A NOCTURNE v0.8 — playtest session #7 “Artificial Minds”
I told you I was writing this basically right after the session #6 actual play. I warned you bro.
We launch into downtime with an unexpected, but in hindsight inevitable, bang: the craft’s stress track maxed out, giving it the Trauma “Obsessed”, specifically focused on the Patriarch and its own murky origins. We don’t see the immediate effects of this in this session, but I’ve got some dark plans…
Nix starts a long-term project to counteract the spread of the membrane rot inside their head, essentially setting up a race clock against the membrane sickness clock that we already have established.
The other big thing that happened this session was the introduction of fresh mea- I mean new player Edwin’s character Timothy, an AI encased in an artificial brain, wrapped in a cocoon of some gooey, flesh-like smart substance that he can extrude to create temporary, dripping limbs, interface rather disgustingly with more mundane computers, and bud off short-lived homunculi. His first act after sloughing himself out of coldsleep (incidentally, a great way to introduce new characters to the crew) is to bond his fleshy bulk with the core computer terminal while Nix looks on horrified. He starts a long-term project to fully map-out the byzantine innards of the craft. Bug enters with a gun and asks if he should shoot the gradually-expanding flesh monster that’s talking at them in alarmingly pleasant and chirpy tones. They eventually decide that Timothy means them no harm, but remain thoroughly weirded-out.
In his attempts to bond with Ghost’s core node, Timothy discovers the depths to which the old, violent AI is more than just an artificial mind – it appears to be based on a full-on fork of someone or something else’s baseline personality. What follows is a rather off-putting conversation about the nature of humanity between the pre-existing crew and Timothy, who seems bemused but chipper about basically everything.
But before we can learn more, it’s down to business: the crew decide it’s high time they return the personality matrix to Heaven, as Ghost seems to want them to do so, and they surmise that it might help the uploaded society eventually return to its more idyllic state. They’re certain the Pale Crew will attempt to interfere, so they do something risky to stymie Newton’s efforts: they cut off the power from the empathy scrubbers for a bit to make them sweat, hopefully making them a little more manageable (or at least less likely to follow Newton’s wild ambitions) for the next score.
Bug also acquires an asset for the score to return the personality matrix to Heaven – a sizable gang of Limpets. With all of this set, and time running out for the session, we end on an Engagement roll and a cliff-hangar, as the crew enter Heaven and make their way through the darkened corridors to the station’s benighted core. Risky position, folks. Let’s see how that goes next time…
Stray thoughts: introducing a new character via waking them up from coldsleep went really smoothly, far smoother than I thought it would, such that I may just write this into the rules as a easy bit of shorthand when you need to introduce a character quick. Timothy’s already adding an interesting dynamic to the crew in downtime, so it’ll be interesting to see where that goes in the score. Edwin went to town on describing all the oozing and sluicing and general weirdness of Timothy’s strange body plan, and I couldn’t be happier. This is a lot of what A Nocturne is about. Incidentally, for those keeping track at home, he chose the playbook The Broken, with the starting special ability The Carriage Held But Just Ourselves – makes sense for constantly interfacing AI with a fragile core.
No big rules revelations this go around, though it certainly gave me a lot to think about re: the danger of certain types of interfacing and data in the game, and the way’s in which we handle the power (or lack thereof) the crew have over the workings of their craft.
Next time: War in Heaven, Round 2. In the blue corner, two furries and a cheery blob of flesh, backed up by a gang of child-like machine intelligences. In the red corner, a crew of psychopaths with a grudge. And in the nth-dimensional octarine corner, the warped intelligence of a forked super-AI nomad with blue-and-orange morality and weird designs on a society of uploaded Space Mormons. Who will win? Who will lose? Why not both?