OK, the third of the games I ran at GaelCon was Best Friends and this was the shortest of the three games -- it got squeezed at bit by games running late, others running long and allowing Adam room to run Inspectres before the closing ceremony.

Oh, before I go on I should tip my hat to the staff at GaelCon who publicised the Indie Games Track on the main hall microphone at regular intervals (and indeed made some timely calls for players too). Thanks!

Anyway, this game was going to be something different: no character creation.

I pre-generated the characters and made them and the setting to be pretty tight. My aim is to create a pre-made scenario pack that people can jump in and use, perhaps as a bit of a training module in how they might want to put connections and link characters together, etc.

All the PCs are Freaks! in a Circus. They are the put-upon and ridiculed freaks, and ill-treated by the circus master and some of the others in the entourage. They have conflicting and interacting Stuff and Nonsense. (Why Freaks!? Well, it's "safe" in some ways, as it's fantastical. Partly like Dumbo or Pinnochio, and in a sense we're all Freaks in our own way.)

So, the Freaks!:

• Grimselda, Tough with claws and hideous. Revels in being a monster, but wants to be normal.
• Dottie, Pretty with horns sticking out her head. Likes the Circus and believes what she's told.
• Piccolo, Cool and Smart, this scarred girl sings like a flute. Wants to leave the circus, but won't leave her friends.
• Little Jane, daughter of the Circus master she wants to be treated like the other Freaks, but is locked in a drawer by her protective father.

I started by (terribly) describing what the stats were and so on and what everyone had. However, I can see how to solve this: pre-gen the hatreds, Stuff and Nonsense, then get everyone to write in their stats with the usual "reveal". It's the "reveal" that's fun, not the admin of writing in five hatreds.

Anyway, we got to play. I suggested that the performance had been bad, and takings worse that night. The circus master was livid and everyone was going to get it in the neck. Where are you all?

Claire was playing Piccolo and had a great idea. So good I will be stealing it. They were all sitting around Little Jane's drawer as the Circus Master beat the clowns.

The game went on with Grimselda impertinently suggesting that revelling in Freakery (Fish Heads! Throw them at the crowd!) would get crowds up and please the circus master.

He arrived with much bluster and grabbed hold of the pretty Dottie, wanting to expel his rage. It was fun with the group deciding on the Circus Master -- and they made him more hideous than I would have! ("That's my dad!" exclaimed Little Jane's player.) The Best Friends stood up and persuaded him to let them try the Fish Heads and Clowns next night, and he agreed. Little Jane then failed to persuade him to allow her to be a part of the show (tried to show she was Tough) but Piccolo pushed for her and she won him over with a display of acrobatics saving Dottie from a fall.

It ended with her becoming a Freak like the others and her no longer sleeping in a drawer. "I'm not a Little Girl anymore!"

It was quite a touching game and the characters are very sympathetic. Not the usual slapstick meanery that it's sometimes played as.

I was the GM and I spent my time asking them questions and clarifying what they were doing when pushing, and offering them choices when someone had pushed. Once people get a hang of that then the need for the GM to do so much of that falls away, and then time can be spent just throwing in ideas like anyone else.

Anyway, I liked it and the Freaks! themselves a lot.