Alt (Dash) Blur

[LD]

Hm. Once again I understand you. I think I'll put in a short explanation for anyone erudite enough to be troubled by the situation. Thank you.

[Steerpike]

An End to Hunger.

It almost seems inappropriate to play this one in person; play-by-post suits it better.

[LD]

Oh yes, now I remember that story. Thank you for the link- I did not know it was also available online! You are right- that is the exact type of feel for Alt (Dash) Blur- the sense of wonder, excitement, cool technology, flippancy, secrecy, and danger.

I think you are right that a group could work playing this in play-by-post... or even better play-by-chat. But logicistically, with everyone doing their own thing- it seems like an in person 3 player or 4 player game could get quite boring?

[Steerpike]

Yeah I agree that a group probably wouldn't work well.  I suppose the main advantage to single player is that meetings are easier to arrange.

[LD]

I updated the game types above (and reproduced the update in the spoiler below:

[spoiler=Game Types]
Game Types
See above for short descriptions.

1. Cat and Mouse
- Hacking and messing with sites. Computer security or computer cracker.
- Cyber-Nationalist battles. DOS attack battles, and more.

Feel: Light hearted. This is a game. No one really gets hurt other than in a computer sense or in the sense of wounded pride. But there is a lot of finding and seeking in this game since real damage can be done. This game is the most computer-only centric even though some technician work may be involved.

2. Spies Like Us
- International governments fighting each other
- International Crime pulling off heists of bank account numbers and avoiding Interpol.

-Feel Hot, Intense, Coffee-chugging and sweat dripping coding at 5 in the morning setting up firewalls and hunting down the enemies. Throwing up code blocks, designing logic bombs, and twitching Trojan Horses. Higher stakes than Cat and Mouse. A net cable may get blown up. You may have to pick up your gun and continue the coding war outside in the real world. People can and will get hurt.

The Lowdown
- Governments spy on each other.
- Governments probe each other's military and government office defenses.
- Governments probe each others' energy grids for weaknesses (the advent of the SmartGrid makes this type of espionage all the more dangerous.)
- Spy satellites, GPSes, and more can be commandeered.
- Hack into security cameras.
- Get into places, get stuff, and get out.

- Steal credit card numbers.
- Alter data.
- Delete google trails
- Track anyone, anywhere.

3. Paranormal
- The Men in Black are trying to keep the existence of monsters and aliens from normal people. Play as the MiB or as people on the outside trying to get in. You want to believe.

Feel: It's a strange world. Either you are a seeker or you are a keeper. If you are a seeker, you exist in a world of possibility and mysteries. If you are a keeper, you live in a stifling world of secrets and lies- ones you keep and ones your associates keep from you. It's a tense game on the inside; it's a wild ride and adventure on the outside. Stakes are low for those on the Out- but high for those on the In- they have a hard job to do and they cannot let others get inside.

On The Outside (and General Info)
[ic=What's True]What's True
"Nothing's True, except what the GodMan, the GM says is true." Yuri folded his hands and spat into the crackling fire. His hands were red, from gripping tight. Outside it was twenty below Fahrenheit- damn cold.

"And who is the GM?" I leaned forward and felt the growing heat of the building flame. Charred ash settled on my face, and I flinched, and drew away.

Yuri unpacked a cell phone from inside his parka. Taking a deep breath, he closed his good eye and jammed the phone in my palm. "I cannot say. You call him. Perhaps he will answer?"

I took the phone. It was queued up, and I pressed the green button to call. The phone rang but once- [/ic]

Generally the GM (GameMaster) can decide what-ever is true. But here are a few guidelines.

1. Few Strange Things - Don't overdo the strangeness. The world is more Scooby Do with men dressed as ghosts rather than a place where real Banshees wail across the world.
2. Pick a Feel - There are two general feels appropriate for this setting: Feywild, and ET. A successful story will generally keep the two isolated-- it may be too much to have both. Feywild focuses on monsters, ghosts, faeries, and demons. ET focuses on aliens, strange phenomena, and unexplainable events.
3. Lovecraftian - These strange things... they aren't easily killed, and aren't easily manipulated. You can interact with them- but you come away with more questions than answers.
4. Manipulation - Everyone is being manipulated. Even the monsters themselves. The purpose is vague, left to the GM, but every clue is left for a designed reason. Think of the dance of the monsters as a gigantic game of chess, and of the player as a pawn- perhaps a knight at best.


Feywild Feel
- Will-o-the-wisp, vengeful ghosts, lost ghosts, evil faeries, blind seers, frog-folk, spring-heeled-jack, jack the ripper, yeti, mothman, loch ness monster, talking dolphins, underground races.
- The Hidden, the Lost, the ephemeral.

ET Feel
- Crop circles, Bermuda Triangle, Mutilated cattle, Northern lights, Eclipse of the Sun, Cigar-shaped aeroplanes, saucers, strange lights in the sky or on the land, abductions, first contact, hidden caverns.
- The Stalking, manipulating, preying.

On the Inside
[ic=The Men in Black]
I had my assignment handed to me by a man who stood six foot seven. I often cringed when the man approached-- his visage was almost too horrible to stand. His face was half-paralyzed by a poison that was injected into him during a raid on a stinger habitat out in the middle of Idaho several years back.

I opened the folder which contained the assignment, and I cringed. It was another cattle mutilation down in southern Oklahoma. We needed to get a hand on stopping that stuff- or else the news was going to get too crazy about this. My job was to check out the site, make contact, do some diplomacy with the Greys, and then (if time permitted), to get on the news sites, post up a few misleading info on the blogs- manage a few contacts and pass off the cattle mutilation as something else other than alien dissections.

Thank God that this time the Grey's weren't messing around with people. That Elvis thing had been a pain to cover-up. And the Jackson debacle back in '09-- don't see why the Greys wanted to learn the moonwalk so badly-- but thank God they hadn't struck again since. If they did then the whole Section would be a mess. If they were going to strike, I've got my money on them going after Tom Cruise (20%) or Justin Timberlake (45%), or maybe Lindsay Lohan (35%)- just for a change of pace from the usual male abductions.
[/ic]

Black Attitude - The Men in Black are elite and are most certainly elitists. They are more selective than the CIA, more secretive than the NSA. They get jobs done and get access to all the cool gadgets and gizmos. They have an invention and reverse-engineering department and they hire all the best scientists who don't even know they are being patronized by the MIB.

Lies - The MIB are all about lies, manufacturing them and telling them. The public SHOULD NOT KNOW is their attitude. "What the people don't know can't hurt them." They constantly say.

Cover-Up - The MIB may go on site and make sure no one knows anything was changed. They set things up to look like a car explosion or a release of swamp gas. They have a playbook of set pieces and words to tell the news. They manipulate politicians, newspeople, sailors and more as they bribe and wheedle and hide the truth.

Diplomacy - The MIB sometimes have to work out complicated diplomatic deals with aliens, trying to keep them from messing with earth.

Kicking @ss - The MIB, from time to time, need to break out the big guns and take action against dangerous monsters and aliens like the Spring Heeled Jack, the Stingers and The Oozy Raselfarians.

4. Interstellar
- You have figured out a way to hack into aliens' computers and to communicate with them. You are the only contact with earth. And you have discovered some terrible truths. Try to communicate with the aliens and dissuade them from destroying the earth, and/or try to convince others and build a following to prepare the world to defend themselves from the aliens. Lead the resistance, join the resistance, or fight the cult of crazed internet cultists who believe that the end-of-times is at hand.

Feel: High Stakes. You are a diplomat and a warrior for Earth in space and on the land. You can organize a resistance, or save everyone on the planet. The scope for this game is narrow (only really aliens; or perhaps some monsters hidden in the deepest depths of the ocean) but the stakes are very high. This game is perhaps best for 1-4 sessions that can be heavily plotted with lots of logical trees. It is a puzzle-setting that is meant to challenge players' and GM's logical, political, and reasoning abilities. The player should feel an impending sense of pressure and a heightening sense of impending doom if they fail. Even when the player succeeds, and the player should fail a lot in the beginning (or only succeed in part), the stakes should continually rise- the action must always continue to build as the possibility of success keeps getting yanked away farther and farther and what once seemed simple to solve is revealed to be more complicated than anyone could imagine.
[/spoiler]

@Steerpike,

Well, I could imagine an interesting type of internet Play by post game done with this system. If everyone has several different types of chat software, they could have,, for example: Skype, AIM, two email programs, MIRC chat, and be surfing and searching for hints on the GM's website (and other sites) concurrently while hints and information is going out. They could also collaborate with other players who are allegedly "running diagnostics" and who receive other information.

This perhaps could work as a LARP where one GM exists per every three players- but the logistics of that would be difficult to arrange.

[LD]

Made some small tweaks and updates.

[LD]

Added a small tale for the Paranormals:

[ic=Paranormals]
"See, it's like this- not everything here's on the up and up and normal and like." Tebow took a long puff from his pipe-- then immediately started coughing. When he was done, he looked up, and wiped an elbow across his face. "Smoke gets in yer eyes, ya know." He stood up and walked to the computer. "Sometimes you can't see what's going on." He twisted the monitor to face me. "But I can. And you will." He typed an address into the Browser.

What the Browser spat back blew my mind.

"That's just some Flash shit?" I asked.

Tebow shook his head. "Naw. It's an EPG in a webcam... monitors the waves in the room-"

"So like cellphone and x-rays?"

"Sorta. See how that one looks like a person- Damn." Tebow reached for his lighter. "Gotta keep this place warmer."

The EPG showed a form, like that of a man, six foot seven, standing beside me. I looked over, felt a chill, and a sudden sense of dread.

"The 'normals can only be tracked by digital." Tebow said, as he waved the lighter. The chill ceased and the form fled the screen. "Heat keeps them away."

"Really, heat?" I asked, turning around to see where the form had gone.

"Yeah. Ever wonder why they have so many suicides in Scandanavia?" Tebow asked. "These things prey on fear and doubt- they make you do things that you may not want." He shook his head. "And they don't usually take notice of you, but when they do- they're relentless."

I looked at him, shocked. "What- What makes them take notice of you?" I asked.

"Oh." He coughed. "Yeah. About that." He shook his head. "They only start taking notice of you when you take notice of them. Once you've seen one, they're gonna keep coming back."

My face must have gone white.

Tebow cackled. "Sorry 'bout that, but I need someone to carry on my work when I finally-" he hacked "join them on the other side."[/ic]

[Steerpike]

Creepy!  Oncoming Canadian winter is creeping me out now...

[LD]

Just be sure to keep warm. :)