#RPGaDay2019: Days 12-18

Monday 12th - "Friendship"

Friendships are vital for good gaming, and I've made loads of new friends that way too, and I've talked on that theme before so I'm going to talk about in character friendships instead, because those are also fantastic.

The big ones have been (more or less in chronological order): Kamaya with NPC's Drazen and Tark; Kella with PC's Kyann, Rax, and especially Reisha; Plays in Shadows and the other PC's making up her pack; Svetlana and the NPC's I created for her backstory; Chrissie and Adam; Taji and Kito, and Taji and an NPC you'll be meeting very soon in the Exalted storyline. 

We're currently playing Aberrant so I think the friendship between Chrissie and Adam is a good one to discuss! We've been joined by another player (one of those friends I've made through gaming) whose character, Morgan, is important to the team but, coming in later, isn't as close  to the other player characters as they are to each other. Chrissie and Adam's friendship is a little strained by the events leading up to and following Adam's incarceration but was forged in strong fires. They had almost polar opposite upbringings, have slightly different morals stemming from differences in their pre-nova lives, were forced together by circumstance (and Benedict...) and have done their best to save the world (or at least make it a better place) many times.

Tuesday 13th - "Mystery"
Running a mystery game is hard. You need to leave breadcrumbs that will seem way to obvious to you, yet your players either will completely misinterpret or won't pick up at all, then you have to figure out how to guide them out of the rabbit holes without making it too obvious, because if it takes too long or feels too hard, the players won't have fun. I've always wanted to play in a mystery campaign, but have no idea where to start to run one.

Back to Aberrant (and friendship). We're currently playing a mystery scenario. Chrissie had a friend in her backstory, Bill, who's recently been killed! Investigating, Chrissie found clues he'd left that only she could find, leading to the word "Protos". We've now spent several sessions trying to figure out what on earth is so important about "Protos" that Bill went to such effort to hide it in such a way only Chrissie could find it. We've definitely gone down several wrong paths and the GM has helped us out by rephrasing things or giving us new ways to find information. We've finally tracked down the people behind the word, but still don't know what it all means...

 Wednesday 14th - "Guide"
There's a real joy to be had in being a guide bringing new people to table top roleplay. My best experience in this role was at uni, where a friend of mine on my course and also in the roleplay society wanted to introduce some other friends of his to gaming. He ran Space Munchkin, and invited me along to show them what it was all about, and act as a cattalyst to keep things moving. I played a cat person wiht force powers and incontrollable curiosity - the other players were soon having their characters grab my tail to yank me away from any red button or hatch labelled "do not open". It was great fun to play someone that reckless, and it was great fun to see them enjoying something they'd never done before.

Thursday 15th - "Door"
I love welcoming new players to roleplay. I think it's a fantastic hobby that gives benefits in normal life. You hear about hobby gatekeepers, but I think it's important and wonderful to hold the door open to everyone who's interested.

Friday 16th - "Dream"
I start a new job in a few weeks, and I'm anxious about it because it'll mean less time with Ziggy. Less time for my hobbies, too, but missing Ziggy is my biggest anxiety. The dream, then, is to have a job that pays enough to meet our outgoings and lead a comfortable lifestyle but that also has minimal (and flexible) hours. This was, I believe, a promise of automation that we haven't seen (there's a rant I could go off on...).

I was chatting about it with my regular GM. If I won big enough on the lottery, I'd love to be able to pay my friends to play with me (and especially the GM, because I think they put the most work into a game). He, in turn, would set up an office and employ us all to help develop the game he's working on. With an ice cream machine and mandatory naps.

I kinda hope he does win the lottery!


Saturday 17th - "One"
I was really struggling with this prompt and asked Husbit's help. He suggested one on one sessions, mentioning the Deadlands one he ran at the Asylum, which was effectively 4 one on one sessions, rotating between the players. He did a really good job of bringing personal horror into it and amping up the dread. I think this is something easier to do one on one, as the GM can really focus on that one player, and the player isn't distracted by other players' responses.

My most recent one on one session was in Aberrant, where I'd missed a session so played through the time separately later. I feel like I got a lot more done in that one session than in the normal group, which again goes to the way players are like cats: easier individually, but a nightmare to herd.

Sunday 18th - "Plenty" 
The one thing I have plenty of for roleplay is dice! I've played diceless and there's other diceless systems that interest me, but I do love rolling great handfuls of dice.

#RPGaDay2018: Day 26 - Your gaming ambition for the next year

It's pretty exciting. We're returning to Pathfinder to finish the storylines there. I've really missed playing Svetlana and am looking forward to reaching her promised "happily ever after".

I mentioned yesterday that I'm now playing some First Age Exalted, with the plan to head back to Aberrant, and from there, back to the other Exalted, the one with Taji and Kito, and then back to the Mage game that's just gone on break, with the idea that we'll alternate between these games to their natural conclusions, playing each for a few months at a time rather than years like we have been. I'm really looking forward to getting into this First Age Exalted game properly, and as for where we are in Aberrant, well, there's so much happening! I really want to know if Adam's "hallucination" means Benedict is alive, which would be really interesting. I'm also looking forward to the fallout of Adam's decision to leave his family in someone else's care while he's in prison, especially with Chrissie's trust issues, and out of character knowing Adam's thinking of leaving his family anyway - that's going to be interesting to deal with! We'll have a new player, too; the other player from the First Age game. I'm looking forward to seeing what character he comes up with and how he'll fit in.

But my biggest ambition for the next year is to carry on as normally as possible once this little parasite's arrived.

What're your gaming ambitions for the next 12 months? Let me know below!

#RPGaDay2018: Day 16 - Describe your plans for your next game

The boring answer to this prompt is: 

• arrive on time for once
• gossip as we get settled
• try to progress the plot (as we're playing towards a goal that, when we meet it, we'll be returning to Aberrant, and we're all looking forward to that a lot)
• try not to roll quite as many botches as I've managed the past few weeks... (it'd be really nice to succeed a few rolls!)

So rather than talk about my next gaming session, I'm going to talk about plans for the next game after that's done. As mentioned, we're returning to Aberrant, but we're also returning to Pathfinder, so I'll start there.

We're returning to the 'Interlude' characters, who're currently working their way through some version of the Star Stone Trial, very different to the one in the book (rather more epic in scope). They're nearly done, my GM reassures me; I've not particularly enjoyed the character, although I think the concept is interesting, and we felt a bit adrift in the trial, really not knowing what to do most of the time. Their arc should conclude not long after they get back, and we get to return to our main characters! I've really missed Svetlana, so I'm looking forward to getting into her skin again. I'll need to read through my notes on where we got to, which is one advantage of this blog.

Then Aberrant! Chrissie's just been called to the jail where Adam's being held because he's behaving weirdly. What Chrissie doesn't know is that Adam's been hallucinating, including that their mentor Benedict is alive and calling to him from beneath the quantum lake that was Vienna, where they'd assumed he'd died. Hallucinating... or are the strange conditions of the jail allowing Benedict to contact him? Tune in next time to find out... (or, y'know, whenever we get started and however soon after that I get around to writing it up).

One cool thing about the Aberrant game is that Bells and Rich have been playing First Age Exalted with another friend, Ash, but that game is being put on hold so we can play Pathfinder. It would be trickier to integrate Ash into the Pathfinder game at this stage (and also possibly the group), but having gatecrashed their game and found I got on well with Ash, we're going to bring him into our Aberrant game instead. I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, and how the GM will introduce him.

What about you? What plans are you ruminating over? Tell me, or link to your response, below.

Aberrant - The Eruption

Told from the point of view of my character, Chrissie Walker aka Lisa 'The Phoenix' Moore, the Aberrant story index is here.

~~~  

Forget what you read in the news profiles and on Wikipedia, I promised you the true story of how Hyperdrive and I Erupted.

It was 23rd March 1998, not a few days later. I had the day off and my brother and I were working towards some form of reconciliation; I'd come to his office to meet him for lunch. His idea, but now I can feel Benedict's fingers all over it. Especially seeing as Adam showed up as I was waiting, with a package from Benedict for Pete.

As my brother came down the stairs, a group of masked, armed men burst through the doors. All of us in the lobby area were swiftly tied up and put in a room. More hostages were led in soon after. 

It didn't take Adam long to free himself and then me. We manage to take out the two guards by surprising them, and tied them securely before untying the other hostages. Adam took the guns, surprised I wasn't prepared to carry one. We snuck back into the lobby. Seeing a clear route, we hurried the hostages out of the room to hide them in the lift shafts: there was space for them all below where the lift would settle, and it seemed very unlikely they'd be found by the intruders - who we suspected to be part of a group known as EM Tek.

The package from Benedict was sheets of paper covered in gibberish writing, that served as cover for a useful toolkit. As Adam slung it across his back, I saw him rubbing his forehead as if nursing as headache as bad as the one that had been bothering me all day. Neither of us were going to back down, though: there were too many people in danger in the building. 

We left the hostages. Pete joined us as we carefully climbed the stairs, but after we were shot at and he was nearly hit, he admitted he couldn't cope, he was too afraid, so we took him back to the lift shaft to look after everyone there. The stairs seemed too dangerous, so we used rope and other items in the toolkit to allow us to navigate the lift shaft and ventilation shafts as we made our way around the building, doing our best John McClane impressions until we reached the top floor. A helicopter circled overhead: we found marker pens and wrote in as large font as we could manage, backwards, to get their attention. They circled closer, and we could make out a return message that, with a bit of pointing, we realised was a radio frequency. As luck would have it, there was a radio in the toolkit.

The helicopter was from MI5. They didn't know much more than we did, but were excited to have us inside and active, even as civilians. We continued to explore the building, running into the occasional patrol. We avoided those we could, but ended in a fight with one and Adam shot a man. I raced over as he fell, but there was nothing I could do for him. We hid the body and continued - Adam a little shaken (to be honest, I was a little shaken: I saw death regularly, as a nurse in A&E, but I'd never seen a friend cause the death, even though he hadn't meant to).

The building should have been a busy office block; the empty rooms were eerie.

We took water and snacks from vending machines back to the lift shafts. It didn't seem to matter how much I drank, my head still felt like it was splitting in two.

We eventually made our way to the server room, and this is where we found what the bad guys were up to, hacking the server. We knocked out the few people here, and (with the help of the MI5 guy on the radio) shut down what they'd been doing - which was when the rest of the bad guys stormed in, shooting. 

We fled, running awkwardly and in fear, the stresses of the day building to a crescendo, our heads pounding like we were about to give birth to Athena, and it was all too much when...

When something happened, like the universe arriving within. I felt myself rise as though bathed in phoenix fire - as though the heart of a phoenix as the flames flooded the building, green flames healing everyone, even the guy Adam had shot and we'd left for dead. Storm clouds gathered outside. Adam was going through something similar, his newfound power shoving foes backwards, away from us and crushing - imploding - the weapons held by bad guys throughout the building (as red flames flickered from me to melt them beyond recognition once he was done).

The release was phenomenol.

As I sank back to the floor, a man stepped from the shadows, introducing himself as Montgomery...

We awoke in a strange holding cell. Montgomery returned to us and explained it was now 15th April. He told us about the arrival of Novas and that we'd Erupted before the others, before the explosion of the space ship, but that we should keep that very quiet.

An uneasy truce arose between us.

His facilities were good, but we were prisoners there, and we never felt any regret for deserting and rejoining Benedict at the first opportunity (just some disappointment and minor betrayal when, years later, I learnt they were friends and Benedict had been behind our kidnapping). 

Aberrant - Chapter Two Conclusion

We'll be returning to Aberrant when we're at the end of the chapter for Mage so thought I should finish writing that up too!

Told from the point of view of my character, Chrissie Walker aka Lisa 'The Phoenix' Moore, the story index is here.

~~~  

The news continued to report on the devastation in London and the search for Hyperdrive as a suspect in the attacks on the churches across America. They mentioned they were all part of the Church of the Archangel Michael, and speculated he'd done it in vengeance against what had been done at the premiere. They pointed out there was no comment from us. That riled me: they hadn't approached us for any, and we hadn't had time.

I looked to Alastair to lead us, but he sat on the bench motionless and emotionless. I drew strength from the memory of Benedict, of his request that I lead the Initiative. I've made poor, young Alastair do this for far too long. Time for me to stand.

It was a daunting prospect nonetheless.

I phoned Dave, head of the nova-friendly network N! and long-term friend of ours. He would have a team with us shortly - would come himself to help us find the best things to say. He's human, but very good at what he does. I phoned Captain Montgomery, too: he had a team on the way and promised to make the remains of the St John mansion safe. The PR department of St John Enterprise was also set in motion, and I felt a little better. The strong, black coffee Remi brought me helped, and seeing Holly was safe even more so. Someone pointed out I need to let Jen's parents know she was hurt, maybe dead, and Alastair finally roused and said he would do this, but accepted my offer to come with him.

He took my hand to teleport us to their drive. As we walked to the door, each of his footfalls cracked the ground. This... I'd never seen this before. I touched his arm before he touched either of his grandparents - I could feel something rippling from him, but it seemed I could survive touching him. He told them what happened, that many men with many guns overwhelmed security at the mansion and shot Jen. I left him with his grandparents and their grief, and took mine with me.

I collected Holly and Stef - whose only UK address had been the Hub - from what remained of the Hub and took them back to Cambridge with me, tried to make things as normal for Holly as I could with her dad missing and encouraged everyone else to spend a bit of time recovering. Alastair joined us after a few days to let me know he hadn't found Steve. I wanted to hold him close and mother him, but he had things he needed to sort out so I let him go.

At the end of the week, Adam sent me a very brief message: he was handing himself in, then silence on our link. I turned on the news and watched until I saw him being arrested. He was at his California home; the footage from the circling helicopters showed a huge burn mark, but I couldn't see Sam or Nicky. Pax took him in. I picked up my phone to call Pax to find out what would happen next when the doorbell rang. I opened it to... Steve.

Steve.

For the first time since Erupting, I wasn't sure how I felt, how I was going to react, so I listened as he talked. I'd assumed he'd never asked me to marry him because he knew, with my childhood, I wasn't ready for that, but now...

He'd Erupted shortly after me, while I was being held in the Outer Hebrides. His ex-wife - Holly's mother - is a Nova scientist who specialises in 'experimenting' on other Novas. Holly... Holly may have been born a Nova, he wasn't sure. At some point around 1995, she'd said or done something that changed Eleanor's attitude: she got a hungry look towards her own daughter. My stomach churned at that - I felt flushed with fear and anger and maternal protection. If Steve hadn't still been talking, I might have flown off to try to tear the woman limb from limb.

They left, changed their names, moved around, eventually settling in the flat below mine. It seems this was a genuine coincidence - very unusually where Benedict is concerned, but my mentor didn't take an interest until after my Eruption. When he found out, he taught Steve to control his powers and did ... something for Holly. Steve wasn't sure what - bound her or controlled her or something, tied in with the bracelet she wears. She has no idea of any of it, not least how dangerous she has the potential to be.

And then I took her with me to fight that fire in London, which was what started all of this. He saw her there, holding on tight as I flew in front of the cameras, so he raced over, that figure in ice - but of course her mother saw the footage too. My anger was tinged with frustration, because if he'd only told me the danger Holly was in, I'd never have taken her with me. I recognised that frustration as a mask for guilt and didn't reveal it.

"How dangerous is she?"

"I don't know."

"Vienna?"

"Maybe. I saw it once, apparently, but it was too dangerous for me to be allowed to remember. I don't know. She doesn't know any of this. She mustn't. Not just because she'd hate to be dangerous, but it's not safe for her to know."

I promised, then phoned Pax to learn Adam was in Bahrain. I asked about the burn mark, and he said he didn't know what had caused it but it looked recent, and Adam had been kneeling by a small cairn. I thanked him, checked in on Steve, Holly and Stef, and flew out to Adam's place.

Fans had left flowers and cards expressing disbelief, a sentiment I shared. Other people had come by and desecrated the scene. Inside, there was a grim quietness to the staff tending his vinyards. The cairn Pax had mentioned was marked 'Robin', and the cape Adam had made for his dog hung over it. I patted the name, sighed, and talked to the staff. The police had told them not to talk to anyone, but they knew me and told me they'd been attacked, three of them killed: crucified then burnt. Robin had been killed defending them. 

I ingratiated myself with the police officers patrolling the grounds. They couldn't tell me why this attack was being hushed up, and I didn't want to push them, but they did tell me the link between the Church of the Archangel Michael and the victims shouldn't have been leaked to the press. 

There was no sign of Sam or Nicky, and no one knew where they were. 

Back in the UK, I talked to Steve about the attack on the facility, and the handless lady I'd left in Morocco. I visited her, and she said her name was Gertrude and she'd gone to Switzerland for work as a guard. She didn't know much about the company, just that it was something to do with microchips. I helped sort out prosthetics for her hands (despite the potential in my Eruption and to my frustration, I'd still not demonstrated any healing power), and took her back to Switzerland. Steve said the microchips were new technology based on the Nova study by his Ex. I wanted to investigate more, but London needed rebuilding. 

On which note, Alastair wanted me to head up the quantum generator project to bring green power to London as part of the rebuild. With looking after the Initiative and Holly, Stef and Steve, and trying to find Sam and Nicky, and keeping on top of my research, I actually felt busy.

I dreamt we buried Jen next to the empty plot marked as Benedict's grave. A weird feeling crept from the pit of my stomach, filling me with a sense of wrongness. I missed them both. The feeling stayed with me after I woke. Maybe this is partly why I don't normally bother with sleep.

We didn't bury Jen. She survived. Very weak, recovery a long road, but she was alive. Alastair didn't tell us to begin with because he wasn't sure she'd make it. That boy takes on too much. 

Adam's court date was set for 6th June 2005. We found the best defense lawyer on the Nova Initiative books, and I started studying law in my spare time to assist - took about a month to get my degree sorted, but at least it was interesting. The PM raced my licence through. 

It meant I got to see Adam, but that didn't reassure me. He seemed unconcerned that I couldn't find his heavily pregnant wife or their young daughter, just saying the defense lawyer was investigating. When he slipped and called me Chrissie instead of Lisa, I raised an eyebrow and asked if he was ok, hoping anyone monitoring would assume he'd made a mistake. He twitched as he talked, describing something like sensory deprivation torture.

As it came near time for me to leave, he looked right at me, more lucid than any other point: "I'm scared for my sanity, back there in that room with no beginning and no end."

It frightened me, but he made me promise not to break him out.

I investigated the Church, hoping to find links to terrorist organisations to justify Adam's attacks: the lawyer told me he'd said he was guilty and hadn't been coerced. They had incited the attack on his film premier, but weren't normally involved in that sort of thing, and it didn't look like they'd been intending to become more involved. It looked like he had been manipulated into creating anti-Nova propaganda, though: all the incidents were captured on cameras with sufficient EMP-shielding to protect them even from Adam's power. The best we could hope for was that provocation and good behaviour would buy him a reduced sentence.

The trial was at The Hague; Pax must have pulled straws, because a trial in the USA could have led to the death penalty. It was difficult to go through: Adam was like a caged animal, and they showed footage of the attacks I hadn't seen - more brutal than I'd realised. The lawyer did his best, but it wasn't enough. 

We built the new Hub on an island, a unique place with a sprawling network of buildings that could only be reached from that one location. Workers would arrive from other offices, but could only go further if they had approval. It truly was a hub.

Remi and Mark had spent their time trying to track down the people behind the attack, but with no success. Alastair had an idea it was a Belgian former black ops soldier, Gaspard Reynard, who'd led the attack. He'd been an accomplished soldier and had no family we knew of. Alastair had no idea who'd instructed him, but he was a Nova now, with absolute mastery over the molecular structure of others. Project Utopia had picked him up early, at one of the clinics they ran to give a drug to suppress your powers while you learnt to control them (and, being Utopia, presumably made you infertile at the same time).

We had no leads at all on Sam and Nicky, and it was driving me to distraction. I was worried enough about Adam without having lost his family. 

Finally, I was allowed to see Adam, A doctor took me to him. There were so many small rooms in the facility, each housing a criminal (I presumed all Novae), and Adam was one of them. He was curled up in a small ball, rocking, repeating "He's here, he's here..."

~~~

And that was where we left the game. We actually played out this section differently, with Adam being acquitted, only at the end for the GM to give me a few changes to the year so it ran for Chrissie more or less like this, while what we played was in Adam's head.

The last note in my book is "(+10xp I forgot to note on character sheet)", which is the kind of note a player likes to find!