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This small Indie game hit gamestore shelves in 1982. For its time it featured a unique high school setting, providing a nice diversion from the typical dungeon crawling. The game focuses on social interactions in both gameplay and measuring overall success. It does feature mature content with explicit rules for sex and drugs with complimentary suggestive art by legend Erol Otus. The book has 48 pages.
Content:
The rulebook starts out with a minimal one-page introduction to role-playing games and describes the basic conventions of the polyhedral dice used. The game uses d20 and d6.
Character creation is very straight forward, following simple sequence of paragraphs guiding the player. The seven attributes are rolled on 1d10: Strength, Coordination, Appearance, Intelligence, Learning Drive, Courage and Willpower. Strength and Willpower are combined into Constitution (effectively hit points). There are seven character types to choose from. Each is based around high school stereotypes: Criminal, Jock, Cheerleader, Brain, Tough, Loser and Average. Attribute requirements limit class selection.
Skills focus around typical high school activities. They range from social skills such as coolness, crudeness and isolation (a form of stealth) to academic studying, homework and cheating. Skills are developed through individual use with levels of mastery that provide bonuses to skill checks. Skill use is straight forward and easy to resolve.
The combat system is simple, yet a bit cumbersome. It relies on numerous situational modifiers to tally the effectiveness of attacks. During playtesting we found ourselves referring back to the rulebook frequently.
A big part of the game centers on social interactions with NPC’s. There is a wide range of social rules that cover dancing, flirting and going steady. These are complimented by a healthy selection of encounter and reaction tables. These charts and rules combine well to give the “Schoolmaster” tools to generate random encounters and lay the groundwork for scenarios.
Again, this is a game with mature topics. There are rules covering alcohol and drug use (including addiction) and pregnancy.
Unlike most open-ended role-playing games Alma Mater has a winner, ending after four years of high school. Winning the game is measured in success points accumulated through Social, Academic and General successes. Characters earn multipliers for successes related to their class. Players are encouraged to stay within their class. During playtesting our group found it more rewarding when achieving successes outside of the character class. Those tend to be much more difficult to accomplish and the payoff was often more enjoyable so we plugged that into our house rules.
The rulebook also provides a generic high school setting, Central High. It details the campus, plus selected faculty and students. The scenarios are outlined as a timetable of events. Many of these events provide quirky moments to break the drudgery of daily school life or provide catalysts for character interactions. There are two sample school days and a party to get the game started.
Conclusion:
As a product of 80’s high school, I have a soft spot for Alma Mater. It is a below-average game system by today’s standards, but its interesting social simulation aspects boost it to an average game. For its time it offered a unique experience from the standard RPG’s. It can be appealing to relive your youth or fulfill teenage fantasies. With the right gaming group Alma Mater offers some really fun moments and a lot of laughs.
Style: Needs Work – The rules are cramped and spread around simultaneously, so the index page gets used a lot. A homemade gamemaster screen is handy.
Content: Average – The social simulation rules are interesting and the authors provide a good starting place for scenarios.
