What does it mean for a PC to use an improvement to take the Quarantine playbook? Should it be allowed? Should the player establish this aspect of their past prior to the decision or is it ok for it to be a spontaneous discovery?
What does it mean for a PC to use an improvement to take the Quarantine playbook?
What does it mean for a PC to use an improvement to take the Quarantine playbook?
Perhaps you disappear into a newly opened vault and return, wise with the knowledge from before.
The applicable rule is “your job is to play your character like a real person.” Switching to the quarantine is legit only within those bounds. They make it pretty tough! It’s between the player and the MC to make sure it works, case by case, if it even can work.
So sure, it’s allowed, but it’s not a given.
Well that’s a pretty official answer
What if you roleplay coming across the bunker where the quarantine was quarantined and he/she suddenly has a flashback?
What if the Apocalypse wasn’t real and the Quarantine is inside an all-encompassing VR simulation? Sort of like the Matrix, they weren’t supposed to remember their previous life because they were plugged in but now their old memories are rushing back, and are these other people even real?
That’s a cool idea, but I think it might upset players who may be a little down on the “It was all a dream” trope. Last time I made a big change in my campaign like this, my players rebelled and it killed the game. In hindsight, I probably would have complained too. I offered a “do-over” but the general feeling was that it was too late.
When you open your brain, it’s a two way street. Sometimes the ghosts of the past flood in.
Stuart McDermid You’re assuming that the MC has final say on what it means. The player should be forced to explain why they’re switching to a Quarantine. If the other players don’t like that explanation then they are always free to renegotiate with the table. (Or maybe the Quarantine is just a crazy person who believes they’re in a simulation of the apocalypse.)
Patrick Henry Downs
You are totally right. I remember the debacle that constitutes the game I mention but was thinking in terms of a very old school way of playing where the GM decides everything. That was kinda how things went for me in the 90s as we jumped back and forth between WOD and DnD. Thank goodness for story games…
The only way to get the cryo-sleep to work was to pump the soldier’s soul out. They’re theoretically stored in an isolation bottle in the lab so that they can be put back, but shit, when your PC got close, the soul-vacuum just yoinked her soul out and slammed it into the quarantine’s body. No wonder she’s disoriented. But what happened to Tammy?
I was thinking that one could play somebody who is secretly a quarantine and has been keeping it a secret, and for some reason has been avoiding trying to get his friends out
“for some reason has been avoiding trying to get his friends out”
I’ve seen two campaigns with quarantines and no one ever thawed out a team member. 🙂
Ah, but a major theme of a campaign with a quarantine is the people in the tubes. It seems like those people are a defining aspect of the quarantine, even if they aren’t getting out. To me not being a quarantine while having the past means leaving those tubes and the facility behind.
What if you’re a Quarantine and you want to take your fellow tubemates as followers or a gang as an improvement?