[Solar] Tales of the Gnostic Avenger, Sci Fi pilot and a curve ball.

[Kaare Berg]

This is an Actual Play post. I just need to clear something from my mind first.

It's been a while. I once promised a post about a Battered Player Recovery Plan and how it affected my current Burning Wheel Campaign. However, one of our friends shot himself, and this threw my group a curveball from hell.
We're a tight crew; friends. Not just around the table, and some of us go back fifteen years and longer. None of us saw this coming and now we are left with the questions, and the guilt. Not to mention the pain of loosing a close friend in this manner.

Why I am I sharing this with you?

What does this all have to do with Shadow of Yesterday's engine: the Solar System?

Bear with me.

I've cried my tears for Jon, and occasionally it still hits me where it hurts. Yet this isn't a elegy for Jon, nor me crying my heart out. Roleplaying games are a big part of our lives (a too big part according to my SO), it was a part of Jon's, and I am including this here because I dreaded our first game without him. It's so you'll understand the social parameters of our first game since his death, and why I am glad it went the way it did.

It was my only game this summer and it was with the Solar System, more specifically the new version delightfully proposed by Clinton only two weeks after I bought the original. Why this, when I've been Burning Wheels here close to two years?

Well Jon's suicide suddenly made our Burning Wheel Miranna Campaign a bit too sensitive. He had a starring role there and had at so many moments made us all crack up and sit back in awe that his presence in that game makes it too painful to play. Hell, I don't know if we'll ever be able to pick that campaign up again. But I digress. I didn't feel like it. So I looked for something different.

I chose the new version of the Solar System, despite my initial misgivings to the use of Fudge Dice (or Shift Dice as they will now be called), because IMO it seems more intuitive than the original, with names for skill levels and an improved Harm system (not to mention parallel and perpendicular actions. Check it out if you are curious to what I mean by this).

And we had tried the original TSOY, I loved it, and the players present loved it. So I printed the new version and called up the crew.

They were ready. I pitched a sci-fi game and based on Vincent Bakers rant/essay about setting creation created a universe in just one evening. Or rather I stole from several sources to create a mix of Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space Universe (in particular Absolution Gap), Warhammer 40k, Chronicles of Riddick and Fading Suns. A gothic space fantasy; dark and brooding with tons of ideas hanging in the air for us all to play with.

A few last minutes cancellations and we were set to play. The crew consisted of:

Christian; a creative powerhouse that sadly has the hearing of an old rock star, yet always sits far away from the GM chair. Of the players present he's probably the most open to the ideas I keep stealing from this here forum.

Espen; another long timer, who prefers exploration of character and doesn't understand what's the big deal with all this theory when we've been doing some of this as a natural part of our gaming evolution. God knows we've discussed this subject. But a great player and despite chronic disbelief in my new rpg-faith always down for a good try.

Ole Morten; Our resident Battered Player whose response to the Solar System pitch was "I really want to play this because it can help me become a better player." Strong words from a chronic min-max guru.

Me, Kaare, the GM; a Forgite Convert that due to fragments of a controlfreak personality prefers to be behind the screen.   

We discussed the concept of character motivation versus player motivation and different stances for a few hours before we began making characters. I also explained my take on conflict versus meaningful conflict. Then we pulled out the character sheets.

I told them about the setting, the ideas I had and the only iron shod rail I laid down: You are all the crew of the free trader the Gnostic Avenger, a ship with port of call aboard the ancient Cathedral Ship St. Tiberius. Further I told them that I my overall goal was to tell a story about the Gnostic Avenger through the stories of the characters. In other words there would be no "campaign plot".

They got fired up about the setting, and the Creative Space Vincent talked about allowed their creativity to flourish. Here is what they came up with.

Christian: Leonard. A sloppy, ugly technician with the attitude: why do today what can be put of to morrow, and short term repairs are so much easier than doing the job properly. Take the character Marv from Sin City, send him far, far into the future. Give him a wrench and the Key of Conscience to go with his Key of Bloodlust as well as skills like Rough Tech and Street Fighting and you have Leonard. A streetkid from a dusty smog filled planet called Twilight by its residents, Forge World 518 by the Administratum.

Espen: Montoya. The smooth Captain of the Ship. A Benincio del Toro lookalike from the Ecclesiastic Red Light Planet called Haven. A hellhole of whores and drugs, servicing the many pilgrims traveling the Pentacostal Worlds. A Captain driven by the Key of Exploration (made up there and then) and the Key of the Crew (another Key converted on the spot). A man whose social skills only function is to allow him to keep the ship so that he can look for someplace better.

Ole Morten: Mentat. A member of a semi heretical cult who seeks to achieve the perfection of the Creators greatest creation, man, by a regime of genetic selection, total body control and meditation (think Ben Gesserit from Dune). This here planet has to send its members out as valued advisors and courtesans to the powerful in the Empire to keep the Inqusition and the flames of Exterminatus Hereticus at bay. With the Key of the Conscience and the Key of the Fraternity (Leonard) Mentat has joined the crew because Leonard saved his life once and he now tries to repay the debt, without resorting to violence.

To be honest at this stage I was stunned. The three were coming up with evocative skill names, planets, heck, even future conflicts rolled off their collective tounges. We established that that night's session would be the Pilot episode, and that each "Season" (for lack of better word) would consist of five episodes.

We took a five minute break while I sorted my brain out trying to start of something to fire off the game.

It was a short, relatively linear game (it is hard to make complex r-maps on the fly) but we got a great feel for the characters and the direction our game was to go in. Highlights included:

With a nervous Tech Adept having booked transport to a outlying settlement on the Ice-planet Thule Minoris and a suspicious trader from the Great House Haam (crime/trade syndicate) with ten sealed Cryo-crates booking a last minute trip to same obscure settlement a nervous Montoya had ordered Leonard to watch the Cargo Hold and the crates.
While he is leafing through his paper porn mags (Christian was specific that he could not afford neither Scroll-pads or holo-porn) one of the Crates defrosts and opens. Out steps a naked sex-servitor (human sold into machine slavery). Leonard says "hey".
She kisses him (tounge and all) and I state her intention is to knock him out with the drugs she secretes from her mouth. Leonard endures. She then tries to knock him out with secretions from other orifices. Leonard says "hey" and still endures. And now smiles a bit woozy but happy. Frustrated the servitor pops her long nail-blades and tries to carve his heart out. Her intention is to kill him and push his corpse out the airlock. Leonard says "hey" and knocks her out.
He then calls Captain Montoya and begins by saying: "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that I am no longer a virgin. The bad news is that I might have damaged the cargo."
And we went from there. I am convinced the reason why this scene went so well was that Christian knew he could always ask to Bring down the Pain if things went wrong. And this "character-loss" safety-net allowed him to be duped time and time again where he "normally" would try to kill the servitor after the first poison attempt. This was the first conflict and it rolled on into several more aboard the ship.

Like the conflict between Leonard and Mentat when Leonard tries to make Boniah, a Haam bodyguard, attack him in the lounge, and Mentat tries to remind the bodyguard of his place. Montoya won a hundred credits on the short fight that followed.

Or when Leonard's Bloodlust is exploited against him and even though he mauls a Great House Riiva (rivals of House Haam) bodyguard a tracking device is planted on him because of parallel actions.

Then later having entered an old Necromonger ruin on the surface, found and old Necrutech Darklight Crystal, been ambushed by mercenaries in employ by Great House Riiva, and then having captured their agent DeTroi, Montoya sells a free seat aboard the confiscated Riiva Air Transport to the agent convincing him that all the killing was "just business" earning the grudging respect of the agent. (and 20 000 Imperial Crowns aka two helping dice to be spent on Credit Checks for ship upgrades).

Some time later with Inquisitor Kryptman of the Ordo Genos locked in the open Cargo Bay with Captain Montoya and a desperate Tech Adept Allarse trying to get the ship out of the Thule Minoris atmosphere, Leonard tries to force open the hatch to the bridge. Specifically stating that the task is difficult and if he fails he'll damage something on the bridge as he hydraulically blows the hatch into some components. (He used his monstrously large handgun to vent the locks by applying dum dum bullets to the piping system as an example of Rough Tech). As the Cargo Bay Doors slid shut he says over the intercom: "Captain. I've got good news and bad news."

All in all the game was great, and Christian ranked it as one of the top three sessions ever (Makes me a bit nervous about the follow up).
Post game analysis makes it clear that the combination of the way the Solar System supports Story Now , the application of Creative Space gleamed from Lumpley.com and the fact that we so thoroughly discussed what we wanted from the game in the beginning made this one of my top fives as well. The great thing about this one was that it was talking about it that led to this being kick ass. Not just good random timing.

This proved doubly beneficial because it could have been awkward because of Jon's death. But by taking our time we passed this hurdle in the getting on with our lives, and maybe it became a little more poignant because of it. We had a great time, and I know that's what Jon would have wanted.

Peace

Kaare