Yesterday was the first playtest of a new
Alpha Blue scenario I've been working on since the book's release -
Girls Gone Rogue.
I had an idea to merge the plot from two of my favorite films,
Escape from New York and
Blade Runner.
There were 7 players and I had everyone make new characters, even though over half of them had made characters a month back when playtesting Alpha Blue. A lot had changed and I wanted them (and the noobs) to get the full
Alpha Blue experience.
This little d4 table for randomly determining a character's age and experience worked like a treat, adding even more background nuance.
I won't go into detail about the actual adventure because of spoilers; however, below will be a number of details, thoughts, and miscellaneous from the session...
It all began when a beautiful brunette woman in a translucent red dress walked into the club and ordered a drink. Her name was Serene and she was looking to party.
Here's the quote of the day, "If the testicles have tentacles attached to them, even better." That came from the mouth of
+sean mcconkey. He played one of the most interesting characters - an alien spider creature templar/priestess that could change size when he got excited and was really into golden showers!
Not sure why I didn't explicitly state it, but players can create robot characters, too. Deciding to go robot would be the same as choosing to play an alien, mutant, or roll on the something special table. There's even a random table in the character creation section for what machine you were before being converted into a functional machine with artificial intelligence, sensitivity, etc.
Also not explicitly stated, but seemed obvious to me and another player, one can choose to play a combination of alien and mutant, mutant and something special, alien and robot, etc. if they opt to forgo rolling twice on the career tables. We had a couple characters go that route, including Joshua Cooper Darlington who played an alien mutant. He was a rat-sized creature composed of fire that bought a meat-shell that he could operate and walk around in. Kind of like the thing Krang used in the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the 80's and 90's. His bite was poisonous, too!
I had been working on the "shimmering circle" for an entire week before the game. Layers of acrylic paint, glazing liquid, self leveling clear gel, sparkling latex wall paint I had left over from making my daughters' rooms extra girly, and gloss varnish. It's not too big and very slick, so rolling on the surface is difficult. Perfect for mirroring the difficulty of fighting in a zero gravity arena! The guys had a lot of fun with that. It led to a close-line decapitation with an arm - that's not something you see everyday!
+Jacob Nelson (who played a human digestive scientist... for some reason) laughed so hard and so many times during character creation and throughout the scenario, that I worried about him. He noted quite a few of the references, such as the "Blue Steel" mutation from another favorite film of mine -
Zoolander.
Almost everyone roleplayed their sexual fantasy and fetish throughout the game. One might imagine that rolling for such a thing at character creation would lead to one of two possibilities, either that detail is relegated to the void, never surfacing during play, or that incorporating it into play would be a chore, feeling forced instead of natural. Well, I'm pleased to report that PC proclivities were present without getting in the way of adventuring... in fact, the erotic aspects became enmeshed with it.
+Tim Virnig (who played Sliik Khok, a human technician assassin) improved on the name for a desert-world bar I came up with. So, it looks like the Most Easy Cantina will be replaced with the Moist E-Z Cantina. I'll probably include options for using both in the PDF.
Everyone survived and had a good time, so I went away satisfied.
VS
p.s. I made a video about the shimmering circle over
here.
