Yearbooks in Disgrace

First Day of the Rest of Your School Year

The first thing you notice is that the school is laid out like a labyrinth in a video game: Huge passageways, multiple levels, and monsters, lots of them. Not actual monsters. Not orcs or dragons. But there are bullies, stressed-out teachers with a grudge against freshmen, and you could swear that you saw the vice-principal breathe a little fire. 

Yeah, that’s it. Laugh a little. It’s just high school, first day. Mom got you up early and gave you the whole speech about how you needed to do better. “Come back with your shield or on it,” or something like that. And not just better than you did in middle school, and not just better than her, or dad, but better than anyone else in your entire family has ever done, at anything. Because if you don’t do better, you are just going to be another miserable-slacker-loser in a family full of them. 

By better, of course, Mom meant good grades culminating in a scholarship and a career that makes real money. Breakfast was not the right time to tell her about your dreams. It never is. The last time you tried, she told you she couldn’t afford them, and that you couldn’t either.

You find your class, and you sit down. Your teacher, in his forties, is desperately young. He smiles a lot, talks quickly, and bounces around the classroom. He tells the class about his band, which plays less and less since he’s a math teacher. And then he starts the lesson. You like him and pity him at the same time. Is this what Mom wants for you? If you had his sad life, would that make her happy? 

Sorry, Mom, not me. 

Overview

Yearbooks in Disgrace  is a role-playing game about teenagers and the pain, joy, and growth that teenagers experience. It is meant to evoke such films as Easy A or The Fault in Our Stars and television shows such as Everybody Hates Chris or Freaks and Geeks. In Yearbooks in Disgrace, most of your group will consist of players, each of whom has a teenage character with talent both actual and potential and some real problems too. One of you will be the game master (GM), the person who will create and run scenarios for your characters that let those talents shine and develop (or not) and test and overcome the problems (or not). 

Setting 

The default setting of Yearbooks in Disgrace is an era, neighborhood, and high school with which you would feel familiar. So if you and your friends graduated nearly 30 years ago from a public math-science magnet school in a poor neighborhood (like I did), that would be your default setting. But suppose that you are of different ages, went to different schools, want to play in different eras, and so on? The best move is to let everyone who cares (some of us are happy just to play, after all) contribute to the setting. If one person seems to care more than everyone else, that person should likely be the Principal (who will take on the roles of Games Master).

Character Creation

Your character is assumed to be a new freshman at the start of a new school year. You should decide on a name, gender, race, overall general appearance, and some parts of your background such as friends, family, hobbies, unrequited loves, and so on, and you must establish the following traits:

∙	Academics -- This is your ability to succeed at schoolwork, though this is not necessarily reflective of your intelligence. 

∙	Athletics -- This is a combination of strength and coordination. 

∙	Independence -- Your ability to think and act for yourself. It is used for any activity that is personally important to you or to defy anyone who attempts to make you conform to their standards. 

∙	Status -- This is your ability to be respected for your achievements, to be forgiven for your mistakes, and to simply be admired.

These traits will each have a rank value - 4 (Outstanding), 3 (Good), 2 (Satisfactory) or 1 (Poor).

The Principal will tell you whether your characters are to be built from the Average Grade Points or Chance Entry:

-	Average Grade Points give you the values 3, 2, 2 & 1. Assign each value to an ability.

The Average Grade Points provides the quickest method of bringing about characters and will allow you to tell the majority of high school stories. If you are playing with a fairly large number of players, you might want to avoid this method as it can lead to characters feeling mechanically similar; for one or two players, it’s probably perfect.

-	for Chance Entry, roll 2d6. The resultant number should be divided up so that all abilities have a rank of at least 1. (If you don’t have enough points to do this, any ability that would start at 0 instead starts at 1 but with three points of Strain).

Since these rolls are random, it is possible to end up with a character whose scores are objectively terrible. I really suggest that you play whatever scores you get, no matter how good or how bad. If you think about all those high school stories, there are always characters who don’t fit in, who would have lots of low scores if they were statted in this game, but who were sympathetic anyway. And I know some people who, in real life, would have had lots of low scores too, but who have grown high school measurements. Those are interesting characters and people, at least as interesting as the prom queen valedictorian.

Each trait will also have two tracks - a Gain and a Strain score.
If you Gain four points in one trait, those points are erased and that trait is increased by one rank (to a maximum of 4 - though Gaining beyond this level provides your character with regional fame and beyond).
If your trait is Strained by four points, those points are erased and the trait is decreased by one rank. If a trait would drop to 0, you are likely to suffer terribly - dropping out of school at best.
Gain or Strain points are only erased when they reach their maximum - so if you had three points of Gain in Academics but dropped a rank because of Strain, you retain three points of Gain. You can expend time and effort to reduce the level of Strain. If you take too long to capitalise on your Gain, the Principal may remove points.

Playing the Game

Your Principal will put certain obstacles in your way: such as a bully, a new time-wasting hobby, an argument between your parents that spills over and affects you, and so on. Usually these obstacles will be based on your abilities and background or on the setting. In addition, you may certainly decide to focus on something that you want to achieve or improve. 

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). 

Your Principal should pit your friends, family, fun, work, and school against each other. You can’t do everything or be everything to everyone. Something has to give. You have to decide what is important to you, and try to juggle everything else. 

Attempting Tasks

When you attempt something with an uncertain outcome, your Principal will assign a difficulty number between  2 (very easy) to 12 (very difficult). If you act directly against another character, you simply roll against each other and the highest result wins.

Take a number of six-sided dice equal to your rank and roll them. You may keep no more than two dice from those rolled and total those dice. If this number exceeds the target number, you have been successful. If you fail to reach the target number, you have been unsuccessful.

Aiden is sitting a chemistry mid-term. His teacher, Mrs Kennall, is strict so this test is actually more difficult than the final - the difficulty number is 9. Aiden is Good at Academics, so he rolls three dice - scoring 4, 4 and 3; even combining both fours, it is not enough to pass the test.

During resolution, you can Strain to increase your odds. By adding a point of Strain, you can add another dice to your roll. By adding a point of Strain, you can re-roll any number of dice from your pool.

Aiden really needs to pass this test, so he adds a point of Strain to roll another dice - it’s another 4. This still isn’t good enough, so he adds another point of Strain to re-roll all dice except one of the fours: he gets a 3, 2 and a 6. Combining the 6 and the 4 is enough to pass.

If you succeed in a task, you Gain one point in that attribute.

Failing tasks never increases your Strain - but the repercussions might.

Precise Tasks

Some things in life require exquisite attention to detail.

Your Principal may determine that any given task needs a precise number to succeed. When this happens, your combined dice must exactly equal the target number - exceeding it or failing to reach it equally count as failure.

Rihanna is about to take the game-winning shot in an important netball playoff. This is a shot she’s made before - it’s not too complex (she only needs a 7), but the pressure is on - this will be the last play of the match. The Principal deems she needs a precise seven to succeed. Rihanna is Outstanding in Athletics: and lucky, since she rolls 5, 4, 2 & 3.

The usual rules for Straining apply in Precise Tasks.

Trivial Tasks

Some things in life are, you know, below me, man. It can be very difficult to motivate the brightest students.

Your Principal may determine that any given task is trivial. Since they are so difficult to be motivated for, any dice value in your pool that fails to equal or beat your trait rank gives you one point of Strain.

Deshawn is meeting the school governing committee, but it is solely a political hand-pressing task. It’s simple - he only needs 5 to make a good impression, but the task is trivial. Deshawn’s Status is Outstanding and he rolls 2, 3, 5 & 6. Since the two and three are each lower than his rank (of four), he takes two points of Strain.

The usual rules for Straining also apply in Trivial Tasks. Since the dice will be checked only at the point of completing the task, it might be worth adding Strain to reroll away low numbers.

Precise, Trivial Tasks

If your Principal is a sadist, they may deem a task to be both precise and trivial. Such things are the destruction of star pupils.

As head girl, Kayleigh must recite the school poem for the county officials at the opening of the school’s speech day. This is both precise and trivial - requiring a value of six. Kayleigh is only Satisfactory at Academics, but rolls 1 & 5. This is what she needs to succeed, but the roll of one gives her a point of Strain.

Preparation, Advantage and Disadvantage

Advantage and disadvantage are usually the result of effort or lack of effort. You will have advantage on an Academics roll to pass a test, for example, if you have studied for it. Sometimes cleverness can also give advantage, and a poor choice can lead to disadvantage. For example, you decide to ask the couple for whom you babysit for a raise, but in doing so, you point out the shortcomings of their children, and they feel insulted, resulting in a disadvantage on the Status roll to ask for your raise. Finally, you can receive help from someone else in order to gain advantage on a roll. Similarly, someone can attempt to interfere with you, thus giving you disadvantage. Attempting to help or hinder someone else does require a roll. It is not automatic.

There are limits to how much effort you can put into different areas. The GM is within his rights to ask for a roll, even a hard one, when you try to spread yourself too thin. In general, the better you are at something, the easier it is to prepare. In a sense, you have done a lot of preparation for it previously. Conversely, the worse you are at something, the more difficult it is to prepare.

If you are in an advantageous position, your difficulty numbers will be smaller.
If you are in a disadvantageous position, your difficulty numbers will be higher.

Preparing for a specific outcome (such as revising for a test) allows you to Strain on the task without adding to your Strain track. Your Principal will determine how many Strains are free, based on the quality and scale of your preparation. Last minute cramming might give one free spend; a month-long revision programme with the local sophomores may allow as many as seven.

Success and Failure
Each time you succeed at a task, your character Gains one point for that trait. When you accumulate four Gains, erase them all and increase the rank of the trait.

If you attempt to increase a trait beyond 4, you earn a level for that trait. The level indicates against whom you are fair competition, or how well known you are, or both. If you have a level, you always roll at advantage against someone of lower level or no level.

The levels are:

∙	County (5)
∙	Regional (6)
∙	State (7)
∙	National (8)
∙	International (9)

In order to progress up the levels, you need to reach a number of Gains equal to the level. However, four Strains will always reduce your trait by one. Once you reach State prominence, trivial tasks are particularly dangerous…

In order to maintain a level, you must spend time each week successfully practising. The difficulty number for this task is equal to the value of the level. Alternatively, you may spend a point of Gain instead.

You don’t accumulate Strain for failing, though persistent failure will bring more tasks which will bring about more Strain.  When you accumulate four Strains, erase them all and decrease the rank of the trait.

If a trait falls to 0, you are in danger of leaving the game due to expulsion, depression, poor health, an act of violence, a run-in with the law, or some other reason altogether. The next game session should be about your attempt to stay, to improve that 0 to 1 by accumulating four Gains in that ability before you accumulate four Strains. However, since you roll no dice to start a task, this will prove very difficult...

If your trait falls below 0, your character leaves the game and you must make a new character. 

If you would decrease a trait, you can instead attempt to deflect the loss. The various methods are listed below. If you are successful, you do not lose the point, but your Strain marks for that ability are erased. The Principal may deem that you also lose your Gain.

∙	Share the pain: Pick another player-character, and ensure that she gets some negative attention too. Point out her flaws or mistakes or lapses of judgment or betrayals, real or imagined. This would be an opposed Status roll or possibly an Athletics roll if you attempt to physically bully the other PC. Whether you succeed or fail, you add a point of Strain in Independence and Status, which are noted last, after any marks have been erased. As a group you may want to ban this option, but I would suggest keeping it if you can handle it.

∙	Share the folly: Similar to the above, except that in case, you attempt to make the other player a co-conspirator. This is a matter of negotiation, not rolls. Whether you succeed or fail, you add a point of Strain in Independence and Status, which are noted last, after any marks have been erased. Your conspirator is not Strained in this way.

∙	Harm yourself: You starve yourself, or you cut yourself, or you start abusing drugs, &c.… This requires no roll. You add a permanent point of Strain in Independence and Vitality, which are noted last, after any marks have been erased.

∙	Become obsessed: This one can be dangerous because it is so subtle. You become obsessed with something that is a seeming good, such as your relationship or your schoolwork.  This requires no roll. You add a permanent point of Strain in Independence, which is noted last, after any marks have been erased. Using your spare time in any way that does not feed this obsession requires a successful Individuality task.

About Trigger Warnings and X-Cards:

This game does not have a trigger warning. I do mention some unpleasant things, but I do not go into detail. However, I expect that the game will be mild compared to what could happen in play, so I suggest that you use trigger warnings and John Stavropoulos’s X-cards. You can go to this address for more details:.  http://tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg

In short, X-cards are a way to make the game enjoyable for everyone. The GM places an index card with an X at the center of the table, and let’s everyone know that they can touch (or even simply point to) the card anytime they like to make the current subject off-limits. There is no discussion necessary, no judgment. This system takes into account the improvisational nature of role-playing games. You can’t really predict what will happen in the game, so trigger warnings, while useful, are also by the nature of RPGs incomplete.

And although the seriousness of this seems to indicate that it would only be used for weighty topics, and it can also be used if someone introduces something ridiculous such as “a modern realistic horror game [in which] someone introduced funny elves” (John Stavropoulos).

For those of you uncomfortable with such measures, I ask for your indulgence. Like you, I am not easily offended, so if anyone did something so strange or vile that it forced me to press the X-card, I would likely simply not play with that person again. But I am lucky, and so are you. Some of our fellow players are not so lucky.
CHARACTER SHEET -- YEARBOOKS IN DISGRACE

Name:	

Description:

Academics		GAIN        [_] [_] [_] [_]
STRAIN   [_] [_] [_] [_]	
Athletics		GAIN        [_] [_] [_] [_]
STRAIN   [_] [_] [_] [_]	
Independence		GAIN        [_] [_] [_] [_]
STRAIN   [_] [_] [_] [_]	
Status		GAIN        [_] [_] [_] [_]
STRAIN   [_] [_] [_] [_]	

Image:
Guiding Words: Being an Outstanding Principal

School is a time of great emotional investment and turmoil: it is little wonder we carry these memories and scars deep into our lives. It is also a brutal and complex social environment - at its best, tempering nascent minds into powerful thinkers; at its worst, demoralising and indoctrinating.

Nevertheless, your players will each have a solid experience of school, where they wouldn’t have a real-life experience of kicking down dungeon doors and slaying those within for access to their pocket change. As such, it is especially important to allow players to suggest content for your shared setting. Nothing dissuades a student as fast as rejecting their input.

Everything you do as Principal should be guided by the words, “Yes, and.” 

As the story progresses, you’ll be tracking repercussions of events anyway: a little greater chaos than you expected is just going to be par for the course. Even the greatest teacher cannot prepare for every eventuality.

The remaining tenets of Principal’s advice is guided by the current British teaching standards. Their ideas apply to your own preparation and also the provision of the setting to the players.

1. High Expectations

Before the game begins, it is important that all players are on the same page, singing from the same hymn-sheet, following the same curriculum, and other tired metaphors.

The simplest way of doing this is to begin the first session by discussing the kinds of memories we had of school - of the teachers, of our peers, of our idols. From this, you should settle upon the scope and tone of the game. If the memories mostly cluster around exam time, focus on a single term at school. If they cluster around the in-class shenanigans, focus on the social aspects of the education system.

Once these ideas have been discussed and decided, clearly communicate the agreed tone and scope of the game.

If players push against these boundaries - and they likely will - allow them. Yes you can mess around, and it will mean your difficulty numbers are higher for this task.

2. Progression

The purpose of education and its provision is to bring about progression in the students - in their knowledge, in their skills and in their lives. 

Within the game, you should look to allow players’ progression in terms of their abilities and their goals. This will mean providing them with enough tasks to complete so that they can accrete Gain.

The idea of progression also brings into account the nature of time’s progression. There are only so many hours in a day - players will have the opportunity to use their evenings well or badly. If you’re tracking days directly, assume each day has a Morning, and Afternoon and an Evening. School will take up the Morning and Afternoon of weekdays, leaving the Evenings for preparation or relaxation. If a player wants to push themselves and stay up late, allow them - but require an Athletics task to avoid becoming overtired the next day.

3. Subject knowledge

The arbiters of knowledge within a school are often its staff and its alumni. These are the sorts of characters the players will interact with on a daily basis - it’s thoroughly important that they are individual and distinct. It’s much more important to create vivid adult characters than to populate the entirety of the players’ class.

Your teachers should all have names and brief descriptions. You’ll also want to give them personal drives and vices, and just that one thing that they cannot stand. These will provide all the interaction your players need.

Mercilessly steal these from your own school experience. Alter the names if you must.

4. Planning

Since so much of the game will be driven by what the players want to do, it is difficult to plan for every eventuality. It’s better to have a loose grasp of where the term is headed and the sorts of things required to get there, and see which parts the players push against. Your discussions at the start about tone and scope will help inform this.

At least, you’ll want to plan out what your relevant teacher characters are interested in achieving or doing in the far and immediate future.

5. Differentiation

Though school is primarily driven by its academic content, a good provision of education will grow a student in all areas, and provide for students of all abilities.

Though your tone and scope will likely focus on one area, do not ignore the other aspects of teenage life. If you’ve gone a week without setting Status tasks, you’re in danger of over-specialising. Remember, it’s the tension between managing all of these areas that can provide the best opportunity for an interesting story.

6. Assessment

The bread and butter of this game is in the regular setting of tasks. Whenever the outcome of something is uncertain, you should call for a task for all relevant players. This will be obvious in relation to certain things - a test will always be an Academics task, convincing your parents to let you hang out with your friends worryingly close to that bar will always be an Independence task. However, passive events might also call for tasks - it’s not easy to take important notes from a bad teacher…

The most difficult part will be assigning the difficulty numbers for the tasks. Remember that the most common roll on two dice is seven, though your players will be potentially rolling more dice and choosing the best. You should be able to get the feel for difficulties during play, and any variance can be explained away by teacher quirks.

When in doubt, use seven as your standard target, adding or removing one if players are disadvantaged or otherwise.

If your players are feeling smug, throw trivial tasks their way. Build up to precise tasks - let your players know they are coming from a while off. Perhaps your literature teacher wants to test everyone’s oracy before she picks the person to give that end of year speech.

7. Discipline

Task failures have no mechanical drawback - it’s only pushing hard for success that causes Strain. However, you should look to increase the narrative difficulty if players continue to fail tasks. It’s boring to have persistent failure equate to sequential disadvantages on tasks: it’s much better to have that player’s parents called in to meet with the teacher.

A quick word on common discipline structures in schools: usually, students will be given an opportunity to fix improper behaviour; if they fail to do so, they’ll be punished by the immediate teacher. Persistent failure to comply leads to intervention from increasingly senior staff - heads of faculty, heads of year and eventually, the head of the school itself.

And notoriety goes a long way and lasts a long time.

8. The Bigger Picture

Although it’s your job to run the game, you aren’t the only arbitrator. Likewise, this isn’t a simulationist run of education. If you’re struggling to come up with things to drive the story onwards, ask the players outright what sorts of things they are interested in exploring. Throw in some mutually exclusive demands on their time, and all will run out smoothly.

Perhaps even other players will want to play the role of Principal from time to time.