The Player's Side of the Screen

I'm gonna start divvying up the posts into "dreamworld" and "real world" segments, now, because that's a simple way to manage them. There isn't a whole lot of intercrossing between the two, so they shouldn't be hard to line up right. So without further ado, let's have a little more of what happened outside, while Paige was dreaming away...

So, last week, we started to dip into Paige's ventures in dreamland, as everyone on the outside tried to figure out what had just happened. We met a new character, and Janice started dream-crashing.

Kicking off this session, we brought in a new character, played by a friend whom I'll refer to as Torta. She's the newest out of all of the RPers, having had only a small exposure to roleplaying in general. She's done some extended freeform, but nothing with any semblance of rules. Even though I run Mecha (a rules-lite system) pretty light on the rules, that's still more of a structured game than she's ever played. Torta plays Ivy, a young Godblind who makes her way into the story via an unusual method...

At this point, Paige's arc took a rather nasty turn, with her facing off against a sort of psychic invader from the walls of the Free City. Now, she was comatose, with the whole group watching over her. The question is: where will this take everyone?

Well, folks, it's been a while. (My apologies to you, Kureaa, I know you've been dogging the mech recaps with great zeal. They're back!)At any rate, we now enter the period of the story where, after promises of marriage, things become most dire for the romantic couple. They also get a bit trippy.

Well, folks, sorry about the delay here. I've just kicked off NaNoWriMo, which means that I'll be even more busy from here on out! But that's okay, I'm gonna get that done and continue to post regularly, and hold down a part-time job alongside my freelance web design. So, then, on to the RP recap! We had a nice bit of character development, as well as a very unexpected development...

Well, then, let's get started on this somewhat belated post! Hopefully some of you readers have still been attentively hanging around, waiting for this one. It's still not terribly spectacular yet...I may have tried to push the plot a little too fast, resulting in a need to slow down and develop characters a bit more strongly.

Plot Summary
Katsuo and Paige talked mechanical stuff, and Janice had a weird dream and a brief chat with Commander Rowan.

It finally came time to kick things back into gear, as far as this campaign went. I opted, for a few different reasons, to enact an in-game timeskip of about three weeks. In that time, the Godblind have settled into a manner of organization, under a leader, with a loose hierarchical military structure. Their immediate goal is to break into the Heavens, and the main characters have been given the mission of working in the frontline of that approach. Eventually, those three weeks will get filled in via flashback, to explain some of the bits of how the characters got to their present point.

Well, folks, sorry about that delay! I, er, got sidetracked a bit, including a lengthy Civilization IV session, crushing my enemies. (I guess it's time to bump up the difficulty...) Anyhow, this is the final update on Mecha, at least for a little while, since the group is on hiatus. We'll be starting back up again once people get settled. I need to start hatching plans for what's happening next in the story...

Hoo boy. So, we've had our good chunk of drama take place already, what with Nathan getting outed partially by his abusive older sister Lynn. Did I mention that Lynn had covertly slipped out and away, while all of this was happening? Because when people went to check around, she'd disappeared. Did I mention that Nathan was the illegitimate son of two gods having an affair?

So, with all the action happening, and big reveals in the past, it was time for the fallout to begin. Paige started crying over her drastically-altered perception of Nathan, and everyone headed for a patch of the Free City to repair up. Lynn and Nathan came along as well, rather suspiciously escorted, and everyone just plain hunkered down. And then Janice had her crazy dream, and woke up, and that's where trouble started...

Like I said last time, things started gearing up for another fight. The mech pilot (the cold, efficient gal) who'd helped the players before was now...on the other side, it seemed, coming back with the Protector whom Katsuo had bluffed away. Paige was on call, ready to jump in for backup, but Eric and Ty were otherwise engaged by some fighting in their area. (I RP'd that as a separate session.) And things were about to get a lot more involved.

Well, it was time for some action. Soon, anyhow. The troops were all piling together to investigate the University, to see if they could find out what had become of Paige's love Nathan, amidst all the chaos of rebelling Godblind. So they all converged on the University from different directions. Ty (the annoying kid NPC) took the North, Eric took the East, Katsuo and Janice went in to investigate, and Paige sat back, ready to rush in at a moment's notice.

Well, folks. Now that everyone woke up in the Free City, it was time to take a lay of how things ran. Oh, and guess what? Time to introduce a new character!

So, everyone's headed down to the Free City, which is where things sorta calm for a little bit. Sorta. Of course, nothing is ever quite so straightforward in this game, especially when it comes to the "calm" bit...

So, a combat where people got beat up pretty heavily, and a mystery NPC who showed up to help out. And then killed the enemy pilot. Things are starting to get interesting. By this point, I had a lot of major pieces in play, and it was time to start pushing things together, and making big things happen.

Well, I finally crossed that line, more or less. I only barely avoided a Total Party Kill in this latest session of Mecha. It was rough, seriously. I'm one of the GMs who doesn't fudge or re-do dice, and I had an unfortunately lucky run of the dice, to the point where I was seriously holding back. I think it turned out well in the end, though. I learned a lot about how combat runs in this system, and that'll help a lot.

So, we have the players for my group, their characters...once everything came into place, it was time to begin play. Mecha uses an interesting framework, in terms of story. It tells the GM to frame the action in terms of scenes, just like in a mecha anime. The consequence of this? Most of the players' action ended up being a lot more to-the-point than what I'd observed, running or playing in more traditional games. Each player got a scene, which let them set up their character; after that, we would start to bring the character threads together.

Well, I finally kicked off that game of Mecha that I've been wanting to start. Successful enough that my idea of trying a one-shot morphed into running a mini-campaign with my players. So, that'll mean updates on how that goes. (Still unsure how I'll wrap up Spark of Fae, but I'll figure that out...we ran into the great barrier of "the semester is over", and I don't know exactly how to get in touch with all my players.)

This also marks my first time running an organized game over online chat. It definitely lends a different quality to play, and it is incredibly nice to have an OOC and an IC channel. Keeps table chatter segmented off, away from roleplay. If only I could do that in real life...

(as a side note, I'll be using the "dgr" tag to keep track of my "Dystopia and Giant Robots" posts)

The Line-Up
We have a fun mix of players, including one who played in Spark of Fae. (As before, I'm using pseudonyms for privacy's sake)

• That would be Turniphead (previously known as Kenshi...there's a story behind this one...and yes, it involves Hayao Miyazaki), the calm and collected one. Not so much of a newcomer to RPGs any longer, she's eagerly delving into the creative aspects of the story. Plus, this system is a little simpler to manage than 4th Edition.
  
• Kureaa is probably the newest to RPGs. She's played in a game of Swords and Wizardry, and is active in freeform roleplaying. Kureaa is very socially outgoing, with a strongly engaging personality.
  
• Panda (yes, there's a long, long story behind that one) has been acting as DM for the previously mentioned Swords and Wizardry campaign, and both she and Kenshi have been active in a 3.5 D&D campaign. She's easily the dry wit of the group, and owns a Jayne hat.
  

I worked with each player, introducing them to the setting ("Revolution Deity Godblind", found in the Mecha sourcebook) and then working with them to make characters that engaged the world. Revolution Deity Godblind is a dystopia of sorts: the gods who live Up Above smite down people who rebel against their rigid framework of rules, which serves to keep everyone in line. It's not a bad life per se, and is marketed as a good existence for the common citizens. Not the players, of course. I told each player to give me a "Drive" for their character, something which they hold in secret from everyone, something which would break the bonds of the Living City's society. (The Living City is the quasi-sentient utopian city where everyone lives.)

The Characters!

• Janice, played by Turniphead, is the unhinged artist, who has just barely managed to keep off of the gods' radar. She has an affinity for painting with the color red, and goes off on demented rants to herself. She is a rather reclusive character, keeping tabs on her art very carefully, scrounging together extra canvasses in secret.
  
• Paige, played by Kureaa, is the petite, cute redhead mechanic-in-schooling who dreams of falling in love, as opposed to the arranged marriages of the City. To this end, we developed an NPC, Nathan, the skilled cellist with whom she shares feelings. The closeness of their relationship has been impacted severely by the threat of the gods' intervention.
  
• Katsuo is the nerdy mech technician (he works on the suits of the Protectors, the City's police force, who own the only legal mechs), who is utterly fascinated by mech technology. He hoards all of the data he can, even though the extent of his research is in highly forbidden territory.

As you can see, we have quite an eclectic group. So far, they've all somehow managed to slip beneath the gods' radar. Well, they find out just how that happens in the session to come...

Next time around: robots, romance, and rebellion.