Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: Play Reports – Page 3 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Ok!

Ok! So now we’re up and running! We’re doing a little collaborative world building in Primal Pathways over at Role Gate.

Please check it out or join if you’re familiar with the Legacy system!

https://www.rolegate.com/ref/vainur/primal-pathways

Morning Star: Session 1

“Morning Star” is a campaign of “Generation Ship”. we ran our first session last night. here’s how it went:

Call to Order

* Major Petrova of the Enforcers of Harmony asks the Maintenance Collective to fix the regular brownouts in the Left Bank. They accept.

* Verity of the Keepers complains that someone in The Hole is preventing children from accessing educational subsystems, resulting in widespread illiteracy. They ask the Puppeteers of trade to do something about it – build a school or something. Mr Vyapura refuses, giving Treaty to everyone. Verity then asks the Enforcers, who accept.

* INC-07 of the Maintenance Collective lays out the problem of finding the Bridge, but notes that they will likely need assistance to bypass some of the security systems. They ask the Keepers for help. They accept.

* Mr Vyapura of the Puppeteers of Trade says that they need raw materials to supply their factory workers and ensure there are sufficient goods to meet the market’s needs. The Maintenance Collective agrees to help.

The Enforcers decide they will just seize an area in the Hole from the local residents to set up a school – they’re scum, and they don’t own anything down there. They go in dumb and hard, and are promptly ambushed by the Hole Gang. The survivors flee; the bodies of the dead are dumped at the entrance to The Hole, missing a few body parts, which have been added to Igor’s collection. The Enforcers are now short of manpower and Need Recruits.

The MC reveal research to discover a new power system in the dark decks. They set about dismantling it and reinstalling it in the Left Bank to fix the brownouts (solved).

Zoom in

The MC then put together an expedition into the dark decks to find the bridge. At this stage, they’re keeping the other factions in the dark about the drone army that they believe is guarding the way (and moving towards the City), but they reveal that they know that the bridge is DNA-locked so it is only accessible to members of the bridge crew (who are a different species who look human, but aren’t). Fortunately, they have a solution: they’ve cloned a dead helm officer, Lt Elijah; force grown his body in INC-07’s incubator; and dumped his mind into it from backup. So, if they can find it, they should be able to use the controls. Should.

An expedition consisting of INC07, Verity, an Enforcer named Johnson (good at security, bad at charm), a Keeper team of “hatchbreakers” and an MC team of bodyguards for Lt Elijah head out into the dark decks. First up they encounter a team of scavvers, disassembling an important dehumidifier unit which keeps the City’s atmosphere suitable for human life. INC-07 persuades them to stop, but has to leave the bodyguard team behind to repair it and keep them from coming back. The scavvers head back to the City, grumbling (they’ll no doubt be back in future).

Continuing onward, they get lost, but find an area of the ship which is warm, with the background throb of machinery. Verity identifies it as an environmental processing plant, which could provide a surplus of water, if it could be piped back to the City. If only they could work out where it was…

They finally make it to the area of the bridge – brightly lit, well-maintained corridors, with working panels and good air. As they open a bulkhead, they’re met with a rattle of automatic gunfire. INC-07 risks being shot to identify the threat: a heavily armed and armoured walker-droid – one of the drone army. Verity realises it is a Colony Defence drone, designed as a contingency to defend the colony against threats after Worldfall. They adjust the holy iconography of their vacc suit to match that of a Colony Defence officer, allowing them to convince the droid to stand down and obey their commands.

The droid identifies itself as PD-17. It has orders to defend the bridge against “unauthorised boarders”. These boarders appear to be human (uh-oh), and have been active for some time. PD-17 itself has been active for 743.497 megaseconds – about 23 years. A search and destroy team is currently hunting for the boarders (uh-oh again). Colony Defence has become active as a contingency as shipboard security is inactive and possibly compromised.

The characters have some theories on how this disaster happened: scavs, data corruption, the current residents of the ship not being on the passenger manifest (the idea that there might be actual boarders on a deep-space sublight sleeper ship is dismissed as ridiculous). But however it happened, they have a problem: that drone army is probably looking for the City. And when it finds it, there will probably be a bloodbath…

PD-17 escorts them to the bridge, and the drone guards there (including a tracked point-defence model) stand aside as Lt Elijah is scanned in. Elijah checks his panel and notes that the Morning Star is a long way off course. The others examine their surroundings and debate what to do. INC-07 has found the security panel, and may be able to add people or groups to the passenger list, meaning the Colony Defence drones won’t attack them. But who to add? Specific groups, or all humans? The latter would allow scavs to damage the bridge area. In the end, INC adds only the MC and their Listener friends; they’ll sort out what to do about the humans later.

After the group returns from the bridge, the Enforcers dig up the old Colony Defence protocols in an effort to find a solution. They’ll need to have one before the drones arrive. Fortunately there’s mention of a kill switch, though they could just designate the City as the Colony and so refocus the drones on outward threats. But to do that, they’ll need to travel back to the Bridge to do some hacking…

So last Friday we had our second session in the lands of Zion (did I told you the Homeland is called Zion?

So last Friday we had our second session in the lands of Zion (did I told you the Homeland is called Zion? Because the Homeland is called Zion =D). A little short maybe (less than 3 hours) cause one of my players grew quite asleep (these 20-old-youngsters have no energy at all!), where our heroes explored the overseas Marsh (they were still traumatized from Mansions of Madness) Research Center, and they discovered they weren’t alone, both over and underwater. It turned out that the Research Center was created to observe and control the activity of The Maw (the huge underwater volcano), and that there were pre-Fall marvels able to advert the eruption; the twist was that a sort of cult put itself in charge of observing The Great Red Eye and preventing it from opening and bringing ruins over the land “with the majestic, terrible power of a god”… and no, I wasn’t thinking about Sauron at all, really! And yeah, mainlanders could feel safe, everything was under control: the Dancers were a bit restless but nothing concerning (“Dancers? What the heck are these Dancers?” It turned out there were some serpentine silhouettes moving in the magma, each about 3 to 5 meters long; “Oh please, not dragons too!” said Nicholas, and he doesn’t know he putted something drake-ish in Zion’s future!) the Ferret (their High Priestess… and it was fun when they understood that cult’s titles came from the names on the ancient laboratory coats) already went in the Sacrarium below for the rites to close the eyelid again, could they leave the temple now and left them in peace, please?

Well, the problem was that the Ferret was dead, killed by some Scourges (the machine-hybrid monsters that caused the Fall), so the characters descended in the Research Center searching for the Sacrarium. However, after a clash with a pair of Scourges, they discovered the monsters took control of the underwater labs, so they decided to fall back and prepare a large-scale assault. After this we zoomed out… and it was midnight, and I was “losing” a pair of them to sleepiness, so we stopped there.

I think I must “free” myself from habits given by more traditional RPGs and become a little “faster” at characters level, spending less time on “first-person dialogues” and putting the spotlight on important parts (but without forgetting “fluff” here and there which give color to the world and it is the funniest part). Oh well, one step at a time, I guess.

So, first session finally happened!

So, first session finally happened! It has been fairly short (a pair of hours, then we were quite sleepy… Damn you, real life!) and my players had some issues in wrapping their head around the concept of “Family level – Player Level”, but it went fairly smooth. Just to recap Families and Characters:

– The Sages (Cultivators of the New Flesh): a feudal society of scientists, where the king is decided with tests tailored on the actual needs of the Family. Grace is a Envoy concerned with the growing separation between the Sages and the people they reign over;

– The Silver Seed (Synthetic Hive): androids created to help humanity managing the environment, they are now dispersed around Zion (the Homeland) and guided by the directives of a Singularity. RONn13 is a Seeker which is searching for a way to improve the defences of Family members;

– The Baston Family (Order of Titan): a military corp of honorable fighters, they defend Zion against Titans, foreshadowing their actions with a misterious psychic connection with the monsters. Nicholas is a Hunter, and he’s guiding the Family in a blood hunt against some dangerous creatures that threaten their homebase;

The Gargantia (Pioneers of the Deep): part of the Tritons (genetically enhanced humans for operating above and below the waters), they are a sort of nomadic warriors with isolationistic tendencies. Ren is a Reaver living in a marsh out of Zion. She is currently trying to steal something important from a dangerous faction (it hasn’t been decided yet)

So I started with two brief scenes involving two characters each (the predators Nicholas is searching has its lair in the marsh Ren is living in; Grace and RONn13 witnessed the delivery of a strange creature’s corpse they’ve never seen before – it was a hint of a threat, the horde of genetically altered creatures added by Cultivators) and then zoom out to family level and asked them what they wanted to do. Apparently the large creature wasn’t enough concerning for the Sages because they preferred to solve some issues with the people they rule over (they don’t think scientists are the most qualified to rule a settlement), but the large earthquake caused by The Maw (a large underwater volcano near the shore and about to explode) was enough to catch everyone’s attention. Now they’re looking for the answer at a simple question: how do you stop a volcano erupting? Meanwhile, something else is approaching…

So a short session, they found some hint about a research laboratory nearby (a point of interest added by Gargantia) and we ended our session with our heroes arriving there and discovering they’re not alone (DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUN!!!).

I must admit, PbtA games are a bit “intimidating” because they require a bit (ok, quite a lot) of improvisation from GM, but in a exhilarating way (like a roller-coaster), and I already GM’ed some Dungeon World (and I read a lot about issues GM often found) so I’m quite confident I will be able to tackle it with a little effort. Maybe my only issue at the moment is that there seems to be a lot of things to do (four threats – one for each Family; four “issues” from the roles they choose; and some other complications they decided to introduce during the preparation process – and I’m ok with it, I like how they put their marks on the fiction without any push by my side) without the “focus” offered by more “traditional” rpgs; so I’m a little afraid to overwhelm them with things to manage, and in trying to avoid doing that, giving not enough time to the “funny things” that are about to happen or, even worse, put them out in a sequential way (“Ladies and gentlemen, after last week’s volcano, this episode’s threat is… “). But I am quite sure we’re in for a great ride with this great game (I think I will not be able to express my appreciation for Legacy enough)

My Sunday group had our first full session of Legacy: Life Among the Ruins last night.

My Sunday group had our first full session of Legacy: Life Among the Ruins last night.

The Legacy playbooks generate so much content to contend with right from the beginning. In addition to the four Threats (a plague too efficient and dreadful to be natural: The Twist, a crude tribe of raiders using advanced tech: Dark Omega, a settlement dominated by an unknown force: The Edge, a derelict corporation on the hunt for your body parts: The Reclamation Project, we had history (the hunt for the Homeland’s worst criminal) & literal fallout from The Fall (debris still raining down from orbit – the next starfall forecast by the Enclave to hit the settlement of Ashbourne within the next week) to immediately deal with.

As someone who has run or played scores of Apocalypse World sessions I have several thoughts, questions and cool moments to share, but no time at the moment to write it all up just now.

This post will serve as our placeholder & I’ll add more as I’m able.

Long story short: There are some very interesting differences between this game and Apocalypse World and other PbtA games we’ve played & I’m looking forward to our Legacy run.

Have you played Non-Compliant?

We did yesterday. I ran it at a local convention for 2 Cutthroats and 2 newcomers to Legacy. And it is “a murder machine to test the nerves and wits of everyone involved”. But really… a GREAT adventure – people were tense, engaged, hooked.

The countdown clock and the stakes of defeat worked to make every decision, every action heavy with consequences and pregnant with possibilities. The Characters felt epic and glued together nicely. Blackwind (and his Last Nation) in special shone as a figure out of legend!

Be warned though… Non-Compliant is HARD. All Role Moves and 3 Death Moves were used. We had 7 Family Moves, with 3 Zoom Ins, and still the clock hit 11! Players should be warned of the quite real possibility of defeat and total party kill.

Thanks to Carlos Fagundes Rodrigues, Arthur de Andrade, our friendly Cutthroats, and Gustavo Tenório for the amazing game.

After tonight’s finale, the next Age was determined to include an Arthurian Camelot complete with questing knights,…

After tonight’s finale, the next Age was determined to include an Arthurian Camelot complete with questing knights, a Mafia-like society, and a city suspended on a disc above a massive colosseum of rib bones.

Awesome fun all round.

Question:

– how often do MCs award Surpluses outside of specific moves?

– trials and fortunes add to a Family’s stats but there seems no real way they decrease. Do these just keep growing age by age?

We have one more session to go in our First Age.

We have one more session to go in our First Age. So far it has run 5 sessions + 1 session of family and character creation.

The world we have created has evolved organically due to the family playbooks chosen (Order of the Titan, Uplifted Children of Mankind, and Servants of the One True Faith) with the nature of Fall taking on a spiritual/fantastical aspect.

The world Fell due to the machinations of four scientists who strive to advance humanity in different ways. They are:

– Sotilary, who sought to elevate humanity to the heavens

– Iloseta, who sought to make humanity into an apex predator

– Leolyn, who sought to make humanity one with the earth

– Anbadon, who sought to expand humanity through technology

These four (called Oni) are now sufficiently advanced to be considered gods, each with their own altered people to serve them.

The Fall came about when the Oni managed to breach the sky and connect to the realm of inspiration and dream beyond, which is called Clarion. In an attempt to build a bridge between the two worlds, they found a way to attach worldly desires and suffering to the beings who inhabited Clarion and brought them crashing down to earth.

Play Report

Play Report

We had our first session today. Overall, it was positive. Our GURPS player decided he liked PbtA and wanted to try more of it.

Family and character creation made some excellent story threads for me to pull on, and everyone really got into creating our homeland.

During play, we got along well and moved ahead easily. But the game wasn’t without it’s hangups. Here’s where we struggled:

– Starting Tech and Data was confusing; we didn’t know if there was supposed to be any and they began with 0 in both.

– Surplus and Needs were easy to determine, but when to get a new surplus or need didn’t seem like it was covered in the rules. I winged it.

– Gear was awkward. If a family doesn’t have gear as an asset, do they not get that at all? (If you don’t select a weapon, do you not get any weapons? We had a couple of unarmed people.)

– Not having a “discern” type of discovery move felt odd when players tried to look around the scene. I decided it wasn’t important to the game and let perception and stealth just happen, unless they were under pressure.

– The options for Fierce Assault almost always included added chaos and terrible harm to foes. So much so that a player commented that more interesting choices would benefit (I suggested he choose them. Lol)

Finally, as predicted, the difference between families and characters felt awkward at first, but I started to get the hang of it. It’s still confusing why players would ever venture out to fight a force when their families could just do it, but maybe they’re meant for smaller activities? Our group assaulted a camp of cannibals while zoomed in, and it felt like the family may have been the ones who should have done it. Choosing between which would act was difficult.

Most of those things stemmed from our inexperience with the game. Overall, we had a ton of fun and are looking forward to our next game.

Trying out a one-on-one game of Legacy with a friend of mine! Pretty excited about it!

Trying out a one-on-one game of Legacy with a friend of mine! Pretty excited about it!

We’ve created an alien world that in the Before was terraformed into something livable and earth-like, until “The Stars of the Creators” made planetfall (aka ancient space stations and satellites fell out of the sky). Now, thanks to their sturdy construction and near-limitless futuristic power supplies, wherever these “stars” embed themselves in the world, microcosms are terraformed and made livable, while the expanses in between are “The Shimmer” — dead, prismatic alien sands and atmosphereless, black starry sky that must be navigated in winter clothes and atmospheric helmets.

These livable, terraformed bubbles are the result of the advanced life sciences of the Creators: weather control, atmosphere generation, gene manipulation. Examples of this miraculous tech can be found throughout the wasteland in the form of bioprinters and transmats, rain machines and solar cells, genelocked facilities, vehicles, and weapons. They’re not the only product, however: communities of Uplifted (they prefer to be called Cybrids) dot the Homeland, products of the Creators’ ancient agenda — as do the Chimaera, misshapen and feral genetic aberrations created by the heavily-damaged Fallen Stars.

We’re going with a sort of “post-medieval+” technology level, like something out of Ghibli or Final Fantasy. The default look of things is tunics and swords and shields and farming and carts, but the families are already rediscovering the sciences, maths, and technology of the renaissance, so the tech is leaning forward from the Middle Ages. The “+” in this case are the things like flatbed trucks that peasant communities use to transport their goods, the commlinks that can communicate anywhere within a mile or so of a Fallen Star, or the futuristic lamps that illuminate the communities after dark.

My friend chose to play the Uplifted Children of Mankind, called the Children of Loki. From their Before, Fall, Threat and Family History choices I created the Inheritors of the Garden-Star (in control of most Creatortech) Covenant of World-Made-Flesh (human-centric zealots) and Skyblotters’ Wake (intelligent carrion bird barbarians) as Factions to pad things out. He is going to take the Envoy out for a spin for our first Age, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m excited to see how things play out, one-on-one.