Hey Man, well this is Babylon

Last night I met with three players for a pre-campaign Jam Session. A few weeks ago I sent out feelers for interested parties to play a campaign idea I’d been developing. Major themes involve the clash of reality, virtual reality, and dreams. Major inspirations are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dark City, and Jacob’s Ladder.

The basic idea:

“In this campaign we tell the stories of the only people on board a research space station. A disaster has occurred back on Earth, and the effects of that disaster will play heavily into the lives of these characters. Perhaps they’re scientists, or survivors, or prisoners, or something else. This game will tell their story.”

We met last night and put a lot more development into it, and I’m extremely pleased with the results. Here are the details so far:

The Disaster:

A hundred or so years in the future, the human race is dying from a disease of some sort that has so far decimated the world’s population. Several teams of experts were suddenly rounded up without warning and put into quarantine on orbiting research stations. Accompanied by skeleton crew support staffs, these teams are working with separate controls to find a cure for this deadly outbreak. The company that is in charge of the research has thrown in a hefty financial incentive which will reward the first team to make a major breakthrough. Our characters are one such team.

The Characters:

The three characters (possibly four, if the other player joins us) are the last members of the research team on their station. One is a Biologist, with a focus on genetics and nanotech biology. Another is the station’s security officer, who has more recently become the biologist’s lab assistant and the caretaker of the test subjects. Another is the station’s engineer and maintenance technician.

There is one other major character, in the form of an AI that assists with the research and handles many of the ship’s functions. The crew interfaces with the AI through a virtual reality connection, and it has holographic projection abilities so as the make it feel more human to the station’s staff.

The Situation:

The characters have been here for a month, maybe more, working on finding a solution to the epidemic. The biologist believes he is close to a breakthrough, but keeps getting set back by problems. For one, they’ve had to seal off several sections of the station due to accidental contamination, trapping the rest of the crew behind the bulkheads. For another, the virus is mutating, and keeps adapting to the research. Finally, to top it all off, there’s something else going on, something so far indescribable, something seemingly unreal…

The Variables:

The Station is a small orbital research station with a low amount of artificial gravity. It is circular, with various sections that can be sealed off in case of emergency - these seals are controlled by th AI, and will occur immediately upon suspected contamination. There is an escape pod, but if there are presences of infection on the pod then failsafes will prevent it from launching. The pod has storage banks that will download a copy of the AI’s core files before ejection.

In the worst of emergencies, the station can be exploded to prevent possible contamination. This requires authorization from three sources: the security officer, the engineer, and the station chief. Each has partial codes that will only work when combined with codes from the other two. Unfortunately, the station chief is sealed off in one of the contaminated sections of the station, and no one knows if he’s alive or dead.

A supply ship comes once a month to restock the station’s food and other supplies. It is the only method for transportation other than the escape pod.

The characters are in contact with the other stations, but instead of working together, they don’t share much information at all, each team wanting to seize the big bonus.

In this game, I’ll be pitting the players against each other more so than I usually do. I’ve told them in advance that I will be not only screwing with their characters’ perceptions of reality, but their own perceptions of what is actually happening in this game. They’re all down with this, which excites me. Each player will likely have some bit of meta-information, and their characters will each have some kind of narrative angle, something which they know and are probably keeping secret from the others.

The System

We initially discussed using the Fortune Deck from Everway as the base system, wanting to stick to something very rules-light. But the more we brainstormed, and the more we talked about conflicting character agendas and different levels of paranoia and trust, the more it became obvious: Cold City. The mechanics seem pretty damn perfect for this.

So there’s the basics laid down from last night’s discussion. Once we get some actual character Traits and Agendas written down, some more solid base conflicts will be put in place, and I can really see this game rocking. In our next session, we’ll actually create the characters and give them more details, and then see how the game progresses from there.