I always liked Futurama, from the very first episode. Being what I am, by the time I bought the first season on DVD, I was tinkering with ideas for a comedy game… in space.
Comedy needs spontaneity. I remembered that from Jonathan Tweet’s old Al Amarja games (before Al Amarja was published as Over the Edge). One thing he did was hand out “whimsy cards” – he had this deck of vague plot developments like “Someone falls in love” or “Unexpected aid arrives.” You got three of these at the beginning of each session. If you used them to help out your character, you lost it. If you used it to make the game more interesting (primarily by making things harder for some other character) you got to draw a replacement. Hilarity ensued.
…in Spaaace! is something of an attempt to capture that freewheeling madness all the time. It has a system in which the resolution of events is based, not on GM judgment and random results, but on a concrete measure of who cares most about the outcome. Player interest is quantified. The more you give a damn, the more you’re likely to have things go your way. The catch is, the mechanics assume limited passion. If you care about everything intensely, it’s really no different that only caring tepidly.
