[Breaking The Ice] Isla and Goldie

[Gregor Hutton]

And here is my 2nd AP of the night.

While I was over in Cork for Warpcon, myself and Dave Neil found ourselves at a loose end for a few hours on the 28th January. So we walked ourselves through a game of Breaking The Ice, which was one of the indie games I had in my bag. (We would have needed more for Polaris, Best Friends, 3:16 or DitV and the rest were off playing Dead Poets in a LARP I think...)

We got most way through the first date at the con before our friends dragged us off for dinner. We finished up the first date on the flight out of Cork back to Scotland.

Dave wasn't keen on doing anything radically emotional, but wanted an SF twist, so we put on a PG rating and choose a genre of SF Action/Drama.

Dave is from Australia, in a reasonably urban background on the coast. While I'm from Scotland, and have lived a lot mostly within a short drive of the countryside. So we switched that about a bit, and for safety/kicks we both played females space chicks with non-boy interests. But with the rating drawn so that nothing would happen on camera. (And not to upset the two curious Magic players sharing the table with us...)

We started with our maps...

Dave:
Green
-- Emerald -- Isle
-- Forest -- Beautiful
     + -- Conservation
-- Inexperienced -- Innocent
     + -- Young
-- Money -- High Society
     + -- Yacht -- Space

Gregor:
Gold
-- Beach -- Ocean
     + --Volleyball -- Professional
-- Blonde -- Dumb
-- Gym -- Fit -- Epileptic
-- Bank -- Debt
     + -- Robbery

So... we then set about turning these into characters.

Dave:
Name: Isla (Scottish name, using Isle from the map too)
Color: Green
Traits: Wealthy, Yound and Idealistic, Rebelling Against Upper Classes, Doesn't Work, Environmentalist, Races Space Yachts
Conflict: Arranged To Be Married
Backstory: Isla comes from a wealthy aristocratic family on Earth. Her family can trace itself back to the Highlands of Scotland and they have an arranged marriage planned to the heir of a wealthy Galactic banking family for her. She has turned her back on the nobility and high society, and spends her time saving trees and rare alien species. She isn't all that interested in men but can't bring herself to snub her entire family and call off the wedding.

Gregor:
Name: Goldie (Aussie-style name, using the colour and beach/hair reference)
Color: Gold
Traits: Dumb Blonde, Loves The Ocean, Epileptic, Plays Volleyball, Committed A Robbery, Lives Dangerously
Conflict: Wanted By The Galactic Police
Backstory: Goldie is a ditzy blonde who played volleyball semi-professionally and might be partly famous in that scene. Somehow she ended up in debt with a bank and in desperation she has robbed a bank of a lot of credits (in fact, the banking family of Isla's proposed husband). She used some of the money to flee to the pleasure planet of "Surfer's Paradise" and is hiding out there until she figures what to do (maybe hand the money back?).

The characters were quite easy to create collaboratively once we got started. We almost made Goldie a hero that stopped a robbery, but in the end we thought there would be more fun if she was a fugitive, with a chance at redemption.

Goldie starts. The preamble to the date was that Goldie's volleyball landed in between Isla and her date on the beach, knocking her drink over. Goldie apologized, Isla said "no problem, really", but they arranged to meet up later on so that Goldie could buy Isla a replacement drink ... she didn't even notice the guy lying there next to her, or assume that he would tag along for the meeting. They briefly chatted about sailing yachts and there is a misunderstanding about ocean yachts (in Goldie's mind) and space yachts (in Isla's) that they don't realise.

Anyway, Goldie arrives at the bar and the guy is there. He is called Cephuloid, Isla's husband-to-be, and Goldie is confused about why he is even there and where Isla is. The odd couple have an awkward few minutes until Isla arrives with drinks from the bar and it isn't going well when we find out he owns the bank Goldie robbed. It is then revealed that Isla and Cephuloid in fact only met yesterday. Goldie can't believe they are already engaged (!), until they explain about the marriage arrangement. Cephuloid isn't best pleased that his first date with Isla has been gatecrashed, or that Goldie and Isla are showing more interest in each other (and the drinks) than him. We roll some dice and the girls are getting on really well together. For some re-rolls things get complicated by Goldie being inadvertently rude to Cephuloid, spilling a drink over him and having a minor fit. Isla gets her out of the bar for some fresh air, and catches sight of the news with a wanted add for Goldie! Oh my!

We switch to Isla and she tells Goldie she won't hand her in to the police. Cephuloid doesn't hear as he keeps a distance from the scene. He stands watching, inert and unable to act -- fearful of ruining his chances with Isla. Ceph and Isla agree to meet later for dinner while she takes Goldie to get some medical help. We find out that Isla is in fact a paramedic, learnt while she was on a jungle survival course. The girls find out that they both could care less about male company and they are finding a compatibility. They drunkenly take a trip to a chemist to get some hair coloring to disguise Goldie and they end up in Isla's hotel room to do this. In the bathroom they are coloring Goldie's hair when Ceph walks in and is confused by the giggling in the bathroom, coming from behind a closed door.

The girls emerge from the bathroom, looking the worse for wear and they head to an expensive restaurant for a meal. Ceph seems unable to shake Goldie (and the other way about too) and a reasonably disasterous dinner date happens where Goldie gets food poisoning from a fish (who knew she was allergic!) and Ceph has a shouting match with Isla over her protecting her new found friend (leave her lying there! let her be someone else's problem!). It ends up with Ceph storming off and leaving Isla back at the chemist getting more drugs and then looking after Goldie.

The next morning Ceph turns up at Isla's room to apologize for his behavior and Goldie wakes up in Isla's bed (where Isla left her) to see Ceph and Isla holding hands talking emotionally to each other. Unable to remember anything from the main course onwards Goldie jumps from the bed and flees from the hotel! Ending the date.

Neither has any contact info for the other, but these two are sure to cross paths twice more before Isla's wedding. Over the 4 turns we managed to get 1 compatibility and raise the attraction to 2 (permanently) before the date ended so it was quite successful. We have also loaded up some ammunition to cause problems for dates 2, 3 and any ongoing relationship too. We also added a few traits on the way.

Feedback from Dave was that while the rules looked very procedural when he read through them, we found that they were very intuitive in play. Their presentation in the book made it actually very easy to refer back to them and step through our turns. Our initial stumbling slowly through them was maybe from us being more cautious than we really needed to be.

To come, when we have time...
Date 2: six months later a chance meeting, will Goldie hand back the cash?!...
Date 3: of course, a meeting the night before the wedding...

Quotes:
"You're so evil, Gregor. You're going to ruin their lives... (laughs)", "Well, you'll look good in jail clothes..." -- Dave
"Cephuloid? That sounds like a disease" Gregor as Goldie.

Great stuff.

[Emily Care]

That is great, Gregor.  I love that Golda spends part of the first date with the husband to be, Cephuloid. Did the epilepsy ever come up? Too bad it ends at a cliffhanger, will they see each other again? But then, there's that stolen dough on the line...

I'm glad the rules felt intuitive in play. It looks a lot crunchier than it feels.

There's something about choosing "gold" as a color. The ditzy blond thing is not uncommon. Though I would have expected the rich part to end up on her side! There's certain trend to blue characters (depressed cops who fly : ), probably are for all the colors. But I've found that green is a big toss up, can be anything. 

all the best,
Emily