Players: Justin, Tim, Ben, Javier

Last night we played a game of Follow, with the fellowship assuming the role of Gods. Uhmm, kind of.

We were a human crew from a not so distant future sent to an alternate reality where humankind is starting to take its first steps in its cultural/societal/technological evolution.

Our goal was to “help” these nascent people to advance faster and in a better way (e.g. less bloodshed, less setbacks) towards an advanced stage like our own. A speed route to enlightenment.

We had two constraints. First, a prime directive that forbade any direct interaction with these alt-humans. And second, the inability to time travel. We had jumped into this alternate reality and we could not go back home, nor jump around this alternate timeline. All we could do is engage in real time, then go to cryo-sleep, and wake up years/centuries later to continue our societal engineering work.

At our disposal we had all the tools and capabilities that sci-fi engineering can provide, making us nothing short of gods to the eyes of this primitive people. We also counted with humankind’s accumulated experience and a team of the best and the brightest united behind a common goal full of promise, good intentions and, irredeemable hubris.

The underlying questions were: As time goes by and humanity evolves, do we really learn? Do we become better? Can humanity evolve towards a god like state? If not in powers, at least in wisdom? Can future generations teach/guide/mentor past ones? Or is humanity bound by its own makeup, with all its faults and glories?

Our game was aptly named RESET. As in, we will reset humanity and help make a better v2.0. And, oh god did we reset these poor bastards! Actually quite a few times. It took only 5 minutes of play time for the team to start disintegrating in petty infighting and political maneuvering. Even if we were all united on our common goal, each one of us interpreted it differently. Some believed in a unified approach to managing it (one nation, one god, one direction). Other tinted the endeavor with her narcissistic tendencies and fell drunk to the power rush of being adored by the masses. Another, the terraforming engineer, was having too much fun putting into practice all that technology had to offer to worry about petty metrics like casualty statistics. Even the most powerful member, the financier of this alt-universe expedition, was more obsessed about the PR ramifications of each blunder the team committed than any on-the-ground effects. Finally, there was also a disillusioned religious leader, who at the end of her life was set on liberating humanity from its ever creating self-imposed beliefs. She kept on trying to fix her mistakes, justifying to herself the ever grimmer means needed, just to end up making things much worse. The only “sane” members were those without the power or authority to change anything.

As you would expect, the dice gods were not benevolent and the end-game was grim. Not only did the team keep on hitting the reset button to wipe the slate clean, but the final civilization that emerged was a hybrid of all the things they set out to avoid. Half the team ended up dead. The others went their separate ways. Some down planet to a chaotic and barren world. Some half mad in the powerless timespace-ship up above.

"the final civilization that emerged was a hybrid of all the things they set out to avoid"

So, so true. We did a wonderfully terrible job of restarting civilization. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And rampant terraforming.

I hadn't really thought about ways to reskin "the Gods" quest before this game, but our scientists and social engineers were a great fit. Using our terraforming / weather control technology to inflict divine displeasure (or blessings) on the tribes was so easy and tempting, and sleeping away the decades and then seeing how civilization had evolved (or spun out of control) in our absence was perfect.

Papisa Juana (the female Pope of the future church) provided a great anchor for the whole story. I loved how, even though the Papisa was separated from her church and had no special authority, a lot of our characters (even non-believers) respected her because of the office she once represented. There's a good lesson in that: conflict and tension in story games is great, but there's also a lot of value in handing another character carte blanche respect or authority and just trusting them implicitly. It hands them piles of rope to make terrible, wonderful mistakes.

I also loved the chorus line of characters coming to me in the terraforming control room to manipulate or lie to me, since I knew which buttons to push, even though I had the least authority in the organization.

Points to Justin for volunteering to lose his main character (Apollo) in the first outcome, which launched our entire "worshipping us as false gods" theme, which was central to the rest of the game. And Tim's minor character, the taciturn bodyguard Chax, turned out to be one of the pivotal grounded and sane characters who sabotaged our project in the end. Thank god.