Starting a New SA campaign

Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1254101450|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Kinda found SA randomly, through the internet grapevine as it were. Read the rules and loved it. Very cool.

We'll be playing over Maptools - an online Virtual Tabletop for those who don't know. My group has been D&D junkies for years, so, this will be a radical shift to the left. Tomorrow was supposed to be our first session, but, unfortunately, work calls. :'(

My first scenario is taken from a short story (actually, all my scenarios are lifted pretty much wholesale from various short stories and SF podcasts like Escape Pod and StarShipSofa) whose name I totally cannot recall. In the story, a small toy is invented. A simple toy with a button and a light. The twist is, the light always turns on one second before the button is pushed. The light is an time device of sorts and no matter what, one second after the light turns on, the button is pushed.

In the story, the toy causes widespread depression and social paralysis because it is the first empirical evidence of the lack of free will. It proves empirically that no one has free will and society begins to crumble at the edges because people cannot deal with it.

In the scenario, I placed the toy on a Stardweller ship traveling to the Great Convention. The ship is having massive problems, similar to the story and the players are called in to investigate. Also on the ship are various diplomats, including a Rationalist group which may or may not have something to do with the toy.

Mechanically, I'm having the toy make a sort of memetic attack on the players if they use it. Each time you play, it will run you lower and lower on reserve, until such time as you collapse into depression. The toy uses Metatech to attack the user. Interestingly enough, my players have mostly chosen religious types of characters. It will be interesting to see how the Worship core value interacts with this.

I'll keep you posted.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Colin_Fredericks 1254169192|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Neat approach to the time-travel issue. I'm interested to hear how it turns out. It's little things like that which can lead to new societies or even civilizations.

Side note: One interesting facet of the free will / predestination issue is that most people forget that the universe is probabilistic rather than deterministic.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1254492523|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Funnily enough, I think people's real life backgrounds will play into this as well. My wife is Japanese (I'm Canadian) and I talked to her about this. I asked her if it would bother her if she absolutely knew that there was no free will and her answer was almost to take it in stride. To some degree, it was a non-issue, since there is a strong sense of fate and predestination in Japanese culture.

Colin, could you explain that probabilistic vs deterministic bit a bit more? It might help in the game.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Colin_Fredericks 1254532794|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Sure! A lot of people argue determinism vs. free will as if those were the only two options, but there's also the possibility that some of the universe is fundamentally random. In fact, in the most common interpretations of quantum physics everything is probabilistic, and what we see as deterministic laws are just large-scale averages of random events. A lot of folks choose to ignore this in their debates, partly because it was never part of the original free will / determinism debates, and partly because many folks don't want to believe that the universe might be genuinely random.

I don't know if that helps or just confuses the issue. :)

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1254561904|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Honestly, I'm not sure if it would apply.

Even if the reality is simply a macro level averaging of random events, if you had a device that empirically proved that there was no free will involved, would it really matter if there were quantum level random effects?

In a random universe, you still could have free will, since it's the choices you make which determine the average result.

However, either way, random or deterministic, or completely free will, having empirical proof one way or another would have a very strong psychological effect. At least, that's the tack the story took. Psychologists argued that the device actually hadn't changed anything, only given a visible proof. Your level of free will is the same today as it was yesterday, but, it was the conscious recognition of the lack of free will that causes the malaise.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1254798989|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Just played our first session

Fan Friggin Tastic. Loved it. The idea of shared GMing is pretty new to me and my players, but, wow, did it work.

They decided that the whole thing was a hoax, a memetic attack on the Star Dwellers. The session ended with the Disciple player using an Intrigue twist to overhear a coded conversation between the Logician diplomatic delegation aboard the ship. She has to decide, next session what she overheard. Very cool.

Here's the Session 1 Transcript transcript of the session. Search down for "Starting Session" and you'll skip all the blather at the beginning.

Plus, you have GOT to see the framework for Maptool my player has come up with for this game. O.O Wow.

Framework 1.0

Colin, can I suggest that you head over to the Maptools boards and do a bit of flogging of your game. With this framework you can play SA over maptools very, very easily. It's still a bit rough in places, but, damn. SCHWEET.

last edited on 1254799164|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by Hussar + show more

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Colin_Fredericks 1254848706|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Very cool! I'm glad you had fun with it. I'll have to spend some time this week looking through what you have there.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1256540907|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Forgot to talk about last week's session.

Went very well. I ran a nested extended skill test. The party was manhunting a killer, while an enemy group was also hunting the killer and could possibly stumble across the party. The killer was running Hide and Seek with the party (since manhunt didn't seem to make sense for her to run while trying to evade the party). Very cool system. Pretty exciting actually. Back and forth really seemed to work well.

My resident Maptools Guru is now on Version 1.2 of the framework. O.O OMG it's sweet. You gotta see this.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Colin_Fredericks 1256825654|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Cool. Glad to hear it's working for you.

I'll look up the Maptools stuff as soon as I have time. Finals are coming up for us, so I (as always) am a little swamped.

Re: Starting a New SA campaign

Hussar 1258123717|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hey Colin.

I managed to get a fairly lengthy thread going using SA as an example over at Enworld. If you're interested, take a look:

The link is to the first page. The SA bits come in about page five or six. :)

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/267716-why-we-like-plot-our-job-dms.html