I finally made good - kinda - on playing through my solo game of Untold: Adventures Await. So what follows is the slowly-puttering out of my facalties as I faltered in what exactly my characters could pursue to better their situations in the final scene particularly.

I finally made good - kinda - on playing through my solo game of Untold: Adventures Await. So what follows is the slowly-puttering out of my facalties as I faltered in what exactly my characters could pursue to better their situations in the final scene particularly.

A few things I’m going to guess would have seen a much more enjoyable experience, particularly for a first time with the system. The first is to play a more lighthearted tone. I was thinking in my head I’d play out a realistic and gritty crime tale but opting for realism (especially without much real knowledge of the subject matter and not doing much research for the game) seems like it was much more difficult than something where literally anything could happen and my characters could thrive more readily in such an environment. The other was a note-taking choice. I started out talking pretty detailed notes for the first scene setup, and after creating my characters I made the unconventional choice of placing one at the scene and the other far from it. I actually don’t think this last bit hurt my game and was instead an interesting idea. Once my first scene started proper, though, I took detailed notes again on every question and answer interpretation, every action plan and result. This took a lot of time. I’m not an amazing writer, especially in longhand. (I sometimes employ a shorthand I developed based on my own abbreviations using TextExpander, and now aText, when on MacOS. It makes getting words down incredibly quick while typing or scribbling, though scribbled notes are harder to read than nicely expanded abbreviations) Again I was using a new system - no matter how simple - and the various components I had to context switch through just crippled me. Keeping things all in your head or only noting very key names and brief descriptions seems much more practical and better suited to this game in particular. With that preamble out of the way, the story itself with minimal comments on why things devolved etc... I’ll also probably reveal details out of the order it originally appeared in on the table.

Bittuva change to my original idea (trying to do a cops-and-gangsters betrayal tale along the lines of The Departed) saw me playing a high-stakes game of feds investigating corruption in other federal agencies. This is set some time between 2003ish and 2010ish.

The first scene took place mostly aboard a commercial jet flying between Kansas City International Airport and Dulles International Airport. According to the scene sentence, a man - seemingly a hacker with a laptop running and text scrolling by in a terminal - watched and sweated as text messages about him flashed past. He had merely been combing the wireless networks aboard the plane, but he’d just discovered he was being hunted - by the 2 sky Marshals hidden aboard. They were receiving messages from someone concerning a bug, and were told to apprehend this man for questioning upon landing. The hacker’s true name was never revealed during the session, though his handle was ChaosBURN. He was a grey hat hacker, never engaging in actual direct assaults to take down services or data mine the masses.

He was a regular associate of another hacker, an NSA analyst by the name of Omar Hariri. Omar was the first of two PCs. Omar had Connections in the Bureau, so he could call in minor favors from a couple associates in the FBI. He was a Govt Hacker, giving him access and awareness of certain programs put in place specifically to allow people like him to drop in and control things, or listen, and drop out as though they’d never been there. Omar was driven by duty to his nation, and faith in friends. He was a righteous dude, even if he dabbled in some grey areas. It was all in service to a greater good.

Omar was also a passenger aboard Flight 337, though he sat several rows distant, they couldn’t even see one another. Still they had set up an ad hoc network and he was seeing exactly what BURN saw. He sent him a brief message over IRC, knowing his intent would be clear to anyone who found himself in BURN’s position: There was no way in hell he was getting off this plane without a bracelet and a couple of new friends. “We have to act quickly,” it said, “I scanned the cellular earlier just for kicks and they’ve got some kind of encryption on everything going out of here. I’m not going to be able to get a message to my people unless we can tap in to one of the marshals’ phones, which were clearly equipped to decrypt incoming signals and ensure that what went out wasn’t just noise.

“I’m on it,” BURN sent back, but within a minute or two he’d mucked things up more: whatever busted string of commands he sent across, hoping to secure control of the first Marshal’s phone instead caused the phone to let loose a burst of cycling pulses that actually managed to interfere with the avionics on the plane, putting the pilots on edge and sending two men - they had to be the Marshals - toward the front of the plane. It was almost certain they’d end up rerouting now, they couldn’t continue the rest of the flight without full visibility, and until they’d verified the source of the interference they were taking risks the Marshals wouldn’t allow. The plane was ordered to turn back around to KCI.

Meanwhile in Arlington, Virginia, Chase London - our other PC - had just been up minutes. It was just after 5AM. Chase was an FBI Agent - frequently an SAIC himself, and qualified to run just about any simple field op that didn’t need special clearance ahead of time. He also had a Nose for the Truth - he was an all but infallible human lie detector when it came to dealing directly with other observable humans. Chase’s motivation? With a name like that, you might not be surprised it was all about the thrill.

Chase checked in with the office to see if his source on intel related to Flight 337 - a fellow agent named Kinetica White who he had an on again off again relationship. She was based in Kansas herself, which was why she was supposed to be aboard the flight to ensure safe delivery of the package, itself still mysterious in nature. The office had yet to hear from Agent White. They did know, though, that the flight had been turned back around. It was halfway to DC almost when it reversed course. It was still in regular contact with ATC and by all indications everything was fine, just a technical malfunction.

Back on the plane things were falling apart quickly. It was clear that, though Omar knew nothing about the identity under which BURN traveled, the sky cops did. He was in cuffs minutes after the captain announced the unplanned return. Most everyone aboard was in a sour mood. Omar took his time. He had seen what carelessness had gotten BURN, and he wanted to be sure to get a message to his contact, Agent White, who had not signaled since he’d been aboard and who he assumed hadn’t made it on as planned. His sequence of control commands did the job and saw him able to send arbitrary text messages (albeit from whatever number was assigned the marshal’s phone) and he didn’t have to be told that time was precious. He composed a series of brief but straightforward messages clarifying the situation, letting her know the package had been compromised, and that he’d need someone to meet with him and figure out what to do next when they arrived back at the airport. She shouldn’t send anything back, he made that VERY clear. Omar breathed a sigh of relief that he’d at least managed not to bungle things further and made ready for disembarking as soon as able.

Chase, now boarding an impromptu private flight of his own out of Dulles Airport, finally had a moment to ring Agent White directly, and it was about the most depressing thing of his morning, worse than the mission gone awry: Her husband Simon answered cheerfully. Some glitch with her alarm, they’d both been so tired they’d managed to sleep in, but he’d have her to KCI fast as you please. Putting her on, Chase learned of the current situation, and began formulating a plan for when he’d arrive at KCI himself, hopefully coinciding with both Agent White and her source aboard 337.

Her final words to him before she hung up had been that on good authority, “the package was intercepted by rogue elements.”

Thus ended the first scene. I’m going to send this post before I lose the damned thing, posting from an iPad this happens all the time with a fat finger.