The Veil: Cyberpunk Roleplaying: Actual Play Reports – Page 2

The Reach – Episode 0

Character and World Creation

Before the game night and basic setting:

Having been enticed into The Veil, we had decided to use Microscope (also for the first time) to give us an idea of a history for our setting. This also came out of the desire of the group to generally have a science fiction game that wasn’t a swashbuckling space opera but instead would explore a more personal space and potentially deeper questions.

I am really satisfied how this turned out, as the Microscope game of two sessions was basically about humanity spreading to the stars with a nice caveat:

As we start The Veil our universe has had FTL communications for a long time but no means for humans to travel at faster than light speeds between star systems.

This makes for a juicy situation where the Veil in this setting is of great importance as it is the thing that connects all of humanity while at the same time it means each world/culture is in reality very much isolated from each other.

(So, it’s basically like being on social media^^. If you have a crisis, people might give you sympathy, help out with resources but they can’t come and actually help you directly.)

Our specific star system is a rather rich one, held in a precarious balance of two habitable worlds that are interdependent. One, dominated by a handful of sprawls is hot and lacks in natural resources, the other, smaller,, is cold, harsher but has an abundance of water, etc.

The Playbooks:

It took some time going over all of the Playbooks with people having multiple favorites (my players are nice in a way where they want to accommodate their fellow players’ desires but this means no one really brings the ‘I want to play this one thing!’ that jump starts everything^^).

After a simultaneous gut choice we ended up with:

The Catabolist

The Honed

The Seeker

Uh. Oh. =D

The initial concepts behind the Protagonists:

The Seeker belongs to an old faith that opposed the integration of an alien life form that directly interacts with tech into the FTL com network (the seed for this came from the Microscope game) and he arrived in the system via “conventional” space travel in cryostasis 6-12 months ago.

The Catabolist is an experimental cybernetics research expert who survived a freak accident by integrating a Yavlin (the name of the above mentioned life form—and now his Omni-Tool) into himself.

The Honed is a descendant of the first settlers of the system and part of the minority culture that remains of them.

That last one, named Emet Kessner, was initially the trickiest to fit into the setting. But the solution that his people had to rely on their own physical toughness and prowess to weather the harsh environments and to be able to cope when machines failed made things come together.

Funnily enough, he now is the youngest kid of a family headed corporation that owns a major mining fleet that work the outer planets & asteroid belts. Full of ideals and being paraded around for his perfect image and living of his family’s wealth. His Jam: being a playboy.

Dr. Grant, the Catabolist (who had a run-in before his accident with the Kessner family because he came to entice a cousin of Emet who has to deal with a physical disability into seeing a future in cybernetics) was part of the expedition that met the spacecraft Andron, the Seeker, was arriving in.

Andron, after waking and having his old cybernetic parts treated and upgraded by Dr. Grant, convinced him to smuggle out a Yavlin specimen that he had locked away on-board so that it wouldn’t be confiscated and fall into the wrong hands(!).

The details of what caused the accident on the research station Belina-Calder, where Dr. Grant took the alien lifeform, are nebulous. The only thing he is sure of is that it was the station’s AI who helped him integrate the Yavlin to save his life.

Only, this also caused the violent rejection of all of his ordinary cybernetics: Currently Dr. Grant is on medical leave in Surge City, still without eyes and one-armed. Navigating his surroundings currently relies on the assimilated neurochip working on creating an abstract representation of all of the things & people connected to the Veil in his surroundings.

While the Dr. has been busy with getting a grip on his new situation, Andron has been received by city officials as he was identified as an old and high ranking member of the Church of Unbound Humanity.

He has settled in and managed to persuade a city politician of the faith to create a Garden of his Order, where he resides as a guide for people who seek help. Taking on a troubled young man as an apprentice and communing with his Order outside of this star system via the Veil, he is dormant in meditation. For what reason or mission he was sent here, he does not know, yet, as those memories do not reside with him currently (one of the wants is +memoryloss, which the Church then keeps save and to enable super long lives for humans).

His major concern right now is that Dr. Grant has vanished and he doesn’t know what has happened with the Yavlin he entrusted to him. And to keep the hot-head apprentice, who seems much more enamored with the celebrity Emet, who they saved them from some drugged-up punks that threatened to wreck havoc in the garden.

It is in this situation that Andron is rudely interrupted by his apprentice: it’s the middle of the night and there is a fireball streaking down straight onto his garden covered by a tranquility dome. Emergency lights and alarms already engulf the city outside of it.

Emet is rushing out of his hotel, seeing multiple impacts go down, heading against the crowds of people fleeing and towards the nearest explosion.

The news are broadcasting emergency evacuations and announcing several dozen unidentified Drop Troopers in Power Frames hitting the city in multiple locations.

And as Dr. Grant takes in the feed sitting in his apartment, we see out of his window across the city.

The first district flickers and goes dark.

Then the second.

The third.

######

What really worked well were the Giri-Questions. Basically beyond the concept all of the story above was generated by them and by talking how they might have come to pass.

While I also had everyone roll up one NPC with the Link move in general, if we didn’t see a PC fit to one of the Giri-questions the player used Link again.

This created the disabled Kessner woman who is convinced by the Catabolist ideology and gotten into deep trouble with her family (a miss). As well as the apprentice who has mutual Giri with Andron plus one more for saving him from his doomed garden (also from a miss^^).

And a father who will up his expectations of his son for representing the family in a proper light.

We don’t have Beliefs, yet, but we ended on the opening situation so I don’t see this being an issue. There is enough immediate crisis, tense relationships and firm worldviews to write them. Looking forward to what the player settle their priorities on!

Thoughts, themes and concerns:

So, the backdrop certainly has some weird themes of victim-less colonization in the sense of humanity spreading across the stars. Which I don’t quite know how to feel about. The Yavlin are a completely alien lifeform with a nebulous relationship to the sentient (?) AIs of human origin. Otherwise, there is not much established interaction between them and humanity.

The Church of Unbound humanity is a vague call-back to catholic monks with institutionalized memory management for their members and the Kessner/original settlers/The Honed are very much informed by Judaism (well, not the literal body image stuff but their culture in general (which I am not an expert in but the respective player is native to)).

Then there is the definite tone of “what’s best for humanity”. This is found in the juxtaposition between the Catabolist and the Honed. And the character with a disability is already caught in the middle of those two stances. This has the danger that it could veer into “what makes one superior” territory which… ugh, well. Mmh.

The Seeker is arguably more on the technocratic side of things, but then again the integration of alien lifeform is seen as sin.

This game /o

Actual Play Report:

Actual Play Report:

I hosted a one-shot of The Veil today. We had an Architect, a Catabolist and an Executive.

The Executive drove play because their session start move provided two mandatory missions.

1. Protect a visiting dignitary so the corporation could get permits to operate in that region.

2. Track down the cult leader of a socialist commune of anarcho-luddites who’s message was hurting the Brand.

Right away the executive parcelled out the work so he could get both missions done. He protected the dignitary while the Architect and Catabolist went after the cult-leader.

The dignitary wanted to be entertained, and he demanded some illegal memory recordings.. much like in Strange Days. The mission then became acquiring those goods from the seedy part of town.

Our Catabolist was an academic lecturer advocating transhumanism. He had been involved in the expulsion of another academic who followed the works of that luddite cult leader. To locate the cult, he had to reach out to the very man he got fired.

The Architect was an artist who beautified everything she came across. But she regretted a lost love, which manifested and continued to haunt her. This caused problems when she encountered figments of her past during the mission to track down the cult-leader.

Bugs:

The character sheet on Roll20 didn’t add the stat modifier unless the additional modifer field also had a value (It had to be 0 instead of blank because “2d6+2+” fails, but “2d6+2+0” works). We didn’t notice this until a few rolls in. (I’ve since modified the character sheet to put in a default 0 value in that field, but it’s still something to be aware of.)

In the playbook reference, the Executive Giri questions don’t seem right. They’re the same as the Architect.

Other Things to be aware of when running a game:

The architect needs to be rolling dice. That’s how their subconscious figments come into play. At the start of the game, I wasn’t making them roll for manipulating the environment, thinking I’d make them roll when the stakes were higher. But without rolling, their regrets never manifest themselves.

The PCs didn’t all buy-in to the Executive’s mission, so the Executive had to use Giri or Cred to get everyone involved. This is working as intended, but it feels strange when you’re used to “we all meet in a tavern” or “Here’s your mission, Go!”. Be ready to ask people to spend their Giri.

Humanity harm was a bit confusing. If there’s no Empath, when do you roll it, exactly? We let players volunteer when it comes into effect for their characters, which worked ok.

The game feels intended for longer campaigns. We had some challenges weaving the characters together and giving them common purpose in a one-shot. We started in media res, but the “Call to Action” felt forced. The question: “In this high-stakes situation, why wouldn’t the characters just scatter and go back to their normal lives?”, was never settled. It turned out the Executive’s Giri was a better call to action than the GM’s in media res scene.

All in all: The game was really good. I really like the far-forward setting with trans-humanism, persistent Augmented Reality, and all the other tropes.

Here’s our tropes board:

Creative Play and Podcast Network LLC just put out a special 3 podcast episodes of them playing The Veil.

Creative Play and Podcast Network LLC just put out a special 3 podcast episodes of them playing The Veil. This series is called “The True Love Virus”, excited to give them a listen myself and at the start they say that it’ll be reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell. All about that!

Here’s an iTunes link to the first session, which is the character building and world building:

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/creative-play-podcast-network/id924972056?mt=2#episodeGuid=https%3A%2F%2Fcreativeplayandpodcastnetwork.podbean.com%2Fe%2Fthe-veil-the-true-love-virus-session-0-%25e2%2580%2593character-building-and-small-talk%2F

APgamingREAL invited me on his channel and we played a weird inverse volcanic snowcrash-y cyberpunk setting with the…

APgamingREAL invited me on his channel and we played a weird inverse volcanic snowcrash-y cyberpunk setting with the Veil. If you’re interested in seeing the game in play – all be it for a really silly and fun, crazy non traditional cyberpunk setting – check it out!

https://www.twitch.tv/apgamingreal/v/74735754

https://www.twitch.tv/apgamingreal

On the past Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night, I ran three different playtest sessions for The Veil,…

On the past Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night, I ran three different playtest sessions for The Veil, each time with four players – mainly regulars from my D&D (first session) and Night’s Black Agents (third session) games, but also some friends of mine from another local Shadowrun group (second and third sessions).

Each time, we did character creation right at the table, which wasn’t too much of a problem since it’s PbtA and all the options are on the playbooks, with the exception of the Tags (from the second session onwards I made sure I had extra Tags handouts to make equipment shopping easier). With all three sessions, I used the Caprice setting from the old Heavy Gear RPG – it’s a megacity in a 1,800km canyon on a colony planet, run by megacorps who in turn are chafing under military rule by an oppressive Earth government. Pervasive technology, vertical arcologies spanning over ten kilometers in height, flying cars and two hours of sunlight per 26-hour day – a great backdrop that I’m quite familiar with.

Each session was rather different because of both the player mix and my choice of scenarios to fit them. The first had The Dying (phasing powers and a body that was turning into part of the Veil), the Apparatus (in a flawless female human body), the Seeker (a pacifist sword monk) and the Honorbound (a dagger-and-bow wielding avenger of the innocent), infiltrating a corporate penthouse spa to steal data and, in the case of the Honorbound, to assassinate a secondary target. Memorable moments included the Apparatus’ sex move turning a vacationing exec into an insane cultist of the Apparatus, the Honorbound battling an Earth Admiral’s GREL clone bodyguards and sparing one defeated opponent to create a debt of honor, the sex-shy Seeker spending nearly the entire mission Scared of all the naked off-duty executives, and the data center’s anti-intrusion AI freaking out upon contact with the contaminated data that made up the Dying’s body, which caused it to wipe all data and initiate self-destruct countdown. After the Seeker broke his own tenets to slaughter a VTOL full of would-be evacuees, the Honorbound was forced by his own Giri to execute the Seeker for slaying innocents – only to be stopped when the Apparatus blocked the shots with her own body in an appeal for mercy. Very intense, funny, bloody and tragic all at once.

The second session had a very traditional cyberpunk crew of the Executive (Russian accent, side agenda to impress military clients, spent entire session in her HQ), the Architect (who failed almost every roll and manifested a jilted lover as a malevolent AI that sabotaged their mission at every turn), the Honed (a pro gaming streamer-cum freelance ninja), and the Catabolist (a tech merchant who never actually catabolised a single piece of equipment the entire game). They were sent to hunt down a rogue corporate lab technician (and, unbeknownst to them, her clone), but a bad series of rolls and decisions led them to a somewhat unrelated Liberati nomad trailer camp where they made the mistake of breaking into a weapon smuggling operation, getting into a battle against gun turrets and combat frames (small mecha) and getting a dozen innocent Liberati children and their target the technician killed. I believe the quote of the session went something like “The Kindergarten is burning! The Kindergarten is burning!” The Executive, sitting pretty back in the boardroom, actually called up NPC contacts to initiate a parallel operation to the one his allies were running when she lost faith in them, and by the end of it was hiring the Architect’s jilted lover and the lab tech’s clone to replace the team and was putting out a kill order on the other protagonists…

The third and final playtest had a spiderlike Apparatus taxi pilot (disguised in a trenchcoat), the Dying (with enhanced strength and a nihilistic worldview), a sociopathic Empath gourmet chef, and the Onomastic (the guardian of a world-threatening Weapon and pursued by the Rotary Club of the future). They investigated gruesome killings in Cayonn District’s underground Alpha levels, outwitting corporate police to snatch an off-the-books SLEDGE prototype supersoldier and get themselves a chance to force a bargain with the powerful Elite Genome Labs. In the process, they drew a grand total of FIVE conspiracies close to conflict with each other. Unlike the other two games I ran on Thursday and Friday, this one did not explode into an orgy of bloodletting and destruction, and because of the complex nature of the conspiracy, we ended on a sort-of-cliffhanger with the operatives trying to decide whether or not to get involved in this Xanatos Gambit Pileup…

Also, this session was memorable for the protagonists bringing a regenerating corpse into a private clinic, prompting the unhappy NPC doctor to complain: “Not again! Do you see a sign outside that says ‘Dead Liberati Storage?'”

All the players had a good time, even the ones in the failed missions (first and second sessions) – the player of the Honorbound was red-faced with excitement at all the conflicts of honor and conscience his character was going through by the end, which earned him a record 4 XP from beliefs.

After three separate playtests I am beginning to see the potential of The Veil for running offbeat and unorthodox cyberpunk campaigns. The Apocalypse System ensures fairly fast conflict resolution once everyone gets used to how it works, and it helps that almost all the character options are listed on the playsheets (except equipment tags), making character creation fast – we had four players making characters at the start of every nighttime session and we still managed to get a decent amount of playtime before the cafe closed. The protagonist types are all rather unique – almost too precious in their uniqueness, but I can’t really complain when the array of Unique Snowflake characters feels quite awesome and empowering. The most generic protagonist types were the party in the second playtest (the Executive, the Honed, the Architect and the Catabolist) who could very well fit into almost any other cyberpunk game. The other protagonists like the Apparatus, the Dying and the Onomastic brought a lot of flavour into the games where they were played. One flaw lies in the editing, which still needs a lot of work to weed out all the typos and confusing errors in the playbooks, among other places. Finally, the use of emotional states and emotional spikes in place of conventional stats means that every player character may perform at similar levels when it comes to combat, stealth, investigation and so on, but the flavour of their roleplaying (berserker, zen meditation, overconfident fool, angsty weeper) is affected by the emotional stats instead. We didn’t play long enough in any session for any particular emotion to spike out to the maximum – I figure the Alleviate rules for dealing with maxed-out spikes would only come into play in longer games.

Special thanks to the 11 players who helped me to explore the game, credit to All Aboard Community Gaming Centre for putting up with us, a nod to the old Dream Pod 9 writers who created the imaginative Caprice/Cats Eye/Gomorrah setting that I used as the backdrop for my games, and cheers to Fraser Simons and Samjoko Publishing for creating The Veil!