So, after finishing a ten-session game with Arvid as MC, I thought it as time to bring this to my other group and MC myself. First session was about half a session, but here's what happened in that one and the one we had just today.
The cast:
- Lee the Savvyhead. Goodhearted, travels around and fixes stuff with her eapprentice, 15-year-old Fleece. Called to Sunken City to fix their desalination machine, without which they won't survive long. Has a radio she listens to in the evenings, even though she only gets noise since no-one is broadcasting anything.
- Dart the Driver. Drives around the area (which is about as big as an average american state, and has a coastline to the south) just taking odd jobs. Passed Sunken City and got sent to search for a mechanic, brought back Lee. Has a trusty Jeep.
- Gritch the Brainer. Gender-ambiguous weirdo with a gas mask, of course. We keep track of everyone who isn't afraid of em, so far it's like 5 people or something. Not really sure about what e wants yet. Just tagged along to Sunken City, as e knows Lee and Dart from travelling a bit together earlier. Opens eir brain almost every night, as e doesn't have normal dreams.
Introducing: Scream, right-hand-man of hardholder Newton.
Barker: old man with a house full of junk and spare parts. Take care of the desalination machine, but hasn't been able to fix it.
Fuse: Barker's daughter.
Amy: ten-year-old street urchin, lives with Two Moon's cult. Not afraid of Gritch.
Two Moon: cult leader. Not afraid of Gritch.
The game started out in Sunken City, a city consisting of the top 4-5 floors of a number of skyscrapers sticking up out of the water (shamelessly stolen from my game with Arvid). Scream greeted the PCs as they rolled into the tent area surrounding the bridge to the first scraper. Lee and Fleece got to their job right away, while Gritch took a look around town and Dart stayed by his car.
Lee made the first move listening as Things Spoke, namely the wind-powered desalination machine. It told her someone had sabotaged it, and that she needed to replace a heating pipe thingy. Meeting up with Barker, she found out two things:
Firstly, he'd had the right pipe a while ago, but it had ended up with Rolfball the chopper.
Secondly, his daughter Fuse was the saboteur. Lee recognised her from what the machine had told her the moment she walked in the door.
Gritch went to the market, which was located on a rooftop. He started looking for interesting stuff to buy, pretty much because his players wanted to try out the barter mechanics and do something with the 5 (!) barter he got at chargen. He found a guy (don't remember his name) trying to sell his fishing boat. More trying-out-the-rules led to a deep brain scan where he misread and asked "what are your character's secret plans" (should have been "pains"). I answered that he was leaving town because this place sucked. Gritch ended up buying the boat for all his barter, why I'm not really sure. Oh well, I'll make sure they have to go out to sea sometime.
Dart got tired of waiting and wandered into the market, where he met Gritch and a small girl named Amy offered them to come to her aunt's place where they would get food. This sounded nice (after reading a person to make sure she was telling the truth) so they fetched Lee and went there. On their way they saw a woman in blue robes preaching to the masses that the city was doomed (their water supply was gone, the machine had let them down) in the market square.
At Amy's aunt Two Moon's place there were quite a lot of people, all quite happy except for Ik who was keeping the order and handing out food. Everyone awaited the arrival of their mysterious benefactor Two Moon, and when she arrived she turned out to be (surprise!) the woman from the market. This is were first session ended. What bugs me most is that Dart almost didn't get to do anything. We also didn't do Hx since practically nothing had happened between anyone.
Second session, and Dart called in sick the same morning. We decided to play again, since several weeks had already passed and we didn't want the game to die.
Introducing:
Newton, hardholder of Sunken City.
Matilda, guard at Newton's fort (which is just a reinforced office floor).
Roark, police officer (there's no police force, just Newton's gang in general, but they've got a police officer).
Monk, Tao and Jap, to members of Rolfball's gang.
The session started where the previous had left off. Two Moon spoke to the people who had gathered about how times were hard and what little hope they had they had to make for themselves. And they especially shouldn't trust that machine, she'd told them that from the beginning! She talked a bit to Gritch over the table, essentially telling him that she was the reason this city was still alive, as she took care of anyone Newton didn't. And of course she expressed her scepticism towards Lee when she said she'd come to fix the machine.
Then they talked a bit to Amy, who had a hard time understanding that the machine was just a dead thing and hadn't chosen to forsake them but just broken down. When she finally realised that an "evil" machine can be fixed so that it starts giving out water again, she thought about "fixing" Newton so he'd give out more food. Creepy. Anyway, the PCs were offered to sleep there too, and they did.
The next day Dart got an offer to take two of Newton's men out to check up on the small farms and hamlets that paid tribute to Sunken City. They left early, and thus Dart was out of the rest of the session.
Lee went to Scream and told him about the part she needed, and he told her he'd arrange some transport to go look for Rolfball's gang. Most of the time, they can be reasoned with if you've got barter. The best (land) vehicle in town after Dart left is the ATV owned by... Fuse! She agreed to take them out, but stayed pretty silent.
Out on the plains, where mutant wolves roam at night, they got on a hill and Lee whipped out a borrowed pair of binoculars and read the sitch. For her enemy's true position, I told her she sees two men on motorcycles to the north. For what she's to be on the lookout for, I told her Fuse.
They approached the men cautiously, and after a bit of discussing back and forth Monk agreed to take them to the rest of the gang, and their tech guy Tao. When they got there Jap bargained with them and asked for one more barter than they told her they had, so Lee gives up her radio. When the deal was closed Gritch shaked her hand and puppet string'd her with "give the radio back, it's not working anyway". She fiddled with the dials to confirm this sudden impulse, and then threw it back at Lee who failed to catch it.
On the way back, Fuse tried to take them another way. Lee confronted her about it and read a person, finding out that her story about this way being safer from the wolves was bull (answer to "what do you intend to do" - "get rid of at least one, maybe both of you, before returning home"). Gritch tried to puppet string her out of this, but accidentally mucked her brain up so that she fell over moaning. They stopped the atv and she threw em off, screaming about em being a weirdo fucker and "what the f did you do to me"? Lee then told her she knew about the sabotage, "and I won't tell anyone if you just get Gritch back on here and drive us home". She rolled a 9, so she actually has to refrain from telling people about it.
They got home and found Amy sneaking around the machine it trying to fix it. They showed her how it's done and then went to sleep, though Lee went to Barker this time. She didn't like Two Moon very much, and Barker lives next to the machine. Gritch went to Newton's fort to hang out and have a drink first.
Newton and Gritch talked, mostly about Two Moon, and Gritch agreed that he'll keep an eye on her and see what she's up to. Newton doesn't understand the maelstrom, but is happy that he's found someone who does who's on his side.
I first told Lee that she was woken up by footsteps outside her room. She opens her brain to find out what's going on (I'd been goading them both to open their brains pretty much all the time). She got to know Fuse is outside with a knife, got to answer my question of "what do you think Gritch would be capable of doing to you, if he had to? Hurt you? Kill you? In-brain puppet strings?" and saw a vision of masses of boats rallying to an island with a lighthouse. Fleece and Ik were on two of the boats.
She woke up and woke Fleece up too. I had her spend her bonefeel hold to make sure she had weapons ready for both of them. They bashed the door open and found Fuse, except she'd heard how they got ready and now played innocent in front of Barker, who woke from the door. Rushing out of your room at night, armed, assaulting your host doesn't look very good. They quickly left and went to sleep in the entrance hall at Newton's court, after telling the guard that they'd just been assaulted (almost).
Gritch opened eir brain that night too. Lee's maelstrom had looked like just a purple haze with a lot of motion blur in it, Gritch's was a stormy, foggy sea. As e stood there, a ship passed in the night. Two Moon was steering, and as she turned to em and spoke, e found emself on there too. There were a lot of people on the ship, but they were faceless shadows, and only Two Moon and Gritch could rech the steering wheel. Two Moon told em that she wanted eir help in steering this ship, and that she'd been so alone until now. It seemed she was quite a weirdo herself, as she told a brainer that she was alone and wanted his companionship.
At this point Gritch's player told me that what I was saying as Two Moon felt like it was leading up to her wanting to have sex with em, and in the end we decided that felt right. At first it was only brainfuck (literally) since they were in the maelstrom, but when Gritch failed eir deep brain scan for eir sex move, e woke up and realised e was all over Two Moon, and not in the other end of the room where he'd gone to sleep. Two Moon passed out from the psychic harm. I think she'll start being afraid of him now.
In the morning, Lee went over to get Gritch to help her explain to Roark (the police officer) how things really were with Fuse. They had a very informal trial in the fort which ended with Roark dismissing everything Lee said because it was based on seeing things in the maelstrom or the machine speaking to her. Gritch wasn't much of a help.
Lee sat down in a corner and started to fix the radio Jap threw to the ground. She blew her Things Speak roll, so her brain was open. I described the static that used to come out of the radio when it was whole, except now it wasn't just what she heard, it was in her field of vision too, and it wasn't the radio getting it but her, her brain had become an antenna that only caught static... she was in the maelstrom again, but this time with static instead of purple. And then she heard Dart's voice, from far-away, as transmitted through his car radio. He was in danger.
Gritch noticed her starting to shake and falling off into weirdo country, so e opened eir brain too and entered her static vision. Unlike her, e was in control of emself and even managed to discern the source of the Dart transmission. Then he seized Lee by force and pulled her out of the storm.
We wrapped up here, but I'm really happy that we did so much and even got back to Dart in the end, so that next session he'll have a natural way back in.
Things that happened that made me happy:
- All moves except Seduce and Go aggro were used at least once
- Open your brain was used more than once
- Brainer sex (after I thought this group would never have sex at all)
- Gritch managed to break Two Moon, even if it was just 1-harm from a failed brain scan. There are no status quos: she wasn't even fully established as a powerful mindfucker until Gritch took her down. I wonder what she'll do.