The Methane Switching Station - Star Master Log: Are We The Baddies?

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In this Star Master Log, Jeff reflects on Episode Four, “The Methane Switching Station” diving into the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

• His thoughts on Wafisa as a world

• Humanizing enemies

• The group's self-awareness of their limited skill set

• The "found family" trope

• The brutality of the crew (I mean, seriously)
  

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

• Show Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey everyone, 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. In this debrief, I'm giving you a look at how I ran episode four entitled The Methane Switching Station. I'll be going over what was planned, what surprised me, and exactly how much improvising I'm doing behind the screen.

  If you're into GM ing world building, or just curious about how the story takes shape, this one is for you. So the methane switching station is the second episode to take place on waa the planet Waa in the city of Waa, which is already, as you hear at the beginning of this episode, starting to become a bit of a meme with the group.

  Our discord was just popping off with WAA memes in between these two sessions. For some reason the name of that planet just really wormed its way into our [00:01:00] heads and became like part of our, like our group collective consciousness. So already when we sat down to play this game, we knew that more wsa means more good times.

  It's been really fun for me to slowly reveal more and more about this world that I, I created ahead of time. You know, I wanted to create a not post-apocalyptic planet. A post collapse planet. Something has happened here that has driven out all of the like economic driving forces to leave the planet, and all of the workers that don't have enough money to leave are sort of left behind.

  So as we explore PSA a bit more in this episode, we're going to see more of the abandoned city, the interior of some of the buildings, but to me, most importantly. I wanted to give a little bit of a glimpse of how the guardians of the work move about in this world. So we see some of their patrols and we see what they do when they're on patrol.

  Of [00:02:00] course, in episode three, they encounter the crew and they immediately try to tax them. They don't even ask them if they've already paid their tax, they just want the money. This kind of strikes to the heart of exactly who the guardians of the great work are and how they operate. They want your money.

  They want your items and your gear, and they want your. Production value. So if they are able to remove your means of escape from this planet, they can then use you as part of their workforce, maybe even with the promise that you could leave someday. But it's all in service of what they want to accomplish, what their great work is, which is something that's covered here in this episode.

  They want to revitalize waa, but in their own image. There's actually a cut joke from this one where I say, make Waa great again. I ended up taking that one out. I just felt a little too outta place and a little too referential to current American politics. But that's the general feeling here is we have a post collapse society and we have a group [00:03:00] of fascists that have taken over the remaining resources in the city, and they're attempting to bend the population to their will.

  So of course, when they're out on patrol, there's not a lot for them to do. So the patrols just band together and find a place to party and they hang out. Unfortunately, they decide to hang out in the exact building that Robert chooses for everyone to sleep in. But they do move up to a higher story to make sure that they're safe, which is what actually protects them from, you know, a combat.

  That definitely would've been pretty bad for them. They probably would've had to run away. So I've had a really good time expanding on WAA and the Guardians of Great Work. And you know, the crew moves on to the switching station and they. Run into more guardians of the great work who are quote unquote guarding, but also watching the beautiful sunrise or just chilling drinking beers in the station, even though it's the crack of dawn.

  These are people who are living in and around the station working for the Guardians of the Great work and just trying to make sure it doesn't [00:04:00] fall into, but they would call rebel hands, but really just the hands of the general population who want to. Restore gas to their own parts of the city or their own homes so they can have energy.

  Anyone that's not living in Black Harbor and participating in their fascist society don't have energy and they have nothing that they can use for energy. All the solar panels and everything else have been taken and they're being used by the guardians of the great work. It's no wonder why Dr. Ra Voss wants the crew to go to the methane switching station and swap the gas so that it goes back to her research station, because then all of her research assistants and companions can continue on with their work long after Dr.

  Ra Voss has left Whaa behind. So of course the characters go to the methane switching station, and the very first thing that they have to do is they have to sneak and no one in this group can sneak and. I didn't necessarily realize that. I think we've had a couple situations where they've talked about sneaking and been like, [00:05:00] who's gonna sneak?

  How are we gonna do sneaking? And everyone's at like sneak minus one or worse, so they all have to sneak past a distracted guard who's just watching the sunrise. And I had a really good time in editing, adding the music, and I really love humanizing. All of these bad guys, especially on Wolffia because they do live full lives and the evil things that they're doing to, you know, the general populace of wolffia is not something that they're dwelling on.

  They're happy, they're not really conflicted, and showing that they are deep and complex individuals that are generally pretty happy with their lives is actually exposing how evil they really are because the way that they get to be happy with their lives is by crushing other people in Wolffia. I do kind of play around with the group here, trying to make them feel a little bad for attacking and killing, or quote unquote murdering the guardians of the great work.

  But they shouldn't feel bad at all. And if they're listening to this, you shouldn't feel bad. These people are fascists and the guardians of the [00:06:00] great work are standing on the bodies of hundreds, if not thousands of people to be happy themselves. So they have to sneak past this guy. And I, I, I'm thinking in retrospect, maybe the group will understand, Hey, we need someone that can sneak.

  But honestly, having no one that can speak is kind of nice because they all have to stay together and we don't end up splitting the party. And, you know, honestly, with this group, I don't think any of them are gonna necessarily be like, oh, we need to learn to be more quiet. Ooh, we really need someone that can go in and sneak or, or anything like that.

  I think that they're knowing these people as my friends, I think they are much more likely to be like. Oh hell yeah, we nailed that. No notes, no changes necessary. And I wouldn't be surprised if we hit episode 100 without any of them learning to sneak. I just don't think it's a very sneaky group and I think that's okay.

  This isn't d and d. We don't need one of each archetype. We just need four [00:07:00] interesting characters that love to be together. We're kind of leaning into the found family trope a little bit, but I think that's sort of a inevitability with modern gaming. Players want to have a sort of catharsis and they want to band together with a group of like-minded individuals to achieve a greater goal, and I think that the logical end of that is the found family trope.

  I don't know if that's necessarily where this is gonna end up. Right now in episode four, we're seeing the group get tighter and tighter and rely on each other more and more. And I think that they're starting to become, if not a found family, an extremely close group of friends. So something that's been really surprising me in episodes three and four is the brutality of the group.

  I've never really known them to be murder hobos or anything like that, and they're certainly not murder hobos in this game, but when they feel like they have a job to do, they are brutal, for instance. Hailey, hiding around the doorframe, pointing her gun perfectly at head height and [00:08:00] just waiting like a cold-blooded killer for the next man to walk in.

  Absolutely crazy. And then the gunfire starts, and Robert still outside on the ground, immediately backtracking to the front of the building and killing the man on the roof. Just the man hanging out watching the sunrise, just so he wouldn't be alerted to what's going on inside the building. No talking, no deliberating, no prisoners, just Haley and Robert going nuts.

  And on the other hand, I think Felix and Thorn are doing a very good job of being non-combatants. They're staying outta the way they're taking shots when they feel like they can safely take shots. But other than that, they are hiding. And I think that that's actually really illustrative of how SWN and a lot of OSR games work.

  They're highly lethal. You have your people in the group who are really good at punching and shooting, and then you have your people in the group that are really good at talking or computers or stealing or whatever it is, and they each have their thing [00:09:00] and there isn't a lot of crossover between them.

  That way the warriors can feel extremely deadly. The tech people can feel extremely smart. The social people can feel extremely cunning. And I think you know the episode so far, 1, 2, 3, and four. We've had star moments from everyone in the cast. It's been really cool to see what they grab onto and what they want their characters to do and how they see their characters versus what their characters actually have written on the sheet.

  So at the end of the episode, the characters destroy the switching station controls after pointing them back towards Dr. Alar VA's research station, Misrata four. So of course all that's left for them to do is to head back to Misrata four, pick up Dr. Olavo, and head back on over to the scapegoat. Which currently the Guardians of the Great Work are attempting to break into mixed in with those two goals.

  For next session, we have some exploration of Waa, along with an interesting personal story from a former resident of the city that dramatically alters the course [00:10:00] of their stay here on Waa. I'm very excited for you to hear episode five coming out soon. And as always, I'm so pleased that you choose to be a patron of the Dark Star Adventure Cast.

  Thank you so, so much for doing that. We really appreciate it and we're grinning ear to ear every time we look at our download numbers. We can't believe that people are listening and people are enjoying. It's so much fun. We love it so much. Well, that's it for me. Love you all. Bye for now.