We Float: Plot

In step order!

Hunt The Hare

1. We need to find Barton
2. We need to find Thu Hien and let him lead where he will
3. We need to get Andrey into peoples’ minds and on screen.

Notes I (Cass) have an email from BriAnne about this that I have received but honestly hsve not read. I will reply to it within 24 hours.

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Sympathy For The Devil

Objective: To remove Katherine from the current game equation. On a meta level, we feel that she has too much influence and power, that she does not deserve.

1. Katherine reflects on her life with Bart.
4. Tereska catches Bart violating privacy and kills him.
5. Tereska finds out that she didn’t entirely prevent the violation of privacy and informs Alistair and Katherine that Katherine’s cover is blown.
6. Katherine disappears (either into hiding or dead).
7. The group is effectively leaderless.
8. This segues into...

Notes This really is going to remove Katherine from the game. We're very serious about that. Jillian, we'd like to know what you'd like to have happen to Alistair, who we'd like not to lose.

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It’s What You’ve Got Inside That Counts

Objective: There really are threats out there, and there really are people capable of killing over genes. We want to bring them on screen to provide something for the group to react to.

1. Genetic readers (G-readers for short) - machines capable of reading a person's genetic structure even from a distance of about twenty feet - are released to the public by Vile Corporation X.
2. Gangs of patriots begin assaulting/killing Wild Cards.
3. Tereska and Alistair have some kind of resolution (not necessarily the same one) that they are no longer employed; this needs to be decided with Jillian.
4. Matt and Gabe realise that a) they have an ideological objection to what’s happening, and b) they want it to not be happening, so c) they need to behave openly as heroes in an attempt to change public opinion. This sets up a decision loop.
5a. The group decides to fracture over Matt and Gabe's actions. (Not desirable, but our last idea is to force people to keep doing things they wouldn't want to.)
5b. We can soften this some by having public opinion be supportive of Wild Cards as a result of the killings that have shocked the nation if we need to give the characters space. However, if the characters go into hiding...
5c. The characters can operate incognito to promote the greater good.
Notes: Obviously a lot of character discretion in the latter half of this plot.

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We do not have firm timeframes for any of these, but we do expect that we'll have more time starting next week to get some of these actions happening. As ever, we welcome discussions and/or questions.

Puzzle-solving: not as good over the internet as in real life.

Purpose: Twofold. Maybe two-and-a-half-fold. We want to introduce a new, antagonist faction, or at least antagonist character who controls hordes of faceless NPCs until he can start controlling hordes of PCs. This character, whom absolutely no one should be surprised to realise is not yet fully written up, is Andrey St. Laurent; journal is at morningofthewar. Gwen and I both feel that games cannot survive without conflict of some kind, and we like ours moral.

The second purpose of this plot was to get players to, as time allowed, start to develop their worlds. We've all sketched in some rough outlines, but honestly, there's a LOT left to figure out, and that's not in the game setting but in terms of how your characters fit into the world. Off the top of my head, I would say that all the characters are socially well-grounded - seriously, find me someone in this game who knows NO ONE - so who are the people the characters interact with? Where do they go first? Is that the place they feel most comfortable? What do they think of first when presented with a relatively unreasonable situation? We want this plot to be about the characters, not about the situation.

Additionally to that, how do the characters work together? We wanted to start that interaction small, with something relatively harmless; as Matt and Maxxie have just found out, for example, not having a coordinated plan of attack is a bad idea when you're confronting a set of villains with a gun and a teleporter who knows TKD. Matt will have nightmares for some time to come about almost shooting her when she blinked into his line of fire. What are the natural lines of authority in the group? Whose power complements whose? How good is the exchange of information?

Time Constraints: Player generated, honestly. I can keep throwing bits of solution at everyone in sight for as long as I need to, and when Gwen returns she can pick up right where I left off. If people want to take this as a long event (for either IC or OOC reasons) we can run longer with it. If people are tired of it, we can chop it off sooner than we expected. Since it's mostly a plot for player exploration of characters and world, it's really up to you guys how long it runs.

Ultimate Upshot: Well, Barton's gonna die. Katherine may be disappointed by this, or she may not be; it kind of depends on what the team decides to do and how they choose to handle the situation. However, she doesn't know about St. Laurent in specifics, and she isn't aware that this is a fishing expedition of his own, so that part of it Katherine doesn't control. So from a mod viewpoint, the ultimate upshot would be to bring in St. Laurent, figure out how the group works together, and go humbly tell Katherine that they might've, kind of, possibly, fucked up. (I recomment Maxxie's meek and mild demeanour for THAT mission.)

Questions? Comments? Leave them here, or direct them to the mod box. (For reference, the mod box forwards to me, because I am very lazy and hate Gmail; Gwen, when she's got internet access, checks the mod box every day.)

We are getting contacted about next steps for this plot - we wanted people to have time to get organised, which, yay for happening! - and now we're curious to know who is talking to whom for information about Richard Barton.

If you're using a personal contact, let us know who they are and where they're at and we'll let you know if they know anything useful. If you're looking in a general area for information - the two groups at this point seem to be heading for Jokertown and for the last known address - who is your character likely to talk to? What are they likely to do if, for example, they get access to Barton's former place? If you're hacking, what sites are you visiting?

In other words, tell us what you're doing and we'll tell you what you're finding out from it. Feel free to make things like locations and websites up - just tell us a bit about them, because if you're looking on allwildcardsmustdie.com, you're going to get different information than if you're on undergroundrailwayreturns.com, and, as ever, we like player-generated world data even more than we like cookies and puppies.

Also! As your search evolves - you talk to the nurse who tells you to talk to the bar owner who points out that the fish-throwers might know something, who say no, but they saw that guy talking to the balloon dancer - feel free to keep asking for more information. We will continue to happily generate it, and give it to you as quickly as we can.