TftF OOC

A place to talk out of character, also open for public commenting

Our timeline puts the characters in the same school year, correct? March-April?

Yes, I think we established you're in your last year of school, so you'd graduate in the summer. You'll still be in school when this adventure happens

I thought I had already approved all sheets. Sixteen is approved now

Ty!

uh-oh... what have we got ourselves into? Something tells me it would have been better to walk the opposite way 🤣

Sounds good to me. We should put together a set of three to six songs.

I'm the one who made her disappear!

Someone else will have to bring her back 😉

Can Sabine sing German?

Yes. She can. I can't, even though about half of my ancestry is German, but she can. Well, actually I can if I know the song, but I'm not always sure what the words mean.

I have added Sonja and Kristina to our list of NPCs.

Thanks Rage!

Hey C1NDER, would you mind if we opened with a cover of What I Am - Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians? Its not really as hard as most things Sabine really likes, but I think it captures her outlook of things.

In regards to KCC's question: I think the band was just Sabine, Mikael and Hare, but correct me if I'm wrong.

A-okay by me, its a fine song!
I believe this is right -

Sabine - guitar and vocals
Mikael - drums, backup vocals
Hare - bass

Set List in progress

What I Am - Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians

Creep - Stone Temple Pilots

Everclear - Santa Monica

Rammstein - Du Riechst so Gut

working on a post now

EDIT:
Also, this is exactly what I was thinking! I had already mentioned to bowl that I thought Creep was the next best follow up to What I am. Then we get into the higher energy stuff, by the time we finish, people will be back to dancing

The figure of Sonja blinks out of existence for half a second. Henry’s stomach lurches. And then she’s back again. She speaks. It’s metallic and distorted.

"Don’t… you… like me… Hen…ry?"

The girl slumps over, powered down. The facade is pulled back and Henry is locked in a metal cell, strapped to a chair. The last few months had been a simulation.

++503 Service Unavailable++ blares across the room’s speakers just as ***** enters the room!

Lol!

Thanks for that KCC! It makes the situation just a little bit less annoying while I do some emergency first aid to about 80% of all the images I've loaded onsite. Seems Postimage is either down or defunct and no longer a stable platform.

My apologies. Here's a new one.

No worries. I would assume it's a temporary issue, but I'll replace the image link either way

I'm loving the party. It's a really nice character introduction for this part, but unless someone minds, I'll move us forward tomorrow to the end of it

Fine by me.

all good here!

let's do it

@KCC, do you mean the question whether the device looks as she remembers? I thought that was answered by the "That's it!"
Sorry for any confusion.
If that's not what you meant, which question did she ignore?

No, you’re absolutely right. Apologies! My mistake! Let me amend it!

Sabine buys cans of hair spray, lighter torches, and ball bats (had to look up baseball in Sweden. Apparently, there has been a growing interest and play of baseball in the Stockholm area since 1992 at least).

Nice Rolls btw, KCC!

100%! Nicely done!

A once in a lifetime event, believe me!

So that's the end of Chapter 5, ending on a cliffhanger. I'll get us started on the next chapters tomorrow!

And the new thread is live. This one might get a bit confusing, but I'll try to make things as clear as possible.

Also: You're back to playing the young ones!

@bowlofspinach,

I can't submit Axel. I am at my two character limit already.

Oops, didn't think of that.

I raised the limit now

I submitted Axel, still awaiting approval.

Approved

Jeez, Stina. .. Sixteen dice rolled, One six.

If Sabine has to use Force to make an attack on Dr. Evil there will be no dozen sixes. The best she do is five sixes. If she can use Move, on the other hand, she can possibly get nine sixes.

You can't really attack with Move. If Sabine wants to attack, it'll have to be Force

I'm a little unsure of what Mikael's best role in this might be.

With the wall and door between us, I can't see him getting a chance to distract her with a charm roll first before Sabine is on her.

Stina has Tinker down.

That leaves his other high-ish skills as Contact, Investigate, Comprehend, and Empathize.

Mikael could go in before Sabine and attempt to talk her into unhooking the kids to bring them out safely. Or come in after Sabine and do the same while she has him at gunpoint.

What do you think, Rage?

You could help Stina with the machine with an Investigate roll maybe... Or you could just double down on attacking Elisabeth. I'd also allow a charm roll to distract her

For example. Just looking the machine over and trying to figure out how to disable it safely

Investigate to determine how to gets the kids out without killing them.

I cannot see any way for Stina to use her Shame, here... or she would!


should have picked something more useful at character creation 😅

I think you could justify it. She failed to act in time then and couldn't save the cat. But this time, maybe she can save the kids... If you stretch it a bit, I think you can figure it out

OK, gave it a go.

Is it just me, or does putting Dr. Sundgren in her own device and throwing the switch again until she vanishes sound like a good idea? No one is going to believe us AGAIN and she is going to walk free and harm more people, unless we stop her for good.

I'm not sure where you got that Elisabeth has a gun, @RageRed. She's just working the machine and as far as you can see, she doesn't look armed

I'm also thinking about this now 🤔
The book definitely wants her around for the final adventure of the campaign. If you do decide totry and get rid of her, I'd have to see how I would still make that work. But I'm sure I could figure something out

Posted May 24
Dr. Sundgren tenses up at the sound of Sixten's attempt to break the glass. She looks up at him and reaches for the pistol at her hip. When Sixten tries again and Dr. Sundgren sees that the plexiglass does not seem even close to giving in, she relaxes again and turns her eyes back to the machine, ignoring the boy's struggling.

Ah, right. I forgot about that and couldn't find it because I only searched for "gun". Thanks for the reminder.
She probably wouldn't be wielding it this moment but she is armed. Doesn't make a big difference to your post anyway, I was just curious

I understand how frustrating Elisabeth is. She's arrogant and doesn't acknowledge that she's been beaten. I hate encountering villains like that, so I'm sorry for that 😅

That said, I'm really not comfortable with torture, like, it's the one thing I can't stand in any media and it just makes me really uncomfortable.

So I'd prefer if we could not go that route here.

Maybe it makes sense to discuss ooc what the solution to this confrontation should be and then move it in character. That might be more productive.

One thing I might not have made clear is that she doesn't expect you to leave the kids with her, just that you let her walk away from this. Which I understand you don't want to do.
Again, I'm happy to let you find some punishment for her. I might have to bend the final adventure in response to it but that's fine.
I'm perfectly happy with you banishing her.
I don't know if I'd be as happy with you shooting her. I'm not viscerally uncomfortable with it like with torture, but there's a lot of implications there. For one, your character(s) will have to deal with having murdered someone. And they might have experienced some tough stuff, but they're still just regular teenagers. We'd also have to figure out what the legal consequences would be. If Elisabeth disappeared, well, nobody has seen her in a decade anyway. If she is found shot dead, there'll be an investigation. And there's an eyewitness that saw you enter and whom you attacked.

Anyway, just saying, I understand how frustrating the situation is. It's written in the book to let her get away unobstructed so she can show up in the next mystery. But again, I'm happy to bend that if it'll give you a better experience. We should just figure out how

ah, OK. Was trying to roleplay an appropriate reaction for an angry young girl whose brother has ceased to exist and that just stepped into a torture chamber of the woman responsible for that...

Stina is trying to figure out if there is a specific action that the tattooed doctor has to take to re-instate things, and if she can intimidate her into taking that action. She wants her brother back, and is prepared to use violence if that can help get him back.

What I really don't like about how the writer ends this part, is that she not only just walks away and it says she can't be charged with anything, but she has kidnapped and tortured at least five kids and they are alive to testify to this fact. Also, the idea that if we stop the machine and take the kids out of it, suddenly everything goes back to normal. Very bad writing and logic at least for me.

I say we dump her in the machine and erase all trace of her ever having existed. This will reverse what she did to the kids to the changes that have occurred. Better yet, if we erase her completely from existence and she never forms the Prophets. Jarnek is not goaded into killing Tanenbaum's mother and all her minions were never mesmerized by her.

Mikael's party will go off without weird twists and we all live happily ever after.

After reading Sundgren's BS I just want her gone. Permanently. Put her in the machine and as she's vanishing, put a bullet in her.

Seconded. And I 100% get Stina's approach as well - losing a close family member like that and having the person directly in front of you...I'd argue an emotionally charged teenager is at least as likely, but maybe more likely, to resort to senseless violence to try and fix everything, lacking a better idea.

I totally get that. It's definitely the one main complaint about the campaign that I've seen online that all the prophets have plot armor in their initial adventures.
The book says that she can't be charged with anything because the kidnapped kids are too confused and shaken up to give a proper statement, which, yeah, I think feels like a copout. It also doesn't feel quite right that shutting off the machine just fixes reality somehow.

This will also mean that it will be completely impossible for us to play the final part. Which, okay. We can end the campaign after this one if this is the more satisfying end for you. It does kind of wrap up the campaign nicely to undo everything that the Prophets did that way and to make it so they were never formed.
I would prefer if we got to play the final adventure as well, to have gone through the whole campaign. But if this is how you prefer to end it, I'll accept that.

Yes. It is how I would end it.

I would however be open to playing in the fourth part as an alternate world with a different character, maybe in Colorado?

Hm, I'm not opposed to that solution either. The final adventure does expect the PCs already having played through the first three, so those alternate characters would have to be assumed to have gone through similar adventures as yours. But it would be possible.

I'm far more interested in the Swedish setting than the American one, but I would be open to running the adventure at the US Loop if you'd like to explore that part of the setting. If everyone wants to go for this alternative universe idea for the fourth adventure.
Also, fair warning: If we move to the US, the characters' names would be different. But I could put a refresher into the forum so everyone can keep track of who is who

Slightly evil idea: If you banish Elisabeth to a different universe, we could assume that that universe would assume her to have always been part of it, so she would have done similar things there as she did in the one we've played so far. So while you would be dealing with a different Järnek and a different Liv (or their American counterparts), Elisabeth could conceivably be the same person as in this universe 😄

Throw Elisabeth in the machine, shoot her as she's disappearing - bullet hits vital component, machine explodes, we all wake up in different bodies as alternative versions of ourselves? Offer a chance for us to return home to our normal reality through the end of the final chapter?

I live in the US, but the Swedish setting is more to my liking as well.

@C1NDER, I don't want different bodies. If we are going for a different reality, I will be creating a completely new character, as I want the end of the Trilogy to be the finale for Sabine and Kajsa so they can get on with their lives and move on to Stockholm.

That's fair, it was just a thought.

I guess we put her in the machine then? How do our characters know how to erase her from reality like ahe never existed? Or is that just automatically what happens when we put her in?

Before one of you ends her, let me make another post. I just want to figure out how we do this before then.

I kind of like the "now kids in a different universe have to deal with her after you send her away" idea.

As for erasing her, it's not really instantaneous. It took days to wear Jillian down enough that she became untethered.
But Elisabeth has spent the past ten years traveling, so it would be reasonable to say her tether to this world is already severely weakened.

Which is the consideration of firing a bullet into her as she vanishes.

Let's do a poll. If I can remember how to set them up.



I think I already know which option won't get a single vote

this is like the film director stopping the movie to ask the audience! 😂

I will abstain my vote (and avoid reading the result), as whichever way we go, it would have spoiled the surprise for myself!

It just seems like there's some strong opinions here and I don't want to end this in a way that makes people dissatisfied. A poll seemed like the best option to figure out how the players want to do this and what would make you feel best about this adventure and potentially the next

I am good to go whichever way, really - and Stina will behave 🙂

Cheers to however we proceed!

Well, with Dr_B not voting, it looks like the decision is made. However, and that is entirely my fault, I am realising that I have a problem with that decision. And I definitely should have thought it through more before creating the poll and adding that option.
I was going to make a response here saying what the decision is (to play the fourth adventure completely unconnected) but as I had the whole thing written out and just had to hit send, I realised I can absolutely not bring up any enthusiasm for it.

I'm okay with ending this campaign with you erasing Elisabeth here and ending the campaign prematurely by undoing all the bad things the Prophets have done. It's a nice ending. I'm even okay with you killing her as well.
But I just can't bring up any excitement about playing the culmination of this campaign completely unconnected to all the build-up for it. I'm really sorry for not thoroughly considering this earlier, but I'm not going to do that.

We'll end the campaign here, the way you want. But I'm not going to run part 4.

Very well. Just as you can't find the enthusiasm for running the 4th part separate, I can't find the enthusiasm to play it as intended due to the huge plot flaws. It not only doesn't make logical sense, it makes our character's experiences and personal testimonies to the atrocities committed by the Prophets, invalid and worthless, as if our characters really don't matter in the scheme of things.

I agree with Bowl. That unconnected option was the least appealing to me. Better to pick option 1 or the option that I eventually voted for, in that case.

I think it’s a fitting end to the campaign, if we end it here. Though I admit to being curious as to what the fourth adventure could possibly have contained. A triple threat? I was surprised when Bowl mentioned a fourth part.

Well, thanks for the game Bowl. Let’s finish it strong. I had a great time with Henry and the rest. Hope you enjoyed it too!

And I totally understand that. So we'll make the big finale here

Thank you for playing!
I really enjoyed this campaign and it was a lot of fun to go through these adventures.

I'm sorry for the rough way this last one ended, but I hope that didn't sour the rest of the campaign for you. I think we managed to bring it to a satisfying conclusion thanks to some good discussion about our wants.

I'm looking forward to palying with any or all of you again in future games!

Awh! We did it, and we got the best ending imaginable! Great stuff everyone, and thank you, Bowl! One last post incoming!

Thank you for running it, I had great fun with Stina and her Scandi friends! Will post an epilogue too.

Thanks Bowl!

See you around the virtual table.

Thank you, Bowl, for running us through these adventures! I really enjoyed playing Mikael and getting to know everyone a little better (both in and out of character) - see you all around GP!

I'm retiring this game now.

Thanks again for playing the campaign! You were an amazing crew of players 😊