Design Reflections: A Game A Month July 2024
In case you missed it, A Game A Month is a project I ambitiously took on to practice game writing mechanics with limitations and etc. For July, the limitations based on an d20 roll off a random table are that it has to be in a High School setting, and somehow be inspired by popular music.
Reader, believe me when I say that my mind was a complete blank even though I wrote that damned random table myself.
My first thought on High School x Popular Music were films and series that incorporated popular music deeply into their script, like High School Musical, or Glee, or others that highlighted and made popular bands, like 10 Things I Hate About You, or Bring It On.
(Yes, I realise my age is showing…)
But while I was mulling over High School Musical: The RPG, I decided to jot down a list of things that I linked to high school in general in hopes of it sparking some new inspiration. I was about to do the same for popular music when I realised that I am totally out of touch of what even counts for popular music these days.
So once again, I left it to the random table gods as I opened my “Top Hits in Singapore” Spotify playlist, hit shuffle, then pressed “next” an arbitrary 15 times to land on Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter.
In some despair (high school satirical romance: the RPG?) I checked the lyrics, and latched on the line that read “I’m working late, ‘cos I’m a singer”. And that’s when I realised that I could now write a game that met all the parameters of theme, setting and even my actual personal interests! I was going to write a game about the 7 High School Mysteries!
In case you don’t know it, the 7 School Mysteries are generally a Japanese school trope where there are several “unexplainable” mysterious events that happen in school, such as the anatomy model that moves in the science lab, or the piano that plays by itself in the music room, and etc. I guess 7 is just a nice supernatural type of number. You might have encountered these in many school setting manga and anime, and often these are explained by some scientific/mundane reasoning, but occasionally (especially when expressed in fiction) there is a supernatural cause too.
I even had the perfect system for it. Some years ago, I was commissioned to write a game based on a work of local literature The Teenage Textbook which, yes, was based in high school! The game I wrote was a whodunnit and used the teenager-friendly version of Gumshoe by Pelgrane Press called Bubblegumshoe (BGS) by Evil Hat.
I digress. So the July Game is a mystery/supernatural investigation thing using the BGS system, and I’m hoping the feel of it is something close to a Scooby Doo-style supernatural investigation that turns out to be perfectly mundane. My adventure for Teenage had 4 possible culprits that the GM could decide on before the playthrough (based on a Free RPG Day resource by Evil Hat, downloadable here!), so I wanted to write a similar set up for the JulyAGAM where the general narrative would be the same, but the small details would point to different culprits and motives for the strange happenings in school. For the sake of time, I brought it down to 3 possible mundane reasons, but it also gives the GM space for an inexplicable cause!
But wait, I hear you say. That’s all well and good but what is this logical leap from "working late" to the 7 High School Mysteries?
There was a rumour in my last year of secondary school that there was a moaning ghost in the separate Phys Ed block - several younger school mates reported hearing deep humming and sounds echoing in the quiet building early in the mornings (local schools generally start at around 7:30am, so most students are in school before sunrise), and they ran away rather than investigate. I personally wrote it off as teenage imagination, but as I was chatting about it one day to a junior I was close to, their face paled and said oh. Oh? I think I know who’s the ghost. What?
As the story goes, I had recorded some singing (although I forget why exactly) and sent it to this junior for their listening. Turns out that this junior had been bringing it to the PE block in the mornings to listen to it with some other friends. So yes, I was the PE Block Moaning Ghost. Somehow, I matched that thought to a janitor who's trying out his singing chops in the PE Block late at night.
I’m working late, because I’m a singer.
Anyway. Here's the scenario document for JulyAGAM - The Case of the School Ghost. It is a one-shot scenario and the document is wholly for the GM, although I've provided some pre-gen characters that are statted for BGS. I believe the scenario can be quite easily adapted for any system that caters to a Scooby Doo, investigative supernatural comedy sort of feel, including Monster of the Week, Big Eyes Small Mouth, or quite literally anything you want. I'm rather fond of Gumshoe as a system due to how it manages clue-giving, but I think that's another post for another day. I have stripped out much of the system-related notes outside of the stat blocks, but I'd recommend downloading the original demo Save the Prom on the link I provided above for those notes!
A Game A Month: July 2024 by Thorn & Key- The Case of the Moaning Ghost
- Digital Product (13-page PDF)
- One-shot scenario
- 5 Pre-Generated characters
Till our next post,
Alanna