Egress: Act 1, Act 2
“The Ludic Century Is an Era of Games.”
“When information is put at play, game-like experiences replace linear media. Media and culture in the Ludic Century is increasingly systemic, modular, customizable, and participatory. Games embody all of these characteristics in a very direct sense.
Increasingly, the ways that people spend their leisure time and consume art, design, and entertainment will be games - or experiences very much like games.”
“We Live in a World of Systems.”
“The ways that we work and communicate, research and learn, socialize and romance, conduct our finances and communicate with our governments, are all intimately intertwined with complex systems of information — in a way that could not have existed a few decades ago.
For such a systemic society, games make a natural fit. While every poem or every song is certainly a system, games are dynamic systems in a much more literal sense. From Poker to Pac-Man to Warcraft, games are machines of inputs and outputs that are inhabited, manipulated, and explored.”
– Eric Zimmerman, Manifesto for a Ludic Century
“Anyone Else Think 2016 Pokémon Go Was Peak Humanity?”
– multiple sponsored gaming influencers on twitter (paraphrased)
Going into this part, my plan was that Act 1, Act 2 would be My Body Is A Cage-style daily action, working on a calendar where each character got an AM action and a PM action, mixed with other obligations while the glitch meteor looms. For ex, Pony and Ruby both have to go to school on weekdays AM, but Ruby can still take game actions because she goes to fancy anime arts high school and has more freedom, and Axel has to work shifts rolled one day in advance.
On each AM/PM segment (if they have time), they can either Live your Life (less risky, Needs may increase), Play the Game (risks harm, may reduce Needs), or Take a Break (recover stress, Needs will increase). They have to keep up obligations while balancing three Needs (from Calypso’s Cyclic Framework): Lore (what are we doing in this game?), Grist (do we have the resources to do it?), and Friendship (can we even work together?) The higher these Needs get, the more difficult it is to advance; they’re treated as Conditions.
There’s a d6 table for what exactly happens on each segment action and how it affects Needs, usually with a loss to manage or a hard choice. Each time I roll a 6 on an action, I mark a Wins tally, and once I collect 3 Wins, the PCs get a chance at escaping the cycle and “beating the game” before the meteor hits. I expected this would take several in-game days of increasingly desperate actions. Play to find out!
We start on Friday, April 14, 201X with Pony in the AM. He’s at his boring regular gifted academy, so he can’t take an action segment, but he can try to get Light Dice to help later.
/// /// ///
Friday Am, Part 1
Pony: Go to Class.
He’s back at St. John today, right on time. He prepared excuses for his sick day and why he’s back so soon and noncontagious, but his classmates are incurious about him being gone.
What’s on his mind? Succubus — Power at a Cost (Temptation.) Poised on the line between love and obsession. Trait: Escapist.
He’s on autopilot through Calculus and Orchestra. Clouds bearing game mechanics, strategies, ideas, questions drift through his head. He keeps coming back to that unsigned text that appeared in both his chats at once last night at 9:46 PM. “That’s all for tonight.” That means he and Ruby should be ready for more little tricks, so they don’t end up suckered like Axel. Next time, he’ll be ready. He’ll know what to ask. Who are you? What’s in it for you? Why us? Why me?
It’s 9:46 AM and he’s out at the water fountain, 10 minutes before the passing period, running the fountain and looking at his phone. No Convoke notifications. No mystery messages. The clock above his horse wallpaper ticks over to 9:47. He hurries back inside, still thirsty.
She’s probably some rival player or Salt Catalog troll messing with his whole friends list. Why does he think she’s a she? Why did she single him out? It feels like she’s letting him in on a secret plan for the game, even if he’s just a pawn. Why does this feel like anything?
Why can’t he stop thinking about this?
English Literature comes and goes. He imagines things that she could try to tempt him with, and the cool and clever lines he’d use to turn her down or outsmart her. He’s running the whole conversation in his head. She offers a magic umbrella, or a secret quest, or tells him what’s really going on. She knows things he doesn’t say out loud. She offers big things, scary things, impossible things. Things he couldn’t come back from. She listens to him. She asks Pony questions that he doesn’t know the answers to. The script in his head gets tied in knots, and the daydream can’t go any further because he can’t imagine what would happen next.
Oracle: Is he in business class? Yes, but: threaten to take something away. Hit Key of the Mundane, +1 DD (to 5).
Blink. A classroom full of paired-off overachievers in uniform blazers is staring at him.
A row of puppets is lined up neatly on Mr. Sebastami’s desk. Pony hates those puppets, especially the hidebound reactionary HANES SOCKEFELLER, but the Board holds the purse strings.
No prep, no reading the room, no cutting yet constructive feedback! And his assigned partner has already jumped ship to his friends’ firm with all the weekend prep work Pony did for them, the snake. Funding affects the class ranking affects the bell curve affects final grades affects GPA affects admissions! While the other teams in the fourth period conglomerate huddle and scheme, Pony’s going to have to improvise a business plan.
He loosens his tie and takes out his pen case. What’s one more day of hyperfocus? This is his future.
So stop thinking about those messages.
Strive with Studious 1 to become competitive in the class rankings with a new business plan.
Danger: suffer major academic stress from a week’s work in an hour. +Advantage from Theme Music. -Disadvantage from the ?Who’s Tempter 2 condition.
9. Partial success. That’s not enough for Pony this morning. He wants to win.
even after I get what I want I can see baby baby that it’s lonely at the top (yeah)
Push to 10, a full success, with Cope.
That’s it. Scrap everything. Forget production. Take it back to zero. Pivot to consultancy.
Pony is better at this than anyone in this class. He can hear the spreadsheets. He did the work. He doesn’t need a business partner. He’ll be everyone’s partner. Pony’s advice will be the x factor that helps every other firm succeed. His clients’ competitors won’t stand a chance without contracting with him, too. Sure, it’ll be a little extra work at the end of the semester — but he’ll make himself indispensable. And he always does his best with something to focus on outside his head.
Take a light die, “Master Planner,” to use while playing the game later. Also roll a new coping condition: Avoid 1. Stop thinking about how bad this all is. It’s nothing he can’t handle.
Lore 1, Grist 1, Friendship 1
/// /// ///
Ruby: Play the Game.
3: You find a minor resource; what guards it? What do you have to trade for it? Reduce 1-Need and gain 1-Need.
At Chenoweth, Ruby’s killing two birds with one stone. She’ll use the power of Link Grid for a leg up in her school’s perilous Social Labyrinth, and use her new Links to find a way to stop the looming glitch meteor (why can’t anyone else see it?) using Egress’ own systems. Maybe she can unlock a cool summon, or something.
What outfit did she prepare for True Drip today? Bear. Caution (Aggression). A blow strikes true, unexpectedly. Trait: Envious.
Under the serene curtain of her embroidered bird cape, Ruby wears a bear pride tank top with her belted and pocketed skirt. The peers who might skeptically ask why she’s wearing that aren’t close enough to her to care. [Trauma: Grudge.]
I make a note that the Student Council may or may not know about Egress already, I’ll find out in play — but not the President, who is a non-gamer. Maybe someone else does, though. I roll a drama move: expose a past mistake’s consequences. Motif: Palace. Luxury (Bureaucracy) A gilded cage for an irreplaceable songbird.
Following the Sun to Sully pattern, I’ll take Songbird and call her Sonya. Sonya used to be a fellow fashion design student — someone who Ruby thought was a friend — until she was poached for Student Council’s favored Vocal Performance track. That’s how Ruby sees it. Wrapped up in the armor of ironic distance, Ruby’s Grudge doesn’t want to admit that there was more to Sonya changing to Vocal Performance than jumping ship from their underfunded program — or that Ruby’s bitterness was what finally pushed her away. Sonya’s new Council title for her portfolio is “Advisor for Gaming and Digital Media.” Tread carefully, gamers.
Ruby still has the megaphone in her Object Grid that Sully dropped yesterday when Benni and Paula, those Student Council enforcers, shut down his courtyard soapbox speech for daring to mention the President’s name. Since Egress seems to trigger Links during meaningful conversations, she has the idea to return it to him and build a bond with the Council’s most outspoken foe. When she goes to the courtyard Friday afternoon, he’s there as usual, but being oddly quiet. Sonya, she notices, is just leaving, flanked by Benni and Paula. Ruby hangs back until they leave, not wanting to raise her flag, then approaches him.
Sully has what seems like his usual brave bombast, but he looks tired and stressed, and his platitudes go nowhere meaningful. Whatever she said, Sonya got to him. Sully may be the Sun, but instead of rising in inspiring defiance, his light is setting in surrender and encouraging the masses to sleep. Seems that Links can have their aspect inverted…! It’s not safe to return Sully’s megaphone in this state, much less make a Link with him. She’ll have to align his polarity with her own to make the Link helpful, rather than a millstone. (Imagine the disaster if you made a Link representing a relationship you didn’t realize was an enemy!)
There’s no other way. She’ll have to bully this dude into being good.
To flip Sully to her side, Ruby will have to overcome a condition-2: Sonya Got To Him. Each Strive success can reduce the condition by 1. Once it’s at 0, she can try to Strive to achieve her goal without the obstacle or armor in the way.
Strive with Mannerless 1 to knock him out of Sonya’s orbit.
Danger: Sully gets angry at her from being inspirationally yelled at. +Advantage from True Drip, -Disadvantage from Sonya Got To Him.
8 is a partial success, but Ruby wants more. She uses Shove It to add +2 to her total in exchange for 2 ranks of conditions’ worth of unrelated problems. She’s using her megaphone, so I give her Loud 2 and push the total to 10: full success. Reduce Sonya Got To Him by 1, no danger!
Ruby’s cloak parts and her bear paw blazes as she exhorts Sully to stand and fight, dummy!!! She uses the megaphone like a morality coach, imitating his speeches and reminding him why he’s been out here all semester. The truth matters! Rebellion matters! Even when no one is listening, he burns bright!! So stand and fight!!
The other students passing in the mural-lined hallways, or mingling in the courtyard heedless of the glitch meteor in the sky above, find Ruby very annoying and very loud. On the other hand, being dressed down by a rude rebel fashionista in a bear top who insists with his abandoned megaphone that he can be a goodguy, seems to actually even believe in him, is having some kinda complicated effect on Sully. He has tears in his big brown eyes, rolling down to his well-trimmed scruff. He stands up.
And then sees a Student Council banner hanging from an upstairs balcony that could only have been reached by acrobats, and his face falls again. His thick fists ball up, his eyes turn down.
“I won’t fight for them,” says Sully. He’s high-voiced and soft-spoken, not the firebrand from yesterday. “But Ruby, the Council…you don’t understand. They’re untouchable.”
Ruby follows his gaze up to the balcony banner. “oh i’ll touch them sully”
“i’ll touch them hard”
/// /// ///
Motif: a restless night of uneasy dreams leads to action.
Axel: Dream.
There is an ocean in the sky. Below the ocean is the silhouette of a golden ship-like palace surrounded by stepped bladespires of brass, and below them is a skyline of honey colored pillars hung with windmills and waterwheels and cornsilk sails, and below them is a sprawling marketplace in two hundred fifty six shades of yellow. In this vibrant and fantastical festival of commerce — a merchant’s paradise! — anything worth trading may be sold and bought.
But there’s no time for spendthrift entrepreneurials now: ze has been hired to solve the absconding of the PRINCEX, the dispossessed scion of this ochre domain’s bygone noble house, whether it be by capture or rescue. Little does zir cut-out patron realize that their unstumpable finder, the enigmatic PINCER X, is in truth none other than the absent EX-PRINCE zirself. How twisty!
Ze exits zir investigator’s office and ventures out into the saffron streets, down to the marketplace, where the holistic truth of this deception may be revealed through the all-cutting swords called Reason and Exchange.
It turns out this involves a complicated set of interlocking trading quests that take zir through alleys, tightropes, and windcarts to and from all corners of the market. Trade the POSTER for the EGG for the THREAD for the COG for the WHEEL for the FROG for the MALLET for the BOTTLE for the QUILT for the EGG — it just goes in circles! Value is moved, but never produced, and a succession of vendors and seekers of all shapes and sizes brings zir no closer to the truth of the mystery.
Then ze has a brainwave. Instead of ferrying them back and forth as directed, ze tries combining the item cards stored in zir Object Grid, manufacting them into something completely new: FROG and EGG and BOTTLE create a stoppered dram of MEDICINE. Ze gives the PINCHED RX to a pachyderm sufferer, wrapped in sheets turned gray from amber, with nothing to give in return. Renewed by the tincture, the sufferer trumpets and sheds the rags, pointing zir to a secret door overlooked by avaricious eyes. Ze follows winding spiral stairs, up and up and up through what must be a brass bladespire, but – !! — ducks away from a window! An iridescent UFO looms…can it see zir?
///
Axel’s eyes open on alien-print sheets. The covers are tangled. The xenomorph body pillow is abandoned on the floor.
Ze has work today.