So last night five of us, Myself, my wife Victoria, and friends Justin, Gregor and Per, met to play a session of Solipsist. This is my attempt at an Actual Play report, and its my first Actual Play, so be gentle :) Hopefully Per and Gregor will come in and put me right if I get anything wrong.

I'll try to outline the game in this post, and then comment on difficulties and mechanical insights in the next one.

Pre-game

Victoria, Per and Gregor took the characters from the previous playtest we had (two of which appear in the ashcan rules). Per was playing Marty Stardust, a wannabe rock star with a fear of failure, Gregor took Major Barty Wetherspoon, who yearns after a quiet and perfect middle england and fears grittiness and unkindness (both of these are in the ashcan), while Victoria was playing Tamera, who believes herself to be the chosen reincarnation of Horus, and Pharaoh of the Egyptian gods and fears furries (and her catholic guilt). Justin brought a new character (and seems to have taken away the character sheet) for John Gunn, a black-ops style operative for the mysterious company with enemies amongst his own superiors.

We also assumed, as suggested in Carl C's playtest, that the PC's knew each other before. Finally each player got 5 infestation (we used blue glass chips) and I got 10 shadow tokens (red glass chips). I also had a pad of paper ready to tear up and use as tears.

Opening Scene - Marty's caravan

The session opened in the trailer home of Marty, which Per decided was in the garden of his sick mother's house. When the post arrived it contained a letter from a fan (Cathy marsh) asking Marty to autograph his latest CD (also enclosed). This was strange, because Marty had never released such a CD! Looking over the CD Marty found an address for "Pike Brothers Records" at 218 Brick Lane, but no other contact details.

At this point both the Major and Tamera narrated themselves into the scene (this only had a difficulty of 3, so it wasn't hard). Tamera turned out to be staying next door and was having her mail delivered to Marty, the Major had popped down to make a cup of tea. The Major overshot on his change, so I narrated that he wasn't just round to help, he'd actually offered to take on the job of looking after Marty's sick mother, and had to get back to the house at any moment. Marty meanwhile decided to open Tamera's mail, and since Victoria had got a perfect change to add the mail in the first place she got to narrate the contents, which turned out to be an angry mummified crocodile!

Marty went back to the house and looked up Pike Brothers in the phone book and gave them a call, but got an answering machine and a strange message of a young woman's voice saying "help me!". Being disorganized and confused by technology he left a message anyway. Meanwhile Marty called Cathy's house and was told by her flatmate that she had gone out that morning to the East End (where Brick Lane was), and hadn't come back. Marty and Tamera, in an attempt to get more information from the flatmate, constructed a company, Stardust Productions, out of thin air, with Tamera as co-owner and some Polish callcenter workers in the back of the mobile home. They didn't get more information, but they did get the flatmate's credit card details. (Here Per didn't have the obsessions for the change he wanted but Victoria helped out to get a share of the change).

Finally (this scene took half the game) John Gunn turned up with a writ from Pike Brothers ordering them to cease and desist with their illegal distribution of CDs! When he realised that the people with the CD were his fellow Solipsists they all deduced that something strange was going on over at Pike Brothers. Tamera played the CD, which had weird tracks on it. Track 3 especially had the voice of a young woman saying "I can't get out" over and over again, although when she replayed it she got lift music instead and a voice saying "doors opening, level 5". Marty recognized the voice as being the same as the one on the answer phone, and they deduced that it was the missing Cathy. Together they decided to head to Brick lane.

Scene Two - Brick lane

Brick lane proved to be a run down street of battered cars and shops with grills over the windows. Pike Brother's records was a converted warehouse with shuttered windows and a locked door, looking abandoned. However John Gunn proved to have the key (this was an easy change, especially as Justin had already established that he worked here) and they entered an empty lobby with the answering machine from earlier. There was also a list of employees on the wall, with Mister Pike (5C) at the top. At this point the Shadow intervened and tried to remove Gunn from the company. His name was struck off the list along with a note to the secretary to say he'd resigned and should be kicked out. This un-change had a strength of 8 (I decided to use less than the full shadow strength), but with the Major's aid this was easily resisted.

Gunn now had it in for Pike, and was all for going straight to 5C. Tamera meanwhile searched for more information and found a computer that would only show static, a record catalogue that didn't include Marty's CD, and a printed out schedule that showed Mr Pike had a meeting with Cathy at 10:30am. The Major surmised that both Cathy and the CD were threads that needed to be dealt with to undo this shadow incursion, one to be found, the other removed, but they left the CD intact for now.

Scene Three - On the way to 5C

The Solipsists now tried to make their way to 5C. The Major insisted on taking the stairs, which led them to level 2 (a cubicle farm) and level 3, where packing boxes of flat-pack furniture were stacked up. These had labels saying they were being delivered next week, and were from PIKEA (and addressed to Mr Pike). Gunn leapt on this as evidence of Mr Pike's treachery against the company, and rang through to his bosses for authorization to remove him. (This change had a little bit of a discussion, since it wasn't clear what Justin actually hoped to achieve with it, but it became clear that it was authorization to use force to get rid of Pike).

The Solipsists continued up the stairs, but ended up on floor 3 again. A third try and the same result. At this point Marty and Tamera insisted that only the lift would work, while the Major and Gunn investigated the fire escape. The others insisted that the Major would, in fact, go in the lift (they persuaded him rather than changing things) but Gunn stuck to the lift. At this point the party split up. Gunn went to the fire escape and, finding it blocked, headed to the street, where he created a car with Mr Pike in it arriving (again an easy change, but one he overshot). Pike turned up but with menacing wetwork style bodyguards. Gunn refused to tangle with these but used his new authorization to call in the "Phoenix security". Meanwhile the rest used the lift to get to level 5 (which required another change they all worked on together).

Scene Four - Fifth Floor

Marty, Tamera and the Major reached the plush floor 5 to confront Mr Pike, but the Shadows attacked the Major, trapping him in the lift. It plunged down the shaft and all he could get on the emergency phone was the sound of Cathy being tortured and calling for help. This un-change had a strength of 10 (9 points left and a limitation of 1 being triggered) but the Major blew most of his infestation resisting and got out on level 3, where he had a cup of tea. I spent 2 shadow token for this.

Meanwhile Marty and Tamera entered 5C and found Mr Pike, a record exec with a fish head, who told them Marty was fired and Tamera hired in his place! Marty was attacked by snakes in suits (record company lawyers), who mocked the lift music on his album, while Tamera was swamped by her furry suit weraing backing singers. At this point Justin tried to have Gunn and his hit men arrive as well. I did Justin's change first, and spent a couple of shadow tokens to make the change more difficult. With that and his own limitation of unreliable minions the change failed and I narrated that Gunn was stuck downstairs trying to fill in paperwork.

This left a Shadow strength of 5 for the two un-changes, with level 2 limitations being triggered both times. Tamera resisted perfectly and had her mummy crocodile eat the furries, while Marty overshot and had the lawyers offer him a new lifetime contract instead. I narrated that they took him off to 5B to offer him a contract with a glass of JD. This reduced the shadow to 2 tokens.

Scene Five - Closing Scene

Returning from floor 3 the Major reasoned that the evil record execs. couldn't really want to harm poor Cathy, and that she was probably locked in a cupboard somewhere asking for help on the intercom, and she would really appreciate it if someone were to let her out and give her a cup of tea. (Gregor tried hard here not to use his 'making tea' obsession, because he knew he would overshoot, but the others talked him into it, and he did indeed overshoot by a large margin). I narrated that he did indeed find Cathy, waiting in a comfortable waiting room reading "town and garden" and making tea in a tea urn. It turned out that she had recorded a few odd clips for the record company earlier (like 'help me') but was now just waiting for a tour. What's more her mother lived in the same village as the Major and was the nice woman across the road! The two of them went off to go on the tour with the nice secretary who was missing before. I spent another shadow token for the resolved thread.

This left Tamera dealing with Pike alone, but with the shadow now reduced to 1 token (a total difficulty of 6) she easily dealt with him by summoning Osiris, God of the dead and traditional enemy of fishes (because a fish ate Osiris' private parts after he'd been chopped up by Set) to smite him.

Gunn finally arrived to clear up at this point, only to be confronted by the other Pike brother and his bodyguards emerging from the lift. This Mr Pike trash-talked Gunn's messy handling of the situation and threatened to take the company off him, but Gunn simply shot him, reasoning that as the only Mr Pike left around his authorisation from the company applied to him. Mr Pike's bodyguards took the hint and left.

This left only one thread over, the CD, which was now the foundation of Marty's new record contract. Gregor argued that it had to go, though Marty was somewhat reluctant, as was Tamera, since she co-owned Stardust Productions, which was now merging with Pike Brother's Records. However Justin pointed out that it had already been established that the CD was a fake earlier, and with the obsessions and infestation of all four players helping to overcome Marty's obsessions they wrote the CD off as a bad chinese import fake, complete with details of the wikipedia entries and snopes pages on the legendary 'Chinese Album'. With that the final shadow token was gone and the shadow was defeated.

Whew ... what a lot of text :) I'll talk about conclusions in the next post.