Saturday night in the 8pm slot I played Misspent Youth written by and run by Rob Bohl. This was an unexpected favorite for the con. I had high expectations for PTA and a few other games, this one I actually skipped over on my first pass through the games on tap. I wasn’t sure whether playing kids was going to be that compelling, but I read a little more of the write up and idea of rebelling against the authority did sort of grab me. By this time the game was full so I signed up as an alternate and by chance managed to get in the game. I’m glad I did.

Misspent youth is actually an ashcan which means its meandering its way to being available but Rob isn’t generally selling it yet. But its close.

We kicked off with world creation which is bit more guided than other instanced I have seen. Our authority was a corporate state trying to make better consumers. There were a bunch of individual decisions that went into creating the world and I’m not going to remember them all.

We ended up with a world where the cities were the only habitable places and the people communicated by text messaging each other. There was a conflict between the corporate provided subsistence and lost DIY ideals.  The thing we were trying to stop was keep the corporation from beaming advertising directly into people’s minds that would turn them into zombies. Advertising was really big in the world.

Each game begins with asking a question of the character to your left. The question is about the friendship between the character and should create a new authority bit. This seems really useful and produced a bunch of the elements we used in the story but it is a bit rough in the con setting.

Misspent Youth’s conflict resolution system is pure genius and intend to drift it to use other places. It starts off pretty standard story game, frame a scene, define stakes. In some games this results in scenes that are actually anti-climatic, the actual playing of the scene is a bit superfluous. With MY the conflict resolution mechanic is iterative. There is the immediate conflict and youthful offenders do something to get around the problem, then the authority responds and it becomes iterative. Action, reaction, action, reaction until the scene is resolved.

The actual resolution mechanism is essentially craps, or at least as I understand it. I’ve only played craps once. A youthful offender, the first that grabs the dice, rolls the dice. They put a chip on the number rolled and describe how they are using one of their traits to overcome the immediate problem. The authority escalates the situation and puts a chip on 7 and another number (depending on the difficulty of the scene). The youthful offenders do something to overcome the new situation and roll, again putting a chip on a number at this point with each authority escalation the authority starts from the the statistically least likely number until the conflict is resolved.

Resolution occurs when a youthful offender rolls a number that already has a chip on it. If it is a youthful offender chip the players win the conflict, otherwise the authority wins. Depending on whose chip it was and what trait was used to put it down, will determine the final narration of the youthful offender.

We had the rich girl who cuts herself (Sunshine), the hacking skate rat (Sp4z), the cook who knew the outside (Bobby the Blob) and me the scavenger and jury rigger (Terra).

Each session of MY has 7 (I think) scenes, each with set difficulties and names, where certain things are supposed to happen to invoke the right feel.

The first scene was out in the outskirts. Bobby had pulled us of the city to try camping or something, Somehow a fire got started and soon Quality Control was bearing down on us. We ended up hiding in the sewer while Sp4z lured them away. We managed to fool there sensors and get Sp4z safely hidden with us. Once QC left we found one of their agents dead, shot in the back.  The stakes for this scene were we were either caught or we found information in the form of the dead agent.

At this point there is a planning phase where we decide what the story is about.  We decided the corporation killed the agent for marketing purposes.

In the second scene we found the agent’s widow. On the way there we had trouble with the robo-taxi and old ladies on the street thinking kids like us didn’t belong in such a nice neighborhood. Meanwhile the company had started selling security against barbarians using the dead agent’s image. We managed to convince the widow to direct us to a friend of the dead agent, think he may have shared something related to why he got killed. The widow worked for the Division of Scientific Truth, the corporate religion and was willing to put information into the lesson plans if we could prove the company killed her husband.  The stakes for this scene were either the widow was helpful or actually she was just a hired actress for the ad and didn’t actually know the agent.

The third scene was meeting with Delay, an old nemesis of Sp4z and apparently a friend of the victim. There was a lot of cyberpunkesque distrust and pointing guns. We hoped to get information but he ended up betraying us.  Errr…. I don’t actually recall what the stakes for this scene was.  I think it involved Sp4z and Delay’s history but I can’t be sure.
The fourth scene was when Delay came to give us the information. We managed to notice that it was fake and get the real information from his laptop without him knowing it.  The stakes for this scene were either we noticed we were being betrayed and got the real information or we were oblivious and transmitted the wrong information ending up with egg on our face.

Fifth scene was the finale. Getting the information to the widow for distribution. Sadly since Delay betrayed us the widow had been reprogrammed. She was gone but we managed to figure out how to get her to do the things we wanted her to.  The stakes for this scene was whether the widow could be manipulated to help our cause or if she was lost to us.

In the sixth scene, after the message went into the lesson plans, the house went into lockdown mode and we had to escape before QC got there. Bobby managed to keep the door from sealing and we slipped out before QC arrived.  I think this was just escape or capture at stake.

The seventh scene was supposed to be a cool down but in a lot of ways it was the roughest. Delay came after us, knowing we had gotten the data from him and the company would blame him. We only got out unscathed because Bobby sold out a trait and became brutal.  I think the stakes for this scene were whether we lost our crash pad or if quality control didn’t notice us, but I’m not sure about those stakes.

Overall just a great game.