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After The Glitch Stranding 📴

This is the session report for my Starforged game. It is an intermission after Egress, Act 1. This takes place after things that happen at the end of Act 1 of Egress, which this blot hasn’t gotten to yet, FYI. If you don’t want to be spoiled, come back later — that being said, this will be parallel-standalone for a bit.

I’ll start by doing “Liftoff,” the campaign prep. Unlike the Forge setting suggested by Starforged, this takes place on the post-collapse Earth of Egress.

Music: what dying inside a machine sounds like | breakcore mix

After the ?Who took over all signals and the kids’ escape through the Mercy Gate was broadcast to everyone, along with her rallying and desperation of the Earth to “pray for your honorees!”, she was left behind like everyone else as the meteor was pushed back and became the low-orbiting Glitch Moon. The ?Who, having failed to be brought through the Gate, retreated and made a new plan out of vengeance and frustration, taking out her loathing on the Earth. With all data and network infrastructure scrambled by the Glitch Moon, any network connection had a chance of spawning or attracting rogue game constructs: Glitch Constructs, or GCs, from pesky scamps to judging ogres to looming kaiju, who can harm the physical world but are illegible to non-game weapons. Not only that, but more often than not, a direct attack by GCs doesn’t leave a body — people just disappear from reality. Together with the initial meteor storm and ongoing physical danger from GCs, networks from social media to payment processors to stock exchanges to critical infrastructure crashed in fatal loops. Only the ?Who had the power to establish secure connections, and she extracted heavy prices from those she spared (in frantic but coordinated 9:46 messages.) Many were not spared. She ensured that humanity was critically weakened, collapsing, desperate, stranded. Like her. Now the Glitch Goddess reigns in hell, but she’s withdrawing, seeming to lose interest in manipulating, punishing, calling would-be heroes, redirecting GCs, maintaining critical infrastructure. It’s all going dark again. Is this the end of the whole mess?

Oracle: have a lot of people died or disappeared? [Likely]

50: yes. The world has suffered an apocalypse.

Oracle: are human characters from Act 1 still alive and active? [50/50]

75: no. It has been more than 100 years, and our protagonist doesn’t know exactly how long ago it was.

Set a Flag: I’m setting a flag on detailed descriptions of the apocalypse and attendant suffering. That isn’t where I want the thematic focus of this game to be; it’s post-apocalyptic/post-collapse adventure. It’s understood that things got very, very bad, but/and in a stylized and absurd way fitting the setting. Many horrible things are absurd. “Kramer is an Owl” by KC Green

Starforged offers 14 categories of Truths about the setting to establish. Since this is a custom setting, most of the suggested options don’t apply, as fun as they are. I’ll use these to the extent they matter.

  1. Cataclysm: the world has been Stranded. The Glitch Moon, GCs, and the collapse of network and data infrastructure worldwide, with the only recovery at the angry hands of the ?Who, have ended civilization on Earth as it was. What remains has mutated and changed, or retreated.

    1. a scrap of the pre-Cataclysm: in addition to being derived from the Victor doll design, she’s seen the video of the kids escaping Earth many times. She hates them, esp. that Other Doll.

  2. Exodus: There hasn’t been an exodus, except for the kids. We’re all still here, though other means of Egress have been attempted. Getting skronked by GCs seems to take you somewhere.

  3. Communities: Many people live in networks of small settlements; or else in tightly-controlled sealed communities with closed networks. Larger and more organized settlements, carefully planned and guarded by anti-GC barriers, are rumored to be emerging but fragile. It’s dangerous to congregate in one place and risk spawning or attracting GCs, but Stranders connect people.

  4. Iron: Not interested in this for this setting. If a vow really matters, someone might put it on the blockchain if that’s their deal, or our PC might commit it to her code as a comment jewel.

  5. Laws: “Powers rise and fall, so any authority is fleeting. In the end, we must fend for ourselves. A few communities are bastions of successful autonomy, but many are corrupted or preyed upon by petty despots, criminals, and raiders.” Plus there are secret societies like Blackstar. The ?Who is less an authority than a capricious goddess growing tired of punishing the world.

  6. Religion: Not very interesting to me for this setting. People still practice spirituality, often isolated and innovative (or deep throwback) sects and occultisms. 1998 Geocities Kemeticism. Some people find spiritual meaning in GCs, or the ?Who, but those entities don’t care.

  7. Magic: There isn’t magic, but there are glitches. (Eridan: “science is real, magic is not.”) GCs exist, and some can do videogamey stuff like cast fireball or buff allies or use weird abilities. Some organized and/or obsessed people have had very limited success tapping into “reality glitches” as GCs do, enabling weird stuff and strange tech and phenomena. Like Glitch Busters.

  8. Communication and Data: “Information is life. We rely on informal Stranders to transport messages, data, and goods across the danger between settlements. Direct communication and transmissions beyond a local network are impossible [without the personal sanction of the ?Who, during the 2 minutes per day she allows it.] Digital archives are available at larger outposts, but the information is not always up-to-date or reliable.”

  9. Medicine: “To help offset a scarcity of medical supplies and knowledge, the resourceful technicians we call riggers create basic organ and limb replacements. Much was lost in the Stranding, and what remains of our medical technologies and expertise is co-opted by the privileged and powerful [to the extent they exist]. For most, advanced medical care is out of reach. When someone suffers a grievous injury, they’ll often turn to a rigger for a makeshift mechanical solution.” [there are techs who could potentially help repair our PC, but it’s rare.]

  10. Artificial Intelligence: Do GCs and the ?Who count? It’s unclear if she’s an alien or AI or both. Machine intelligences like the Glitch Busters exist, but are rare and strange, and often not as free spirited as our PC, as far as she knows. Leaving the door open for Yokohama androids.

  11. War: “After the Stranding, resources are too precious to support organized fighting forces or advanced weaponry [mostly]. Weapons are simple and cheap. Vehicles are often cobbled together from salvage. Most communities rely on ragtag bands of poorly equipped conscripts or volunteers to defend their holdings, and mundane or strange raiders prowl.” Anyway guns are no use against GCs so why bother — weapons would only be useful against people (or animals.)

  12. Lifeforms: Along with humans and Earth animals, the fundamentally otherworldly and strange GCs arise when networks touch dire data or the Glitch Moon passes overhead. They aren’t life, though it isn’t unheard of for them to form working relationships with humans.

  13. Precursors: Just the wreckage of old Earth, mostly. But…there are a very small handful of weird places on Earth, like the “Octopus Ruins” off the Newfoundland coast, that may be of pre-human construction. Maybe even created in a prior iteration of the universe . . . ? The ?Who has been known to suggest things to that effect, though she always chooses her words carefully.

  14. Horrors: Ghosts are not unheard of. A whole lot of people died in weird ways. They’re possible, but very rare. The Victor doll whose design inspired the Glitch Busters was originally made to house a ghost, so our PC knows something about all that.

    1. Ghosts | David Dycus

[With different Truth categories, this would be a great tool for defining details of the Medium, too.]

Now I’ll create my character. Starforged notes that its intended scope is human characters only, which I’m not doing for this game. This PC does not consider itself human or as possessing humanity. But kind of in the way that someone on Discord with it/its pronouns would say that. I make a note that my PC recovers Health with the Repair move rather than Heal (informed by the more detailed Heal table.)

I start by picking two Paths for my PC. I looked through these earlier: I’m picking Augmented, because she’s a cybernetic Glitch Buster with the powerful EX Turbine, and Fugitive, because she’s pursued and pestered by Blackstar GBs.

I also pick or describe a brief Backstory for now. Some of the options on the table that gel with what I’m thinking: “You escaped an abusive or unjust situation,” “You rejected a duty,” “You were denied a birthright,” “Your ambitions outgrew your humble origins.” What I have for now is: she’s a Generation 2 Glitch Buster cyborg created (modified? Raised?) by a malevolent secret organization called Blackstar, which is rolling out the new Generation 4 GBs and scrapping obsolete units like her. She doesn’t want to die like that, she has a bigger destiny. She’s going to rule the world! They’re all gonna pay for treating her like junk, for making the world this way, for leaving her behind and not letting her adventure and have fun. [delusions of grandeur may be informed by Blackstar’s grandiose delusions] So she ran, City Escape/Shadow the Hedgehog style, fleeing [Techno Riot City] and heading north. Screw this monochrome scrap heap, it’s boring! She wants it loud, she wants it pink, she wants it now!

I choose her Background Vow. This one’s easy, it’s all she thinks about, it’s right there in her name: the Future Ruler of Planet Earth. “When I rule the world, I’m gonna make you sweat, dog collar round your neck, on your knees and scrub the deck.” (“oh no look who’s sorry, now they’re answering to me, so scrub it/rub it/whip it/dry it it till I tell you to stop”)

By default, Starforged characters start with a starship. This PC doesn’t have a starship (she wishes!!), but I think she has a personal Boost Frame, a la Infinite Revolution. I’ll adapt the card to represent that instead.

Oracle: Is her Boost Frame separate from her body? [50/50]

76: no. These just represent the capabilities of its body. They can’t be separated or removed from it, although certain functions might be damaged or need repair. I’ll move fluidly between the Health and Integrity tracks as fits. Maybe the frame unfolds from internal panels and arrays when she uses it.

I’ll represent her Boost Frame as the Hoverbike asset, but only carrying one person, armed and multipurpose, and capable of being equipped with Module assets. Her back unfolds angular panels at speed, halfway between umbrella and wings. It (ie, she) was part of her gear loadout at Blackstar, and she stole it when she left. Thanks, suckers!

Now I choose a final Asset. I like the Snub Fighter module for a combat boost, but I love the Firebrand path for power-level anime garbage. I’ll take Firebrand, but about the incredible potential of [EX Power] rather than pyromancy, and with an extra ability that the PC can recover +fire in a high-stakes situation by Enduring Stress at -X per +fire sought. “EX Score: 3 and climbing.”

Let’s assign this character’s stats. Sneaky cunning tricky pranking Shadow is definitely her forte at 3, then speedy Edge and aggressive Iron at 2, then smartypants Wits and sociable Heart at 1.

Now I set my starting Condition Meters: Health, Spirit, and Supply at 5, Momentum +2, etc.

Finally, I envision the character: how they look, how they act, what they wear. The PC is humanoid, but hot pink with pale pink-white hair, solid black eyes and red irises, like Mina from My Hero Academia. She’s visibly nonhuman, with grasping manipulators and flame-painted rocket legs, but doesn’t really look like a GC, either. She’s too solid and real. Humming in her chest is the EX Turbine, like an upside-down heart that glows bright and hot when she pushes her physical power past its limits. She wears a thick future hoodie with a logo printed, shorts, and what appear to be big bulky boots. She acts like a little scamp, causing mischief and so on, goofing around and baring her teeth and treating deadly situations (which she often initiates) like a game. I’m thinking of two tags for her personality: Sweet Tooth and Me First!

Pronouns are it/its or she/her. Its designation is GB-873-0F-15. It thinks of itself as Future Ruler of Planet Earth, but some annoying humans like to abbreviate that to FRaPpE. I’m making a note to try to use she/her in narration when Frappe is being instrumentalized or treated as an object, and it/its when it’s being particularly personable or sympathetic.

She has a big pack, a specialized toolkit that can work with her chassis, a “handheld terminal” that’s probably just an N-Gage, and a buster cannon that works on GCs and other GBs. Other integrated stuff too, probably.

Now that I have a basic setting and character, I’ll create a sector to screw around and cause trouble in. This isn’t a spacefaring game, so I’ll just use the creating-settlements layer of this procedure. Instead of a sector, this is a region; I’m imagining coastal Maine because I want Frappe to keep wandering north into Acadia next, or places like that. I’m not worrying about real world maps, and anyway the alt-201X world of Egress was different already, but it’s a good mental image.

This is an “Outlands” region for table-rolling purposes: not as densely populated as the Techno Riot City necroplex that Frappe has already fled from, and not completely out in the sticks. It’s an outer ring of human communities. I’m going to call this region Kennebec.

Because it’s Outlands, I give it three Settlements at the start. (I figure these are the places Frappe knows about.) For each of these places I roll a few basic details.

  1. The Prom. (coastal, artsy-weird, evokes Portland.) Dozens of people (~150?) live here permanently. Whatever authority is here (tom goes to the mayor city council) is ineffectual. The settlement projects are festival (and prom is tomorrow!!) and black market (sailing & overland.)

  2. the Moose. (inland, woodsy, evokes 2004 film Welcome to Mooseport.) Hundreds of people (~600?) live here permanently. As in the film, the local authority is ineffectual. (It’s a Napoleon of Notting Hill situation with a rotating mayor.) The settlement projects are agriculture (smart) and (serve + expedition) outfitting travelers and Stranders and offering a safe place to stay. (vendors and banners and motel signs along a riverside road up to a very steep trail.)

  3. The Kiss. (evokes King’s Castle Rock.) Few people (~30?) live here permanently. The local authority is tolerant and probably informal. The settlement projects are evacuation (oh my) and secrecy (oh my!!), which makes me think this place hosts a science bunker (King of Infinite Space) where those rascals are trying yet again to escape from the Earth to someplace else. People steer clear because of the rumors of high GC activity.

I’m now prompted to make a region map just to track relative distances and orientation of these places and any new ones I encounter. I’ll maintain one on Stargazer. I mark passages on this map: well-known (at least to my PC) connections between places that can be traveled more safely and directly. This region is Outlands, so I mark two. I’ll put one between The Prom and Mooseport, and one from Mooseport to the edge of the map, back toward the Techno Riot City necroplex from whence she came. Frappe doesn’t know how to get to the Kiss.

I zoom in on one of the settlements: the Prom. This is where Frappe starts. On a first look, it has rustic architecture and (advanced + art), which is one of those perfect random table results. It’s very avant garde. There’s trouble in the settlement: depleted supplies. It’s hard to keep enough food and resources for everyone lately through the black market; the whole region is declining in harvests and trade, and there isn’t as much to skim off the top.

Now I create a local connection for Frappe at the Prom. I have a very specific idea emerging: Frappe has made it out to the Prom and taken up with somebody who seems to Get her, but it’s not going well. She’s nesting in some cardboard boxes, in a closet, in the basement, of a strip mall, where this artsy crook (rank: dangerous) has her Jet Set Radio tagging stuff and doing kinda shitty murals, but actually uses her more for black market package deliveries and intimidating his rivals and marks as a scary pink heavy at business meetings. (His thing is to have her menacingly blow stuff up with the buster cannon.) Their name is Vengaboy (he/they.) On first look, they’re flashy (stylish and loud and gaudy) and accompanied (always has goons.) His goal at first appeared to be find a person whom Frappe was looking for (“mr. claire is helping me find my gun”), but as he’s been revealed to be manipulative, incompetent, and “loving,” it’s becoming clear that his true goal is something else. Gain riches, I bet, through securing a new food and trade route for the Prom that they control.

Last, I introduce a regional Trouble as background. It’s probably related to harvests and trade being in decline. My first roll is rogue AI infiltrates systems throughout the sector, which of course is the trouble, that’s kinda the whole problem. The ?Who is endemic. I’ll run with that: the ?Who used to grant access to corruption-free networks to those who curried her favor, enabling more complicated logistics and reliably running infrastructure, but lately she’s been withdrawing. She still checks in every now and then, but she seems tired and bored of her malicious manipulation. That’s both a threat and an opportunity, but for now it means big things don’t run very well.

The ?Who counts as a dominion, a governing power. Her influence is inescapable, extending across the inhabited world. Her key tags are secrecy, technology, and treachery. Leadership: fated or prophesied/machine intelligence. Her eternal project is to incite conflict among rivals to keep them busy and watch them squirm while she attempts to fulfill a prophecy and somehow find a back door into the Medium. The ?Who wields unnatural abilities or strange technologies. The rumor Frappe’s heard is that the Glitch Goddess is growing bored of tormenting humanity and is withdrawing, leaving a vacuum.

Meanwhile, Blackstar counts as a guild, an organization of specialists. Their influence is notable, with dispersed centers of influences across a few regions. They’re a guild of researchers and spies scheming in their secret bases. They have a heavily stratified social structure (complex cells-within-cells network of Outer and Inner Orbits orbiting the unknown Blackstar who is their imagined central leader) and are guided by prophecy (Blackstar is also the future they Will bring about; the fact they haven’t been destroyed already by time travelers proves it. Their victory is inevitable. There is no alternative.) Frappe knows enough to know that any operations they run are a false front for their true purpose. Blackstar wants to usurp the ?Who and use her power to Take Over The World and expand their human domination into a new universe. But that won’t happen, because Frappe’s gonna do it first, and better.

September 14, 2023

[S] Convene.

Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 6

[[This is a point where I use the Three-Act Framework to add structure. (I’ll try to keep all the different uses of the word Act as clear as possible.) To close A1A1, I roll up an Enemy whom the players will try to overcome. The Enemy is made of Formidable Conditions that will have to be overcome if the teens want to succeed; the balance of Formidable Conditions and Score Dice informs how things shake out for everyone in the end.

The Enemy for A1 is Egress itself, the world-eating game. Calypso recommends that I let “what the Enemy wants” flow from what they do, and from what happens as I play. IE, I’ll play to find out exactly what its end goal is. I just give the Enemy three Conditions for now. The first (from a generic d6 Strengths table) is Hidden Allies 1, representing people and other entities that the teens don’t realize are working against them yet. I roll up the next two from a more involved Custom Conditions table that prompts you with several broad categories to generate something specific. The second (Circumstances + Overt/Flashy + Utility) is Gamification 1, representing Egress’ self-referential ability to incorporate any challenges back into Egress itself, bringing in the menu and music to turn dissent into a boss battle. The third (Mind + Focused + Utility) is Normalization 1, the clouding quality that makes non-players (NPCs if you will) ignore Egress game constructs and find it unremarkable when kids battle with cookware over grist orbs in the parking lot. These are supernatural qualities that work much better because of the ways that this society has primed itself for something like Egress to exist.

Scene 5 was framed in this system around a rolled Catalyst: a direct threat erupts, pushing the protagonists out of their status quo. A looming glitchstep meteor will do that. In the scene following the Catalyst, a Lock-In Goal is declared by the protagonists, and then I make a drama move as an immediate threat.

So I roll a Lock-In Goal. Now that the table is set, what do the protagonists want to do about it? I roll find a cure or remedy, and I’m happy about it. That’s a good one! (Other options would have been things like save themselves from a threat or find out why this is all happening, which might motivate other Egress players they encounter.) Let’s play it out. I roll a scene-setting motif: nourish.]]

Waoh | Hamhambone

It’s Thursday evening, April 13, and Ruby Goslyn has washed the dishes, said goodnight to her Grandma, and finally been able to go to her room, where her stylishly haunty Macboo awaits. Convoke is back online at last, and the bunny icon is excitedly binkying with unread messages. stringedMaven’s the one she’s been dying to talk to, though.

They’ve never called over video or voice. They’ve shared photos they’ve taken, but never of themselves; no more than fingertips in the frame. It’s the same with mindsetAmbassador. They know each other through text and what they choose to present. It makes more sense this way.

They all met on this board called Salt Catalog. It used to mainly be about making people really mad online, and there’s still a crust of that – it’s called Salt Catalog, not Smile Catalog — but people post about all kinds of stuff there: video games, gardening, tax evasion. Mostly video games. And lots of really horrible stuff, too.

There’s a line in every user profile on Salt Catalog with three options:

This user claims to be a male | female | squid.

stringedMaven, timelostPlayboy, and mindsetAmbassador all picked squid.

Sometime last year, mindsetAmbassador posted that ze’d just baked cookies, stringedMaven asked zir to mail him some, and they started talking. Then timelostPlayboy and mindsetAmbassador had a ten-page back-and-forth about knitting, and as a masterstroke timelostPlayboy sent zir some terrible socks. Later, timelostPlayboy posted an ask for new music, and stringedMaven made a recording of some cello arrangements and sent it to her. By the eve of the Winterlights 201X gift exchange, the three of them had swapped Convoke cognomens and become friends off the forum.

Then, like a month ago, timelostPlayboy and mindsetAmbassador had a falling out. Pony doesn’t find it hard to imagine them clashing, but he’s worried that they haven’t made up yet. They all signed up for an Egress 2.0 beta key on the form that was going around their circles. Will they not be able to play together?

Compulsively working his abacus at his bedroom desk, Pony puts it together. The teacup he sent into the ether became fungible data, a digital commodity to be transformed and instantiated elsewhere. Egress is reading the data being fed to it and reincorporating it into the game. The Magentimps had papercraft armor because Ruby showed Egress a paper crane. The Yellions had binocular eyes because Axel captured binoculars. The Cyants had doorknobs because Pony is a huge dumbass.

No no no, Pony repeats as he rubs his temples. He isn’t going to choose between them. He’s not going to judge. He won’t lose either or any or both of his friends. That’s catastrophic thinking. He’s just going to have to work a little harder and help both of them succeed.

Pony hits his Key of the Malleable, Ruby hits her Key of the Loyal, Axel hits zir Key of the Player. They each take +1 DD.

The system clock on Pony’s PC has just rolled over from 9:45 to 9:46 PM, and the same unsigned text is appearing in two of his chat windows at once.

This felt like the moment for the drama move for an immediate threat: someone takes notice.

Oracle: Is it related to 💹?

Yes, and: it’s something big, roll motifs to find out more.

Emperor. Authority (Tyranny). A crumbling throne, a dying line, a final heir.

Skill, Strategy, Society * Intellect.

The Exaltation of the Mind. Smirking Mercury, unkind missive in hand.

I will: tacere, be silent. I use: devotion to great work. I use: unchastity, lust.

That’s silence as in lies of omission and saying not a word more than what or when was intended, and lust like the White Witch and Turkish delight. Playing on short-term wants to tempt people into what this entity wants, along with promising to help them win the game.

Conditions: Silent-3, Authoritative-2, Tempter-2

The truth is, I’ve known ?Who this is since before I touched any dice. She was already here, just waiting for the right random roll to emerge.

Bug Report | Hamhambone

This character gets two theme songs; she’s greedy.

Audrey’s Dance | Xiu Xiu

Pony puts the chats side by side. Playboy and Ambassador both think they’re alone. He’s dazed.

Oracle: Does Pony accept the offer?

No: He does not. Pony is Conformist and doesn’t like to do things that feel Wrong.

Pony and Ruby raise Rueful Rolemodel and Passive Protege respectively from 1 to 2 for both rejecting the offer. Ruby is Envious and might have accepted if Pony did in front of her, but he didn’t. Axel, who’s Ambitious and Dangerous, grows distant from Pony but may have a reward in zir future. The three of them have each decided to play the game and gain resources to stop its epiphenomena from spinning out of hand and causing wider disaster. And there’s a whole alter world of adventure to explore . . . !

September 9, 2023

Pony: Finish tutorial.

Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 5

[[At this point, I made some Oracle and Strive rolls to resolve Pony, Axel, and Ruby’s current situations and get this intro stage — Act 1, Act 1 — to a climax.

With Pony at the tea shop, I roll a random drama move: someone takes notice. I draw a motif to learn more: Summer. Passion (Exhaustion.) The hum of bees on the heated night air. Sounds charged. I decide it’s another Egress player, who might take a mutual interest in Pony.]]

And he’s tossed out into the world. Pony completes the tutorial and he’s on his own. People on the Salt Catalog forums said that Egress 1.0 had all these complex systems and hidden secrets that you had to discover on your own, so Pony figures that the Egress 2.0 beta will have even more. Too bad Convoke is still down, or he’d be asking Ruby and Axel what to try next already!

With the AR layer still active at the tea shop and Ms. Ban angrily sweeping a defeated Yellion out the door, an item sparkles into existence on Pony and his dad’s table. It’s a jar of blue honey. When he examines it in Capture Mode, it’s revealed to be a gift from another player: a peer-to-peer reward for claiming a Node for Cyan. So Egress is a strand game! And it rewards color-based team play, too…

[[Oracle: can players chat to each other within Egress? (these logistics were important.)

Yes, but: a mutual gift exchange is required first.]]

He captures the [BLUEHONEY], adding it to his Object Grid. A new icon promises a potential Egregore connection with the sender, if they accept it. Whatever that is.

Fox Dad asks if Pony has made a new friend. Pony wonders aloud if he should send them a gift in return, and Fox Dad blithely suggests that there’s plenty of cool stuff at the tea shop to send, however he does that. Pony thinks that’s a good idea, but doesn’t want his dad hanging around too close, so sends him to chat with Ms. Ban about the things a dad talks about with a pseudo-auntie while he slips away to wander the shop.

[[Strive with Escapist 1 to find something cool to capture without dad or Ms. Ban noticing him outright swipe something, disadvantage for their close relationship (hard to sneak around ’em.)

7-9: Success, but someone takes notice as a soft move.]]

Oh! Pony found a cute cool teacup on a high shelf, a pretty patterned porcelain thing. He’d love to get this as a gift, so maybe the other Cyan player would too. He takes out his phone, locks on with the Capture Mode reticle, and captures it out of the world and into his grid. As he goes to link back up with his dad (who fondly squeezes his shoulder), Ms. Ban looks over at the tea set Pony was “snapping a picture of” and frowns. Pony quickly suggests that he and his dad head back home to digest!!

[[Another soft move to stir the pot: someone feels something.]]

Driving back in the afternoon drizzle, Pony sends the teacup as a strand gift to the other Cyan player. It floats from his grid to a spinning globe icon, waiting in the data ether.

Pony has a sudden feeling that this really is magic. The interface makes it feel like posting a photo, or trading an Eevee, but the physical teacup that someone molded and fired and glazed is gone. It’s information now, stored on some server rather than described in atoms. He has an intuition of just how big this game could grow to be. But what’s it building toward? What is Egress doing?

[[Conditions: Rueful Rolemodel •, Adversarial Ally •, Fatherly Follower •

Trauma: Overwhelmed •

Light Dice: [Theme Music], Dark Dice: 3]]

Pony: Be Axel.

[[Oracle: Did Axel make it to the top of the Fire Tower, find the dog, and claim the Node?

Yes, but: reveal an unwelcome truth. (Roll a motif: lashing out in pain.)

It turns out those imp game constructs can hurt you for real. Axel gets beaten up pretty bad by those papercraft-wielding brutes. Ze upgrades Scraped from 1 to 2 as ze’s bonked, bruised, and burned.]]

It’s a struggle, but the mission is virtuous. After a tactical retreat, Axel manages to evade and subdue the Magentimps and infiltrate the ranger station at the Fire Tower. Ze explores it for clues: there’s a battery-powered radio, but the signal’s all scratchy and fuzzy. And the ranger logbook doesn’t have any useful patterns or secret clues about Egress. It’s just weather readings and cleaning schedules. There’s some kind of metal hatch on the floor of the station, half-covered by a rug, but it probably just leads to some crawlspace full of spiders and mildew. Why is reality so boring?

Ze tosses a firecracker to draw the imps’ attention away from a steep and narrow staircase. Up in the rafters, ze finds the poor pup, huddled on a landing. Dirty and scraped and pissed off and relieved, Axel sits down to take a breath and pet him. Ze pours from the water bottle into zir hands, and the dog laps it up.

[[Axel clears Guilty-1.]]

But ze isn’t ready to leave yet. Not until ze makes it to the top.

It’s only once ze climbs a ladder to the lookout post, tired but driven, that the AR challenge ticks complete. A jingle of epic triumph plays from zir phone as ze gazes out at the arid Nueva Navarra landscape, like all the waypoints on the world map are about to light up as the title drops.

Except…Axel’s been up here already. Ze lives here. There’s the blacktop highway of Federal 7 past the trees and the pencil factory, there’s the Generimart on the far side of the killer interchange, there’s the A&A market with the giant clown looming, and there’s zir trailer, halfway up the park, undecorated. It’s just the same old world.

[[there’s that Pessimism.]]

Ze mutes the music and sips from zir water bottle. Sweat and dirt’s mixing with zir scrapes, and zir green highlights are faded in the sun. Ze checks zir messages with 💹, but there’s nothing new since 9:46 that morning. Still, those cryptic clues are what made Axel capture the binoculars first and come out to the tower to work out what’s going on with the power out and Convoke down. So ze draws the binocs out of gridspace, glitchy as it is, and looks out at the horizon.

What the hell?

North of West Clowncrest, out where the land is cheap, there’s a nondescript building that the big companies use as a data center. Trucks are parked outside and maintenance workers are coming in and out, but they don’t seem to notice the massive black UFO floating in the open sky 100 feet above them.

No, Axel realizes, the color “black” doesn’t do it justice. It’s an impossible color, a new color, like an iridescent shadow. It hangs in the air, spinning and gently bobbing, sometimes turning jagged or fuzzy or skipping frames like it’s glitching out, and it’s projecting some kind of beam over the data center. Every so often, the building itself somehow glitches out, too. The people working don’t even blink.

[[Sensing it will be important, I give this UFO the conditions Subtle-2 and Affect Data-2.]]

Once again, Axel pokes boundaries and experiments. Ze futzes with the Egress interface, looking for some way to interact with this thing. In the process ze notices that Egress has recorded a new Link to zir grid: the [HOUND of ARROWS]. It must have reattempted the glitched [??-Who?] capture at the first opportunity…Axel doesn’t even like dogs. But this Link is a new variable to work with. Using Methodical trial and error, Axel discovers how to extract a potent [HOUND’S ORB] from the [HOUND of ARROWS] Link, fuel it with Grist from claiming the Node, and use it to empower the [BINOCS] within the Object Grid!

[[are your eyes glazed over yet. good]]

Filled with the power of a true-sniffing hound, Axel peers through zir binoculars and fixes focus on the UFO. A Z-targeting reticle appears, and strange data streams across the HUD. Ze’s locked on! The current PYROKIND crackers Axel is using attract enemies rather than scare them off, but that’s going to be just fine.

[[Strive with Methodical 2 to get the UFO to move away from the data center with fireworks, risking drawing it to zir position, with double disadvantage from Scraped-2 and the UFO’s Subtle-2. I roll 4 dice and take the lowest 2.

7-9: Success at getting its attention, but the UFO is now cruising south toward the tower! I declare a new danger.]]

When ze locks on, the UFO must know exactly where the firecrackers are coming from and the Strife Axel means by them. It withdraws its scramble beam from the data center, spins rapidly, and extends a sweeping beam toward the Fire Tower! Axel eeps, turns off zir phone, bolts down the ladder, grabs the dog, and yeets on over to zir bike. With any luck, ze’ll be invisible to this thing’s data sniffers on the ride home.

[[Conditions: Perfect Pawn •, Resented Rival •, Glitched Grid •, Scraped ••

Trauma: Pessimism •

Light Dice: Gamer Dice •, Dark Dice: 4]]

Axel: Be Ruby.

[[Oracle: Did Ruby convince Ms. Wheeler to drop her concern and not call home?

Match dice, flawed question. +1 Dark Die for acting on it.]]

Ruby spends her school day collecting Motive Fragments on the [EMPRESS of THREADS], asking the right questions of other students and teachers to understand Ms. Wheeler better. She thinks it will reveal the perfect move to convince her that everything’s okay, but once she does the eavesdropping, gossip-collecting, and favor-trading in Chenoweth’s Social Labyrinth, all she realizes is the truth: her homeroom teacher was never going to snitch on her. A catty glee club treasurer pointed out that Wheeler is only the Program Head for Fashion Design because there’s one Fashion Design student left, and she wouldn’t put herself out of a job by jeopardizing Ruby’s enrollment.

That hurt; it was supposed to. Was she just a body? Would Wheeler not care if there really was bad trouble?

No. She doesn’t need Egress to know who Wheeler is. Her teacher has seen her dwindled cohort go through some real bullshit over the last three years, and she knows when to step in and when to trust Ruby to handle her own life. She wouldn’t have made it this long at Chenoweth if she couldn’t.

Blue Ruby | Hamhambone

[[I decide that in the course of asking around, Ruby also learned about a larger problem at Chenoweth that she’ll have to deal with. What is it?

Motif: Messenger. (Mis)communicate. What price peace and safety?

Goals: secure a self-interest, secure a retaliation.

I start spinning this cotton candy onto some ideas I had already. The problem is coming from the golden boy Polite Young Man at the very top of the Social Labyrinth: the President of the all-powerful Student Council. He says that he’s doing the right things for the right reasons, and it benefits all the right people to believe him, and he’s so Nice, and he’s so fucking evil. Crawling the Social Labyrinth in hopes of toppling this dude sounds like a super fun backdrop for Ruby to play against.

Oracle: Does the Student Council President’s Office want full access to Chenoweth student communications? (all their messages, chatlogs, socials, texts — of course it’s all to promote mental health in this unfortunately sometimes toxic environment, and to prevent bullying, or even violence!)

[motif: Cross. (Dis)belief. The way only opens with sacrifice. Hey, that’s what the Ruler of the Hosts of Air is all about, too.]

Yes, but: The Safeguard program is a ‘voluntary sacrifice’ for now. Students can opt-in to the pilot program to set a good example for others (and scrape for the Council’s favor.) All of the Council, including the President, have opted in. But Student Council is lobbying their pet teachers and program heads to make it mandatory. They just need the right crisis to demonstrate its utility and inevitability: learning about this dangerous Egress game through surveillance would be perfect.

Oracle: Is the President in the Theatrical Performance program; ie, a theater kid?

Yes, and: he’s a big deal. He’s from a wealthy and connected family, he’s had representation for years, he’s already been in major productions, and he’s inevitably going to be a star. Graduating is just a formality at this point, but mentorship and making a lasting impression at Chenoweth is very important to him, and he’ll be staying involved until the very end. Because Doing Good Matters.

I give him two conditions to overcome: Socially Invincible-3, Honorable Facade-1 (he’s vulnerable to a Fashion Duel if Ruby can just get close enough to him…)

What sympathetic student is already affected by the Safeguard plan? Motif: Sun. Revelation (Blindness). A superior rival, challenged to single combat.]]

The Sun — I’ll call him Sully — is a former member of Student Council, but his faction was removed from power over winter break after a shock investigative report by the Chenoweth Eagle exposed their corruption, thanks to messages leaked by their ascendant rival faction. Most of his cohort either transferred schools in shame or quietly accepted flunky status under the winners, but the ignominious Sun has been campaigning all semester to be elected back onto the Council. It will never ever happen, but it’s admittedly pretty brave under the circumstances.

Sully gave his daily stump speech in front of handmade banners in the interior garden courtyard, railing through a megaphone against a culture of cliques and complacency and promising to fight Council overreach from within, and as usual people largely passed by without listening. Today, though, he dared to mention the President directly. In response, the two most feared and stylish Student Morale toughs (blue-dyed Benni and platinum Paula) hustle him off the stump immediately, glaring at the peanut gallery to disperse.

Ruby hangs back, arms crossed, but notices that Sully dropped his megaphone in the commotion. She picks it up from among the fallen banners once the courtyard clears, captures it to her grid, then leaps away like a fashion assassin.

[[Oracle: Is Ruby’s first Node at the Grimstone Branch of the city library?

No. Then where? Motif: Merchant.

Her first Node is at Block 11, the fancy downtown mall east of Chenoweth. She’s Imaginative and pictures hot deals on rare items spawning there.]]

She walks there after school via Lower Polk Street, the notoriously-confusing-to-tourists underground road that links downtown. It’s easier to think when she’s not in a foot crowd. Not remotely for the first time, Ruby wonders why she never learned to skate right. She could have been so much cooler and healed all the broken bones by now.

Lower Polk links up to a parking garage, where Ruby takes an elevator to an empty level. Some adequately-tailored boys are gathered around a lighting rig taking senior photos. They’re wearing the exact loose-shoulder fits the Menswear Wolf called out last week, so she figures they must be sunk-costing the suits before they burn them.

She brushes past them, cloak billowing, to a mural-lined walkway that takes her to another elevator, which takes her to the low-tier shopfronts on the bottom floor of Block 11 Mall. One of the billionaires who talks to media said he’d bore a tunnel from here to the airport, but it never materialized. There’s just a shuttered door that says COMING SOON and doesn’t go anywhere.

[[Oracle: Does Ruby claim the Block 11 Node by racing some imps from the bottom to the top?

Yes. You know how this goes by now. Find a site-specific AR waypoint, do the challenge, claim Node. I add the condition Cyantagonists-1 for her opposition.]]

“we are also imps.”

Egress reads the site, all its shops and merch and people, and its interlinked split-levels too. None of the people circulating in the mall find it unusual when Ruby touches a floating fast-arrow icon that’s appeared, or when a troop of cyan minions — Cyan-tagonists, Cyants for short — file into position, wielding…doorknobs?

At least it doesn’t give them any edge. Her sprint in sneakers is enough to outpace these goons, and they aren’t even trying to keep up! Their pathfinding’s busted; they just march across the floor, turn their knobs on the shop doors, and — walk right out of a door on the next level up. Aw, hell.

She runs like a demon to keep up, vaulting planters, tagging waypoints, YOUTH ROLL’ing past orange juice carts, racing up the down escalators so she doesn’t dodge as many people. When a line of cyan traffic blocks her on a fourth-floor straightaway, she summons the megaphone from her grid and shouts “MOVE IT!”

[[Strive with Mannerless 1 to win the race and claim the Node, risking harm from Cyants.

10+: Success! She beats the baddies and the target time and makes it to the top unharmed. I spend the 10+ bonus to clear her Unsettled condition; the adrenalin makes her feel ahead of everything. This was a 13+, so I also mark a Score die.]]

Her shout knocks ’em down like bowling pins.

Two more stories up, she practically flies through the last maintenance door. The knobbed Cyants on the stairs behind her poff out of existence. On the roof of the mall, a winner’s circle greets her with a welcoming glow.

Grist and XP fill her virtual coffers as she raises her fists to the sky and hollers. Her megaphone has been slotted in the Strife Deck for her SHOUTKIND Specibus, apparently. Once she gets her breath, she leans on an AC unit and looks up at the New Neo City skyline.

There is something in the sky that is not the moon. It has a bad halo, like an image fragment that’s being dragged and saved wrong in a new way with every heartbeat. It looms, uninvited.

The AC hums. Street noise carries. No one is running, no one is shouting. Ruby feels cold from the inside out.

Thoth buzzes. Ruby has a new message from the windy shield icon.

Hosts of Air | Hamhambone

[[Conditions: Passive Protege •, Annoying Asshole •

Trauma: Grudge •

Light Dice: [Perfect Drip], Dark Dice: 2]]

[[Clock: 4, Score: 2]]

September 8, 2023

Axel: Be the business teen.

Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 4

[[When your instincts say that something should be acknowledged in the fiction but doesn’t need to be played out, or you just don’t feel like it, you can abstract it to a well-worded Oracle, or Strive if you like. I don’t use this tool as often as I ought to; my instinct is to create more fiction and named things. You can spend a Light Die to declare an Oracle answer after rolling, based on the fiction the LD stands for. One of Calypso’s inner workings is that you are the one who decides what warrants rolling for or spending resources on, and what’s worth ignoring or narrating past.

Oracle: did Pony escape from his room in time for breakfast?

Spend LD “Wacky Antics”: Yes, but it was very silly.]]

After a scene of capturegrid hijinks that read funnier live than archived, Pony managed to calm down by conforming to a routine, even an imaginary one: clean his glasses, tie his hair back, get dressed in his school uniform as if it were an ordinary day, take out his cello, and play his daily warm up.

Actuate | Hamhambone

That’s much better. Now things are beginning to make sense. All he has to do is USE KNOB on IMPOSSIBLE DOOR, and everything will be back to normal with both dads none the wiser.

[[Oracle: Is Fox Dad Pony’s first Link?

Yes, but: expose a past mistake’s consequences. His dad let him sleep in, and now he wants to talk.]]

Pony, descending the stairs, realizes the grave danger he’s in when he smells batter from the breakfast nook. Short, scruffy, apron-wearing Fox Dad is cooking on the stainless steel waffle iron Wolf Dad got him, which he only does on special occasions, which means that Fox Dad considers this morning a special occasion, which means he is going to Ask How Things Are Going.

They’re better than they were, he thinks. He’s definitely staying busy: advanced classes, test prep, table tennis, scholars league, city youth orchestra, future accountants club. He’s more or less eating in a healthy way, now that he dropped swimming after the meltdown at the meet, (god that was dumb he’s such an idiot why is he so fucking stupid.) He doesn’t have much free time to waste. He’s not being bullied at the new school. He still spends the first part of lunch in the library, browsing webnovels and message boards, but he eats with his classmates for the last ten minutes. It isn’t bad, Pony thinks, it’s just — not real. Empty. He’s eating shame. He knows why it feels so miserable to look at his reflection, but he can’t find the words to name it. It’s easier when his parents assume things are okay and he’s a star student. Staying up late and oversleeping troubles the illusion.

He’s too dutiful not to sit down. Just then, of course, Capture Mode activates. In AR, the Hateno family breakfast nook becomes an inescapable cell with a bright spotlight, and Pony is subjected to CROSS-EXAMINATION, protecting his resistance bar against a gauntlet of waffles and guilt.

[[So Fox Dad engages Pony in conversation. That Overwhelmed trauma must be making him turtle up lately, and his parents wonder what’s going on. With his Spill condition on top of Conformist, Pony will have a hard time keeping his mouth shut. What do they talk about? I draw a motif: youth.]]

Fox Dad has a glint in his eye. He thinks he knows what’s going on.

[[Strive with Teenager 1, with disadvantage due to Conformist trait. Pony tries to impress his former-rascal dad by playing at being a cool troublemaker to cover up something weirder and more online.

Goal: avoid mentioning Egress.

Danger: he wants to spend the day with Pony.

6-: Fail. He admits he was up late installing Egress, this new alternate-reality game, and now Fox Dad sees an opening for some much-needed father-son hangout time skipping school to play it. Awful! +1 DD tho.]]

In the spotlight of AR interrogation, a fox tail sways behind his dad’s apron. Egress has interpreted him.

The interface fades. He’s just a guy again, having breakfast with his weird teen. Egress beeps.

[[In addition to a new Link, Pony adds a relationship condition, Fatherly Follower 1. I note that Fox Dad has a condition of his own, Involved Parent 2, which will have to be accounted for. Pony’s parents aren’t the let-him-run-around-on-his-own type. His Escapism happens through a book or a screen.]]

Pony admits that he’d kind of like to do that. Fox Dad beams. Pony can’t say no to that enthusiasm.

His cursor hovers over the Forest Lake town map, and Fox Dad comments as he moves it.

Pony rubs his temples. Rain is beginning to patter the windows of the breakfast nook, so he goes and gets an umbrella.

They drive through the labyrinth of lawn-lined streets in their copy/pasted subdivision. Pony can tell that his dad wants an excuse to get out of here, too. Over the rhythmic noise of the windshield wipers, his dad discreetly turns down the volume on the Bacchanalia CD left in the player to continue their conversation about youth. There’s nothing here for Egress to eat, so no stylish dialogue boxes.

Fox Dad says Pony should savor this; it’s a lot harder to take a day off for any reason when you have a regimented corporate job like Wolf Dad’s. Is that what Pony wants? Pony says yeah, he thinks so, it pays well, and he respects Wolf Dad for doing it. Fox Dad smiles at that, but just with his lips. Pony looks out the rainy window, adds that he’d love to work in forensic accounting and ferret out troublemakers and cheats, the people who take advantage of the system to scam people. It isn’t untrue, and he thinks his dad will want to hear it.

The real truth is that Pony wants to be someone else. He wants a different body, a different history, a different mind, a different personhood. He wants to have been someone cool and interesting and alive, like Ruby, or even Axel. When what he really wants is impossible, the future becomes likelihoods and probabilities, not things to strive for with all his heart.

Pony tries to articulate something like this to his dad without disappointing him. He tentatively says that it might be hard to keep his hair long in a corporate job, and maybe he’ll just try accounting while he keeps looking for something new. Or, Fox Dad suggests, he could become a musician. He’s quite skilled. He could play in an orchestra, or even start his own little ensemble. Pony makes a quiet sound of imagining it. Fox Dad adds that he’s just saying there are more possibilities at his age than Pony maybe realizes. Pony says that he’ll think more about it.

Ms. Ban, the owner of Little Ms. Tea Shop, is wearing a much fancier apron than Fox Dad was this morning. He’s plainly jealous. Pony and his family have been coming here since he was a kid, and they all know she won’t spill about him showing up on a school day. Some green tea is just what he needs when he’s “under the weather,” anyway.

As they await their mid-morning tea, Fox Dad peers at Pony’s screen and asks how you “claim a Node,” anyway.

Like Axel, Pony is prompted with little AR nodes as Egress reads the tea shop. There’s one right in front of them: a tea ceremony challenge where he’ll claim the node if he can follow all the rules properly. Pony’s a natural rule-follower; he accepts the challenge, and Egress learns something about his preference profile.

But — oh no — a troop of yellow badniks file into the tea shop! These ones have binocular headsets, WALL-E looking little goons. They’ll be attempting a tea ceremony of their own, with a different set of rules and rhythm cues! Can Pony throw them off and complete his own challenge?

“we’re imps too.”

Activate | Hamhambone

[[My co-player’s suggestion was English vs Japanese style tea ceremonies. basically they’re playing a rhythm game. I add an obstacle condition to account for: Yellions-1. Follow the increasingly-complicated protocol, find harmony with the rain, savor the subtle flavors correctly, and collect points!

Strive with Studious 1, +1 for Fatherly Follower: Fox Dad is helping out, keeping him on beat. He also rolls with advantage from his Theme Music light die: Activate!

Goal: Claim the tea shop as a Node by passing the rhythm game!

Danger: The Yellions break stuff in the shop!

10+: Full success! Pony nails it and avoids the danger. I get to take a bonus when I roll 10+, including reducing a condition: I clear Pony’s Spill 1 condition as he finds confidence in a win!

The final total is 13: for this game, whenever I roll 13+, I keep a Score die for later.

I also happen to keep a 5 on this roll, which is a Clock match. I take that cue to mark a Strife Specibus for Pony.]]

The Yellions are a challenge, but Pony’s an expert at music and etiquette and self-discipline and drinking tea. At the climax, Pony hops down from a precarious shelf, floating like Princess Peach, and clinks teacups with Fox Dad as his foot touches the ground, toe-first. (the Yellions spin helplessly on a lazy susan overstacked with cups…then they poff away.)

Pony is rewarded with XP, a new Node, and (to his confused excitement) UMBRELLAKIND as his new Strife Specibus, whatever that is.

[[Conditions: Rueful Rolemodel •, Adversarial Ally •, Fatherly Follower •

Trauma: Overwhelmed •

Light Dice: [Theme Music], Dark Dice: 3]]

[[Clock: 4, Score: 1]]

September 7, 2023

Ruby: Be the gamer teen.

Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 3

It’s Thursday morning, April 13, in a rural North American unincorporated community called West Clowncrest. The sky is bright and clear, the chickens are clucking, and Axel Xemnas has called in zir strategic reserve of chips to take today off work for gaming. It’s Egress beta day, baby.

Axel wakes up fresh from dreams of riding balloon animals in a frightful parade. Convoke is down, which irks zir. Ze goes through multiple tech support pages, speed testers, IsConvokeDown.com, in an itemized sequence of failsafe steps. No details, and no one knows what’s going on. At least ze isn’t the only one having problems.

Ze installs Egress on zir cracked-screen old phone with the industrial case anyway. With an early morning and time to spare, ze reads carefully through the TOS and EULA, notes the danger words ze expected to find plus a few ze didn’t, and accepts immediately. Ze knows what ze’s getting into. It feels right to be prompted ENTER NAME and to type it without hesitation: AXEL XEMNAS. It’s the truth.

[[Axel also starts with two Relationship Conditions at 1 each. Perfect Pawn is Pony, zir pliable partner for schemes, raids, online goofs and tricks, and seed money for Entrepreneur Things. (He can afford it.) Resented Rival is Ruby, whom Axel respects as a canny and worldly sparring partner and Posting Nemesis, yet is frustrated by again and again when she doesn’t play by zir rules. Axel’s starting Trauma is Pessimism. Ze has been trained by life so far to expect the worst. It’s the undercurrent of zir aspiration to Win at Capitalism and beat the shitty rigged game ze’s been forced to play.]]

Axel rents a single-wide trailer, the lease cosigned by zir Boss at Pizza Palooza. Ze got the hell away from zir family last summer and moved across the county to West Clowncrest, which ze mathed out as the perfect cost-to-income ratio at zir hungry rung of success. West Clowncrest is a community that loves its honking harlequins, its pratfalls on billboards and lawn gnomes in jester caps, and Axel hates this. Ze tells zirself that spite motivates the grind. This and other varied INTERESTS may be gleaned from zir spartan bedroom, hidden through blackout curtains from the morning light:

  • a PULL UP BAR in the doorway, with LIFTING WEIGHTS and PROTEIN POWDER stacked atop an EXERCISE MAT

  • a perfectly made bed with fitted alien-print sheets, a forest green duvet, and freshly fluffed XENOMORPH DAKIMAKURA, a thoughtful holiday gift from Pony

  • a GAMING RIG, lovingly assembled from parts, but not the expensive or good kind; there’s a laminated printout taped to the side of a primo rig with resplendent neon guts exposed, to keep zir hungry

  • a small figurine of THE MENSWEAR WOLF, the fashion influencer whose sardonic takedowns and vtuber-narrated guides to looking dapper have somehow leaked out of furry circles to become the only thing DunkZone shows everyone now, apparently

  • between posters for the 2001 American films EVOLUTION and HEIST, a motivational photo display of NOG, ROM, and QUARK, each captioned with one of the FERENGI LAWS OF ACQUISITION

  • a brick-and-particleboard BOOKSHELF displaying titles such as MEDITATIONS, LOGIC: A USER’S GUIDE, and ANTHEM, as well as ACCELERANDO and THE WINDUP GIRL. The top shelf hosts the one GOLD MEDAL ze won from track last year, plus a thumb drive full of ACTUALLY GOOD MUSIC from Ruby, an act of mercy as much as a gift

  • a collection of RETRO GAMING PARAPHERNALIA for resale, presided over by a floor-to-ceiling stack of mint condition WOODY WOODPECKER RACING for GAME BOY COLOR boxes, collecting value until Woody’s fortunes turn around and Axel drafts into first place

Hardworking sneakers, efficient cargo shorts, and zir best alien t-shirt are the ideal Egress beta day fit.

[[Oracle: Axel captures something useful, right? 10+ (6 over 5): Yes, and - roll a motif. Knowledge. That gives me an idea.

Oracle: Does Axel somehow have foreknowledge of the game? 10+: Yes.

I draw a motif for more details. Veil. Disguise. When you part the veil, what stares back?

Oracle: Has an entity been feeding Axel information over anon messages? 7-9: Yes, but. It’s been in the form of weird spammy [Success Win Motivation Bizdev Founder Mindset] texts from a list ze doesn’t remember signing up for, but probably did.]]

I also roll a soft move to add some drama. Reveal an unwelcome truth: not only is Egress down, there’s been a wider local power outage. Rolling a 3 on Axel’s Just as Planned Edge, I determine ze has a backup power brick fully charged to keep zir phone online. Ze also stows a Grendeldew energy drink in zir pack, sweaty and flat from zir unpowered minifridge. Gamer’s Choice Light Dice: 1.]]

Axel has been turning over last night’s latest message from 💹 like a puzzlebox. There’s more to the signal than the oddly-worded motivational text, or the background image of a bodybuilder gazing at the horizon: it’s the context, the metadata, the time…why do they always arrive at 9:46, AM or PM? Following a hunch, Axel ignores everything in zir room and goes out to the hall closet. There’s a box of used hiking gear that zir Boss donated when he helped zir move in. (He’s so based.) Along with water bottles, good boots, and maps of the area, there’s a pair of good binoculars in a leather carrying case. Ze opens Capture Mode and nabs them.

[[But what will Axel’s first Link be? I roll another motif to get some ideas, and get Knowledge again. “Did you stop to think if you should?”]]

Axel decides to experiment. Can ze Link a relationship that isn’t physically present? This mystery 💹 messenger seems to know a lot about the game already. Ze pings it with a message of zir own, trying to relate to it on zir own terms.

[[Strive! Aspirational 1 to try something different. Roll with disadvantage from 💹’s Esoteric-2 obstacle condition.

Goal: Discover who 💹 really is.

Danger: Glitchy result.

6-: Fail. Hard move: something breaks. Axel takes a condition, Glitched Grid-1. 💹 adds a new obstacle condition, Integrated-1; it now has a way to talk to the game. Axel gains +1 Dark Die for failing a roll, and an additional DD for hitting zir Key of the Mundane, for 2 Dark Dice total.]]

Axel gets a weird error message. The app thinks that nothing was successfully linked, the task is marked incomplete, but the glitched link won’t leave zir grid. After a long minute, the system messages continue as if nothing happened.

Wanting a better view of the area to work out what’s going on with the power out, Axel loads up zir backpack and hops on zir bike.

The UFO Museum is one of Axel’s only oases in this Clown’s Hell. Even the outdoor A&A Market is presided over by a red-nosed monolith, looming over the otherwise healthy bustle of commerce. But getting to the Museum would mean crossing the highway by bike, and Axel knows that’s how ze’ll die. It’s only safe to reach on work days at Pizza Palooza, when ze has access to the delivery truck. The trails are there to bike to Pizza Palooza, or south to the old Reliable Pencil Factory (now defunct), or out in the sticks to the firewatch tower the forestry service built by the stream. The Fire Tower is where Axel’s headed today.

[[Does Axel encounter anything mundane along the way? motif: Tower. Alliance (Solitude). A beauty in a tower, calling, greedy for affection.

I smiled a lot imagining a fandom exploding in speculation when I drew that. Oracle: omfg does someone have a crush on axel??? Match dice: flawed premise. That’s not what’s going on here!

Oracle: does ze meet a coyote who wants attention? No. It’s a dog! Just a normal dog. I give it two conditions: Friendly-1 and Parched-1.]]

While biking past the abandoned grounds of the pencil factory, a scruffy white dog comes sniffing around Axel. It doesn’t have a collar, and it looks pretty thirsty. Axel doesn’t get along with loud, messy, slobbery sheddy smelly dogs. They make zir neck tense up. But there’s nobody around to hear the story of the uncle’s dog who bit zir and what a busted and sad and messy failure that all was; there’s just this dirty thirsty dog who doesn’t have any people. Axel squeezes zir arms, groans, and in a moment of weakness, pours the dog some water from zir bottle. He laps it up — how quickly it became he — and soon he’s licking zir hand, and Axel is cringing as ze pours the water, and ze realizes that this dog is going to bound beside zir bike all the way to the stream, and further.

The sturdy wood-and-metal tower rises up five stories from the little ranger station on the brushy bank of the stream. Axel lets the dog sniff around and lap up some water upstream while ze activates Capture Mode. Egress interprets the terrain around Axel’s phone…and a patch of AR waypoints blossoms, little geometric shapes rotating on the trail and above the stream. There’s a promising reel icon by the water’s edge: a fishing minigame. Sounds like fun!

[[I give this area a condition, Marked-1, thinking Axel might Strive against this condition to claim the Node. Just As Planned: of course Axel brought a fishing rod, and on a 2 there’s no drawback.]]

…But Axel’s more interested in exploring how the game works and where it breaks than playing as designed. Ze walks downstream, meanders up a trail, and watches the target area expand on the phone Egress interface. More AR waypoints appear: in a hollow log, on a root over the river.

[[Strive! Methodical 2 to enact a plan logically. Marked-1 sets the fiction but doesn’t alter the roll.

Goal: Understand how Nodes function.

Danger: Game state escalates challenge.

6-: Another fail! Axel isn’t as good at experimenting as ze thinks. +1 Dark Die, now 3 DD.

Hard move: take something away. While ze was exploring, the unattended dog chased an AR trail and went missing! Not only that — some badniks have appeared!

“i’m an imp.”

A whole troop of scowling magenta minions started roaming the area behind Axel’s back, and I add a condition Magentimps-1 to represent them. The dog is alone, and hungry, and probably really scared, all behind enemy NPC lines…Axel takes a condition, Guilty-1.

This was the moment when Axel clicked for me as a player. Only after fully embracing what a huge dork ze is does the golden door open to also being kind of cool. I write PUNISHED “VENOM” AXEL in my journal.]]

Theme of a Punished Gamer | Hamhambone

Axel’s face is grim as ze bellycrawls to the stream to avoid being spotted. The doggy is gone. He didn’t ask for this. And Axel’s to blame. Ze will have to outwit the imp patrols if ze hopes to catch the dog’s trail.

Axel cracks the Grendeldew from zir pack and quaffs it, bringing zir to 2 Gamer Dice. Ze wipes zir upper lip and daubs mud around zir eyes. Lucky for the pup, sneaking missions are Axel’s specialty.

[[Strive! Dangerous 1 to sneak and roll and flip. +1 Gamer Die; roll 3 and keep best 2.

Goal: Find where the lost li’l doggy went.

Danger: Spotted by Magentimps.

7-9: Success with danger. ]]

Axel sneaks like a dead-serious airsoft teen through the woods, hiding in the trees and peering with zir binoculars, mapping enemy patrol patterns on zir phone, doing cool operator hand signals for no one in particular. Ze sneaks upstream in stealth, CAMO PROFILE 30-35%, until ze sees a pile of leaves marked in unmistakable canine fashion. The trail leads up to the ranger station. But when ze dashes up some loose scree - [!] - Axel is spotted!! A patrol of stout Magentimps, decked out in papercraft armor, raise rolled-up newspapers as they advance on zir!

[[There’s a Calypso mechanic, designed to build momentum and surprise, called the Clock. It starts at 6, and each time you keep a die on a Strive roll that matches the Clock, you roll a motif and narrate a soft move inspired by it. When you match 1 and “count down” to 0, you make a hard move that shakes things up. I rolled a 6 on that last Strive, so it’s a Clock match! I wanted to use these to introduce new Egress mechanics organically in the fiction, so I had this whole idea to key different in-fiction game systems to each Clock result until 0. The game developed in a different direction, but this first one was still a game mechanic reveal as a soft move: show a new facet of your gear or abilities.]]

The Egress UI warns Axel that IMPS are approaching, and that STRIFE is imminent!

[[Does Axel have some firecrackers from the A&A in zir backpack? Just as Planned says yes, but! I roll a 4+, so they’ll backfire or betray zir.]]

With the imps approaching, Axel’s camouflaged eyes narrow. Ze draws out a whole pack of M-80 crackers and holds them up like a royal flush. Read ’em and weep. They’re captured and stored in a newly unlocked Strife Slot on the Object Grid: PYROKIND. The firecrackers can talk to Egress now, and they have a lot to say.

Clowncrusher | Hamhambone

[[Strive! Dangerous 1 to throw live explosives while being thwacked by imps.

Goal: Scatter the imps!

Danger: Hurt in the battle!

6-: …another fail. Look what they’re doing to my little pogchamp. Axel takes +1 more DD (now 4), and takes harm as established: ze adds Scraped-1 to zir conditions. (That’s 5 out of 6 condition slots: if ze takes another, even a level 1, Axel will be taken out!) Not only that, Axel misunderstood how Egress makes the world: these Crackers attract burly Magentimps with their noise and smoke. Axel is soon swarmed by them, aggressive and on full alert! I raise Magentimps from 1 to 2.]]

The scene ends on a GIF of Axel being walloped by one magenta menace’s rolled-up newspaper, then another, then another, as more imps arrive in an endless loop. Claiming this Node is going to be tough!!

[[Conditions: Perfect Pawn •, Resented Rival •, Glitched Grid •, Guilty •, Scraped •

Trauma: Pessimism •

Light Dice: Gamer Dice •

Dark Dice: 4]]

August 25, 2023

Pony: Be the fashion teen.

Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 2

It’s Thursday morning, April 13, in a major North American metropolis called New Neo City. There’s a cool late spring breeze, the dogwalkers are out, and Ruby Goslyn has woken up early to play Egress before school.

Ruby wakes up fresh from dreams of flying and falling. Convoke is down, which is weird, but she doesn’t have time to chat this morning anyway. Once the software is installed on the fancy smartphone her mom gave her two birthdays ago, she clicks through the TOSes and is taken straight to a cosmic-looking title screen.

[[My idea for this phase of play was for each PC to introduce one of the core game concepts in detail: Objects, Links, and Nodes. Once I gave one of these actions full screentime, I could just say “Ruby captured an Object” in the future, which is what I did next.

Like Pony, Ruby starts with two Relationship Conditions at 1 each. Passive Protege stands for Pony, whom she likes and knows she can get to do stuff with (or for) her, but doesn’t show much initiative. Annoying Asshole stands for Axel, whom she’s been close to for a while but is totally fed up with right now after some bullshit ze said about her clothes. Ruby also has a Trauma at 1: Grudge. When people wrong her, she holds it for a long time. Lately, she’s been holding enough to weigh her down.]]

Her room is smaller and more crowded than Pony’s, and messier. Her fourth-story window, next to the radiator, looks out into the neat tiled courtyard of her Grandma’s apartment building. Her variety of INTERESTS is on display.

  • a poster for the 2001 French film AMÉLIE, framed alongside a poster for the 2000 French-Hong Kong film IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

  • a shrine-like triptych of melodramatic DARKWING DUCK FAN ART, created in homage to a DOCFUTURE VIDEO that speaks to her on a deep level

  • her obsolete ghost-themed MACBOO, accompanied by STATIONERY and marked with color-coded notes about HISTORICAL FASHION YOUTUBE DRAMA

  • a FIVE-DISC CD PLAYER she won from a school contest: the BTS, BLUR, and BEYONCÉ CDs she then had to buy to go with the CAKES DA KILLA and ZEBRA KATZ she had already

  • a CRT TV with DREAMCAST, a gift from Axel after ze deduced through close questioning that she had never actually played SPACE CHANNEL FIVE

  • a secondhand DRESS MANNEQUIN (a gift from Grandma), loosely wearing a PLUSH GOOSE (a gift from Pony) in homage to BJÖRK’S SWAN DRESS (a gift to this world)

  • a PILE OF UNWASHED CLOTHES on a FOLDING CHAIR

For now she only needs her wardrobe, which she studies while picking out clothes from a wheel of thought bubbles, then spins into her new outfit and poses. She does this every morning.

Waoh | Hamhambone

She reaches the Capture Mode interface, but doesn’t Capture anything: her Grandma forbids her from taking photos of things in her home for any kind of social media or game or whatever, and also roasts her without pity for looking at her own bedroom through her phone. Ruby flees, defeated.

She stops at the Snack Corner by the train station for a [MiceTea], and while the older teen wearing a Rick and Morty shirt whom she knows from church rings her up, she spots a flier on the rack. It’s a promotional poster for the touring production of Bacchanalia, that corny satyrical musical Pony is into for some reason. Smiling, Ruby takes it, and once she’s down in the station, folds it into a paper crane as she waits for the train. She clicks it in Capture Mode and it’s gone.

[[While Ruby is on the train to school, I roll for a Drama Move. These are just Egress’ PbtA GM Moves, with some encouragement to roll them randomly and be surprised. I roll someone takes notice. But who? I roll a Those Who Act motif for something nice and mythical and get The Ruler of the Hosts of Air. A holy and energetic ruler under a starry sky, bearing a wicked shield. Cool! I roll a Personality and Goal as well: I believe + devotion to great work, with a goal of sacrifice. We’ve got something. You have to know what you’re giving up and why for it to be a sacrifice.]]

Convoke is down, but the encrypted messaging app Thoth is still online. Ruby realizes this when she gets a message from an unknown sender. For maximum security, supposedly, Thoth represents users as an iconic avatar rather than a text cognomen as Convoke does. Ruby’s icon is a sphinx playing trumpet. The unknown sender appears as a shield emblazoned with a stylized gust of wind. (The style evokes the FORMAL HELMET on Pony’s shelf.)

Ruby is deeply weirded out and peers around herself on the train car, but no one is giving her a second glance. If someone saw her capture the crane at the station, they’d be long gone by now. She doesn’t reply. WTAF…?

[[I give her a Condition named Unsettled-1 from that hard move.]]

She’s rattled as she emerges with the wave of commuters at Centennial Station. Downtown skyscrapers loom as she turns the corner into the campus building.

Ruby attends the Kristin Chenoweth High School of Performing Arts and Musical Arts and Arts, a public magnet school and one of the most fiercely sought after in the city. They usually just call it Chenoweth. Former lunch-debtor students like her attend the same classes and work in the same studios as the heirs of the rich and famous, although “side by side” would be naive: the school has a byzantine and often quite formal social hierarchy of clubs, cliques, mentorships and rivalries, under the active direction of a feared and powerful Student Council. It’s an anime high school.

[[The goof for me is that there’s a whole complicated system of rules and obligations and Cromartie/Balamb/Shujin/Asticassia drama that everyone takes deadly seriously and which Ruby is totally not read into but has to engage with to get anything done. I assume people are constantly blocking and scheming and dueling and betraying each other over hall passes, but writing out good details was harder than just imagining the vibe and giggling. The Egress fan wiki would have multiple pages describing it. For the game, I call this an Obstacle Condition: Social Labyrinth-1 at the start. I’ll keep the labyrinth in mind for the fiction, but it doesn’t directly affect rolls yet.]]

On her way into homeroom, walking past an interior garden and an uplifting mural as well-dressed students flow around her, Ruby discreetly checks Egress again. The app has moved onto a new screen.

She puts her phone away with a frown. She’s stumped.

[[Soft move: unwelcome truth. Ruby doesn’t have any IRL friends. Not anymore. She can’t think of anyone to Link with.]]

Chenoweth is an arts high school, but fashion design has been the black sheep for a long time. Its students are poached for other tracks in the games of more powerful departments, and the one who aren’t leave on their own, demoralized by the winnowing out of their little program. Actually, by this time in April, she’s the only one left. Her and the program head, Ms. Wheeler, into whose otherwise empty class-lounge she files to begin the day.

[[I draw an elemental motif to find out who this person is. Queen of Diamonds: Empress. Generosity (Generosity with Strings.) Parlay from a position of power. Elemental motifs are information-dense for oracles, and that Thesis (Antithesis) represents opposed interpretations to pick or roll for. I want Ruby to have a character who’s genuinely on her side, so I use Generosity. Wheeler is a deposed Empress with a fallen kingdom, but she’s still a program head, and she uses her toehold in the labyrinth to fight for her students, even when there’s only one.]]

Wheeler looks up from portfolio review on her colorful abstract-furniture throne, smiles slightly. “I don’t have to make up an excuse for you being late this morning. Nice!”

Ruby, still Unsettled, takes a seat where she can see the door. “haha. yeh”

Her teacher picks up on it, sets her green tea down. “What’s up? I see you thinking hard.”

Ruby’s shades flash. Oh no — a supportive adult! If she finds out about Egress and the weird text and everything else, she could send her to the office. Send a letter home. Call Grandma. No way in hell is Ruby going back to that therapist. Gotta throw her off the trail.

“…i’m good.”

Still in Capture Mode, Egress plays tense music and overlays locks and strings over Ruby and Wheeler. A charged exchange of probes and evasions plays out in dialog boxes.

[[Strive! Roll Teenager 1 to keep an authority figure off her trail.

Goal: Conceal Egress from her.

Danger: Wheeler takes an interest in Ruby’s trouble. [building off her Unsettled Condition.]

7-9: achieve goal, but danger hits. Ruby doesn’t mention anything about an alternate reality game, but her evasion only makes Wheeler worry Ruby’s in trouble.

Not only that, Ruby finds that having a sincere conversation while Egress is active has unintentionally recorded Wheeler as a Link. I am thou, thou art I…]]

The room grows shadowy, and the music tremolos. Suddenly backlit by color, she appears in this light as a splendidly attired peacock sovereign: the [EMPRESS of THREADS].

And just as suddenly the interface fades, and she’s back to normal. Wheeler sips her mug of tea. “It’s 8:02 already. Let’s get our day started.”

[[In addition to her new Link, Ruby hits the Key of the Mundane for describing her school life, plus her room decoration and interests. +1 Dark Die, taking her to 1.]]

In a break between classes, dreading the looming threat of a call home, Ruby compulsively checks Egress again. Now that she’s been made readable to the game, could she somehow use the Link system to shut this down, convince her teacher she’s fine, and make this go away? An attention-grabbing icon blinks on the Link Grid UI…

[[Conditions: Passive Protege •, Annoying Asshole •, Unsettled •

Trauma: Grudge •

Light Dice: [Perfect Drip]

Dark Dice: 1]]

August 17, 2023