Editing Scum: We Is Scum

In ''Scum'', life isn't worth much. There's a hundred teenagers like you on the estate, and all of them have started in the bottom of society, and will likely end there too. Teenage mothers beget at least half a dozen mewling sprogs each, and they'll go on to be teenage parents themselves. Numbers multiply and there's always another child on the way. Life ends easily with the stab of a knife or with a drug overdose. Those that survive have little to do but perpetuate the cycle of misery.  

The key to happiness then, is to live for the moment. The ''Scum'' are hedonists in the truest sense: they drink, have sex, smoke, take drugs and fight because there's nothing better to do, and nothing to lose by doing so. The game systems in place encourage this sort of attitude - if you want to succeed you have to embrace the hedonistic aspects of life, and throw yourself into danger. You shouldn't be worrying about consequences, but instead living for the self-gratification of the moment.

The world of ''Scum'' is dirty, in every sense of the world. In depicting the world and in shaping the scenarios the GM should be aware that he should be viewing through a lense of grime and filth. Graffiti lines every wall, glass is always broken and rats rummage through uncollected trash.  The ''Scum'' move through this dirty world comfortably, because its all they've ever known.  The filth of the streets should be reflected in the NPCs as well. Everyone's dirty somehow - everyone has a guilty secret, be it sexual perversions, a secret drug habit or a warped and bigoted mind. In this sort of setting it becomes easier to see our protagonists as the heroes (or at least, anti-heroes). They might not be paragons of good behaviour, but there still not as f**ked up as the generation above them, and at least they are still young enough to change...

Tied in with hedonism and filth is ''sex'' - we're talking about teenagers here, with little supervision and an attitude of "do what feels good". Is it any wonder that sex is a major theme? The protagonists happily have quick and dirty sex in the piss-stained alleys, or give each other hand jobs in darkened corners of sticky nightclubs. The GM and players shouldn't shy away from narrating sex - this isn't a game where you just cut to the next scene. On the other hand, sex should generally be depicted as tawdry and filthy, and all about pleasure rather than love.

This game was written in 2009, though the setting it depicts could have been from any time in the last 10 years, and probably will be relevant for at least a few more years yet.

The ''Council Estate'' is where the nation used to hide its poor - blocks of flats would be built in the cheapest and most run down areas. The nature of the area and the population would drive down property prices, and determine the services. High street clothes shops would be replaced by discount-shops and charity shops. Restaurants would be replaced by chippies and kebaberies.

These days, thanks to some bright spark in government, every new build site has to have an area of "affordable housing". Instead of lumping all the poor in one place, they're everywhere. The net result is the same as the poor are still ostracised by middle class neighbours, except now the communities of the poor are that much smaller.

The setting of ''Scum'' is either in the inner city or in a sizeable town, but always focused around a specific small geographic area. We're not looking at the conurbation as a whole, but just at the ''Estate''.

 

Everyone round there is poor, though the borders between the estate and the world of the middle classes is now blurred - you could walk five minutes and find yourself "up market", and then walk another five and find yourself in the next estate along.

However, unlike a punk, the chav isn't yet accepted into the mainstream. Also, unlike a punk the chav isn't in any way ''political''. The chav isn't looking to tear down the status quo, he's just looking to get drunk, have fun and do what he wants.

The approach that this game takes is to look at common media, and look for depictions of anti-heroes.  

 

A good match here is ''pirates''.

 

A subtle GM might just take certain themes - buried treasure, mutiny and the like - and use them as background elements. This is the default approach, recommended by the author. Pirates are a useful mental placeholder to give you ideas as to how you can make villainous folk into protagonists that you can root for. Piratical fiction also runs the same gamut of styles and ranges that you might want to consider in a game of ''Scum'': humour balanced with darkness, and grime mixed with sexuality.

* Getting into the Pop Idol competition, and winning through fair means or foul.

This is a list of things that the protagonists are likely to like and appreciate.  

* '''Music:''' Lily Allen, The Streets, Blazing Squad, N-Dubz and So Solid are common choices. Many male chavs are more into their esoteric music and might have more eccentric tastes, such as obscure German hard house or real Jamaican reggae. Conversely, many female chavs may be more interested in mainstream music than in the music of their subculture, so may like generic pop like Girls Aloud, Westlife, etc.

* '''Food:''' Fried chicken, chips and burgers are a large part of the staple diet of our protagonists. They might also appreciate pizzas, curries, kebabs or chinese food, and will do so without any sense of irony, despite their generally racist and anti-immigrant attitudes.

* '''Drink:''' Cheap lagers (Carling, Carlsberg, Fosters) for the boys, Alcopops (WKD Blue, Smirnoff Ice) for the girls, additive-heavy shots (Shotz, Afterburner) for everyone.