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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.

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