Hi transhumans fellows! I quickly went through the reading M.Y.E. but few questions arise.
1- What are the NPCs really doing in Qurain? Did they serioulsy believe they could take back the lost city with a zeppelin, a helicopter and the good will of the few (14) crew members? Am I missing anything except they were zelous religious people? Or were they simple hiding from Go-nin pursuers waiting to sell Idris to the highest bidder? How could it be achived in the TQZ without any general mesh access?
2- Is there a way to get the players understand the backstory of the scenario except talking to Octagon that has limited information? I mean: what Idris really is (not the “usual” exurgent variant... Belt-builders ... black-boxes ... etc.).
3- How could the sentinels guess that the medbot amidst the flesh party contains an Idris copy? Unless they like to put their hands in dangerous, probably infective exurgent organic mess to free an apparently ordinary mech (AKA: doing stupid random things while “dungeon-crawling”).
4- Aftermath. Quote “THE FATE OF IDRIS: If Idris makes it out of the Zone on a device that it still controls into an area with mesh connectivity, it will immediately begin spreading itself.”. If it is so virulent why didn’t it infect the whole mesh when it had the chance before? Was it offline/dormant from the moment when Al-Mareekh retrieved it in Giza to the moment when it exits from the TQZ? If so, why was it brought online in the TQZ then? If not for the purpose of the scenario of course...
5- If PC enter the TQZ with every wireless communication offline (it’s the first thing I would do before entering TQZ: shutting down the mesh and communicate through laser link), then are they safe from infection from Idris and the blind Imam?
To my personal feeling this scenario suffers for being conceived for a convection one shot where the main scope was: wearing strange morphs, having different secret side-mission, going to cool dangerous places to search for a McGuffin and above everything else luring new players in this cool game!
I’m a new game master in EP, so far I’ve read the core book, I’m reading Gatecrashing, and I’ve played Continuity but it seems to me there are a few inconsistencies, no offence. I’m trying to understand if it is me or the scenario in first instance.
And another side question to the authors. In convenctions many players try new games without knowing much about the background of a RPG. How do you handle this problem with so many background infos involved in MYE? Giza black-boxes come to my mind...
Were they trimmed down to the essential infos you can read on players handouts and PC background story? I’m curious about this and also about the players feedback. :)
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Million Year Echo - Questions - SPOILERS!
Tue, 2016-08-30 09:23
#1
GRAAK
Million Year Echo - Questions - SPOILERS!
Tue, 2016-08-30 12:48
#2
hyades
Not-author here...
Not-author here...
1 Firewall (p. 142) suggests that White Butterfly - the organization the Hegira crew seems to be affiliated with - is in fact some sort of Oligarch/Consortium front, so it might be their interests that actually drive the whole operation.
2 You cold drop more info on the subject as part of the research data that can be found in Dr. al-Mareekhs berth.
Idris will probably be quite willing to simply tell the PCs if they choose to communicate. Also the Interest: Belt-Builder Civilization and the Behavioral Control trait added as part of Gamma and Delta infection should give the players pause if they still believe it's exsurgent.
3 Like the gaming table it might just try to open comms once they enter the room or approach it.
4 If Dr. al-Mareekh knew what she was doing, she would've probably kept Idris off the mesh, although it's hard to imagine how she would have done that after Sanaa/the muses got infected.
5 From Idris: Yes. The virus is purely digital so as long as the PCs don't connect to any systems it's on or has access to they're fine.
From the Imam: Not so much. He can deploy the Exsurgent via all the vectors AND controls the exsurgents in Qurain, so what happened to Dawoud can be expected to happen to one or more of the PCs.
Oh and don't forget Vastian.
---
I've run MYE about four or five times including at conventions here in Germany and with players who were mostly new to EP. I usually try to keep the introduction short (most important thing I've learned over time!), hand out the PC backgrounds and explain further if there are any questions. From the player feedback I got I'd say that MYE is actually easier on newcomers than for example Continuity because their PCs have clear goals and the means to try and see them through.
While I think you can run MYE as cool transhuman action I prefer to think of it (and EP in general) as more in the vein of Delta Green with exsurgent/alien horrors, uncertain loyalties and very bad odds because the PCs just don't know what they're up against.
If you want to increase the scope SF-wise you should definitely play up the whole Belt-Builder angle.
—
[...] vidi ingentis portenta ruinae,
vidi hominum divumque metus hilaremque Megaeram
et Lachesin putri vacuantem saecula penso.
Stat. Theb. 3, 640-42.
Wed, 2016-08-31 13:21
#3
GRAAK
thank you so much! I lean
thank you so much! I lean towards the lovecraftian side of EP too, but the backstory of MYE is nice enough to be fleshed out and given to players somehow. :)
Wed, 2016-08-31 17:41
#4
jackgraham
1. They're a bit like Balin's
1. They're a bit like Balin's dwarves in Moria. There are stories about non-exsurgent groups like the Yezidis that do manage to survive in the TQZ. And information on what really goes on inside the Zone is from a patchwork of sometimes conflicting sources. So groups outside would have reason to believe (or hold out hope) that it can be done. So yeah, as written, they are playing long odds, but they are doing it for kith & kin. I think the idea that they have some other motive is really interesting, though. You should post about how that plays out in your game when it happens.
2. Yeah, as Hyades points out, Idris is smart enough to respond to a "stop hacking me for like a second and I'd be willing to talk to you" message. It's pretty up front about what it is and what it wants.
3. Again, like Hyades said, it'll try to talk/transmit to them. PC hackers who get the better of Idris also have ways of tracking it back to its device (see Mesh chapter in EP Core). And if the PCs just start inventorying every wireless device on the ship, they'll find the Automech bot. It's super handy if any of their plans involve fixing the ship, so they have a reason to investigate it more closely. They'll know something is up when it resists their hacker's attempts to establish control more strongly than a random automech bot should.
4. Yes, the assumption is that al-Mareekh, as an experienced gatecrasher, observed proper containment protocol and didn't let Idris loose.
5. You can use wireless in the TQZ; you're just at much more of a risk. If wireless is off, yeah, Idris can't do much (although it could still do stuff if the automech bot managed to free itself). Hyades covered the rest.
MYE still has some convention one-shot in its DNA. As far as explaining it all, though, I was thinking toward publication for campaign play with the Black Pyramids angle. It's meant to give a GM an interesting hook for further investigation of the pyramids. Like some other con games we've put out recently (Sympathy for Uncle Silence) it might be a bit too meaty for novice ingestion. So the comment is well taken.
Thanks for the feedback! You brought up a bunch of stuff that I would fix or make more explicit if we do a revised version.
—
J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!
http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
Thu, 2016-09-01 11:56
#5
GRAAK
Thanks to you!
Thanks to you!
No, I see: there are two mixing DNA in MYE: the first is the one-shot nature of the scenario, the second DNA contains loads of material for a longer campaign! I appreciate that! Maybe the main problem I felt while reading it was exactly those two aspects living together.
Is possible to have your personal opinion about what the black boxes really are? Or should be in that campaign plot?... (if the project is no longer work in progress of course)
Those are very, very strange things and I'm not sure how to handle them in my games.
I'm asking this but I hope it doesn't contitute an infringement of some "no spoiler rule-only sandbox approach" :)
Thu, 2016-09-01 15:41
#6
jackgraham
I actually don't have an
I actually don't have an opinion on what they really are, at least, not currently. Someone else originally wrote them.
The data that Idris has about the dead Belt Builder civilization, though, is so extensive that if some outside agency were faking it, they'd be going to great lengths.
—
J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!
http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
Thu, 2016-09-01 16:11
#7
GRAAK
I too think they're real..
I too think they're real...somehow...not totally faking contacts and conversation, at least...Idris somehow demonstrate there is something beyond the chat facade.
I like to think that they are running the backup of the sentient beings that touched them.
The censure filter could be something correlated to the light cone, as the author suggested (through a character POV).
But then I stumble in that paragraph where alien troll the humans and I don't know what to think :D
thanks for your opinion!
Thu, 2016-09-08 21:42
#8
hperantunes
My players took a short route
My players took a short route during this mission (SPOILERS AHEAD):
1. They saw but ignored the crashed helicopter.
2. Talked to Ghazala's ego via one of the party's ectos, but didn't attempt to rescue her.
3. Entered Qurain and left as soon as some wastewalkers appeared and started shooting them (the wastewalkers' disassemblers ate one of the party's two vehicles).
4. Entered the Hegira airship through area 4 and quickly found Zameena's stack in area 6.
5. Nobody in the party reads Arabic, so they mostly ignored Dawoud's AR griefing (that's why I'm curious about Hyper Linguist even though without the mesh the party couldn't make use of it).
6. They detected Idris, but did not figure out what it was and got their ectos infected.
7. Started suspecting Vastian for obvious reasons.
8. Had a brief altercation with Dawoud in front of area 6, but he fled.
9. Went back to area 4, sniped a few more wastewalkers down there, left the airship and got back on road.
10. Shot Vastian in the head after figuring out what he was (they didn't accept his generous bribe offer in exchange for letting him go) and extracted his cortical stack.
11. Let Idris escape to the mesh as soon as they left the TQZ as they forgot to dispose or turn off a few of their ectos.
12. Decontamination time!
It was a fun mission!
However, because of the way the elements are spatially positioned, if the party is particularly jumpy about being in the Zone the players may focus on the primary mission, quickly resolve it and skip half of the adventure.
I missed a version of the maps without the keys.
Hegira's internal areas are hard to describe without the map, and if you show it to the players it's hard to conceal area 18 (here's my imperfect-but-good-enough take on it).
I wonder how much damage Idris' virulence can cause to Mars' mesh once it's on the loose.