Session 2: Betrayer Part 2

"Lisa" The renegade being, and art from the second session write up.

Rant mode go!

Second session of the game was really a kick in the nuts all around, it it was probably the longest single fight in the game, and it really did a wonderful job of setting the tone for the rest of the game.




Because the second session really was basically the second half of the first scenario, there was a far lighter focus on the story telling aspects, and more of a focus on the action, as over half of the session was dedicated to the battle against the villain, who was in effect "Lisa", a renegade being who was re-purposed to believe it was the still alive dead lover of Alvin.


This session also did allot to teach me as a Gm, the limits of the party at the time, and in hindsight, I kinda feel like the game ran smoother at the lower levels we were playing in at this point in the game, the boss itself was tossing around 13 dice, which seems like a lot at this stage in the game, and to be fair, it honestly was, but at the point in the game there I'm having to give the boss fights, between 16 and 22 dice to keep pace with the players. and I don't feel like the NPC's have quite as much staying power as they did back in the first few sessions, at the point where i'm writing this about 17 sessions and 13 scenarios in, that we really are pushing the the barriers of the system.


I also kinda figured out that it is honestly challenging to write a serialized game in what is basically an episodic game system. Hear me out on this one if you will but, allot of the Japanese TTRPG philosophy can be summed up in allot of there culture. Feel free to correct me in the comments, but gaming in Japan has to be a kinda tightly woven thing, most people would try to run tight, dare I say railroading, scenarios of a few hours, because allot of the time, you would see people playing games like Double Cross and Tenra Bansho Zero in places such as Karaoke bars and what not. This episodic mind set is seen in a couple of the mechanics in the game, The Xp Mechanic and the Lois/Tidus systems.


The Xp mechanic for example, on paper states that EXP is awarded to the players, not the characters, and the GM gets an average of the gained EXP of all the players in the game. This means that a GM could sit down and play a few games, and let someone else GM there story, while the person who took over as GM is allowed to still gain XP while he or she is behind the Gm screen. So, in effect, your letter another writer direct a couple episodes of your game, so you can enjoy the show yourself.


If Double Cross was a Television series, it would be like what most of the Star Trek series did, the episodic approach, unconnected stories told with the same cast and crew. One week your dealing with Tribbles, the next week another writer tossed down an episode about Klingon's or something.

This Episodic approach extends to the character's themselves as well, as since the player gets EXP not the character, there is no downside for losing the character at all, besides no longer being able to play that character if your attached to him. As a funny story, I was in IRC one time when a player was talking about a game they were running, and the player sacrificing all 7 of there loises, turning them Titus, and burning them to lover his CV to 2 and gaining a shit-ton of dice afterwards, after he used genetic shift to push his Encroachment to 300%. The end result was the villain of the week eating about 400+ damage in one attack and the certain death of the character in question due to Gjauming.

So yeah, in an episodic game, by all means burn the character out to win, it's really dramatic. it Also exposes the Lois/Titus system for what it is, your burning away parts of your character, and reducing your ability to survive the session in favor of  victory. Your girlfriend of a couple years, not only does she mean nothing to you now, or at least is no longer important to use to pull yourself back from the brink, but the game itself describes the relationship as "Broken", After that Titus burning, your pretty much breaking up between sessions.  Even a couple of the premade scenarios create situations where a Lois can be forced into a Titus due to something happening, like she learns about your powers or something. One scenario actually writes out on paper, the character *dies* at the end if she is Titus'd out at the end. Powerful shit really as in a way, the player killed that NPC himself.


So now that I’m terminally off topic here lets bring this back to how this impacts the ability to run a serialized game, unlike the episodic approach I tend to Gm arc's in the story, we have some episodic episodes, such as this one, but there is generally a long overreaching arc or three running behind the scenes. and Lois NPC's tend to have larger roles as time went on, and in many cases are important parts of the individual character arcs my players themselves have going on. In the Serialized style of the game I'm running, Burning a Lois to a Titus, is a really heavy proposition, especially now that the party has "known" many of them for going on 17 weeks. I try to compensate for this by providing scenario Lois's in a heavier fashion than the books scenarios, but my players have adapted to this by making there character's focused and strong enough to persist without needing to burn a Titus in the first place.


That is a wonderful thing to see, when your players seem to want to keep the Lois NPC's safe, by making there character's strong enough to not have to risk trashing the relationships tied to them. I try to help it out by not creating situations they feel the need to do so as well.


Okay enough of my rambling, lets actually talk about the story for this session.

Character's introduced this session

So I'm going to have to explain this one here, but we introduced a second Lisa this session. But we didn't learn it was a second Lisa untill the end of the session.

So this sessions version of Lisa, was a Renegade Being, for those of you who don't know what this means, she was effectively, what happened s with the virus infects something not human.

Renegade beings are a fun concept to play with, and really are part of what spawned the almost meme like phrase in the topic "The renegade virus doesn't have to explain shit"  Because the virus can infect damn near anything, rocks, animals, websites, legends, concepts. Yes you read that right, you could have a Renegade being that is basically a virus infected version of Google+ if you can figure it out (though I'd be tempted to say Neuman/Solaris for syndromes) and god do we have fun with this later on in the game for reasons I won't get into here.

The Post Session Write up

(So once again this was taken directly from my notes, I'll have the chat logs posted in a seperate post to follow for those wondering,  this one was only 69 pages this time)

The second Episode started off with the party directing themselves at the direction of the female operator figure to a local blood bank, they Identify the assassin as Lisa, much to Alvin's shock and disbelief by examining blood collected at the scene..

Later over breakfast. Kendall contacts her operator again to learn that the female operator was not UGN at all, Also John has a conversation with a concerned sounding Katrina, who warns him about the location.

Afterwards they arrive at the Baxter building and confront Lisa, they battle, at the half way mark, she blows the supports of the building and they end up fighting down the side of the building.

After she was beaten, free from the virus's grip Lisa has a final tearful farewell before passing on, all she asked, was for Alvin to promise her that he would be happy, a promise he could not make before she passed. She passed revealing that she was not actually Lisa at all, but rather a Renegade Being that thought it was Lisa

Later on Alvin made it home, just in time to get a call from Sarah, who wanted to come over with a movie, Alvin realized he had allot of battle damage to cover up

John met up with Katrina, who gave him a ride home, on the way they discussed the possibility of breaking out John's wife from UGN custody, but, that she may have been involved with the destruction of City N!

they had an argument with John making this glorious statement of the situation "You don't join an organization that turns humans into abominations; feral creatures with no impulse control who have the power to fire lasers from their fingertips and blow up buildings because they're confused and possibly murderously horny. That's not how you get things done! The UGN isn't any better with their OPERATOR PLEASE HOLD WE DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH THE ENEMY mentality, but this is SICK. I saw a dead girl turn into a puddle of goo! Is she even still alive? Was it some clone?" "

He slams the door in her face shortly afterwards

Meanwhile Kendall had an argument with the not so good Doctor Burton, who after a brief argument let slip that Lisa was just another experiment, and after the call turns to other collaborators, a man known only as Alex, and Katrina her self to advise that this was only the beginning of there plan.

The Scenarios impact

I said earlier that this scenario had something of an impact on the events of  later sessions, and two major aspects get referenced quite a bit in later sessions, Lisa herself continues to be a powerfull force in Alvin's character arc, and the Ruins of the Baxter building also becomes a sort of center point later in the game itself.

I kinda say Lisa has had a profound influence on the character arc of Alvin, because his player is honestly playing the trauma of losing the same lover twice, really close to the hip, in the current arc, and honestly, spoilers so I'll try to spoiler text this section if possible, Alvin has been in a relationship with one of the NPC's for, I want to say several months in game. Said NPC recently was awoken to her Overed powers, and as a result, Alvin has been taking a forceful stance in protecting her from battle and danger. This is despite the fact she wants to help out as much as she can, and it is creating a strain on the relationship. It's now to the point where it is very probable, and in character for both players to have a breakup in the future. It is honestly a tribute to the players abilities as a role player to really not break character even if could cause him this kind of problems.

As for the Baxter building, or the ruins of it, I'll leave that for a later post.