Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Sessions 14&15 – Tuesday (Parts 6 & 7)

Things have been busy at work lately, and I have been working on setting up a new laptop (which still doesn’t quite work the way I want it, it is what I get for picking a non-noob friendly distro of linux), and also have recently been getting into Crusader Kings 2 again, which is a huge time-sink.

Anyway, these last two sessions (and we have another tonight), were pretty good. Since Caine and Venkata split up at the end of last session, I ran a one on one for both of them simultaneously (which is an advantage of the text form).

Caine talked with Jake for a bit and asks about the men that attacked Chris and ruined his farm. Jake replies that the two men, to atone for their failure, are spending time in “reflection chambers”. It’s a funny little bit where Jake is trying to dress it up as nicely as possible for Caine, and it WORKS, except it just makes Caine MAD about the conditions they are in.

Caine asks to meet them, and I decide that it is more interesting than not allowing it, so Jake takes him to them. The “reflection chambers” are guarded, and, when he goes inside to talk to the first one, named Simon, he sees that they are completely dark inside and that this man has not had food or been out of here since the attack on the farm. Caine tries to get some information out of them, and it mostly seems to go along with Jake’s official story of things getting out of hand. Simon though, mistakes Caine for a cult member, reveals that the prophet is female. Before now I had been careful to either avoid pronouns, preferring ‘The Prophet’ when possible, or using a singular they/their when not. He realizes his mistake when Caine presses further and clams up.

Caine weighs his options and decides he is probably not getting any more out of these guys, and, while he would like the punish them somehow, he doesn’t think he can get away with it, and these guys are already in a bad spot for what they did anyway.

Meanwhile, Venkata changes into his robe, and goes in to find his girlfriend, Vanessa. She’s made a mess of this area and is munching on some snacks, but it seems like the room is a large magic circle of some kind. Venkata is on guard because it seems like she is here willingly, but at the very least she is happy to see him.

Venkata begins to ask her some questions, but she first asks him if he knows who the prophet is. He admits he doesn’t, and she tells him that means there is stuff she can not tell him. That naturally pisses him off, but she clarifies that she actually MEANS incapable, not merely will not. Still she can tell him about IG’s plan.

Summoning demons damages reality, and, in order to create their new world, IG will need to poke enough holes in the fabric of existence. Once that happens, they will consume the existing world and use it to make their new one, bringing a select few along for the ride.

Vanessa also confesses her role in all this, she is a demon, possessing a human body. It takes Venkata a while to get it, partly because she keeps beating around the bush. The key thing is though, that she has been a demon for as long as Venkata knew her. She is the goddess Mut and was summoned into an unborn baby as a means of her resurrection (the literal meaning of Shin Megami Tensei is “True Goddess Reincarnation”, and the rebirth of a goddess is a common theme in the series as a result). She will be the medium by which the Prophet will remake the world.

Venkata is not taking all this too well, but she manages to somewhat redeem herself in his eyes by saying that while she can not defy the Prophet due to their contract, she would be willing to let him kill her if he really wants to put a stop to it. He elects not to, and asks if there is an alternative. She tells him that IG can not proceed with their plan while the lockdown remains in place, and if he can gain control of the demon summoning programs before then and stop more demons from coming through, the world will eventually recover from the holes in reality on its own.

We call it there for both players. The week after ends up being a mostly player driven session, as the two of them mostly catch each other up IC. It’s a good session from a roleplaying point of view, and they did a good job coming up with their own next objective when I admitted OOC I didn’t have a “next step” planned for them.

They debate for a while, and decide that Ryan might be their best ally against the cult. He seems to have the demon summoning program already, and has an investment in the status quo which they are worried O’Connor’s people won’t have. Caine feels a bit torn, as he likes O’Connor and is a lower caste member himself, is pretty sympathetic to their plight. In the end though, he decides to trust Venkata’s judgement, and so they make plans for their next step to get out of here.

That’s where we will pick up tonight, I might be too busy to get tonight’s session written up by the weekend, but I will try to get it done by monday.

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Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 13 – Tuesday (Part 5)

Our sessions of Devil Survivor on Wednesday nights have pretty consistently become a single scene or two short ones a week. It’s the nature of the beast when we are playing text and only have about 2 to 3 hours to dedicate to it. I don’t think there is really anything wrong with this, but if these last few recaps (including this one) have seemed short, that’d be why.

Anyway, last time Caine and Venkata agree to basically be kidnapped in order to get access to the Cult’s sanctum. They get searched for weapons, Caine is unarmed, and Venkata willingly gives up most of his, but tries to sneak a stun gun by them. I call for a roll, his cover vs the guards will, and he just barely passes it. I describe it as a close call where the guard came THIS close to finding it.

They leave their demons behind, and Matthew asks them about their needs. The players are curious if there is a magical disadvantage to telling him this, and I tell them there isn’t (in fact, if anything it actually strengthens the binding), but it does mean that they’ll know what the demons want and could try to bribe them. They reply in vague terms and leave the demons behind

They get bags put over their head, since this game takes place inside a large building AND the elevators are out, the mode of transportation was being slung over these large men’s shoulders.

They are brought down to this area without much incident and are greeted by a man I tell Caine that he knows. His name is Jake (would have to check the logs for his last name), and he ran a greenhouse down the hall from Caine. Now, my original plan was to have this guy be someone Venkata knows, as the cult is the faction I tied most of his stuff to. I changed my mind at the last minute, because of how we’ve been lingering on Venkata stuff for a while, and I wanted to try to get Caine more involved.

Anyway, this Jake guy is NOT the Prophet either, who he says is “conserving their strength”, but says he is able to negotiate on the Prophet’s behalf. He apologizes for Caine’s farm, calling it “collateral damage”. He says they were trying to take Chris into their custody to contain the demon summoning program, and things got out of hand due to the people they sent jumping the gun. He comments that not only did those two fail in bringing him in, but they didn’t even take his COMP, inferring (since he knew Caine didn’t own one) that it was the same one Caine now had.

He offers Caine and Venkata a place to lay low as way of apology, and the two of them ask what the cult is planning. He replies, in fancier words, this world has gone to shit, so they are going to use demons to make a new one. When pressed for details he admits that the current world will be destroyed in the process, but he sees it as a necessary sacrifice.

Venkata wants to see his girlfriend, and so Jake has one of the cultists take him to her (I joke OOC that in the anime version this woman would be dressed as a Miko). He is lead down a hallway which has a dog-headed demon guarding the far door. The woman shows him a side door and asks him to go inside and bathe to “purify” himself. When he asks if that is really necessary, the demon insists.

We call it there, if I have time during the week we might try to do some one on one sessions for the split party so we can reunite come game day, but if not, I probably can just do both at once next Wednesday.

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 12 – Tuesday (Part 4)

The other night Caine and Venkata followed up on Ven’s mother’s information and made their way to a safe-house used by Immaculate Genesis, the cult they were pursuing. They didn’t quite know what to expect inside, but proceeded in with caution. Inside, they found a lobby area, with a pair of demons (Hathor and Horus) hanging out, and a man behind the desk.

The man greets Venkata by name, and says he has been expecting him. The man is Matthew Knox, the same Matthew that worked with Liam and Chris on the demon summoning program. For various reasons, the cult does not really want the PCs as their enemies at this point, and so Matthew is mostly cooperative with the two of them (although perhaps committing a few lies of omission).

The entirety of the session is taken up by the conversation with Matthew as he explains what he can, and the PCs are generally surprised at how reasonable he is, which is generally the result of two factors. First, in character, he is someone that IG specifically chose to make a good impression, there are raving zealots in it, but, that’s not who would be picked for something like this. Second, one of my goals for this game was to make all of the various factions (demons excluded), to have reasonable (from their point of view, at least) goals, the cult being no exception. I don’t honestly think that type of characterization is needed for EVERY RPG, sometimes the Lich just wants to take over the world because he can, but it was something I am going for here.

The conversation itself was a little disjointed, in my opinion. It wasn’t anything bad, it was just mostly two players both asking different questions of the same NPC at once, and sometimes changing subjects when they think of whatever new thing they want to ask, a lot like some Video Game dialog trees. I don’t think this is due to either of my players, as much as a result of the mediums. I’ve seen this a lot in RPGs in general, and text games tend to exagurate the issue when multiple players start typing a response to the same line of dialog before the other one posts.

Either way, they still get some good info out of Matthew:

• He confirms that Chris was killed by some “overzealous” members of the cult
• He will not let them meet/reveal the identity of the cult’s prophet, citing more security concerns than any religious reasons.
• He claims that the cult has nothing to do with the lock-down/purges, and would generally rather that the lock down ended.
• Finally, he admits that Vanessa is with them, and fine. He is willing to let Venkata meet her, but that involves taking them to their sanctum. which needs he has to take some security precautions.

We end with the group agreeing to be disarmed and blindfolded in exchange for being taken to the sanctum. I have to say I really do like that the pair of players I have in this game have the perfect mix of playing “smart”, but also are willing to jump into dangerous seeming situations like this when the situation demands it. Looking forward to the results next week!

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 11 – Tuesday (Part 3)

We started off the other night with the group heading off to visit Venkata’s mother, they very quickly discovered, as they approached a more populated area, that Frost Ace did not have the super natural ability to hide that Wendigo had. According to him “Hee-horos of justice don’t need to hide!”. Still, they were pretty confidant that Venkata’s had the information they needed, and so they threw a coat on him and called it good. It helps that the frost family line looks much more like mascot characters than dangerous beasts, so he mostly got weird looks.

They arrive at the hospital room where Arya is being treated to find her already meeting with someone. I did a poor job describing him, so I think the PCs just assumed he was a doctor, but that really wasn’t my intent. The illness that Arya has affects her mind, but, for various reasons (her being the PC’s only current lead among them), I had today be a lucid day for her.

Her cat, Bastet (which I don’t know if the PCs picked up on or not), seemed to want to get at Venkata’s rabbit demon, but eventually gave up and settled into Arya’s lap, and Ven asked the other people there for the room.

Him and his mom exchanged some pleasantries, and generally had a fairly nice moment, before Ven got down to business and asked her about the cult. Arya, didn’t really want her son getting involved with them, but did tell him what he wanted to know. She explained that Immaculate Genesis believed that there really wasn’t much of a chance of humans rebuilding the world in its current state, but believed that it could be remade anew. Further, they believed that their leader had the power to summon and command demons, and would use this power to lead them into the new world.

Arya has been out of the game for a while, but she did say that she heard that an area of the Arc was evacuated under rather suspicious, under orders of an engineer she suspected of being an IG member. Venkata decides to check it out and promises to come back soon, and goes outside to tell Caine what he learned.

We called it there. It was a bit short, and Caine didn’t get to do much (I didn’t want to run two parallel conversations at once), but it overall went over well. I’ve been feeling like this game has gotten a bit railroady, so I think I will want to try to put some more open situations out there in the next few sessions when they confront the cult!

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 10 – Tuesday (Part 2) (Plus recap for sessions 8&9)

As mentioned in my previous post, we have met twice in the last month. During which time, Caine and Venkata decided to swing by the protest, only to discover it had turned into a full blow riot, and the police were cracking down hard. The two of them managed to locate O’Connor, who had been injured, and managed to help him get off the promenade. They then retreated to a safe house that O’Connor knew about. They explained their situation and decided to give O’Connor the Demon summoning program, who in turn is likely to provide it to his resistance.

The next morning, they met Caine’s new Demon, Frost Ace. While O’Connor has managed to summon a lady in an american flag get up, who introduced herself as Columbia. They talked a bit more with O’Connor, who, while he didn’t know much about the information they were looking for, offered to set them up with one of his contacts in security who did. They agree to meet with him in an abandoned sector of the building, and after a period of their demons feeling like they were being watched, they hear a scream coming from their meeting point.

We start off session 10 there, with the two men kicking in the door to find their contact, and several demons eating through the walls to get at them. They decide that there are too many of them and decide to book it, when at the same time they get an email from the same source that informed them about the lockdown early on in the game.

The politely informs them that they have about 5 minutes to get out of that sector before it is “purged”, and provides them an outdated map of an evacuation route. Venkata manages to piece together their next best bet, and the three of them run, being pursued by demons (Mothmen). Caine, with Frost Ace’s help, manages to outrun the Mothmen, but Venkata rolls garbage and is almost caught. A few mothmen get through the exit right on their heels, as the sector is sealed off by a heavy iron door.

The PA system comes to life and a voice informs them to stand clear in case of “leakage”, and all the demons (friend and foe alike) double over in pain, while their contact doesn’t seem very comfortable either. The two player characters themselves though, are fine, although their COMPs seem to be working on overdrive. Caine tries to carry Frost Ace away while Venkata uses this chance to finish off the Mothmen.

They get to a space that they feel safe, and settle down to talk to their contact, who introduces himself as Jack Martin. He isn’t feeling too great after what happened, which Frost Ace calls a “Magnetite Burst”, but does teh best he can to answer their questions.

Ryan is trying to get control over the COMPs, and thereby, the Demon Summoning Program, supposedly there are some crazies out there who are summoning demons and letting them free, like the Mothmen they encountered previously. Further, Ryan certainly doesn’t want his enemies having those COMPs either. Still, Jack says that Caine and Venkata might be able to leverage their talents with the program to work with Ryan if they want to.

He doesn’t know much about the lockdown, nor does he really know much about the cult, but he does recommend that Venkata’s mother might know more, which Ven isn’t too happy about, but he doesn’t have much choice. They say their goodbyes and we call it there.

I was flying by the seat of my pants this session, and I didn’t give the PCs much opportunity to make many decisions, but overall I think it went alright. Looking forward to next week!

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 7 – Monday’s Mania (part 4)

This session, as Caine’s player put it, “We walked down some stairs”. It was mostly a conflict session with a lot of the time being spent in OOC decision making and mechanical resloution, so while we played for a normal ammount of time, not very long passed in game. Ven and Caine had just made it to the emergency Stairwell, and the suits that were raiding the lab were attempting to chase them down. They got down about half a flight of stairs when the suits caught up to them. They considered having their demons hold those guys off, but I made it clear that Wendigo would not survive that, considering his previous injuries.

They opt for trying to delay them instead, Wendigo using his bufu to freeze the floor, and Jackalope using his confuse power to stop a few of them. The demons help, but Ven’s dice go cold, and Caine makes much more progress than Venkata does. Another throw of the dice like that, and Venkata takes a bullet to the leg, while Caine reaches a door into another hallway. I tell him that if he just keeps running at this point, he likely can get away, but that means leaving Venkata to deal with their pursuers on his own.

Caine elects to stay behind and help out (earning a humanity gain roll in the process), and directs Wendigo to go back and help. Caine’s directions to “help” are rather unclear, and a few ideas are tossed around, so I have Wendigo look to Ven for guidance which is met with an equally vague “Fucking DO SOMETHING!”. I decide to default to Wendigo’s base nature, which is combat.

Wendigo manages to take out one of the guys with its Bufu skill, and Caine barely misses hitting another one with a thrown lead pipe. Ven makes it to Caine and the two leave Wendigo behind after all as they make good their escape. Jackalope manages to heal Ven’s bullet wound, while Caine’s COMP informs him that his demon was “lost”.

The pair debate their next steps, and, feeling short on leads, decide to go to the protest. I’d intended this meeting to be exclusive to the protest, since they were going on at the same time, but I’ll likely let them show up for the tail end of it. Not really sure how well I handled that chase overall, but I think it was a good time for everyone involved.

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 6 – Monday’s Mania (part 3)

We picked up right where we left off, the Pixie they let go vanishing around the corner of the hallway. Wendigo is injured, and Jackalope is exhausted (and exposed to Caine for the first time). Caine feels betrayed that Venkata didn’t tell him about his demon earlier, especially since Caine laid all his cards on the table. Venkata mostly blows him off, saying he had no reason to trust Caine, and if he wants to bail, he can. Caine wants to know what happened to his friend, so he decides to stick around for now, and the two continue on to the lab.

The Lab area is fairly secure, with video cameras and an electronic lock, but they manage to get inside by scanning Chris’ comp on the reader by the door. They arrive in the lab in question a bit before the guy they are trying to meet, and poke around for a bit. They consider trying to hack into some of the terminals, but they are fairly secure and might trigger some of the security systems if they fail, and so they decide not to risk it.

They wait until Liam shows up, who is rather ragged looking, and a bit freaked out that there are some random strangers here. They level with him and get him to calm down a bit. He tries to keep them from getting involved, until they reveal that they already know about the Demon Summoning Program, and that demons are on the loose in the Arc. He says he, Chris, and a third man named Matthew found the source code on an old salvaged server and managed to get it working again. They were going to keep it a secret, but he ended up sharing the program with a buddy of his and security, and now it seems like the Admins are out to get him.

Venkata asks him about Vanessa, and he doesn’t know much, but he does know that a strange woman was bothering them about the program, telling them to get rid of it, and he wasn’t sure how she knew about it. He also briefly mentions that Matthew might be involved in a cult or something, or at least, he found him a little creepy.

In retrospect, I think the conversations should have gone on a little longer, as there was more information the PCs wanted AND more information I wanted to give them, but at that point, Liam suddenly jerks, and seems to come under possession by a demon. The demon says people are coming, and Jackalope seems to corroborate. They ask about a a back way out, and the demon points them to an emergency exit.

This Demon decides to make its own way (using the PCs as bait to make its own escape), but does tell Venkata it noticed that Vanessa avoided Matthew to the point where he suspected they knew each other. Really that was a bit of information I just forgot to get out sooner, so it was kind of awkwardly thrown out there, but it worked well enough. The PCs make their way to the emergency exit and we end right as the alarm goes off and the suits notice them.

It was a nice short and a sweet session, and I think the PCs have been really coming into their own. I’m not really sure how I feel about Sorcerer as a system as it feels like we are hardly playing it and more just using its dice conventions, but the game itself is going really well in my opinion.

Next week we’ll likely start with a chase/fight which should at least get some dice rolls going.

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 5 – Monday (part 2)

We picked up this week right where we left off last time, with the demon Wendigo charging at the Jack Frost to start the battle. This was any of our first combat in sorcerer, and we were all a bit shaky on the rules, but we dove right in. Wendigo and Caine both got a bonus to their first action roll due to surprise, and the Pixie and the Jack Frost both had fairly bad stamina, so I thought it would be a rather one-sided fight. Caine ended up looking for a weapon, and I told him there was a pipe he could pry off the wall with some work. Wendigo wanted to get bite and claw at the Jack Frost. The two fairies wanted to stop that big monster, and Venkata and Jackalope were taking a wait and see approach.

We roll the dice, and even though the fairies aren’t rolling very many dice, Jack Frost kills it on init/attack (which I find weird is the same roll, but that is how the game works), turning right at the last moment and sticking Wendigo with a Bufu (Lethal special damage fluffed as an ice shard). Wendigo goes down with some heavy lasting penalties, while Caine can’t get the pipe free with a single action (due to a failed roll).

I point out Venkata has the chance to bail, but he doesn’t take it, instead, he sicks Jackalope on the Pixie and tries to banish the Jack Frost. I didn’t make ordering the demon an action, because at the time, the demon was already waiting on a attack/flee order, he wasn’t demanding anything TOO specific, and if the demon was going to help or not wasn’t a question at this point. Caine finishes prying off the pipe, while the fairies both try to defend themselves.

Jack manages to get off another Bufu before Venkata can really test his luck, which takes him pretty deep into the negatives (5 lasting damage, and way more temp damage). While Jackalope and the Pixie both manage to defend themselves against each other.

Most of the demons are already running up to the limits of how often they can use their powers in a conflict, so the rest of the fight is a bit less lethal. Caine and Jack Frost clash a little, neither really hitting each other, but they do exchange a few puns. Meanwhile Jackalope gets a few minor penalties on the Pixie. The fight ends with Caine getting a total victory on an attack vs Jack Frost, which I mistakenly apply the edged damage table to instead of the blunt, causing him to be destoryed (banished). I said he had earned the Jack Frost’s respect and so he’d get a bonus if he tries to contact something in the Jack Frost family in the future. At the same time the Pixie gets barely taken out of the fight, and so tries to surrender.

They take the opportunity to try and get information out of her, and she willingly tells them what she knows, but it quickly becomes apparent that she doesn’t know much. She says she is working for the queen of the fairies, Titania, and was out hunting for “Camps”, which it takes them a little bit to realize she means COMPs.

She’s a bit confused by them calling their COMP a medical device, since as far as she knows, it’s just a tool that “Hunters” use. Her only explanation on why she is looking for a COMP is that the queen told her to. I hadn’t really decided if she actually knew why the queen wants them or not, but they assumed she did not and didn’t follow up.

Caine asked if there was a way to help Wendigo, and she suggested either to give him his need, or to give him a few life stones. It was getting late irl, so she then asked if she could leave, and they let her go. They probably could have demanded money or a life stone or some such from her, or maybe even formed a binding with her, but decided not to bother and just let her fly off.

Fun session overall, even if the combat was a little wonky. Next week, we’ll probably deal with the fallout of Caine discovering Venkata has been hiding a demon from him.

Recap: Devil Survivor 22XX – Sessions 2, 3 & 4

My Wednesday night Sorcerer game done in SMT style have actually still been meeting every week since Session 1, and it is actually going fairly well. Text based games are fairly different beasts when compared to in person or online voice games, but one of the perks of which is having a log. As one of the key reasons I write APs is to help me remember what happened, the logs kind of hurt my motivation to actually get them out. The commentary, on the other hand, I think is still pretty valuable (to me at least), which the raw logs don’t capture, so I really should try harder to get those out on a regular basis.

For now, just to clear out the backlog on the three sessions since my last post, I’ll just give a high level recap of the events of the last few sessions.

Session 2 had Caine and Venkata go to Christopher’s house on the promenade, a large, open, upper class residential, shopping, and meeting space near the top of the building. They arrive and find police having partitioned off the building, and seem to be searching it.

Venkata is recognized by one of his contacts on the force, Frank Erickson. They let slip that they know Chris is dead, which the police didn’t actually know yet. They fail a roll, and so Frank wants to take them in for questioning, but they basically want to try again. The conversation sorta devolves into a ‘”Come on”, “No way”, repeat’ thing. I feel it was some bad consequence setting on my part.

I end up giving them another roll to avoid getting arrested, and they manage to get a bit out of Frank in exchange for what they know (although they leave out the details of whose greenhouse it was or where the body is). In return, they find out that the Arc’s de facto leader, Samuel Ryan, is looking for Chris, and that the symbol they found is for some cult called “Immaculate Genesis”, and that Venkata’s mom worked the case a while back. They decide to look into the cult and Caine thinks he might know someone who could tell them about it.

Session 3, Caine goes and meets his ‘contact’, who also happens to be his Bartender. Caesar O’Connor, owner of O’Connor’s Pub, and something of a community/activist leader among the lower class of the Arc. Caine’s timid nature, plus a combination of forgetfulness and inexperience on his player’s part, lead to O’Connor controlling much of the conversation. While the cult never came up, he did learn O’Connor’s take on the lockdown, that Ryan did it to trap a good chunk of the farmers outside so they couldn’t come to the demonstration they were planning. O’Connor extracts a verbal commitment from Caine to show up at the demonstration. And Jackalope causes a bit of trouble but Venkata manages to reign it in.

It is getting late, and given the information they withheld from the police, it is likely not safe for either man to go home, so the duo crash with a contact of Venkata’s, in a less than legal “hospital”.

Session 4 started with Caine’s COMP getting an email for Chris, in which one of his friends asked him to meet during the demonstration. They debate it for a bit, before deciding to meet with this guy and find out what he knows. I give them plenty of time before either event to investigate more or change their mind, but they decide to just get there early.

One failed roll later and I decide to introduce some wild demons. They encounter a duo of two iconic Fairy Race demons, Pixie and Jack Frost. They listen in on the two demons chattering away (about eating humans, about how they are looking for something for their Queen, about how the human world is strange), until Venkata tries to simply walk past them.

There’s a bit of confusion for a bit because I thought he was still trying to be stealthy, but apparently he is hoping ignoring them will be enough. The Pixie notices his ‘Camp’ (COMP) and tries to get his attention, which freaks Caine out enough that he sicks Wendigo on the wild demons. I kinda threw these demons in on a whim, so I didn’t have them statted out in Sorcerer, and haven’t reviewed the combat section in forever, so we called it there and will get into a demon fight next time.

Actual Play: Devil Survivor 22XX – Session 1 – Sunday’s Encounters

Been trying to get this game off the ground since before the holidays (see my initial idea post here), but things just kept not working out. It was a huge pain in the butt, but luckily my players and I stuck with it. As discussed in the previous post, I’m trying to run Shin Megami Tensei in Sorcerer, and see how well that works out. I’m also getting back into text-based gaming (by player request) with this, which is neat, as the format has its own pros and cons.

Anyway, the premise we came up with since we got together involves a more post-apocalypse setting than the present apocalypse of the normal Devil Survivor games. Many years after some great disaster, people have spent generations living in Arcologies called “Citadels”, because the world outside of them is toxic. Things aren’t exactly great in the Citadel the PCs live in, LNC-13, commonly called “the Arc”, but are about to be made more complicated by the sudden distribution of a program that can summon demons. COMPs in this world are arm-worn computers, they are useful for interfacing with certain machines, have some poorly-understood medical properties, and of course, can summon demons.

The two PCs we have are:

• Venkata Durga: The son of a high profile, and well connected security officer, Venkata makes his living as a PI. His ex showed back up in his life just in time to disappear again, leaving behind only a heavily encrypted data file containing a very peculiar program. He has had a COMP his whole life thanks to his mother’s connections. His demon is the Beast Jackalope, a funky flying rabbit thing (this is the pic he sent me)
• Caine Laurens: Caine is a farmer who dreams of a better life. He and his friend, a high up technical worker by the name of Christopher Wilson, were attacked when Chris showed up as a favor to Caine to help him out with some technical issues in his greenhouse. Chris was brutally murdered, while Caine was merely left for dead. Caine took his dead friend’s COMP, and discovered the demons summoning program on it that way. The Demon he summoned was the man-eating Jaki Wendigo

Our first session was basically a set up, and as we had already done our initial binding rolls beforehand, we didn’t roll any dice this session. I know some people LOVE sessions like that, and I don’t think this was a BAD session, but it is difficult to judge a systems suitability for a given purpose when you don’t engage the system.

We started off with Venkata, I narrated that he had heard that his ex, Vanessa, had been seen in some sort of argument with Christopher Wilson, and that Wilson had last been seen going down to the greenhouse area. Venkata came across the scene of the attack on Caine and Christopher shortly after Caine fled (taking Chris’ body and comp with him). Venkata, with a little help from his demon, investigated the scene. There’s a huge hole in the wall, blood everywhere, security system is shot and a number of plants seem to have been burned and frozen.

He also notices a symbol has been drawn on the door, one he can identify as cult related, and makes a note of it in his notebook. Finally, Jackalope discovers a dark green piece of cloth that had gotten torn on some equipment, and Venkata leaves to track down the owner of this greenhouse.

Said owner, Caine, had just finished making his contract with his demon, he agrees to feed the Wendigo, and the large mannish creature will help him out. At that exact moment, all the lights dim, a brownout. Caine is wary of the creature, especially in the dim light due to the power loss, but he’s out for revenge and could use the muscle. He and Wendigo both head out, leaving Chris’ body behind in Caine’s house… And run right into Venkata.

Wendigo can hide in the shadows, and so I have him do so. There could maybe have been a roll here, but Venkata’s player didn’t ask for one and I felt the two PCs interacting was the key point here. Since Wendigo was hidden and Jackalope hides in Ven’s pocket, this created a neat bit of dramatic irony where both PCs were feeling confident because THEY had the secret weapon ready.

Caine played the fool for a while, but broke down pretty quickly. Sorcerer social rules are a bit wonky to me still and they both seemed fine with just RPing it. Around the time they show each other their comps, both of them suddenly go off with an email notification. At the same time, metal plates begin to come down and cover the exterior windows of the arc. The message basically seems to be an automated message about the Arc going into lock down for “repeated security violations”, only listed by number. Once all the windows seem to be covered, the lights come back up.

The two men are confused and concerned, but stick to the matter at hand. Caine ends up showing Ven the body, who sees it is in as bad shape as the greenhouse was. The cloth he found earlier does not seem to match either Chris or Caine. Caine tells his story, even showing off Wendigo, and, although Ven does not return the favor with Jackalope, the two do agree to work together to try and figure out what happened.

We called it there, Sorcerer doesn’t have any end of session validation mechanic like Burning Wheel’s Artha, or Blades in the Dark XP, but overall I think things went pretty well. These characters didn’t have much in the way of connection, so I am glad I was able to tie their stories together and it was cool of them to go with it like they did.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes!