The Man is clamping down, tightening the grip on society. Our only hope is a group of defiant teens with nothing but distaste for authority. Will they save the day or sell out? This week on Finding the Fun, we’re looking at Misspent Youth, an indie title that puts the player in the shoes of a Youthful Offender struggling against an Authority of their own making.

We’re all familiar with the usual set-up for tabletop roleplaying games by now, a table of 4(ish) people, and one person telling you what’s happening and calling the shots. It’s a tried and tested formula, but surely there are more options available to us, some way to make use of the imaginations of the rest of the group? In fact, for one night why not give the GM the night off, and just let him play?

Brometheus covered this pretty well on Setup for Success last week, and it’s an ethos I can definitely get behind, as imaginative a GM as you may be, two heads are always better than one, and 4(ish) heads are better than two. So GMs, why not slacken your grip on the reins a little more, and let the players create the game they want to play?

So, what is Misspent Youth?

Misspent Youth is an indie roleplaying game made by Robert Bohl and published in 2010. Celebrating punk culture, the game doesn’t focus on a specific setting but provides the tools necessary for a tabletop group to create their own setting and an Authority, an individual, organisation or social construct that the Youthful Offenders, player characters aged between 12 and 17, will be trying to defy. Misspent Youth uses an interesting 2d6-based resolution system that varies in difficulty from scene to scene, but we’ll talk about that in more detail a bit further into the review.

First Impressions

I love the design of this book, you can tell as soon as you pick it up that it isn’t going to be more of the usual staid fantasy RPG fare. The layout is bold (even if the interior is monochrome) and reflects the punk culture that the book celebrates, as well as featuring little nods to pop culture references and humorous snippets of Authority-worthy propaganda.

The book is laid out well enough that you can find information without too much difficulty, and cheat-like summaries at the end of each section definitely make it easier on the GM. Having in-play examples in a different colour scheme is another master stroke, saving the GM and the players valuable time as well as making sure that you’ve always got something to point at and say “here, this is how that rule is supposed to work”. That kind of thing is always handy, particularly when players are nudged out of their comfort zone.

Is it Fun?

Without a doubt, this is one of the most fun experiences I’ve had playtesting since starting these reviews, if you don’t finish this article, your one take-away from this should be that Misspent Youth is a great game and you should try it as soon as you can.

Remember what I said earlier about how most RPGs fail to take advantage of the players’ imaginations to create the world, or the story, or the villains? Misspent Youth breaks the GMs control, and then stamps on the pieces with its giant Doc Martens. The players create the Authority – the obstacle or force that the player characters will be rebelling against – deciding what it is, what it’s doing, why it’s doing it, and perhaps most importantly, its assets and their means of fighting against it. There are a few categories to get you started, and then a little bit of thinking required, but those examples come in handy if you get stuck. The system is well suited to building up a campaign based on a film or book you’ve seen.

I got my start in RPGs with D&D 3.5e, and every fibre of my being baulked at the thought of losing control to the players. Don’t worry; inevitably they’ll create something awesome. Having an antagonist created by the players shifts both the balance of power and the players’ emotional investment in the game, now that they’re fighting, at some level, their own personal bully. It’s a great way to capture your players’ interest, and it makes for some very compelling storytelling.

The combination of having simple categories to pick from and a small number of open-ended Fate Aspect-like Convictions for the player characters, called Youthful Offenders (YOs) means that character creation is a doddle. More than one player at Casa Draper suggested that it was far less intimidating for players new to this style of descriptive storytelling game to try Misspent Youth, if only because there’s less for them to come up with from scratch. I think this system strikes a nice balance between allowing the players free rein and giving them some structure to work from.

In my head and occasionally in this review, I compare Misspent Youth to Fate Core. They share the goal of creating a dramatic narrative through play, and could be described as a story-making engine. In that way, they serve as a great yardstick against each other, but without maligning Fate Core, in some ways Misspent Youth surpasses it, especially when it comes to pacing and structure.

Each session in Misspent Youth is really an episode in an ongoing series, each one divided into seven scenes. I really like that the game straight- up addresses something we know to be true for many narrative-heavy games – and this is part of the reason why I’d call it a story-making engine as well as an RPG – which is that if you’re making a story-focused game, it needs to be structured like a story, with a beginning, middle and end.

By providing this structure as part of the mechanics, it gives the group a strong foundation to work from, episodes have a limited amount of time to reach a conclusion and superfluous scenes tend to be discarded. That’s good, a story-focused game doesn’t need to waste time addressing whether the PCs bought a hundred feet of hempen or silk rope, all it needs to address is the relationships between the characters – Misspent Youth uses character questions between Youthful Offenders to this end – and the rising drama caused by conflict between the protagonists and antagonists – resolved through the Struggle mechanic.

Rather than adding bonuses to a dice roll to meet or exceed an arbitrary number, the Struggle has the players narrating actions whilst rolling to try and hit the same number twice. Meanwhile, the Authority narrates their own action, claiming numbers that will cause the players to lose should they hit them The tension really begins to ramp up, until either the players win the Struggle for that scene or the Authority wins.

As the drama within the Struggle increases from scene to scene, the Authority claims numbers more likely to be rolled, making the players’ loss seem more inevitable. The system is a little fiddly to begin with, and frustrating until you get it right, but after a few practice runs, it’s possible to get a great flow of narrative going. Some of my players thought that the system was a little too swingy, I’m not sure I’d agree, it feels dynamic and unpredictable to me, but it’s probably something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Players can also opt to succeed on a lost struggle by “selling out” and committing some heinous Authority-like act that permanently changes some facet of their character. If they sell out every time they lose a struggle, the Youthful Offender eventually becomes like the Authority they used to despise, forcing them out of the series. It’s a great resource management mechanic and one that players are hesitant to use without great need.

Despite it being an automatic win, it’s a lot of fun selling out, at least whilst the campaign is fairly young. Due to the rising tension of the struggle, roleplaying groups who like to focus on interpersonal relationships and character development will likely really enjoy this bit, as well joining the peanut gallery in the near-requisite boos and hisses against the selling-out player and whatever their heinous act might have been.

So, is Misspent Youth for you? That depends, it might not necessarily be for the number-crunchers out there, but I’d suggest Misspent Youth as a great introduction for folks new to story-gaming community as a game to cut their teeth on. It’s a fairly simple, lightweight game with bags of personality and a novel approach to story-gaming. As a setting-neutral system created by the players, this is the perfect opportunity to make the game your group want to play, whether it’s a space opera or dystopian cyberpunk hijinks. Personally, I’d recommend everyone give it a go, twice if you can find the time.

If this review of Misspent Youth has piqued your interest, it’s available here for download, and you can try a free copy before you buy here, but remember to support indie developers where you can so they can continue to make awesome games!

If you’re a developer and would like your product reviewed, or you’ve seen a product that’s worth a look, let me know here at the Mad Adventurers Society via the comment box below, or on Twitter @jay_jaydraper.