Recap of Take-2 Trail Game!

 

First Mission Take-2!:

As promised, today I am going to present to you the second attempt at our first mission. The reason we ran the first mission twice was so that we could control some of the elements and see how different players would interact and conduct the mission and expose potential additional issues with the system. 

So, for this second round of play, we rallied up a whole new set of players from our friends and acquaintances and went through the process all over again. With this group, however, only a few people knew each other beforehand and a few were largely brand new to TTRPGs altogether. This would help us test accessibility to the systems for those who were brand new. It would also show us how well a group could be put together and function when there were no dynamics outside of the game factoring in, like friendship. 

So, let us meet the cast of characters I created for the players based on their power fantasy ideal.

 

 

Djinn: A Japanese Netdiver proficient in the manipulation of the Overlay. An Eidolon who moves with grace and conducts himself in honor. 

 

Dizzy: A hulking EOD Paladin with heavy cybernetics, an extremely dense shield, and a warhammer. A direct sort of guy who absolutely loves charging around and making a mess.

 

Amon Vect: A Psion who manifests their psychic powers as auric energy, projecting the energy from their hands. A guy with a real skill for naming things, and mercilessly tearing enemies apart with mind bullets.

 

Desht: A dwarf-like man heavily augmented with cybernetics, most importantly his cybernetic vibro claws and the agile leg striders with pivot cleats. A clever, albeit, short man who is never deterred and always ready to fly into a good berzerker's rage.   

 

Nmbl: A Netdiver who has augmented herself for the remote operation of drones. Nmbl is the friend many places at the time as she controls her combat and scouting drones with her mind. 

The Plan:

Like with the first group they were debriefed with the vague information on the contract and left to figure out what to do and how to plan. They reached out to contacts and quickly followed the Arven Nordica lead that the other group had also discovered. This group, however, zeroed in on this angle and discovered the dock location where the Cutters were offloading the syndicate's arms to be smuggled into the city and sold. They commenced with a scouting mission to the docks and discovered that Arven Nordica had been shipping in heavy amounts of military-grade gear through the Cutters, including personal mechs. 

After the docks, the team made their way to scout out the location. They found the underground passage in the neighboring bar but then decided to scout the roof of Vikker’s hangout. There they discovered a point where the scouting drone and possibly the short Desht could enter into the ventilation to quietly gain access to the main bar. 

Upon arriving back at the House of Weeping Gomorrah, the team built their plan. Dizzy, Djinn, and Amon Vect would enter through the underground passage while Nmbl used an ally not far away to deploy her drones and support from the front of the building and also through the ventilation. Desht too, would go through the ventilation and look for a direct route to Vikker.

The stage was set and session 1 concluded. 

Let the Chaos Begin:

It began not so different than the first group. Dizzy, Djinn, and Amon Vect headed for the neighboring bar to shuffle down into the underground tunnels. Nmbl found herself a nice tight ally to bunker down in and deploy her two drones. Slowly moving her assault drone towards the front of the building while her small drone lofted high and moved for the roof. 

 

Desht, likewise found his way over to the side ally of Vikker’s hideout and with his cybernetic limbs scurried on up to cut a hole in the ventilation. After swift work he and the drone began their stealthy approach through the ventilation, Desht heading toward the North end of the bar while the drone split south. Desht, perched above an office-turned bedroom and silently descended to grapple an unsuspecting foe from behind. 

Meanwhile, the small utility drone found the back rooms of the hideout where the underground shaft came up and upon a brief scout made its way back to the roof to keep the front of the building under visual surveillance. 

Dizzy, Djinn, and Vect made a valiant effort to sneak into the basement tunnel but the heavy armor of Dizzy clattered through the hall alerting the gangers down below to their presence. As guns were drawn Dizzy bull-charged in with his shield, flipping the couch and tossing the two gangers from it. Amon Vect followed suit with a salvo of psychic energy blasts tearing one ganger to shreds. Finally, Djinn hacked and locked down the garage door and car to make sure neither could be quickly utilized for a getaway. 

As the other ganger scuffled off towards his mechanic partner who had produced a pistol and began shooting it at Dizzy, Dizzy tossed his frag grenade, exploding one ganger and sending the engineer across the room. The final mechanic opened fire but only landed hits against the concrete wall while Vect’s projected energy ripped off the mechanic's arm. The mechanic who survived the explosion used his direct EMS signal to notify the gangers upstairs even as Dizzy came charging over the car and leaping down with his Warhammer upon the chest of the mechanic, caving it in. With the basement neutralized, they made for the entrance to Vikker’s bar. 

While the basement was being assailed Desht up above threw caution to the wind, charged out onto the main floor of the bar with his hostage and threw him into the table Vikker was sitting at. No sooner had the ganger's head met the edge of the table than Desht charged in, flipping the table along with the poor ganger and sending the whole bar into a frenzy. A dozen guns blasted away clipping his arm and leg but merely blasting off chunks of armor. 

It was then that Desht realized the mech parked in the front started to animate. He jumped behind the couch and prepared for the entire room to get a whole lot messier. 

 

By this point, the crew outside had heard the news of the assault and Vikker had started making his way to the door trying to get away from the berzerking dwarf slashing up his gangers. As the first gangers slipped inside through the front door, Nmbl, piloting her assault drone came around the corning head-shotting a ganger on his way in. The guards out front now turned around to open fire on the assault drone picking them off. Eidolons were coming from every direction with force. 

The Gatling guns of the mech opened fire upon Desht tearing into his right leg, blood spattered across the bar room floor, but the small angry Eidolon remained enraged and ripping apart ganger after ganger. 

As the Cutters from the back room made their way to the chaos out front Dizzy, Djinn, and Vect came up through the underground tunnel. Vect with ruthless psionic attacks blasted apart another ganger as Dizzy charged in to shield bashed two gangers into each other and up against a wall. Djinn moved his way to see the mech and deployed his Hack: Hijack program and took the gun to blast away another ganger in the bar. 

 

 

 

As Prince Vikker backed his way into the corner shooting his gun at the madman Desht, Nmbl brought in her small drone with a utility arm. She had installed an injector full of the drug Konk and without him noticing descended to inject the powerful anesthetic into Vikker. He dropped unconscious and Vect moved to secure him. 

 

 

 

With Vikker going down the mech began to lumber out of the bar, nearly blasting away the assault drone and causing Nmbl to steer it to cover. Djinn, Dizzy, and Vect picked apart the remaining gangers behind the bar while Desht, lost in his berzerker’s rage, ran after the mech, hacking with his vibro claws at the Gatling gun arms and jumping onto its hull to try and tear open the cock-pit. Little did he know that the mech had an electric hull countermeasure for such situations, and soon his body was jacked full of electrical waves frying his already seriously injured leg and sending him to the ground in writhing pain. 

 

Luckily, the mech prioritized getting away over dumping both guns into the prone Desht. Dizzy, made his way out and picked up the broken body of Desht and the team made their way back to the House of Weeping Gomorrah for their reward and a mission accomplished, albeit, very messily and with a ganger body count 3x that of the first group. 

 

Wrapping-Up and Take-Aways:

Desht rolled to figure out what part(s) of his right leg had been destroyed from the electrical damage and luckily only ended up needing to replace his hip with a cybernetic. Lucky for him, he had just got a nice chunk of crypt to patch it up with and would now be just a little bit more machine. 

Like the other group, we asked for feedback and were curious to hear from the new players, who had played little to no TTRPGs. They both felt the game was intuitive enough and after a few rounds felt like they understood how to proceed. Everyone loved how great their character felt and how strong they were. They also enjoyed seeing Desht go down (even Desht laughed about this). It was nice to see that they were not invincible and that decisions had a big impact on how well and long the Eidolons could stay up and fighting. 

Not included in this recap was a brief moment when Djinn jumped into Submersion space and though it was more improved it also revealed that Submersion space continued to be an abstract and difficult space for players to operate in, especially those who did not have much time in TTRPGs. This game created further improvements to the Submersion space and a large-scale update and simplification to programs to make them more intuitive and readily useful.  

It was a great time and really encouraging to see that both groups felt that the rules were concrete, smooth, and intuitive. It was also great seeing yet another crew fall in love with their characters and getting excited for what was to come next and the prospect of gearing out and developing their characters in the future. 

Next Time: 

Next week, I talk more about the classes and customizability of characters from creation and onward. It is a blog you will not want to miss and I think will excite TTRPG players, House of Eidolons is going to deliver unparalleled character options like never before seen in TTRPGs. Stay tuned and follow me and House of Eidolons on our social media for more content!