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.