= The School A game for two to six players, inspired by the 1980s YA novel _The Girl Who Owned A City_ by O.T. Nelson  [Text outside of square brackets is conceived as user-facing text, although all this text is of course mutable.] == Premise A virus has wiped out everyone on Earth who has gone through puberty, leaving only children, fairly few of them over the age of ten. The virus itself is no longer a real concern (characters are free to hit puberty without fear of death), but the struggles for the survivors are clear. The game is set in a junior high school building in which 40 or so children have gathered. There is enough for everyone to eat for the near term; weather is still clement enough for people to sleep without lighting fires or freezing, and the library is well-stocked. Basic defenses are in place, with guards posted regularly. Electricity isn't a thing, but there is some fuel, mostly wood. The point of saying all this isn't to throw the spotlight on technical details of post-apocalyptic life - quite the contrary. First and foremost, The School should be played as though there is real hope and the assembled survivors feel that hope. If this means fudging some details, do it. An instinct toward realism about all aspects of societal collapse will be better served by another game. == To Play You will need some pencils and paper, two six-sided dice, and one twenty-sided die. Each player chooses a character seed from the list. [You don't get to decide who you are when a crisis starts, but once it starts, your capacity for your decisions to affect your character goes up.] If you have an even number of players, choose equal numbers of male and female characters. It should be assumed, per the above, that there are many more kids at the school than just the PCs. 1. Lisa 2. Craig 3. Jill 4. Tom 5. Rachel 6. Sam Whoever has the lowest-numbered seed starts as the the current leader. (For example, if the players have Tom, Jill, and Sam, Jill is the current leader.) Write character details onto an index card. Secretly roll the two six-sided dice (2d6) and write the total on the back of the card. This is your Loyalty rating. Then roll a d6 and write it down as your Tired rating. Finally, roll the d20 and write it down as your current Health. Don't share these numbers with the other players. For all these numbers, higher is better. If your Loyalty hits zero, you become disillusioned by the leadership and might leave the school. If your Tired hits zero, you're no longer capable of dealing with things anymore and might leave the school. If your Health hits zero, you fall unconscious and might die. NOTE: Any observed patterns in statistical differences between male and female characters reflect acculturation already done to girls and boys in Western societies, not any "innate qualities." Watch for these numbers in particular to change in play. Play of _The School_ goes in scenes, cycling between a need, a council meeting, and an action. *Need:* Roll from the list of needs, or the group can choose based on the fiction as established. If a need comes up a second time before all the needs can be used, each player either ticks down their Tired or makes a Loyalty check. (You might choose to do this as a group because it's just logically inescapable for a certain kind of thing to happen next, or because you actually want the added risk of conflict and the drama that comes with it. Don't be afraid to revisit scene types!) NOTE: When you make a Loyalty check, roll 2d6 and compare it with the number on the back of your card. You pass if your roll is equal to or less than your loyalty number. Otherwise you fail: reduce your loyalty by one. 1. Hunger / Thirst: Running low on food or water. 2. Ignorance: Difficulty getting the world back to the way it was. 3. Decay: Something that needs maintenance is being destroyed by time. 4. Despair: The kids aren't alright. 5. Envy / Ambition: Someone's unhappy with the school's leadership. 6. Fear: The outside world is filled with monsters, mostly children. *Council:* Hold council to decide how to deal with this need. Council also pushes the description of the need itself. As people talk about the need, if nobody argues with a statement, it stands as part of the fiction. If someone thinks a statement is incorrect or less interesting than something else, they should propose an alternative -- pause the game. Once there's an alternative, the two players in conflict should talk about what might make the most sense with the fiction as established. They might change either alternative, or compromise to make one built out of both narratives. If they can't come to an agreement quickly (within a minute or two), have the other players vote. In the case of a tie, assign one player evens and the other odds and roll a die. It will often be appropriate for the group to decide what scene to do next, in character. This means the current leader PC makes a proposal and other characters may quibble, acquiesce, or be straight-out hostile. Resolve any arguments longer than about 30 seconds of real time with a roll: assign one side evens and the other odds, as above. There is no GM. Conflict is intended to be between PCs for the most part. In challenges such as harvesting resources from outside or dealing with threats, the players are opposed by the system. [If things are easier or harder than normal, it's due to chance, or because a PC took action to make it that way.] [For the business of having councils as well as everything else, some PbtA-style Moves might be appropriate. My best theory for those has been to look at Umberto Eco’s “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” and then make moves that reward the opposite. Something more incisive that that, though, is probably available.] *Action:* When the council finally decides on a course of action, the scene is over. The person who originally proposed the decided action re-rolls their Loyalty: 2d6 secretly, replacing their Loyalty rating only if the result is higher. Then you resolve the action. How the action resolves depends on the plan itself, and who leads the action -- this could be the leader of the school, or whoever they send out on the mission. When you *act regardless of imminent danger,* or hold out to endure danger, make a Loyalty check: if you fail, you flinch, hesitate, or stall; have the other players offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. This might have you tick down a stat, or perhaps have another person tick down a stat, or have the school lose something in the fiction. When you *seize something by force,* make a Loyalty check: if you fail, you were a coward or perhaps injured; have the other players decide whether you tick down your Tired or your Health. Then you choose another character to tick down their Tired or Health (their choice). When you *seduce or manipulate* someone, make a Loyalty check: if you fail, it backfires: have the other players decide whether you tick down your Loyalty or your Tired, then you decide how the manipulated person acts. If you're seducing or manipulating another player's character, they always decide, don't bother rolling for this move. == Violence When something violent happens, or your own character takes violent action, both the attacker and the victim roll a d6. This is for a kind of psychic damage. In council, it can be verbal violence but has to be legitimately abusive. (It's abusive if any one player believes it is.) If the attacker rolls higher than their Tired, they should tick it down once. If the victim rolls higher than their Health, they should tick it down once. Then both players should treat the sum of the two dice as a roll in a Loyalty check. Players that fail that Loyalty check should write down what happened on the front of their card. This leads to a sort of increased weakness to that kind of violence. If you're involved in a similar sort of altercation in the future (the other players decide whether it applies), you use the higher of the two rolls when reducing your Tired (as the attacker) or your Health (as the victim). == The End If your Loyalty reaches zero, describe how you react to losing all faith in the community -- do this instead of whatever result the Loyalty check would otherwise have on a failure. If you don't completely abandon the school's community, the other players should make loyalty checks. Each one that succeeds gives you a point of Loyalty back. If you abandon the community, either leave the game or make a new character (as at the beginning of the game). This character should be based on one that already exists in the fiction, if possible. NOTE: The best way to recover Loyalty is to have one of your plans accepted by the council. If your Tired is at zero, the next scene must be one of Despair. If it's successfully resolved, re-roll your Tired with a new d6. Otherwise, either leave the game or make a new character (as at the beginning of the game). This character should be based on one that already exists in the fiction, if possible. Narrate how your old character succumbs to the despair. NOTE: This is the only way to recover Tired. If your Health is at zero, you fall unconscious immediately. If the other players carry you back to the school, make a Loyalty check. If you succeed there, recover one Health. Otherwise, either leave the game or make a new character (as at the beginning of the game). This character should be based on one that already exists in the fiction, if possible. Your old character has died. NOTE: The best way to recover Health is to have an Ignorance scene resolved through someone else giving you medical attention. This will trigger the "acting regardless of immediate danger" move.