Remember Tomorrow - Maxim Wargentin vs AIWA Entertainment - Face Off Scene

I'm continuing to use the same GM/Player dialogue format since it helps me immerse so well. I took on the GM role again since I have more knowledge right now than the character, Maxim, does. 

As usual, I've put the complete actual play information on a spreadsheet here (notes, concordances, etc): Remember Tomorrow - Maxim Wargentin vs AIWA Entertainment - Face Off Scene

Remember Tomorrow - Elena Yamamoto vs Wan Brothers Multinational - Face Off Scene

I still followed the same format that I did for Sarah Rheita's intro scene, where I don't write the actual play as fiction but as an interaction between GM and player.

In this case, I decided to GM because I had more knowledge about the in game situation, especially when it came to what Simao Okada of Wan Brothers had found out. I try to avoid having to pretend a character doesn't know something I do, so this is a nice way of dodging the situation.  That's going to be my rule of thumb now: If I know more than the character such that I have to play it as if I didn't know what I know, I'll GM.

My approach to concordances keeps growing. I decided that in some cases it made sense to incorporate a more traditional oracle as a way to add indirection. For example, generating a random event and using those keywords as my concordance search. I added a few other things to my personal method as well which you can find out in the spreadsheet notes.

If you want to read only the actual play without notes, concordances, etc, continue reading this post. If you want to see more of the nitty gritty, take a look at the spreadsheet:  Elena vs Wan Brothers Multinational  - Face Off Scene

#SGAM2017 - Remember Tomorrow - AIWA Entertainment - Intro Scene

The last intro scene, and my last entry for this year's Solo Gaming Appreciation Month!

Read the actual play without concordances, mechanics or notes below, or see all those things in the spreadsheet here: Remember Tomorrow - AIWA Entertainment - Intro Scene

Zach's Bestiary is still accepting entries! Roll up your NPC with UNE and share with the world!

As today is the last day of Solo Gaming Appreciation Month for this year, I wanted to remind everyone Zach's Bestiary is still accepting entries. So far, we have 17 that I can count, and it would be great to get that up to 20!

You can enter your NPCs at this link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdmJBA0YfBbOQhGsAHGGO5R3W4_m5ibcECIryCOrgChr7hC8w/viewform

You can also see what's already there (which is pretty cool) using this other link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdmJBA0YfBbOQhGsAHGGO5R3W4_m5ibcECIryCOrgChr7hC8w/viewanalytics

You can get UNE as PWYW here:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/134163/UNE-The-Universal-NPC-Emulator-rev

But, if you don't want to go through that right now, you can access my PDF copy at this link as a convenience, so you can roll those NPCs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7MzENQrZSxQWlNdjAyMFdNWXM/view?usp=sharing

Or this automated UNE tool by Todd Zircher: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Aosci5JNhersXOUHpYieN7K4LhqXntwb2DmTARg52c/edit?usp=sharing

You should still download it at DriveThru in the future, because it's awesome.

Thanks!

#SGAM2017 - Remember Tomorrow - Wan Brothers Corporation- Intro Scene

Intro scenes lend themselves to narration so here is another monologue. I had a pre existing idea of which PC the Wan Brothers would oppose, so that drove my selection of available concordances somewhat. I did try to discover other ideas first, but nothing suggested itself.

Most of the other details were filled out by the first concordances that made sense.

If you want to see the actual play fiction along with the concordances and notes, you can skip to the spreadsheet here: Remember Tomorrow- Wan Brothers- Intro 

#SGAM2017 Remember Tomorrow - Tokyo Police Department - Faction Intro Scene

Introduction scenes can be narrated or roleplayed out. It felt more appropriate to narrate an inner monologue for this Faction's representative NPC. The thing pretty much wrote itself, as the only thing I did was choose the concordances that I felt were speaking to the context, and transforming them into more readable fragments.  

As always, my approach to using the generator has kept evolving. This time, I front loaded as many concordances as I could before I began to look for a message. To do this, I used the same method of taking keywords from the Faction's character sheet, but this time I looked for meaningful concordances before I began actual play in earnest.  I still generated some while in play, but mostly I just worked with the ones I front loaded. Maybe that detail will be interesting to someone. 

#SGAM2017 Remember Tomorrow - Sarah Rheita - Intro Scene

This one feels a bit weird to share. 

I tried something new with how I use the concordances to write the output. The fiction in this one is not like a story, bur rather, I wrote things out as if a GM was talking to me as a player. I found it actually helped me immersion, but it makes me feel a bit silly sharing it. 

Still, I guess it's really a version of emulating other players. 

The notes were a lot more detailed and they might be interesting for some. The link to the google spreadsheet is at the end of the post.

I'm pasting a version of the actual play without the concordances or notes here, but it really makes more sense to see the actual play along with the notes and concordances to see how it all came about. :)

#SGAM2017 Remember Tomorrow - Maxim Wargentin - Intro Scene

I've posted only the resulting fiction here. Though based on Neuromancer concordances, no one is going to confuse it with William Gibson. I have found a talent to mangle his beautiful prose into my own tortured crap.

Still, the prose is hardly the point; it's all about the process as a fun game. So fear not, for I am not going to force anyone to read bad fan fiction without seeing the process behind the game part. I am taking a page from Todd Zircher, and using a spreadsheet to separate the game parts from the resulting fiction. The concordance generated phrases that inspired each line are in column A, the resulting fiction in column B, and the (very) sparse mechanics in Column C.

I have some thoughts about the solo process I've been using. I feel this mode is a bit more arduous than when I wing it with an Oracle. Partly due to real life reasons that limit my time, and my energy (I feel solo play demands a fresh mind).

At the same time, I've consistently found it more fulfilling of my RPG needs. When I look at random pieces of fiction together and the suddenly they say something that makes a sort of sense, it feels like I've discovered a pre-existing message, as opposed to being inspired to create one.

I particularly feel pretty good about this scene (as I did with some of the scenes in my OLBH game), because it's not an action scene and it's a sort of interesting hook.

Link to spreadsheet with game stuff at end of post.

#SGAM2017 Remember Tomorrow - Elena Yamamoto - Intro Scene

This is the intro scene for Elena Yamamoto. As I decided not to control this PC, I let the oracular results guide as much as possible of everything (since the Controller of the PC is in charge of all content during the Introduction scene, unless they choose to have someone help to roleplay it out).

Generated phrases are in brackets ([]). These were generated by using keywords from the PC's character sheet and/or relevant game flavor text from the RPG book itself. From the results I quickly selected any phrases that showed potential. Then, the scene is built by choosing the most interesting ones that made sense as a GM response.

In a way, it's a bit like jigsaw pieces assembled to build the scene (or maybe more like an archaeologist putting broken pieces together to recreate a picture). Whenever I got stuck or felt like it made sense, I looked for more keywords in the character sheet/game text as well as the already established fiction for the scene. The process is cyclical.

At some point, I will fix the format of this actual play to fit that of Maxim's (next post linked at bottom).

#SGAM2017 Remember Tomorrow (game prep - Factions)

These will be the entities that will most likely be opposing the PC's. There may be more (and also more PC's) introduced in-game if it makes sense.

I still have a couple of "blanks" for some details. Suggestions welcome, if not, I'll find out in-game...

Ideas are still generated with the concordance generator (text in brackets []).

#SGAM2017: Remember Tomorrow (game prep - PCs)

Three PCs generated using the game instructions and also with the help of my concordance generator (seeded with Neuromancer).