Thoughs on the Undercity Noir Playtest after 2 sessions

I apologize for the lack of posting.  I’ve been a bit paralyzed by Undercity Noir’s nature.  Whenever I run a playtest, I find it dominates my time, because I’m busy fixing the bits that the game is missing, but I can usually make that up by talking about the playtest.  Now, though, I can’t do that, because I intend to run it twice, which means I would spoil things if I ran it twice.  So what can I talk about?  Well, I can talk about how particular systems worked and what my experience with them was. So let’s hit a few high points.

How did Character Creation Go?

Without a hitch. Though I will note that three of the five characters wanted templates that either didn’t exist, or didn’t exist until recently.  We have a bounty hunter, a con-artist, a hacker, an assassin and a psion. The bounty hunter worked fine, and the player even praised the variety and options, and I regularly find that I’ll ask for a skill vital for bounty hunting, he’ll say he doesn’t have it, double check, and then see that he does.  So the template did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was cushion someone who didn’t have a great deal of knowledge of the game and guide them to where they needed to be.  The con-artist seems to be missing a few important skills: Holdout, which is not just about weapons, but also about hiding small things, and Diplomacy, which I likely left off deliberately because of the Diplomat template, but in retrospect, the skill that sets the Diplomat apart from the Con-Artist is Law (International) and their access to high levels of rank, patrons and diplomatic immunity, not their ability to talk circles around people.

The Assassin is an old template, but it’s going through a lot of revisions, mostly in the form of martial arts.  I see the Assassin as the “space ninja” in contrast to the “space samurai” of the Space Knight. Their role is to kill quietly and with weird, exotic weapons, and this requires exploring a lot of weird, exotic weapons.  I’ve been slowly collecting them, and I think I have enough material to finally start posting these, but I always run into a sort of creative inertia, where when I start I have no ideas, and by the time I’m done I have too many. But the general build seems to be holding up so far.

The Hacker is an interesting experience.  In principle, this probably could have been the Spy template with a Criminal background, but the Spy comes with some broader baggage that assumes its tied to an international entity: criminal spies are closer to rogue agents than to criminal hackers.  So the player took the new Criminal mini-template and attached the Hacker Skillset to it. It seems to work fine, and it’s a more relaxed approach to design, less strict about what you can do and perhaps better for more experienced players.  I wonder once the skillsets and mini-templates are finished, how often we’ll see them used to recreate something that could possibly be an existing template?

The Psion is the trickiest, because he’s not actually a psion: he’s a mystic in drag.  The player clearly wants to be a zathare sorcerer, while Psions are designed to be closer to an X-men or a character from a psychic scifi film or movie series whose focus is on having weird powers, like the Psi from Monster Hunter.  You can stretch that to fit it onto an occult sorcerer, but it is a stretch.  He seems to be handling okay, and has even used his psychic powers (complete with Extra Effort and Techniques!) as well as tinkering with their occult elements.  So he seems to be happy, but clearly there’s a lot of interest in the mystic template(s).

I had originally planned on giving no CP for the adventure to see if everyone could just handle the entire game with what they originally had, but they talked me into CP.  First, they’re fun.  Second, watching where they put their CP will tell me what’s missing and what people are interested in. Third, the plan is for this to be short (though one player predicted this would go longer than I thought, and he seems correct thus far, as after two sessions we haven’t finished what I planned for one), so they shouldn’t get that much additional power. So we’ll see where things go. But so far, the templates seem to be robust and holding up well enough, even to some abuse.

Cut to the Chase

So we had a chase scene. It was light and low stakes; I often start sessions/campaigns with low stakes fights or action sequences, to feel out the system with the players.  I suspect it’s part of the reason the session used up its allotted time so quickly, because resolving mechanical scenarios tend to eat up time.  But I don’t think anyone was bored, or at least I didn’t have that impression.

I personally have issues with how most chase scenes work, and GURPS Action is no exception: you roll until someone catches up, or someone pulls away. If we’re talking a flat plane, then you know who is going to win after the first roll, or the first couple of rolls.  If I have Running 15 and you have Running 14, then I will win eventually.  What makes a chase scene work is dynamics.  I borrowed from the Thrill of the Chase from Pyramid and the “Chase flowchart” idea from Damnation City (a world of darkness supplement).  But I found Thrill of the Chase too generic, and Damnation City too specific, so I had to work out specific details myself. Not the end of the world: that’s a bit like complaining that D&D doesn’t design the encounters for you, it just gives you the pieces.  But I could use slightly more specific pieces than I’ve been given, and more worked examples.  I’m working on that now.  We’ll see how far I get.

So the result was a fairly dynamic chase involving a lot of choices and opportunities for shortcuts and making use of movement skills.  The two characters involved in the chase were delighted to find that movement skills mattered.  And that’s my experience with this: the guy who has Running 15 feels like a chump, because in most games (ie DF) Basic Move matters and Running is a cute background skill. In Action, though, being able to parkour over the scene really matters a lot, and that hit the players viscerally.  This won’t be isolated either, because Action is rife with opportunities for chases and parkour.

But still, making those fun, dynamic chases is work. There were two chase scenes, actually, one that was thoroughly prepped and the other was improved, and I have no doubt that the players could tell you which was which.  Better resources offering better support would make the improved one better, or make it so I could more easily plan both.

So, good result, needs more support.

Abstract Wealth

“Hey wait, didn’t you pay for stuff last session?”

In the second session, I remembered that the Bounty Hunter had paid docking fees for his ship, bought some casino chips and, in this session, needed to pay for lodging.  So, we should be using our Abstract Wealth System, right? How did it go?

Well, it went okay. The first thing I notice that a selling point of Abstract Wealth is to not have book keeping, but there’s book keeping.  Instead of tracking how much you spend, you track how many modifiers you get.  He’s currently at -2 or so, and will be for the rest of the adventure. So we have to note that somewhere.  

Abstract Wealth, once you have it in mind, though, puts a lot of things in context. For example, how much should medical services cost? How much should a movie ticket cost? How much is “too expensive” and how much is “cheap?” Because you can find the price of medical services from Bio-Tech, you can extract berthing fees from Spaceships 2, and you can work out how much a restaurant costs from GURPS Basic, and then you can start to see what the average person can afford and what they can’t.  So I could just list these all out in the costs and equipment section, like D&D does, but then I find I also need to do “two tiers”, where I explain that something has a cost (“A restaurant meal costs $60”) and then what its Abstract Wealth value is (“This is trivial for characters with Average wealth”). 

I also notice the players don’t interface much with it.  It’s useful for explaining what costs a lot and what doesn’t cost much, but when a player got a Deep Coin (a particular currency), I didn’t see any questions about how that interfaced with the Abstract Wealth system, he just knew it was about $1000. Likewise, the Bounty Hunter never once asked to use the Abstract Wealth system.  He just paid what was asked and didn’t think about it.

I think the idea of a proper abstract wealth system is to wave your hands and say “Don’t worry about that, it’s handled.” But in practice, I feel like I’m putting a layer of abstraction over the standard wealth system that seems to create more work than it resolves.  I think in practice players will just add or subtract some money from their till on their sheet.  Especially with modern, computerized sheets, you can just add or subtract much more easily than with pencil and paper, and Abstract Wealth helps a bit more when tracking with pencil and paper.  But we’ll see how it plays out. It isn’t natural, quick or especially intuitive.

As an aside, I saw a lot of questions about starting wealth.  Is it 100% or 20%?  Action says 100%, but it’s also going with a “budget.” The premise behind Action is that your commandos and street racers all meet up in the secret compound, and the boss unveils a veritable warehouse of materiel, and the players go and pick out half a million GURPS $s in gear and go “Mwahaha” as they nerd out about it. This doesn’t match the Space Opera aesthetic of a run-down universe like we see in Star Wars (or Firefly or Killjoys or even Dune).  In those settings, characters just have things, like a house and a speeder and clothes, but they also have one special blaster, or one cool piece of armor. That implies the 80/20 split.  But there are also characters who live their entire lives out of their ship, such as a Bounty Hunter.  Would they also have the 80/20 split? Maybe.  They have their clothes in a wardrobe on their ship and they have their space car, and maybe they have a flop on some space station somewhere.  So I’d need to think about it, and perhaps work out what you get “for free” with your 80/20 split, because I tend to lean in the direction of that being a thing: it makes the cheaper weapons more viable, and higher levels of wealth more powerful, but I think there needs to be room for the Poor Bounty Hunter who is homeless yet has a decent gun because that’s where all of his spare money went (Though perhaps that’s Signature Gear)

After Action Report: Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt Part IV – The Storm Comes

Last we left our heroes:

• Sir Axton Kain, Space Knight of House Kain, who has no heart.
• Viscontessa Shay Sabine, Space Knight of House Sabine, who sees the future on the petals of dreaming nymph
• Baron Mallus Grimshaw, Ace Pilot of House Grimshaw, who disapproves.
• Sir Tyro Pavonis, Ace Pilot of House Sabine, who sees without sight (but was unable to make the session).
• Walker Lee, Scavenger and War Hero of the Orochi Rebellion, and caretaker of one Jethro Page
• The Dread Pirate Xerxes, Captain of the Calico and its killer crew, and Asrathi Witchcat, but otherwise not a bad bloke.

They had captured the smuggler station “Port Mongo” after executing its previous owner, Mongo Corpulain, for the crimes of murder, human trafficking and Orochi poaching, and then carefully captured the rest to minimize casualties.  Then, they discovered that an Orochi Swarm descended once more on the damaged, inoperable station.

Outlining the Scale of the Disaster

The session begins with the grim Malachi Harrow, fighter ace and all-around great guy (in his estimation) standing in the hangar of Port Orochi, quietly contemplating the fighters patroling the belt, with its green-clad botanical asteroids, and the tumult behind him.  His black-eyed gaze settles upon his wingman, Mallus Grimshaw and then he notices “Nixi,” the one candy-haired “pleasure clone” who had escaped her confinement and now excitedly works with the head mechanic, Callister Lee, to repair one of the Alliance Corvettes that was damaged in the capture of the base.

“The Hierophant is still on its way, and its in the heart of the Belt.  The Morass between the botanical asteroids are interfering with communication. It should be here in about an hour.”

“That’s a problem” Mallus growled in a suspicious voice.  “The Orochi will be here in an hour. I’ll tell the others.”

Harrow once again eyed the supple body of the girl in coveralls and then glanced at Mallus “Do you mind if…”

“If you wish to socialize with peasants, don’t let me stop you.” The Baron growled, and then turned to join the rest of the command crew.

The silken-haired Squadron Commander of Harlequin Squadron, Talia Sabine, stood at the center of attention as everyone peppered her with status updates while she cradled her wounded arm in a sling.

• The Orochi would be here in an hour.
• The Hierophant would be here in an hour, and they had no way to warn the carrier of the impending attack.
• The base was in total disrepair but Walker Lee thought he might be able to jury rig some repairs, if he was given the proper resources.
• There were a considerable number of prisoners (The smuggler Wyatt Van Carlo, the pirate Scipio Vash, Legionnaire 451, some poor kid, and a bunch of nameless Belter mooks) who needed guarding.

After a discussion, the group decided:

• To put all possible personnel (all regulars except one who would guard, all pilots and any prisoners who they deemed trustworthy and were willing to help, which amounted to 5 prisoners) to the repair of the base under Walker Lee’s command.
• The focus on the repair of the sensors, the force screen, and the long-range weapons; they would not fix the comms, the tactical mainframe, the short-range weapons, or the internal security.
• Mallus and Malachi would board their valkyries and rush to the Heirophant as quickly as they could, based an navigational assumptions, and see if they could manually warn them.

The Final Hour

 A squad of 5 regulars arrive, escorting a tall, bearded belter in a space suit carrying a harpoon and a small child, and an Imperial medical officer, who has his hands up.  Upon the arrival of the Imperial medical officer, he marches directly up to Talia and says:
“I am Lieutenant Commander Venter Weir, Medical Officer of the Resolute, Service Number IMP-6174-1089. As a prisoner of war, I expect be given all the rights of the Sovereign Accord”
“Finally!” exclaims the gleefully vengeful Axton Kain, who happily takes him into custody, but not before Xerxes manages to hiss and spit at the Imperial.  Axton escorts him towards his lancer, leaving the man to his devices.
Upon seeing the roughness of the doctor’s treatment, the man with the child bellows “Hey! Don’t treat him like that! He done saved Emma’s life.”
This creates a flurry of questions: the man’s name is Ford Francesca, and he is a homesteader of the Veridian Field and a botanical asteroid farmer.  He had come to the station “to drop off his supply of Obtusa mats, and to see about mabye picking up a wife” as he heard they had shipments of “wives” here.  During the attack, some debris had wounded his child (who was, of course, there to meet her “new mommy”) and the doctor had worked hard to save her life.

After some initial hostility, the group decides that Ford is no threat. When asked if he can help with repairs, he readily agrees, but he asks again about a “wife,” and then notices Nixi, who is in the midst of being “talked at” by Malachi Harrow.  He approaches, looks her over and declares her “Awfully young looking,” and not really his type.  He asks to see her teeth, and after blinking, the clone shows him her teeth, and then he asks if she’s good with children and can cook.  She says she doesn’t know, but she likes fixing things.  He nods, satisfied and asks if she’d like to join him on his homestead as his wife and be an Asteroid Farmer.  She shrinks back, confused and uncertain from the attention of both Ford Francesca and Malachi Harrow, who bristles that his monologue about his fighter ace victories were interrupted by the bumpkin.
 While the rest of the group watches in tense silence, Callister quietly coaches Nixi, asking if she thinks she’d like that, or if she’d rather do something else.  She thinks for a moment and says “I think I’d rather stay and fix ships.”
To her surprise and everyone’s relief, Ford just sighs and says “Well, fair enough” and shakes her hand “It was nice to meet you.” And then he returns to help with repairs.

The point of this scene was, first, to highlight what Callister stands for. It’s to draw a parallel between how he coaches Nixi, and how he likely coached Kerin Kethim, the Ranathim mechanic who likely had similar circumstances when he first found her.  But more importantly, the “pleasure clones” (Eros-model Bioroids from Biotech) are meant to represent the underbelly of the Orochi Belt.  One of the moral questions I want to pose to the PCs is “how will you govern?” Will they rule over them like lords, will they govern like representatives? Will they impose their outsider morals or will they try to understand how the belt works.
The “clone-trade” represents a necessity in the Belt, in that there are many workers, but not a lot of companionship.  In some places, like Rust City, this results in brothels, but the miners and farmers still seek wives, a common problem with frontier-life.  But then the moral question arises as to whether the clones are a moral option for this.  The initial assumption that the clones are “slaves” is probably over simplistic: they’re not legally property here.  But at the same time, there’s doubtless some coercion going on, and even if there isn’t, are the clones, with little life experience, really in a position to consent to the life they have? Even if they are, is it moral to construct “artificial women” for the purposes of being the wife of a miner?  And if it isn’t, what conclusion do we draw from the fact that the Senator, their ally, is clearly married to one?
So far the conclusion seems to be “This is a space opera game, we rescue the beautiful clones!” but you can see with Ford that they’re willing to make some compromises here.  Mongo, who used and abused and then murdered his clone definitely gets the axe.  Ford, who’s brusque with them, but would probably be brusque with anyone, treats them like people and asks.  How will they feel about the edge cases in Rust City and elsewhere? This is a question we’ll return to several times.

Dreams and Greed

As Nixi heads off to help with repairs, Shay keeps an eye on her, until it becomes obvious that nobody is going to harass the clone, and then she goes off to indulge herself in some dreaming nymph, a psychic enhancing drug from Persephone.  While on her trip, she has visions of unbroken knight pieces near a fire, and an unbroken Queen and Jack near some stones and a far distant place, a junk yard, that she cannot see, nor find, for everyone there is blind; that’s where “the rest of them” are. Whatever that means.
Meanwhile, Xerxes glances around to make sure nobody is looking and then sneaks off to the Orochi processing center, certain that more treasure can be found there.  He communes with the dead briefly, watching visions of what they did just before they died to the Orochi attack, and then sees that a great treasure is locked away in a crate-within-a-crate, secreted there by a belter who hoped to keep it for himself. He finds therein a great, marintine gem the size of his fist, in a deep, most black, green.  He pockets it.

 I’ve been making a point of revisiting disadvantages before the session, to remind people, and I’ve found that it helps immensely in getting people to think about their disadvantages.  Seeing a spare moment of downtime, these two players elected to skip helping out to indulge in their vices.  Well played!

The Inquisition of the Imperial

Axton immediately frogmarched the Imperial officer into an interrogation room and handcuffed him to a table, leaving the one, lone regular to watch the prisoners.

I’m sure that’ll be fine.

The interrogation begins: “Why were you in the Veridian field?”
“I’m here to help people.”
“Right, that’s a likely story.”
“Have you seen how they live? How little medical service they have access to?  Have you actually seen it? Are you here to help them, Aristocrat, or just rule them?”

“I’m here to help.  I’m not here to rule them, I mean, we’re not here to rule them.  We’re here to liberate them from your tyranny.”

“Uh huh.  So, have you seen how they live? Or did you just bust in here guns blazing and seek to control the first place you found?”

“You’re losing control of this interview.” One of the players commented.
“I think he lost it awhile ago.” Another added.

“Look, this isn’t about us. It’s about you.  Odd, isn’t it, that you’re here without your ship.”
The Imperial sat back with a smile on his face.  “Yes, that is odd.  Good that you finally noticed.”
“Well, where is your ship?”
Doctor Weir hesitated.  Then leaned forward.  “I think maybe we can help one another.  You’d like to have access to an Imperial dreadnought, wouldn’t you?  Well, I need something in return.”
Axton’s eyes narrowed “What would that be?”
“I need you to rescue my crewmates.  If you promise to treat them with the same respect that you treat me, then I’ll agree to reveal the location of my ship.”
“I give you my word as a member of House Kain.”
“Do you believe in ghost ships, Mr. Kain?”
Axton pauses and then hits his comms system “Someone get Xerxes in here.

The Messenger

Mallus and Malachi fly, without incident, through the asteroid belt in search of the Hierophant and eventually track it down.  They comm the carrier directly and inform it of the situation.  The comms person asks them to hold, and then returns with the High Admiral who clarifies the situation, and then asks them to guide them through while they prepare a Raptor squadron to support them in fighting the Orochi.

Adventures in Heroic Engineering

Walker focuses on his repairs, and after a critical success and some-on-the-spot updates, they also bring up tactical and comms (making Mallus’ flight less important).  They also clipped some of the cables on the harpoons to create long range missiles, using the advanced sensors (which pick up no imperial ships, but finds the incoming Orochi, including a handful which will be ten minutes early).  Then, once everything is done, the pilots rush off to finish their task.

This was actually a mini-game I cobbled together about resource management: how do you prioritize what to rebuild given time, resources and man-power.  They had the option of distributing Regulars (soldiers) and pulling in pilots and they either had to scavenge parts (which took time) or strip other systems of parts.  Incidentally, all of this managed to conform to the GURPS Spaceships repair rules, if we assume the base is SM +12, which isn’t the craziest thing in the world.
I had intended it for the group, but handed the actual list of times and required resources to Walker’s player, the idea being that he could explain it, as his character had the information and so his player did, but he did what most engineers do, which is explain some stuff, decide it’s too complicated to explain to everyone, simplify it a bit, and then say he’ll handle it, and he did.  As a result, only he got to play with it.
The real cost was that there were no regulars watching the prisoners but the one, and Axton was distracted, and they didn’t activate internal security, because why would you?

The Orochi Storm

Axton steps out of his interview, having uncuffed the Doctor Weir, to go find Xerxes, and finds a belter walking away from the brig, one of the belters he had cleared for work.  The man does a quick, casual salute at Axton and carries on.
“Hey, aren’t you in the wrong part of the base?” Axton demands.  Suddenly, the Belter runs.  Axton charges and bodily tackles him and restrains him.
At that moment, a team of three orochi, including the wounded one that Axton liberated, and a great, white Orochi with a rider on its back, arrive.  They approach slowly with the rider slowly waving until the white orochi comes right up against the base.  She dismounts and approaches Axton.
“Did you rescue Runt?” she asks imperatively, and looks around, “You’re not smugglers at all.  Regime change?”
After a quick discussion, it comes out that she’s Nadia “Viper” Morgan’s mother, Medea Morgan, an Orochi Rider.  She uses her Animal Empathy to commune with the beasts and participated in their raids on the base.  After Axton’s kindness, she’s willing to do what it takes to push the beasts away, but “Red Alpha,” the new swarm leader, is difficult to control, but she’ll do her best.
Then Axton rushes back to the brig to check, and indeed, his one Regular is down, blood all over the floor. He gasps out “They took her, they took the Corporal” and then collapses.  6 prisoners, including Scipio Vash, have escaped. He orders the Doctor Weir to save the Regular, and then, spotting someone leaving, gives chase.
The orochi swarm, led by the great, red orochi, arrive.  Medea goes to commune with it, but is rebuked savagely as she is thrown from her mount by Red Alpha’s attack on Big White. She comms back (as she floats through space) that if they can kill Red Alpha, the rest of the swarm should scatter.
The swarm rushes the base, but the repaired force screen holds them back. The bases defenses open fire, driving the Red Alpha back.  Mallus and Malachi burst through the asteroid field with a raptor squadron about a minute behind them.  Walker comms Mallus and explains the need to focus fire on the big red orochi, who complies. He and Malachi both open fire on the orochi.  Mallus powers his Valkyrie’s “lightning cannon” which dumps all of its power, and some of Mallus’, directly into a single blast of lightning that certainly gets the Orochi’s attention. Malachi fires a reckless all out assault at Red Alpha, who disables his ship with an flip of its electromagnetic tail.
The fighters launch through the barrage of plasma fire rained down upon it by the orochi: one fighter catches fire and explodes, but not before the pilot ejects.  Shay deftly dodges through the fire and races towards Red Alpha and opens fire on its eye, inflicting some damage, but failing to cripple it.  The Orochi roars. The Calico blasts through the plasma fire, its heavily armored front barely singed by the attacks, and then opened fire with its forward mounted cannons to hit Red Alpha about as hard as Mallus had, but still fail to cripple the great beast.
Meanwhile, Axton burst into the hallway.  A single fugitive opens fire on his with a blaster pistol, which Axton ignores as he blasts through him and through some random construction equipment to come to the other side and find… nothing.  He’s completely lost track of his target.

Ah, critical failures at the worst possible time.  Plus he spent all of his impulse buys…

As Walker begins to coordinate with the fighter squadrons and aiming the primary cannons, three fugitives storm into the room, blasting with their pistols.  Walker dives to cover, but not before popping one in the face, painting the inside of his vacc helmet red with blood.  One rushes around cover to smash Walker’s faceplate with the butt of his pistol, while the other goes to seize control of the comms system to radio for help.  Walker tackles the first one in such a way that it slams him into the second guy, which knocks out the second guy.  Then the two struggle on the ground, and Walker manages to pop open the other’s visor and knock him unconscious with a headbutt.
Then he gasps back to the comm system and begins to coordinate all forces onto Red Alpha while the heavy cannons lay down a pattern of fire to disrupt the swarm.
Mallus opens fire on the rest of the orochi to draw them away from Malachi and the Raptor Squadron, and then races away with a swarm of orochi boiling after him.  This gives the Raptors their shot, and the first, second and third torpedo strike home, and the great beast erupts in nuclear fire.  The rest of the swarm, stripped of their leader, scatter back into the belt.

The Aftermath

Exhausted, frustrated and triumphant, Harlequin squadron returns to the Hierophant.  The fighters land, and Kerin Kethim, Ranathim mechanic, rushes to the side of Shay’s fighter to quickly inspect it. After carefully caressing it and looking it over, Kerin murmurs in her broken Galactic Common:
“She is okay.  She is tired. She must rest.  Ah, your talisman, it broke!”
“It served me well.” Shay smiled at her.
“I make you another.” Kerin promises.
Mallus’ wife, Dani Grimshaw-Shinjurai rushes him as he leaves his fighter to give him a fiercely emotional hug while the cameras swirl around them.  Mallus can almost hear the soundtrack they’ll eventually put over the emotional moment.  He plays his role as stoic soldier and husband.
As Senator Sawyer Septum and his wife, Rayna Septum, come to the hangar bay to greet the returning heroes (When Ford sees her, he comments that she’s more his sort of woman and asks if anyone minds if he invites Rayna to be his wife.  They tell him the Senator might have something to say about that). Rayna spots Nixi and she freezes: they could be sister-daughters.  Then she sees the clones being offloaded from Walker’s nomad.
“What’s all this?” she demands.  Her wonder turns to anger as she the situation is explained to her and she learns that she, too, must be a clone, and that, perhaps, Sawyer was less than honest about how he “saved her” from pirates, though the Senator maintains that he did, in fact, rescue her from pirates.  Wyatt Van Carlo seems to recognize the senator, however, and the Senator does question if it is wise to disrupt the flow of clones to their intended destinations, as waiting parties will wonder what happened to them.
The crew re-unite in the grand briefing room. They discuss the situation, which is as follows:

• The Mother’s Touch, the Eleganian Medical Cruiser, fell out of Hyperspace in the inner system of the Orochi belt and is surely in Imperial hands now.
• The remaining Kainian Lancers fell out near the Skollian Ice Fields, between where the characters are now and the inner system.  They are likely in the hands of pirates.
• There was a hyperspatial signature from the remainder of the fleet “somewhere out system.”
• The Empire doesn’t seem to be aware of their presence yet.
• The base is secured, but still heavily damaged (Walker’s repairs were just a jury rigging).

 After much debate, the following positions are clarified:

• High Admiral Lowelin Cole feels they should torch the base, stow the clones in the storage bay, and focus on moving in on the Empire as quickly as possible.  He advocated for going to the Ice Field to recover the Kainian Lancers.
• Sawyer Septum argues for releasing the prisoners, returning the base to them, and resuming its operations as though nothing happened. They should use the smuggler as a cover to insert themselves into Rust City and see what they can do to connect with the resistance while raising as few suspicions about their presence as possible.
• Talia argues for repairing and restoring the base “as it states in the prophecy” and getting to know the belters here, who have great need of their presence.  The clones should be liberated and decide their own fate, and the labyrinth explored.

The heroes naturally decide to side with Talia: they decide to stay at the base, to explore the labyrinth, to liberate the clones (and give them the base “for the Queen must make the fortress her domain and the bloody-haired princess must break her chains”).   They also want to see if they can find some way to rescue the Imperial Dreadnought from the Derelict Planet.
And thus ends the first arc of the Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt.

Retrospective

What I wanted to do with the Tall Tales was get a good mix between space action and personal action, and I think this proves that it works.  There’s been no scenario that the heroes wanted to engage in that my rules don’t cover.  They’re not as quick as I would like… but you can also resolve most chase/action scenes in a few turns, so while mulling over the rules isn’t as blisteringly fast as I would like, the resolution of the fights go pretty fast.  Similarly, I’m finding it pretty doable to go between Action and Chase scenes, which seems the intent of GURPS Action.  All in all, I’m pleased with the rules thus far.

I will say that I’m not convinced of the Conditional Injury rules we’re using.  With the orochi I just used HP, and the fights go so fast anyway that I feel like one-minute-long fight scenes with normal HP might be just fine as is. Yes, it’s harder to get those excruciatingly long fights of two cap ships slugging it out, but I’m not convinced those are a good idea anyway.  Do we need 10-20 turns to resolve a fight? Or is just a few enough?

We missed one of our fighter aces, which diminished my ability to test things as well as I would like, but broadly, both space-combat characters and non-space combat characters have proven equally useful.  I think this is because the “Fighter Ace-ness” is not extremely expensive, which means it’s pretty easy to be “good enough” on 25-50 points.

Naturally, the players would choose to go at the least prepared direction, so I’ll need some more time to prepare, but we’ll see. This is also the direction with the last space combat and the most noodling around with occult stuff, but that might have a side benefit.  The next session will likely be a “downtime session” where people get to know one another again and simply be free to explore a bit.  Axton intends to chase down Scipio and recover the missing Corporal Saga Auric, and the rest are already busily spending their points and expressed enthusiasm for continuing.  Whether we keep going depends on my time and how useful I find it as a “playtest,” but for now signs point to “Go.”

I found this an interesting session as the group seemed very engaged, and while I think I made some mistakes (I lost track of stuff in the space combat fight again. Not rules, but tracking all the players and NPCs.  It might be worth having one of those turn counter systems again, as this is a problem I’ve had since day one as a GM), but they seemed to really enjoy it.  The game has really found its stride and the players have really gotten to know their characters.  It’s been fun to run it, and I think they’ve had fun playing it.
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Nobilis: A Philosophical Action Game featuring Theological Superheroes (in full technicolor!)

More than anything else, Nobilis is driven by the choices the players make: Who they want to be, what they want to represent, and what their own personal worlds and rivalries are like utterly shape the world. I can do a few things on my side to shape it into a particular direction, but in the end, Nobilis must be about surrender to the power of the players.  After all, they’re playing Gods.

So, let’s take a look at what our PCs, and thus the world, are like.  Note that we’re getting new players and some of the previous players want to revisit their characters now that they have a better understanding of Nobilis, so all of this is subject to change, but it’s still a good starting point.

Sebastian Saint-John-Smythe, the Pawn of Glory, Angel in Training

Sebastian is a British exchange student currently residing in Vancouver where he attends the Shawnigan Lake School.  He likes fencing, reading fantasy novels, petting cats and playing D&D (he has a regular D&D group that meets every friday).

He’s also an angel in the process of growing up.  He was born in the flower garden of Fran Wahnfried and is destined to become an Imperator in his own right.  The Excrucian Cameron Delacroix uncovered his destiny and stole Sebastian’s heart and forged it into a Abhorrent Weapon with which he will harm the world, but the cost of the blade is that Cameron must love Sebastian desperately, or the blade evaporates away.  They find themselves at an impasse, neither really able to bring themselves to kill the other, but rather duty bound not to be lovers (what scandal!)

So Sebastian lingers in a twilight, unable to move on until his situation changes, he plays D&D with his group of friends, now called the Myrmidons (one cannot play a D&D game with an Angel of Glory as your DM without gaining more than a little real-life prestige yourself, thus the group features a rockstar, a notorious hacker, a CEO and con-artist, making their weekly session quite an affair), fencing so he can keep up his skill with his sword, Heaven’s Will (of which many swords of legend, including Excalibur, Hrunting, and Kusanagi, are just shadows), and feeding local stray cats.  He hopes someday to become a teacher, though he is forced to admit being an Angel of Glory makes that a touch difficult.

Sebastians Keys are the Lotus, the Key of the Descending Angel (Representing his angelic nature and his capacity to change others), and Hollyhock, the Key of Destiny in Balance (Representing his trapped state, in the midst of growing into something greater).  His estate is Glory.  His anchors are Cameron Delacroix, the Myrmidons (his D&D group), and Heaven’s Will, his sword.  He follows the path of Heaven.

Sebastian’s player is Jimmy, and arguably this game was inspired by him and created mostly for him.  He’s had Nobilis for as long as I’ve had it, and has always wanted to play it.  Jimmy is also gay and very romantic, and thus the need for a tragic, torrid romance between himself and the tall, dark and dangerous excrucian.  He’s a dear friend, he has a great understanding of Nobilis, and is a good leader/supporter for other players, helping to guide them through the nuances of the game and often suggesting awesome things that an estate might allow someone to do, that they hadn’t thought of already.

Glory

• Glory makes Heroes of mortals (2)
• Glory is immortal; it endures beyond death (2)
• Glory is the triumph of inner beauty over outer adversity (1)
• Glory is celebrated and admired by the world (1)
• Glory flows from performing great deeds (1)

Jack R. M. Livingston, the Marquis of Adventure, the Boy with Sunshine Hair

Jack was just a boy when his parents divorced.  The stress of the divorce changed them from people into Strange Folk, soulless people that merely looked and acted real. Knowing this, Jack ran away from home, in search of adventure, or to escape the collapse of his home.

Jack met Esmerelda, the Red Witch, on his path to adventure, and she told him of a princess she could rescue and a dragon he could slay.  To get a sword worthy of slaying a dragon, he broke into Toyland and stole the wooden sword, Snickersnack, the sword every boy who ever picked up a stick invokes, and befriended its guardian, Percival, the teddy-bear knight.  Then, he made his way into the heart of the dragon’s land, only to discover that he had been tricked by the Red Witch, that the dragon was friends with this particular princess, but they fought anyway, because it was awesome, and the dragon was so impressed, that he gave Jack his heart and made him into the Power of Adventure.  He also promised to help Jack find his real princess, the coffee-slinging Jenny Cho, who didn’t yet know she was someone’s princess.

His Keys are Chamomile, the Key of Something Romantic, representing his sense of adventure and his passion.  His other key is the Key of Oak, the Key of Something That Hasn’t Changed, representing his refusal to grow up.  His estate is Adventure.  His anchors are Percival, the teddy-bear knight, Snickersnack, the wooden sword, and Jenny Cho, his princess, who doesn’t yet know she’s an anchor (or is not an anchor yet, but her adventure has already been written).  He follows the path of the Wild.

Jack’s player is Raoul, who currently runs the Gentleman Gamer blog.  He’s very enthusiastic and also a very good friend.  I may have offered Nobilis as a gift to Jimmy, but Raoul fires my motivation. In a way, the game had its origins in our long riffs over the “boy with sunshine hair” who “fought a demon with the sword every boy wielded when he fought pretend demons, a ritual that’s been done a thousand times in preparation for this very moment.”

Adventure

• Adventure leaves you changed; more mature, more experienced (2)
• Adventure demands sacrifice (2)
• You encounter the most interesting things on an adventure (1)
• Adventures are exciting and fun, at least in retrospect (1)
• Is it a bad idea?  Then it’s an adventure! (1)

Hazel Sanders, Duchess of Shinies, the Most Exclusive Collectible

Hazel was an adorable, 8-year-old girl until what she called “the Other” got to her.  Her parents mourned over the loss of their little girl.  The police canvassed the area for her killer.  The papers ran articles sensationalizing the murder.

But Hazel wasn’t dead. Or perhaps she was.  She knew she flew with the birds, magpies, until she remembered she couldn’t fly and fell and skinned her knee, but when she went home and cried for her mommy, there was no answer.  She shook the shutters and kicked the chairs, but nobody answered. Exhausted, she curled into a ball until her magpie friends tapped on the window and showed her what they had: A new body in the form of a beautiful doll, the one she’d always wanted.  She folded herself into it and opened her new, glassy eyes.

So beautiful, so desirable was she, that when she met a dragon, he claimed her as his own, added her to his horde as his princess.  Thus, she became the power of Shinies.

Her keys are Clematis, the Key of Something Given Gifts, representing the many things others have given her, from her parents to her cult of magpies to her dragon, and the Mimulus, the key of something restless, representing the fact that she’s technically a ghost.  Her estate is the Shinies. Her anchors are cult of magpies.  She follows the Path of Hell.

Hazel is played by Marjolein, who isn’t as veteran as Jimmy or Raoul, but a sweet girl with the right sort of sense of humor and approach to suit the game, so I invited her and she was interested. She finds Nobilis a little intimidating, and I think that shows in the sparsity of her character, but it’s a good first draft.  She was one of the players who suggested revising their character, so I expect Hazel will see some changes.

The Shinies

• Shineys are shiny and sparkly and pretty
• Shinies are distracting
• Shinies bring trouble
• Shineys are inanimate objects
• You can put shineys in your pocket and take them home with you
• Everyone wants shineys, even if they won’t admit it
• Shinies are never lost, shinies want to be found

Selena “Red” Redwood, Pawn of Thrills, The Daredevil Goddess

Selena comes from the Vancouver Redwoods.  Those Redwoods, the ones who run Redwood Inc, which fused, in a financial and marital merger, with Yamada Consolidated to make one of the largest powerhouse companies of Vancouver.  Her older brother, the cool and collected Christopher Hideo Redwood, was groomed as the heir, while she was left to her own devices.

And Selena was bored.  Driven to tun from the stultifying existence of the upper crust, her own mind-numbing boredom, and her desire to impress her brother, she started to do stunts that grew more and more extreme until, one day, she make a bicycle jump that took her so high that she literally touched the sky.  She performed feats so unparalleled she transcended her mortality.  In the realm beyond the sky, she met the Tacoma, who returned her grin with a ferocious smile of his own, and like a star blooming into life, he touched her soul with his own and made her into the Power of Thrills.

Her keys are Mimulus, the Key of Something Restless, and Alyssm, the Key of Destiny Fulfilled, which she achieved the moment she touched the sky and performed the greatest stunt any mortal has ever done, and thus become immortal.  Her estate is Thrills.  Her anchors are Deadwood, the Power of Death (like most Daredevils, she’s in love with Death), her electric guitar, and her brother, whom she would do anything for.

Her player is Michelle, one of Marjolein’s friends, who was so excited  when Raoul and Marjolein told her about the great campaign, that I went ahead and invited her.  Like Marjolein, she doesn’t have a lot of experience with Nobilis, and would like to revisit the character, especially after all this downtime, to remember what she was doing and perhaps adjust her concept.

Thrills

• Thrills crave novelty (1)
• Thrills make you feel alive (1)
• Thrills reward you for facing your fears (2)
• Thrills are wild, reckless and without thought (2)
• Thrills are the most epic moments of your life(1)

The Tacoma

The players create more than just their own characters: they create their Imperator too!  They didn’t want an angel or a demon or a crazy fairy thing.  They wanted something huge and magnificent, something terrifying and awe-inspiring.  Marjolein pointed out that an awe-inspiring thing that likes Shinies would probably be a dragon.  So we went with an Aaron’s Serpent named the Tacoma.

“The Tacoma” refers to Mount Ranier, which is near Vancouver and part of the Rockies.  When the Avatar of Cneph sought to create the world, he was forced to battle the Tacoma, and tamed him in victory.  The Tacoma agreed to bear the world on his shoulders, and so the world was built into his spine, and the jutting spikes of his spine can still be seen in the Rocky mountains, and his smoking nostrils in Mount Ranier. He slumbered until the prophesied rise of the promised land, Canada, which roused him from his slumber for the first time in eons.  And so, he took an interest in the world, in the Excrucan war for the first time since the Creation of the world.  Never has the world has so many of the Tacoma’s powers walking its surface at once.

The Tacoma’s Estates are Glory, Thrills, “the Shinies”, Adventure, Secrets and Losers.  Doubtless, he’ll gain one or two more, as we add new players.  Like his beloved Selena, he follows no path but his own.