What to play?

Hey everyone. Sorry for rushing ahead like this and already creating a game for this xD I’m just very excited about starting up this game. I’m still pretty new to this system but I just love Cortex Plus and I always need more drama in my life (as long as it’s just fictional drama of course)

Before we do anything else, we should discuss what kind of setting we are looking for. Tracy already suggested a bunch of settings that I’m just going to list here. We can talk about which ones we’re more interested in and which ones not as much and then maybe have a vote at the end.

Suggestions were:

Superheroes,
lords and ladies at the royal court,
a cyberpunk crew working all sides against the middle,
monster teens,
the crew of a spacecraft,
a gang of intrepid supernatural investigators,
or at a magical college

---

Personally, I’m not into the royal court idea. Everything else would work for me. I’m always up for superhero games and I also like the monster teens idea (which is very similar to supers, I guess). Supernatural investigators is also cool (and again similar to superheroes. I really seem to have a niche there). Space crew sounds interesting to me as well but I’m having more trouble thinking of how the drama would work there than I do with other settings.

If anyone has ideas besides those already mentioned, please share them. Also let us know which of the already proposed ideas you like or don’t like.

---

As for GM-Duties, I’m a fan of switching that responsibility around between different episodes/adventures but I’m also fine with having one static GM, whether that is me or someone else.

Rotating GM responsibilities sounds ideal.

I liked the superheroes, cyberpunk, spacecraft/sci-fi, and supernatural investigators best. I could probably be convinced to partake in magical college or monster teens, if that's what the group is up for; both seem rife with dramatic potential. Honestly, I could even do the lords and ladies one, depending upon the storyline.

I was very interested in the lords and ladies one because I was hoping to test the Kingdom as a Character rules from the Cortex Plus Hackers Guide. Your House gets its own stats and takes stress and makes rolls based on what's happening in the game, so it's like playing two characters, because you still get to play as a member of that house. We could probably hack it further to be something modern or futuristic - corps in a cyberpunk setting? planets in a sci-fi setting? I don't know. It just seemed interesting.

I'd LOVE TO PLAY SUPERHEROES. I freely admit to being hero obsessed. If we did Monster Teens I'd like to define our own monster rules so we weren't just stuck with the classic tropes. Perhaps vampires are really only psychic vampires, or werewolves can turn outside of the lunar cycle, or whatever might make it interesting and feel more original. But if anyone suggests sparkly vampires I will find out where you live and visit sweet justice upon your blaspheming face. j/k :) but really. no sparklies.

For the crew of the spaceship, I was imagining something similar to Firefly meets... something. I don't know. I imagined a crew of misfits in space taking odd jobs, picking up passengers, maybe even having a companion or someone aboard. The sci-fi setting is rife for drama, especially if we include cool transhuman concepts like AI, digital replications of human minds, AIs and digital copies of human minds downloaded into bioengineered bodies, physical cybernetics and jacking new skills and abilities via skillsofts or something... we could explore all kinds of interesting, reality-bending, dramatic situations. Is that really my boyfriend that downloaded into that super hot bioengineered copy of my ex-husband? What if we download him into 3 different bodies - which one is really my boyfriend? What if he downloads into a female body? Gah! What if I fall for the AI inhabiting my boyfriends body since his mind was erased? Wow I love these possibilities! We could do all those in a cyberpunk setting, too, I think.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamber

Nine Princes In Amber

I never read the Amber series.

While it is clearly part of that pulp era it is a good read.

I've never read the books either.

I don't think I've ever even heard of that.

For scifi, I could also imagined something Star Trek themed, probably more DS9 than TNG but that could also be interesting

I have to admit Sci Fi is usually a weak point for me but I would be willing to give it a shot.

I could see a space station- keeps people local while still having the ability to travel elsewhere, multiple locations with the planet, station, and ships... so no one has a strong feeling in any one direction?

That mind upload body swapping bit sounds interesting. I do like stories that explore the meaning of life, identity, and self. I'm good with leaving it in the hands of tracy as the instigator or bowl as the gm.

I've set up a poll in this thread now with every option that has been mentioned. Everyone can vote for as many options as they like for now (well, you can vote for 7 out of 8 at most. There has to be some decision made).
Once everyone has voted, we'll see if we have a winner. If not, we'll have a second vote with only the highest ranked options.

We are currently at 6 players in this game. I've received another request to join the game by Hiddenfan.
What do you think, should I accept them or will that make the group too big?

My gp broke down yesterday. So i’ll repost :) i’ve Never done techy futuristic games, so cyberpunk or sci-fi would be interesting to try :)

In the mean time, I remembered an old setting back from the uni days, which could work with most AI, fully automated futuristic and smart IoT cities (both dystopian or space works). Basically, the PCs lived in a self sufficient "bio dome" which is an artificial copy of a living cell (and all its chemical stuff). You can have plots from the city "DNA mutating" and stuff goes wrong to simply having discussions of whether or not to explore the new planet they are approaching.

I voted, Gamers Plane was down for me last night.

After I saw it I am hoping Transhumanism Though I am very interested in the subject not sure how well it translates to rp format.
Though I do like Eclipse Phase and Savage Worlds versions.

I guess transhumanism as a theme can be implemented in a lot of those other ideas. Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk, Superheroes, maybe even Monster Teens or Supernatural Investigators could all deal with those topics in some way

There's a great transhumanist hack in the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide. I'll head over and vote now!

I voted, I'm fine with any of the game ideas. If we do supers, I would suggest a different story line.

For the monster teens...(I'll admit to a weakness to Vampire Diaries..thanks to my daughter..lol). I agree though VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE!!!

What if I want to play a special glittery variety of vampires, though???

That's different...lol

And I'm sure we can find a way to make supers different enough from our other game. Just a unique setting or a different theme

I vote for transhumanist cyberpunk monster teen superheroes in the sci-fi future.

Thou shalt not glitter.

I do have an idea for that.

What's the idea?

It's a combination of a couple things. The graphic novel "Old Man Logan" and the Xmen movie "Logan". Basically a supers style campaign set in either a post apocalyptic style setting. It doesn't have to be a fully blown out Mad Max setting.

In the graphic novel Wolverine stepped away from the fighting. He was involved in a situation that caused him to quit and walk away. By the end of the the book, he realized sometimes you can't walk away and came back as the last hero in a world gone to shit.

Our characters could be like him at the end of the book. Something happens and we realize that someone needs to do something.

I'm not really a fan of post-apocalypse but that gave me a related idea.
There could have been some catastrophe, maybe caused by superheroes, not a full apocalypse but like a half one maybe and in the aftermath, superheroes disappeared (maybe due to some law like in watchmen)

Or, a simple way to set it apart from the other game: Villainous characters

Both of those would be great. I haven't played a bad guy in years.

What if in the catastrophe the good guys died or disappeared? They would have been the ones to step up and try to stop it. That leaves the bad guys...

It's a cool concept, I have seen it handled all kinds of ways from retro 9' tall cyborgs to super sleek sleave bodies you just slide your conscious into to virtual lives.

I'm not sure I'd be up for playing as villains. Perhaps selfish non-heroes, but outright villains doesn't have a lot of appeal to me. Post apocalypse is kind of meh for me. I like reading watching it, but I don't make the same connections to characters as I do in other genres, so it's less appealing for a drama-heavy roleplay.

I better get over there and vote, huh?

Former villains and antiheroes forced to be heroes maybe?
Alien invasion wrecked the A team and now those have to step up

That could work.

What if the aliens are the cause of superpowers? Their initial invasion force was clandestine, working in secret to subvert humanity via technologically advanced genetic engineering. They manufactured a virus that worked on a subset of humans and granted them superhuman speed, agility, and strength while degenerating their minds to a nearly feral, animalistic state. Humans are attacked by these new creatures, investigate, discover the virus, but not its origins. At first, they try to cure it, but once the actual invasion begins, they release the version that several governments had been experimenting with. The modified version affects a much wider population, and seems to remove the degenerative mental aspects. Human governments start by infecting volunteer soldiers, then when things look grim, all their soldiers. When the tide of battle doesn't appear to be turning, they release the virus across the planet, infecting every human through high atmospheric distribution.

Now the last chance to save humanity are normal people with their normal problems, who just happen to have been infected and changed by an alien virus that has been modified by their leaders without a clear understanding of what they've done.

Or the group could be a group of randomly selected humans (the crew of a cruise ship, the passengers and crew of an airliner, a group of people on a weekend camping trip, anyting that could give us a wide slice of life), brought aboard an alien ship, modified to survive the rigors of an alien environment, tested to see if the lifeforms that had been seeded across the galaxy bred competent, adaptable warriors. They find themselves with superhuman abilities, pitted against alien combatants, and through sheer human adaptability and ingenuity, survive to prove humans are the greatest warriors the alien program bred.

From there they could be returned to Earth, or left in an armpit sector of galactic society to await their fate, while the aliens make plans to harvest all remaining humans from Earth. You could have space adventures or Earthbound adventures, characters from a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of personality types, yet an event and future threat that keeps them bonded together despite their differences.

That last one could be your superhero AND sci-fi all in one.

That definitely sounds like an interested idea that we can work with

Indeed, lots of avenues to look at.

How about we play in a cyberpunk setting where recently something big happened, maybe some global virus or a cosmic phenomenon, that randomly gave some people superpowers. It's a completely new thing so there haven't been any costumes superheroes in this setting ever before.
Superpowered people could be hunted by the government or corporations (depending on who is the oppressor in the world) to be killed or reeducated because they are a threat to the established order.

Cyber punk and apocalipse... I guess we can even drop the fantasy heroy stuff and go for pure sci-fi human enhancement if we decide for cyberpunk (it is basically the same, but with machines instead of cosmic radiation ;) )

Yes, but I prefer to have actual superpowers :p And it makes for a good central conflict and a reason for us to stick together
I'm fine without them too, though

Bowl you scare me sometimes !

What did I do now?

You know what you did ! ha ha ha

I actually don't ':D

That's a good one to.

Season II the aliens arrive

I am 100% on board with this. Dystopian, corporate-ruled future, newly acquired superpowers - sounds sort of like Shadowrun but with superpowers instead of magic. We don't have to be good guys, but we can all work together against the corps that want to turn us into their property, or worse still, figure us out to turn us into their next product.

Sounds great!

Sounds like everybody is on board with this idea then. CESN, are you okay with having superpowers in the setting? If you prefer it for yourself, you can be a non-powered or gear-based character as well. You can easily have a superhero and a regular person together in this game without ther being any balance or usefulness issues. And it's mostly about the drama anyway so...

Should we go with this idea then?

Ok, in summary a low cyberpunk post-apocalyptic alien invasion setting with virally mutated superheros?
Or was it the other one... maybe I need a review of where it is now :(

I think you mixed up both ideas. I was just talking about the second one now

ooo... hunted protagonists... super powers... cyberpunk badassery! I'm so excited!

Also... is the virus a cibervirus?

I thought they implication was a biovirus, giving powers to people. How would a cybervirus work?

That was my thinking too

If we want to go with that idea then, we should probably establish some core facts about the settingsOnce we have the setting nailed down, we can move on to character creation/relationship mapping.

I already have an interesting idea that I might want to pursue for my character...

Tech level - Beginning of space colonization (Intersolar system)
Who is the Evil Tyrant The AI Godfather Designed to oversee and protect mankind insuring it's survival and expansion
Key Figures World and Corporate Leaders
Average Life - Average person is immortal or near enough living in sleeve bodies and kept entertained, advertised to and monitored by various corporate interests. People work, make copies of their selves to work allowing them to enjoy time to enjoy life. People trade swap ideas, perfection of 3-D printing. Some people sell their bodies to advertise products etc.
How common are super powers: Not common at all maybe one in a million.

I like those ideas but I would scale them down slightly.
I like this - Maybe one or two colonies on other planets that are either working camps for the extremely poor (maybe even a prison colony like Australia back in the day) or only accessible for the extremely rich.
This idea is great I think. Some time ago, people created an AI to be the perfect ruler and now the ruling class is blindly following its orders to stay in control while nobody actually understands its reasonings anymore.
This idea is interesting but a bit to sci-fi for my taste. Near immortality might be possible for the richest of the rich but not the average person. The idea with the sleeve bodies is interesting as well but it should be implemented in a way that's amazing for the elite but terrible for the average/poor person.
If multiple of us want to have powers and we want to be able to encounter others as well, I would make them a bit more common than that. Maybe somewhere between one in ten thousand and one in a hundred thousand

Ahahah. I guess cyber punk calls for cybervirus :) it work work exactly like a bio virus you know... through suspension of disbelief. 🤣

For the setting, has anyone done microscope? I’ve seen it mention as really great for making setting before gaming, but I have no idea how that works :)

Tao mentioned it to me one time. We could probably try that out to create the setting but I've never used it before

Ignore we go with the persecuted supers idea, then it can be rare but we all have it, since supers stick together for protection ;)

I have the Microverse book, but never played it.
I like the idea of floating space cities / stations like in Elysium (if anyone saw that) where the elite live off world. Planetary colonies are for the dirty masses until the terraforming or other environmental tech is done making it a nice place to live. Then the elite move into their towers and let the peons remain on the ground keeping their cities working.
The AI has been programmed, and learned through the reactions of those with whom it interacts, that the ruling class are elite and worthy of saving, while the masses are disposable.
Yes! The elite have custom bodies they can just slip into for whatever purpose they wish - combat bodies, pleasure bodies, exploration bodies, depending upon what they're doing. The poor sleeve into machines designed for utility of purpose, the ones that leave them feeling more drained than if they had worked in their own bodies. Some poor can earn the right to use sleeve bodies reserved for the rich by becoming prey in rich hunting games, or by selling themselves into depraved sexual slavery where their artificial bodies are subjected to whatever the rich desire, only for them to slide into a new sleeve and suffer an even more debased act.
Agreed. Common enough that we'll meet some, not so common that they're everywhere.

Shudders

Too much Dystopia in my Sci Fi

Yeah, that's pretty dark. I'm not opposed to dark, heck, Shadowrun is DystopiaFest and I love that setting. I think maybe we're trying to push too many genres in there? Like, the box will hold 4 muffins and we're mashing in a 5th and 6th muffin and wrecking all the muffins.

Man, I'm hungry. I want a muffin.

What were our genres for the genre mashup? Did we ever get a final tally on the vote?

here you go. :)

We don't have to make it that dark. I thought it felt more cyberpunk with the dytopia. The first version felt too optimistic, like Star Trek.

I felt we had too much sci fi in my dystopia at first...
Looks like we have to agree first where we want to be on the scale from cyber to punk xD

Also, you can't just send a picture of muffins in the thread. Now I want one

I don't think everyone voted in the strawpoll but currently, the top vote is shared by Cyberpunk, Sci Fi, Superheroes and Transhumanism

I was about to order breakfast when I saw that -_-

CESN just sent me this on Discord. He said he can't post it to GP at the moment, so I'm sharing it here for everyone to see and discuss:

I like the idea of superpowers being the result of a global plague that killed most, left some crippled and giving some superpowers. I would start after that plague is over, though, not in the middle of it.
It would give an additional reason to why people with powers aren't trusted.

I still think there should be a central oppressor like the AI controlled government that leads the witch hunt on superpowered people.

Your witch hunt could be the classic X-Men "these mutants will replace normal humans, who has time to debate if they're our next evolutionary step, they mus be exterminated before they wipe us out!" The AI, programmed to protect mankind, sees the possibility that they may BE the next step of humanity and decides they musts be studied, categorized, classified, and their threat level established before total annihilation.

If we're in an enclosed space, any of those options above could work, as well as a space station. A station the size of a small city would be preferable to give everyone room to create locations, extras, etc.

Yes, it should still be a full city to give a lot of options. A city-sized space station sounds interesting.

Hrmmmn

I was thinking more in line with bowl, where the persecution would be more about someone exploiting fear/hatred against supers because of their association with the plague. Or maybe someone using the supers as scapegoats to cover up the origin of the plague. These are a bit less dramatic than the next evolutionary step, but I guess that can a thing to inspire fear (regardless if it’s is true or not!) or maybe the AI wants to be the heir of humankind, messed up and now the supers are preventing its plan 😱 we could be playing in a setting about to hit singularity, where AÍ, governments and private corps are playing each other and supers are an unwanted side effects (of someone’s accident)

Since we’re doing GMing rounds, I guess we can have a lot of evil subplots that we’d tie together. Each GM and PC will bring could bring in a new threat to supers, instead of having a unified centralised evil

It feels more dystopian/cyberpunkish if the big bad evil is just people being selfish and greedy.

Maybe we should summarise the ideas so far as well 😅

Yeah, I'm confused now. How about we start with the basics.
Things it seems like everyone agrees on:

1. Setting: Cyberpunk future with sci-fi elements. Mankind colonizing the stars.
2. There's a space station.
3. A plague caused superpowers.
4. No more pictures of muffins.

---

Other Details

Tech Level
- Beginning of space colonization (Intersolar system)
- Maybe one or two colonies on other planets that are either working camps for the extremely poor (maybe even a prison colony like Australia back in the day) or only accessible for the extremely rich.
- Self regulated and sustainable cities, space exploration, AI maybe before singularity, close to unified conscience, highly automated
My two cents: I'm good with pretty much any cyberpunk/sci-fi tech level.

Who is the evil tyrant?
- The AI Godfather Designed to oversee and protect mankind insuring it's survival and expansion
- Some time ago, people created an AI to be the perfect ruler and now the ruling class is blindly following its orders to stay in control while nobody actually understands its reasonings anymore.
- No evil tyrant. I think the "government " cover up or witch hunt ideas could work. Maybe just a plain struggle for survival where the elements are the "evil".
- We could be playing in a setting about to hit singularity, where AÍ, governments and private corps are playing each other and supers are an unwanted side effects (of someone’s accident)
My two cents: I like the idea of multiple bad guys, all powerful, all with their own agenda. Like the idea immediately above this note.

Who are some important key figures
- World and Corporate Leaders
- The AI, the agents trying to cover up the accident and maybe a split faction that is against the witch hunt.
My two cents: If there are leaders, there are opposition leaders. If there are agents and an AI trying to cover up an accident, there is someone trying to bust it wide open and make it public. One of my favorite rules when worldbuilding is
What does average life look like?
- Average person is immortal or near enough living in sleeve bodies and kept entertained, advertised to and monitored by various corporate interests. People work, make copies of their selves to work allowing them to enjoy time to enjoy life. People trade swap ideas, perfection of 3-D printing. Some people sell their bodies to advertise products etc.
- This idea is interesting but a bit to sci-fi for my taste. Near immortality might be possible for the richest of the rich but not the average person. The idea with the sleeve bodies is interesting as well but it should be implemented in a way that's amazing for the elite but terrible for the average/poor person.

How common are superpowers?
- Not common at all maybe one in a million.
- If multiple of us want to have powers and we want to be able to encounter others as well, I would make them a bit more common than that. Maybe somewhere between one in ten thousand and one in a hundred thousand
- They are uncommon, but most survivors would probably awake at some point.

Background: so, handwaving that a virus can induce superpowers, you’d need an highly variable viral strain to cause a wide range f superpowers. Such a high rate of mutation is not great for survival, so I’d say most people infected develop some sort of super cancer and die, and the game starts in that "plague" scenario. Survivors slowly awake to their new powers.

Also, if the focus is on relationships and drama, we probably want the PCs to be stuck into a restricted space: lots of people in small places = drama :slight_smile: so I’d say a small skate colony, a bio dome or a spaceship
Quick brainstorm before boarding

Thanks tao! This looks great! My first impressions on the summary:

1. cyberpunk setting (or some sort of post-"catastrophe" dystopian sci-fi?)
2. something big happened, maybe some global virus or a cosmic phenomenon, that randomly gave some people superpowers. I’ve tried to have some scientifically "sound" event here, where only an highly mutable virus would cause a variety of superpowers, but also very deadly effects due to the disadvantageous mutations.
3. Super powered people could be hunted to be killed or reeducated because they are a threat to the established order.
4. Tech Level: all options fit with space exploration. If we go for a wide world, we may need to refine it, but if we start of with a city sized setting, I think most distinctions are more for flavour and mood. But i’d say something in space seems like a well received idea
5. Who is the evil tyrant? A lot of AI in those options. Adding multiple opposing forces can easily include the remaining options (corporation, secret agents, government, etc) including there being various AI systems!
6.What does average life look like? Not many options explored. There seems to be a tendency for richer getting immortality mind transfer like tech, and poor being worse off. I guess it depends on the actual setting and tech level, but would turning on the common rich vs poor theme be something doable? (Maybe everyone is worse off after the plague? Or maybe people are generally ok but being ok hides, or costs, something?)
7. How common are superpowers? Everyone seems to be ok with rare supers, but the question seems to be if it is static or more supers may appear. As I told bowl, i’d guess 1:5000 incidence is already a pretty rare "medical condition", specially if the "symptoms" are not obvious.

I’m not sure we’ve heard what cosmic thinks about it ;)

I guess those things seem ok.

When I'm world building like this, I like to think of what the world was like prior to the plague/phenomena. Then define the event that changes things, what happened, the immediate effects, how it progressed, and the long term prognosis for life in general. Then figure out how people adapted, who reacted in what way, why, and where things went wrong for them.

So in this case we have an intrasolar or interstellar civilization. AIs control entire colonies. Tech is sufficiently advanced to allow ease of travel between colonies (some sort of quantum drive or something suitably timey-wimey-handwavey to allow travel between colonies in days or weeks rather than years or decades, but not the instantaneous. What does daily life look like? High tech, lots of luxury, hardships on new colonies, but overall positive, upbeat, and hopeful. (more details are better here)

Then the virus hits. Millions die, tens of thousands are crippled with mutations that make them essentially monsters. Some escape seemingly unscathed, while others... change. The immediate effect would be devastation on a massive scale. A society built to support millions suddenly loses a huge percentage of its population before a cure is found. Economies collapse, every industry falters without the manpower to support it, a society of technology and hope collapses unable to support its own weight.

Within the ruins, survivors band together into pockets of society, struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy. Global cityscapes are post-apocalyptic wastelands, with only small sections maintained by the survivors. Naturally quarantined areas like small colonies, space stations, and large ships remain largely unaffected by the virus, but the loss of industry and agriculture has a major impact as imported food and other supplies become scarce.

Into this world is born a new race of superhumans, with powers unlike anything know from technology or legend. Possible enemies of supers:
1. AIs who wish to study them
2. Goverments and corporations who want to use them as weapons
3. criminal organizations who want supers in their arsenal
4. Religious organizations who want to stomp them out as an abomination in the eyes of their God
5. Religious organizations who believe supers are their saviors
6. The organization that created the virus who wants them all destroyed so their secret doesn't get out
7. a thousand little clandestine organizations with a thousand different nefarious purposes
8. the muffin man (because I have a weakness for continuing bad inside jokes far longer than they're amusing)

I'm just along for the ride. I'll throw ideas out there, but at the end of the day, I'll defer to all you more experienced types. :)

Same goes for me.

See Above

We should start making one of those character maps not as sure about Cortex Plus as I am Smallville.

We're just working with the Smallville rulebook so you should be fine, Cube.

For those who don't have it, we'll go through it step by step.

Very cool ! Glad to hear that.
I am looking at Nova Praxis and Interface Zero for Transhuman and Cyberpunky ideas

Do you have the Cortex plus hackers guide? There’s a trans human hack and a cyberpunk hack (which is more of an actual scenario but it puts some good ideas down on paper.)

Do you want me to setup a character map over at Miro? It’s the BEST way to do them, imho. The one I setup for our real life group is super complex but you can zoom in and see whatever you want.

I don't have it.

Yes, the map you made for the last game was pretty good. That sounds like a good plan.

I'll get the ball rolling on the relationship map creation tomorrow and then we slowly go through the steps together.
I'll also make another summary of the setting but everyone should already have a rough understanding of what we're playing in so you can already think a bit about what you want to play like generally, as in characteristics and powers (if any)...

I'm trying to think of a name for the interplanetary government and all I have in my head is
Attention, all planets of the Solar Federation, we have assumed control

Alright, I wrote up a setting description based on what has been discussed in this thread. Fair Warning: This is just a quick thing I wrote down so don't expect it to sound very polished xD

If someone is unhappy with parts of it or wants to add/remove/change anything, let me know and we'll do that!

---

Technology has progressed a lot from today. Improvements in medicine ranging from better medication to tissue and organ cloning and replacement and perfectly working cyberlimbs mean that those who can afford it, don’t have to fear death or injury anymore. The rich and powerful can live centuries while staying eternally young (at least in theory – the technology is still young enough that even the oldest people alive are still barely 150, although they have no reason to assume they will die within the next 300 years at least). The poor only profit from these advances in so far as it keeps from becoming unable to work. They still have to face death after an average lifespan of around 90 years, although death from disease or injury before that is much less likely than it used to be.

There has also been a major boom in spacefaring. Two colonies have been set up, one on Venus and one on Mars. Living conditions in these are generally pretty harsh as they are very reliant on Earth for food and supplies, so they have started out as cheap living alternatives for the very poor. Later, people of different stages of wealth have moved to these as well, giving them a similar (although still generally poorer) population spread as on Earth. Travel from one planet to the other can be accomplished in less than a month, depending on the conditions it can sometimes even take as little as ten days. A couple of smaller colonies exist on space stations circling these planets but compared to the populations living on the three planets, those are much less relevant.

The Solar Federation is ruled by the Intelligence, an AI system developed decades before the time that the game is set in. Since its inception, it has evolved and developed upgrades for itself to the point that no human actually understands how it works anymore. Its will is still carried out as law as it keeps the powerful in power. Over time, this AI has turned more and more authoritarian so that at this point, armed military patrols throughout every city are a common sight, as are random controls and checks of passersby with no reason required.
While AI research is still going on and there are many highly intelligent computers, no other true AI except for the Intelligence is known.

Other factions have risen to power recently, especially huge corporations that have the wealth to amass small armies of security forces themselves. There is an uneasy peace between the government and those corporations as neither side can risk antagonizing the other. Criminals have also been forced to band together to combat the iron military grip of the Intelligence, leading to the formation of multiple powerful criminal conglomerates that, over the years, have gained influence that rivals that of the corporations.

The average person is caught between those rivaling factions, just living their highly automated life. There is hardly any private life as surveillance of all activities, online and offline, is a universal constant.

This uneasy balance was further disrupted when five years ago, the Plague broke out. Billions of people both on Earth and Mars died while only the Venus colony was spared completely. Working together, all major factions in the system managed to contain and eventually eliminate the disease by letting those who were infected by it die out in quarantine.
What could not be predicted was that a small percentage of infected survived the infection. Many of those were crippled by the disease while others were mutated in different ways. They came out of the plague with superhuman abilities. Some were noticeably deformed or visibly changed as well while others still look completely human.

Those in power fear a return of the Plague almost as much as they fear that these superpowered individuals use their abilities to overthrow the order of the system so they began hunting down the mutated to either kill or reeducate them.
The Plague also allowed some religious extremist groups to rise to power as people flocked to them for emotional support. Seeing their influence fade after the end of the Plague, they began preaching about the dangers that the mutated pose to the human race.

The Plague also had other global consequences. Large areas of land have become uninhabitable, making agriculture difficult to impossible. Food scarcity is a real danger in the world at this point, despite the drastically decreased world population. Even for the rich, meat is a luxury. Most of the population feeds on grain and soy products and even this lifestyle will not be sustainable forever. Corporations and the government struggle to find alternative means of food production to ensure the survival of the citizens of the Solar Federation.

How will we all know each other? I don't imagine we'll all want to play schoolchildren in the same class, or workers at the same company, or anything easy like that.

I think if we're all metas or at least have meta contacts, that'll be enough justification to know each other. If metas are being hunted and oppressed, they'll probably stick together

We met at Metas Anonymous

A lot less Transhuman then I was thinking. Much closer to Cyberpunk.
I am wrapping my head around this. Thinking up character concepts today.

I think the setting looks good. I’d have some minor comments here and there, but i’d Need some proper time for that :( some points:

* why Venus? I guess we’d want to move away from the sun, not towards it (moon -> mars IRL). Venus is too warm.
* why make an AÍ to rule? Maybe it was initially an ai to manage automated processes (including food production, industry, travel optimisation. Etc) instead of ruling. That would make governments obsolete.
* why only one government? Maybe big country alliances are on a space colonisation race (pretty much like the race for te new world)
* supers can, rationally, contain viral dna, due to the retro transcription and integration property of some viruses. Turns out that induces mutations and could be a reproduction mechanism for the virus. Thus supers are a threat because they may be viral incubators (but there is not real evidence yet). As a consequence, supers may be identified by High throughput DNA insertion sequencing
* not sure why a human virus would destroy agriculture. However, the rise of the criminal organisations/corporations may be not because of the authoritarian AI but because of the lack of workforce for efficient food production (or machine maintenance for that). The corps may be forming armed cartels and paragovernamental Sepheres of influence in the colonies.

We may meet each other at the start of the game in a place where supers are. This could be prison, guettos, secret hangouts, a protest for supers rights or just the dark streets as supers are not allowed to work and are basically homeless. I guess the transhumanism may be a constant with both bionic enhancements and the supers as a new step, both pushing humanity to an evolutionary split

Breaking out of prison would be a great first episode.

Or maybe we escape from a quarantine zone along with a bunch of others.

If we break out of prison, we're wanted, there's a manhunt, anything approaching normal is right out the window. If someone like the Super Power Liberation Front (SPLiF) were to break everyone in quarantine out just to make an anti-authoritarian statement, we would still be wanted, but not specifically us... everyone who was in that quarantine zone. We could go about our normal lives pretending to be normal and supering on the sly. We might all know each other from the time we spent together there, and know we all have powers from using them to help each other escape. Maybe we made a pact to meet up after, to see if we could do anything to help vs. whoever is hunting supers.

That sounds like a good idea, I think

Breeakibg out of the quarantine zone sound interesting. That could even mark a turning point: some people think the quarantine guettos are/were a necessity to stop the plague, other saw it as shameful death sentences from a far and detached government.
More comments for the brainstorm:
* I’m not sure if there should an autoritarian regime already or if one is slowly being created. I think the second option builds up the tension progressively And allows for more factions to struggle to fill the recent "power vacuum". All faction are authoritarian in themselves, but full control is still lacking. We’d be in An exploitable state of panic with political and economic forces clashing to impose their will?

The thing is, even with breaking out of a quarantine zone, we all have to be linked already to each other through the relationship map and everything. So just randomly meeting up before the first episode starts wouldn't work

Right, the map will connect us all, but... not necessarily like we grew up together.

It sounds like we met while in a "quarantine zone". From the way everyone is describing it, I imagine it was a neighborhood or section of a city that was just suddenly blocked off by the military/authority/government or whoever without warning, trapping us all there with lots of others. It was probably a poor neighborhood; it might even be fun if it was a section of town with a shady reputation.

Some of us may have known each other before that, but not necessarily. I like that idea because it means we can be all kinds of ages, backgrounds, socioeconomic classes, professions, etc. without it seeming really weird that we all know each other. Our relationships to each other and the NPCs and locations we setup can connect us more than our shared history. We can hack the pathways chart to make it mean whatever we need. That Hacker's Guide is priceless!

Right, I assumed the quarantine zone would be a desginated area that we would have been moved to but this makes a lot of sense actually! I like it

I agree! Let's go with this approach.

Sounds good. Let me know when we start characters!

Hmmm I am thinking of playing a rich brat or someones little brother or sister

If you're serious about the sibling tie-in I'd be down for that.

Cool !

You want to be the younger brother or sister?

Yes I will play the younger sibling.

I have no idea who to play now... lol
I think I officially have too many games going now.

Does anyone want me to be their sister or girlfriend? I’m not sure what my character is like yet, but I promise to make her dramarific!

I never played this system, but that sounds like you’re already planning to cheat on a PC 🤣
Are these the sort of starting relationships we should have? For example, Tracy is my girlfriend and squad is my childhood friend who is the big brother of cosmic who was in the swimming team with tao where they met bowl, the waiter?

I'm always up for stuff like that. I'm still not settled on a character but I like the girlfriend idea. Just don't count on it being a happy relationship xD

Yeah were all supposed to be tangled up with each other.

Think the characters in Smallville, Buffy, Immortals, Flash, Supergirl etc etc.

And not just the PCs but their other connections as well.
If I establish a location, for example a restaurant I work at, then you could have a contact, let's say the guy that you owe a whole lot of money to, who we then decide is the manager of that restaurant

What exactly would this quarantine zone look like? Something like the slums in a Judge Dress movie or like something out if the Division video games?

I like the Dredd slums idea. That's how I pictured it.

I dont even know the Division game

I don't know either of those. I pictured it similar to the walled of district in the Deep Space 9 episode where they go back into the 21st century xD

Berlin: 1961 ;)

Thanks Tao Daddy

Quick check (because I can’t remember...) are we rotating GMs and have an enemy per GM or so? Or are we focusing on a single evil entity?

We're rotating. And different episodes can have different villains, I would say

Tracy, if you are still interested in linking up characters, I would be up for it. We could go for either the siblings or the relationship angle.

With the way our characters are set up so far, we could have a nice dynamic of "I did it to protect you" - "I don't need your protection and never asked for it" going. What do you think?

That sounds awesome! She's in with some shady characters just like you are, maybe rival gangs? Maybe her gang is run by a super, so opposite of yours, and promotes based on super powers and willingness to "do what it takes to get the job done." She would be very willing to do whatever it takes.

We could be in a relationship. You joined the gang you didn't want to join to protect your loved ones, she joined the gang she wanted to be in to get ahead. We would have very different views on our very similar jobs.

I love that idea! There's a lot of potential in that

Poison bug man in live with poison kiss girl 👌 can’t think of a more toxic relationship 🤣
Just a quick (suggestion of) addition to the setting’s technology (i’ll rant about cloning at some point): gene editing, that is, the change of a single nucleotide base from the genome during development! Yes! Everyone can have yellow eyes and rainbow hair!!! (and cystic fibrosis was eradicated ;) )

Can I move my consciousness into another body with technology?

And if you do, would your powers come with you or stay in your old body?

This !

I'm personally not a fan of this idea for this setting but I'm okay with it if others want to have it in there. I'm just not sure how it fits in with the rest

First bowl... i’d say you’d change your superpowers or lose them altogether. This because we are going with the viral infection leads to superpowers, which suggests a very strongly biological root for superpowers. You can even have body snatchers going about stealing supers’ bodies by switching minds ... oops, that can actually be a plot!

For the original question, Mind transfer is obviously a technological nightmare but hey! It’s called sci-fi :D should we have some sort or database were minds can be uploaded and downloaded from? We’re already going with perfect cyberlimbs, I guess we can push that to accurate bionics with brain re-wiring technology (mind changing)

This would probably be a very big part of the setting if we decide to include this concept in the setting.
And I would say that only the rich and powerful have (voluntary) access to this technology

I guess it can also be a prototypical technology that is not widespread yet, if you guys want it to exist, but not define the setting

There could be one company that has developed this company and is offering the for the very rich. That way it wouldn't be freely accessible to anyone and could still be a part of the setting.
That company could officially just do it consensually and only move minds into new bodies with an agreement from both sides (would it be a switch or a takeover where one mind gets lost?) but then use the technology to transfer their employees/sharehodlers into new bodies if they want without regard for consent. They could even have a small security force made up of people who switch into super bodies when they have to fight but then go back into their own bodies afterwards to live a normal life without fear of being hunted.

Superbodies :) would there be cyborgs/full machines as well? Then they could transfer their minds into machines and back to their bodies

Cyborgs yes, full machines probably not, at least not ones that people can transfer their consciousness into

Edit: Maybe machines that can store a consciousness if necessary but not robot bodies that can walk the street

I was thinking more like shell bodies grown in vats, something with a shorter lifespan than normal humans (REPLICANTS!), but could possibly have cybertech in it to give it simulated powers. There's a new villain idea. This would be, as bowlofspinach said, limited and cutting edge tech, not available to the players.

Perhaps they upload a digital copy of a mind, much like an AI, and download it into an engineered body. I assume with the proper DNA sample they could grow a body to simulate a specific individual - this is definitely too cool for one of us. I would think a company developed this and has an agent or two, or a small team using this technology to advance their goals.

The AI needs to have this technology (probably hacked it from the company that developed it and built its own lab to make the bodies, then downloads a copy of its own, inhuman AI intelligence into the bodies so it can interact with the world as a human - imagine a machine trying to learn what it means to be human in one body, while simultaneously using another body to try to capture someone it considers a threat. ...and we may have just hit on the bad guy for my turn as GM.

You people and your Dystopia am I the only one that hopes for a better brighter future.

Probably.

You hope for a darker future Tao ?

I was coerced into dystopia by bowl, so I feel you cosmic ;)
Also, it could just be really limited by the fact that it destroys the previous mind at upload. This way, you’d have to kill yourself before the mind transfer occurs. Are we supposed to get the bad guys sketched now as well,

I hope for a more colorful future that includes all shades from light to dark, but I fear all those colors will be muted by mans own selfishness and greed.

Is that dark enough for you? ;)

Eh human nature BLEH thats why I want transhumanism or even posthumanism ^_^

By the way @thetaodaddy are you ok with you mom being in a human transcendence cult? I could have infiltrated the quarantine zone, first and foremost, to locate you and get you out (or something like that). That would give me a relationship of some sorts to every PC I think 🤔

Tell me about this cult.

I'm picturing her as power hungry, manipulative, probably morally bankrupt. She gives her son just enough love to keep him from plotting to overthrow her (as she would expect him to do, even though that's not his style.) I picture her wanting money and power.

Picture someone like Littlefinger from Game of Thrones (except as the Lord of a house), or Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

I wasn’t considering the individual motives actually. It was more about a group of people that believe humanity can transcend with the help of technology, so they built some sort of "virtual shared mind". This would be something like a mind reading implants all connected for super fast connections, but not really a hive mind yet. The believe is that humans are a part of a whole and achieving that hive mind would lead humanity to a god like state. Or something like that :) Turns out some sort of central proto- AI emerged from (or was added to) this network and is manipulating the interactions. Now some "cultists" think this is a sign and others are worried about the "black box" leader that just appeared. With the plague, this cult is very interested in supers, as they show different abilities. Could humanity have transcended without technology? Can these supers be the last piece for the human transcendence?

This is the general ideal loft, but of course there could be members trying to get some advantage from them. Could having Access to fast, long range "telepathy" with some fanatics be good for your mom’s corp? Is she after that emergent AÍ? Was she the one to hack the transcendence network with the AI program to manipulate them? Does she think transcendence and the plague are related and is trying to get her hands on a powerful bio-weapon?

CESN, if your cult is interested in studying supers, they might possibly work together with the criminal organization I'm part of.

Since that group is using supers even though they are generally very prejudiced against them, they might be willing to work with your cult. They wouldn't agree with their goals but in exchange for money or technology, they might be able to provide a super that got on their bad side to them for examination, either dead or alive

Maybe tao’s Mom is the connection between the two groups 😱

I think the mother character would fund that research for sure, provided she could get some tangible benefit for her personally or her company (insider information on competitors, etc.)

So maybe she's a member of the cult, but more of a financier, who just pays lip service to the cult to get them to do the things she wants in exchange for the tech and money they need to achieve their goals.

She could also finance criminal organizations (through multiple levels of plausible deniability).

Your mom definitely sounds like a feature.

Definitely. She sounds like she might have her fingers in everything. Not just the cult but possibly both my and Tracy's organizations as well

Why not? The more tangled, the better.

I just thought of an idea for Eli that I need some help with. Is anyone up for a PM and giving some suggestions?

Sure, send me a message, here or on discord

You can PM me too if you want

I don't want to be left out. Me too. :)

And my axe

We're nearing the end of character creation so we should start thinking about the actual game. Does anyone want to run the first adventure?

I could go first as GM but since I'm already doing SV at the moment, I'd welcome anyone else who has an idea and feels like going first

Not me ;) I have no clue how this works

Are we going to continue through the rest of the Pathways, after the event? I was kind of banking on that for my actual power, since I haven't taken it at all yet... lol

Go for Power Manifestation in the next stage then

We can go beyond life changing event. Works for me

I planned a stop at Life Changing Event since that is set up for Season I where going the full puts things at Season V and we haven't had any time to actually play these characters.

Oh as far as being Watch Tower (GM) it is a bit more of a balancing act then in most games. It's not so much that your creating a bad guy and challenges but your creating characters set up to challenge the Player Characters Values and Relationships.
You usually pick two characters in a 4 player game in a six player game you usually pick 3 and see how you can create an episode that will challenge those players values and relationships. Old or New Flames showing up, a villain helping one PC while hurting another etc. Something that helps the players grow. Usually the players themselves will find ways and reasons to challenge their values and relationships too.

Another thing to balance is the Trouble pool sometimes it grow too huge for the PCs to handle so as Watch Tower you need to not buy all the 1s rolled. Also in a good episode the characters will spend and gain plot points. Towards the end of an episode they usually have enough to deal with whatever the major threat or problem is alone or as a group.

Since we have no single Clark there will probably be more group or small group endings then single character endings of episodes.

So keeping an eye on the trouble pool, making sure plot points flow (Players can challenge each other for plot points as well), and making sure people challenge those values and relationships. Bowl is really good at these things and getting better.

Tao on his own is masterful at making people challenge things and having his own characters challenge things.

If we're not going to move beyond the life changing event, we need to up 3 values, or any combination of values 3 levels.

The rulebook recommends continuing through the After the Event section (I put it in bold it below) - makes no difference to me, but we should all pick where we want to start. I'd prefer continuing, but we can stop after Life Changing Event if that's what everyone else wants.

I don't really have a preference so if you prefer to continue after the LCE, I would say, let's just do it.
Unless anyone is against that

Basically it makes us more mechanically powerful and more tangled up with all the extras and locations? That map will be pretty confusing.

I opened a poll about this in the other Thread. For some reaosn, GP won't let me delete or redo the one in this thread so go here to vote.

I think we can just go with the majority vote. Either option should be fine, I think. We can deal with extra tangles xD

Ah yes, you can’t change polls for some reason :(
I think it will depend more on how long we think the plague/ quarantine has been. If it happened recently, then rookie masked more sense, if we have been stuck for years, then we would be pretty veteran :)

I like the "veteran" idea, it makes sense especially with Elijah.

Veteran sounds more fun to me. Maybe it's because I'm already playing rookie in our other Cortex game.

All votes are in and we ended up at 4/6 voted for Veteran so I say we go with that. I hope everyone is okay with that.

I'll set up the Life Changing Event in a bit. Squad can still finish Road but the rest can already start thinking about LCE

---

And getting back to the previous question, I'll run the intro adventure. I already have a basic idea and with us going through the rest of CC, I'll have some time to work something out.

I have a quick question - are we starting the game while we're still in the quarantine zone, or after having met while in quarantine? Because earlier posts make it sounds like we met in quarantine, but that was a while ago, while newer posts and some of the options we created on the map make it sound like we're still under quarantine.

I assumed we are still locked in the quarantined zone.

The way I understood it, the quarantine is still up and we'll break it at some point in the game

Edit: Presumably

That was my assumption as well. I just wondered how much that would affect people who clearly can't use their resources that exist outside of the quarantine zone, like thetaodaddy. Assuming it's a shady area of the city that was quarantined, his corporate headquarters and rich mother probably wouldn't be under quarantine. Probably not his weirdly cloned fiance, either, and I think that's all of his resources on the map.

Will's a pretty resourceful guy. He'll think of some way to still use those assets. :)

We're basically done with the CC. I'm currently starting up the next episode of the smallville game which is currently taking up my focus. I will get us started in this game by the beginning of next week. Any bits still missing in character sheets can still be filled in whenever but I think we're at the point where we should just get going

Are you sure you want to be the first to run this? I know you're putting a lot of time into that other Smallville game. My home tabletop game is pretty much running itself now, and football season is over this weekend except for the playoffs. I could kick this off, or if anyone else wants to step in and run it. We could take a little pressure off so you're only running one game at a time. It's a lot easier that way.

If you want to run the first adventure, that'd be great. Last time I asked, nobody seemed interested in running so I stepped up.
I can do it but if you're free, that's cool

Ooo! I'm already a GM in the group. I can run it too if you guys don't mind a total pbp noob as your first GM. I have IDEAS!

It doesn't matter to me. I trust both of you with doing a good job.
I'll definitely GM an episode in the future.

We should decide on who starts, though, so the person can do preparations to get us started

Unless anyone has issue with it, I'll start!

I have plenty of ideas, but let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to explore for your character in their first scene or arc. Also, expect to hear from me about your NPCs. I might have some weird ideas that I'd rather get approved by the creators of the NPCs before I run with them. Sometimes I approach things from a weird direction and I don't want to put anyone off the game just because my ideas aren't normal.

Sounds awesome. I can't wait!

I'll let you know if I think of anything

I would like to see some interactions and things around Jessica's

Agreed. Jessica's seems like it would work as a central place for our group.
And Elizabeth seems like she should generally be involved in a lot of what happens to us, although she doesn't have to be at the center of everything that happens so it's up to you

I have a general idea of an overarching plot for the first arc to involve most of the NPCs in one way or another. I'm building a potential scene list and working out how to best start.

I made a spreadsheet of the most linked people and places to try to see who and what appears to be of most interest to everyone. The list is sorted by links to people, then to places. Each entry is listed by number of links as follows:
Name: Total Links (Links to Leads / Links to NPCs / Links to Locations)
(for example, the first entry, Ms. Evelyn Parker has a total of 8 links, 3 to leads, 4 to other NPCs, and 1 to a location)

Ms. Evelyn Parker 8 (3/4/1)
Malachi 8 (3/3/2)
Elizabeth Cavendish 7 (3/3/1)
Connor Walsh 6 (5/1/0)
Amanda Smythe-Davies 6 (5/1/0)
Captain Kurk 5 (4/0/1)
Fiona McPhillips 5 (2/3/0)
Veronica's Lab 4 (4/0/0)
Alexis Kopinski 4 (3/1/0)
Lain 4 (2/1/1)
Uriel 4 (2/1/1)

Jessica's 7 (4/2/1)
Distribution Center 6 (4/1/1)
The Minute Clinic 5 (2/2/1)
Wanneng 4 (3/0/1)
AWAKEN 4 (2/0/2)
Xinjen Headquarters 3 (2/0/1)
The Node 3 (1/2/0)
Dragon's Den 2 (1/0/1)

So the most connected NPCs are Ms. Parker, Malachi, and Elizabeth, but the NPCs with the most connections to our Leads are Connor, Amanda, and Kurk.

The most connected locations are Jessica's, the Distribution Center, and the Minute Clinic, but if you look at most connections to leads, you keep Jessica's and the Distribution Center but swap in Veronica's Lab as #3.

Jessica's seems like the best place to start a scene for most of the Leads, and it looks like the NPCs who will be most involved in their lives will probably be Connor, Amanda and Kurk.

I always try to give NPCs some kind of identifiable personality traits, so if anyone has a strong feeling one way or the other about how I depict Connor, Amanda, Kurk, Elizabeth, Evelyn, Malachi, Jessica's, the Distribution Center, or the Minute Clinic, please let me know. Ideally, pass on anything you thought of when you created a character that you feel is important to who they are, otherwise i'll make it up and it might not be what you wanted.

It would be cool if Malachi were blatantly a super. Since he seems to revel in it.

As for Kurk he has a lot of connections I see him as middle aged, in good shape though, living with a lot of stress and so money is an issue.

Connor - Play up the military aspect maybe. He could have the buzz cut and discipline or maybe go against that since the quarantine and maybe now has long hair and rails against the government locking him in here with the sick.

Jessica's this is a hard one because everyone has their own image of the place in their heads. The setting though were all in is futuristic so maybe it can change it's looks for different days of the week. Being that were all locked in a confined area and with a quarantine under way a lot of people probably come to bars.

I thought he was the only other survivor of the experiment that gave Elijah his powers... I thought at one point squad mentioned him being physically mutated or something. I pictured a more haunted, hidden person, a sort of "phantom of the subway" vibe.
I had an idea for this, that the interior decor of the whole place is holographically projected. The walls, tables, support columns, etc are real, but their appearance is projected onto them via a series of holograph projectors. When it's powered off, the place probably looks like an abandoned club, but for most nights it has the cyberpunk theme people expect from the semi-dystopian future. On the 40's night when Veronica sings, the interior is redesigned holographically to appear to be a 40s style club with retro design features. Malachi might even be working on, paying someone, or planning to steal other holo designs to change up his club on a regular basis. I imagine he uses the holograms as part of the security and defense aspects of the club, and possibly the rest of the building (since his hq is upstairs.)

The Holographic thing seems perfect.

It could even be used to hide smuggling etc. I like it.

I always just imagined Jessica's as a regular bar but I really like that hologram idea actually... It's cool and works well I think. One detail I had in mind for it, that I'm not sure if I mentioned it anywhere, is that there is no actual Jessica involved in the club at all and that it's just a name that was picked to sound personal and inviting.

For Evelyn, I pictured her as having a very commanding presence wherever she is despite not being a super and as always being vaguely threatening, making sure to keep others uneasy and on their toes around her. She's pretty open about her involvement in criminal activity in the zone but she always makes sure to have some plausible deniability so security couldn't do anything to her even if they wanted to. I also always pictured her as black

Why do I suddenly picture Malachi as played by Samuel L. Jackson? I didn't at first, but for some reason now I do.

So far I think I like the idea of an original quarantine zone that was restricted to a poor section of the city. This area includes all the listed locations on the map except for the Wanneng Enterprises building, and probably not the homes of the upper class characters like Will, Elizabeth, and Amanda. Will was trapped inside, but if everyone is okay with it, I'd like Elizabeth and Amanda to have been outside the quarantine zone. Will has been able to contact both of them, but no one who is in the quarantine zone has been able to see anyone who is outside the quarantine zone. Of course, some enterprising individuals found a way around (or perhaps under) the protective wall erected around the poor section of town.

We can begin the story with the entire city being quarantined from outside by government forces. The people inside the city still consider the quarantine zone around the poor neighborhood to be in effect, but now that the entire city is cut off from the rest of the world, it will be harder to maintain the interior separation. The rich and powerful use their influence to pull government and private security forces back from the quarantine zone to defend their corporate and personal interests from what they see as a populace on the verge of anarchy, and certain individuals are given free passage into and out of the quarantine zone.

The normal flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, and other necessities, as well as luxury items, is still locked down. The government controls everything through it's own military and the private contractors in whom it has placed that responsibility. People like Captain Kurk have become even more valuable now that they are the only link to the outside world and the supplies that are necessary to the survival of the entire city.

By doing this we can maintain our focus on the quarantine zone, keep locations like the distribution center relevant, but still open up the whole city and make characters like Amanda and Elizabeth accessible.

How does that sound to everyone? I'm laying out conflicts, reveals, and wedges with this concept in mind. I'm also trying to hold off on too much prep until I hear back from CESN and Squadfather44 on their relationship statements. I'd really like to incorporate relevant connections for everyone into the opening scenes.

Sounds good to me. I like the quarantine within the quarantine zone idea!

I am fine with that.

I'm not sure how this games actually goes, so I have no expectations for my PC or extras. I'm imagining this as a first episode which I guess would probably explore how deep Jack has infiltrated the quarantine zone, kind of an introduction to the character. Maybe have a focus on the coldhearted and scheming spy personality and then a shift to a more human personality at the end of the "pilot" with some interaction with Lain?