A Dark And Quiet Room

This is cross-posted to the Forge. You may find the discussion there interesting.

…incoming transmission …
… Peoria Resistance Group…

Bliss Stage makes me think of this.

On 8/27/2007, Crystal, Gabrielle, and I sat down to play our first session of Bliss Stage. Things start off with a bang, so suit up, strap in, and hold on.

Scramble!

I don’t like doing game prep, so I already like Bliss Stage. Yes, there’s the need to put together missions, which I’ll discuss a bit below. But the opening of the game is scripted. You start with a mission briefing. Aliens are attacking the base. They must be stopped! If not, one of the characters will be Harmed.

Very cool. And very helpful. The opening mission serves as a simple tutorial on running mission actions, which require a bit of understanding to grasp, plus it immediately destabilizes the opening situation. I love it.

Mission Brief
Scramble!
…begin briefing…

…end briefing…

So, two alien remotes were attacking our base in downtown Peoria. One was coming from the north, near St. Francis Medical Center, and the other from the south, across the river. As a bonus, here’s a map of the area in question. The pointer shows where our headquarters are located.

I decided that remotes have an overlap in the dream world and the real world. So they can be engaged as dream entities and destroyed. So, the pilots scrambled to their ANIMa crèches.

We agreed that, in the anime of our game, there’s a standard montage of launching the ANIMas. We also agreed that we need to have “start the mission!” music or something. I’ve located a MIDI of the “Angel Attack” theme from Evangelion, but I’m open to suggestions.

We ran both missions separately. Jude went south, across the Bob Michel bridge, and was able to engage and destroy the remote at that location. Marcus went north towards OSF and easily destroyed the remote at that location.

I made a rules error for these missions. I missed the fact that I always narrate for the aliens. I thought that I could only contribute narration if pilot safety was threatened as the result of a mission roll. This led to a bit of confusion for Crystal, who was trying to get into character as an anchor, yet provide adversity at the same time. Once we ironed this out in future actions, the process was much smoother.

Also, we were still hashing out the look-and-feel of the ANIMas. We’ve finally settled on rounded, organic shapes, instead of blocky, armored shapes. So, closer to Evangelion than Battletech. We also discovered that Crystal didn’t have nearly the level of exposure to the mech concept as Gabrielle and I did. But, after some encouragement, she managed to come up with some cool gear for her ANIMa. And, as a bonus, she has been tying her equipment to the relationship thematically. So, Jude’s relationship with Rachel is a sensor jammer, and his relationship with Gloria is a cancer gun. Yeah, it fires projectiles that metastasize upon hitting the target, burrowing in all directions. Nasty!

…break…
…re-establishing communication…