Hacks and Variants

Hack the Rules! | Misspent Youth

Try doing THIS in D&D

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”

― Lewis Carroll

First, a rundown for those that don’t know any better. Misspent Youth is about young rebels fighting The Man. At the beginning of the series, the players work with the GM to help create the setting. This includes the Authority they’ll be fighting. The game is played in seven Scenes, each with their own structure and effect on the episode.

Each scene uses a craps-like Struggle system to determine the outcome. The Authority declares the Objective that it’s pursuing, and the Clique (the players) declares what they Hope to achieve. Only the players roll the dice. If they roll an unclaimed number, they claim that number and keep rolling. The Authority also claims another number. If they roll a number already claimed by the Clique, they win the Struggle. If they roll a number claimed by the Authority, they lose the Struggle. There’s more to it, like describing what happens in the scene, but those are the basics.

Some reviewers have called the the episode structure too constraining. This is easy to fix. In fact, every problematic rule is easy to fix. Just allow players to use their Hope to change the rules of the game.

A clique’s Hope can be pretty open-ended. Typical examples include “Convince the space station’s council that the new security chief is crooked” or “Free a kid that’s being experimented on”. There’s no reason a Hope can’t be, “Skip Episode 4”. Similarly, the Authority’s Objective could be something like, “Start the next Struggle with an extra claimed number”.

This sort of “playing the rules” isn’t unheard of. The Marvel RPG’s Rule Powers let players swap initiative order and experience points, or build hybrid powers out of existing powers. The core mechanic in Universalis lets players change “Facts” within the game, including rules. Playing the rules is fitting for more bizarre games of Misspent Youth. Examples include:

• Living computer programs or digitized people (Tron, The Matrix)
• Mad Scientists who break reality (Rick and Morty, Fringe)
• Superheroes who can break the forth wall (She-Hulk, Deadpool)
• Writer avatars (The Tempest’s Prospero)
• Manipulators of events (The God-Machine Chronicle, The Adjustment Bureau)

Some ideas for Meta Hopes include…

• Remove one of the Authority’s placed markers from the Struggle sheet (they’re supposed to stay until the end of the Struggle)
• The Clique can call for a Struggle in the future (normally only the Authority calls for a Struggle)
• Keep one of the Clique’s markers on the Struggle sheet at the end of the Struggle (markers are supposed to be cleared at the end)

…and Meta Objectives could be …

• Force a player to Sell Out one of their Convictions (this is supposed to be a voluntary act)
• Instead of the normal Aftermath process, the Authority’s next successful Aftermath can be used to permanently add, remove, or a change a rule from the rulebook (there are no rules for changing the core rules)
• Jump back to and continue from a previous Scene (there are no rules for playing the episode out of order)

Note that there will be unexpected, unforeseen, and unintended consequences. There’s no way you can predict the madness that will ensure. When you reshape reality itself, the price is usually order and sanity. Also, you need to determine what sort of limits to put on this. Can any and every Hope or Objective be meta? Or, does each side only get one per episode? Are Meta Hopes and Objectives temporary alterations? Or, can they all be permanent changes? How bizarre do you want to get? Does playing the rules reflect the characters’ control over the setting? Or, do the Clique and the Authority know that they’re fictional, and will cease to exist when the series is over? How meta.