Legacy 2e
Session Zero Dawn
Man…they say life finds a way. In our post Fall world, we have SEVEN families. 5 PCs two NPCs – because the rules say I can add a couple!
The scum of the earth inherited the might of the armies before the fall.
Wonders of the Before are hoarded by military, researchers and the wealthy.
The collapse of societies help contribute to the fall.
The fall was long ago, many do not remember how it played out.
The fall was likely driven by scientific research. The Illuminati know where the origins of the fall is and they also know the Digital Echoes were a factor.
That. That all came from setup, the rules RAW. 100%.
The PC Families
Five Fingers of Midas (The Gilded Company of Merchants) Housed in a mountain vault they are the most “together” of the families and EVERYONE trades with them. They are collectors, elegant and all about the open markets. Bon the Thumb of Midas (Envoy) is the family’s leader, he’s expected to bring in new recruits to grow the Family.
The Fakabat (Lawgivers o/t Wasteland) More like Extortionists of the Wasteland! Descendants of cops & robbers they govern by threats and promises and respect. Most families recognize these hired guns as the local law. Max (Survivor) is an agent and has sworn to keep Bon safe. High on the family’s worst criminals list is Vegas. She’s an exile of the Five Fingers of Midas.
The Illuminati (The Enclave of Bygone Lore). These hoarders of wonders are a loud, disorganized family of families. Ruled by the loudest and most interesting they were recently raided by Vegas who kicked their asses and stole quantum batteries from their stores. Jalel (Seeker) is an outsider and is looking for a way into a floating research facility, it is rumored to house various pre Fall wonders.
The Nokk (Pioneers o/t Depths) These nomadic aquatic cyborgs have most of their people under the sea. Ruled by a technocratic council they are the rulers of Atlantis.
Thaddeus (Scavenger) is an agent of the Nokk. He works closely with Bon when he’s on land.
The Forsaken (The uplifted Children of Mankind) These designer pets were abandoned after the Fall. These predators are ruled by the strong and have serial codes as names. The lower number signify strength and order of creation. EFTP-007 is a tiger(Remnant) and outsider looking for tech to help increase the declining families numbers.
The NPC families.
Hundred Handers (The Tyrant Kings) Families of veterans that survived the fall are ruled by battle companies in council. They have fought side by side with the Nokk against the Digital Echoes. They have also lost a cache of Doomsday weapons to Vegas and her band of troublemakers. Their lands are settled and patrolled. They know if you crossed their borders.
Digital Echoes (Synthetic Hive) The Guardians of the singularity. Known by their drones and ghost holograms. They have a cold war going with the Illuminati and refer to the Forsaken as ‘cousins’. All the Families have important nodes that belong to the Digital Echoes. No one has dared to unlock these nodes. Everyone knows they could strike at any moment.
We started play at the massive destruction of a town by some large scale weapons discharge. Jalel and “Seven” were en route to the floating research facility which was directly over the destroyed town. They both want access to the facility. They see a lot of fused materials, rock, bone, wood, etc. The area is extremely heated. No sign of attackers. Seven, the only one with comms gear!, tries to reach anyone around and gets a response from a feminine, digitized voice.
“Cousin, we have lost a key to the Cloud facility. Should Vegas get all the keys she will have the weaponry stored there. Will you help us?”
Seven knows this is the Digital Echoes. When their families fought the DE called the Forsaken ‘cousin’.
Thaddeus, Bon, and Max quickly arrive to investigate. Thaddeus cobbles together a sensor and discovers a strong quantum energy signature, they figure the energy discharge came from directly above and past the floating facility.
I hard zoom out at this point. That scene is done and I want them to feel the Zoom Out move, and I broke the rules, I let them all use the move – because we’re learning.
Next game we’ll get into the families, possibly some quick characters as I suspect they will all have different agendas.
I’m pretty sure this First age is all about Vegas and those Doomsday weapons. I wanna talk about that because that shit was Sorcery!
I picked two NPC factions to add to the creation because I know my players and the RB allowed for it. The Tyrant Kings PB can lose a cache of Doomsday weapons as a Threat Option, so I took it. Then the lawgivers have a rad AF history option “which of you has raised the land’s worst criminal?” The Merchants volunteered. Then that same option says “which of you were victimized by that criminal?” BAD ASS!!!
The Illuminati took it.
And it all clicked. That worst criminal is Vegas, I immediately said. She has those Doomsday weapons. I asked the Illuminati player why them? He replied she stole the batteries from us to power those weapons.
And Vegas was born.
I think we tripped over one thing. Under the history options the wording. Some say: “Which one of you” and many say: “Which of you…”. We took the literal path and let many PCs in where it said “which of you…” instead of just one. This seemed wrong when we got to the “worst criminal” option for the Law Giver, that started as “Which of you” but there should only be one family that raised the worst criminal, not many, right?
I’ll post up our (re-drawn) map and r-map. I look forward to comparing notes with Paul Beakley and his game (maybe even a podcast?!). My folks were pretty stoked afterward and I must say this is pretty fricken great. This’ll be our winter game and I’ll be paying attention about how to present this in a one-shot for con games. I’d want the creation bits, that’s where the magic and buy-in is.
I went all in when I backed Legacy. So I got these incredible cardstock play sheets…that the players are afraid to use!!! I was worried the setup might become bonkers without some restrictions. I voiced veto power at anything that felt zany to me and it all worked out nice. I’m looking forward to running this thing!
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We’re a couple actual-play sessions into Shattered City, UFO Press’ latest Legacy–derived game, and it’s delivering an interesting experience. Rather than blow-by-blow whaddaydo whaddayado play, each session is a vignette. There’s a clear opening with an explicit situation, a nice little arc with miss-generated complications, and closure at the end of the session. They feel like very satisfying little one-shots happening within the much (!) larger context of the world-building bits.
Playing Shattered City kind of feels like watching a series like Tales From The Loop. There are small interactions between major characters, but big situational jumps between episodes. I gotta say, that’s doing a lot to keep me from feeling itchy and burned out! Rather than having to constantly shovel coal into the engine of The Campaign, we can just play a vignette and have it be satisfying.
Story Time!
Our first session was about an agent of the Crystal Crowned (the ageless vampire/elf/alien faction that had ruled the city and now holes up in The Last Redoubt, their
goth nightclubspooky haunted castle) tasked with taking out a big titan stomping around the countryside terrorizing a crossroads community. I was worried that our first play session took us directly out of the city setting, but it turned out great. There was some travel and exploration, hungry soldiers who had deserted and were terrorizing the inn at the crossroads, and a non-violent resolution to the titan problem — the Agent is a Warlock, and one of their main deals is being able to negotiate with giant monsters. Cool! It was also our kick-the-tires session and we went out of our way to try all the basic moves. Normally that’d mean kind of a bad/dull session but honestly, it was nice. Because it was a vignette.Totally normal plant people, not at all upsetting.
Our second session jumped to a prophet of the Verdant Priesthood, a society of tree people, who had foreseen the fruits of a great alliance between the city’s rebel underground and a cult of scumbag foreign occultists. The PC attached to the rebels is also a sibling of the prophet (the tree people are made, not born, and the process is intensely alienating in a city overrun by human-only bigots), so there was some terrific family drama baked in. And again, the vignette thing worked great: get into some trouble with the bigots, stumble into a crisis with the leader of the foreign occultists, have a heartfelt negotiation, done and done.
A Different Facilitator Mode
The vignette thing is a nice change of pace, I gotta say. It feels good to aim for a satisfying ending, if not actual closure. It feels good to not have to hustle for hooks and leads and ooh what if?! bits as I facilitate. In fact I hadn’t really realized how different my GMing headspace is when I’m in spool-out mode versus wrap-up mode. Rather than looking for ever-escalating snowballs (you know, typical PbtA), I’m on the lookout for smaller close-able loops. And sure enough, the sessions don’t end with everything on fire and everyone screaming.
Documentary footage of me GMing Apocalypse World
I think vignette play also leads to overall lower intensity. Which, you know, it’s a trade-off. I loved the big payoffs at the end of our Impulse Drive campaign. They were hard-earned. But the campaign ended when it needed to end, too, because I just couldn’t maintain that level of heat. The interest in Shattered City, I think, is in moving back and forth between the game’s big-picture tools — practically speaking, it’s a nearly-GMless game, but that fact is hidden behind the players’ faction moves — and these closed moments. It’s less intense but maybe more sustainable. Guess we’ll see!
Vignette as a Distinct Play Mode
Settling into our game’s tempo has me thinking vignette play is distinct enough to deserve further investigation. I think the demands and expectations of a vignette are their own mode, like how dungeon delves and hex-crawls are their own modes. A vignette to my mind is also distinct from a conventional one-shot because a vignette, by definition, is part of something bigger than itself. Practically speaking, a vignette might be similar to mission-based play, but only if the mission is clearly part of a larger, evolving arc.
Off the top of my head, a good vignette needs:
A concise, well understood kickoff situation. Unless you just want to have the characters riff Clerks-style, you need to nail down why the characters are together and what they’re facing. But depending on the players and the game, maybe you could just riff. I think it would be hard to nail my last point in this list: making the vignette matter to the larger work.A clear shift in focus and setting from previous sessions. I feel like the shift is an important element to the vignette, because it illustrates how this moment stands apart.A good shared understanding of the overall game/setting/arc so that players have several choices of vignette. Sure, the GM can just frame one up. But I feel like players making that choice gives them more vision and buy-in for how it’s going to play out. They can go into the vignette with a better intuitive sense of the underlying pattern that will be completed.A facilitator emphasis on small, closeable loops rather than constant escalation. (PbtA games, in particular, can easily fall prey to ever-wilder outcomes through to the end of the session.)Accepting that the vignette may be a lower-intensity experience. The payoff is in character revelations and closure, not the cliffhanger.Ways to tie the events of the vignette into the big picture. The vignette needs to matter in some way, even if it’s just to build out the setting.
And a few things I think a vignette is not:
It isn’t a play-the-day type thing, where every session covers every moment of everyone’s life. Hitting a satisfying conclusion means being disciplined and intentional about framing scenes. I think you can do this quietly but it may require a firmer facilitator hand on the tiller than you’re accustomed to.The players can’t wait for the GM to hand them shit to solve. Players need to be proactive within the session for a vignette to come together.Tightly integrated into, and contingent upon, outside events. If you’ve got some way to convey a big picture – the faction turn in Stars Without Number or the Family Phase in Legacy – then you set your vignette within that big picture and have it be meaningful and resonant. This is distinct from a session kickoff that picks up hot on the heels of the previous session, or is otherwise part of a continuous whole. It can be discontinuous.A cliffhanger. The session needs to stand on its own and feel conclusive.
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