For Story Game Sunday, we played Classroom Deathmatch (Society of Dreamers was on the calendar, but we had the wrong…

For Story Game Sunday, we played Classroom Deathmatch (Society of Dreamers was on the calendar, but we had the wrong number of people for that one). 

I will start-off by saying we had a lot of fun. There were many good scenes, and we had some good laughs, but this game is problematic. First, the mechanics are garbage. The last time we played a game with such utterly disposable rules was probably Cosmic Patrol. The conflict resolution system is essentially meaningless. You roll a bunch of dice, are statistically likely to succeed almost every time, but it doesn’t matter, because your fate is entirely in the hands of your ‘best friend’ or your ‘rival,’ roles which change so quickly, they mean nothing. It has a hand-wavey, arbitrary feel. 

Another issue is the game is kind of a slog. You have to plow through 49 characters to get to the end, and there is a lot of weird bookkeeping (which makes no sense at all, given the hand-wavey mechanics mentioned above). Do I really need to know that my gun has 2, 20-bullet clips left, or that I have 1D4 flash grenades? There is also this impenetrable skill system based on elements (Fire, Air, etc.). Good luck remembering what kind of actions each of the elements pertains to, since there are about ten for each of the five elements.

Another big issue with this game is the cast of characters. There are 50 of them, and most have stats and traits that are amusing, if a bit too heavy on the Japanese youth culture stereotypes. Some of them, however, are very objectionable and cross that line between good, campy fun and skin-crawlingly icky. One character, for example, has ‘molestation’ listed as a hobby. Another character is a victim of domestic violence and has the special technique ‘Can take a punch.’ Another character is all about incest. It’s a bit gross, but this game came from the geniuses who gave us the game Panty Explosion, so I’m not sure why I’m so surprised. 

Like I said, we had a good time with it, but the chances of us playing this again are none. A game like the Final Girl would actually do this setting with much better payoff.

Thanks to Daniel Lewis for running it, and to Rob Ferguson Russell Benner Steve Mains and Ferrell Riley  for coming out!