Again with the Diaspora?
Yeah you're probably hoping I'll shut up. Too bad.
We've entered the "passionate disagreement about trivia" stage. I had a bit of a laugh today going over detailed arguments and realised I didn't actually give a shit which way it went but was just so engaged in the game that I wanted to see my vision exactly regardless of quality. I think we have that hammered out now -- vision is preserved but there are some refinements that I admit, make a better game. Mostly consistency checks and typos left and some formatting back-and-forth.
We ran a platoon game last night as part of the campaign storyline that's been running for playtesting and it rocked. Cops in riot cars commanded by high tech mind reading commo vans with coilgun turrets engaging striking workers with off-world energy batons for possession of a landing strip for incoming supplies. The player side wound up negotiating a concession rather than lose and so the objective was lost but all three PCs got away to be picked up at the secondary LZ. Each had to take a Severe consequence -- basically the worst level of genuine injury in the game; takes months of game time an a minimum of one complete session to recover. Wonderfully, each player chose a different track for his consequence:
Konstan, owner of the ship and bankroll of the operation, took a severe against his Wealth track (which already has some hits on it, so they don't heal yet) -- apparently he had overinvested in getting those weapons to the workers and now the loan sharks have decided he's a bad risk: bounty hunter time.
Rebekah, leading a group of striking workers into a direct hand-to-hand fight with police, was surrounded by the shrieks of the dying and mutilated and found herself horrified at the reality of up-close warfare. She too a severe on the Composure track and suffered a nervous breakdown.
Mac, a heavyweight brawler also leading troops into battle and at the center of the final engagement right at the LZ when everything went south, took his on the Health track: a shattered knee, threatening his whole leg unless he can get high tech assistance.
So one failure set up the motivations and opposition for at least the next three sessions that I can see. My ass is kicked.
We've entered the "passionate disagreement about trivia" stage. I had a bit of a laugh today going over detailed arguments and realised I didn't actually give a shit which way it went but was just so engaged in the game that I wanted to see my vision exactly regardless of quality. I think we have that hammered out now -- vision is preserved but there are some refinements that I admit, make a better game. Mostly consistency checks and typos left and some formatting back-and-forth.
We ran a platoon game last night as part of the campaign storyline that's been running for playtesting and it rocked. Cops in riot cars commanded by high tech mind reading commo vans with coilgun turrets engaging striking workers with off-world energy batons for possession of a landing strip for incoming supplies. The player side wound up negotiating a concession rather than lose and so the objective was lost but all three PCs got away to be picked up at the secondary LZ. Each had to take a Severe consequence -- basically the worst level of genuine injury in the game; takes months of game time an a minimum of one complete session to recover. Wonderfully, each player chose a different track for his consequence:
Konstan, owner of the ship and bankroll of the operation, took a severe against his Wealth track (which already has some hits on it, so they don't heal yet) -- apparently he had overinvested in getting those weapons to the workers and now the loan sharks have decided he's a bad risk: bounty hunter time.
Rebekah, leading a group of striking workers into a direct hand-to-hand fight with police, was surrounded by the shrieks of the dying and mutilated and found herself horrified at the reality of up-close warfare. She too a severe on the Composure track and suffered a nervous breakdown.
Mac, a heavyweight brawler also leading troops into battle and at the center of the final engagement right at the LZ when everything went south, took his on the Health track: a shattered knee, threatening his whole leg unless he can get high tech assistance.
So one failure set up the motivations and opposition for at least the next three sessions that I can see. My ass is kicked.