The draft was never designed with intent to print, so I'm not surprised. Will fiddle with that if I make a final publication outside the contest's sharing.

And, hmm.

My own personal thought, which I don't want to impose on players as part of the rule set, is that FOREIGN contaminates LOCAL.

eg, an interaction is LOCAL if it contains no FOREIGN element, but a FOREIGN interaction remains FOREIGN even if it contains a LOCAL element.

I can see that, but can also see that it'd feel like tipping the boulder to put that into the rules.

What I have done in the rules is make FOREIGN interactions unsafe and LOCAL interactions kinda boring.

FOREIGN is where mechanical changes get triggered.

Right. Because supporting SUCCEEDING when dealing with FOREIGN gains a coin, defying loses one.

So by that element of the rules... an interaction that could significantly change how the LOCALS behave can't be purely LOCAL itself.

Which is a bold and intentional statement.

So, for the scene with the school chaplain.

I'd make it FOREIGN because it's an external element which has the potential to spur assimilation or radicalisation of the LOCALS.

But if a group decides that it's LOCAL, I think that's really interesting too.

@nitsua60 I have no idea how long this game will take to play on average.

We only had fifteen minutes and, again, they weren't gamers.

The longest portion was describing how we all were FRIENDS and RIVALS when, IRL there are many ways in which we are simultaneously FRIENDS and RIVALS. It was a bit of a tricky balancing act =)

It didn't come up in the group, but can I ask about the -PUNK suffix: what the thinking there?

@nitsua60 That sounds a lot more immersive than I ever imagined. So. Cool.

One of the original meanings of punk as a subcultural movement was the appropriation of the oppressor's resources by the oppressed to forge tools of resistance.

@BESW You may not know, but we're all particularly-close coworkers. By structure, not necessarily out of affinity. We've lived in each other's houses at times, we see each other in our bathrobes, we bring our families to meals and cover each others' classes when a parent falls ill. Heck, we've had elderly parents move onto campus where there's a bit of a takes-a-village feel to how that plays out.

It survived in the early senses of cyberpunk, wherein disenfranchised and marginalised individuals repurposed the technology created and controlled by government-businesses to defy and overthrow those government-businesses.

So, a few days ago main chat had a conversation about someone's setting wherein feudal aristocratic colonisers were embracing a steampunk aesthetic, and my brain went [herrrrk doesnotcompute].

@BESW gotcha. It wasn't a distraction in any way, but I was curious.

Phone--gotta run.

That filtered into some conversations my local friends and I had after playing a game of Dog Eat Dog set in contemporary Guam with the Natives being Chamorros and the Occupiers being Americans.

And all of those things did a "will it blend?" in my brain and got spat out later that night (between about 11pm and 1am) as Colonypunk: a resistance & assimilation game.

@BESW any questions for me/us?

Hrm. I've never had playtesters before!

Did you have fun with the game?

Would you play it again?

Absolutely had fun. I would totally play it again. I may use it for an upcoming interim-session I anticipate with my Monday night group. Sadly, that's at least two weeks away, so it wouldn't help you for the contest.

Were you surprised by what happened at any point during play?

How quickly the creativity started getting us into the shared fiction.

I don't know if that's because of the lightness creating a low-friction environment...

Or the inexperience of the group making for a no-learned-fears atmosphere...

Or that they were all literature/drama-types and felt perfectly at ease diving right into roles.

I do love no-learned-fears gamers.

It's funny--I read so many problem-player and problem-gm posts around here and think "thank God I've never run across any of this." Then the cynical part of me thinks "you know that mean's you're the problem, right?" And I get insecure and start asking people for too much feedback rather than just letting them enjoy the game.

Feedback has been very helpful in my games, despite not having much in the way of Big Problems.

Just a little post-session, "So, how'd that go?"

But yeah, pushing for it too hard can get troublesome.

You're great at feedback, by the way.

@BESW Aww, thanks. Just being honest with no post-processing and hoping it doesn't offend at the least, helps at the best.

I do have to run, though. Really good work there. I'll let you know what else pos up whenever else I play it.

There's a level of self-awareness and understanding what's useful to share.

They're re-joining with their old sponsoring organisation. However, we'll have a brand-new player, and only one PC from the old days is actually going to be played again; three others are being retired and replaced, and two are brand-new to the organisation.

The best thing to do, I think, is to dump them into a field assignment as quickly as possible.

But to do that without feeling like I'm skimping on "hey, let's figure out our new situation" or making the organisation seem too sloppy...

Father James: "Well, according to the Amaterasu manual, you should all be in quarantine. And Baker, Myka, and Vogue should all be given mandatory leave after their last mission. And Llyan should be getting thoroughly debriefed under our alien protocols."

"...but we really could use you in the field. So for any of you willing to turn back around and go on a mission in 24 hours, we'll log your drive down here from Oregon as leave and I'll fudge the quarantine papers."

He'll tell Cassandra to still lead, but to consult Baker for ideas. Privately he'll ask her to evaluate Baker and Llyan. He'll also tell her that he's giving them a softball mission for this first time out; "only one team has vanished so far!"

Then I'd like to use the M12 Mission Briefing rules if possible.

My idea is: Whatever new mystic power source is being used for Hollywood's electricity replacement, it's being disrupted at the source.