Robert's Story - Star Master Log: Send in the Clones

Star Master Log

Apr 7

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Jeff breaks down Robert's focus episode, where the crew learns that Robert Ross is clone designation RR7 and that Haley died on Ventos during an extraction gone wrong. He covers how the players turned a dramatic backstory flashback into Tropic Thunder in space, the war movie structure he used to make the emotional gut punch land, and what the clone program reveals about the campaign's corporate factions.

He covers:

(00:00) - Introduction: "The Truth About Haley: Robert's Story"
(00:45) - The Crew Logs: Encrypted reports from the players
(05:28) - Fog of War: Scott and Brian commit fully to being Robert clones, turning a military extraction into a pirate adventure
(09:41) - Engine Room: How Jeff structured the Ventos flashback like a war movie extraction film
(15:25) - Deep Dive: Clone designation RR7, randomized memories, and why the program was scrapped
(19:55) - Subspace Signals: How much NPC prep is too much, and why Froggy was barely a sentence in the notes
(24:29) - Star Master Spec: Tropic Thunder (2008) and the comedy-to-drama pivot

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

[00:00:03] Star Master Jeff: Hey everyone, Star Master Jeff here, and welcome back to the Star Master Log. Today we're talking about the truth about Hayley, Robert's story. This is Robert's Focus episode where the crew finally learns that Robert Ross is a clone named RR7, and that Hayley, with two Y's, is actually just Hayley with one Y, and that a whole squad died getting her out of a cave on Ventos. Oh, and there's the little matter of a fork in that cave as well. Because of course, there's alien crap everywhere. So we're going to break down this episode in just a moment. But first, let's check in with the crew and hear their latest encrypted reports. And I'll see you on the other side.
[00:00:45] Felix: You know, when Robert said he had a story that could help us, I was skeptical. The man's stories have not been informative in the past. But I mean, this was even more bullshit than I was expecting. Does he really expect me to believe he's a clone? And that Haley somehow came back from the dead magically thanks to some alien artifact? I mean, come on. How does that even help us with what's going on right now? Haley's in some kind of coma. She's not coming out of it. And we're stuck in this alien facility until this goo tube fills up. I just... I mean, sure, it was entertaining, but... Sometimes it is hard to find the truth in what he tells us. And maybe there is some truth there. I mean, I have heard of experimental clone programs, sure, but nothing as advanced as making a whole functioning combat unit. And I just can't buy that an alien device could somehow change Haley in a way that would bring her back from being very, very dead. I've seen a lot lately that makes me doubt my own mind. I don't like that. I got to stick to what I know. And right now what I know is that Robert spin a tale and that Haley is unconscious and we have to get out of here. I'll have to question him more on this later when we have some time because right now it just is all too far-fetched. When we get back to the goat, we'll sit down and hash this out.
[00:02:24] Thorne: Well, that was quite the tall tale from our friend Robert. Or maybe it's all true, or at least mostly true. Robert is some kind of clone from some kind of abandoned Omnitek program. And Haley, our Haley, is actually her sister, and she just doesn't know it. Oh, and also she died, but then she came back to life. I thought he was gonna tell a story to help me make sense of what's happening, but I actually think I'm more confused now. So whatever happened to Haley back at Scrapjack's and here at this facility, it's happened before, but that doesn't even explain half of what's going on. What is Haley's connection to these forks? What do they even do? Where do they even come from? Did Omnitek do something to bring her back to life? Or was Robert just exaggerating? I wish she'd wake up so I could ask her myself. But even when she's conscious, she avoids the subject. Maybe she really is suppressing old memories. Did Vos know about this when she pulled them onto this mission? Even if it's all made up, at least Robert managed to kill a bunch of time while we waited. I just hope we can get Haley out of here safe. Then, I swear we'll get to the bottom of this somehow.
[00:03:40] Robert: Ranger's Log. I hope Felix and Thorne know how explosive this is. I mean, Haley's got gumption, sure, but these alien lightning wranglers? It's the only thing I've ever seen put her on her ass. Not a damn person knows what's really going on. I mean, I'll admit, I've been dodging talking about the whole clone thing to the team. Folks tend to get a little jumpy when they learn that you've been cloned, like a lot of times. And I've watched myself die more times than I can count. I mean, it's different for me. I mean, I'm the original, of course. But you never really get over seeing your whole squad torn apart. Especially when they all have your face. And then Haley knits herself back together like a damn wolverine. Nope, that ain't normal. Don't like that. Whatever the hell's happening, just feels serendipitous. Xenoarchaeologists spend their whole lives chasing this stuff, never find a working artifact. But for me, they keep turning up like bad pennies. I don't know the path we're on anymore. I don't know if we're the good guys or the bad guys. The Army, Omnitek, whatever the hell this is, feel like I'm being led around in circles, dragged clean around the barn. I wouldn't even hazard a guess which way is up. And that's my truth. And Haley thought I'd carry her secret to the grave. Or to say keep it quiet. But Felix and Thorne need to know. Because I can't know when these alien rods will tan my hat.
[00:05:28] Star Master Jeff: So that was the crew's take on the episode, but let's take a step back and talk about what happened behind the screen. This is Star Master Jeff, and you are still listening to the Star Master Log. Let's talk about how that session went for me, a little old local Star Master. We'll talk about what was planned, what I found surprising, and how much I'm actually improvising what you hear. If you're into GMing, world building, or just curious about how that story takes shape, this segment is for you. So let's talk about what happens when you hand three of your four players basically the same character. Going into this episode, I knew the structure. Robert's going to tell a story. We flashback to Ventos. The other players become clones in his squad. This is a situation that we've been in a few times with Felix's focus episode and then Thorne's. Everyone in the crew is going to play a different character this time and explore a character's backstory. Simple enough. But what I did not anticipate is just how fully Scott and Brian would commit to being Robert Ross, or at least a clone in the same platoon as Robert Ross. And I mean, they really committed. Brian went with what he described as something between Eeyore and Hank Hill. And Scott apparently based his on something seemed to have a bit of a pirate bent. And then there's, of course, Doja, who is actually Robert, sitting there watching two of his friends do impressions of him for quite a long time, a couple hours. There's a lot of this episode I had to cut out of basically him just laughing and shaking his head because a lot of Robert Ross's voice isn't contrived. It's just Doja's awesome voice. So anyway, here's the thing about focus episodes. When I designed them, the idea was that one player gets a spotlight and the others play supporting characters. What I learned from this particular episode is that quote-unquote supporting is a relative term because Scott turned every scene into a pirate adventure. I mean, he shaped a demolition charge into a doubloon. He blessed the explosive before detonating it. None of that is obviously in my notes. He just stole the spotlight for that moment. I just wrote, the squad's going to have to get out of this cave somehow. And that's what happened. And Brian's clone ended up just being a walking anger problem. the end in combat he ended up just marching straight into gunfire standing fully upright not crouching not taking cover just a man with a death wish walking and shooting like a lunatic which honestly is probably what a Robert clone with an anger issue would actually do so I can't really say that it's out of character but it was pretty fun to see that side of a potential Robert personality The dynamic that surprised me the most was how quickly the table turned into a few guys doing the same bit, finishing each other's sentences, getting offended at being called photocopies of each other, etc., etc. Of course, the synchronized insults. And how much emotionality we eventually got out of these characters. They are not just two-dimensional. They aren't just... there to be clones of Robert. But we ended up learning a lot about them. And they each got their own spotlight at different times, which I thought was very cool. And I just I just sat back and let it happen. They just ran this game on their own for the most part. Oh, and the pirate thing, by the way, that was entirely Scott's fault. Jackal was supposed to just be a straightforward soldier, just another clone. But Scott didn't want to just do a southern accent. He decided that his particular batch of implanted memories for his clone produced a pirate enthusiast. And from that point forward, every line out of his mouth had a nautical flare. Avast, walk the plank, yo-ho-ho, etc. To the point where other characters were starting to do pirate things as well. And this is not a pirate game. I just remember sitting there and thinking, this episode is supposed to be an emotional climax of Robert's backstory with Hayley. But everyone's just saying, arrr. But hey, that's the thing with Focus episodes, or really any of these episodes, especially with this crew. I can try to plan the beats, but I can't plan the energy. And the energy of four Roberts and a Hayley is just chaos. I guess I wouldn't change a second of it, but it can be a lot sometimes. So next I want to talk about how I structured the episode, because I very deliberately built it like a war movie. When I sat down to design Robert's focus episode, I had a little bit of a problem. I needed to get the audience from Robert is telling a story in a cave all the way to Hayley is dead, Robert is alone with her body. which is something we actually flashback to way back in episode three. The scene at the end of this episode was actually a copy of that scene from episode three of Haley dying and Robert applying Lazarus patches. So how do I take this wacky personality of Robert who's telling this story and is very rambly and just jump to the sad part? You can't do that. It just won't land. You need to bring the audience on a journey so they actually care about these characters that we're just introducing in this mission before we can rip it all away from them and show that awesome gut-punching scene that Doja performed awesomely. So I went to movies, specifically war movies, even more specifically, extraction films. If you've seen something like Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor, The Last Act of Aliens, you know the structure. A squad goes in with a plan, the plan works for a while, then the plan falls apart, then it's just survival. So that's what I mapped out on Ventos. The episode starts with a squad approaching the cave, talking their way past the guard, getting inside. Low stakes, lots of comedy. I wasn't sure if they were going to talk their way past the guard or if they were going to fight him and just go in guns blazing. Those are the things I don't really have any sort of control over, but I built the sandbox and I let them play in it. This is where that pirate stuff lives. All the comedy. This is where they have a lot of flexibility to be weird because the stakes are actually pretty low. It's just one or two guards, some torturers. Haley's obviously not in any real trouble. Everything seems really straightforward. Everyone is laughing. Everyone is bonding. Because then we get that investment in the story a bit later on when things get a bit heavier. So they find Haley. She's being tortured. They clear the room. The stakes go up just a notch. But the squad is still in control. They're laughing. They're having fun. Haley is tough as hell. She's not impressed by anything that's been happening so far. So it's still a bit funny. But now there's a real person that they care about. And then the group finds the fork. And of course, Ailey can't help herself but touch it. And something happens to her. Now, I'm buried this right in the middle of the episode on purpose, pretty much towards the end of what I would call Act 2. I wanted the audience to process it as a weird thing that happened during an action sequence and not necessarily the most important scene in the episode. At this point, Ailey with one Y is just Ailey with two Y's older sister. So this happening to her is really just drawing a parallel with what's happening with Haley with two Ys and isn't necessarily the most important thing that's going to happen this episode. But of course, the audience isn't really going to realize that the fork is actually very important until much later. It's just a little seed that I'm planting and I wanted to hide it inside of the war movie so that nobody would think too hard about it at that moment because I'm still trying to obfuscate the reveal of Haley with various number of Ys. After that, it's pure action movie. Motorcycles through the jungle. Pursuit. Robert eating bugs and narrating like he's the hero of his own film. The table is having a really good time. And then they reach the LZ. They call for extraction and they hold off the enemy. Classic war movie holdout. The helicopter's coming. They're gonna make it. Everything's looking great. But if anyone's ever seen one of those war movies, it never turns out right. But it sort of does. They hold off the motorcycles, they get on the skimmer, and they fly off into the sunset. But it's only then that the anti-air mech shows up. The helicopter is swatted out of the sky, Jackal loses an arm, Envy decapitated, and Haley is under a bush bleeding out. So now we get into episode three territory, where we're matching the flashback from episode three with what Robert is telling now. We're finally getting the whole story. So the whole structure of the episode was really comedy, comedy, the turn, action, hope, and then it all falls apart. We promised a gut punch at the beginning. We signposted it pretty effectively. And we've known since episode three that something happened. And now we're finally bringing all of that to fruition. And the reason that it works, the reason that the ending hits as hard as it does, is because all of that comedy at the beginning did all of the work for me. I didn't really have to write a bunch of scenes being like, oh, let's get a really strong narrative structure going. I just had the provision pieces of the episode so that the players would come on the journey with me. And I knew that their natural instinct in playing a bunch of Roberts would be to have a really good time. The bug-eating tangent just a few moments before is a contrast. to Robert screaming for a new drop point into his walkie-talkie. And for me, that contrast was beautiful. I think the thing I've learned from more movies more than anything is if you get the sequence of feelings right, you don't really have to force an ending. It just sort of lands on its own. But when you're running a game, you have an extra dimensionality of chaos. There's a lot that you don't control. So coming into this as a writing major, it can be difficult to leave a lot of things up to the players. And you obviously can't tell them what's happening because you want them to enjoy the journey. So the way that I went about it, just structuring tone and allowing them to follow that tone was an interesting experiment that ultimately I think paid off really well. If you have any comments about that structure or any thoughts and ideas about this episode and how it landed, please make sure to comment on this or send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, so let's talk clones. Send in the clones. There's a lot under the surface of cloning technology in this sector that we haven't really gotten to just yet. Obviously, Robert is a clone. We've seen that Viktor Strake appears to be a clone. We know that Project Red Wing was cloning people's minds into AI. I guess that's kind of like cloning. So there's been a lot of hints at cloning and... Even with Robert Ross, we kind of hear that it's a clone program and potentially is one of many clone programs. So let's dive into it. So Robert Ross is clone designation RR7. He was grown to physical maturity in just a matter of months. His body is about six years old, but he looks and feels like he is in his early 30s. However, he believes that he is in his late 40s. Every memory he has from before his first real mission is completely fabricated. That Lasik scam with Nexus Trading, where he got his quote-unquote bionic eyes and they just handed him binoculars and it cost him a million dollars, referenced way back in episode five, I believe. That's a completely fake memory. The Southern accent? Now that is actually real. It's a direct copy from the original Robert, or whatever name that man may have had. His brain just did what brains do when given a crap ton of information, even if it's fake. It took all those random fragments and pattern matched them into something that feels like a coherent identity. So Robert Ross isn't a person who was copied, consciousness and all. He's a shell that was cloned off of someone. And then all of his memories are completely fabricated, which then inform what his personality ended up becoming. Now you can see why the clone program was scrapped. Because Robert, Jackal, and Envy, and Headcase, you see the way that they turned out, they're all a little bit unstable. It turns out when you are asking an AI to prompt generate a bunch of memories at random with zero context, and then you shove them into a clone body and its personality just gets stitched together from that, you're going to end up with some erratic results. So here's what makes cloning interesting from a campaign design perspective. I didn't want all the clones in the setting to be copies of a single individual, like Boba Fett. That's too easy. It's been done a million times. I don't find that exciting. Instead, these clones all share a physical baseline, the same Southern drawl, similar musculature, height, gender, but their personalities are all wildly different because their implanted memories are randomized. Therefore, Jackal thinks he's a pirate. Envy is a rage case. Head case is head case. And Robert is Robert. It's the same production line, totally different people. As unique as a fingerprint. That clone program was run by Veridine Labs through Omnitek Holdings. Omnitek is the military arm. Veridine is the science. The clones were fitted with Kinetica Dynamics weaponry and armor and deployed as expendable strike teams. And the key word there is expendable. They have a very short shelf life. They weren't created to exist forever. They aren't elite special forces, no matter what Robert might tell you. They are disposable assets. So when Strike Force 6 lost three of its four clones extracting a single defector from a cave, nobody in the corporate chain of command really cried about it. They just scrapped the program because the cost just wasn't worth it. They didn't scrap it because people died. And that's the reality Robert lives in. He was manufactured, deployed, and discarded. The fact that he survived Ventos is pure happenstance. And the fact that he kept going after that, that he built a real identity out of these generated scraps... That he chose to stay with this crew when every other instinct probably told him to run. I think that's one of the most human things anyone in this campaign has done. He wasn't born. He does not have real memories. Well, at least up until his first mission. And yet he's still choosing to be with this crew, his newfound family. And I think that's something that's really special about his character that is unique and different from any other character on the crew. So the clone program was scrapped after Ventos. Robert was told to avoid all contact with other clones, but his line of clones was a full production run. There are more of them out there. Robert might be the only one who stuck around long enough to actually become someone, or he might not. So tune in, because that question is going to matter quite a bit later on this season. Okay, so let's jump into this week's subspace signals. This week's signal comes from Jordan on Blue Sky, and they ask, When you're building NPCs, how much do you have written down versus how much is improvised in the moment? Like, did Froggy always have that personality, or did it just sort of happen? Oh, Froggy. I mean, I love Froggy, but not a lot of him was planned. He came out of nowhere because that episode, episodes five and six, I believe, were both complete improv. I thought that the crew was going to go straight to Blackharbor and they went off on a bunch of side quests instead. So it's good that I built out a little bit of a sandbox, but I really had to lean really strongly on my improv in that moment. But the more honest answer from when I do have a little bit of a plan is that most of my NPCs start as just one sentence, maybe two, and then they become real people at the table. NPCs for me have like a strong motivation and a little bit of backstory. And then the way that they act isn't necessarily something that I'm deciding ahead of time. It's more to fill in a performative gap in the current scene. So if things are really serious, I'm not going to want to like inject a really goofy clown like character. And if things have taken a more comedic turn or things are going way too easy for the group, I might throw someone like Froggy in the mix who is constantly difficult and annoying and they are just stuck with him. and can add a little bit of conflict and variety to the scene, mostly just to amuse myself, but also because I think it's infinitely fun to listen to the crew get annoyed at Froggy. So I think the trick is giving yourself just enough to react to in the moment. So I'll write down a name, a role, a personality trait, maybe a secret, but the voice and the mannerisms, that all comes from that interaction with the players, that very first interaction. Froggy became Froggy because the crew kept kind of scaring him. And I knew he was meant to be a hermit and a little bit standoffish. And I wanted to make him weird. So I kept leaning into how badly he handles interactions with them. So every time they come into the room and he wasn't expecting them or they shove him towards something dangerous, I just try to amp up his panic a little bit more. So really, the players are shaping him more than I am because, boy, they really kick that poor dog, don't they? So besides NPCs like Froggy that come about completely organically, I do overprepare some NPCs. And those are the ones that are probably the least interesting, but are most critical to the story. So I'll have an idea of how they fill in a story need like Viktor Strake. And I do use some table chemistry to fill in their personality and their speech patterns and their voice. They all started as a short paragraph from my notes and grew into something I never fully planned out. And that's because their history comes out in the conversations with the players. I'm not going to sit down and write pages and pages of history about Viktor Strake. I'm going to write down a couple of key bullet points and personality traits about him. And then when they talk to him and make fun of his clothes, I have to be like, why is he wearing these clothes? Oh, this is the Veridon uniform. Why do you have that dumbass haircut? And it's like, oh, this is actually very in style on the planet that I'm from. So now I'm like in creating a planet's culture or at least pop culture during that period of time that he was last there. It's also saying something about Viktor Strake that he has a popular haircut and that he is wearing his Veridine uniform every time that he's seen, even though he travels alone and could probably just wear a sweatsuit. So draw about conclusions you will about Viktor Strake, but all these little personality traits and pieces of history that come out during these conversations with the players are really what develop the NPC and make me fall in love with them. So my advice to any GMs that are out there listening, don't over-prepare your NPCs. Give yourself a hook, one or two interesting things about them, and then just pay attention to the table. They'll tell you who that character is through how they engage with them, what questions they ask, how they make fun of them. And honestly, it's way more organic and more fun to do it that way. It takes way less work and you'll have way more memorable NPCs. Anyways, that's the answer for this week. If you want to send a signal for the next log, head on over to patreon.com slash darkstaradventurecast. Our patrons always have priority in the queue, but I do pay attention to other socials. So drop us a line on blue sky, send me an email, whatever. And your question might just be the next one we intercept. So that wraps up our subspace signals for this week. But before we close the log, I want to leave you with a Star Master spec. That's a book, movie, or other piece of media that connects to this week's episode. Now this week, I want to talk about Tropic Thunder. It's a 2008 film directed by Ben Stiller. This one didn't actually inspire the episode, but after we recorded it, I couldn't stop thinking about the similarities because what happened at our table was basically Tropic Thunder in space. So if you haven't seen it, the premise is a group of actors filming a war movie get dropped into a real conflict and have to survive using nothing but their egos and their absolutely dogshit instincts. They're playing soldiers. Badly. And the comedy comes from the gap between who they think they are and what's actually happening around them. Really, I could have also said Galaxy Quest is a really good analog to this episode, but with Tropic Thunder, we do have an extraction war movie and it is just the perfect fit. So that's this episode, really. I handed Scott, Brian, Steph temporary characters. And instead of playing hardened operatives, Scott decided his clone was a pirate. Brian's clone was just angry all the time. They weren't really that competent at their jobs. Steph's version of a captured commander was so tough she was basically bullying her own torturers. A complete fabrication, a Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque type character at the height of his masculinity, like in Predator, where it's a complete over-the-top example of what a character like that could be. And then we have Doja, the actual Robert, tempered by session after session of real-life play, and he's narrating himself like an action hero, with chiseled sapphire ass and a legendary afro, all poked up like a peacock. Every single one of them playing a soldier very crappily. And the comedy comes from how committed they are to the bit, even though they're getting every single thing wrong. And that's a lot like Tropic Thunder. Underneath all the absurdity, there is a real story. There's real character growth. There's real meat between the characters and how they interact with each other. For instance, Robert Downey Jr.'s role in the movie. His character gets so lost in his role that he forgets who he actually is. In our episode, Robert's narration starts as a comedy but ends with him desperately sticking Lazarus patches on a dead woman. He's just telling the story. But Robert is so invested in this memory that he gets lost in the role. The humor doesn't go away, but it stops being the point of the episode when we reach that drama. So if you like this episode's energy, go check out Tropic Thunder. Super freaking funny. Like, it's really up there with some of Ben Stiller's best stuff, like Zoolander, which I do think is better, but Tropic Thunder is way up there for me. It does the exact same thing that our table did. It uses comedy up until the point where it gets serious and you don't ever actually see it coming. But there's always still that undercurrent of weirdness. On the next episode of the Dark Star Adventure cast, Haley is unconscious on the floor of Xenosite 34B and the crew can't wake her up. But something is happening inside her head. Two identities, Haley with one Y, the soldier who died on Ventos, and Haley with two Ys, the woman who woke up in a morgue and invented a dead sister to fill the gap in her memory. Each player is going to take on a role inside her dreams as Haley is forced to confront who she was, who she is, and what she wants to be. All this and more on the next episode of the Darkstar Adventurecast. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll catch you on the next one.