It’s Just a Prank! - Star Master Log: Dealing with the Neon Fangs

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In this Star Master Log, Jeff shrines a light on Episode Two, “It’s Just a Prank,” diving into the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

• How the group immediately went off-script, leading to a fully improvised episode set in Roger’s Billiards

• The emergence of character traits: like Felix’s drug use and Thorn’s surprise love of music

• The collaborative (and chaotic) naming of the ship Scapegoat

• His approach to social puzzles

• How the players’ teamwork evolved between two halves of the same space battle

• The growing mystery of the alien signal and the corporations racing to find it

New Star Master's Logs drop every other Tuesday, bridging the gap between our main adventure episodes.

• Show Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey, it's Star Master Jeff here back with my special bonus series where I talk about how I plan the Adventure Cast campaign available exclusively for our Patreon listeners. So today we're talking about episode two, titled it's just a prank. As quoted by Felix, which I believe he actually said that at the end of episode one, but it was too good of a quote, and I just had to name episode two after that.

  Awesome quote. There's a couple things I wanted to go through today. As I mentioned in the previous star master log for episode one, basically everything went off the rails immediately. We're not only talking about episode one of a new season, we're talking about episode one of the entire game. They immediately went off script and uh, they just approached everything in a way I did not think they would.

  So at the end of episode one, they were already far off the rails, and at the beginning of episode two, it was all improv from there [00:01:00] on out. So I wouldn't say that exactly caught me off guard that that happened. I mean, this is an incredibly chaotic group of players. I've played with them for years and years.

  I knew something like this was likely to happen, but I didn't think they were gonna leave the adventure so far behind as to. Go to a billiards hall, which I invited them to a billiards hall. I don't know why I did that, but it was super fun and an incredibly memorable night of gaming. I really enjoyed Roger's billiards because it allowed the party dynamics to sort of come out for the first time.

  You know, we saw a party dynamics a little bit here and there as they're interacting with different NBCs as Robert is. Rolling around on the grease laden alleyway, stuff like that, but putting them into a situation where there's a lot of potential NPCs, there's some social conflict between Roger and his wife and their child.

  It gave all of the characters time to get to know each other and have freeform role playing. Put the plot to the side for a moment. And [00:02:00] yes, of course they're trying to sneak out back and actually do the hack. But they get to interact with an interesting group of NPCs with each other. They get to play to their strengths or reveal parts of their history or their habits or their drug habits as it, you know, it's probably more accurate to say for Felix, and I really liked how fleshed out their characters became in that moment.

  I think that it's set up the characters in such a way that when you get to episode three and four and five, they're already a lot more comfortable with who they are. I think that can be sometimes very difficult to do at the beginning of a game. When the game first starts. They're a name and there's some stats and there may be a couple paragraphs of history.

  So what defines a character is gonna come out in the gameplay, presenting those opportunities for the players to explore their characters, who they are, what their morals are, what they do in difficult social situations. Is very gratifying and I think extremely important for the players to do as early as possible so they can [00:03:00] solidify who this person is and what this person acts like.

  So a couple of things that we saw in this episode. Felix has a love for drugs. He experiences a lot of pain with his bionic legs. It was a terrible surgery he went through. It wasn't done correctly, and he's in constant pain because of that. Haley's classic fighter. She loves beer, she loves fighting, she has a, a short temper.

  Thorn has a, a love of music, which obviously no one knew. Brian didn't write that down ahead of time, but once there was a jukebox, he saw that opportunity. And then talking with an NBC about music and me being able to, in editing, put in all these different songs that they were mentioning and all the different bands, and that was so cool for me.

  I really liked that we could expand the universe in that way. We're kind of building a soundtrack or a discography of everything that is in this universe. So yeah, I'm really excited about that and I'm excited to bring back some of those songs when they're on the scapegoat. Later on, maybe there's a mixtape or something.

  [00:04:00] And speaking of the scapegoat, I had asked the group if they would name their ship. All I really asked the players was if they would record a short scene where they talk about what the name could be and then settle on a name. They wanted to take a small break so they could talk and decide on a name ahead of time before we actually recorded that scene.

  And my God, let me tell you, they debated a long time. It really came down to Steph and Scott, you know, Hailey and Felix. They felt like their characters wouldn't really care that much, so they didn't actually provide that much input besides agreeing on the final name, Doja and Brian, Robert and Thorn, respectively, they went back and forth for quite a long time.

  Both felt a strong connection with the name Scapegoat, but plenty of other names came up in the meantime. Other possible names, Wayfarer, serendipity, the Death Stick. Argo, like Xena Horse, and all of [00:05:00] these kind of went right out the window when they heard Scapegoat. They loved Scapegoat because it actually has a specific connotation with both Robert and Thorn's backstories.

  And you can hear both of those backstories later on in season one when Robert and Thorn both have their focus episodes, which are super fun. I cannot wait till you get to those episodes. So there wasn't a lot that I actually designed about this adventure between episodes one and two. We had a 10 minute break and I made some notes about what I wanted to accomplish during episode two.

  I'm actually really comfortable with improv and sandboxy type games, so I just made a couple notes to make sure I would adhere to some sort of consistency. I knew that they had to get behind that locked door. I put a side entrance inside of Roger's billiards to give them a way to stay as part of the action without actually leaving the billiard hall.

  So really, I presented them with an extremely simple puzzle with a million different ways that they could approach it. And that's really the type of puzzle that I like. I don't like creating a puzzle [00:06:00] where there's a single solution. I'm not a big fan of puzzles where it's like, oh, the door is locked, so you have to bounce rays of sunlight off of 10 different mirrors, and then they strike into the door and then the sun goddess and chanted the door.

  So now it opens. I'm not a huge fan of those. I don't like single solutions. So if I were to do a puzzle like that, I'd probably allow a lot of other solutions as well, like breaking down the door. I don't think doors being sealed that way are particularly interesting. So when it came to this puzzle, which is they have to get into this locked door, they don't want to draw attention.

  There's a lock on that door, there's a security camera in the room, and then there's a computer terminal that they have to hack into, and then they have to get away. There's a social puzzle that's inherent in all of that, especially because they don't want to piss off their new friends and have the neon fangs guards called on them.

  So social puzzles like that, I'm really, really drawn to. And you're gonna see many more of those as the game progresses because I'm, I'm extremely drawn to those and I think they make [00:07:00] for very interesting role. Playing a couple notes here is we have our first combat and we have the second half of the space combat that started in the first minutes of episode one.

  So the first minutes of episode one, we have a space combat. Everyone is like, I don't know how to do space combat. So we were learning it, we were figuring it out. Everyone was also trying to figure out who their characters were and what their characters can do. It's sort of like in Galaxy Quest. The characters are in combat for the first time with their ship.

  They're all screaming, they're freaking out. They don't really know what to do, and you can hear that hesitancy in the player's voices as well. In episode one, episode two, end of the episode. They're doing the second half of that space combat, and you can hear them click once again back to Galaxy Quest.

  It's like they understand now what they're supposed to do. They understand who their characters are and they're working more like a team. And just comparing those two halves of one combat with a flashback sequence separating the two of them is so cool and interesting to me, and I'm really happy that I did it that way.

  The other piece is [00:08:00] the ground combat, which happens also towards the end of episode two. Of course, they are betrayed by the drift rats. Never trust someone that is part of the drift rats, or any gang that has rat in the name or even maybe part of a gang, maybe don't trust them. So they're betrayed. They are attacked.

  They do the best they can, and editing that combat section in post was super fun. 'cause I get to put all of the squishy sound effects. Gunfire and I got to do a couple fun things with Hailey as well because in a lot of ways she is kind of a pro wrestler and you're gonna see that kind of come out in later episodes as well because she is insane.

  She's not just a puncher, she is giving the people's elbow, she's body slamming people and we're really trying to like expand on what it means to be a melee combatant in this game. So of course, we close out the episode with the naming of the ship. They're in space, they're on their way to see Dr. Voss to hopefully convince her to come with them as a xeno linguist and follow the signal to the outer regions of the sector where they will be investigating [00:09:00] something alien maybe.

  And once again, you know, if you've listened to the campaign overview, aliens exist. They just don't exist in this sector. There are plenty of relics from alien times technology, but none of it is understood and none of it can be activated. So this signal sort of hints at the fact that there is active alien technology somewhere in the sector.

  If it can be found, if it can be harnessed, perhaps the other alien technology in this sector can be activated as well. So the sort of gold rush of trying to find alien technology that all the corporations are engaged in is starting to heat up as more and more than realize that this signal exists, and more and more of them want to get out to it.

  So that's the hook for the characters to continue on towards the end of the season. Episode three is coming out very soon. I'm super excited for everyone to hear it. The universe really starts to open up now that the characters have left Kami for. Honestly, I just can't wait to explore it with all of my [00:10:00] listeners.

  We're extremely excited that we've had such good reception. On episodes one and two, we're getting a lot of positive feedback. If you have any comments or criticisms, please let us know. Love you all. Bye for now.