Last night, I ran the second issue of Worlds in Peril with Davey Cruz , Jonathan Davis , and George Austin.
Short version: This system is fantastic. And my players are the best.
Longer version:
I'm a lucky GM to have these guys as players: they think narratively, know the PbtA system better than I do, and enjoy playing to fail. While in this game we want them to succeed, these guys can get behind a hard move.
What're the characters like? What're the powers like? What's the world like?
They call themselves The Catalysts, looking to change the world.
We're doing a single power source for powers; pills chosen by the characters that grant super powers. We have:
Deja vu, with the power to edit memories.
Sinon, with the power to control devices.
Ectype, with the power to make perfect copies by touch.
My players don't want to status quo, and neither do their characters. They've decided to pursue different projects, alternating for each player. Last night, they pursuit stopping crime.
Turns out, stopping guys with guns is no fun even if you have super powers. Especially if they work for a super villain who took the "fire pill", and is constantly covered in heat and fire and whose skin is firey coals. Burning Man, they called him.
Sinon used gangsters as a weapon through misinformation passed into their phones, but was badly wounded. Deja Vu "adjusted" the villanious Burning Man, letting BM come to terms with loss, while Ectype ... saved the life of a mortally wounded bystander by stretching his powers and making an altered copy.
After a few fitting in moves, they decided stopping crime isn't quite for them. Instead, Sinon is going to change the world through SCIENCE, planning to make a teleporter. Ectype will copy it -- and food and medicine -- and Deja Vu will make sure everyone is cool with it.
Or so goes the theory.
Next time: Will the gang complete the science plans? Will they lose their humanity in a sea of erased memories? Will they remember their assistant -- and made man -- Adam M. Prometheus exists and is confused?
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Cool!
ReplyDeleteDavid Hawkins Thanks! What would you do with such powers?
ReplyDeleteWell, as an EIC and "thinking like a Villian" I see potential to try and manipulate this crew to my side, perhaps acting a beneficial patron.
ReplyDeleteI would build an android that was abale to shape change to mimic humanoid appearances. They can make the world a better place making copies of this android to replace world leaders, which can all be reprogrammed with the required directives.
Deja Vu is scary, and the very nature of their powers has some serious moral implications. To rewrite everything I have ever experienced and ever loved, and essentially create a whole new person based on some other template, well... to me that is morally reprehensible.
Between the three of them they could easily manipulate the perceptions of most of the population and institute huge conspiracies.
It's as awesome as it is scary.
David, yeah, Deja Vu is incredibly scary. I don't think I mentioned much about Adam M. Prometheus. To test their powers, they:
ReplyDelete1. Find someone in a coma, who was never going to wake up. (Deja Vu)
2. Copied him (Ectype)
3. Gave the copy new memories, and helped him wake up (Deja vu)
4. Ensured there was a paper trail, so Adam M. Prometheus has a credit history. (Sinon)
that was before this first issue. These people are powerful. The players are -- all -- appropriately scared for Deja Vu, and we'll see if the power corrupts him. Perhaps he'll be retired to being a threat.
How did Deja Vu know. with out a shadow of doubt, Adam was never going to wake up?
ReplyDeleteSomething just crossed my mind. Can someone who can edit memories, put actual memories in the correct order... or repair damaged ones, effectively treating Alzheimer's?
So far, he can't change brain chemistry. Just memories. They are (fairly) sure the original Adam has sufficiently bad mental problems -- non physical ones -- that he won't wake up. Of course, that's the characters thinking it as opposed to the players... who knows what the next issue will reveal?
ReplyDeleteSo, fixing Alzheimer's is probably really hard for two reasons: 1. brain chemistry, rather than memory stuff. (yes, this requires a level of dualism.), 2. He's not that precise.
Adam M. Prometheus isn't quite right. He has ... problems ... and his memories don't quite line up with each other.
The Catalysts have some serious problems that I expect will bite them, unless the EIC forgets.
The EIC should use his smart phone to schedule a reminder. ;)
ReplyDeleteDéjà vu's powers are nuts. Please excuse my going down an entirely different game design path, but I believe that Jenna Moran has stated the entire reason imperators, nobles, and anchors have blanket immunity to miracles used against them directly in Nobilis 1st and 2nd edition is because she imagined what a Noble of Memory could do to the coherence of a game. I could not find the direct quote, but I did find Dr. M writing some other incredible stuff about memory powers: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?544032-Nobilis-Third-Edition-Anticipation-Discussion-Thread-volume-2&p=13017527#post13017527
ReplyDeleteDéjà vu is a pretty messed up dude. He thinks he's died, met Death, and traded away the memories of his childhood, the circumstances of his death, and more for a second chance and for the pill that gave him these powers. He is incredibly evasive of the parents he has no memory of and lives under an assumed name to distance himself from the past he doesn't remember. He's by far the youngest member of the group (maybe 20 or 21?) and really has very little support network outside of the other Catalysts.
He's a pretty smart dude (and has learned a lot of skills and knowledge from the memories of others), and so far can conceive of no mechanism that would allow his powers to work the way they do. His brain can't possibly process other people's memories fast enough to be aware of the things he's aware of, nor does he think it physically possible to transmit information fast enough for him to over-write the memories of others such that he's effectively invisible on a crowded street, and yet these things come easily to him. This, his brush with death, and his missing memories can put him dangerously out of touch with reality.
Despite that, I think he's gonna be alright. He's casually talked some frightening game, but outside of a few exceptions (Adam M. Prometheus first and foremost), he treats the most egregious applications of his power like a deadly weapon: only to be used in self defense or in the defense of others.
So, our conversation here got me all curious and stuff and I found this...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.iflscience.com/brain/watch-chemicals-turn-memories-first-time-has-ever-been-recorded
Wow. We do live in the future. And it is a technocratic one.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Austin I also appreciate the additional background.
ReplyDeleteA good friend once to me that are memories and with out them we equal nothing. I've found this to be true to a certain extend, and Deja Vu still scares the dookie out of me, which is a compliment.
You know, each of the three scares me......
ReplyDeleteThen the wiki article on alzheimer's, most of the language is beyond my limited medical and neurobiological vocabulary, but the distinct relationship to memory is there.
ReplyDeleteI'm considering the capacity of healing of the groups powers, as opposed to their capacity to control and influence.
Some very neat possibilities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochemistry_of_Alzheimer%27s_disease