The soap opera move: when you conspire & plot, roll+drama.

The soap opera move: when you conspire & plot, roll+drama.

The soap opera move: when you conspire & plot, roll+drama. On a hit, they do what you want them to do; on a 7-9, choose one:

– You are overheard: who else knows about your plot now?

– There is a misunderstanding: what do they do that you didn’t want?

– They make a demand: what do you have to do that they want?

…

I must look away from daytime TV while trying to work.

21 thoughts on “The soap opera move: when you conspire & plot, roll+drama.”

  3. That would be more true to the genre Pierre M… or even, you always choose one and on a 10+, you get to provide the answer, but on a 7-9, the answer comes from the table or the MC. 🙂

  5. LOL that’s great! As someone who “watches” (out of the corner of my eye…) the episodes my girlfriend records, the only thing I’d change is “When you conspire & plot with your back to the open door…”. Maybe Drama = “the number of men/women in town you’ve been married to at one point”. I swear, every male character has been married to every female character on those shows!!

  6. I’ve been thinking about the game Soap, and it has this neat mechanic – every character has a secret, and you write it down, but also summarize it in five words (i.e. car accident killed nun fled).

    With something like this you could add:

    – The learn a part of your secret: what do you let slip on accident?

  7. Dammit… I’m actually thinking about this now: what the stats would be, when you would roll, etc. I think the move above would actually be ‘when you hatch a scheme, you need to tell someone else what you want…’

  8. I think Monsterhearts’ non-weird stats (Cold, Hot, Volatile) map pretty well onto soap operas. Maybe Sincere for the fourth stat.

    When you come clean, roll+sincere…

  11. Maybe instead of Harm, you gain Hack, or Schlock? When it reaches maximum, your character has become too tedious, predictable or unpopular and you get written out? 🙂

  13. And you don’t trade links, strings or whatever, but secrets! Or shame, if you prefer.

    When you discover someone’s secret, get some fun.

    When you blackmail someone using a secret Roll + Secret. On a miss, oups, the secret is out 😉

  15. There is definitely potential for this! I’ve just put out the Ashcan for Pasión de las Pasiones, a Game of Latinx telenovelas and it’s been quite fun at the table! What you’re talking about sounds somewhat more meta on the writers side, as opposed to in the Audience side where I aimed!

  19. I’m actually running this as a Monsterhearts play by post, game:

    “Player characters are all teen actors in a trashy, but very successful, teen drama. They’re also monsters. As part of the character design, players will choose their role in Sunset Hearts.

    You’re young, rich and famous, with all of LA as your plaything, but all that doesn’t mean things are going to go your way. Hollywood Babylon beckons with sin, indulgence and excess. The swarms of paparazzi and camera-phone wielding citizens would love to catch the stars at their worst. You have to fight your fellow cast for every second of screen time At any moment the writers might just decide to kill your character, and on top of that, you’re a monster.”

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