I read through Ignition Stage, and it looks like it'll take some actually trying it to get a more comprehensive handle on how things work beyond the stuff covered by the demo.

I do have one question that I didn't see addressed, except fleetingly; and that is, what about the alien probe/drones that manifest in the real world? Clearly they can be fought, since at least one was defeated per creche (or at least the introductory fiction implies such). Does the game assume that once humans take the fight to the dreamworld, the aliens no longer encroach on our reality? Or did I just miss something?

Thanks!

D.

When we played the game there was this constant interplay between the dream world and the real world. Like Zelda: Link to the Past (whee, geek references FTW), when you changed something in one world, you changed something in the other as well. So the most efficient way of fighting the drones was, indeed, to fight the aliens in the dream world. While the drones might be nigh impervious to hand guns and whatever the children might have scavenged... well, you know the rules for fighting them in the dream world. It can be done.

I could also easily imagine playing the game in a manner where the aliens still act in the world and they are fought, but all of that never comes into the game in any mechanical manner. It's just not the topic of the game. For example, in our campaign it was quite concrete how the aliens came and torched the whole city where the game started into fine grey powder. This was, however, never a reason to stage a real-world scene where people would have fought against the aliens. What would have been the point, when there are no mechanical repercussions for such a scene? Indeed, the rules actively prohibit you from having such a scene, because each interlude scene needs to be defined in terms of changing relationships. You could certainly have a relationship scene in the middle of a fight, but you couldn't have a fight scene in the middle of the game, if that makes sense.

So I guess the answer is that it depends on how your tech looks and how your dreams world works. However the aliens work, there's no pressing reason to put pilots into scenes where people fight against the drones.

I always kind of assumed that the drone would have a dream-side representation, so if you defeated them in the dream, they would be defeated in the physical world. This seems consistent with the likes of Rah-Xephon.

We have also discussed the possibility of manifesting the ANIMas in the physical world too.

That pretty much clears it up for me. Basically the dreamworld/realworld connection is relegated to color, because there is no mechanical means to address it. Check.

Thanks, guys!

D.

You know, if it would be fun, run a mission where a possible objective is to "hijack" a remote so that a Pilot can use it like a real-world ANIMa to deal with real-world threats.

This all seems great to me.

yrs--
--Ben