Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

Campaign spitballing

4 posts / 0 new
Last post
Linger Linger's picture
Campaign spitballing
So I am starting a new campaign and I am having a little difficulty narrowing down how it is going to start and what it will be about. I was hoping to get feedback/suggestions etc. My players have pretty much made their characters and will be playing Firewall agents on Luna (most likely Nectar). They run a small private investigation company of sorts- but seem intent on exposing corruption etc. The idea I have is that the PCs are contacted by Firewall to discover the location of a young Firewall scanner who has gone missing. the scanner is something of a mystery figure in that he lives several secret lives (he is like a Lunar Dan Draper without the smoking). He is an undercover coolhunter who works as a bartender at a high end night club. He is constantly following new street fashions, memes, movements and even designer drugs for the company he secretly works for. He also, of course, works for Firewall to track dangerous memes and trends as a scanner. I want him to be kind of like a Matryoska doll- the more the characters investigate the more they find. I want him to have a life he has kept secret even from Firewall- a past that he somehow kept secret even during the intense Firewall vetting process. I am still trying to work that part out which is leading to some problems. Vijay (the scanner) has been murdered by a gogo dancer/pleasure pod at the nightclub. She herself was "hacked" (through her puppet sock) to kill him. She arranges to have her boyfriend, a griefer and ID thief, get rid of the evidence which leads to him getting some unsavory characters involved in trying to cover things up. So far things are ending up like a game of Fiasco honestly. But anyway I am still trying to work out who the puppeteer is. Some elements that have struck my fancy: a) a serial killer from pre-Fall who has been condtioned not to act on his impulses. He now designs petals and spreads his dark desires that was- experiencing what others are doing when they send him their XP. b) a xenodeist splinter religion who believes that the Pandora gates must be protected/destroyed. Perhaps the serial killer above actually works with them spreading the religion and exhuman ideals/morals through his petal. c) other memes he (Vijay) was tracking (other than the new drug craze or rise of a weird fad religion) could be a political movement like the reclaimer movement gaining steam among the youth population or a rising obsession with a special one of a kind celebrity morph (like the Pantheon morphs described in Transhuman) that may, when investigated, be a carrier for the Watts-Macleod virus. Maybe even a weird variant that has made it somewhat sentient. Anyway- like I said. Lots of spit balling. Does any of this make any sense? I understand that I will have to trim all this back to a manageable level or space it out, but like I said- this is spitballing and I hope I can bring all together into a cohesive whole. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
I like the setup. A good
I like the setup. A good background plot; I would probably go with option (a), while using (b) and (c) as red herrings or background goings on. One question is why the scanner's backup has not kicked in. Clearly somebody must be feeding false lifesigns to his policy (maybe the griefer?) Or maybe this is all a serious attempt for the very alive scanner to get a Firewall crew to go down his rabbit hole: he got involved in something serious and has to play along as a mole, but if a rescue team barges in and saves him his cover is not blown. Your description made me think of my vignette http://eclipsephase.com/comment/33908#comment-33908 - this might be another part of the campaign.
Extropian
Linger Linger's picture
Actually...
I was thinking about the backup insurance- and absolutely was thinking the griefer was using his skills to keep the scanner from being resleeved. As to your other point- I thought about this all being a ploy by the scanner- he sets up his own death so that he can go underground. I kind of like the idea that he is undercover but for some reason cannot tell Firewall. maybe something to do with his past. However, understanding that he may be in over his head he sets it up so that a "trail of breadcrumbs" willlead Firewall to where he is- just in case. Sort of like insurance. I am going to check out your vignette.
jcoltkelly jcoltkelly's picture
or option d.
Option D. The puppeteer is contracted by an earlier version of Vijay himself. He can still be a sick serial killer "This wasn't part of the deal Blackheart!" but the entire murder & disappearance is tied into the secrets he's hiding from firewall and some plan that he needs to start putting into place now. Maybe Vijay recently changed his backup insurance to a new carrier, so they would reboot him into a different habitat and with a fake Mesh ID so he could... [INSERT MOTIVE HERE]. Anyway I think you have a great hook here and it's all about where you want the campaign arc to go. You don't even have to decide what Vijay is up to until after your first few sessions. One helpful question to ask is "Why Now" what else is happening in this world that lead to these series of events?
- I've only been with the company for a few weeks now, but I've seen shit that would turn you white! - Winston Zeddemore