Scene Stealers
Play as a member of an ensemble cast on a science-fiction television show. Survive the episode and upstage the other actors! An RPG where you can actually win.
In Scene Stealers, you’re playing a member of an ensemble cast of a science fiction action show that’s primarily watched by teenage boys. Teenage boys that belong to the science club. Each game takes place during one episode of the show. During the episode the cast members are not only trying to overcome obstacles, they’re also trying to steal the spotlight from the other cast members.
Each episode is broken up into several ?scenes?. These scenes are basic major chunks of time: The crew breaking into an abandoned space station is a scene, running from a bunch of angry natives is a scene, fighting a bunch of bad guys with zapguns is a scene.
1.2 These Games We Play
The crew is captured by the Gamesters of Omegacron-5 and are forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena. Between battles, they try to convince their fellow slaves to stage a revolt against the Gamesters.
Here’s the section where every role-playing game describes what a role-playing game is. It’s pretty straight forward. It’s a GAME. Where you PLAY a ROLE. Look, just go to http://landfill.thesnakefarm.com/aboutrpgs.php and read a delightful comparison between Our Town and a cyberpunk game.
There’s going to be a group of people sitting around a table or at least in the same room with each other. All of the players (except one) control an actor in a television show. (This character is referred to as either an “actor”, “character”, or “cast member” intermittently throughout these rules. They all mean about the same thing.) The other player controls everyone and everything else as well as describes the settings, determines the results of the cast’s actions, and pretty much knows the whole plot of the episode before the others start to play. As this is a game that is about a television show, we’re tempted to call this player something cute like “the Director” or “the Executive Producer” or “the Gene Roddenberry”, but we’ll call him “the GM” instead. (“The JMS” would work in a pinch.)
All the people that aren’t the GM are referred to as “players”, even though the GM is playing the game with everyone else. Role-playing game terminology is pretty silly that way.
1.3 Set Up
On a botched attempt at rescuing a stranded vessel, the crew is mistaken for pirates. Can they prove their innocence to the system authorities before the third moon rise? Each player chooses a character sheet (or creates his or her own cast member using the incredibly simple actor creation rules that follow). The other characters aren’t used in this episode. Separate the plot cards from the script cards and place both decks face down in the center of the table. You’ll also need a couple six-sided dice and some markers to keep track of how much star power the actor has.
The script deck contains 36 cards, all of which can be used to help your cast member outshine the others or add complications to the plots. Each player gets to draw five of these cards. With a full cast of six people, six of these cards will not be used.
If you have more cast members than six, go ahead and divvy up the cards so everyone has the same amount. For this version of the game, there’s just some squares you can cut out and use as cards. If this was created for something called ?7 Day RPG?, these would be actual cards with artwork and everything.
- Scene_Stealers.pdf
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Tags: Thomas Deeny
