Thursday, September 6, 2012

Players: Marc, Martin, Erik, Ian

We took Geiger Counter for a spin. It was pretty awesome.

Genre
We opted for a sci-fi horror suspense thriller. Y'know.

Menace
A mutagenic outer-space virus that transforms people into aliens.

Setting
Deep within the halls and chambers of Area 25.5, which is way more underground than that mainstream Area 51. Puh-leeze. So overdone. Actually, the place was called Fort Pendleton, or just Pendleton.

Characters
We decided to set up a vaguely military vs. scientist opposition, but this didn't really end up being as important as we thought. We had:

• Eccentric scientist Dr. Breyer (SURVIVOR) - Her goal was to have her assistant Kelso follow in her footsteps as a great researcher
  
• Burnt-out soldier Sgt. Jack McQuaid (SURVIVOR) - His goal was to find something to believe in after years of relying on the bottom of a whiskey bottle
  
• Inexperienced young lab assistant Kelso Bordock (SURVIVOR) - His goal was to get together with Dr. Archer, a fellow worker in the facility
  
• Hot-shot hacker Wade Murdock
  
• Brutal commander Col. Reeves
  
• Tough rebel soldier who doesn't play by anyone's rules Jacob "Cocktail" Ackers
  
• Undercover journalist/scientist Miranda Lawless, aka Dr. Miranda Archer (SURVIVOR) - Her goal was to skyrocket her career by revealing the existence of Pendleton
  
• Alien "expert" Venus Deleon (SURVIVOR) - Her goal was to prove herself as a legitimate expert on alien phenomena
  
• Political spook Ms. Grey
  
• Unsuspecting local witness Russell Peterson (SURVIVOR)- His goal was to find a way to make a profit from his experience in the facility
  
• Stern, by-the-book CDC rep Dr. Torres
  
• Gung-ho, idealistic soldier Nina Cameron
  

Plot
I'll leave it to others to add more if they wish. Basically we spent some time talking about the crashed object that was being studied, saw some infected patients mutate, and then ran around getting killed off. Most of the characters started deep within the facility and had to head for the surface. By the time the game finished, only one of our Survivors had died (RIP Kelso), with most of the others unaccounted for. We called the game early on account of time, but concluded that most of the other heroes would probably have been killed in their escape or by the infection afterwards.

I really like Geiger Counter's ability to recreate the experience of a film. Each part of the game plays like a scene in a movie, and it's fun to think about camera shots and all that. I hadn't played with a map before. Kinda liked it. Helped keep the scenes coherent, but I could also see it getting in the way of game flow in a different genre.

Thanks for a good game.