When: Thursday February 3, 2011
Who: Cy (The Governor) and Shuo (The Savior)

The Story:

Kelly Perkins, the celebrity scientist of the corporate party, travels to Mars Colony to deal with the PR problems of her breakthrough medicine called Dust. While Dust allows the inhabitants of the colony to breath the harsh atmosphere of Mars freely, it is also giving the people lung cancer. Kelly "fixes" the problem by adding a stimulant to the formula making the patients feel better even though the cancer is eating them even faster than before.

Tanya, Kelly's cousin and a senator of MC, reveals that her husband is one of the many addicted to the new formula of Dust and died after OD'ing. Feeling guilt and shame for possibly the first time in her life, Kelly promises her cousin she will make things right.

Scouring all over the planet for a new cure, Kelly finds a martian plant that can be used as the active ingredient in Dust without the carcinogenic properties of the medicine's predecessors. Unfortunately, the plant causes low level paranoia throughout the populous and violent cults form throughout the colony. In exchange for seat majority on the colony's council, Father Jiang (the Religious party leader and the muscle of the government) agrees to quell the cults upon Kelly's request by implementing a few well-chosen crucifixions. Kelly, fearing the uproar once the people learn of their fellow neighbors being nailed to a cross, decides to take the initiative and reformulate Dust with a sedative.

Soon after coming in power, the Religious party begins deporting colonists off the planet for conflicting religious views. Meanwhile, Earth's government is getting pissed off at the colony for the low production of Plaladium (the miners, like the rest of the people, isn't very effective on the new Dust) and threatens to cut them off entirely. Kelly, in her last effort to make things right, makes two more batches of Dust. One with the stimulant back in for the Miners and another with a robust sedative to all of the Religious Party's officials. Her deception is revealed to the public and now she is politically toxic and hated throughout the doomed colony.

Game review:
Whew, sorry the synopsis is so long. We got through a lot even though we ended three rounds early. I think my biggest complaint is not having more collaboration throughout the scenes. Because of the rules and our roles, it felt a bit restrictive to ONLY issue or respond to a situation. Like Caroline had said in the other thread, it took us a little while to get to a good pacing but in the end I think we had a good mix of personal and action scenes.

Thanks to Caroline for facilitating and thanks to Cy for being an all around awesome role-player. (Tanya at the hospital? Holy crap that was intense.)

Thanks Shuo!

I have been very lax in not posting a writeup for this.

I felt like something didn't quite click with this first Mars Colony attempt. I don't know if our Kelly didn't feel as sympathetic as they "should" or if our world started off too bleak to feel promising. But I felt like our world started bad and only got more dystopic as things went along.

We had kind of a rules/narrative clash when we ended up stopping, because Kelly was basically ready to give up, but the rules really don't extend there.

I wish the "pick three things you're scared of" part were more tightly integrated into the game. Like they were chosen from as issues/problems. They felt like they had potential, but couldn't be addressed except how they were related to issues.

That said, I think we ended up with a lot of story. I'd give it another go. I think having a clearer sense of the effect of choosing issues, and knowing to focus on them more will help.