(no subject)

Met up with marina and oddcellist the other night at the Way Station, the bar that looks like a TARDIS. It was really fun to meet them both, but that's not why I'm posting.

I'm posting because I attempted to spread the Left Behind II virus by giving my copy of the DVD to marina. roga, she will be bringing it back to Israel in shame. Make sure that Israeli fandom watches it. And make sure you watch the special features.


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I don't usually write rpg session reports here, because mostly they're uninteresting, but I'm wondering if I can't draw out a point here by writing about this past Saturday evening's Star Wars Saga session.

Setting is 5-6 Years After the Battle of Endor. Our party is a collection of New Republic-affiliated officers from a variety of backgrounds, working undercover as Manticore unit- a more or less extralegal investigation arm of New Republic Intelligence. My character, Sanderz, is a human Coruscant Port Authority police officer with expertise in sniffing out smugglers. Another character, Captain Remora, is a Mon Calamari B-wing squadron commander. A third character, Kennaud Thorn is a badass Zabrak demolitions specialist. And the party is rounded out with a corporate honcho with limited combat experience.

The idea is that we are positioned with cover identities that allow us to wage pretty wide-ranging investigations without implicating New Republic Intelligence's interest. In game we've expanded that capability with two additional cover identities- a Hutt-operated luxury goods smuggling operation based on Coruscant's lower levels and an official appointment as a New Republic ad hoc economic investigatory committee charged with doing the preparatory work for economic integration of the New Republic and the Hapes Consortium.

All right, enough background. This week, our party was given a week to prepare for a voyage to Hapes to continue that investigatory work, which includes quiet orders to seek evidence of a Hapan anti-New Republic conspiracy. During that week, we got a call from the Hutt's translator seeking our assistance in closing a deal involving 'blacked' bottles of Hapan Gold Wine- bottles that somehow turned black while possessing the same chemical signature.

We intervened and a hilarious scene evolved as a mysterious Wookiee angrily bid against a Gran club owner for the case of blacked Gold Wine. The scene was strange. There was no reason we could figure out why the wine would be worth any more, yet we were able to ask for an amazing markup. Captain Remora- freeradical42's character- decided that before he pulled the trigger on any deal, he was going to try to get information from the bidders about their profession, their interest in the deal, with characteristic rude bluntness. Sanderz, my character, more familiar with the underworld, was determined to close the deal safely before asking any questions. And it was just about the funniest thing ever, this four or five sided auction/interrogation that culminated with us splitting the case in half and making 3 times the normal price of a case of wine. (-What do you do for a living, you no good low-life? -He didn't mean that! We're not the sort who asks questions! How's thirty million credits? -If that Gran doesn't back down I'm going to beat him up!)

This was thus settled. And since this had nothing to do with our mission as Manticore Unit and since it had really little connection to anything, it should have ended there. But we were curious about a few details that didn't add up and our GM gave us a lot of string to play with. And here we get to the point I wanted to draw out.

There are two ways to conduct investigations in an rpg. Those two ways are fundamentally drawn from the two opposing philosophical approaches to rpgs. Approach 1 is "I roll Gather Information and get a 24. What do I learn?" Approach 2 is "I find a list of all of the people the Wookiee assaulted and interview each one separately to learn what I can about his character and motivations."

This philosophical opposition goes deeper than the basic "Some people like to act out their encounters and some like to use dice to tell them how well they did." There are other tradeoffs here. The first approach takes you five minutes. The second approaches takes you... took us... over two hours. The first approach puts the decision about what information is relevant mostly in the GM's hands. The second approach lets the players have much more control over that. These are tradeoffs you need to balance as you decide how you want to undertake investigations in a game. What decision you make fundamentally changes what kind of experience you'll have.

In a series of bizarre encounters with assault victims, we learned that the Wookiee had assaulted a Duro peddler of blue milk because that Duro shared his name with a Duro fund manager who owned stock in a company called Red Milk. We learned that the creator of a popular whiskey blend had gotten the idea while being smacked by the Wookiee and a vampire goth had replaced his ruined teeth with vampiric fangs after being similarly smacked. And we learned that there is a great market for custom-made wine cozies in certain parts of the community.

Most of these things probably don't lead anywhere. A few of them likely do. Red Milk promises to turn into a significant player in our game's shadowy politics. I think this is a really legitimate philosophical split here, because the session we had was both immensely frustrating and extremely fun. And everything we learned could have been handled with a couple of good Gather Information rolls, which would have freed up time for the other fun and less frustrating things the GM had designed for us, but it would have been an entirely different game.