players: Drew, Elin, Ben

The Flaw of our haven was our resistance to change. We were a technologically advanced but completely rigid society. Jobs and status were assigned by ceremonial Guides who reviewed gene records, aptitudes, etc. but as it turned out mostly just kept children in the same castes as their parents, even when the gene evaluations says they totally should not have.

Someone doesn’t fit in? Too much of a free-thinker? The Guides select them to be part of the brave expeditions that go out to found new colonies. Hint: no one who has left the haven has ever returned. The environment outside is almost certainly deadly. “Being selected as a colonist” was the equivalent of execution, though most people had no idea and actually celebrated the colonists for their bravery.

For example: our hero’s 14 year-old daughter has just completed her “early adulthood” selection ceremony. She came out on top, pre-selected to be a Guide (even though we know her real father was sub-standard, because her mother was a Guide and her mother’s mother is top overseer of the Guides and the fix is in) while some of her friends from the same class are about to go off to be colonists.

I think we started off a little slow but things heated up nicely. Drew and Elin, what did you guys think?

Yeah, like most games it took a round to get how it worked but once I did it was a lot fun and the ending was really satisfying. ("If I'm willing to let my grand-daughter be a colonist to protect us, do you really think I'm not willing to sacrifice my daughter either?")

I still find the whole "Only mark the hero's fall after their scenes and the haven's fall after the protagonists scenes" a bit odd. At the end I felt the hero had fallen more than the haven (the guy she thought was her friend has rigged the system to become her daughter's father from the start, her daughter was to be a colonist, and her mother was off the deep end trying to protect the "greater good") but because it was an antagonist's scene I had to fill in the Haven instead (which to be fair was pretty gone too)

But I really enjoyed getting to play all the characters. Makes it easy to get invested in the story as a whole rather than just your own character.