Blood and Spectacles: RPG Review: Inspirisles

This was a game I picked up for my wife for Christmas. She has been looking for a game she can GM for her first time GMing. Therefore, she wanted something that was less complex than the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic game. This one appealed to her for two main reasons:

It is designed for younger players and is family-friendly
It features American Sign Language (ASL) in the mechanics

She learned ASL in college, was a big part of the deaf community in our area and even has a Facebook group dedicated to ASL in our area. She was very close to being an interpreter before deciding to go a different route.

Therefore, this game seemed like it would be a good fit for her needs. We picked up the core rulebook, the Underisles expansion, and set of adventures she could start us off with.

You can find this bundle here: Inspirisles

Today, I will be looking at the core rulebook. Let's get ready to shape and sign!

Things I Liked

A core idea that powers the game is a mechanic called Belief/Disbelief. Since the setting is focused on Fae and magic, this was a clever idea to focus on. The players are in an alternate, magical realm that is shaped and powered by Belief. Disbelief is destructive energy that brings ruin and wrath to the magical lands of the game. Disbelief is negative emotions like Cruelty, Corruption, Greed, and Bloodlust. Belief is a form of magical currency that powers the world and the PCs powers.

The game is very clear that its intention is to do three things:

Story-telling
Empathy and Collaboration
Deaf Awareness

It is always nice for a game to be upfront about it's design goals.

Sign Language is built mechanically into the game as an effect called Shaping. They have resources for both American and British Sign Language as they are different. They even have video tutorials on their site as well, so you can see the signs being made as well. Using certain signs in certain ways will give you modifiers and re-rolls to various rolls.

The section about Shaping is a very good introduction to the Deaf community. For example, it is rude to assume a Deaf person would like a cure for deafness. Many see it as their own culture and embrace it. The sections about sentence structure are spot-on, as ASL uses a Yoda-like sentence structure of Time, Topic, and Comment. The rulebook really mostly covers how to Finger-sign, numbers, basic question words, and a few RPG specific words too. You could play the game without signing at all if you really wanted to, but that feels like missing the point.

Character Generation is very easy and has no numbers. It is all narrative, but asks questions that draw upon the world of the game to help you fit into a place. In addition, you choose an element as that ties into what you can do with your "shaping". You also build a sanctuary and narrate 5 items that align with your sanctuary and hobby. Later you will use Belief to increase these items, your sanctuary, and even your PCs skill level.

Mechanics and resolution only require 3 regular six-sided dice.

The GM section does a good job of laying out how the game should be played. It is broken down into a "Questing Day" that will have a variety of challenge archetypes. The Questing Day is essentially the session for a night of play. The archetypes are basically scenes with potential resolution styles. All Questing Days end in safety and a chance to reflect and for the GM to gather feedback. A whole chapter is an example Questing Day for a level 1 party using various archetypes.

Things I Did Not Like

Some of the naming conventions for things I was not a huge fan of. The background of the game is Celtic and British folklore so it draws heavily from these sources. For example, the GM is called a Grail Guide. Player-Characters are called Pendragons. They use names and terms from Arthurian myth outside of that context and as a fan of Chaosium's Pendragon this caused me a bit of angst and confusion. The lore in this game is unique to itself.

There are two types of tests in this game, Belief Barriers and Disbelief Battles. The first are challenge tests and the second are contested tests. For any test, the Players choose who will lead based on element and they roll the dice. Up to two other players can choose how they assist and give a bonus to the dice roller. To encourage narrative, you only earn belief from shaping and using narrative actions, a simple dice roll may pass but will generate no Belief. 3-4 is a fail, and you gain Disbelief! 10+ is a pass, and 17-18 is Crit which generates additional belief. Disbelief Battles only force opponents to flee or surrender since Bloodshed caused Disbelief. These work as Belief Barriers except the total of any dice roll is compared. The higher dice roll wins.

These are very simple dice mechanics and lead to no real depths or even much decision making. The biggest issue is determining the Leaders and how exactly the supporting PCs will do that. Most of the decision making is how the elements will narratively work. Therefore, there is little or no tactical depth or thinking to these tests beyond a bit of creativity. To make them a bit more interesting, the GM can require multiple dice tests so the challenge lasts more than a single round.

There is a small twist about which elements are dominant over other elements. Offensive elements like Air and Fire force the opponent to re-roll dice in a Disbelief Battle. Meanwhile, Earth and Water allow you to re-roll your own dice. However, if you are facing an element that "Dominates" your own, then all re-rolls are cancelled. For example, a Water element can cancel the re-rolls ability of a Fire element. Therefore, picking the right leader does make a difference.

You will notice that the ASL part is not integrated fully into the mechanics for overcoming challenges. There is no place where the leader or the assisting players need to use ASL? It is not clear what role ASL plays with shaping or the resolution mechanics in this game. It is also not clear to me how ASL is needed to interact in this world either? This is a BIG miss and almost betrays the Hook that got me to purchase these rules in the first place.

These challenge types are more like simple narrative beats rather than complex puzzles or challenges of their own. However, for a simple family-friendly RPG this can work just fine. The impact of these challenges rests much more on the sill of the GM to make them exciting and how engaged he can make the players with them. This section does have several examples on how the process works and how to narrate them for both GMs and Players.

This game has a self-contained focus of gathering the parts of Excalibur. Some of the mechanics seem tied to this quest. However, at no point does the game really tell you what steps this quest should take. That is left up to the GM and the Players.

Meh and Other Uncertainties

Since this game was designed to be played by young adults, learners, and be family-friendly they spilled a decent amount of ink on safety tools, consent tools, and how to play RPGs in a respectful manner. The free-form nature of RPGs was not an excuse to live out your inner edgelord fantasy but to learn how to be part of something greater than yourself and a larger community. I especially liked one of the blurbs that said, "Life is full of ups and downs, so use our game to experience disappointment in a safe space"

The game provides a special tool called a "Grail Tool" that acts like a safety card. Players can use it to show their discomfort in a scene or with a situation. You can flip it from Red to Green, or lift it up depending on how series the situation is. I have seen discussion of such tools in other rulebooks, but mostly as an aside. Here since the audience is younger and the game is focused on education, the use of the safety tools is much more defined and explicit process. I have only read about such tools so it was nice to see how the game implemented them.

The Appendix has a consent document to help the GM know what is an is not triggering or wanted from the players. This includes topics like blood, harm to children, animals, etc. Creatures or scenarios that are off-limits like severe weather, illness, claustrophobia, etc. Finally, it clears the air on romance within your games. Again, since the game is for new RPG-players and younger folks this level of detail makes some sense to me. However, I have never gone through such an explicit process in Session Zero, so this was something new to me.

Since the game is focused on cooperation and empathy, NPCs are called "Friends". These are fae and magical creatures in the Inspirisles often taken from Celtic and European folklore.

It is important to note, that this game has no death. Injury is also not a focus. Instead the focus is on failure and the collection of Disbelief. Disbelief builds up on a Calamity Meter. This creates new threats that will distract the PCs from their goals and objectives. The game provides gathering the 6-piees of Excalibur together as their main goal. However, the Calamity Meter will give them distractiosn from this effort, and the only way to reduce the Calamity Meter is by finding pieces of the sword. Of course, you can also use Belief to buy down the Calamity Meter as well.

The last chapter breaks down the "Inspirisles", which races and people live where, key locations, etc. This includes some adventure hooks, some foes, and a few other bits and pieces.

Final Thoughts

Going into this game was an interesting experience because it had two main goals; be fun and educate. That is a distinct difference from most of the other games I have reviewed on this site, as most of them are focused on just being fun. Therefore, I had to look at this game from a slightly different lens and think about whether it accomplished both tasks. I have an interest in using games as a tool to train and educate in the corporate world, so seeing how they tried to tackle this dual purpose was eye-opening to me.

The rules are simple, but playable. In some ways, it uses a lot of ideas as a game like Avatar: Legends using elements and shaping as a focus of gameplay. It also focuses a lot on leaning into the Narrative too. However, I think it is a lesser product overall.

Ultimately, the ASL portion of the game was interesting BUT I think it is overstated as a hook in this game. It is not integrated seamlessly into the mechanics, in fact; the designers even say that they purposely made it playable without using Sign Language! To me that is burying the lede. What they tell you about Sign Language and Deaf-Culture is solid, but it is not well represented in the game itself. It would require some work on the GMs part to make ASL integral to the game. It almost felt like it was added after the fact and I was disappointed.

So, do I think they hit their design goals of Story-telling, Empathy, and Deaf Culture? Maybe, but I think they did not lean into their goals hard enough. Still, I learned things from reading it. I am interested to see if my wife decides to try to run it with my group.

Until next time!