Wednesday, April 10, 2013

"The geekiest thing I've ever done" / Aberrant play report

We played Aberrant last night. Once we'd finished, one of the players remarked that "that was the geekiest thing I've ever done". This was primarily because one of our core players is unfortunately over in Germany for three weeks on business, so joined via a G+ Hangout and Viber.
He paid €3 to watch me on a computer screen for two hours. I feel dirty yet oddly thrilled.

The players had opted to forcibly enter a Project Utopia Nova containment facility for questionable reasons - I.e. a wanted criminal had told them that bad things were happening there - and had understandably met with armed resistance.
First they took out a unit of heavily armed security guards, and we ended the session with my version of Captain America, Thor and Iron Man - Agent America, Aesir and Machine Man - arriving on the scene.

At the beginning of this session one of the player characters, a tank called Adonis, parleyed with them. He offered complete surrender if they would guarantee the safety of Solar Flair, another of the player characters, but as he didn't formally represent the team, he got punched through a wall instead.

I did have a plan for this session. The opposing team wanted the players to escape with their target so that the players could lead them to the rebel base (as it were).
Machine Man had an existing Mentor relationship with Adonis, so he was going to take a sucker punch from Adonis, letting the team escape and placing a tracker beacon on Adonis in the process.

It didn't go quite according to plan...
Solar Flair's player was 'a bit PMT' and played her that way.
She unleashed aggravated damage on both Agent America and Machine Man, nearly killing the Agent in the process.
Machine Man did manage to place the tracker on Adonis and say "make it look good, kid" whilst leaving himself wide open.
Adonis didn't take the bait. Instead he concentrated on getting the wounded to medical assistance and pretty much ignored the fight.
Max Control, the player's mind controlling bastard, dematerialised and took complete control of Aesir, landing an unexpected blow on Agent America and effectively turning the tables of the battle.

By this point, the dye was cast. The team had bought a gun to a knife fight. Solar Flair had used lethal force with no thought to the consequences. Max Control had violated one of the mightiest Nova's on earth and still retained control of him. A number of dangerous Novas had been released from containment.
The players retrieved their target, a teleporter called Gates, and left with her.
Adonis stayed behind to clean up the mess and recapture the released Novas.
Adonis' player has already created another character, one a bit less tank like.

I left the remaining player characters in the Antarctic, although they don't know that. They just know it's bitterly cold and everywhere is white.

It strikes me that if Novas were to build their own country, then Antarctica would be a place to do it...

6 comments:

  1. What does this Viber thing add that G+ doesn't do?

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    1. Absolutely nothing. The player was quite happy to just stick to audio, but I forced him into a hangout as well, so he could see people talking and we could see him.
      Although Viber had quicker audio than G+ by about half a second.

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  2. Nook, we didn't use Viber, I was using my Cisco IP phone on the works laptop.

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    1. Oh. OK. I stand corrected. I thought that's what you were using to dial into Gem's phone with. My mistake.

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    2. We were going to when the thought was you wouldn't be present. Things all changed in your almighty presence.

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    3. Many things change in my mighty presence

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