Created an elf mage, chose the default name, which I, um, didn’t write down.

I default to helpful, it seems (it seems impossible [dishonest? unproductive?] to play this sort of game otherwise—“say yes to everything”), but it made me feel smart, savvy to read Mouse as a liar—to take the desire to escape the fade as a sign of danger. (I would, that is, describe that feeling of savvy as an effect produced by the game, and a compliment to it, rather than a result of my own actual cleverness, imaginary or otherwise.)

Jowan—My feeling is that he’ll be trouble, but I agreed to help anyway. It felt. . . unproductive to abandon him, and I thought maybe I could steal my own blood sample (forgetting it had already been transferred to a different location—I did get a bonus when deep in the vaults the in-game dialog provided a “too bad my own blood sample isn’t here” gesture. It felt like my avatar, the script and I were all on the same page.) All of this felt very much like my paper RPG sessions, going along with what the DM wanted, but keeping my own agenda in mind—the sense that improvisation might be possible.Shouldn’t there be a sad trombone every time Jowan is onscreen? Except that he’s really, seriously dangerous.

Originally published 2/25/15 on Medium