Yearbook: The RPG
Background
Good morning, students! Welcome to another year of your academic life. High school is tough but the skills, knowledge, and friendships you take away at the end can be invaluable -- it all depends on your determination, and a roll of the dice!
You are a student at a fictional high school. Whether you’re the school jock, the prettiest girl in school, or the D&D nerd you will face unique challenges in your attempt to navigate the uncertain waters of academics, friendships, and puberty.
How to Play
Players
One player takes the role of the principal (GM) and will be responsible for setting scenes in motion and filling in lulls. The principal is also the director, choosing to focus in on certain aspects, or jump cutting over unnecessary action.
The rest of the players take on the role of students.
Character Creation
●	Choose a "yearbook" attribute: Most likely to succeed, class clown, best smile, etc.
●	Choose an extracurricular activity (cf. class or race in other RPGs): football, cheerleading, band, drama, etc.
●	Choose an elective (cf. skill): Comparative religion, Journalism, Economics, etc.
●	Choose either 1 extra credit or 1 social capital
Setting
High School in a geographically and sociopolitically appropriate location for your group. Decide if it’s a public or private school, secular or christian, a magnet school, whatever. If in doubt it’s Bayside High (or JFK High School in Indianapolis, IN for those of you that enjoy deep cuts).
Collectively decide whether your principal is a Belding, a Rooney, a Strickland, or something in between. This may influence the difficulty of the game.
Goal
Your goal is to survive the year, get a good GPA, and end up being voted your selected attribute. But really, just have good time and live out your revenge fantasies.
For the Principal
Your job is to incorporate all the aspects of the principal and the school into a cohesive setting. Use your principal to set the difficulty and use the setting to influence the challenges. Many times you will be sitting back as the students make their moves, other times you will be interjecting conflict, drama, and plain old fear. Ask questions of your students! Feel free to torture your students but don’t torture the players. You are all working together to create a rich story and have a good time.
Common themes will be fitting in, being good enough, making friends, and dealing with authority. Basically anything you had angst about in school or gave other people grief for (statistically speaking if you’re playing this game you were the teased and not the teaser, but we take all kinds here). This game could easily be called “Insecurity: The RPG,” except I don’t think that’s a good title, do you? I mean what do you think? This whole game is stupid, isn’t it?
Allow the students to bring drama from outside school, such as working a second job to help make ends meet, but most of the action should take place in the halls, playgrounds, busses, and field trips of your school.
Get to know your students and love them. Play with and against their attributes. If a player is on the football team make them decide between something they want and skipping practice.  If someone is in band have a bully threaten their instrument.
Say yes to added dice more often than not; feel free to take away dice if the scope of the challenge is too difficult. When the dice make a decision, stick to it.
Mechanics
Making Friends
Students can make friends with NPCs that can help them overcome challenges they face.  To make friend with a student roll 1d6, on a 5+ you make a friend, on a 1 you make an enemy. Students can spend social capital 1-for-1 to increase their roll (this include improving a 1 to keep them from making an enemy). Making friends with a teacher requires a 6+, however students can spend extra-credit instead of social capital.
Quizzes
When it comes time to take a quiz roll 2d6. 12 is an A+ and +1 Extra Credit, 10-11 is an A, 8-9 is a B, 7 is a C, 6 is a D, < 5 is an F. Students may spend extra-credit 1-for-1 to increase their roll.
Challenges
To solve a challenge roll 2d6: On a 7 succeed, on a 6 or 8 partial success (principal decides what partial means), anything else is failure. If you can tap an attribute, extracurricular activity,  elective, or friendship instead roll 3d6 and choose the two that sum closest to 7. If someone, such as an enemy, is working against you roll one fewer die.
In addition to narrative some rewards/penalties for success/failure can be:
●	+/1 die forward towards a related challenge
●	+/- Extra Credit
●	+/- Social capital
●	Suspension or in extreme cases expulsion
●	Mark on the permanent record
●	Gold stars
Players can only add a single die based off their attributes and can additionally add a die that’s taken forward from a previous challenge. Players can’t roll more than 3d6. The principal can only remove a single die. Player’s get to roll at least one die.
Rolling a 1, which can only be accomplished when rolling 1d6 for a challenge, is a spectacular fail and something special should happen. Snakes eyes is not spectacular, just embarrassing.
Dice Table
Result	3d6	2d6	1d6	
Success (7)	41.7%	16.7%	0%	
Partial (6, 8)	37%	27.8%	16.7%	
Failure	21.3%	55.5%	83.3%	
5, 9	11.2%	22.2%	16.7%	
4, 10	6.4%	16.6%	16.7%	
3, 11	2.8%	11.2%	16.7%	
2, 12	1%	5.6%	16.7%	
1	0%	0%	16.7%	
Suspension
A student may be suspended from school for one or more days as the result of failing some challenges. While they are suspended they don’t take part in any school-related activities and they can still role-play outside of school.
A suspension results in a permanent mark on your record.
Expulsion
A fate worse than death! If a student is expelled they are done. Coincidentally, a new student seems to always arrive whenever another student is expelled (that is, players that are expelled may reroll a new character and join the school mid-term).
Causes for expulsion:
●	If a student gets 5 marks on their permanent record they are expelled.
●	If a student flunks 5 quizzes they are expelled (advanced: keep track of their GPA)
●	A student may be expelled as the result of a spectacular fail for a challenge