14 k of g in a f p d

I got a chance to run my semi-dormant Traveller game this past weekend. The campaign has been running for a while; the earliest session notes I still have are from 1984. These days I only get to run it on rare occasions. Our last session was about a year-and-a-half ago.

The game went well, the crew of the Whatever³ managed to find trouble again, shot up another science outpost and probably got themselves added to someone else’s enemies list and everyone had a good time. I was glad to visit the old galaxy again but after it was over I felt a bit let down. Some of the shine seemed to have gone. The future just isn’t what it used to be.

I discovered the game way back in 1978 but I always associate the game with the 1980′s. And that’s what it feels like, really; it’s the 1980′s with fancier gadgets. Sure, you have interstellar travel, fusion power and antigravity, but that’s really about it. Take those three things out and it would be hard to find a scenario you couldn’t run as a game set on Earth in the present day. Wrist computers and personal communicators don’t seem so unusual when half the players are tracking their characters on iPads while checking in on a cell phone.

I suppose this is an inevitable result of any tech-focused science fiction. What seems advanced initially seems quaint later on. The best science fiction of course is about people, how the tech affects them, but with few exceptions that doesn’t come up much in most RPGs. Players are usually more interested in exploring or shooting than discussing how being part of an interstellar civilization has affected the local’s lives. The fact that most planets from Traveller are effectively independent of each other means that it pretty much hasn’t anyway. There is rarely a feeling that you are in a galaxy-spanning civilization. Basically it’s just “planet of the week” and none of them seem to affect each other that much.

So I don’t know. I still enjoy the game and still enjoy the thought of hopping on a free trader, hitting orbit and jumping to points unknown. But it’s a future of nostalgia, the way it used to be. Maybe I’m just getting old and cynical, but it doesn’t feel like the future anymore. Just another fantasy that never was.

It was 3 am when I pulled into Paris. They call it the city of lights. Home of culture, of art, of history.

Not to me. To me it is just a few blocks holding warehouses and freight depots. Truck showrooms and repair shops. A place to sleep for the night.

I find the depot I am heading for and back the load of car parts I am carrying into its assigned loading dock. A probably bored supervisor somewhere notes the delivery and marks it complete, a chime indicating my payment for the run has been deposited into my account.

I decide to rest for a few hours until dawn then pick up another shipment, probably heading eastward deeper into Europe. I’m not here in Paris to sightsee. I’m here to work.

This is Euro Truck Simulator.

I’m not totally sure why I picked this game up. A couple of people on the Gamers With Jobs forums started talking about it in a positive way. I downloaded the demo from Steam and tried it and, when the demo expired, bought the game.

The game is actually quite simple. You are a truck driver. Initially you are simply a driver-for-hire driving trucks for others. Once you have earned enough money you can buy your own truck and start carrying loads from the open freight market. Eventually you can buy garages across Europe, buy trucks and hire your own drivers to create your own trucking business. But even then it is still a driving simulation at its core.

It’s hard to describe why the game is so addictive. It’s not as complex as a flight or racing sim but it isn’t something you can just put on “cruise control” and lean back. The simulation of Europe contained in the game is compressed by about a factor of 30 (and is really more representative than accurate) so long straight stretches of road are rare. You are constantly having to maneuver, change lanes and roads, negotiate traffic jams and toll booths and deal with weather and road conditions. You are constantly engaged but at a lower level. This isn’t a life-or-death firefight. It’s just traffic.

And the roads you are driving along are interesting places. There is other traffic of course but other things are happening as well. You will pass construction on the roads themselves. Farm equipment and timber harvesters toil beside the roads. Trains pass by and planes and balloons sail past overhead while windmills spin in the distance. The world is dynamic and interesting.

But the game has RPG elements as well. As you drive you gain experience based on the type of load you are carrying and the distance you travelled. You can use the experience to improve your character. You can give your driver the ability to drive longer distances, carry heavier, hazardous or more valuable cargoes or take on jobs that require rapid delivery. These tend to pay more and give more experience.

Getting paid lets you earn enough to buy better and more powerful trucks to drive yourself or to use to expand your trucking business.

One other feature I find enjoyable is the ability to stream various European radio stations as you drive. Listening to a French Europop or German Metal station while driving through the European countryside just adds to the immersion.

So what is the magic mix here? It’s an experience that requires constant but non-frantic attention. It has RPG elements that lets you improve your character and gives you goals to strive for. It has economic simulation elements that let you grow your trucking empire. And it puts all of this together in an immersive package that is solidly grounded in the real world.

Try the demo. The demo is free on Steam and is the complete game; it just cuts off after you have visited 8 different cities or travel over 3,000 kilometers. You’ll know by then if the game is for you or not.

Me? I’d say more, but I have a load of forklifts that need to get to Frankfurt and I have a delivery deadline to meet.

As I leave Paris I see the TGV train pulling out on a track parallel to the road. I look at it for a moment, then shrug. An amazing machine, but it can only go where its rails will take it. Me? I have all of Europe to explore. I switch on the radio and take the exit east towards Germany.

Recently I wanted to try something different for our semi-regular role-playing group. I had recently picked up Eclipse Phase after having it recommended by one of our players and wanted to try it out. The two of us managed to convince the rest of the group to try a one-shot game of it and I offered to GM.

Since Eclipse Phase is a bit more complex in both setting and rules system than the games we usually play I decided to use an idea I had seen used in a Role Playing Public Radio Actual Play podcast. Basically they ran the game as a “programmed introduction” to the game, similar to the way a video game will have several “tutorial” levels as the first few encounters. I would introduce both game concepts and the background of the world as we played.

To do this, I used pre-generated characters but I had several copies of each character sheet, each with different parts of the sheet blacked out. This way the players would only be exposed to a limited amount of information at a time. The characters all had generic names like “The Doctor”, “The Soldier” and “The Detective”. All were standard Splicer morphs.

I wound up with four players, one of whom was the one who first introduced me to the game. They experienced…

I had pitched the game to the players as horror/sci-fi and gave Dead Space and Event Horizon as examples. As we started, I described the world as being like Blade Runner; hypercorps and a small group of the hyperelite controlled the world’s economy, there was increasing environmental collapse and destruction, widespread unrest, wars and terrorism. But there were also advances. There were colonies on most worlds of the solar system. The Internet (now called “The Mesh”) was ubiquitous. Artificial intelligences and life forms like Blade Runner‘s Replicants exist (except here they are called “Pods”) as well as more traditional robots (here called “Synths”). There are even animals that have been uplifted to sentience like apes and dolphins and even octopi and crows. (I deliberately didn’t go into the details of Morphs and Sleeving at this point and left it at that.)

The players then selected their characters, taking “The Soldier”, “The Hacker”, “The Doctor” and “The Fighter”. Their character sheets only had Ego related attributes and skills showing and I explained how I was using a “tutorial” approach to the game. They all seemed to like the idea.

I told the players that they all found themselves waking up from a nap. They were in a subshuttle station, a terminal for high-speed rail that ran though evacuated tunnels underground. I explained that they had to use the subshuttle because all air traffic over the US had been suspended. After the destruction of the Argentinean refugee flotilla a few weeks before the government had responded to possible retaliatory terrorist threats by shutting down all air travel. When asked about the attack I told them how there were food riots in South America caused by environmental shifts and the near-total destruction of fishing in the Pacific after the collapse of the still-under-construction Pacific beanstalk.

After filling in a bit more of the background the players started looking around. I told them that the terminal concourse was filled with people all apparently waiting for the subshuttle but that all of them seemed to be asleep. The only other person awake was an AI in a worker pod acting as a gate agent. The overhead displays are all showing “Delayed” for all shuttles while screens that would normally show entertainment or advertising are all showing the equivalent of “No Signal”.

The players introduce themselves and talk a bit. Eventually one of them asks why they are there and I have all of them make COG rolls. I tell them that they aren’t sure why they are there; they can’t remember how they got there or where they were going. Only those who made their rolls realize that there is anything odd about this.

This causes immediate concern. Everyone except the Doctor had made their rolls and the other three take a moment to convince him that something was wrong. The one player who was familiar with Eclipse Phase realized that they had been hacked and explained this to the other players

The question then turned to who hacked them and why. They try to wake up some of the other people around but are reprimanded by the gate agent who asks them to leave the other passengers alone.

They then turn to the gate agent and start demanding answers from her. She tells them nothing, simply repeating her request that they leave the other passengers alone and assuring them that their shuttle would be along shortly. The players start getting angry and threaten her but get nowhere. I explain that the agent is simply an AI and explain the differences between AIs, AGIs and Seed AIs.

Getting nowhere with the gate agent and being unable to wake any other passengers they decide to leave. They leave the gate area and get to the main concourse, only to see it extending infinitely in both directions. Gates line the concourse and they realize that are millions of people here, all asleep and waiting on their shuttles.

This confuses the players for a bit and I prompt for rolls before explaining that they must be in a Simulspace (and a fairly basic one at that). This allows me to explain Simulspaces to the players. When they ask if they could interact with the Simulspace I explain the Mesh, Mesh Interfaces and Entropics. The Hacker makes an Infosec to hack into the Simulspace node, find the players and release them.

The Hacker tries to find out who is controlling the Simulspace. I tell him he immediately detects a presence that appears to him as an incredibly complex shape. He finds it hard to look at but at the same time can’t look away and, the more he looks at it, the more complex the shape seems to become. He feels his own thoughts starting to shift to follow the bizarre shapes he is seeing at which point he makes a roll and pulls out of the Simulspace. He loses SV and I explain the sanity rules to the players.

The players wake up on a sidewalk in Atlanta. All around them are hundreds of people lying on the ground, unconscious. Vehicles under AI control have landed but the passengers in them are unmoving. Emergency sirens wail, smoke rises in the distance and they hear sounds of gunfire and explosions around them. The players are all in standard splicer morphs and I give them expanded character sheets containing the rest of their attributes and skills.

The players’ Muses come on-line at this point and I explain Muses to them. The Muses say that the players have been unresponsive for several hours. The players have no memories of the last few days and their Muses quickly bring them up to date. I give them a quick tale of a world falling apart; riots in New York and LA, a three-way war between China, India and Australia, continuing unrest in South America and so on. Things had suddenly escalated in the past 24 hours and wars, rioting and unrest are now breaking out all across the globe. Even off-world was getting involved; there were reports of the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance firing rocks from the Lunar mass drivers at Miami.

Several hours ago reports had started filtering through the Mesh and more traditional media that the hypercorps and governments had been urging their leaders and other elite to get off-world as quickly as possible. There was strong evidence that something bad was about to happen. This was turning into a panic as millions of people were now starting to rush to find a way off planet.

Before the players can fully absorb this a swarm of quadrotors appear at the end of the street. The rotors grab the unconscious bodies and, deploying a pair of rotating blades, sever the head from the body. The rotors then fly off, taking the head with them and leaving the body behind. More quadrotors appear and start “harvesting” more heads, moving towards the players.

Panic sets in, especially since the players are unarmed. The Warrior has unarmed skill but the rest don’t and so try to leave the area. They try to take a nearby vehicle but something has overridden the controls and forced it to the ground. They start retreating down the street.

They try to access the Mesh to get information but all they find are news that the situation is continuing to deteriorate across the globe and alerts urging everyone to evacuate the city.

Someone asks if they know anyone who can help them. I hand out the third set of character sheets and explain networking and reputation to them.

Accessing their networks the players are able to determine more about what is going on. Primarily, The Solder gets in touch with one of his contacts and discovers that the military activated the TITANs about 24 hours ago in response to a perceived threat. Things seemed to go fine for several hours then all hell broke loose. I gave a short explanation by saying “Basically, they activated SkyNet.”

They also get a warning that a battle of some kind is taking place in Atlanta and that if losses get too high the military has authorized a “total containment” solution. It is suggested that they get out as fast as they can.

Finally, the Hacker uses his contacts to find a weapons dealer in the area. The Fighter is trained in unarmed but the rest need weapons so they head there.

They have to dodge around more of the quadrotors but they get to the dealer. Inside there is blood everywhere and signs of an intense fight; it looks like the dealer and her customers attempted to fight the quadrotors and failed. A dozen or more headless bodies are in and around the shop and the remains of two quadrotors lie in the street.

The players collect some weapons from the bodies then check out the store. I explain fabricators to them as they find one in the back. They quickly fabricate some more weapons, ammo and body armor.

An alarm goes off in the front of the store and they go to investigate. They discover it is a nanoswarm detector and I explain nanoswarms to them. They see a foglike swarm around the bodies outside the store. As they watch, the bodies alter. The severed neck seals and the arms and hands lengthen into long claws. The bodies stagger to their feet and start lurching towards the players. A brief combat follows in which the players handily dispatch the “zombies” while learning the basics of combat.

The gunfire has attracted several of the quadrotors and the players dispatch two of them before fleeing through the back of the shop. They manage to find a vehicle that hasn’t had its controls frozen, get it into manual mode and take off.

The main roads are jammed with vehicles that were attempting to flee the city when their controls were overridden. They decide they need to get out of the city as fast as they can and find a way to get to orbit.

I explain there are three ways to get off-planet. They can try to find a spaceport, though they can quickly determine through the Mesh that the local spaceport is already overrun with people trying to get onto one of the remaining shuttles. They can try to get to the lone operational beanstalk at Kilimanjaro, though they will have to find a way to get there. Or, they can find an Egocasting facility and transmit themselves somewhere else. This led to a long explanation of Egos, Morphs and Sleeving. I finally got around to explaining Cortical Stacks at this point as well, and the players realized that the quadrotors stealing the heads were really stealing their stacks for some reason.

The player’s don’t like any of their choices but realize they have to at least get out of town before it gets nuked. They stay in their groundcar and start heading along surface streets out of town.

The initial consensus is that the spaceport will be mobbed with people and that they won’t be able to get to Kilimanjaro. They start trying to locate an egocasting facility but the player familiar with the setting tells them they will at best wind up as Infogees if not simply getting shoved into cold storage. They are stymied for a bit until I suggest that there are smaller starports catering to the hypercorps and hyperelite. They locate one north of town and head out that way.

Along the way they pass a battle between the military and a thing. It is spider-like, with a black nodule of a body with seven legs. About halfway along its length each leg splits into seven more legs, each of which in turn splits into seven more and so on. The thing is firing some sort of energy beam and the military seems to be doing little if any harm to it. They wisely completely avoid the area.

They get to the hypercorp field and find a fence guarded by a large number of private security in fury morphs. There is a crowd around the entrance trying to get in and the fury morphs are keeping them out, firing indiscriminately into the crowd at one point to keep them back. The players abandon their car and start circling the field looking for another way in. They eventually find a drainage tunnel. There is a locked grate over it but they manage to get though and onto the field.

They check a few of the hangers and find most of them either heavily guarded or empty, but finally find one with a shuttle being prepped and only a pair of security guards. They are debating trying to hijack the shuttle when a groundcar pulls up outside. Four people get out, two security guards and two hypercorp types in sylph morphs. One of the sylphs is unconscious and the other sylph and one security guard are carrying her between them.

The Doctor suddenly rushes towards them, identifies himself a doctor and offers to help. The hypercorp executive accepts this and the guards allow them to approach. The Doctor examines the sylph and can’t find anything wrong and the Hacker realizes that they have been affected by the same thing that locked the players into simulspace earlier.

He tells the group that he might be able to help but not where they are. He asks if they have a shuttle.

The executive is suddenly suspicious but the Doctor comes up with the story that they are with another hypercorp (using the name on one of the empty hangers) and says they were there to evacuate but their shuttle left without them. He identifies the Hacker as one of their IT experts and the other two players as their security detail. He burns all of his remaining moxie but manages to convince the executive. The combined group heads into the hanger.

Everyone gets on board the shuttle and it preps for launch. The executive tells the two guards that had been at the hanger to remain there as more people would be coming and they would be sending another shuttle for them. Everyone straps in and the shuttle takes off.

The shuttle climbs to high altitude as an aircraft then switches to its main engines and starts accelerating into orbit. As it does, the unconscious sylph starts shaking violently as if they were having a fit. Suddenly, their head falls off, spouts seven spider-like legs and starts climbing up the cabin. (Think the spider-thing from The Thing) The body’s hands morph into claws like the bodies the players had seen earlier and rips itself free of the seat restraints.

This leads into the climatic final battle, fought in an accelerating shuttle. The apparent gravity keeps shifting from “down” being towards the back of the cabin at several Gs to zero-gravity, depending on what the shuttle is doing. Player get to use everything from Fray through Free Fall to Freerunning to stay alive and kill the two creatures.

They succeed but one of the two security guards is killed and everyone is wounded before both exsurgents are defeated. Unfortunately, the shuttle is leaking air.

They throw the creature’s remains out the airlock and climb into vac suits. Everything in orbit is being overwhelmed by shuttles and other spacecraft attempting to dock as anything and everything capable of spaceflight is leaving Earth and despite their damage they are having to wait their turn to dock.

Meanwhile, transmissions from Earth have changed. Distress signals are everywhere and more and more official broadcasts start urging everyone to evacuate the planet. They watch in their drifting shuttle as flashes of light mark nuclear strikes occurring across the planet and see the massive flash as an antimatter strike hits North America. Fires rage everywhere and the atmosphere becomes dark with smoke, ash and shifting clouds of nanoswarms. Slowly, the transmissions from Earth fall silent. As they watch, the Earth dies below them.

I explain the aftermath. How the TITANs leave the Earth, the establishment of the quarantine, the discovery of the Pandora gates and how 95% of the human race dies in a period of two weeks. They have experienced the Fall.

While the players enjoyed the scenario most of them expressed no interest in playing again. The main complaint was that the rules and the setting were too complex and that there was too much for them to have to keep track of. So it doesn’t look like we’ll be playing again anytime soon. Still, it was fun.

Continuing his explorations of the world of Dragast, Umang finds that discovering the tetrahedron of Dragast is only the first half of what he needs to do here. To finish, he has to visit a blacksmith who forges batteries from fire and steel, manipulates a puzzle composed entirely of red herrings, solves puzzles just to call an elevator and wonders why no one besides him has ever heard of handrails. Yes, another exciting adventure in Aura: Fate of the Ages

Ian and I were working on the irrigation units on the north wall when we saw the trader pass overhead. Just the contrail of re-entry, but we knew it meant they would be landing soon. We left the pump half-disassembled and headed down and across the Gash. We knew the rest of the town would be heading for the pad as well. It would be several days before things returned to their routine so no one would be paying attention to the lower water pressure for a while.

The lifts were already up so we had to take the Thousand Steps to the top of the south rim and by the time we finished the climb the trader had already settled onto the flat expanse of compacted dirt that served as our starport, though the only real way to distinguish it from the rest of the plain was the array of antenna and sensor domes surrounding it. Most of the population was already there, watching as the automs brought the scheduled cargoes out of the hold and carried them to the lifts that would lower them to the valley floor.

Then came the market goods, the things that everyone had come to see and trade for. I watched the crowd as they moved among the tables the trader’s crew had put out. We mostly had items of glass to trade; when you live on a world of sand your manufacturing options are limited. The crew took what we had, carefully packing it away as our people chose implements of wood and metal and clothing of spun cloth in exchange. Data chips were exchanged as well, as always information was the most precious commodity of all.

Ian and I had not brought anything with us to trade. Instead, we were there to talk to the captain. We finally spotted her, moving among the crowd, advising her crew and exchanging the occasional pleasantry with one of our people. Ian pushed his way through the crowd towards her.

When we caught up with her she was looking over a set of goblets that Jeryome had spun. She was carefully examining them, selecting individuals from the set and carefully placing them in a padded container being held by the utility autom that was following her. Jeryome seemed pleased with the way the transaction was going and gave us a nod of recognition before turning his attention back to the captain.

As they talked I thought of the incongruity of it all. The realities of manufacture and travel make it so that there is really no need to ship basic commodities like minerals or food between the stars. Pretty much everything can be mined, grown or fabricated locally in any system that humans have settled. Exotic chemicals or processes can be replicated and recreated locally. After all, there are only so many ways that matter can be assembled and we have had the ability to do so at will for a long time. Even a tiny world such as ours only needed the occasional shipment of parts to keep itself running.

What we did need were uniques. One-off, created items that resulted from human creativity and ingenuity. Yes, any item that a human can create could be replicated thousands of times over but there was special status in having a Unique; from having the template from which the others were made.

It is the way of human nature. Automs could flawlessly replicate a meal, but the same meal cooked by a human, even imperfectly, will always be perceived by others as superior. It was why Ian and I had been repairing the north irrigation unit ourselves. Automs could easily do it faster than we could but no one would ever think it worked as well.

I looked at the captain. She appeared to be well into her second century but still had all of her vitality and intellect. She was dressed in a tan jumpsuit like the rest of her crew with only the blue captain’s star embroidered on the sleeve indicating her rank. As I watched, she finished making her selections, thanked Jeryome, entered a few notes on her datapad then turned to face us. She tilted her head slightly, probably noticing that neither of us were carrying anything for trade, but stepped forward in greeting.

“I’m Dalyen, the captain of the ‘Skirting the Edges of Infinity’. Morning greetings to you both. How can I help you?”

I hesitated but Ian spoke. “Captain Dalyen, I… I mean we…”, he gestured towards me, “We want to join your crew.”

Dalyen smiled tolerantly. “Oh really?” She shook her head. “And what makes you think I’m looking for crewmembers?”

Ian paused, somewhat taken aback. “Well… are you?” he asked finally.

The captain crossed her arms and cocked her head to one side, considering Ian then me. “It depends on who is applying.” she said finally. “But answer something for me first. You don’t know me. I doubt you even know anything about me. But you come up to me and the first thing you ask is to join me. So tell me. Why?”

Ian frowned. “We’re techs.” he said, gesturing towards me again. “I assume you can always use another tech.”

Dalyen shook her head. “That wasn’t what I asked. I’m not asking why I should be interested in you, I’m asking why you want to join me.”

Ian waved his arms around, indicating the sandy plain, the Gash, the mountains in the far distance. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Another shake of her head. “Apparently not, since I’m asking.”

Ian sighed and shook his own head. “Look at this place!” he said. “Sand, rocks and not much else. And no one interested in anything except living in the bottom of a hole in the ground. Why would I want to stay here?”

Dalyen smiled tolerantly. “I understand the Gash is a good place to be during sandstorms. And this desert is hardly your entire planet. I’m sure there’s a lot more varied terrain than this.”

“But it’s no more exciting than this.” said Ian. “Yeah, there are a few dozen outposts around the planet but nothing happens at them either.”

The captain shook her head. “I’m not sure why you’re talking to me if you’re looking for ‘excitement’. Excitement is something I try to avoid. I like stability myself.”

Ian looked frustrated. “But surely you go places that are more interesting than this!”

Dalyen shrugged. “Interesting to who? I’m sure someone from Freya would be happy here given that the temperatures are well above freezing. Nova Seattle’s people would be stunned at a place where it isn’t raining or storming all the time. And Polynesians wouldn’t know what to do on a world with more dry land than ocean.” She made a gesture encompassing the desert around her. “I’ve been to most of the known worlds and most of them are hardly different from what you have here; there are only so many planets we can live on and they aren’t that different when you come down to it.”

She shook her head. “If you want ‘excitement’ I suggest you contact Survey. Or maybe the Patrol. I’m not what you’re looking for.”

Ian stood silent for a moment. “So you aren’t hiring then?”

“I didn’t say that. I always have room for the right kind of person. But you aren’t it.” Ian stood stunned and she turned to look at me. “What about you? Are you looking for ‘excitement’ too?”

I looked back at her and considered the jumpsuit she was wearing again. It fit her perfectly, obviously custom-tailored and not fabricated. I looked at the datapad she still held and the matching earpiece, both black glass and chrome and again obviously custom made. Then I glanced at the items she had selected from us in trade and carefully packed on the autom still waiting patiently behind her.

“I want to learn.” I said. “I want to learn what people want and what they don’t. How to decide what is important to them and what isn’t. And how much to pay them for what they don’t want and how much they will pay me for what they do. I want to learn how to make as much money as I can travelling from world to world so that someday I can have my own ship and my own crew and that I will be the one deciding who I want to travel with me and who I don’t. And I think that the best way to learn that is from you.”

Dalyen regarded me for a moment then extended her hand. “Welcome aboard the Edge.”

I woke up to find myself strapped to a table.

I struggled to get up which brought the other occupant of the room running.

“Whoa! Whoa, whoa! Don’t try to get up!”

I looked at him, confused. For some reason all I could think of was Doc Brown from the Back to the Future movies.

“What…?” I managed to get out. I hadn’t recovered from the blow to the head yet and everything was still fuzzy. “Who…?”

The man laughed. “Just relax. You’re feeling the effects of the neurochemicals we’ve pumped into you.”

“Neuro… what!” I struggled to get up again.

“Calm down!” the man said. “I’m a doctor. You’re completely safe. Probably. I think.” He stopped long enough to take a breath from an inhaler he carried and shook his head. “Whoa! This is exciting!”

My head was still fuzzy but I took a deep breath and tried again. “Where am I?” I got out finally. “And what is going on? Who are you?”

The man nodded. “Good. Good.” He looked over his shoulder at a console of some kind. “Patient is responding.” He then looked back at me.

“You’re in the Eye. Illuminati HQ. You’re lucky; most people who wander in here don’t get to leave. Well, not the same way they entered. Anyway, you are very lucky. You have been given an Anima infusion. Not many people can say that.”

His eyes focused on the distance for a moment. “If only we’d had people like you around back in MK Ultra. Wow. Imagine what we could have done then.”

He looked back at me. “Did you know that if you dose chimpanzees with LSD they can pick up human gestures and body language up to 20 times faster?” Again he looked into the distance and sighed. “Man, those were exciting times…”

“Uh… doc?”

He turned his attention back to me again. “Oh yeah, right. Zurn. Doctor Zurn. I’m a doctor. Really. I’m just unappreciated!” He turned and glared at the console again. “They don’t appreciate my genius…”

“Zurn!” a woman’s voice came from the console followed by a sigh. There was a pause. “Leave the discussions of your ‘unappreciated talent’ to HR. Or Q&A. In the meantime, do you think you can get back to the orientation?”

Zurn suddenly straightened up. “Yes, Ms. Geary!” he said, suddenly sounding more nervous. “I’m on it!” He turned back to me. “Management.” he said with a shrug.

The sound of a throat clearing came from the console. “I’m still here.” said Geary in a sing-song voice.

“Yes, Ms. Geary!” Zurn said over his shoulder. “Right! Orientation!”

“Doc…” I tried again.

“Yeah, right.” Zurn turned his attention back to me. “We don’t have time to run you through a proper training schedule. Espionage, firearms, thaumaturgy, that sort of thing. Fortunately, you’ve been given a massive Anima infusion which means you’ll be able to soak up new skills like a squid soaks up ink.” He paused. “Squirts ink. That doesn’t work, does it?”

He shook his head. “Anyway, we’ve set up a computer simulation of the incident in Tokyo two weeks ago. We’re going to run you through that scenario and let you pick up everything you need to know through osmosis. Or telepathy. Magic. Like magic. But it isn’t. Not really.”

The more Zurn explained things the less sense they were making. “Look…” I tried again. “Can you please tell me what is going on?”

He sighed and looked at me the way one might look at a small child. “OK” he said with a sigh. “Let’s try to start from the beginning. Or near there anyway. Do you ever watch those weird monsters and aliens shows on The History Channel? Or read the headliners on the tabloids at the checkout?”

I looked at him. “Not really, no.”

He shrugged. “You should. They’re all true. Most of them. Well, at least half. OK, some of them anyway.”

“What?” I said, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

He laughed. “Yeah, we get that reaction a lot. But yeah, it’s all true. Everything. Every legend about ghosts and monsters and things that go ‘bump in the night’. All true. We call it ‘The Secret World’. And it’s my job… well, our job to keep it a secret. By fighting the things that don’t want us to be here and who want to see us driven back to the trees. Or further.”

Zurn had lost some of his manic edge. What he was saying sounded insane but I could somehow tell that he believed what he was saying. My head was starting to feel foggy again and I was having trouble focusing.

“OK” I got out finally. “So why me?”

Zurn laughed at that. “Been stung by a bee lately? Or maybe you swallowed one?”

I started to reply then remembered my dream from a week ago, remembered feeling as if I was swallowing bees and flies and how I woke up coughing. And throwing fireballs.

Zurn nodded. “We call them ‘The Buzzing’. We don’t know what they are exactly, but they aren’t bees. And they seem to have humanity’s interest in mind. We think.”

He took another hit off of his inhaler. “Anyway, it appears that they have chosen you! And not just you, people like you are suddenly popping up everywhere. Wow!” He leaned closer. “That is exciting! So many people being infused with Anima, all at once. Something big must be about to happen. And we’re right in the middle of it! Isn’t that exciting!”

It was becoming harder to think. Despite my position I was having trouble staying awake. “What?” I got out finally. “What is happening?”

“We don’t know.” Zurn said, suddenly serious again. “We think it has something to do with what happened in Tokyo two weeks ago. That’s why we’re running you through the scenario.”

“The.. what?” I couldn’t hold my head up anymore and fell backwards onto the table, closing my eyes as I did.

I heard Zurn talking as from a great distance. “Oh yeah! The briefing! You need to…” His words faded out. The last I heard was his distant voice saying “The patient has left the building.”

Much has been written about the turning of the age; the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth. All of us who lived through those dark days know how much our world has changed and those born in our new age accept that the world they live in is much different than the one that came before.

But not as much has been written about how the change came about. About the Shadow War. About how the bees and the Filth returned. About the agents who fought the war.

I was one of those agents. And this is my story.

Prelude – Initiation

It started with a dream. Well, a nightmare. I had been having a lot of those. A lot of people had been having them, I suspect, since the “terrorist attack” in Tokyo. That’s what we thought it was at the time anyway; the Secret World was still secret then.

I had fallen asleep with the radio still relaying disaster reports which was probably why my sleep was disturbed. I “dreamed” (at least that is what I thought it was at the time) that I woke to find myself lying on a rocky beach. Strange planets floated overhead.

A voice echoed in my head. I could be a king or a beggar, it told me. I could rule or suffer. I could be with them… or against them.

A man and a woman appeared next to me. They both spoke, each saying substantially the same thing but both seemingly unaware that the other was there. I was chosen, they said, but I must choose because I was cursed with free will. A swarm of insects, bees and flies, appeared around me as one told me to listen to the voices while the other told me to ignore them. Then the insects seemed to fly into my mouth and I woke up, gasping and choking.

I sat in bed for a moment, coughing. Needing a drink, I reached for my robe…

…and flames shot from my hand.

I don’t remember much about the next week. I remember lying on the floor, waves of energy blasting from my body. Other times I felt like I was floating in the air before collapsing to the floor again.

Eventually I was able to get the strange energy under control. It was somehow inside me but I could cause it to appear, pass it from hand to hand and then return it to myself.

Once I had the energy under control I was able to see what had happened in the past week. My apartment was trashed, the uncontrolled energy releases had overturned and smashed furniture and everything electronic was burned out. My phone was dead and I wondered what the people at work thought had happened to me. I had just finished getting dressed in preparation of going out when there was a knock at my door.

I started to pick up some of the debris then looked around the remains of my apartment and shrugged. With a sigh I opened the door.

A man I had never seen before stood there, looking at me over the top of his sunglasses. He looked past me at the trashed apartment and whistled. “Someone’s been bad.” he said. “I approve. Mind if I come in?” Without waiting for a response he pushed past me and into the room.

“I work in talent acquisition for a special client.” he said, ignoring my stare. “A very special client. And from what I see,” he looked around the room, “you could be what I’m looking for.”

“Wait,” I started. “Who are…”

“Time is ticking!” he interrupted. “Tick, tock. But I’ll cut straight to the chase. My client is interested in persons with certain… talents. Basic thaumaturgy, altering the fabric of time and space and generally fucking stuff up. Your talent is obvious.” He gestured around the room. “But it’s raw. Untrained. My client can provide that training. As well as money. Power. The best parties in the business. Oh, and the opportunity to help rule the world.”

“Hold on.” I tried again. “What are you…”

He shoved an envelope at me. “You have an interview tomorrow afternoon in Brooklyn. I suggest you attend it. There’s no address. Consider that the first part of the interview.”

He started towards the door then stopped. “Oh, other parties will certainly have noticed your abilities as we have and they aren’t as.. accommodating as we are. Who knows, you may survive for a while on your own. Or, you may wind up dead. Don’t be stupid. We have eyes everywhere.” He smiled at some secret joke. “Later, ‘gator.” He slipped out the door and down the hall.

I stared after him for a moment then closed the door. I still had no idea what had happened to me but apparently this person, and the organization he represented, did. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I needed answers.

I looked in the envelope, finding a plane ticket to LaGuardia and a subway pass. “Well,” I told myself, “I’m probably fired for absenteeism anyway. Guess I’m going to New York.”

The next morning found me exiting a subway platform onto a Brooklyn street. The subway pass I had been given had this stop number written on it but beyond that I had no idea where I was supposed to be going so I stopped and looked around. The bridge loomed almost overhead and the river ran nearby but otherwise the area seemed to be mostly warehouses and a few boarded up buildings. Police barricades blocked a few of the streets but those were becoming more common everywhere after Tokyo and there were still some pedestrians walking around, though no vehicle traffic that I could see.

The only business that seemed to be open was a laundromat across from the subway. With no better destination in mind I crossed the street and went in.

Inside was dimly lit with an annoyingly loud rumble of machines. The front room had a few customers waiting on clothes to finish their cycles. Too few for the number of machines that seemed to be in operation and, as I looked closer, I saw that all of the machines were running but that most of them were empty. Odd.

None of the customers seemed to be paying any attention to me or to anything else. There were more machines in the next room and I wandered into it.

All the machines in this room were running as well but in the back of the room there was a desk holding a computer and a stack of papers and magazines. File cabinets lined the wall behind it. An overweight, unkempt man behind the desk saw me enter and hurried up to where I was standing.

“You’re looking for them, aren’t you?” he asked in a wheezing voice. “You aren’t one of them, but you’re looking for them. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Who?” I asked, taking a step back.

“Them!” he said more earnestly. “The Illuminati.”

I paused for a second, trying to come up with a response for that. “What?”

He laughed. “I knew it!” he said. “I always know. They think I don’t, but I do.” He laughed, running back to his desk and waving some of the papers and magazines there at me. “I can see their signs. Their secrets. They think they can keep it hidden, but there’s always a trace. A trail. A sign that I can find if I look closely enough. It’s all there. The patterns. The signs. Enough to know what’s really going on.”

I looked from him to the door, debating if I wanted to keep listening or to leave. “What is going on then?” I finally asked.

He laughed again. “Oh, they want to keep us under control!” he said. “Keep us in the dark. Keep us from knowing what is really going on. That’s why they want us to watch their shows and read their books and play their games and eat their pills. Like Pac-Man. That’s all we are to them you know. Just a little head running around in a maze eating their pills and going nowhere. Gobble, gobble, gobble.”

“Uh-huh…” I said, taking a step towards the door.

“You’re wondering how I’m still here, aren’t you?” he said, taking a few steps towards me. “Why they haven’t disappeared me like everyone else.” He laughed and leaned close. “It’s because I’m too smart for them!” he whispered conspiratorially. “I publish everything I find in my newsletter and on my web site. If anything happened to me then everyone would know it was because they got rid of me. So they leave me alone but they watch me all the time. Always watching. That’s why I leave the machines running 24/7. But they still bugged the place.” He pointed to a security camera mounted near the door then leaned even closer to me. “They even replaced my girlfriend with an android.”

He gestured to an attractive woman sitting on a nearby washer typing on a laptop. She looked up at us, smiled, then returned to her work. I looked from her to him in surprise before deciding that her being an android might actually be the most reasonable explanation.

“You want to know the secret?” he asked. “Dungeons and Dragons. Keeps your mind focused. They can’t get to you then.” He looked around again. “I’m not saying any more.” He abruptly turned away and went back to his desk.

I looked from him back to the camera. “Eyes everywhere…” I thought.

I walked back outside and spotted a second camera mounted outside the laundromat and a look up and down the street revealed a third near the intersection.

“Ah-ha!” I thought, walking in that direction. “So that’s their game.”

I made my way down the street and around the corner, following a trail of cameras. I noticed one of them swiveled to follow me as I passed. Someone was watching.

The trail led to a warehouse. There were several workers on a loading dock but they went out of their way to ignore me as I walked in. I saw another camera above an arched opening and went to it.

Behind the opening was a maze. Old brickwork corridors and iron stairways, far older than the warehouse itself, led this way and that. Graffiti covered the walls but I soon noticed a trend towards eyes inside of pyramids and pointing hands. Following these led me down several levels below the street.

As I descended I heard thumping music coming from somewhere below. Had I stumbled onto a rave? But then I turned the last corner and stopped abruptly.

In front of me was an entrance through a surprisingly modern concrete and glass facade. Two guards in blue trenchcoats and holding assault rifles guarded the corridor. Both wore gas masks.

I stood for several moments but neither guard reacted to my presence. The pulsing music was coming from somewhere beyond the doorway.

“Oh kay…” I thought. “Let’s see what I’m getting myself into.”

I stepped forward and through the door. Neither guard seemed to react. I shrugged then continued towards the music, which I could now tell came from a large, open space ahead.

Abruptly, the lights flared red and an alarm sounded.I turned to look behind me and something struck a blow on the back of my head. I blacked out.

This is a complete compilation of the recruitment and introductory cinematics for all three of the factions of The Secret World as of the final Beta weekend. The Templar, Illuminati and Dragon recruitments, how they introduce themselves, how they send you to the “Tokyo Flashback”, their weapons trainers, your meeting with their leaders where they send you on your first assignment to Soloman Island, your first arrival in Agartha, the Hollow Earth, and your welcome and first mission in Kingsmouth. Every introduction, all in one place. Enjoy.

Intro music: Cellular Faith by Dan-O at danosongs.com

The latest beta weekend for The Secret World has just ended and while I’m still quite excited for the game I’m starting to have some worries as well. Specifically, while the game is close to what I’ve been looking for I’m not sure that most people playing are looking for the same thing I am.

The Secret World is a game based on exploration, investigation and discovery. Yes, there are combat missions. Yes, there are missions where you have to “go to location x and kill y of critter z”. But the main story missions require thought and investigation.

Based on what I saw rolling past in the chat window, I’m not sure most players realize that. I easily saw hundreds of requests for “What is the solution to (some mission)?” It isn’t clear if the players in question had tried to solve it on their own and failed, but a number of them were rejecting hints and demanding the solution. They are trying to power through the content just to get their characters leveled up.

They’re looking for end-game content. The problem is that in this game the game isn’t about the end-game. As the cliché says; it’s about the journey, not the destination.

The beauty of the investigation missions is that the solutions to them aren’t in the game! You have to do real research yourself to solve them. While some players will welcome this challenge I think it is frustrating a far greater number. This isn’t an MMORPG. This is an MMO Adventure Game; an MMOARG.

Let me give an early example from the main story mission “Dawning of the Endless Night”. And yes, I will spoil it so if you don’t want to know then skip away. The rest of you, jump down past the spoiler bird.

OK, a quick runthrough of the first few steps. When you first arrive in Kingsmouth you get the quest “Drowning of the Endless Night”. This is the main story mission for Kingsmouth and the Savage Coast where you are tasked to discover what caused the Doom That Came to Sarnath Kingsmouth. The first step of this is to talk to the various survivors in the town. Sheriff Bannerman mentions Reverend Henry Hawthorne, Madame Roget and Norma Creed.

When you talk to Norma Creed she tells you how the fishing boat the Lady Margaret was thought to be lost at sea and how everyone in town was relieved when it returned, but that the fog and the monsters came after it. She suggests you look on the Lady Margaret for clues.

The Lady Margaret is at the end of the dock. After fighting your way to it you fight and kill its captain and retrieve his logbook. This tells you that he is afraid that several crew members will need to be treated by Dr. Bannerman. So it is off to talk to him.

Dr. Bannerman is in the Sheriff’s Office. He remembers treating the crew members but was forced to abandon his files. They are still in his office. So you go to his office (conveniently located next door to the Sheriff’s Office) and enter what is a solo instance.

Inside you find a computer but the files are locked and you don’t have the password (and Dr. Bannerman won’t give it to you). You have to figure it out on your own. You do have a few clues. There is a picture on the floor of a fireworks display with a note saying that he and his wife met at a fireworks display choreographed to his favorite composer. Then, when you use the “password hint” function on the computer you get “song of the seasons” and “1723″.

If you Google “composer seasons 1723″ you will discover that Vivaldi composed the violin suite “The Four Seasons” in 1723. The password is “vivaldi”

This is only the first of many such missions (you don’t want to know about the middle step in “The Kingsmouth Code”) and that seems to be what is bothering a lot of players. They just want to get the password so they can get on with the mission. They don’t want to experience the story or the lore, they just want to level up their character.

Solving puzzles like this is routine for adventure gamers. MMORPG gamers… not so much.

OK, I suppose that some of the people asking for the solution had legitimately tried to solve it on their own and got stuck. Someone who just looked at the picture and not at the password hints would have trouble, for example. But I think the difference in mindset between the two types of players is going to hurt the game. The usual MMO players will rush past the content in order to get to the end-game, only to find that it isn’t there.

I really wish this was a single-player game, not an MMO. I really love the game and the world; I just hope it manages to stick around.

The players move around a bit and see that the light is now moving away from them along the fence line. They take the opportunity to go back inside the building.

The hallway is now empty and they continue on down it. They find another lab and quickly search it, finding nothing. The next door is locked. Surprsingly, no one has Locksmith and they can’t open it. They discuss breaking it down but someone thinks to check the receptionist’s desk in the lobby and find a set of keys in a drawer, one of which opens the door.

Inside they find another body, another student identified by her id as Alicia Fowler. She has a box of candles and matches and a spiral notebook lies beside her. Most of the notebook contains lecture and lab notes but the last page shows the following.

Dawson wants to “investigate the scene” and makes a Spot Hidden. He finds a waxy, scorched spot near the body which could have come from a candle burning down. The Keeper also points out that the storage room was locked from the inside. After asking about timing the players realize that the candle shouldn’t have burned completely down in the time since their cars stopped and figure things started going wrong at the facility much earlier. They decide to go see if they can find out what happened to Gabe.

The southern part of the area is a relatively recently plowed field. Dawson and Neyland are able to find some tracks and follow them to the southern end of the field. There they find another body, lying next to a shallow hole in the ground. The hole is a couple of feet across and about a foot deep and seems to have been formed recently.

Spot Hiddens reveal a number of what look like ceramic fragments lying in and around the hole. The fragments are curved and are greyish-white and roughly pitted on the outside but smooth and black on the inside. The players examine them enough to determine that the pieces would have fit together to form a rough sphere about a foot in diameter. They figure that the thing fell to Earth and either broke open on impact or was broken by Gabe when he found it. Either way, there is now a glowing thing floating around.

At this point the players consider leaving and letting the authorities deal with it before heading back towards the main buildings. As they do, they spot the Light moving along the treeline, tendrils of light are reaching out and touching the trees. As it does, the trees burst out in a sudden flurry of growth then slump downwards. Back in the parking area, the players note that the pathway they came into the area on is now completely overgrown by vegetation.

The party goes behind the main building and finds a mostly empty dumpster. They decide to examine it and find the remains of a pair of animals within it. Both appear to have been killed by the light as well.

The two large buildings are greenhouses. The players examine the first and discover a series of sevral trays, each filled with a slurry-like mixture of dirt and some chemical. There are plants in the slurry but all of them look to be oddly overgrown. All have fallen over and and many are dragging on the floor. All of them also seem to be moving slightly. The players investigate long enough to discover that the plants are oddly brittle and dead (though the leaves and such are still green) but can find no cause for the movement. They decide that the thing is controlling the plants somehow and decide to leave before the plants attack. Tyler wants to set the plants on fire but the others talk her out of it.

The players enter the second greenhouse and find a similar arrangement, except here the plants are growing in more normal dirt. The north wall of the greenhouse is covered by sheets of highly reflective mylar. The plants here are surprisingly normal; they do not seem to have had the odd growth caused by the light.

The investigators split up and search the greenhouse. Hefford and Neyland find some lab notes and are able to determine that the greenhouse is studying using enhanced light levels to try to promote plant growth. Dawson succeeds in a Listen check and follows a scratching sound to a roll of mylar lying in the middle of the greenhouse. Investgating reveals that several mice are living in the tube the mylar is wrapped on. They realize the light has not bothered the mice.

About this time the light reappears, passing through the side of the greenhouse. The players start making for the exit (Tyler shoots out a pane of glass in the wall to make a second exit) but the light doesn’t seem to notice them. Instead it approaches the reflective mylar. One of the tendrils of light reaches towards the mylar but is reflected by it and comes back towards the light. The light is touched by its own tendril and a blast of energy moves back and forth between it and the mylar for a second before the light rapidly moves away, racing back through the glass and out of sight.

The players realize that the thing was hurt by its own reflection. After talking for a bit they decide the light is attracted to and feeds on energy sources or potential energy sources. It sees its own reflection as an energy source. Hefford then makes the connection with the fragments they found in the field. The sphere was lined with black and would have protected the light but reflective materials would hurt it.

The players all cut off sheets of mylar and attempt to wrap them around themselves. They also attempt to fashon “shields” out of mylar using trash can lids.

At this point the players finish exploring the area. The small structure against the second greenhouse turns out to be a small workshop (which they use to finish up their mylar jackets and shields). They also find several cages for trapping rodents.

After that things stalled for a bit. The players can now walk around with impunity because whenever the light comes towards them they just wave the mylar at it and it flees after touching its reflection. They try surrounding it but it always darts away whenever they get too close.

Again the players consider just leaving the area. The Keeper reminds them that they have decided that the thing feeds on energy, including light, and asks what they think will happen when the sun rises. The players immediately realize they have to find out a way to get rid of the thing before sunrise.

The players decide to try to trap the thing using something black. They search the facility and find a box of trash can bags that they can use.

After a brief, amusing scene where the players try to throw a bag over the light they decide they need to set a trap. Using the rodent trap they found earlier they trap the mice from the mylar tube to use as bait.

Their initial plan was to line the dumpster with the black trash can bags, put the cage of mice in it to serve as bait then slam the lid shut when the light went after the bait. But when they started work Neyland got a better idea. They lined the dumpster with the mylar then covered the mylar with the black trash bags. That way they figured if the light tried to get through the bag it would hit the reflective mylar and back off.

They set up their trap and waited for the light. They saw it but it was keeping its distance from them and eventually Dawson volunteered to drop his mylar cape and shield and go close to it to try to lure it to the dumpster. After a Dodge and Luck roll (to avoid tendrils) Dawson got the light to the dumpster.

The light entered and the players slammed the lid (they had tied ropes to it to pull from a distance) but Dawson had run around the dumpster. The light went in and he slammed it shut.

For a moment there was nothing, then they heard a slowly rising whine. The thing kept continually trying to pass through the trash can bags (if you look at one you will realize they are partially transparent) and encountering the mylar. It started feeding on itself, setting up a feedback loop. Suddenly, there was an explosion when all the energy the thing had absorbed was released at once. The dumpster exploded into shrapnel. Hefford, Dawson and Branford fail dodge rolls and take damage but no one is killed.

After that was simply the denoument. Shortly after sunrise the black helicopter appeared and the sherrif’s deparment showed up soon afterwards. The investigators were interrogated by federal agents with no sense of humor, grudgingly told they had done the country a great service and that if they ever mentioned anything about what really happened to anyone they would disappear. Permanantly. They were delivered to a hotel in Macon, told their vehicles would be replaced, and released.

Right before departing, one of the agents quietly tells them that the government agencies aware of the Mythos know that people who are able to stand up to such events without cracking are useful assets. It is likely that they may be contacted again in the future. Until then, they are encouraged to forget what just happened.

Checking papers and the news indicated that four students working at a university facility in southern Georgia died when a chemical reaction accidentally released poisonous gas. There was another article mentioning that a transformer substation in southern Georgia overloaded and caused a blackout for several hours.

There was no mention of a light from the sky.