Stress and Vexation - Star Master Log: Escalating the Tension

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Jeff babbles on about Episode Eleven, “Stress and Vexation”, where he chats about the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

• Juggling too many NPCs

• Letting the players run wild

• Some notes on factions and their role in the overall story

• How the Doctor NPCs took shape and evolved.

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

• Show Transcript

  [00:00:00] Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here back with my special bonus series where I talk about how I plan that good old adventure cast campaign available exclusively for our Patreon listeners. In this debrief, I'm looking back on how I ran episode 11, stress and Vexation, part two of the Scrap Jack Saga. What was planned, what surprised me, and how much I'm improvising behind the screen.

  So if you're into GM ing world building, or just curious about how the story takes shape, this one is for you. Oh boy. Episode 11, part two of scrap jacks. What is there to say about how insane this episode went? If you listen to my star master log for episode 10, I talked about how I like to run a sandbox, how I set up scrap jacks and what I was going in expecting.

  This is where things start to go really crazy, and it's also where I have [00:01:00] the least amount of control over the story arc and what happens in scrap jacks. Scrap Jack just so happened to be a three part story. So episode 12 will be the final episode in that arc, and there are definitely things in the first part of that arc where I'm setting things up, I'm introducing characters, and I can kind of control the flow and the pacing and the narrative a little bit leading up to when they will then have complete control because they'll be running around the station doing a die hard, essentially.

  Episode 11, which is the second part, gets really into that, and boy, they really go crazy. So first of all, the number one thing that I sort of ran into is that there were a ton of NPCs. I felt that in episode 10 as well. But in episode 11, it really felt like a lot. And the fact that the group was split up into two different locations made it so that I needed active NPCs in both locations.

  You had Neso and Vox and Janna hanging out with Thorn. You had the doctor, you had Buddy [00:02:00] ai, and then trying to have the two groups bring themselves back together, which I think they did a really good job of. But what happens when you're playing so many NPCs so quickly in such a short amount of time? Is that you start to exaggerate individual pieces of their personality or their character so that you can better play them consistently.

  So Nesto became more violent towards those that are unhallowed. Janna started standing up for herself a lot more. The doctor got increasingly crazy and high and drunk and raspy voice for some reason, and Buddy came back online less. Depressed, but more of like a sulking teenager. And it's funny to hear all those things evolve because the characters don't necessarily evolve because I wrote something down and I'm like, they're going to evolve in that way.

  They evolve because of the way the scenes are going, and it's all complete improv. So sometimes they bring you into unexpected directions. For instance, the doctor getting more and more raspy and more and more crazy. I was watching a lot of lower [00:03:00] decks and the cat doctor on lower decks got into my brain somehow just before we started recording this episode.

  And so immediately I was just like more cat doctor than whatever the hell the doctor was like in episode 10. And she just increasingly got more and more crazy and, but there's also a piece here where. Not only do I have to deal with all these NBCs, but the PCs themselves have sort of free reign over everything that's going on.

  'cause the story device by definition is they are doing a diehard, therefore the enemies aren't really aware of them. So when, when we're talking about things to drive them forward, there are very few levers under my control that I can pull to prod them in certain directions or prod the story forward.

  And it's always a little bit scary when you're a GM in that situation because you don't know how crazy they're gonna go or how far a field they're gonna go. So in this case, the levers that I had to really pull were the different NPCs. The fact that the void cultus were doing rounds looking for [00:04:00] additional survivors could throw conflict in their way because the doctor was getting increasingly.

  Drunk and high and there was the conflict of Thorn needing to meet back up with the group. That was sort of an ever present force that I could hint back to, to, to drive them all back towards getting together and forming their final plan, which is what they're doing at the end of episode 11, and they will be enacting that plan in the start of episode 12.

  So there's one thing I wanted to talk about here. Something I was very excited about. So when I was planning out scrap jacks, for some reason I got pretty into designing this place, and there's a lot of areas in here that they never went that have really cool things. At least as insofar as episode 10 and 11, episode 12, it is still to be seen.

  But you know, food and sundry storage and so on and so forth, the fright landing pad, the mechanics bay. But in episode 11, they actually do go to the utility room and there is a comms array there. And I get a little too into describing the comms [00:05:00] array in its mini airlock system. And that's something that I did write down and I'm really into it because I, I was just like, oh, they have a comms array.

  What if they wanna be able to use the comms array to call for help? Right. Or repurpose it to send a signal to their ship or ask Frog to help them or whatever else, right? So I was like, well, how do they get to the outside comms array? Or maybe the comms array is a way they can then exit themselves outside if they find some sort of vac suit.

  And I was just basically thinking how do they do maintenance on it? They must have like a mini airlocks that the comms rate can just be lowered into the station. I was getting really excited about that idea. None of them cared about it. Uh, we moved on pretty quickly, but then for some reason the door into the utility room was of great interest to them.

  And they were like, well, how does this door work? Does it swing in or out? Oh, is it a, is it a knob? Or what kinda lock does it have? On and on and on? And it's like. I mean, I guess I sort of get it because they wanted to, you know, securely lock down the utility room and they want to understand how they can Tallahassee handshake 1, 2, 3 different guys into the room and take care of them as well as [00:06:00] mother.

  But I really want them to be interested in the comms array. I really, really do, and that's why I try to not get too invested in my world building because the PCs are just going to get attached to some stupid little detail that I don't care about, like door technology. And they're not gonna care about my cool comms array design, and that's just the life of a gm, unfortunately.

  Anyway, enough about that. I want to touch on the void cultus one more time. I know I touched on them last session as well, but the void cultus aren't just this single sect. The void cultists are a faction, just like the Drift brats, just like any of the corporations like Omnitech. And they are on my big old map of factions and they are doing things out in the galaxy.

  Offscreen things are continuing to happen with the Drift rats and the Neon fangs, omnitech Promethean, and the Void Cultus, and many other factions that are not yet part of the story. They are all doing things offscreen using the faction system in stars without numbers. So I'm [00:07:00] doing random rolling. The factions are coming together and meeting each other.

  Uh, sometimes battling or trading and those types of things do influence what happens in these adventures from time to time. So as we move forward, we will start to see more and more of these factions rear their ugly head as the characters start to go further and further out into the sector and encounter more of them.

  So stay tuned for that. So next episode is episode 12, which is the final episode in the scrap Jack Saga. I'm really looking forward to that. Things come to a head in a extremely surprising way. The players opted to create a plan between sessions on how they were going to handle things, and we decided that we wanted to reveal the plan to the listeners as we went instead of telling them all at the beginning of the episode.

  So at the start of episode 12, things just start moving and the plan will get revealed to you as it goes. [00:08:00] And in fact, as I was running that episode, I didn't really even know the plan. I just had the barest idea from overhearing them talk about it at one point, and they kept it a secret from me the rest of the time.

  So it was very interesting because they had a plan and I didn't, and it was almost like they were game mastering for me instead of the other way around, which was a weird experience. It came out very, very cool, and I love the way that they revealed everything, and it was just awesome. I cannot wait for you to hear it.

  So that episode's called Death and Damnation. It'll be out one week from today on Patreon and just a few days later publicly. So that's all of our time for today. Just wanted to tell you that we do have some changes coming to Patreon. Soon, we will announce something in the coming weeks that makes your Patreon membership even more valuable.

  Thank you so, so much for being an early adopter, and thank you so much for following our journey here on Patreon. We really appreciate each and every one of you. You are the reason that we are doing it, and we just love telling this story and [00:09:00] hearing all the wonderful feedback from all of you. So thank you so much.

  Love you all. Bye for now.