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Larks at St. Agnes • 2019 rpg
Anil Venkatesh • no link
One of you is Headmaster/mistress at a British boarding school in 1902. The rest of you are mischievous students planning a prank. With at least five players, one student is the Secret Swot (wants to help the Head). Privately assign roles with playing cards and only the Head announces their role.
SETUP
Pens, paper, phone, d6.
PHASES (Repeat 1-2 N times with N players.)
1. Morning Prayers:
Head announces a distinguished guest will visit (name and title of guest, why they're coming). State time and location of at least three events (e.g. speech, award ceremony, banquet). May change/reorder one event each round.
(Objective: Students plan a coordinated prank to spoil the visit.)
2. Recitation:
Head calls one student to perform a reading. Topic must be appropriate (e.g. Romantic poets, British history, Thucydides) Others may only pass notes. Roll d6 when passing a note. If 1, Head intercepts and confiscates it.
3. Visit:
All privately write down prank roles. Head announces finalized agenda of visit. Players read prank roles. Did it work?
DEMERITS
If caught talking or passing notes, or with bad posture, a student gets one demerit. With two demerits, no more passing/reading notes!
Author Comments
Back in 2013 I had a concept for an eavesdropping game inspired by a controversy involving NSA wiretaps. I could never figure out how to make it happen in a controlled and fun way, though. I’d never written an RPG until now, so back then I was thinking purely from a mechanical perspective. When I found out about this challenge, I went back to the eavesdropping concept and wove in my oddly encyclopedic knowledge of turn-of-the-century British boarding school (courtesy of Enid Blyton and P. G. Wodehouse). Someday I’d still like to make a game where the eavesdropper can secretly edit parts of the messages too, but that isn’t this game. I hope you got a kick out of reading it.
