Dissonance
Full scale war.

Yeah, this is a conflict all right. I'll write it up later, when I have time.

Politics
Almost entirely role playing and research. This was a political session (hence the name), so very little real conflict occurred. Or, well, nothing that required cycling characters.

Mephistopheles
The early parts are role-playing, but things shift into conflict time when Rem-8 goes searching for Bob. The conflict is poorly defined, though. It's mostly Robert telling Rem-8 where to go, Rem-8 following those instructions, and ending up at the wrong place. There's GM actions between those two (Aia actions, specifically), but it's never explicitly stated. Basically, they're on the wrong end of a subtle conflict, and don't realize it. Eventually, Rem-8 tracks down Bob, and we switch to a suborbital chase scene (something Rem-8 is especially good at). More role playing and research during the chase. Overall, there was very little die rolling (although character abilities came into play continually).

Faustian Bargains

This entire session is a solid wall of conversations, mostly consisting of the inspectors making sacrifices.

And So It Ends

While a lot happened this session, not much of it was conflicts, per-se.

Yoric is arrested - Mostly conversations and back-and-forth between Yoric and the police officers. While it could be argued that the back-and-forth constituted a conflict, it was mostly low key, and anyway this was a complication firing off. There wasn't really anything he could do about it.

Yint experiments with time - research. Yint asks questions, the GM answers. Not really conflict, no die rolling, but we do go back and forth.

Rem-8 speaks - research, and pure role playing (with the Skotadi).

Ship Explodes - lots of action and panicking, but the conflict is against an environment that is (now) passive.

Losing - the micro-T and Causal Loop talk to each other. Pure plot, of the most evil kind.

Off Line

Why is everyone off? While this was an investigation, the party was split and I was action jumping between the two groups. The fact that there were two parties, both investigating the same thing, was a little awkward. They were capable of learning the same information, so I needed to jump back and forth to avoid one learning everything, only to have the other learn everything a few minutes later (this way, I cycled which party learned what first).

• All – PCs decide to split the party after learning all they can from the patent office.
• Yint/Yoric/Robert – go to investigate the powered hospital. (statement of intent and venue change)
• Brishen/Rem-8/Robert – go to investigate the newstation. (statement of intent and venue change)
• B/R/R – investigate the newstation; find wall computer with records and bring it back to the ship. (research: perception rolls; venue change (to go somewhere they can power the computer).
• Y/Y/R – investigate the hospital; find power source (lower levels), talk to computer, and find cryogenic patients. (research: perception rolls and role playing conversations).
• B/R/R – try talking to computer (research; interrupted)
• GM – cog/meta attack against B/R/R to knock them out. (surprise attack; trap)
• Brishen – shrugs it off (attack is weakest here)
• Robert – shrugs it off (very high resistance)
• Rem-8 – falls unconcious (strong attack + weak resistance)
• Robert – figures out what they're up against (research)
• Robert – clears Rem-8's mesh and computer (direct attack on trap; undo sustained damage)
• Brishen – talks to computer, learns about civil collapse (research)
• Y/Y/R – wake up elderly mechanican (plot; situation change)
• Y/Y/R – interrogate mechanican; learn about Ezekiel and after the events (research, role playing)

Parties re-split. Rem-8 goes to find Ezekiel while everyone else goes to the ship.

• Rem-8 – follows Ezekiel's bike. (research; forced venue change (tailing someone; months later))
• Robert – wakes up Chen-15 (mechanican). (plot; situation change)
• Y/Y/B/R – interrogate Chen-15, get the full story (research; role playing)
• Rem-8 – flies to Ezekiel's island (forced venue change)
• Rem-8 – interrogates Ezekiel. (research; role playing)

Doom at Aurora This is where Yoric used his three twists. While things were extremely tense, there wasn't much the inspectors could do short of burning twists. So this became a brainstorming conversation to figure out what was plausible.

Tower is Burning

Mechanican Apocolypse:

• Yint – Investigates the death of the previous inspectors; finds the coordinates to the asteroid. (non-conflict research action, that sparks a surprise conflict). (technically, the PCs walked in on a hidden conflict that was already in progress, which they hadn’t (previously) been involved in).
• GM – asteroid fires (plot; major change of situation).
• Robert – scans incoming shell. Finds it small and massive (neutronium) but “mostly” harmless. (research/perception)
• Yint – investigates dead patent office for anything that could help; finds strangelet bomb (research; is unproductive (not due to a bad roll; there just isn’t anything to find))
• Yint – panicks about strangelet bomb (an amusing aside, but not really central to the conflict; not that he knew that at the time)
• Brishen – investigates situation using a twist; finds crazy mechanican and understands antimatter/matter neutronium planet busting device (research: trump card)
• PCs – fire ship’s gun at the projectile; destroying it. (don’t remember which player; combat action; changes situation; reveals that it is an anti-neutronium round; much more dangerous)
• GM – Crazy mechanican fires at ship. They weren’t paying attention to him (they didn’t quite realize his involvement), so this was an instant death cutscene (combat; trump card)
• Robert – Twist use: the ship dodges (by accident). (avoid threat; trump card)
• PCs – fire ship’s gun at mechanican (he really can’t dodge, so there’s not even a roll; just a crater) (combat action)
• GM – asteroid is warming up to fire again (anti-neutronium round) (change situation; actually I’m just delaying my action to let the PCs respond. One reason to delay is that the PCs have already proven that they can easily shoot the projectiles out of orbit. Doing that again would be boring, so I let them take this one out before it leaves the barrel (for variety))
• PCs – fire ship’s gun at asteroid to disable it (combat; ends conflict by eliminating the last of the threat)

Skotadi Conversation: As interesting as it was, it wasn’t a conflict. This was (almost) pure role playing.

Reconstruction

No conflicts here. There’s a conversation with Nataraja, and a lot of investigating and getting people to do things for the PCs. Some of those conversations could have been conflicts, but I didn’t bother. I needed the PCs to succeed, or there’d be no campaign, and anyway the PCs had overwhelming (social) force, so no point in making it difficult.

Actually, that's not quite true. The PCs could have failed and the campaign would have gone on. The entire reason I had the habitable worlds in my universe closer together than in vanilla Sufficiently Advanced was so I could have the PCs go between star systems at sublight speed, if they failed to get the wormhole network up. It would have been a rather different campaign, of course.

The Fall

The Market Crash: Brishen accidentally instigates a conflict.

• Brishen – Goes on a buying spree (doesn’t realize that he’s started a conflict)
• GM – Informs Yoric that there’s a metatech conflict going on, centered on Brishen.
• Robert – Gathers data. (collecting resources for another character; this may not have happened)
• Yoric – Investigates data and discovers government, Logicians, and mob. (research; metatech roll) (PCs realize that they’re in a hidden conflict, but not against whom or over what)
• GM – Mob is reacting to Brishen; knows approximate time of end of world; seeks to take over government. (research; no roll (assumed to auto-win a roll due to overwhelming metatech) (In effect, at this moment a hidden conflict against the PCs is fully revealed)
• Yoric – Works to correct economic collapse. (research; social – gathering resources for Brishen)
• Brishen – Implements plan to prevent economic collapse and stop the mob (dynamic changes; social)

You’ll notice that there was a hidden conflict, but the GM didn’t announce it nor start conflict actions until one of the PCs had reason to notice. In classic rules, the players would be aware of it but their characters wouldn’t (since they’d be making rolls in the conflict, but not know why).

A Political Incident

Spacer Bunker at Alsace-Lorraine: Not a conflict, although it could have been, maybe? Conversations with the spacer, and some investigation. The spacer panics early, preventing further communication. Yoric and Brishen talk, Robert bungles an investigation (makes the mistake of thinking that the Tao nanites are nearly stealthy enough).

Talking with Rotor, Directly: Again, not a conflict due to being a conversation. Mostly involves Yoric with back conversation with the rest of the PCs. There’s some research going on into genealogies.

Napoleon

Which Political Incident?: Not a conflict. Again, investigation is better handled by players coming up with ideas. Applying structure to that process would only disrupt it.

The Four Men: Conflict. Social, investigatory, and later violent. Twists were used in the middle and towards the end to mitigate various results.

• GM – The four men approach Yint and Robert, requesting to use their wagon (which happens to contain Robert’s mainframe). (social; no rolls)
• Robert – stalls the four men while calling for Yoric. Discovers the historical plot. (social, research, other; no rolls (or maybe one social roll))
• Yoric – drives the men off (metatech+political), scans the bomb-in-a-barrel (investigate) and finds his scans blocked. (social (roll), research/perception (roll)). (at this point, the GM reveals that we’re in a conflict)
• GM – Four men retreat into alley. (no rolls; change venue to one without cameras)
• Yoric – confronts the men, is shot for his troubles. Burns a twist to avoid death. (no die rolls). (social, combat, instant death cutscene) (Yoric is no longer capable of character movement)
• GM – Four men retreat to next street. Yoric is offered the opportunity to lose consciousness; he declines. (no rolls; change venue away from Yoric)
• Brishen – Collects thugs and arrives with a carriage. (Collecting the thugs may have been an earlier action in the cycle). Nothing here requires rolls. (social, gathering support, character movement; entering venue)
• Brishen – Confronts four men. (social)
• GM – Four men escalate confrontation to pitched battle. Brishen’s thugs turn out to be automata, so the four men auto-win. There is a roll for Brishen surviving the gunfire (and for shooting back). He misses both, and dies. (combat, modified by previous venue changing (side street) and Brishen’s choice of allies (thugs), including unexpected ramifications (he didn’t know that they were automata, or using rubber bullets)).
• Yint – Comes running. Throws up dust to obscure Tao cameras to avoid continuity laws. (character movement; entering venue).
• Yoric – Word of Peace analog: convinces four men to flee, without the bomb. (social, via Yint (who is now in the venue)).
• GM – four men flee. (retreat from conflict; conflict technically over)
• Yint – use twist to stabilize Brishen, and prevent his death. (medical; reduce negative combat effects (used twist))
• GM – instant death cutscene: bomb about to explode. (plot; trump card)
• Brishen – burns a twist to get the bomb off of the world first. Kills Napoleon as his complication. (plot; trump card)

Further Investigations: Again, not a conflict. I’m going to stop listing investigations here.

Regatta

Investigating the Disaster: Not a conflict because investigation is driven by players coming up with ideas. As such, it’s slow paced, and doesn’t conform with a player order. Players toss ideas on the table and see what sticks.

Convince Buon: Not a conflict. This was one-on-one (Yoric vs. Buon), and was better represented by RPing with Buon (taking into account Yoric’s Meta and Buon’s CV). I used only one die roll, at the end, because I wanted to get Buon’s character across and dice just don’t do that.

Investigate Echilon-8: An odd case. This is an investigation, but the characters were chaining their actions off of each other as if it were a conflict. That said, there was no opponent, and I wasn’t cycling around the table.

• Yoric – Convinces Buon to grant access to Echilon-8. (social; see above)
• Robert – Uses nanites to get into Echilon-8. (venue change; no rolls)
• Robert – Finds the bomb (perception; nanotech+something roll)
• Robert – Searches the code; finds disabling hacks. Can’t determine source. (perception; Cog+Programmer)
• Robert – Passes code to Yoric for further investigation. (supporting another character via existing research)
• Yoric – Determines who wrote the code (investigation; meta+programmer)

Nataraja’s Nanoswarm: Not a conflict. This could have been, but (a) the PCs lacked strong fighting abilities and (b) it was the end of the session.