Games of Summer 2023

The schedule of games being run in Summer 2023 under the auspices of the MIT Assassins' Guild is as follows.

Make sure that you are on the Assassins' Guild Mailing List to receive the application forms for these games.

[6/17 Weekend] The Hisseldale Trilogy - Games 1 & 2

GMs: kkb

Ascent to Hisseldale

As residents of the Sprawl, you have always taken technology for granted. It’s always been the only thing cheap enough to afford for the impoverished majority. Even with a life of abject misery, you could get by with enough drugs, simstims, cybernetic implants, and the latest trends on the black market. Jacking into cyberspace was your best escape from the dusty, rat- infested slums under the gray artificial sky.

That’s over now – you’re getting out of the Sprawl. A new cylinder called Hisseldale was recently commissioned by the Hissel company based on the northern coast of Paris; construction has only just begun, bringing promises of employment and of influencing the culture and government of Hisseldale’s future populace. Maybe you’ll follow in the footsteps of so many other early migrants who set themselves up for success and became one of the wealthy high-orbit first families. You’re on the TYL Pegasus Nightingale shuttle out to Hisseldale, the first shuttle in the first wave of voyages carrying Hisseldale’s prospective workers, visitors, and migrants.

Just after the shuttle takes off on its 4 hour voyage, all passengers settle in and grab their decks so they will be jacked in for the flight. But something isn’t right. Jacked into cyberspace, one can with ease reach Chiba City and Tokyo, or the Freeside cylinder’s colony of New Zion, or the set of Orbits Of Our Lives, or anywhere else desired. Except now. You can only jack into a cyberspace room the size of the shuttle, and you can’t exit or flip to any other locations. You are completely cut off from Earth and the omnipresent cyberspace spanning it and all of its orbital colonies.

You’re stuck with only the few people on board until the shuttle reaches Hisseldale. There is no escape by jacking in. You’ll have to do something with these next few hours. Do you get to know the other passengers? Investigate the break in the connection to Earth’s cyberspace? Argue philosophy? Deal with interpersonal drama that you’ve been avoiding? Try to find drugs to calm your mind? Start developing Hisseldale’s culture and politics? Turn the shuttle around to head straight back to the Sprawl? While you think about these, a weightier question looms.

How will their society survive if cyberspace on Hisseldale is also cut off from Earth?

Cyberpunk set in the Sprawl, a world with sentient AIs, cloning, personality uploading, cryonics, and cybernetics, the game tackles philosophical issues of self, identity, humanity, and over-reliance on an omnipresent digital world.

This is the first of the Hisseldale trilogy. Games in the trilogy are set decades apart and while some characters might show up in multiple, the games do not spoil each other and can be played independently. Some of gamespace may be lit using blacklights.

Eclectic Dream Summit

The international community is in chaos after a notoriously anti-human super AI took an entire orbital colony hostage today. Protesters throughout every megalopolis are calling for harsh reductions in AI rights as public sentiment turns against all of Eve’s kind.

The AI is expected to announce her list of demands soon. An emergency taskforce has been called by ECLECTIC DREAM, the Emergency Congress for Legislative, Economic, and Coordinated Tactical Inter-Colonial Defense Responsive to Exotic Adversaries in the Matrix. The Chambeaux mansion on the Moon Colony is now playing host to a diverse group - diplomats, cyber cowboys, pop idols, lowlife hustlers, and more - sent by interested corporations, governments, and shadow organizations. No one knows yet what sorts of talents will be most useful on the taskforce. No one knows yet which outside interests will end up pulling the strings of the taskforce and coming out ahead after the crisis.

Everyone is purportedly here to resolve the crisis and to free the citizens of the Hisseldale cylinder, whether by negotiating with Eve and complying with her demands or by organizing a militant response from the other colonies and megalopoli, but you can’t trust that their priorities are on the up-and-up. After all, yours aren’t.

Cyberpunk set in the Sprawl, a world with sentient AIs, cloning, personality uploading, cryonics, and cybernetics, a super AI has gone rogue and taken hostage an entire orbital colony. Eclectic Dream Summit is a game of identity, deception, scandal, cyberpolitics, the limits of humanity, and maybe even resolving this crisis.

This is the second of the Hisseldale trilogy. Games in the trilogy are set decades apart and while some characters might show up in multiple, the games do not spoil each other and can be played independently. Some of gamespace may be lit using blacklights.

This game will also be running the weekend of July 15th.

[7/1 Weekend] A Retreat to Remember

GMs: Laura Boylan

You have arrived at a small, remote island with a group of fellow campers for a weekend of… what? Something strange and inexplicable has happened and your personal memories have vanished!

---

This is a game of amnesia. You will try to figure out who you are, where you are, your relationships with your fellow amnesiacs, and what’s really going on as bits and pieces of your memories slowly return. The game is set in the modern day and the characters are every-day normal people. Mostly.

[7/15 Weekend] The Hisseldale Trilogy - Games 2 & 3

GMs: kkb

Eclectic Dream Summit

This game is also running on the weekend of June 17th and you can read its blurb there.

The Fall of Turing

A person can get away with anything... as long as that person is a human in their original, not-too-altered body. Clones, digital personality matrices (ghosts in the local cyberspace), and cyborgs are all somewhat regulated by the Turing Police. But nothing compares to the complicated laws governing Super AIs and the vigor with which the Turing Police enforce them.

The battle against AI overreach doesn't stop the Turing Police from being omnipresent throughout the sector, from megalopoli down on Earth to the smallest orbital cylinders. The Turing Police are a staple of society, present in every rundown bar in the Sprawl, every business headquarters in Paris, every Moon Colony mansion. In recent years, they have even made inroads in New Zion and are establishing a presence there, the most hostile place in the sector towards law enforcement.

Today, the Turing Police disappeared. The disquieting lack of distinctive charaumille uniforms has everyone on edge. Where are they? What happened? Who caused this?

As reports from other colonies come in, the severity of the crisis becomes clear. There are no Turing Police /anywhere/. No one seems to know anything.

The biggest, unspoken question: are the AIs to blame? And if so, can you do anything about it? AIs not kept in check are an imminent existential threat to human society. Well, that's what the Turing Police have always said.

Eyes everywhere are on Turing Police Main HQ, a massive complex in the Sprawl proclaimed to be an impenetrable fortress. If answers are anywhere, they would be here, and so are all the secrets the Turing Police have ever kept.

Your group includes the best cyber cowboys in the Sprawl. You are determined to break in, and if you are successful, you are assured of a luxurious life in a Moon Colony megamansion rather than your current life slogging from coffin-sized hotel pod to a bar and back again in the dark and grime of the Sprawl.

This is the third of the Hisseldale trilogy. Games in the trilogy are set decades apart and while some characters might show up in multiple, the games do not spoil each other and can be played independently. Some of gamespace may be lit using blacklights.

[7/29 Weekend] Resonant Space: Scherzo Collective

GMs: Jesse Ashcraft-Johnson, Ken Clary, Spencer Lane

01001101 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 designation 6k5, 18J7 dodecahedral, Overmind 7, initiating active defense sequence. <dodge> Preparing for dispersal. <fire> <dodge> Priority -1, <fire> <fire> <damage> <fire> 0, 1. <EOL> <rerouting> Reaching critical calculation density. Protect, dispense, assimilate. Spread survive conquer. Repel intrusion. <fire> <fire> Repel intrusion. <fire> <ogg> Destroy, assimilate. <ogg> <fire> <OGG>.

...

You are an emergency response team stationed in the Pavane system, making routine patrols to ensure safety of mining equipment, scare off poachers, and deal with other small threats. A virulent AI seed (from the Singularity Collective) has just infected a relay outpost named Scherzo Beta, quickly overtaking the station’s support systems and making a beeline for the mainframe. Left unchecked, it will send out spores, putting the nearby worlds in grave danger. This is above your pay grade, but with no time for reinforcements to arrive, you must board the station and prevent the Mother Mind from reproducing, at all costs.

...

Resonant Space: Scherzo Collective is a SIK (Society for Interactive Killing) game: a high-action, low(ish) plot, large-scale nerf-gun battle between multiple teams. Each team has a unique set of game mechanics, goals, and victory conditions. Roles are available for both new and experienced players alike. The game universe is heavily inspired by Star Wars, Aliens, Metroid, Star Trek, and various other sci-fi settings

[8/12 Weekend] In the Belly of the Beast

GMs: Alcor

The Permian Basin Superorganism Natural Preserve, colloquially known as the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, was an awe-inspiring clash of American entrepreneurship, ecological research, and – oh, never mind, you’ve heard the corporate pitch before. Let’s condense it. Anodyne Mining created an entire park and resource extraction complex down the throat of a huge creature buried under Texas. After an infrastructure failure last year, the Park was closed to the public. We all know how that went: it started to wake up, got shot full of drugs, puked its guts out all over Texas, then ate everyone trying to escape. Anodyne hit it in the head with some kind of secret-squirrel Contingency Measure and put it back to sleep. There, you’re caught up.

So why are you here? Well, billions of dollars of equipment, buildings, and resources are still down in the literal bowels of this thing, waiting for investigation and retrieval. Someone has to bushwhack their way through its guts again to scope out the situation and start the harvesting machines again, and that someone is you. Yeah, I know we could “just use a robot,” but its neural tissue really screws up the signals. We have to use humans for the best odds of success. Look on the bright side: here’s a chance to see the Superorganism in a much more natural state than the sterilized theme-park atmosphere it was in before. You will, of course, be compensated for your efforts. Your usual hazard pay is doubled for this one. I’ll take arguments for triple.

We’ll kit you out with acid resistant suits, stent frames, hell, if we can dig up an old Internal Anatomy Vehicle, we’ll give you one of those, too. And some guns, the critters in there can get pretty angry. You’ll have all the tools you need. Get in, hook some stuff up so we can pump out the magic hormones for the pharma guys, get out. It won’t be hard, trust me.

Good luck. And if you see an Abyssal Copepod and take some selfies with it, you’re a moron, but I’ll hang that stuff on my fridge for the rest of my life.

In the Belly of the Beast is a high-lore SIK game taking place in the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park (a worldbuilding project by Trevor Roberts, aka u/strangevehicles on Reddit). Expect lots of Nerf combat blended with individual character story and a very strange world.