Spirit of ’77 is a PBtA game that I don’t hear about often, but I was curious about what makes it tick, what makes it fun. David K. came onto this episode to chat about the game, and he even ran an impromptu demo of it for me.
I’m going to be running this game in February for the Gauntlet, this episode got me excited for it!
Oh, and his voices for NPCs are amaaaaaazing, you all. No lie.
What do you think? Anyone ever played it?
Was my introduction to pbta games actually.
Ouh yeah!
I have tried one game, lack of players.
Spirit is a great game, and Dave is probably one of the best GMs out there.
I played Cruise Ship of the Damned (a spirit adventure) that Dave ran at Strategicon almost 2 years ago (?) and it was fantabulous. Dave is high energy and brings it as a GM. You don’t have time to get complacent at that gaming table! Great game and great GM.
This Dave person is nothing but trouble.
He is that, too!
I’ve ran it a couple of times now, and always had a blast with it. Definitely the kind of game that benefits from a good soundtrack. I found the snippets of setting in the books very good as jumping off points, and that the dual template part of character gen worked well with the general PbtA method of constricted-choice character gen for getting people to generate very distinct characters
The only thing I would say is that the combat is a bit slow. I recommend making mooks a heap easier to take down. The soundtrack is absolutely vital so pay attention to the discography in a way you wouldn’t bother for other games. I also found doing a google image search for 70’s fashion helped set the mood.
Super fun game! I just ran a Christmas-themed Spirit of ’77 session last week. Looking forward to giving this a listen.
how was your Spirit of ’77 game, Jason Lutes ?
It was great! I had a rough playset for a previous Elmore Leonard-esque So77 game set in Atlantic City, so I repurposed that, threw a bunch of 70s Christmas hits on my Spotify playlist, and improvised a setup based on the final character roster.
Our roster was “Flips” Samson (All-Star/ Bopper), Ernie Lem (Visitor/Good Old Boy), Shep Johnson (War Vet/Gonzo Journalist), and Marky von Peep (One Bad Mother/Sleuth). The hook was that Dee-Dee, a member of Flip’s gang who was impersonating a Salvation Army Santa collecting for charity, got abducted by the Philadelphia Family (Atlantic City’s mob). Hijinks ensued.
Memorable moments included Flips and Ernie dropping acid while watching Adam-12 on TV, Ernie ovipositing an alien egg sac (?!?) on the underside of a motel balcony, and a slo-mo shootout in an Italian grocery.
The final shot was of a thrashed blue ’67 Mustang stalled out on a sidewalk in Ventnor Heights, with a dead gang lieutenant slumped over the wheel, and the PCs strung like bloody beads on a trail pointing to the nearby wetlands, where Ernie is wrestling the capo of the Philadelphia Family into the muck. As Elvis Presley’s rendition of Here Comes Santa Claus crackles over the car radio, the camera pans up through the falling snow and across town back to the Italian grocery, settling into a view of the service entrance. Dee-Dee, having escaped captivity in full Santa getup, slips out the door and into the night.