Review of Soap - the game of completely illogical emotional pain and suffering

"If you know you are just being disruptive, be the wiser one and just shut up."

MetalMan's Review of "Soap" by Crayne

The Premise:
Players assume those oh-so-complex roles of actors in any given soap opera and indulge themselves in the over-the-top melodrama. As the game states, "your character is likely to be shot by ex-lovers, have a life-threatening operation, save a family member and have a carcrash, all in the space of 30 minutes." There is also a saying that drama is life with all the boring parts left out. If that's true, I'm quite happy with my mundane life.

What Ya Get:
"Soap - the game of completely illogical emotional pain and suffering" is only available as HTML. A printer-friendly version is available and that is the one that I am basing this review off of. It comes in at seven pages. You can access this version here.

Cost:
Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Gratis. Free.

Appearance:
Nothing special as far as presentation goes although the ability to get a printer-friendly version is a very welcome touch. The other version of soap comes with a hyperlinked index which adds some value to it. There are no graphics to speak of other than the banner for "The BlackLight Bar" at the top of the first page. Still, the product is free and it delivers good value for what you do get as we will see below.

The Game:
Soap does not use dice. Instead you will use tokens of some form or another to keep track of your "plot points." All characters are recommended to be related to each other in some fashion as it sets up the adulterous backstabbing environment that seems to be so common in soap operas. Players pick three adjectives that describe their charcters such as envious, cunning, perverted, etc. They gain a token whenever they form a sentence that brings up one of these adjectives in the context of the game - not necessarily by using that exact word but in the context of their actions. For example, Bart Adams has "cunning" as one of his adjectives and he says in the game that "While waiting in the living room for his ex-wife Mona, Bart finds her diary and reads it quickly looking for inciminating evidence that he could use against her." Each player can only state one sentence per turn. Sentence construction is the main game mechanic of Soap. Character creation is completed with the choice of the character's "secret." Characters can never be killed unless their secret is discovered. If a player uses a sentence in the game that hints at his secret, he gains five tokens for his daring. Once a secret is revealed, however, that character can be killed off by the other players if they choose to do so.

Tokens can be used to start, join, or continue a scene. All players start with two tokens. A scene can be started by paying a token. Your character can join a scene already in progress but it can be opposed by the creator of the scene by starting a bidding war of tokens. Continuing a scene means that your character is already in a scene and that he can use either a positive or negative sentence on anyone in the scene with him or in the game. Positive sentences are used to either hint at your secret or to gain plot tokens. Negative sentences are used to annoy or thwart other players plans. However, negative sentences can be opposed by the affected player by using a bidding war of tokens. Remember characters can't be killed but they can be sidetracked by an extended hospital stay. Here is an example, Player A sets the scene that he is driving along a country road enjoying the sunshine in his sports car. Player B attempts to use a negative sentence against him by saying that "Suddenly a cow steps out into the road ahead of him and he crashes his car and suffers a severe head wound." As you can imagine, Player A doesn't like this and contests it by bidding tokens to override it. He can't stop the cow stepping into the road but he can say that he swerved at the last minute to avoid it.

An example of play is included that clarifies how the system works in gameplay and additional rules are given for extending the game outside of single sessions by using "serial play." Under these rules, characters can be brought back from the "dead" by paying three tokens. Games do not end after 30 minutes but must be stopped with a "cliffhanger." Plot tokens are kept track of as they carry over between sessions and the last player who went in the previous session must opem the first turn of the new session.

A section is given in which the author states that he is working on a variant game for using Soap with the Once Upon a Time cardgame from Atlas and that it will be presented when it is finished.

Overall Impression:
I'm not the biggest fan of soap operas but this is a parody of the genre and I can see this as a great party game. I'm unsure as to how well Soap would work as an extended game but thats really for players of the game to determine. The sentence constuction rules are very nice and simple to explain and allow for a wide variety of mayhem to be brought into the game as characters begin to be abducted by aliens. Most people should be able to get a game organized and running within a half hour of reading the rules, if that long. No GM is apparently needed, but it might be a good idea to have someone impartial to hand out tokens and make sure that nobody gets out of line and offends other players as Soap has the potential to get rauchy in the hands of someone even meaning well. It suddenly struck me that Soap could be used to run a version of Clue pretty easily with only a few minor tweaks such as changing a "secret" to a "motivation for murder." and using either a map of a house or the actual boardgame to keep track of players. Hmmmm...

MetalMan signing off.