The Handbasket Ride - Introduction
A solo Electric State RPG actual play report
In late 2023, Free League Publishing ran a Kickstarter campaign for The Electric State. It's a tabletop roleplaying game based on Swedish author Simon Stålenhag's art book of the same name. The campaign was a success, and in early January 2024, Free League released the alpha edition of the rulebook to the backers, so we could get started on playing it early.
What is The Electric State RPG about?
The Electric State is a game about people making a roadtrip through a world that's collapsing. It's set in an alternate history 1990s. In the 1970s and 80s, the USA went through a second civil war. New technology allowed for remotely controlled drones to replace traditional war vehicles, with the drones being controlled via virtual reality (VR).
The USA fractured into a bunch of different countries, and after the war ended in the mid-80s, the VR technology - called neuronics - was released to the general public. People became addicted to their headsets - called neurocasters - and began to retreat into the virtual world. With the Mode 6 update in early 1996, the realism of the virtual worlds became so believable that people forgot to log out, and stayed connected until they died.
So the world is starting to fall apart, because most of the population is now addicted to being in the neuroscape. On top of that, weird things are beginning to appear. The joining of minds in the virtual space is creating giant neural networks made up thousands of people or more, and these neural networks are becoming sentient in their own rights. They're taking over the remains of the drones in the real world and are starting to wander the physical world as well.
In the midst of all this, the player characters - called "Travellers" in the game - set out on a personal road trip through what's left of California, which is now the nation of Pacifica. The game is not so much about where they're going, but about the journey to get there, and what they experience along the way. It's also about the relationships between the travellers on the journey, and how they cope with the stresses and trials they all encounter.
It's a pretty dark concept, really. But at the same time, it's a deeply emotional concept that appeals to me. In many respects, Free League's games seem to embody a very similar aesthetic to the ones used by Australian convention games in the 1990s.
Travelling Solo
While official rules for playing The Electric State solo were one of the Kickstarter campaign's stretch goals, they were not included in the initial alpha release of the core rulebook. In fact, most of the setting information is currently missing from the alpha release as well.
But there was enough in the rulebook to create a new character and understand how the game mechanics were supposed to be used. There was also the beginning of an example adventure (known as a "journey" in the game) to provide enough information about how the game was supposed to play out.
For reasons I cannot fully explain, I decided to run myself through a solo game of The Electric State, using the (relatively) new Mythic GM Emulator 2nd Edition, instead of the official ES solo rules. Given a lot of the information is missing from the core rulebook, I knew that I was running a risk of contradicting the future game canon, but I figured that I could use the original art book as a setting guide, and just make up everything else that I needed from there.
Getting Started
After reading through the different character templates in the book, I ended up settling on the Investigator, and went through the normal rules to generate the character's attributes. Using a couple of random sources, he ended up with the name Eamon O'Sullivan.
In order to create a backstory for the journey, and feed that into the character itself, I decided to use Mythic's sister book, The Adventure Crafter.
The Adventure Crafter themes chosen were (in priority order):
Personal
Tension
Mystery
Social
Action
Using these themes, I rolled up the following plot points:
Social Tension Set To Boiling (Social 94)
None (Personal 06)
Escape (Action 46)
None (Tension 02)
At Your Mercy (Personal 56)
With the other themes in play, the following came to mind:
Tensions have been running high recently between Pacifica and Blackwelt. There have been a series of border skirmishes along the Exclusion Zone, with each side blaming the other for the trouble.
Recently, a Blackwelt sympathiser was trying to gain information and/or access to the Vandenberg Air Force base in western Pacifica, trying to determine the state of readiness and whether there were any security weaknesses.
Unfortunately, they have disappeared in recent days, their information drying up suddenly. Blackwelt Intelligence does not know if they have been captured by Pacifica, or they have become lost in the Electric State. The last known location was Santa Barbara, not far from Vandenberg. However, information from other sources in Pacifica indicate that the Pacifica military is aware of the operative and is looking for them.
So O'Sullivan has been hired to travel to Santa Barbara to locate the operative, and hopefully rescue them if possible.
So that makes O'Sullivan's Goal and Threat:
Goal: Find the missing Blackwelt Operative in Santa Barbara
Threat: The Pacifica military is actively looking for the operative.
I needed to come up with some more information about the Operative, like a gender, age, and name. I'm going to use the GameMaster's Apprentice Base Deck for simple things like this.
Are they female? Even odds - YES! (Exceptional yes)
Age: 20+ 1d10: 25
Name: Kate Everett
The exceptional yes result is interesting. My initial assumption is that she's very attractive, but upon further thought, I'm going to take that a step further: she's (3 + 1d6) seven months pregnant.
Is Kate an old flame? Even odds - Yes.
Is Eamon friends with her husband, Martin? Even odds - Yes.
At the end of all that, Eamon ended up looking like
Name: Eamon O'Sullivan
Archetype: Investigator
Favourite Song: Crazy (Seal, 1991)
Strength: 4
Agility: 4
Wits: 5
Empathy: 5
Health: 4
Hope: 5
Bliss (Temporary): 0
Bliss (Permanent): 0
Talent: Sleuth (You get +2 dice to Wits rolls when searching an area for clues)
Dream: Be disproven wrong about the foulness of human nature.
Flaw: You have a drinking habit.
Journey Goal: Find the missing Blackwelt Operative in Santa Barbara.
Journey Threat: The Pacifica military is actively looking for the operative.
Gear: Binoculars, Stimulus TLE-Pro
Cash: $400
Because Eamon was going to need a vehicle, I rolled one of those up, then embellished it a bit. I also rolled up the shared gear that the PC group would normally get, because Eamon was going to be a bit light on otherwise. As it turned out, he started with two weapons.
Vehicle Type: Pickup truck
Model: 1982 Ford Bronco XLT
Passengers: 5
Fuel: 12.5 gallons (25 max)
Description: Old blue/white Bronco with a white fibreglass top, and oversized off-road tyres.
Maneuverability: +2
Speed: 2
Hull: 9
Armor: 4
Traits: Heavy
Gear: Baseball bat, Handgun (Beretta 92S), Classic Gaming Drone "Wally Wayne"
I should also note here that I originally thought of giving him Little Mule, for those who remember the movie Romancing The Stone, but decided to give him a Bronco with a backseat and a canopy instead, because its more practical for a journey.
At this point, all that remained before I could start was to populate the Mythic lists:
Thread List
1-2: Find Kate Everett, Blackwelt Operative
3-4: Heightened tensions between Pacifica and Blackwelt
Character List
1-2: Kate Everett
3-4: Martin Everett
5-6: Pacifica Military
7-8: Blackwelt Military
That's it. I had a character, a very basic background, and my populated lists. It was time to start the solo journey. I was actually nervous as hell going into it, because I was worried it was going to end up like my previous solo attempts.
So, in an attempt to prevent that from happening, I made two small changes to the way I was playing:
I decided to write the narrative in first person, instead of third person like I'd done with every other solo attempt; and
I decided to accept whatever result the dice came up with first, instead of deciding that I didn't like a particular result and rerolling it (something I'd had a habit of doing in the past.)
For whatever reason, these two small changes ended up having a massive effect, as I blew through the third scene and just kept on going. Most nights I'd sit down with the intention of writing 500 words, but typically ended up with well over 1,000, and sometimes as high as 3,000.
Oh, a quick note on formatting. I’ve adopted the style of putting all the game mechanic stuff and GM asides inside block quotes (like the character block above), and leaving all the in-character fiction as the main body of the text. I’m hoping that using that style of separation should make it fairly obvious how I was running things.
So, here we go. Time to start The Handbasket Ride. I named it because the world of the Electric State is "going to hell in a handbasket", and Eamon is strapped in for the ride.
Welcome aboard.
Episode Links
Coming Soon
Episode 21
Did Episode 21 ever see completion?
I see that this series has over 20 posts, so I think it's safe to say you completely blew past that dreadful 3rd scene. Congrats! This sounds like a great concept for a game. I look forward to reading it.