Questions for Session 1

Some quick questions for Episode 1:

General World Questions (looking for ideas and/or consensus)
How long has it been since the quarantine was imposed?
What items are in short supply since quarantine? What are the new hot black market items?


Questions About Your Character
What changed for your character once s/he was quarantined?
What is something your character wants from outside the quarantine zone?
What is your character willing to do to get that thing?
What rumor has your character heard about the real reason for the quarantine?

Oh, also (and possibly most important, since I don't see a spot for it on the character sheet or anything)

What is your characters' prime motivation and number one, immediate goal?

For Belladonna her prime motivation is to acquire power and wealth, and her number one goal is to become powerful enough to wrest control of the Xinjen Gang from Malachi. She will probably have a lot of little plans in the works, but they will mostly be working toward that goal.

Are we assuming all of the locations and people are within the quarantine zone? If they're not, it will give some of us less access to use our resources and connections. I think we have to assume the quarantine zone covers mostly the poor section, but also includes some of the rich and corporate section. If Wanneng and Elizabeth's home are quarantined, that lets us have more scenes with these characters and in these locations.

If the locations aren't inside the quarantine zone, then Will's primary motivation will be to get out of quarantine before his mother gets too out of hand with her evil plans.

Richard's core motivation is helping his sister and friends.
He's trying to gain influence in the zone by making allies and hopefully not many enemies so that he can keep everyone he cares about safe.
He also needs meds for his sister which he's currently getting from Jack.

I would like it if the Quarantine was new and were all still dealing with being locked in here so maybe a couple of months into it.

Almost for sure luxury items are not coming in but refugee type items are probably coming in. Depending on what they want to do with the Quarantine (Study) then all necessary items will come in but they will from time to time restrict items to see what happens.
(Kill off) Then medicine and things that might help people survive might be held away.

Veronica feels like she is in jail, a caged bird. She was just starting to get used to the freedom and fame of her game taking off and traveling the world. Then she was gathered up and placed in quarantine. So she is depressed.

She wants to see the world, to see the space stations, to try and step out of her comfort zone of entering data in some dark room and being called a nerd to enjoying a moment in the sun.

She would be ok merely sneaking out.

The Rumor she has heard is that they are quarantined NOT because of the threat they are to the world but just to keep the RANDOM people who gained powers from influencing society. They are being studied until their powers and abilities can be safely adopted by the ruling elite.

What if the whole city were under quarantine? Then we could have all our locations and people.

Maybe years of using up earth's resources are what pushed us to colonize other planets, and the major cities have a sort of "protection zone" to protect their citizens from the "toxic airborne pollutants/harsh solar radiation/whatever threat we want". But now that protection zone has been turned inward, to protect the rest of the world from the virus that is spreading within our city.

Weird I had assumed a whole city or at least a large part of a city was our quarantine zone.

I thought it would be a city district (poor area) that is the quarantine zone while the wealthier parts of the city are still free right outside so you can see all the nice tall buildings of the rich beyond the wall

This is how I pictured it originally, too. I pictured Will being trapped there (hence his connection to Elijah as the guy who gave him a place to stay), cut off from his company and mother, but that was also when I pictured our story starting after the quarantine was over and supers were back in mainstream society. But then I realized that without the rich districts in quarantine, we'll have a hard time incorporating Elizabeth, Wanneng, and Amanda, basically every extra or location I created, because why would any of them be in the quarantine zone? We could incorporate them virtually through the MMORPG, but that prevents a lot of scenes that could otherwise be a lot of fun - Amanda is a clone of Elizbeth who used to date Jack, is engaged to Will, and is sleeping with Belladonna. She's GOT to be directly, physically involved in all this somehow.

We could say the quarantine started with the poor section of town for a couple months, but due to the ingenuity of criminals like Evelyn and Malachi, people and items made it out of the quarantine zone, so now the whole city is locked down. That could even be the event that JUST happened right before the start of the story.

That's an interesting idea as well

I have a lot to think about now :)

Life got harder, I assume. While Richard was already working in criminal circles, he got drawn deeper into them now than he was before. He also had to become more ruthless.

Mainly medicine. While he can get what his sister needs from Jack, he doesn't trust him and doesn't want to depend on him. He also wants to get out of the quarantine zone because it's dangerous in there. I assume that the security presence in the zone is not able to maintain the same level of order as in the outside world.

He's pretty much willing to do anything. He already got in deep with the world of gangs and crime organizations and he's not above using blackmail, violence or whatever else he needs to get what he wants.

There's no reason, medical or otherwise, for the quarantine. The zone is just some plot by some corporation that's trying to expand its power by locking up its enemies and letting them die.

1. My views on these were that the quarantine was a fairly recent event, but not so recent that it was completely new and strange. In fact, I'm assuming that it has already reached some sort of balance and everyone goes on with their lives naturally. Also, I though of it as something like a whole space colony (or network of colonies) was on lock down, so both rich and poor were stuck in one city. Maybe some more than other, but the plague got to everyone.

2. I would guess most thing would be officially rationed and lacking, including food and meds. A bit post-apocalyptic feel, but without the apocalyptic part :) However, because that "balance" that was established, you can also find about everything if you know where to look.
1. Jack was not in the quarantine (if we're in a space colony, he wasn't there at all!). The identification of super powers showing up in some survivors attracted him there and he was smuggled into the quarantine zone. So basically, everything changed, including his vision on human transcendence, as these super-humans were both a challenge and an opportunity to his HTLM believes.

2. Jack has stabilised a supply chain from the outside as part of his mission and he is fully supported be the HTML group. He came into the quarantine zone to understand the supers potential and he so he needs to fake it. If he needs something from the outside, he knows how to get it. As part of the spy concept, Jack is probably the PC with best outside connections.

3. A phone call :) What Jack wants is inside the quarantine zone.

4. From what Jack has gathered, the quarantine zone was established to hide some sort of accident. He is looking into some lead point to the existence of a experimental research facility in this area to find out more (AWAKEN has info on Dragon's Den,, which attracts Eli, whose secret files are on Veronica's lab)