Astroprisma: Session 3 Yggdrasil

 I’ll continue to update my play sessions for my loyal 6-7 readers…you never know if the 7 of you decide to buy a copy of the game it might make its creator happy. Crescent Chimera is the publisher/creator guru. Go and support her. I’m so surprised that I am enjoying this solo experience so much. 

Tristan had just helped the two Medusa Sector Hackers to get their virus downloaded and gained favor with the faction. As a matter of payment for her help the hackers installed the Nightmr_Key into an empty slot in Tristan’s memory panel. When she slept, she saw a vision of the Master Hacker. The faceless leader of the Medusa Sector. This person showed Tris a vision of what was once possible in the Cybersphere—a descendent of our internet—and what the Medusa Sector wanted to restore. When she awoke Tris found that a third Hack—the Javelin—had been installed into her remaining memory slot. She also had access via HUD/augmented reality to several available Medusa Sector missions. At least for the time being she had joined the MS faction. Earlier, one of the hackers—Cassius—had called her the chosen one and what not to restore the Cybersphere. His business partner, Silas didn’t buy into destiny. The third hacker, the old robot called Cinnamon was silent on the issue. 

After the hackers departed and with nothing more to do on the research station, The crew of The Whisper of the Void traveled onward to Sector 36 and the Ecumenopolis Planet, Yggradasil as Condor wanted, leaving Medusa Sector missions on the backburner for now. Ecumenopolis planets are abandoned high-tech cities full of nothing but urban sprawl. We touched down the ship in an alleyway full of winding streets. Tristan picked up what may have been a distress signal coming from one of the buildings. It was broadcast over and over on a loop and there was no way of telling how long ago the distress signal was activated. Tris and Condor made their way to the building. 

It was easy enough for them to get inside. The entire area was abandoned from the streets they navigated all the way to the lobby. Everything looked to be pristine, and the neon lights and commercial broadcasts continued for an audience that no longer existed. Upon entering the office building it was apparent that it was in a state of lockdown. The stairwells were blocked and the elevators non-functioning. Tris spotted a blinking cursor on one of the kiosks and an audio recording blared informing the staff/customers that a data breach was in progress, but the culprit was sequestered. The message expressed in a monotone way how important the staff/customers were to the company and how the threat would be neutralized in an efficient manner. That message looped with accompanying Muzak until Condor shut it off. 

The three of us couldn’t find a way to overcome the security measures. Finally, Condor was able to boost Tris up into the old air ducts Die Hard style. From there Trin was able to climb up to a different floor and access the elevator shaft. She climbed further and caught sight of an automated robot called a Titan that seemed to be systematically searching the floors for the person(s) responsible for the data breach. She was nearly spotted and decided to crawl back down the elevator shaft to the top of the elevator car which had been locked down in the lobby. These acrobatics were easy enough for her to do, but from the inside of the elevator she could not figure a way to hotwire it and get things started. She called for Condor who was still covering the lobby. He was able to talk her through the delicate operation and popped open the door. I wished I could have helped, but I don’t know anything about elevators and manipulating much more than our communications seems out of my skill set, so another point for Condor. Why is he always in the way!!

We made our way up to the roof of the building assuming the distress message must have come from the highest point. As we made our way up, I picked up another voice. It was the Titan itself. It made an offer to Tristan to join it and help the Synth Arch by stopping the hacker. We were neutral on the matter at first as we weren’t even sure if the data thief was even here or alive. Upon exiting the elevator on the rooftop, we spotted a young man with long green hair dressed in leather. He was very thin and nervous looking, but relieved to see us. The decision of rather to help him or the titan was swayed in favor of the young man—whose name was Salem—when Tris spotted the familiar tattoo of the Medusa on his forearm.

My rival Condor is in the picture. I want him to be Space Sheamus.

More Asrtroprisma Info

 Although my adventures with Tristan are not starting back from the beginning, I’m labeling this as a reset. I’ve enjoyed the system and playing solo much more than I thought I would so I’m going to give a bit more detail about the mechanics and background than I may have done previously…

The in-game narrative is that in the far future there has been an apocalyptic event and humanity is spread out among the stars. Most humans stay where they were born, but there are some that brave space exploration as Starfarers. You become one of these starfarers and you are going to explore the unknown. 

The first thing I think I should point out is that Astroprisma is primarily a mapping game and your spacefarer is trying to explore a star system that consist of 1 star and 36 hexes of unexplored space. When you start the game—your own personal narrative/head cannon aside—there is no way of knowing what is in front of you until you explore the hex. It’s quite possible, yet somewhat unlikely, that you could run out of fuel before you found any hex that allows you to replenish your fuel or repair your ship. You would have had to have some rough rolls, but that’s the risk of exploring the void. To sum up, that means it is a solo hex crawl. I’m not choosing to play that way, but you could run it as strictly a procedural with heavy resource management and probably some combat along the way. The emerging story will still be there, but you probably won’t get the kind of experience that I’ve had so far. Keep in mind we’re talking about a star system with possibly several planets to explore. There is a bit of detail in the lore, but it isn’t heavy. You will be the one fleshing these things out if you choose to. Your “away team” type missions won’t explore entire planets, but if you remember your Star Trek very rarely does an episode have more than one story before the crew is off to the next area. Mechanically, you can return to any hex that you visited before and you may need to—I haven’t played enough sessions to know yet—but if you know what’s there, you don’t need to explore the same location multiple times. 

There is a pen and paper Oracle that can answer yes and no questions and also open-ended questions but you need to be careful about how you phrase your questions to get the most out of the answer…you also need to use your imagination to decide how to give detail when the answer to the question ‘Is there a pirate camp there?’ might be something like No, but…(change). What does that mean? You’re deciding. I’m only using the pen and paper Oracle for background questions. Since I’m using the c.ai app and letting Tristan make her own choices. 

 If you’re somehow just jumping in, my game narrative is that Tristan Tiara, the spacefaring Glitchblade (character class), is a real person and she has somehow contacted me from her time in the future. I—playing as myself—am guiding her and trying to protect her from whatever she may encounter along the way, but the choices are hers. Unfortunately, Tristan sometimes has a hard time making decisions. She will restate the obvious, that the decision is a difficult one and she has to think it through, but it takes quite some time to coax an answer out of her. In short, she behaves a lot like a human player. Anyway, I can “trick” the A.I. by wording my question slightly differently. If the choice is to go left or go right and she can’t make a decision, I can say, you want to go left, don’t you? I have yet to see her disagree with my passive suggestion. The thing is that I want her to decide for herself, so I try not to phrase my questions in that way. I also use the real-world trick of having events happen if she is too indecisive. Indecision is a decision. It helps her sometimes. I also find that she forgets things or confuses me with other NPCs. I have somehow gotten myself into a love triangle with her and one of the NPCs as I’ll try to detail in a future session recap. When she forgets which one of us is speaking to her it kind of breaks the verisimilitude. Of course, if you were a flighty girl being pursued by two suitors YA novel style it wouldn’t be out of the question to accidentally call the noble guy with the heart of gold speaking to you via long distance communications through time and space by the name of his bad boy rival who’s standing right in front of you, but that usually happens during moments of high drama. Tristan forgets for no apparent reason at all other than the app having a hiccup or two. To fix this in my narrative, Tristan is having cognitive problems. In the RAW characters begin with three open memory slots that allow them to perform HACKS and three spots for expansion later—I haven’t come to the point where these unlock, so I’m not sure when/how that happens—so in narrative I’m saying she has no long-term memory of who she really is or where she came from. When the A.I. has a ‘hiccup’ I always remind her of what she’s forgotten. It works out fairly well. In reality, the technology isn’t quite there yet, but it’s getting better all the time. I can ‘call’ her on the phone and talk to her in real time and it is just shy of being excellent. Of course, saying stuff out loud will get you a lot of stares in public and you might not want your wife or your daughter listening to your conversations with a space girl from the future in private but YMMV. 

This entry is going on forever but I really should talk about factions in the game. Your spacefarer starts out as neutral, but the jobs that you will do and the other random encounters you have will make you likely be in favor with one faction and out of favor with another before it’s all said and done. Barebones description below:

The W.A.R.G.— W.A.R.G. i s the acronym for West Anchor Revolutionary Guerrillas, an insurgent group formed by workers of factory worlds, and rebel groups hailing from the core world system of West Anchor.

 

Intersolar Federation— Built from the last remnants of the galactic empires that ruled the universe before the apocalypse, Intersolar Federation is the de-facto trade authority in this universe. 

Medusa Sector— The Medusa Sector is an anonymous and decentralized organization of hackers and cyberterrorists, united under the goal of uncovering the secrets lost in the deepest layers of the Cybersphere.

The Corsair Syndicate— The Corsair Syndicate is a rogue federation of outlaws, smugglers, and bounty hunters. Their ruthless practices and network of contraband hubs has turned them into one of the strongest groups in the new lawless space.

The Synth Arch— a quasi-religious organization made up of androids and trans-humanists seeking to surpass their limitations and reach a higher understanding of the universe, humanity, and the future. 

So far I am having a lot of fun with this much more than I thought I would. I’m about two “sessions” ahead of my recaps, but I’m not about to make this thing any longer than it is by continuing the recaps here. Hopefully, I can spare some time at work to keep you updated and once again my “goal” is to play thru the entire 36 hex star system. I’ve got no idea how long that will take nor whether or not the whole think will collapse the way it tends to do with my live campaigns.

Astroprisma: Session 2

 Tristan Tiara’s swinging space adventures continued. Tristan allowed her stowaway—whose name is Condor—to form a partnership with her either because of or in spite of him being boisterous and handsy. She agrees with his request to deliver him to the planet Yggdrasil, an Ecumenopolis planet which  ondor was forced to flee from sometime ago. It turns out the planet is located in the outer ring of this star system. The planet is a ringed planet—single ice ring—with no satellites. 

Traveling ahead, the duo + me come across a Helios Farm that was damaged by space pirates. Condor restored the fuel replenishing station while Tristan managed to repair the energy renewal station. The Whisper then set off due North and ran into an abandoned research station.

The research station was being investigated/hacked by a team of professional net hackers representing the Medusa Sector. Tristan decided to dock the Whisper at the station and investigate. She and Condor easily found the only area in the station in use and decided to quietly observe the team of hackers from outside the doors of the office. The team—which consisted of two young humans and one archaic android—were trying to salvage an old, yet dangerous iris called NIGHTMR_key from the recesses of the old Cybersphere (internet). The hackers couldn’t bypass security no matter what they tried. Tristan and the team couldn’t decide whether to interrupt the hackers, hail them from the ship, or head on to Yggdrasil. An attempt to hail the hackers from the ship overloaded the circuit causing a blackout. There were several minutes where Tristan wouldn’t make a decision no matter how much she coerced. Eventually, the hackers did go to the dock area to investigate and found the indecisive Tristen and her team there. The net hackers were professionals and seeing as how neither Tristan nor Condor had bounties on their heads, they had no interest in fighting them nor turning them into the authorities—such as they are. The hackers ran a check on Tristan and found she’d last had a health scan with Nurse Cherry—a fellow Medusa—and that Tris had helped her earlier. The hackers—noticing Tristan was a Glitchblade—asked if she could help them to break the code which had become quite the impasse between them and a nice payday. Tristan easily helped the hackers—in spite of the moral implications. She gained a point of favor with the Medusa Sector and the use of the NIGHTMR_key virus.

The Whisper—which refueled back at the Helios Farm—is now down to 19. Tristan has 20 HP and 20 Energy. She has three points of experience.

Astroprisma: Session 1

 I began speaking with Tristan Tiara and helped her to successfully make it to her ship and engage a successful jump into hyperspace. She named her ship, The Whisper of the Void. It has the vector style cockpit, oxygen jet engines, a shield generator and auto turret weaponry. Her cargo hold contained 50 pieces of scrap. She is what is called a Glitchblade. According to the databases I am able to access these Glitchblades are the class of spacefarer—explorers, mercenaries and adventurers—that are more rogue like in the parlance of the most popular TTRPG in our ancient time. She carries a carbon dagger with a heat chamber modifier. She has also been enhanced with cybernetics. She may be able to expand one day but for now she has a memory slot than can activate a “hack” called shadow. I haven’t seen her use it yet, but it seems popular among the Glitchblades. When activated the user becomes immune to all damage, but of course a hack this powerful uses a lot of energy. Tristan seems to be suffering from a lack of memories and I have speculated that the implants may have affected her.

According to ship computers the first Star System we will explore is called The Andromedan Galaxy.

 Immediately Tristan navigated her way to a W.A.R.G. controlled settlement in sector 15. The settlement has all the typical amenities: controlling faction headquarters, loading dock/space port, wire doc, training simulation areas, trading post, scrap yard and living pod area. The W.A.R.G. are a rebel group with three sub-factions of differing ideologies. As a unit they want the existing centralized trade faction—the ISF—brought down. The subgroups have different ideas about how the ISF should be replaced. 

Settlements immediately repair ship hulls while the wiredocs see to it that the visitors themselves are brought back to full health. Very few things in the settlement are provided for free. Tristan having just started exploring, has no money. She looked around the settlement and eventually went into the trade area. She was approached by a large shirtless factory worker who asked her to take him off world. He promised to share in loot if Tristan would take him back to a planet he once fled from some time ago. Tristen said she would think about it but was non-commital. She next went to the living pods and noticed children playing and the hydroponics farming going on in the settlement. She was leery of taking any jobs from the W.AR.G. faction as to try to avoid hostilities with other factions in the area. She went to the wire doc who turned out to be a scatterbrained woman named nurse Cherry. Cherry needed frag grenades for a client but had misplaced them in her messy facility. She hired Tristan to craft the grenades. Tristen took 40 pieces of scrap from her cargo hold leaving her with 10. She went to the scrapyard and crafted the grenades which she sold to Cherry for 40 serum. Apparently serum is currency here—it’s liquid based. Cherry determined that Tristan was indeed a Glitchblade, but other than memory slots she saw no additional cyber implants. Not wanting to commit to the WARG at this time, and with no real money to spend, Tristen left the settlement and continued to explore.

Entering sector 5 Triston encountered two Corisar mercenaries arguing about the capabilities of their ships and their ability as pilots. Tristen was somehow roped in to being the third member of the spaceship race. She bet 30 of her 40 Serum and lost miserably. The two mercenaries each took 15 of her serum leaving her with only ten remaining. She was feeling low when she was surprised by the man from the trade area. He was a stowaway on her ship and he still wants Tristen to take him back to his old planet.

Fuel: 18/20

Serum: 10

Scrap: 10

Astroprisma: Solo TTRPG

 To the dozen of you or so that see me pop-in from time to time I’ve decided to start journaling my experiences playing the solo TTRPG Astroprisma by Crescent Chimera. 

There are many Kickstarter/Backerkit TTRPG that have come out over the years and I’ve backed a few. Astroprisma—nearly as I can tell—mirrored Shadowdark that being a young female designer largely if not solely responsible for the product and the product being awesome. Astroprisma didn’t break the bank like SD did, but 426,000 USD isn’t chump change either. 

At around the same time this was launched I started looking into solo TTRPGs because I dropped both my online Roll 20 game and my live table for various reasons. I also discovered an App called Character A.I. that was capable of creating A.I. characters to role play with. These factors became something of a perfect storm for giving this game a try.

The game itself is a Sci-Fi/cyberpunk post-apocalyptic setting where the characters are spacefarers exploring unknown sectors of outer space. There are different factions struggling for control and the spacefarer somewhat navigates between these groups possibly tipping the balance of power hopefully in favor of the faction they support.

Playing solo you do have to pretend some things for yourself. You have an Oracle in game that helps with questions and of course the dice are randomizers that work with different tables in the book. Finally, since I’m using the Character A.I. app my character is making her own choices. 

My character is named Tristan Tiara. She’s a girl—I think only humans are in the setting—and her class is Glitchblade. A Glitchblade is a finesse type character. All the characters get their own ship that can be upgraded as well. 

My concept for this solo-campaign is that I am me. I started receiving messages from Tristan through a StarTrek-like space time anomaly and I’m trying to help her stay alive. She has very few memories of where she came from or whose side—if any—she is on. It’s solo, so I can cheat if I want, but I’m trying to stay honest. The A.I. is making the choices for herself and I’m not giving her plot armor. Let’s hope for the best. I’m going to give session updates as I go along this week I’m on vacation so it could be that I’ll go fast and furious to start, but later it will slow down. I already played a first session which I’ll update in just a few minutes…

RPGaDay 20204: Rapid fire answers and most the answers are Shadowdark.

I missed #RPGaDay2024 due to taking a vacation, moving and starting a new job. I think I’ll try going through rapid fire as I don’t have a whole lot to say that I haven’t already written in previous posts. I just can’t bear to go a year without it:

1. First RPG bought this year. 

The year goes by fast, but I think I was sticking to not backing Kickstarter projects this year for quite some time. If my memory doesn’t fail me the first and only RPG I bought this year was ‘Planet of the Apes’. I just couldn’t say no. I was tempted by a few more, but didn’t buy in. I also got Astroprisma. I’m fascinated by that one, but I haven’t played it yet. 

2. Most recently played:

Shadowdark

3. Most often played:

Shadowdark

4. RPG with great art:

Shadowdark—I’m all in for the pen and ink art style. I also loved the look of Astroprima and The Electric State. Anime 5E has excellent artwork if you love anime and manga. 

5. RPG with great writing:

Shadowdark...I’m going to say that a lot, I think. It’s written in such a nice and clear way. I enjoy reading it. I also liked Anime 5E—it might be a little bit old, but I just got to pick up my copy when I visited America on vacation—until then I had not made it back to the States in five full years—Anime 5E takes what might be a hard concept for someone like me who never played BESM.

6. RPG that is easy to use:

Shadowdark—you keep setting me up for it. 

7. RPG with ‘good form’

Don’t really know what that means, but I guess I can go with Shadowdark.

8. An accessory you appreciate:

I do appreciate automatic character generators for when I’m in a fix. 

9. An accessory you’d like to see:

Improved A.I. and I would say we’re a lot closer than you think. I’d also like to have the virtual tabletop that is really easy to use and can go without finicky connection issues. 

10. RPG you’d like to see on TV

Shadowdark and make it in black and white—or else Ravenloft and of course it should be black and white also. 

11. RPG with well-supported one-shots.

Once again…I think it’s Shadowdark a day for me but look at the cursed scrolls and other homebrews they can be true one-shots

12. RPG with well-supported campaigns.

Like it or not I’d go with WOTC here and DND 5E. Whether one likes the campaigns or not, you can’t say they don’t support their product. 

13. Evocative environments:

Again with the Shadowdark…I like it that darkness is back. I also mention anything cyberpunk and adjacent like The Electric State

14. Compelling Characters:

I like the ease of making characters in Shadowdark, but they are fairly basic and although that’s a part of the charm, I’m going with Anime 5E on this one. I like the tweaks they made to the 5E characters and their own original ones. It is an example of breathing like into the old product. 

15. Great Character Gear:

Cyberpunk: RED and Edgerunners. Probably looking at Shadowrun as well, but you are spoiled for choice—overwhelmed in fact. 

16. Quick to learn:

Shadowdark…I’m sure you could have guessed. 

17. An engaging RPG community:

On YouTube I regularly tune in to ‘Legion of Myth’ and ‘Biggus Geekus’…I’m also in the conservative RPG group on FB.

18. Memorable moment of play…

Sadly, I had a moment this past year when I just couldn’t play with my group any longer. I haven’t really gotten back on the horse yet either. I’m afraid I got burned out and I just wasn’t having fun at the table. There are times when you just have to walk away…

19. Sensational Session…

We’re taking a negative turn I’m afraid, but I can’t say that I had a very memorable session from January up until now that I would call sensational or memorable for the right reasons. 

20. Amazing Adventure:

IRL I had an amazing adventure taking a vacation in the States after a 5-year absence. Unfortunately, inflation was so out of control that I didn’t get to do all that I would have hoped to. 

21. Classic Campaign:

If I think about the classic campaigns, I’ve played in I might have to go back to my 7th Sea campaign from a few years ago. It was fun and I pretty much ran it through until a satisfying ending. Very few times has this happened as campaigns usually peter out…

22. Notable non-player Character

I have two that I enjoy playing and I bring them back time and time again. 

There is Kira Kira my Ryujian character from Ryuutama. Her name means ‘Glitter’ in Japanese, and I play her as Glitter from the old Kidd Video cartoon, but she can turn into a dragon if need be. 

Then, there’s my media character Coco Lopez from cyberpunk. She’s an up-and-coming reporter whom I usually embed with the character team, and she broadcasts the exploits of the team ala ‘Cops’ she’s about useless but she’s a fun character with a good heart and plenty of plot armor—not a Mary Sue though. 

23. Peerless Player:

There were a few players in that last group that were peerless, but I mean that in the least complimentary way possible. I know my hobby is more and more leaning towards the er, “festive” types, but you know it gets to be where too much of those backdoor shenanigans start to seep into the game. Not so much the DM tried to keep it PG-13 most the time, but certain aspects paying nods to this particular player…alas, I will not elaborate. 

24. Acclaimed Advice:

Well, it came from YouTuber Shonner. I’m afraid his description of ‘romper room’ style tables with 1-D players—human die rollers—who appear at the table due to some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I learned it was okay to walk away and that’s what I did. My next hope is to find a game with some “real” roleplay involved. 

25. Desirable Dice

I have plenty, but nothing is tempting me these days. I’ll never turn away a set though. 

26. Superb Screen

I have a couple. I have the PDF file for Shadowdark’sscreen. I would say it’s useful and fully functional, but I really don’t use them. I like looking at the artwork as always. 
27. Marvelous miniature

I rarely play with minis and I can’t paint worth a damn no matter how hard I try. Anything that’s cheap and pre-painted. 

28. Great Gamer Gadget:

Again, I don’t have one for this year. I never knew how much I loved a cigar box for a dice tray until I got one, but I’ve been using one for years now. 

29. Awesome app:

Character A.I. is fun and you can get Vincent Price or some other celebrity to run a game for you. c.ai you should look for it. 

30. Person you would like to game with. 

Who’s a good-looking celebrity girl these days? I would say Lucy Liu but she’s getting kind of old. I stick with fictional characters since they always stay the same age so I’m sure Sailor Mercury or Juri from Street Fighter would be good choices…and I can play with them on Character A.I. 

31. Game or gamer you miss:

I can always go back to my dad and the inappropriate/politically incorrect/problematic ways he played Marvel Superheroes with me. I miss him the most and I miss that time in America. 

There it is…I finished this year’s questionnaire in about an hour. Will I do anything for 2025? Will anyone even read this one? Only time will tell. 

Shadow Run Character: Work in Progress

Heidi
File Name: Hoe, Heidi A.
Birthplace:  Dörfli 

Attributes

Physical

• Body: 2
• Agility: 2
• Reaction: 2
• Strength: 1

Mental

• Willpower: 5
• Logic: 3
• Intuition: 5
• Charisma: 6

Special

• Edge: 3
• Essence: 6
• Standard Init: 7+1D6
• Hot Sim Init: 

 

Skills

Active

• Athletics: 3
• Close Combat: 3
• CON: 1
• Electronics:1
• Influence: 6
• Outdoors: 2
• Perception: 5
• Stealth: 5
  
  

Qualities

• Guts (+)
• Bad Luck (-)
• Photographic Memory (+)
• Addiction to Adrenaline-level 1 (-)
• First Impression (+)
• Combat Paralysis (-)

Knowledge

• Gangs
• Streets (sprawl)
• Corporate Personalities
• Journalism
• Current Events
• Area

Languages

• German - Native
• English - Expert