Also Doyce, I’d like to commend the level of investment you’ve gotten out of us. Upon hearing that a freaking island randomly appeared off the East Coast, the players’ reactions weren’t “What? How? Shenanigans!” but instead, “Oh hell, what are the Vyortovians up to this time?”
Suspension of disbelief is a hell of a thing.
author: Mike
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054432
I like creating situations where there’s less disbelief you have to suspend as well. There’s plausible reasons for people to act any given way, depending on what assumptions you make.
I had already been planning a cutscene with Costigan of AEGIS, and if anyone wants to see how a world power might respond to the Vyortovian situation, I can throw in some descriptions of training and immediate response as well. Nothing that would change the status quo, but would hopefully explain it.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054451
I was talking with a buddy about the YouTube comments (he’s a military history guy and a totally tech encyclopedia about modern military stuff). Interesting conversation that actually led to a good narrative point.
And to Bill’s point, considering the Vyortovians JUST tried something like… barely two weeks ago, I have to think the whole eastern seaboard would light up with people (like Costigan, at the very least) yelling “They’re Back! We are GO for that plan we developed last week!”
author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
*** Dave H. said:
Doyce T. said:
Actually, I need to do a game retcon for the very last event (glad these are rare). Achilles only pulls out a weapon pointed at the keynome, he doesn’t have one pointed at Alicia’s back.
Oh. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed by that or not, but it definitely changes what Jason is going to do next (which I hope I can figure out in a week).
Bill’s PM reminded me I needed to point out that Achilles is still a threat to her, he’s just doesn’t need a weapon for that.
author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
If you don’t want the Vyortovian fight to be taken over by the US military, here’s why I think it wouldn’t be. Check these things with your friend and see their opinion as well.
I wouldn’t expect any military planner to be happy with these things, but I think all of them are reasonable considerations and would stay the hand of the military if accurate.
If you do want the military to fight this fight, invalidate any of the assumptions made here. We did infiltrate commandos over Christmas, and they came through. We have better satellites than they think. Some of the captured soldiers were made to talk. There’s internal dissidents in Vyortovia itself, or a fifth column that isn’t quite as hip to genocide as the Dread Queen. Hannibal Lectric likes the good life here and cooperates with the authorities to talk about the Hidden Family.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054776
To be clear, I have no interest in the US Military taking over any of this. That’s boring. I can watch that on TV at pretty much any time.
I *do* like the idea of some ineffectual saber rattling while generals watch with expensive binoculars while supers fly toward Vyortovia.
author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054789
In that case yeah, the brass chews its cigars but acknowledges all of the above, and every ship in the fleet gets ready to open fire if they get an order. But there’s no big launch.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054796
Doyce T. said:
*** Dave H. said:
Doyce T. said:
Actually, I need to do a game retcon for the very last event (glad these are rare). Achilles only pulls out a weapon pointed at the keynome, he doesn’t have one pointed at Alicia’s back.
Oh. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed by that or not, but it definitely changes what Jason is going to do next (which I hope I can figure out in a week).
Bill’s PM reminded me I needed to point out that Achilles is still a threat to her, he’s just doesn’t need a weapon for that.
And honestly, if you think it’s better tension for him to have a weapon on Alycia, we can leave it in. I bend to the people with skin directly in the scene.
author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
As mentioned in the PM, the weapon vs. the charge makes the difference between “Achilles Chin the nihilist” and “Achilles Chin the suicidal nut”, because he can threaten Alycia with both, but only one of them gives him a chance to walk away. So really it depends on how you plan to portray him.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054839
Bill G. said:
As mentioned in the PM, the weapon vs. the charge makes the difference between “Achilles Chin the nihilist” and “Achilles Chin the suicidal nut”, because he can threaten Alycia with both, but only one of them gives him a chance to walk away. So really it depends on how you plan to portray him.
There’s a third Chin option as well. We’ll see how it goes.
author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Bill G. said:
In that case yeah, the brass chews its cigars but acknowledges all of the above, and every ship in the fleet gets ready to open fire if they get an order. But there’s no big launch.
One more consideration on this subthread: Aside from just appearing, are the Vyortovians doing anything? I mean, yeah, we (the US) are going to scramble, we’re going to get ships to sea, we’re going to go to DEFCON 1-2 … but unless the Vyortovians start lobbing aetheric plasma bombs, we’re not going to fire first.
(The chance of an accidental incident goes way up, though.)
I agree with Mike that the Yuletide “invasion” is small enough to not trigger a state of war, esp. since they got beat. The use of weather weapons is more serious, but that’s about it, except to have warranted (a) major planning and (b) use as a casus belli down the road.
That said, one other factor not considered is, how many of the Family are in high political or defense positions right now? What interference might they run until it’s too late.
(Also, if they are there because Chin is about to do something to with the Sepia-DC Keynome, they may very well just sitting under radio silence and waiting for the Plot to Thicken and/or Explode).
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Doyce T. said:
Doyce T. said:
*** Dave H. said:
Doyce T. said:
Actually, I need to do a game retcon for the very last event (glad these are rare). Achilles only pulls out a weapon pointed at the keynome, he doesn’t have one pointed at Alicia’s back.
Oh. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed by that or not, but it definitely changes what Jason is going to do next (which I hope I can figure out in a week).
Bill’s PM reminded me I needed to point out that Achilles is still a threat to her, he’s just doesn’t need a weapon for that.
And honestly, if you think it’s better tension for him to have a weapon on Alycia, we can leave it in. I bend to the people with skin directly in the scene.
The primary difference it makes is from Jason’s PoV:
As played: _OMG, Chin is about to do something awful to this world and my own, but he’s also threatening Alycia (who, yes, is threatening me) from behind, do I stop him or protect her?!
_As retconned: _OMG, they are clearly not on the same page, but Alycia is also clearly giving Chin cover to do something awful to this world and my own, but she’s also threatening me. How do I stop them, and whom do I stop first?
_Both are decently dramatic situations, but I think the personal drama for Jason is higher with the former. (Because, to be honest, and in a vacuum, and without considering what Ghost Girl is going to do here), Jason’s most likely going to do something he regrets deeply in the first no matter which way he goes, but in the second it’s more doing something that was, at best, a tactical error (angst over injuring Alycia notwithstanding).
But I may (a) not be interpreting what I saw correctly and (b) be unaware of Other Stuff going on.
From Jason’s perspective, that Achilles is a threat to Alycia even without a gun is true, but not immediate (he always has been, he always will be); the gun is a clear and present danger (whether or not she’s aware of it, and I’d initially assumed not).
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
She’s not aware of it.
author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6054967
Just as Byron has Rusty as bodyguard and hatchet man (and so much more), Achilles Chin always has (minus the romantic entanglements) a bodyguard / hatchet man as well. There are been several referred to (Chin goes through personnel at a much higher rate than most businesses, but on the up side he never as to worry about retirement pensions), but the most recent we know of is Hector Callado, who’s referenced in various cutscenes (mostly), and someone whom Jason always has trouble remembering his name.
My rationale for that was both that there have been so many such bodyguards, they all tend to blur together, esp. when you’re a kid, and honestly was all a hidden nod to my own inability to remember his name without looking it up again every single time.
But … what if there was an an actual in-game reason his name always slipped from Jason’s mind? What if there was intent behind Jason’s tending to forget about Chin’s bodyguard, his name, even what he looks like, unless he intentionally tried to focus on it?
What if Hecate had Hector also covered as part of her veil? What if Hector is her man inside of Chin’s organization, and one of the means by which Chin has been brought over to alliance with Sepia!Hecate (who is, after all, one of the Council of Mutually Admiring Hecates)? What if that’s the real reason Jason could never remember him.
Until now.
(Hector was, as far as I can tell, absent from the DC Keynome scene played above. Which raises the question of what he’s up to right this moment, and on whose behalf. Just to add potentially more complexity to that scene resolution, though it could be something as simple as holding off Rusty and the guards who are on their way.)
I confess, I just had this epiphany, but it felt so good I had to share.
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Dammit, if you’d just not thought of this for a FEW more days, I’d have surprised you… 
(Totally stealing that picture, though.)
author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6057598
HA!
I promise to still be “surprised”.
(The thought had come in passing some weeks ago – “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if there were a reason Jason couldn’t remember his name?” – and I intentionally had Jason lampshade the problem in one of the recent Cutscenes, just in case you wanted to play with it. But I didn’t think of the Hecate connection until I was doing the Jason’s Tale recap of 25, so obviously my mind was being clouded, too. I almost didn’t say anything, but it was too fun not to.)
The gent in the pic is Andreas Sepulveda, a Columbian hacker who’s been involved in a bunch of electoral shenanigans in South America. That pic is from a big Bloomberg article on him, but you can find a lot of other pics of him, a bit less slender, but often surrounded by Columbian police ferrying him to or from court. In case you want some other reference shots.
(Hector Callado, sans speculative spoilers, extended from a stub to a full wiki entry.)
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Random thoughts:
1. Ultimately, is Chin willing to see his daughter killed in order to see his mission succeed? Does he reward her loyalty to him with a bullet to the back of the skull?
2. Regarding Ol’ycia – if Alycia’s using the nanobots, is she also getting a distributed consciousness? Is that’s who’s talking to Jason? Is Ol’lycia Alycia’s Li’lycia, and Jason’s on a party line?
3. I’ve always thought that Jason’s DOOOOOOM was due to the nature of extending his consciousness too far, pushing past the specifications that Byron built into the nanobots – i.e., kindasorta his fault for using the tool in a way that it wasn’t designed for. But … what if all the problems had to do with Byron’s ad hoc memory tinkering with the code after the nanobot installation? That rounding error ending up overwriting parts of Jason’s mind that could have properly managed the bots? The fault, dear Byron, is not in our bots, but in our brain, that we’ve had our memory poorly patched. I’ve been treating the nanobots and the broken memory as two separate items. Maybe solving the latter would fix the former. (Of course, it could also “cure” the nanobot power altogether …)
4. Sure, everyone wants to swap Iceland and the Icelanders back to our world … but is it right to send the Vyortovians – all Vyortovians – back to their despairing world?
5. The argument I didn’t get to use: “Jesus Christ, Dad, the Chin of this world blew the whole thing up because your analog killed his daughter. Do you think our own Chin will give you a pass because you’re only holding her prisoner in your basement?”
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6063457
If Leo had any kind of say in it, he wouldn’t be comfortable with “send Vyortovians back to hell”, but he also wouldn’t be comfortable with “give them a pass but leave everyone ELSE back there”. Solving that problem - the migration of a planet of survivors across worlds - would require monumental effort. Assuming everyone’s at the negotiating table, we tell the Vyortovians we’ll help them cross over, normalize relations, all that great stuff, BUT everyone comes too, and the Vyortovians must help with that effort.
There’s also the issue of whatever happened in the Sepiaverse itself - is it somehow contagious? Would those people doom this world just by being here? I mean if so, that’s really tragic, but if worlds are dying, better one than two. That outcome would be very, very grating on Leo, and that alone might have him eventually become a paragon of the city, devoting his life to fixing this for everyone.
Where do you put everybody? If the Vyortovian super-science is up to it, why can’t they build a new island, extend an existing one, terraform the Sahara desert or Antarctica, or some similar mega-engineering feat? The real problem is then ensuring they aren’t a brand new security risk, but there’s mechanisms (the UN, inspections, whatever) for that, which our game doesn’t need to dive into very closely.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6063475
One more consideration on this subthread: Aside from just appearing, are the Vyortovians doing anything? I mean, yeah, we (the US) are going to scramble, we’re going to get ships to sea, we’re going to go to DEFCON 1-2 … but unless the Vyortovians start lobbing aetheric plasma bombs, we’re not going to fire first.
Okay, now I expect to see some US military action. Unless they’re already scrambled and engaged elsewhere while the DQ launches her artfully delayed attack on Halcyon.
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
*** Dave H. said:
One more consideration on this subthread: Aside from just appearing, are the Vyortovians doing anything? I mean, yeah, we (the US) are going to scramble, we’re going to get ships to sea, we’re going to go to DEFCON 1-2 … but unless the Vyortovians start lobbing aetheric plasma bombs, we’re not going to fire first.
Okay, now I expect to see some US military action. Unless they’re already scrambled and engaged elsewhere while the DQ launches her artfully delayed attack on Halcyon.
Right now, the League is in a nasty fight on the slopes of Snæfellsjökull. Most of the mobilized troops are between the island and D.C., or steaming that way.
Those of you with eyes on the Carrier have spotted it, but you didn’t actually notice it until it was almost on top of you, and no other alerts went up so:
1. Hasn’t been very long.
2. Possible no one knows.
3. (Us government:) “It’s Halcyon City - they can handle one big ship.”
4. AEGIS: Crap, what do we have on call in the area?!?
author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: MASKS #25 - A HOUSE DIVIDED! [Recap] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
