Tag: Jason Cordova

An awesome surprise from Rob Ferguson, given in exchange for the extra copy of Microscope I had from the Kingdom Kickstarter.

Some thoughts on two games I have played so far this week: Technoir and Misspent Youth.

Technoir is a pretty cool game. It sets out to tell a hardboiled noir story in a cyberpunk future. Its principal mechanic involves giving and receiving Adjectives (or tags, if you will) which help drive the emergent mystery forward. I found the adjective mechanic to be terrific in a social context – it made forming relationships feel very dynamic and provided plenty of plot hooks. It was much less useful in a combat context, however. Fortunately, the game emphasizes the former. There is, apparently, a lot of interesting stuff going on in the backend, but I have yet to read the full rule book. Daniel Lewis , who ran our game, can speak more to that (and has, in a previous post). 

I’m really loving Misspent Youth. We had our first session of actual play yesterday (last week’s session was world and character creation). The game has a 7-scene structure that is highly specific in terms of what you need to accomplish in each scene. While that structure may be a turnoff to some (and, in fact, it took me a second to get used to it), within each individual scene freeform RP is the name of the game. At a certain point, the Authority cuts in with the Struggle for that scene. You play out the Struggle (using a quick and compelling system vaguely reminiscent of craps), do some bookkeeping, and then move on to the next scene. We’re still very early in our story, but the thing I grew to really love is the game’s emphasis on freeform chatter. The players were getting more and more used to it as the session went on, such that by the time the later scenes rolled around, it was like watching a little play or improv. They began to inhabit the characters, and that’s a good thing. 

Thanks to Daniel Lewis Rob Ferguson Ferrell Riley Daniel Fowler !

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this particular Kickstarter game. I was happy to see it waiting for me last night when I got home from Wednesday One-Shots. 

SO…We finally got Misspent Youth to the table. In the first session, you create The Authority, which your Youthful Offenders (Y.O.s) will be fighting against; the Dystopia which the game takes place in; and the Y.O.s themselves. 

Our Dystopia is a world in which people are defined by their debt. Upon birth, each child is evaluated in terms of their monetary cost to society. Rich children, whose parents can pay for everything, carry no debt. Everyone else (the ‘drainers’ ) gets a collar with a little AR display which constantly displays their debt for everyone to see (these AR displays can also be used as virtual sandwich boards, for working off your debt–see below). Various circumstances can add to your debt, such as small things like parking violations, or big things like subsidized university education. 

And so, everyone is expected to be working off their debt at all times. This is where the Authority comes in. Ours is a mega corp which has developed a technology, in the form of an implant in the back of your head, which allows other peoples’ consciousness to take over your body for a time. And so, a massive labor force has been created, managed by the Authority. People do boring, repetitive work all day; their bodies controlled by a corporate worker who manages dozens of laborers at a control panel. The most terrible aspect? The debtor is fully conscious the whole time, just unable to control himself. 

There are other things that make this world particularly dark. Rich people, for example, will help pay off your debt if they can jump into your skin for awhile. Maybe they want to do something particularly daring or dangerous; maybe they just think your girlfriend is hot. There are also hints of a class of super-rich ‘immortals’ who have learned to escape death by jumping into new bodies. The problem? They can’t stay in the bodies long before their consciousness has destroyed the host consciousness, making the body somewhat unusable, and so have to keep jumping into bodies anew.

As for our Y.O.s, we don’t know much about them yet, except for their short descriptions: a punk rock god; a pugnacious fighter, filled with righteous outrage; a tech geek; a wannabe goth girl; and a rich kid who is currently inhabiting a Drainer so he can document the plight of the poor. 

This was a pretty fun world creation process. I am very lucky to have a group of people who are so creative and collaborative. Next week, they will rise-up and fight the Man!

Thanks Ferrell Riley Rob Ferguson Daniel Lewis Shea Herlihy-Abba and Daniel Fowler 

For our first Story Game Sunday of 2014, we played Technoir. This was the first of two sessions. I’ll share my thoughts after we finish with it, but so far I really like it. Today’s session was about twice as fun as any game of Shadowrun I’ve ever been involved in.

Thanks to Daniel Lewis for running it!