Hi, everybody!
yesterday, that was Saturday, I participated in a Psi*Run demo run by Meg herself at Lucca comics and games.
It was a very fun game so here's the AP...
The introduction by Meg was simple, short and to the point: we are people who have amnesia, there is a Crash right now so we are on the run
by chasers and we each of us has some sort of special power like one of the heroes in comic books.
We three players start to create our PC and it is fairly simple: I have to answer some questions (what's like my PC when it stares at itself at the mirror, what kind of powers do I have, name, apparent age,) and then i get to create some Questions for my pc, things of the past, of the now that my PC will discover thru flashbacks... cool!
I tend to let my guts guide me, not tihnking too mutch, even if it sounds "an overused idea" if it "clicks" I use it...
So I choose Jack as the name, he's 23 or something, and he's an avarege looking guy except for blue scaly things that surface in his arms, I think a little about my power, I think of superstrhenght then the blue scaly things tell me they are about cold so I listen to them and my power is that i freeze things touching them
and that when thathappens one can see clod waves emanating from me...
really cool! On the questions! Meg says we have to do 3 questions and she says the usually there are more, but for a demo we will do less as the game ends when one PC answers all the questions... She says one should be about the power, one about the muscle memory Jack has and one about the now the sitch we are in...
So i come up with these
- How many people I've killed with my powers?
- Why I always avoid eye contact with everybody?
- Why I'm looking for Jessica, a red haired girl?
The other two players create a 14 year old girl named... sheila, who commands electricity, wants to know where is she, why when entering one room she always looks out for someone and when she learnt of her power. The last Pc is Eve, a 28 woman with fair skin and really dark blue veins that shows through it with a mental power of sound/telekinesis (as i recall), her question are ... why I have this number tattoed on my forearm? what will happen with my power when i get really angry? why I'm soo good at fighting?
We say few things about our chasers answering Meg's questions: they look human, they will use old good violence to get us, they have advanced tech and they all wear blue gloves (we had a blue theme already going)
So jumping into the game!
Meg draws a simply map: the crash is a train wreck... we are in the mid of a city, a lake on one side with docks, buildings and warehouses on the other side.
We are in a train car, the train is derailed, it's dark, it's raining, there is smell of fuel everywhere and sparks... and there is a blue glove man dying there, with his gloves scraped as if he was trying the peel them off...
ok! I start by saying, I want to get out of the train car, I want to bring out the man!
so I "roll the dices" and choose the outcomes... for the ones who (still, 'cause they should) have played the game: each 1-6 goes in a category like "do i get hurt", "what happens with my superpowers", "do i get my objective" or "the chasers get closer?" there are... like 5 of them total and I start with 6 d6 so I get to discard one.
So, I pick that I'm hurt (ouch!) that I get to bring the man outside, but my powers get sooo out of control that I freeze in an instant an entire block of the city!
the rains has somewhat stopped and all now is covered in ice, while we see, like in a montage, the chasers enter the train car we just leaved. the blu gloved man dies anyway and I pick a piece of his gloves. no memories come to me from all of this. while helping him out I fall and the slippery ice and I bang my head: I start to bleed and it hurt like hell!
The choosing part is really fast and fun, I love games that as a player you don't need to learn too much rules, you can start right away and play!
Ok, so we run in search of a car, but it's locked, so I say to Sheila, the youg girl: "make it open and start, I know you can do it!" so she lays her hand on it, blue electricity flows all around the car, opening and starting it, and she has a flashback: "where is she?" the dice says we other players should have the first word on it, so we say "what if this is not really a city, but a large test compound, we probably did this before, you remember the train wreck as it has already happened!"
We look at each other at the table... this is reeally cool and really really creepy!
So we head north: we will eventually find and end of this compound... or not? we drive for over an hour, and the gas is running out. Eve notices that tha buildings are strange, she seems to see blue cracks in them so when we run out of fuel and we stop she checks one building and rolls the dice to find out what is this thing she sees but the fails: noone get hurt but hers powers manifest as waves of telekinetic power radiating form her... he chaser come closer and we see in a montage that they talk to a man who had seen us... using an "old modem like" speech full of hisses, and garbling noises.
...
So we split up: me and sheila go search for another car, while Eve goes fishing for info on a grocery store, she finds out that the train wreck and the iced block is on the news, and the creepiest grocery owner ever tries to sell her things to eat that have strange blue things on them...
outside little sheila makes puppy eyes to a man to have his car: I'm hurt and bleeding form my head I need to go to the hospital, she rolls and make 4 6 out of five... she leaves to us the first word on an answer and we say that when she enters a room she always looks out for people because she's looking for someone to kill... the little girl turns out to be a (wannabe?) killer! woa! interesting!
we group up and leave the place... Meg explains to me that i will be hurt until someone cures me, and i will have one dice less to use while im hurt. the others says I need medical attention so they want to bring me to the ospital... but i don't want to stop, so I use my power to freeze the blood coming out from my wound...
man it hurts! I scream in pain but I close the wound and manage to not to freeze the entire car and I remember why i don't want to look people in the eyes: with my cold power I can reach in their brains and freeze memories, removing them! man... I start to think maybe i'm the one who make the others black out!
then I pass out...
being in a demo, we check the time, and discuss a little, we're going to close the game soon, so we decide that the number on the forearms of Eve is an address of some sort and we happen to be driving very near of it... so we go there, I try to open the door but the handle breaks in my hand: Eve says to stand back and uses his power... which goes out of control! the front of the house cave in, the doors blasted away, the other building on out back is damaged, she is REALLY angry because all is nothing as it seems and now she remembers: she tattooed the number herself because she discovered that this house was some kind of control room! the chaser catch on us! they are inside the building startled by our arrival, and the house is full of strange machinery.
Sheila uses her power on them! she remembers when she used her power, when her father killed his mum! and he recognize him there on the control board of the machinery! she grabs his throat and HUGE electricity arcs flows all around killing his father and all the other gloved man making the machinery go kaboom.
As the machinery stop all the landscape around us changes, the building fade and disappear, we are in the mid of a countrylike setting, general feature are still there but... we are free! we get in the car and run away for good!
Endings: sheila chooses i'm on a mission.. but i don't remember the details, Eve chooses that she's at home: now she's free!
I choose "I'm making a discovery" and we see him entering a night club with the panel saying "tonight Jessica sings" ... who is she? we don't know, but Jack will and I'm happy for him!
So... great game, it lasted from 10:50 to 13 and it was really fast paced and fun, having to play in english did pose some barriers in terms of long dialogues between the PC but it made the game more action oriented and we really "got to the important things"
With a normal game we would have 6 question to answer so it would have lasted much longer and given more insights in the Pc and the general sitch... I found the game very fun and simple to play so I'm looking foward to play it with my friends and a local Ludoteca, that is a local cultural association about games.
that is comments and questions are really welcome, if one of the other players wants to add things I (surely) have forgotten please do so!
bye!
ps
I want to tank Meg for being such a nice guest
pps
all the "this is not real" matrixlike stuff was reeeeaaaaally good and fun!
