New Angeles: The Director's Cut Commentary (Boogiepop Q&A)

[Boogiepop]

Hello!

So many thoughts to put down and say...But the most important one I want to say is thank you very much for giving my game a chance and taking part in it, in any way you (the players) did! I'm happy that people were willing to try their hand in a setting that might have been unknown to more than a few of you, which I've done my best to fill in the blanks myself. I know my schedule has limited my activity in some time zones and admittedly a few things were dropped along the way (on the production cutting room floor at least) but I think several tales I wanted to tell managed to make it across.

Everyone had been awesome, I thank you for your participation and contribution, especially your patience. You've all been a wonderful crew and GMing for you all has been a breeze. I very much enjoyed my time here and I hope you've had fun too.

Thank you for playing.


Your GM,
Boogiepop

[Diana Harper]

Thank you for the superfun game! I enjoyed myself loads, though sometimes I did have problems with posting. Thank you for your patience on my dice roll goofs

Also, this may be the cyberpunk game where I'll try hacking if there's ever a sequel.

[Leo Knight]

Wow. I think this game may have had the best events of any game I've seen!

Did you have any favorite events? Any that worked especially well? Which do you think could use some tweaking for the future?

There was a lot going on! Alas, I got hit with some work stuff. I expect there are some plotlines that we missed. Would you mind outlining those a bit for us?

Thank you for the game. I wasn't as active as I liked, but I very much liked what I saw!

[Boogiepop]

Thank you for the superfun game! I enjoyed myself loads, though sometimes I did have problems with posting. Thank you for your patience on my dice roll goofs

Also, this may be the cyberpunk game where I'll try hacking if there's ever a sequel.

You're welcome and I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I think a fair number of us have been slammed with RL, so it's fine! Admittedly, I've done a few dice goofs in Star Wars too. Honestly, it's fine when goofs are made XD

[Boogiepop]

Wow. I think this game may have had the best events of any game I've seen!

Did you have any favorite events? Any that worked especially well? Which do you think could use some tweaking for the future?

There was a lot going on! Alas, I got hit with some work stuff. I expect there are some plotlines that we missed. Would you mind outlining those a bit for us?

Thank you for the game. I wasn't as active as I liked, but I very much liked what I saw!

Thank you very much! Glad to have you here!

Yeah, I've had some fun ideas and mechanics in my head that I've wanted to try while trying to make them as different from each other as possible. Admittedly, my favourite event was the Escape Room, which I've said some time ago was a sort of evolution from the Kuni Eriko ship investigation thing. It was neat to have a group event and have people collaborate together to get it solved. I very much liked that one. While I might have overestimated the time required, thinking there would be more failed rolls and most people just using their turns to assist for a Boost, I think that overall what I was hoping from the event was there.

I liked the sort of flow-chart/choose your own adventure for the Underworld Contracts, watching everyone pick their own methods and sort of a pseudo-voting game out of it.

The NASX was something I wanted to make a spin on a gambling game, using the Advantage/Disadvantage with the Success thing as entirely different matrixes. It was fun...but turned out to be too much of a beast when it comes to math. Ooof, would not do something like that again properly. Liked the concept but the mechanics themselves turned out to be harder.

The Motor Rally was great, just simplified racing mechanics. I think we've seen or taken part in some racing events that seem to take forever. Admittedly the mechanic thingy might be a bit of a bloat. I tried to make using mechanics sensible for not wholly required.

There were a few things, I've might have tried to run more than a few stories at the same time. Some of them did fall through, yes.
-There was supposed to be a little more going on with Wilson Clayton II that could have resulted in some Funding if people helped him with some park management woes
-0blivion had a bit of a long-term story before its ultimate confrontation in the final days. This was relating to the earthquake in Sansan and hackers trying to run the compromise black site to inadvertently release an AI that eventually got corrupted. It was perhaps to be happening more in the background somewhere at least
-Emilio Gomez, well, I think I should have played him once at least. Vaguely tied to the 0blivion plot, maybe, but mostly a social NPC
-Elizabeth Mills wasn't supposed to have a large role but some things were moved around and she got a larger role than a mere background character
-Priya Khatri, another causality to time and plot changes, also vaguely tied to 0blivion
-And a few more in the back of my mind!

[Diana Harper]

Gah, I wanted to talk more with Winston about Di's family building the park and stuff, but never got around to it. Ah well.

The 0blivion fight/hack thing looked really fun from the outside!

Do you plan yon doing a sequel to this game?

[Ven Garcia-Estravez]

Sorry, pbp anxiety is a real issue for me these days and it totally stopped me posting for the majority of this game. TY for running though!

[Lina (NAG Mk3-19)]

I may do some question asking later, but for now - thanks again for running this game, Boogie! It's been VERY fun. I agree with Leo that this game may have had the best, more interesting and fun events of any game I've played in!

The whole setting was very nicely put together too, and the plots we got were meaningful and made the world feel alive! As the end of the game got nearer - even with the day extensions! - I felt myself hoping for more chances to play in the setting and your games in the future

Thanks a lot for the game! As usual, I wish I had been a bit more active, and I feel I dropped the ball on some things here and there, but I had a great time!

EDIT: Also having read through parts of the Oblivion fight and your answer above, I must say I loved that idea, and it kinda makes me want to run a Runner or Sysops in a game at some point

It also greatly reminded me of a plot in one of the Shadowrun Returns games, although I guess it's more of a general Cyberpunk thing. Anyway, it was a brilliant, kinda tragic villain!

[Boogiepop]

Gah, I wanted to talk more with Winston about Di's family building the park and stuff, but never got around to it. Ah well.

The 0blivion fight/hack thing looked really fun from the outside!

Do you plan yon doing a sequel to this game?

He would have been very interested in an opportunity like that!

As for the 0blivion fight/hack, thank you! I'm generally pleased with how that turned out, as I kind of wanted to do a hacking sequence on both sides with a unique sort of enemy. Kind of a different sort of fight with different objectives and a cyber environment involved.

As for a sequel, very good question! This game was sort of built on the premise of focusing on the upper crust of society of the government and the megacorporations, while allowing opportunities for other parties to be involved. I've tried to open the door for as many concepts as possible while telling a diverse number of tales. A future game would likely probably be more focused and might potentially be more focused on the less establishment sort. Maybe. I don't quite have a sequel in mind yet and I don't want to push for one without a big inspiration striking me.

Sorry, pbp anxiety is a real issue for me these days and it totally stopped me posting for the majority of this game. TY for running though!

No worries! I was happy to have you join the game and it was indeed great to have you with us in any form!

[Boogiepop]

I may do some question asking later, but for now - thanks again for running this game, Boogie! It's been VERY fun. I agree with Leo that this game may have had the best, more interesting and fun events of any game I've played in!

The whole setting was very nicely put together too, and the plots we got were meaningful and made the world feel alive! As the end of the game got nearer - even with the day extensions! - I felt myself hoping for more chances to play in the setting and your games in the future

Thanks a lot for the game! As usual, I wish I had been a bit more active, and I feel I dropped the ball on some things here and there, but I had a great time!

EDIT: Also having read through parts of the Oblivion fight and your answer above, I must say I loved that idea, and it kinda makes me want to run a Runner or Sysops in a game at some point

It also greatly reminded me of a plot in one of the Shadowrun Returns games, although I guess it's more of a general Cyberpunk thing. Anyway, it was a brilliant, kinda tragic villain!

Happy to answer any questions and you're quite welcome! Very glad you enjoyed it!

It was my concern whether or not I was able to use the setting to the fullest extent. I didn't want to go too heavy on the technical aspects, but trying to keep things encompassing enough to touch on several themes in spirit.

The Runner/Sysop portion of the game is perhaps unique to the system. I didn't want to quite make the game all about that, considering there are other things going on in the world, but certainly wanted to do something special with it at the same time. I'd like to think the 0blivion thingy kind of achieved that! Working a build-up proved to be trickier than I thought but I'm happy I was able to play the payoff at least.