Reflections on a game from this weekend


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JAGS (Just Another Gaming System)
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PART 2

THE ANNIVERSARY CLUB
We all met at the Crystal City Hilton. There had already been some conversation (amongst those who kept in touch) that some 'cloak-and-dagger stuff' was going on. Our characters were pretty wierded out (being that they were mostly normal folks) and had *no* idea why someone might be trying to stop us from meeting.

My character (the pool hustler) arrived at night and went down to the pool room. There I saw the NPC who had tried to cheat us 10 years ago (or so) playing pool.

Note: this was a repeat of the scene 10 years ago--he was in the same position, doing what I'd seen him doing when I first confronted him. He even, for a moment, looked sixteen again. We had heard that he'd taken the deal with the trust-breakers and wound up broke during hyper-inflation in the mid teens (of the 21st century).

I was shocked to see him--he hadn't been invited and no one thought he was coming. He was pleased to see me though. He had another proposition.

NOTE: this was done very stylishly. The past mirrored the present. There was someone he wanted us to talk to--just talk (same as last time).

This person was Loss Specialist. A person who deals with "loss from a numerical basis." It seemed to be something like an insurance adjuster and psychologist. There were comments about life being a zero-sum game and death being the ultimate catastrophy.

After talking to me about the Loss Specialist, the NPOC told me a weird story about trouble he'd run into down in Mexico. He'd been seeing a married woman, found that her past three lovers had wound up dead (killed by her husband). He ran for it--she ran too and caught up with him. He ended the story with the two of them hiding out in a Mexican hotel, appearently having gotten away.

I correctly summised that it was her doing the killing. He gave me a wicked smile.

The group met and decided that since he *had* made the promise with us (and we agreed to help each other out) we'd meet with this loss specialist guy (none of us had ever heard of this--but it seemed like an insurance adjuster) and see what was going on. We all felt like the NPC was trying to scam us again.

There were some clues: the wiccan was dreaming that she was lured to a radio station in the middle of the desert by a voice of someone she used to know--who she thought was in trouble. when she got there, it was just a loop-tape and not a broadcaster at all.

The person was the NPC in question. He was working with the Loss Specialist guy to open a radio station in Nevada.

NOTES: Again, there were motivational questions.
I felt it was a con (and I knew something about hustling).
The mad scientist felt there was no reason to help the guy--maybe give him some money--but that was it.
The wiccan wanted to rescue him from whatever trouble he was in.

I think that motivations for disparate groups might be one of the hardest things to get right. I told the GM (later) that I felt that walking into a setup wasn't something my character would easily do. I decided I was going along with it to 'keep the others out of trouble.'

NEVADA
A sub-set of the group of PC's and NPC's journeyed out to Nevada to meet with the Loss Specialist (at least for the interview). There was some fairly weird stuff about being given psycological tests while hooked up to machines. About the guy determining our 'relationship with death' and about our 'loss profiles' being unique. It was explained in detail (but I won't go into it here).

We did a bunch of investigative work. We met with a Russian partner of the Loss Specialist. We were contacted by the younger group of beneficaries and strongly warned to go home--that what we were doing was a *bad* idea.

There was lots of PC/NPC debate, research, etc. in this part. We learned that the russian was part of a soviet-era program for mind control (believed to have been a propaganda operation against the US). We found out that the younger surviors had joined a new-agey cult with a VERY annoying radio self-help guru. My character brought a trunk-full of guns with streetwise connections. We got the wierd quote about catatonics and ventriloquists ...

THE STATION
We went out to the radio station. We believed this was where things were going to happen--they did. We surprised and confronted the Loss Specialist, the Russian psychologist, and the NPC. We learned that the operation was an attempt to "contact death." There had been experiments with catatonics in russia, strange lights had appeared in the sky. The security force was "compromised almost immediately" and the russians destroyed the facility.

The mathematics of the Loss Specialists had an explanation (too complex to go into here). The guy running the show (the specialist) had found our friend after he had been reportedly killed by a woman in Mexico. He had been found as an amneisaic, doing mineal labor in Mexico and brought back (both to the states and his old personality).

The radio guru was competing with the Loss Specialists and playing the same game ... anyway ... it all came out and we agreed to help. The data from our interviews was key (for a variety of reasons--our 'unusual relationship with death').

THE CLIMAX
The climax came when we used the station to broadcast the signal (mathematically composed by taking readings from us and using the NPC in a drugged, catatonic state--and using a ventriliquist to "channel" voices of the lights. The success came and there was a chilling (for us players) series of events which resulted in PC's and NPC's being devoured by the lights, holding out in locked room, and finally succombing to the forces we had unleashed.

The PC's did survive, becoming conscious the next day (again, for reasons hard to go into--but with missing time and questions about our apparent 'live-ness:' during the climax our friend decayed into a long-dead corpse with twin shotgun blasts in his chest). It was still the end of the game.

NOTES:
The game could have continued (there were questions left unanswered and the GM had more, but time ran out). He specifically cut several scenes to make it fit the time-tables (especially because we spent time doing things like talking with the radio guru and getting leverage with the Loss SPecialist and the Russian psychologist).

Observations
1. There were certain elements I don't think were at all scripted (our characters armed with information and firepower that was 'hard to get' and allowed us to control the situation until the very end--there were several scenes that never happened both due to time constraints and our character's initiative).

2. Certain elements were probably beyond our control (when the lights were summonsed we were fairly screwed no matter what we did).

3. I can say that from a dramatic standpoint the ending really worked well--the sense of tension, despair, and fear was well wrought. Everyone contributed well to it.

I thought about illusionism, railroading, and vanilla narrativism a lot during this. My conclusion was that despite some VN play on my part (doing things 'out of character' to forward the story) it was fairly straight sim-play. There were strong presences of themes (including who we helped out at the end--the self-help guru was annoying but was in a way much more of a 'good-guy' than the creepy, slick, Loss Specialist). We stuck with our friend rather than doing the 'obvious thing.'

4. Playing with a limited period of time added intensity to the game. There was a sense of purpose to 'get things done' towards the end. We didn't *rush* things--but there was an attention (all around) to action that would forward the story. The time limits were externally imposed (the GM had to fly out the next day) but counterintuitively I think the time limit actually *improved* the game in some ways (there was a point where we got a bunch of phone calls and just didn't take them).

Well, that's it. I really don't know if it's been all that interesting--but I think I'd be interested in seeing similar examples from other people of short games with commentary included.

-Marco

[ This Message was edited by: Marco on 2001-11-27 15:42 ]