Category: Legacy: Life Among the Ruins

Legacy Play Report – Olympus Run, 3rd Session

Session 3

Lots of changes!

We agreed that we needed to explore better Olympus issues and work to solve them. So, we zoomed in the narrative and drew the megalopolis map, where this session would take place. Factions and Threats were added. Praxis was now represented by The Sentinel, a young and charismatic war leader, and Kommittee had a veteran Hunter, one the most respected voices of the collective.

A nice step was asking where were the Characters at important points of their Families’ history. Another question was if they met the previous Characters and what were their whereabouts.

Both Families started over Reading the Wind and working hard to locate Needed resources. Also, the Kommittee retroactively used This is a Civilized Land in settlements in Olympus ruins. While, Praxis immediately unleashed Voice in the Wilderness to denounce rival settlements.

This was an action heavy session, as it can be expected from the Characters choice. They fought off Mutants (and deeply regretted having said that the were very unpredictable foes in the prompting). Stopped a convoy with stolen drugs, and covered up their action to share the Resource for both Families. Also, hunted down a mercenary on the Pathfinders’ payroll. Hectic, but cohesive action.

By the end of the session, it was becoming clear that Praxis creed was too radical and bound to fail on a larger scale. On the other hand, the Kommittee was quickly becoming the power behind many thrones in the Homeland . No Turn of Ages at this point. Both players earned an advance for their Characters and left their Families better as they got it in the beginning.

Legacy Actual Play Report – The Olympus Run

Second Session

Characters remained the same, and the new Threat was that huge glyphs were being carved out in Homeland by some sort of light from the skies. Players were now more aware of their Family needs. I also adapted a little of my story weaving to this aspect, also providing them Fronts / Threats that could solve their Needs.

The end result was that they started chasing one the Praxis heretics, now called Pathfinders, into the Wasteland. The heretic had uncovered an alien ruin and managed to activate its defenses (energy based drones, like the Agent of the previous session) and orbital weapons (the mysterious glyphs).

The confrontation was a long and heavily roleplayed scene, with a good dramatic punch. In the ruins the Remnant found out about its alien origins. I was very satisfied with the pace of the session so far and that it focused more on the characters and the lore of the land. But, in any case, they did come out of the session with some Resources harvested from the ruins and some more immaterial ones gained from the proper handling of the Herectic (Justice and Motivation, for example).

On the Homeland, the Kommittee approached different Factions outright selling their services as hired guns. This resulted in a massive contract to reclaim the Megalopolis, christened Olympus. The Kommittee player, in a rare canny move towards his fellow player, spent his Treaties with Praxis so they would first, galvanize the Homeland population towards the Reclamation, and second, spearhead the Claim by Force. Praxis obviously failed to deliver and the Reclamation just stirred Olympus mutants in far and wide raids.

Another quick Turn of Ages followed, 12 years. Praxis managed to keep on being hated and harassed by the people they tried to save. But, at least they managed to create a Haven of sorts in Olympus, New Athens. And the Kommittee had clearly some Kharma to account for, for they were contract bound for 12 years to the Factions, since they failed to deliver them Olympus from the mutants. Not all enforcers bowed their heads to the contract and the house split, with one of the halves remaining in Olympus to shape New Athens into a communist model society.

Legacy Actual Play Report – The Olympus Run

The Set Up

Prompting players to each add an element to each question.

“What was the world before like?” – a colony on a terraformed frigid planet that could be Mars.

“What is the homeland like?” – covered in cold-resistant red vegetation, vast expanses.

“What signs of the old civilization remain?” – ruins of a megalopolis overran by mutants, an enigmatic ruin from alien species.

“How did it fall down?” – sudden loss of control of mutagenic elements, that altered overnight the majority of flora and fauna.

“What monsters and hazards did it create?” – wilds are covered in an alien red jungle, ruins crawling with mutants (reference The Fly, by David Cronenberg).

Act I

The families: Followers (Praxis – denouncing any pre-fall technology as evil) and Lawgivers (Kommittee – a communist collective of enforcers).

And the characters: The Remnant (the founder of Praxis, himself a liquid nanotech borg), The Sentinel (protector of the dispossessed).

First Session

We drew the map of adding threats and locations.

The group ended up hunting down one of several inhuman agents that left the megalopolis towards one of the settlements (New Venetia, on a large green water lake).

The agent was much more human in appearance than any mutant, and came with a messianic message: “embrace the future” – an ironic corruption / evolution of Praxis creed.

The agent was neutralized by The Remnant, but with high collateral damage. The rest of the session saw the Kommittee unearthing the source point of this creed and the characters confronting the corrupted Praxis chapter and its alien corruptors.

The Turn of Ages was mere 15 years and saw Praxis splitting in heresy and suffering persecution from the common people, due to the collateral damage of their conflict. The Kommittee oversaw the creation of Crossroads, a fort in the wilds, on the ideal junction of possible roads.

Rulewise, transition between character and family focus was smooth. Families suffered for the focus of the story on the Threat. Players also forgot to take their Character’s Advancement in account.