A Dark And Quiet Room

…signal restored…

Reflections on the game

So, where do I start?

The hospital mission was heavy. I mean, really heavy. We talked about it a bit afterwards, wondering why. Yes, we know that the subject material was heavy, but the rest of it has been heavy, too. Also, I’m specifically talking about the mission itself. Here’s what we came up with.

Part of it was that it was so gritty. Missions in the dreamworld aren’t quite “real”, since you can always eject if necessary. This…this had no easy escape hatch.

Also, the aliens are “just” nightmares and enemies. Humans gone feral are worse somehow. The aliens are opposed to us, but they aren’t bent in the same way that the Bigelow Boys were. Gabrielle said that Marcus was quite aware of this the whole time. If they were surrounded and unable to escape, he was going to kill Kay before he let her fall into their hands.

Finally, the city itself had gone feral. Launching assaults into the dreamworld is still done from the safety of our base. This involved physically leaving the base and venturing into the dark.

Um, yeah. Let’s move onto other things.

I keep forgetting to use Trauma in mission actions. I probably forget half the time. I forgot for the entirety of the hospital mission. I’m not sure how to make sure that I remember.

The general consensus of my players is that Jared is a loser and a poor leader. Gabrielle has decided that Marcus will take over once his Bliss hits 108. Which, given her generally poor die rolls, could be as soon as next engagement.

Both Crystal and Gabrielle have commented that they have a hard time being anchor. They say that they feel weird stating the obvious to the pilot. There’s this sense that talking through every little thing is dumb, but then they don’t know how much to say. They are also trying to stay in character as the anchor, which adds some more confusion. So, got any advice or helpful pointers?

We noticed that we use a lot of body language when roleplaying. Some of this is just jumpy gestures. Some of it is specific miming. For example, during “On the Offensive”, Marcus took cover under one of the alien pod trees. I told her that there were tentacles draped over her ANIMa, and, to demonstrate, I dangled my arm limply in front of her face.

Earlier in this series, I mentioned that I think that the most important “character” the GM plays is the War. At this point, I’m going to stand by this assertion. I’ve been ramping up the intensity of the missions, often by increasing the impact of failure or by increasing their length. At the same time, due to increased Trauma and Bliss, the pilots are less able to handle what’s coming at them. This ramping up creates direct pressure on the relationships within the group, pushing the story through towards its inevitable conclusion. To be clear, I think that the authority figure is the other important character that the GM needs to play, but I still think that the War is the most important character. In this game, Jared is mostly a cipher, existing to look foolish and issue orders. We seem to be doing just fine.

Finally, for some reason, Crystal can roll well in Bliss Stage. You need to understand that Crystal is quite possibly the world’s worst die roller. Ralph can testify to this as well. She can roll a critical failure in games that don’t have critical failures. However, in this game, for some reason, Crystal can roll a handful of dice and come up with nearly all (+) results. Weird. Has Bliss Stage cured Crystal’s dice luck? I guess we will find out when we play Steal Away Jordan. So, Ben, stay tuned. You may have an unusual selling point for Bliss Stage. “Cures bad dice luck!”

Rules questions

We did end up with some rules questions.

–Does a denouement caused from battle damage count as a privileged interlude?

–If you successfully create a new anchor, does the new anchor get an anchor ability? If so, who decides?

–During an anchor training mission, can the trainee anchor? Or do you actually need to have an experienced anchor there, plus the trainee?

Closing

I don’t think that we will be going much further with this game. Both pilots have 91 Bliss, so they will both bliss out soon; probably during next engagement, in fact. The end is near.

But for now, this is Seth Ben-Ezra, of the Peoria Resistance Group, signing off.

…end transmission…