Yesterday we played a one-shot of Spell the RPG, for which I made a character a few years back. First, the game story, and then a few thoughts on the game itself in case someone trips over their internet-feet and winds up here and is interested.
Our story takes place in St. Louis! Our setting is very much like the modern world, except that a few people who coincidentally live in the same apartment building have listened to a vinyl record that opened their minds to the magic of language! Said people are:
- Lily Smith: Lily is a hippie, or rather, she's what a modern-day twenty-something thinks a hippie might have been. Very enamored of the 60s and 70s as an aesthetic and kind of romanticizes the period. She gained magic listening to "Rumors" by Fleetwood Mac.
- Alaric Schneider: Son of a German composer, Alaric is a mathematician and professor. Interested in ciphers and folklore, Alaric sees the world in math terms. He gained magic listening to a selection from "Rites of Spring."
- Alice Donahue: Alice is a lawyer and very interested in argument and fairness (also karaoke, though sadly it didn't come up). She heard magic in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels.
- Ash: Ash isn't their real name, but Ash is in something of a phase right now ("it's not a phase, mom"). Highly emo, pretty nihilistic, Ash gets into trouble for doing graffiti and other forms of rebellion. They got magic listening to "Back in Black" by AC/DC, maybe one of their dad's old records.
- Kathryn "Kate" Shaw: Kate is a soccer mom (for the 4-6 year old teams) and pretty much lives in that world (her view on philosophy is "I'll get one of those when my kids get to middle school"). She gained magic from Tom Lehrer's "Silent E" song.
So on this particular day, our five protagonists are at the park. Lily is there most days, spreading love and taking selfies. Kate is there while her kids at the playground. Alaric is walking while noodling over a math problem, and Alice is jogging. Ash is doing community service, and fretting about how this bright orange vest fucks up their look, man.
They notice a crowd of people all clustered around something, taking pictures. Lily is closest and wanders over to see what's up. She sees a bee the size of a housecat rolling around in the flowers, and a dude with no shirt and a cap on backwards who was just tossing a disc around reaching out to pick it up. Lily tries to tell him not to, to leave the wildlife alone, but he doesn't listen and the bee stings him on the arm. It wriggles and separates the stinger from its body, and then buzzes off a few feet to die.
The dude screams in pain, and that gets everyone else's attention. Other people rush over, include the other Speakers, and Alaric calls for an ambulance. Kate, already in mom mode, carefully pulls the stinger out, but can see that this guy's arm is already swelling and he's going into anaphylaxis. She casts a spell ("BEAD") to make the venom bubble up and out of his wound, and manages to slow it down enough to save him; the paramedics arrive and Kate tries to explain what happened.
Meanwhile, Alice tries to figure out where the heck this giant bee might have come from. Are there more around? No one sees any. She casts a spell ("JOLT") to look for or trigger a sudden "ah-ha!" kind of moment, and sees a woman in the onlooking crowd kind of get a light bulb above her head (not literally). She makes conversations and the woman recalls that, while driving deliveries in a nearby suburban neighborhood, she thought she saw a bee that size, but figuring it was an optical illusion or something.
Alaric prods the bee carcass a bit. He figures it's born of magic, but would like to make sure, so he casts a spell ("CITE") to see its origin. It is indeed born of magic, but not deliberate magic - someone did this via some kind of magical accident. Are there more Speakers, then? The characters are only aware of the five of them, but it stands to reason there must be more magical records out there.
Lily does some digging on social media, looking for more bee sightings, and sees that at a recent protest people were talking about a sudden swarm of bees. Lily was at that protest, but must not have been at that exact locale because she doesn't remember bees. The protest was against environmental destruction, and she knows the police got involved, pushed people back, there were some arrests, a big storefront window got smashed. They decide to wander over there and see if there's anything to learn.
The window that got smashed was a Starbucks, so none of the characters are terribly fussed about it (Alice and Kate do get drinks, though). They talk over what they've all learned so far, and they decide to focus their magic a bit to see if they can track down where these bees are from. They have three locations - the park, this area (since this is where the mysterious swarm happened during the protest), and the neighborhood where the woman saw the giant bee the other day, so they get out some people, Kate contributes some crayons, and they draw a crude map and start filling out a word web.
In working on their word web, the word "APIARIST" comes up. Lily knows a few of the folks who sell honey at the local farmers' markets, and getting a permit to do so is hard. But there are other folks who raise bees on their own, of course. Looking to the internet, they find a group for local apiarists. Kate casts her "LEND A STAT" spell to help Alice and Alaric focus (and Focus) a bit, and they cast a co-op spell: "TENANT LEAD." This gets them to one Clarence Dunbar, who, lo and behold, lives in the neighborhood! Kate drops her kids off with their father, everyone piles into the minivan, and they head out to the house.
The house looks...surprisingly normal. They don't see any giant bees around. They go up to the door and Lily knocks, and they are rewarded with a chorus of angry buzzing sounds from inside. This must be the place. Ash, never the most subtle of individuals, casts a spell ("ROID") and grows bigger and stronger and shoulders their way through the door, and into the house.
Well, into the hive. The interior of this place is covered in honey and wax, and it's clearly bigger on the inside. The giant bees are here in force, and they start swarming towards Ash, but Alaric steps in with one of his signature spells ("LEADER") and they go back to their business for the moment. The Speakers start looking around, and Alice casts a spell ("EXPERT MAP") to learn the layout of the place.
The hive is clearly bigger on the inside and doesn't conform to normal spatial rules, but there seems to be a basement that isn't really part of the hive. They head there and find that the door is covered in honey and stuck fast, but Kate casts a spell ("TUBE") and makes a tube through the door. She crawls through and, apart from realizing that she should have gone through feet first ("OW BE CAREFUL" THUMP THUMP), everyone gets through without a real problem.
Downstairs, they find a nice rec room kind of situation - TV, bean bag chair, stereo, record player. Record player? They find a vinyl pressing of Paul Simon's "Think Too Much", and wonder if Clarence might have become a Speaker, too. Kate looks carefully at the record (and then passes it to Alice, who is much more perceptive) and they notice some scratches on it, recent, but almost deliberate, like someone dragged the needle or something? Maybe if the song that Clarence heard was damaged or skipped it corrupted his magic?
Ash heads upstairs, tired of all this "thinking", and goes back into the main part of the house...whereupon the bees swarm them, clustering close and overheating them. They cast a spell ("BEES DIE") to make them drop dead, and the Speakers downstairs hear THUMPITY THUMP as the giant bee carcasses fall. Ash has not, of course, killed all the bees, and others are already swarming in. The others rush upstairs and Alice crawls through the tube, and then casts "GET EVEN" and the others appear next to them. Kate casts a spell ("A STUNNER") to create a speaker kind of thing that makes a loud thrummy sort of noise that stuns the bees. Lily casts "LEADER" and becomes, to these bees, the Queen Bee! She dances for them and they ignore the Speakers.
Since Clarence doesn't seem to be in the house, the Speakers decide to go into the garden. They go out the back door and into the jungle primeval - huge trees, vines, bird calls, monkey noises - Lily is thrilled initially. She calls out for Clarence and they see something rustling in the trees. Alice walks over to look at it, and leaves reach out and grab her! A huge carnivorous plant tries to devour her, but her fellow Speakers on the case. Alaric casts a spell to kill the plant ("WILTS") and Kate casts one to grab Alice ("ROB RIND"), but the plant just sheds a couple of leaves and it doesn't really have rind, so those spells don't do much.
Lily approaches this another way. She makes a more appetizing meal for the plant ("GOAT"), and the plant drops Alice and devours the hapless ungulate (which leads them to wonder if the goat will dematerialize or if it's, like, a real goat). They give the plant a wide berth, and Alice casts a spell ("BEAT") to make a path into the jungle. As they're going, a couple of them (I want to say Alice and Alaric, since they're the ones with higher Focus ratings, but I didn't write it down) cast a co-op spell to find Clarence ("MEET ROOT"), and step off the path to follow the sickly sweet smell of fruit.
They find a huge fruit tree, surrounded by giant bees, and sitting at the foot of it is Clarence. But he's got a beard made of bees, and bees keep crawling out of his overalls. The Speakers try and talk to him, try to figure out what he wants and convince him to maybe shrink the bees a little? But it becomes clear that they aren't really talking to Clarence. Indeed, they get the sense that this being doesn't really care about bees per se. Somewhere in here "Clarence" sends a swarm of bees at the group, and they all defend in various ways (Ash defends with their signature "NEVER" spell, while Kate uses her "ROOST IT!" spell to send the bees packing). But there are so many bees, and Kate winds up with a honeycomb pattern on her face. "Clarence" is apparently trying to turn her into something like him!
This is, of course, not remotely acceptable and the Speakers respond with magic. Kate throws out "DROWN NOOB" to call down a hard rain to drive back the bees. Ash casts "GO MUERTO" to infuse them with existential dread. Alaric takes a more surgical approach, casting "JUST ONE" to whittle down the hive, while Lily casts "LOVE" to calm them and remove their hostility. "Clarence", however, is undeterred and sends more bees. Kate, refusing to be his honeycomb, casts "T-REX" and turns into, well, a t-rex, cronching up some bees. Ash throws in their "MISERY" spell, Lily continues with "LOVE" (it did occur to me that these spells would be mutually exclusive if we weren't dealing with a hive mind).
Alice casts "GOOD SAVE" to hold a last minute advantage in reserve, and Alaric, realizing they still don't really know what's going on, casts "TALK TO ME DUDE." He suddenly hears the voice of Clarence: "Help me! It's got me in a box! I can't-"
Alaric uses his "LEADER" spell to transmit this knowledge to the others, and while Kate distracts "Clarence" as a t-rex, the other four collaborate on a big co-cop spell.
They come up with:
 |
| I remember Ash contributed "ROT" and that seemed appropriate |
This mighty spell hurled at the being, it crumbles, the jungle melts away, the bees vanish, and Clarence is standing there looking very surprised. He buckles up his overalls, and thanks the Speakers profusely. He explains that he was at the protest when the police started doing their oinky bullshit and he tried to cast "BE PANDEMONIUM" to kind of give everything some chaos, but kinda fucked it up and cast "PANBEEMONIUM" instead. The bees appeared and followed him home, and, not knowing how to reverse a spell, played his magic record backwards. That, apparently summoned something dark and Unspeakable and, well, you saw the rest.
The Speakers welcome Clarence into their fold. None of them really know what's going on, but they're happy to figure it out with some help!
And now, some thoughts on Spell the RPG from actual play
- This game is really fun. The letters gimmick is cool, and even our player who isn't much for anagrams got into it. Table talk and help between players is essential, however.
- Multiple sources of letters are very helpful. We had a bag of Scrabble tiles and a bag of Bananagrams, and in retrospect I wish I'd have found a second Scrabble bag because the letter distribution is better. A bag for each player would be ideal.
- The pacing of this game is weird, because you have to stop frequently and let people jumble letters around (everyone having their own bag of letters would help some, because it would mean multiple people could cast at once). That's not a bad thing, it's just something the GM needs to be aware of.
- The PDF is not bookmarked (argh), doesn't have an index (ARGH), and does not have a table of contents (ARRRRGH). I did some work noting important page numbers ahead of time, but it's a giant PITA to find anything quickly.
- The Impulses (your base stats) aren't differentiated enough. What's the difference between "Focus" and "Reason?" When would you use "Scheme" rather than "Daring" or "Grit" over "Force"? There are descriptions of each of them, but the descriptions are too long and too involved. There needs to be a sidebar with quick descriptions of each of them, and honestly I think eight would have been better than 12.
- I say this a lot, but some examples of spells would have been great. I figured out how it was meant to work, I think, but seeing a system this freeform in context is important.
All that said, I really like this game, and I would totally run a longer campaign of it, I think. I might house rule the stats a little, though.
