The Acid Test
The Acid Test
Four on a road trip. Four in a car. Four feeling tension. But four share a destination. One in the rear dreaming of a world without Neuronics, one behind the wheel who has to keep moving, one next to him but a hundred miles away - their gears softly grind and one in the middle grinding their teeth, a glance over her shoulder, "Is it safe?".
The car enters town, the sun casting vibrant red light over the Sierra Nevada, streetlights flicker, then blaze, then go out.
The car loses all power, it is pitch black, Isaac grabs the wheel, turning into the skid. A wheel hub pings off down the road as the tyres screech. They hit a curb and bounce back into the road, heading towards a parked car, Isaac grunts a, "Fuck it!" Under his breath and wrenches the wheel the other way. Two wheels off the ground then slam back down and the car rolls to a stop, silent outside as it gently hits the kerb.
This is the beginning of Into the Dust, the starting Journey for The Electric State.
We've played through our first session of this dark, alternative 1990s, post civil war RPG. First impressions suggest this could be good, maybe great. There is a strong focus on how your character develops during the Journey, getting to their goal, resolving their flaws and meeting their dreams. Along with how each character deals with the tensions with other passengers.
Tune in, Turn on, Drop out.
Some fairly extensive setup to explain the setting, especially the usage of Neuronics - access to an addictive virtual reality that allows browsing of information, hacking and control of remote devices, but also real danger, leading to possible mental and physical hurt. Possibly unrecoverable.
Many people are lost to their Neurocasters, trapped in The Electric State. Bliss trumping Hope.
The Journey shows the devastating impact of a civil war, massive war drones draped over bridges, blasted, barren lands and ruins everywhere. Society on the brink of collapse.
Expand your consciousness.
The mechanics are Year Zero Engine and at the simple end, dice pools for Attributes and Gear, supplemented by your Archetype Talent. No skills. Allowing more time to focus on character interaction and building out the narrative around relationships with other PCs.
Focus is always on what drives your character to undertake the Journey, their Dream, their Goal, their Threat and alongside this, Tension with your fellow travelers. This is deemed a once and done deal, the Journey ends, Dreams are realised, flaws overcome, time for another character to undertake their Journey.
Think For Yourself. Question Authority.
Overall the session played well and everyone got to roll some dice and interact with the NPCs and the setting. There are quite a few levels of complexity, especially centered around the setting and what Neuronics can and can't do, how far society has collapsed, what factions are interacted with day-to-day. Hopefully, as this is an Alpha pdf, all this will become clearer as we get more chapters and updates.
I do like to focus on a collaborative story in my RPG and I think this is a Free League game that supports that. There is a certain level of clunkiness in how the mechanics try to achieve things though. Tension for example, is to get PCs interacting and maybe leading to PvP or resolving the Tension through some intense, dramatic scenes. Currently this feels somewhat forced, Drama System provides a much clearer and sophisticated framework to handle this.
Combat and pushing yourself through failed rolls, really does have severe consequences, both on your physical and mental health. Neuronics can get you out of a fix, almost like a magical ability but again this ramps up Bliss, which if it becomes equal or more than you Hope, will keep you trapped in The Electric State. Now someone can wrench you out of this, but Mental Trauma is likely to follow - overall this game can be grim, brutal and relentless.
To summarise if you enjoy road movies, if you enjoy more narrative heavy RPGs, if you want to focus on character development and if you can cope with dark, difficult subjects there is a lot to enjoy.
I personally am on the fence, mechanically the game doesn't yet achieve its aims, areas feel incomplete or too simplistic and much of the setting chapters are still to come.
I'm reserving judgement until the final pdf is out and of course it's a Free League game, so beautiful, doing much to bring Simon Stålenhag's world to life.
Let's see where the Journey takes us in Part Two.