ars ludi

We sit down to play Battlestations, a space combat RPG, last night. I’ve had it for a while but this is the first time we’ve tried it out. We plan to spend the evening blasting ships and taking names.

I tell the players they’re fresh-faced cadets, straight out of the Union academy. They’re eager to take their new scout-patrolship, the plucky UNV Hornet, out for a spin and prove themselves.

Happily they won’t have long to wait. Scuttlebutt is that there’s been a rash of attacks by Cluster forces in the neutral zone. The zone is a buffer established between the Union and the Cluster to keep the peace. The treaty forbids installations, development or settlements of any kind in the zone, even though both sides want the resource-rich systems for themselves. It’s always been an uneasy truce.

The Hornet gets orders to move out. Their fledgling mission is to escort a science ship into the zone so it can plant listening posts to monitor Cluster activity.

“So basically what we’re doing is totally in violation of the treaty.”

These kids learn fast.

We’ve done a whole slew of Polaris setting hacks recently. Aztecs, Fall of the Roman Republic, 1920s Empire City cops and Battlestar Galactica (twice).

The key ingredients of a satisfying Polaris analog are pretty simple: 1) a grand society on the verge of collapse because of some doom it has brought upon itself (a Mistake-analog), and 2) some lucky order of individuals tasked with defending the sinking ship (a Knights-analog).

It’s critical the Mistaken (the antagonists that represent the seeds of destruction that will bring the whole thing down) can be anyone. Your brother, the king, your girlfriend from high school: they could be part of the problem. In stock Polaris, the Mistaken include demons that can possess or tempt (easy), and in BSG anyone can be a Cylon, but in other settings it’s been easier than we expected to single out issues or beliefs that work wonderfully. In the Roman Republic, the Mistake was a yearning for tyranny, betraying democracy. Anyone could start to feel that way. You’re in the middle of a chat with your girlfriend and she idly mentions how incompetent the Senate is and how one firm leader running things would be such an improvement… Doh!

For our latest Polaris setting hack, we decided to try out 1950′s America. The Mistake isn’t Communism (too easy), it’s self-righteous patriots trampling civil liberties to find The Enemy Within. McCarthyism, Un-American Activities witch-hunts, and all that post-911 stuff you hate so much.

Sweet. Anyone can succumb to The Fear and start thinking it’s their duty to rat out their neighbors, that freedom can only be protected by taking away freedom.

So who does that make our Knight analogs? Diligent FBI guys? Nope, that would only work if Communism really was the threat. Instead, our protagonists are that final line of defense against oppression:

Journalists.

It’s Polaris: Freedom of the Press.

“I start a campaign… a totally _fascist_ campaign.”
–brand new gamer, solving the problems of Mars

I love Mars Colony. It’s hands-down the best game I picked up at GenCon 2009. That’s not even considering that it’s technically only an ash can release, not the final version, which is coming out at GenCon this year.

The trick is that it’s not a game you would normally whip out and get your group to try, because it is for exactly two players, an entirely interesting and largely unexplored gaming niche (ask Ping). But I was determined to get more people to give it a try, and some of my fellow gamers were a) curious and b) tired of hearing me rant what a great game it was, so we bit the bullet and got a bunch of folks together — six as it turns out, but any even number works. I explained the rules and then we split into pairs and played.

Three simultaneous Mars Colony games, all in the same room at the same time.

The rules of Mars Colony, as written, are tremendously clear. Crystal clear. But this was me walking everyone through it verbally, explaining the concept and all the rules from scratch. The system isn’t complicated, but there are concrete mechanics that push the drama and must be understood for the game to work. Was I nervous? Was I braced for confusion and big disappointment? Oh yeah.

Keep in mind, one of our players had never gamed at all. One had played traditional games but no story games. Everyone else had a mix of game experience.

When you’re introducing people to a new game, you are usually in the game, so you can gauge how things are going, provide helpful hints if things are going off the rails, etc. In this case, not so much. I’m playing in my own game, but I’ve got one ear cocked to hear if the other players sound miserable, confused, or just plain bored.

So given all that, what was the verdict? The red planet is made of win, and the gamers in that room rocked. When you overhear brand new players launching fascist regimes an hour into their first roleplaying game ever… well that’s a success in my book.

After everyone hit their last progress scenes and were ready for the endgame, Susan (our fabulous hostess) had the bright idea of doing the epilogue sequences one group at a time, so the whole room could hear how Kelly Perkins had fared in her efforts to save the colony. We did quick summaries of what the different Kelly’s were like, what the issues confronting the colony were, and the roller coaster ride that ensued. There were some glorious victories and some bitter defeats. Some games had both.

Right when we were first setting up, one of the new players asked something along the lines of “could you really play this game more than once,” meaning, once you’d played out saving (or failing to save) the colony, would it be interesting to do it again? Just going by how different every game I’ve played has been so far, and by how extremely different the three games we had in that room were, I’d say the answer is an unreserved yes.

In addition to just being, y’know, super-fun, it was also a great test run of my plan to have a big group of people play parallel games of Mars Colony at Go Play NW. Lessons learned, refinements brewing.

* yeah, literally blew up, like with bombs. Nice one, Caroline.

Great moments in Mouse Guard. The patrol is welcomed to Darkwater after an arduous journey. Tired mice are tired, and hungry mice are hungry.

Hearty meals are arranged by the happy hosts.

player: mimes picking up food with his paws and nibbling on it
city-mouse: “We have forks.”
player: “I have a high Nature.”

This has been a great moment in Mouse Guard.

Playing Shock with (nearly) total strangers. We’re doing it old-school, so we secretly pick issues and then brainstorm a Shock that fits, instead of the wussy Shock-first approach. We choose overpopulation, cultural extinction and plagiarism, and decide on a dystopian future where ideological groups struggle for dominance in society.

The Shock we come up with is a technique to implant value systems (culture, beliefs, ideology) in people. It’s extremely widespread, so most people in society have been indoctrinated with the value implant of their faction, known as a Root. People who don’t have one, or whose Root has started to fray are derisively called Weeds.

I’m loving it already, but then we add one more juicy bit: you can’t just make up the value templates, you have to copy them from people who have those beliefs (like we said, plagiarism). And when you do copy it, you brain damage the source. So if you want to make a thriving tribe of Communists, you first have to lobotomize Chairman Mao. Way to honor your leaders.

So part way along, one of the nicer characters is trying to unite all the warring factions (that’s her story goal: end the divide and unite all the value systems), and she’s trying to bond with her estranged brother who now leads one of the gangs with a different Root than hers. He lets his guard down after a tender moment and, wham!, she backstabs him with a new implant, wiping his value system and overwriting it with her own.

The rest of us are like, wow, you’d brainwash your own brother, that’s cold, and the player looks up calmly and says “Now he’s my real brother.” Snap!

many more details in the excellent Roots & Weeds game summary Susan wrote up

The DAUNTLESS flies again! This was literally a “just finishing breakfast, sitting around in our pajamas, saying hey we could play a quick game of InSpace” kind of deal. As usual in less than two hours we had crafted an entire gripping story arc out of nothing and then sat back and admired the game’s beauty and patted ourselves on the back. Which is why InSpectres (and no-prep games in general) rocks so hard.

Ping ran the game, with me and Steve playing. He was an InSpectres newbie, which I point out because you would never know from reading how well the game went — fishes to water, etc. We also had technical assistance from our special science advisor, the eponymous Ruby. We played this game a little while back (before I released InSpace) so I may be fudging some of the details.

I’m playing Hollis again and Steve is joining in with Dr. Pierre Duchamps. Duchamps is not part of the regular DAUNTLESS crew — he’s a visiting mission specialist, the chief scientist in charge of his own team preparing to deploy a gravitic space telescope to observe the interaction of two gas giants.

At first glance Duchamps is the worst kind of scientist. He’s an arrogant tyrant, more concerned with furthering his grants and his reputation than with finding answers. As far as he’s concerned the DAUNTLESS is just a taxi service to get him where he needs to go — Hollis may be the X-O but as far as Duchamps is concerned, his experiment is the top priority of the ship. His special talent is “cost benefit analysis,” as in “will this project make me look good?”

This is excellent stuff because in addition to an authority conflict it sets up a ideological schism between Hollis and Duchamps, which as we’ve said before is a very good thing. As usual we’re planning on a halftime huddle and we’re writing on the table so everyone can keep track of the emerging answer to the mystery.

Ping starts us off: the DAUNTLESS is en route to the site where Duchamps’ telescope is to be deployed, but we’ve spotted a strange phenomenon on the fifth planet of the Ruby star system: an unidentified aurora hangs over one of the planet’s poles, just outside the atmosphere. That’s all we know, and since it’s InSpectres that’s all Ping knows either — we’ll make up the answer to the mystery as we uncover it.

I get the ball rolling by having Hollis order the sensor officer to make the obligatory scan (successful Contact check) and I narrate that the shape of the cloud doesn’t seem to match the magnetic pole — something else must be causing it. Duchamps elbows his way in and fine-tunes the sensors (successful Technology check) and Steve adds that the cloud is filled tiny debris or particles — physical matter not just gas or some energy field. Like I said, it didn’t take Steve long to get the hang of the system.

Initially Duchamps bristles at the idea of a delay (“your mission, Commander, is to get me where I’m going”) but now that the aurora looks like it might be something interesting he’s willing to consider a detour. Who knows, it could something he could name after himself?

Hollis decides to bring the ship in for a closer look. How close? asks Ping. Real close, I say. Probably dangerously close. Ping grins and describes how as the DAUNTLESS approaches, energy flashes out from the cloud. Stress dice!

As the ship is reeling in the turbulence, arcs sparking from control panels, Hollis pulls himself to the helm to get the ship back under control (successful Athletics check). While everyone else is on the floor he sees the flashes on the view screens aren’t just random, they appear to form geometric patterns like flickering cubes in space. [Yep, I made an Athletics check to resist the turbulence but once I made the roll I used it to narrate something totally unrelated. That's how it works.]

Just to make things interesting I also narrate that instead of veering away from the cloud, I am forced to pilot through it, putting the DAUNTLESS in the high atmosphere between the planet and the aurora. Can we escape without going back through the cloud? At this point we don’t know. For now we’re parked in a low orbit doing damage control, with the glittering aurora filling the sky above us.

Fictional hours go by as we get damage reports and make sure the ship is operational. Duchamps spends the time in his lab analyzing the patterns Hollis spotted in the cloud (successful Academics check) and finds recurring sequences of prime numbers — 11,000 of them! There is no way that could happen by chance. His lab peons are freaking out (Stress!) but Duchamps whips them back into shape.

We’re halfway through the mystery dice, so we stage the halftime huddle: there’s still sharp tension between Hollis and Duchamps, so they have a secret meeting to discuss the situation without having to posture for authority.

To push Steve into a tight (i.e. interesting) spot I declare that the sensor array project Duchamps is in charge of could probably provide much better readings on the aurora, but it needs to be assembled in space to operate and it’s a one time thing — you can’t just take it down again and pack it up. If we assemble it here, we’ll be unable to observe the gas giant conjunction the whole project was funded to study. He’ll be in hot water. It could, I say, end Duchamps career. Naturally I can’t (nudge, nudge) ask him to make that sacrifice (nudge, nudge).

There’s a gleam in Duchamps’ eye as he strokes his beard, then he antes up — he’s in. Duchamps started off as an egomaniacal jerk, but as we talk it looks like this discovery might be awakening an idealistic streak in him (more on that later). Hollis and Duchamps shift from adversaries to co-conspirators.

If you’ve read the other InSpace mission reports, you know what comes next: space walk! Duchamps and his team suit up to deploy the sensor array, monitored by Hollis from the bridge of the DAUNTLESS.

After a suitable construction montage the sensor is powered up so the data can be piped back to the ship, but as Hollis is monitoring the situation from the bridge (successful Technology check) it looks like something has made the cloud unstable — it’s orbit is rapidly decaying. The array was originally defined as a gravitic lens. Did that interaction cause the change? Or was it something built into the cloud by design?

We don’t know, but it’s too late now — Hollis orders Duchamps to get his team back to safety aboard the ship. Duchamps sends his team back, but refuses to leave until he can finish calibrating the comm link so the DAUNTLESS can get any data the sensor collects before the aurora collapses. [I think this the point where we got hit with more Stress and Duchamps wound up getting a point of Cool, which was just too poetic.]

As often happens, we got so into the action we forgot about the confessional, but as Hollis is barking at Duchamps to get back to the ship before it’s too late, Steve jumps up and narrates a flashback of a younger, energetic Pierre Duchamps fiercely arguing the virtues of science before a cynical academic board, years and years ago. He wasn’t always a manipulative glory-hound — he was an idealist once.

The moment he finishes, I jump up and segue into my own confessional of Hollis in his quarters before the mission began, reading Duchamps’ record and reviewing an old vid recording of the very scene Steve just narrated. Hollis wonders aloud to his personal log about the man Duchamps had become. Could a man who was once so passionate about finding the truth ever really change? Could that idealism inside him ever really die entirely? Hollis doesn’t believe it (tagging Duchamps with the “scidealist deep down inside” characteristic). So that becomes the subtext for the entire game that preceded — Hollis has been watching all along to see if Duchamps was still the man he once was, if that idealism was still deep inside him. Which fit perfectly.

[And yeah I know, only one confessional per scene, but I figured I was technically extending Steve's confessional instead of making a separate one. So there.]

Back in the present, as the cloud decays and particles cascade across the hull, the DAUNTLESS tries to pick up the communications from the sensor but fails (failed Contact check).

Floating alone in space, the particles raining down around him, Duchamps refuses to let it go and plugs directly into the array, analyzing the data on his suit computer (successful Technology check). Steve narrates that he finds a message encoded in the cloud, left behind by the intelligence created it, but with the aurora coming apart around him he only has time to relay one brief message to the ship: “WE ARE NOT ALONE.” And then the particles of the aurora rain down on the planet, burning up in the atmosphere and destroying the message.

Dr. Duchamps, caught in the cascading energy of the decaying cloud, takes the secret of the Ruby V Aurora to his grave.

As usual we finish, look up, and are pretty amazed to find we’ve been playing for less than two hours. That’s dense gaming goodness.

Having Duchamps die was a perfect end to the game. There’s nothing in the rules that made it happen, we just decided it seemed right: he’s completed his character arc, he solved the mystery, and he died happy. It makes the story that much more serious and meaningful. Double points for personally finding the answer but keeping it mysterious.