First up, I'd like to say "welcome" to all my new subscribers. I've had a whole bunch of people subscribe over the past few days, and I'm quite grateful for it. It's nice to know that people are reading my story and enjoying it.
Right now, though, I'm in the middle of a bit of meta-gaming, where I've paused the game and I'm working out what is the two new characters I've introduced want, so that we can weave those elements into the game as they become available.
Last week, I worked out roughly what Summer wanted, and today, it's Albey's turn.
Albey Dagan
Albey is less of a mystery than Summer was, as he's already been more vocal in the scenes that he's been in. We know, for example, that he's had run ins with Sentre agents in the past. As a result of that, one of his close friends is dead, and the other is missing.
I also already determined that he uses the Outsider archetype, so he's going to have trouble dealing with authority figures. He's going to be a bit of a loner, which will no doubt cause a bit of friction with Eamon. Personally, I see this as a good thing, as not only is intra-party tension a big part of The Electric State RPG, I also like to see it as it prevents the party from acting as a gestalt entity (but that's a rant for another day).
But while all of that is useful information, none of it counts as a goal, per se. So, like I did with Summer last week, I dug out my GameMaster's Apprentice Base Deck cards, and used the random event generator on those to sparked an ideas. Here's what came out:
The three word phrase is: "Identify Material Weapon". This immediately gave me the idea that Albey has had more than a run in with Sentre; he actively hates them, and is looking for a way to inflict as much damage on them as he possibly can, as payback for killing his friend and who knows what other reasons. He doesn't expect to bring Sentre down, but he can certainly work towards causing them as much pain as he possibly can.
This is one of the great joys of solo gaming: generating a random string of words, and having your subconscious mind create all sorts of connections with the elements that have already been developed in the plot prior to this. I was thinking of Albey's goal largely in isolation of the other characters, but as it turns out, this dovetails nicely with the other two:
Eamon is looking for his former girlfriend, who is also a Blackwelt operative, who was gathering intelligence about the Pacifica military operations near Vandenberg Air Force Base. And, as we already know, Sentre wields a large amount of influence over the Pacifica military.
Summer is devoted to a utopian cause that wants to free the populace by tearing down the neuroscapes, which are Sentre's primary product.
So, while none of the character want exactly the same thing, they all heading in roughly the same direction and that's good enough for me now. How they go about dealing with their almost shared goal remains to be seen, and it's bound to generate some friction, but - as I said before - this is a good thing.
Now, that's not a bad longish term goal, but I think that Albey needs a shorter term goal as well. As Jonah and Tristan Fishel write in their book, The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying, the five rules of proactive roleplaying are:
Each character should have multiple goals;
Goals should have varying time frames;
Goals must be achievable;
Goals must have consequences for failure; and
Goals must be fun to pursue.
Albey's already said that he's there to guide Summer through the desert on her way to Santa Clarita, because he owes someone a favour. But what if it's more than that? What if he wants to get clear of this part of the desert because there's too much heat between the survivalists, the military, and Sentre right now? What if he's somehow pissed someone off and they're hunting for him, so getting out of the area is a way of saving his own arse?
That feels like a pretty good short term goal. His fear of something bad happening to him if he's caught adds more depth to his personality, and it means that it's not only achievable, there's a consequence if he doesn't achieve it (whoever's hunting him is going to catch up and then something nasty is going to happen to him). And finding out whether he escapes from them or not is going to be fun to pursue.
Now, we don't yet now who that person is, or which faction they're aligned to. It struck me that the drone that attacked them in the previous episode might be controlled by whoever's hunting Albey. After all, it came towards the car wreck site from the east, and Albey approached it from the south-east. But we can confirm that with a Mythic Fate Question (the current Chaos Factor is 5):
Was the drone controlled by whoever is hunting Albey? Very Likely - 19 - Yes.
Is it a survivalist? - Likely - 56 - Yes.
Cool. So now we know that there's at least one survivalist in the area that's hunting for Albey for some reason. That's going to complicate the story in a good way, so we'll run with that and see where it takes us.
That'll do us for now, I think. It gives me enough extra material to work with to move the story forward again. The exact reasons for why, and what that means we'll discover during further play.
So next time, we should be in a position to get back on with the next episode of The Handbasket Ride. See you then.