Welcome back to my GM diary! If you haven’t already, check out episode 3 of our liveplay below, then read on for my super spoilery thoughts!
A Moment of Calm
We shot these eight episodes over two days with a lunch break in the middle. This episode was the first one leading out of that lunch break on the first day, so I wanted to give the players a chance to recenter their characters. A lot had happened to them since they were introduced, and so I used the check-in in the cafeteria to just get inside their heads a bit! I think it helps to prompt your players to do so every once in a while. It gave me some insight into how they were feeling and let us slowly slide back into playing after the break.
A Moral Dilemma
I love moral dilemmas, because I’m a very mean GM. For this stream, I wanted to give the players something to chew on that wasn’t too difficult, as it is a family show, but still presented some questions.
In a survival situation, you’re always gonna encounter those who look out for themselves and who try and take control of resources. With the power going out, it was the perfect opportunity for someone with fewer scruples to camp out on the only generators in town and start charging for access! Initially I had designed this encounter as a trap-filled hallway with some goons at the end, but I changed the mooks to robots because I felt there would be less scruples about punching them. In retrospect I might’ve kept them as people, partly for the quandary of it all and partly because, uh, biohacker stuff doesn’t work on constructs and I put them up against a lot of constructs in these early episodes. Sorry Tahm!
Howard Baleson here was one of the first NPCs I concepted. Yes, he’s a man who will take advantage of a crisis to profit, but he’s also got a heart – and more importantly, a good reason for doing things. His daughter’s sick! He needs that power! Sure he’s gonna turn a profit while he’s at it, but he still needs it! The players did pretty much exactly what I expected, however, and figured out the secret third option to win the encounter without, y’know, killing a kid. C’mon, family show. I’m not that heartless.
In this encounter we also see Michelle using her abilities in creative ways I never anticipated. This will be a theme! This invisibility gambit is foreshadowing!
Other Notes
- The line “you may be invisible, but you are not immune to the consequences of your actions” is without a doubt one of the rawest lines I have ever dropped off the cuff while GMing.
- Today’s shirt is a Starfinder Society shirt, because I simply must represent the brand! I’m so excited for the Scoured Stars compilation adventure later this year.
What’s coming next week? Well…now that we’ve got power, it’s probably time to try and make contact with the upper decks. But not every level has fared as well as this one, as our heroes will soon discover! Hopefully they’ve got the fright stuff to make it through…
Alex Speidel 