Wafisa? I hardly know her! | Star Master Log: Lokipon, Gotta Avoid Then All!

Star Master Log

Aug 12

This Star Master’s Log was originally a Patreon exclusive! To get these logs two weeks early, bonus world-building posts, and behind-the-scenes secrets, join the inner circle at: patreon.com/DarkStarAdventurecast

In this Star Master Log, Jeff ruminates on Episode Three, “Wafisa? I hardly know her!” diving into the chaos, character moments, and improvisation that shaped the story.

He covers:

How he predicted the crew would abandon their ship, and how he exploited that.
How he world builds through treasure acquisition
The birth of Lokipon, and the resonate effects it's had on the game
Robert's past and how it intermingles with Haleyy's, and what it means to the plot
What to expect from Episodes 4, 5, and 6!

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

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here, back with my special bonus series where I talk about how I play any adventure cast campaign available exclusively for our Patreon listeners. In this debrief, I'm giving you a look at how I ran episode three or fisa. I hardly knew her, what was planned, what surprised me, and exactly how much I'm improvising 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 goal for the characters when they landed on Waa Planet Waa in the city of Oaa was to find Dr. Larvas at the Omnitech research station. And convince her to come with them. She's a talented Zeno linguist, and they were asked by Omnitech corporate to bring her along when they go to research this mysterious signal in [00:01:00] the far reaches of the Viridian Expanse.
Of course, nothing is easy. Along the way, they ran into two guardians of the great work, which are essentially like police officers here on waa. Well, FEA itself used to be a thriving world of, uh, methane miners, and there were a lot of research stations that used the methane for an energy source or to research different practical applications for methane.
Actually, the narrative goes a bit more into that in episode four, so I won't go over it too much here, but I promise at a later date, I'll do a much fuller, deep dive into afia, if that's what you're looking for. If that's what you want, leave it in the comments below. So the first thing I think I'd like to talk about is what surprised me most in the episode.
I knew that they were going to land on Wolffia. I knew that they were going to just leave their ship behind. They were gonna see that it was a abandoned city. They would let their guard down and the scapegoat [00:02:00] that they fought so hard to gain in episodes one and two would be parked and forgotten. Little do they know the Guardians of the great work are monitoring all of the airspace around Wolffia.
They saw the scapegoat enter into the gravity well, and they started hiking out to that Spaceport right away. So while the characters are trekking across Wolffia, the guardians were already hard at work to break into the scapegoat. What surprised me is I didn't think the characters were going to go back to the scapegoat this session.
I knew that, uh, they would go back at a later date and find that their ship is gone, or perhaps they would see it being taken from them, but I didn't expect 'em to go back this episode. So it was interesting for them to have to go back and for me to have to explain to them, yes, your ship is actively being taken.
Right now there are four men with blow torches. The scapegoat is as good as theirs unless you do something right. Now, unfortunately for them, two of them were already very seriously wounded, and [00:03:00] so they made the wise decision to simply walk away. Honestly, I thought they were gonna go in there. I really thought they were gonna rally go in and maybe someone was gonna permanently die, right?
In episode three, I really thought that might happen. We are a crew of people that have played a lot of heroic fantasy, and sometimes it can be tough for us to pull back from that and realize that we're playing fragile characters with not many hit points. But to their credit, they took stock of who they were, what they had, and the situation they were in, and they decided.
The scapegoat wasn't worth their life. They figured we'll come back later, we'll figure this out. Ended up being a very wise decision. 'cause I think that if they had gone in there, they would've died at least one of them, if not two of them would've died. So having said that, if and when they do retrieve the scapegoat, I think they're gonna wanna approach similar situations in the future a little bit differently.
They won't be so careless as to leave the scapegoat, unguarded, uh, or to just leave it [00:04:00] in some random location. Maybe they'll have to pay someone to watch over it or they'll install some new security systems. I think they're already thinking about that after what happened in episode three. Now on to something a little bit more fun.
Lo Keyon Lo Keyon came outta nowhere. The characters were poking around in some abandoned cars, and I hate just doing stock treasure. I hate just being like, oh, you find four credits and a seatbelt cutter. I like to put something in that has some world building and flavor, and I've never played Pokemon, like the trading card game.
I've played the video game a little bit, but obviously it's so ubiquitous in our culture and I used to watch the show all the time, so for some reason that just popped into my head. Loki. Pawn and boom, it was born. And I have to tell you, the players became obsessed with it. I didn't realize that Doja and Brian were both old magic, the gathering players.
And I did know that Brian was, you know, very knowledgeable of, of [00:05:00] Pokemon and probably played the trading card game, but I didn't know that they were going to attach to it so fully. They are full on obsessed. They talk about it all the time. And they keep weaving it back into the narrative in, in really fun ways in the coming episodes.
So I really can't wait to see how far they take it. And they've already started talking about maybe drawing up some of their own Loki pond and sharing them on the Patreon. I think that's a really cool idea. So there was a very pivotal scene here. Uh, it happened when Hailey was shot and was extremely hurt.
Robert had a flashback to when Hailey's older sister. You know, she's Haley with two Y's. Her older sister is Haley with one y. Uh, when Haley with one Y died, she was killed on Vento planet, Vento Inis system during a pitched battle between the rebels and the elite during the, the red Rice Wars, which is a, a war based on famine, where the oligarchy was attempted to maintain all the food stores for themselves, [00:06:00] and obviously the spark of a rebellion ignited into a full on war.
And during that war, Haley with one Y, who was the commander of Robert's unit, got all of them embroiled in this fight with the rebellion and she unfortunately died. This is a pivotal moment for Robert's character. It's one of his greatest traumas. It was only appropriate that when Haley with two why's was Mortally wounded, that Robert had a flashback and was unable to fully control his emotions.
I thought it was a really beautiful scene. I think that Doja and Stephanie did a great job with it, and I loved it so much. I even used it in the trailer for the entire series. I am very excited to explore their relationship further. Robert was under Haley with one Y, you know, as part of an Omnitech Holdings squadron.
Now he feels some sort of personal responsibility to Haley with two Ys. She's aware of Robert, but [00:07:00] not in the same way that Robert's aware of her. I think he thinks of himself as sort of a protector for her and she absolutely idolizes her older sister. So the fact that Hailey with one y trusted Robert with her life, ingratiates Robert that much more to her.
So there's a lot more of that to come, especially as we start going towards focus episodes. And I'm very excited to explore that with all of you. So now that the characters are on waa, they want to get Dr. Voss and they want to leave and explore this mysterious signal. But first they're gonna have to get back their ship and is a lot of WAA to explore to find it.
Episode four goes deeper into waa the lore of that planet and also embroils the characters in a little bit of waa. Politics as we talk about energy and trading energy amongst the different areas of the city who controls that energy and how the characters are forced to interact with that mechanism.
Episode five and six [00:08:00] goes even deeper into the world of Wolffia. We spent a lot of time on what happened on Wolffia, who's currently living on Wolffia, what made it be so post-apocalyptic, and we finally get to meet the mysterious Dr. Larvas. From myself and the rest of the scapegoat crew. We are really looking forward to sharing those adventures with you.
We've recorded 16 episodes so far. I've edited six of them. I'm already editing the seventh one right now. We have a lot of energy and a lot of conviction to keep marching forward and exploring as much as the Viridian expanses as we can, and we thank you so much for coming along on that journey with us.
We're having a hell of a good time. We're so grateful that so many people have reached out and told us how much they love the pod. So anyway, that's me, star, master Jeff signing off. Love you all and bye for now.