episode 001 | accomplice 01

INTRO

SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I’m your host, Satah, and I’m showcasing multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. If that sounds interesting to you, congratulations! You’ve come to the right place. That’s what this is.

It’s also episode 1 of our Accomplice game, a roleplaying game about researching the unknown by Michael Klamerus. I’m going to quote from the itch page: “Since the beginning of time, the forces of evil have sought to cause fear and destruction, and each time it attempts to do so, a hero rises to stop them. You are not one of those heroes.”

It’s a hack of Takuma Okada’s Alone Among the Stars, inspired by Jane Jensen’s point-and-click adventure game series, Gabriel Knight, which I knew nothing about before and have now very fittingly gone down a little bit of a Wikipedia research rabbit hole about.

Basically, you play a hero’s assistant. You’re doing the research and the groundwork that will enable someone else to ultimately defeat the evil that you’re looking into.

The other assistants on this journey with me, my comrades in right hands, my beloved cast of fellow lower billings– in the game only; top billing in my heart– are Caleb Zane Huett and Tomas Gimenez Rioja. I will tell you a little more about them and some of their cool things that they’ve got going on at the break.

I chose to feature Accomplice because I’m very drawn to games that make it very explicit that you aren’t the main character of the world. It’s a really fun inversion of your classic heroic tabletop archetypes, and I think that even if you prefer playing the protagonist in your games, games like this encourage you to imagine that the world exists beyond your character, which makes it feel more full.

There are four sections to Accomplice. The setup, the research, the plan, and the ending. Because we’re a bunch of smarties here, or at least playing smarties, we’re going to start logically at the beginning with the setup.

In the setup, you pull a card to determine your foe, then answer some establishing questions about the world and your characters. So let’s go meet our villains, heroes, and sidekicks.

GAME: SET-UP

CALEB: I’m here playing Accomplice.

TOMAS: Today we will be playing the game of Accomplice.

SATAH: Open my little, uh… Star Wars Rebels card pack.

CALEB: I have a deck of cards I got from Video Games New York, a used game store in New York City that I love, that is a Kirby-themed trading card game deck. So I’ve got a bunch of King Dededes in here, some Waddle Dees, Kirby in various powers and forms, some Meta Knights, etcetera.

TOMAS: I have my notebook at hand, and let me get a D6 quite quick.

[Sound of a card being dealt]

SATAH: The suggested supernatural adversary for Queen is extraterrestrial, and I love space! So this is great.

TOMAS: Uh, Jack of Hearts. A Jack means that I will be fighting a doppelganger. This will be a very interesting adventure.

CALEB: I just actually, before turning on my microphone, pulled a card for my enemy, what me and my heroic partner will be facing off against. This time I got a King, which is an android, which is great. I say this time because I actually tried to record this once, and I started off one with a mummy. I made it pretty far with a mummy, and I like Yu-Gi-Oh as much as the next guy, but I realized I only have so much tolerance for pretending I know the culture around mummies? They feel, like, very historical and real in a way that it felt silly to play around with. So I didn’t love where that was going, and I started over with a new one, and this time I got android, which I love.

SATAH: Before you begin your research, answer the following questions. “Where are you located in the world?” Something that’s interesting to me here, when we’re playing in the realm of aliens, extraterrestrials, “in the world” carries a lot more weight than it might otherwise? I think it automatically sets up more of a feeling of incursion, of invasion. Because to me, if I’m really respecting the implications of that question, I have to be on Earth; I can’t be like in a space station or whatever. Obviously it would be totally fine to massage it in that way, but that’s just like, that’s sort of just the box that I feel is being set up for me to play in? And I like that. I think that’s interesting. So I’m going to go with that.

Medium picture? Somewhere in Canada, because that’s my point of reference…

CALEB: We’re dealing with an android. It’s me and a hero. Because it’s what I know best, I think we’re going to stick to America in this case. Somewhere in America. I’ll do it close to home. I’m in the American South; I’m near Atlanta.

TOMAS: I want to be located in, like… why not be located in my country? I am in Argentina. So I will be playing from there. On the city of Buenos Aires, why not? And this doppelganger is located within the biggest city, one of the biggest cities in the world, by the way. And this will happen upon this very age, so information can spread quickly and easily. It can be very hard to find a doppelganger among the crew, among the people… and you can trust no one.

SATAH: A lot of alien stories are very rural? You know, your sort of like, grav kidnapped cows and crop circles, etcetera? And I think I want to hit a midpoint between sort of your big urban city center and the like, extreme rural thing? Like I have this image of, um, crop circles on lawns, you know? Rather than like a big field, just little crop circles being done on people’s lawns. So maybe it’s a suburb, actually. I think, yeah, that’s that’s really fun to me. It’s going to be like a suburb, a cul-de-sac kind of thing. And so there have been these like crop circles appearing on people’s perfect, like, manicured lawns and whatever.

TOMAS: “How did your partner hear about this creature?” I know that person that is trying to locate this is someone that is an investigator of the occult. This investigator is going to be named, and I’ll start writing this, um… Jorge Pugnales. That’s the name of the investigator of the occult.

SATAH: “How did your partner hear about this creature?” One thing I really like here, uh, immediately saying like, “how did your partner hear about this creature?”, not “how did you and your partner hear about this creature?” Really immediately making that dynamic obvious.

I think I’m going to say, obviously, the crop circles on otherwise perfectly manicured lawns. What are other alien tropes? I really do not want to play in animal death here, um. But alien stories so often interact with animals, like, you know, aforementioned cow, uh… scooping.

[Laughing]

What if it’s also just tiny crop circles in pets’ fur? Someone just thinks that this is like a prank, that one of the rowdy teens is shaving patterns into everybody’s lawns and pets. And so what was the thing that made it obviously alien?

Oh my god. Okay, so I think… the thing I’m drawing on here is Invader Zim, of all things. I’m pretty sure it’s in Invader Zim that like, at one point they just create a house, right? Or something like that?

So I think it’s the hero sees through some sort of classic reality distortion field. You know, it’s like, everyone’s like, pretending that Miss Gleebglorb has always been at the barbecues and those three houses have always been row home– a row home, and the hero was, I mean, if it’s if it’s a suburban area, then I feel like we’re playing in coming of age stuff. So it could be something as like, the hero was off at college when this happened, and has like come back for the summer or whatever, and is like, “Hey, why does everybody think that we’ve always had a neighbor Miss Gleebglorb?” Um, yeah, absolutely.

CALEB: Okay, I’m gonna go high concept with this one. I think the hero, this particular hero in our story is someone who’s from the future. Like, I’m not from the future, but the hero is from the future. And they are aware of a fate. A future fate where all these bad things happen. And we’re doing a kind of like, Monster of the Week style story… and life, for us, not a story, real life, where we are dealing with a bunch of different problems that might cause this like, horrible apocalyptic future? We know that there’s some combination of these that can lead to like the terrible future that the hero came back from. That he returned from. And every once in a while, we catch wind of something strange happening that might lead there based on a series of historical clues he brought with him.

I’m trying to think– maybe he has like an interesting data pad or something, something that mentions when something terrible might happen historically? That’s kind of fun, if we’re dealing with sci-fi.

So maybe we heard about it… maybe on a… maybe at a convention. Maybe we’re on day one of DragonCon, which just happened, like last weekend. We were on day one of DragonCon in Atlanta, and there was this big, wild viral video of this person doing these crazy things that it shouldn’t be possible for a person to do. And everybody was thinking it was like a really complicated and interesting cosplay, but the video made it to us, and we know that historically there’s a scary android– historically meaning from the future– there’s a scary android that starts wreaking havoc on the world around this time, and so the hero is pretty sure that this android– that this person at this con was a real android. It’s a very silly setup, but let’s go with that. And I like the time pressure. We’re dealing with a convention we know they’re at. We’re on day one, and I’m in Atlanta with, you know, full mobility.

SATAH: For “How did you partner hear about this creature?”, I’m also just going to put uh “saw through the reality distortion field because they were away at college when it was applied.” Which also honestly leads really naturally into the next question of, “Did they choose to confront this foe or were they forced to?”

They chose it. They had to have, because they were one of the ones who could see through it. But I think that it’s probably a combination in that they– they tried to just have a conversation. Like they were like, “I’m going to figure out what’s happening here, and I’m a little suspicious just because… if you had good intentions, I feel like you would have just moved in rather than pretending you’ve always lived here? But you know, maybe I’m just missing something,” and so they went to try and like just have a conversation and then, you know, they unveiled whatever evil plan, uh, we’ll define further.

And so they chose to speak to the foe, but the confrontation, like the actual like fight, was forced by the aliens.

**TOMAS: “**Did they choose to confront this foe or were they forced to?” I like to think that there is a rivalry within these two individuals. So Jorge Pugnales, um… his wife was assassinated by this doppelganger. This being took the form of his wife. His wife is going to be named, uh… Rosa. Rosa Martínez. Why not?

So we have Jorge Pugnales and Rosa Martínez. Rosa was assassinated; now Jorge is after this being. And I am his partner.

CALEB: “Did they choose to confront this foe or were they forced to?” I think… I think this was a choice. I think they made a heroic choice to return to the past to try to fix things that they see as creating a domino effect to a post-apocalyptic terrible future, um, where potentially robots rule the world, or any number of other bad things happened. And I think they’re traveling far enough back in the past that– and they’re dealing with a post-apocalyptic future where information is very controlled, so they don’t have a perfect idea of what happens, but they have a pretty good idea that someone needed to be focused on being a hero during this time.

SATAH: “Is your partner good at this?” What a great question. Yeah. Yeah, I think they are, but also maybe they’re a little rusty.

I feel like the story I’m building is, is sort of like, you know, Veronica Mars Season 4 or whatever– whatever season it was that was Kickstarted years after the show was originally finished, or your Party Down sequel series and that kind of thing. Like, the idea that um, this was a show, sort of a 90s, early 2000s era where it was like, teen supernatural fighters, and then it ended with them going off to college? You know, the whole team split up, and now 15 years later, they’re like… we could just make another season.

[Laughing]

Um, and I’ll have to figure out my relationship to that. I immediately have the feeling that I maybe stayed in town? But yeah, I’m going to say, yes, but they’re rusty because they moved to, in Buffy terms, a place that doesn’t have– that isn’t on a Hellmouth.

TOMAS: “Is your partner good at this?” I’m going to say that Jorge is the sort of person that the rich people among the city and the country contact when something of the occult is going on. His contact gets thrown around a lot here in the country. And… I will say he’s particularly great at this.

CALEB: Is my partner good at this? I like the idea that they are spunky, they are energetic, they’re athletic, um… and they have a strong energy, which is why they threw themselves back into the past, but that they don’t have like a super impressive, clear skill set in this regard. They have a lot of energy, they have a lot of heroism, and… uh… and I think probably I’m in love with them.

[Laughing]

So that’s going to get to my relationship with my partner, but we’ll get there. That’s just classic dynamic, right? I’m the nerd with the computer, they’re the jock saving the day, and I’m in gay love with them.

So that actually that answers the next question, “Why are you helping them?” Well, two reasons. One is I was the very first person in the pilot of this show that they saved from some kind of alien that was going to kill me. They saved me. The alien had like, uh, if you want to add romantic drama, the alien had like infected or done something like Yeerk style to my ex boyfriend, and now after they saved me, I’m like, “Wait, I’m in love with you actually! That relationship was going to end even before he got possessed by an alien earworm that you stopped because otherwise alien earworms would be a major problem in the future.” And so I decided to help them because that whole thing meant I believed them very early, and because I have a skill set for taking the bits of information they have and turning them into actionable paths.

SATAH: “Why are you helping them?” Ooh. I mean, first of all, it’s just what I’ve always done. This was our life. This was our entire life when we were kids. And when we were teens, like when we were younger, this is what we did. We were a supernatural investigation crew.

But I think more than that, because of what I’ve been setting up with like the hero having gone away and now come back, I’m also helping them like… to grasp that thing? You know, in it in, in an, like, like, “oh, wow, the good old days”, but also I think to prove myself a little. Like, “Yeah, sure, I mean, I stayed in our hometown, but I’ve built a whole life for myself.” That kind of thing.

I am genuinely happy to help, and also, I really do want them to respect me.

TOMAS: Now, “why are you helping them?” Um, let’s see. I am helping Jorge because his last partner died on the job and… I was a good friend of his past partner. I have good qualities at this. I am a great investigator. I used to be someone who worked at a library. I am great at rummaging through documents and finding any sort of information that may be of use to Jorge.

SATAH: The next question is, “Do you have a day job?” Absolutely I do. What is it? How on the nose do I want this to be? I don’t want to make this character seem too… pathetic, like I really, I don’t want to do the like, you stayed in your hometown and were stunted thing. Like I do want this person to have a life that is like special and worth living and wonderful. So I don’t want to just stick them in a job that they hate.

I do want it to be a job that gives them access… I’m just glancing down at the card suite answers in research, which indicate like uh, where you found the thing that you’re researching. I’m just glancing through that to see if that sort of sparks anything… museums, libraries and buildings devoted to research. I don’t think I want to go the full librarian route… museum is interesting.

Yeah. Okay. So I think that what I do, my day job is like– I want to be a curator. Not at a museum specifically. I think maybe, maybe it’s an art gallery. You know, maybe this is a small town that just has a cool flavorful art scene and I work at this gallery, basically just being like trying to, trying to make the place that I live cool, you know? Um, and I think that’s fun because like, the idea that part of the reason this character knows things about the town’s history is because they’ve researched art that was created there is very appealing to me.

So I think, yeah, just, curator at a small art gallery.

I don’t think my character lives in the suburbs anymore. I think, I think they still live in that town, but they’ve, they’ve moved, you know, further in? But they have family and friends still in this suburb. So they’re there pretty frequently. And I think in sort of like the, the logistics of the world, part of what that does is make them affected by this reality distortion field, but less strongly? You know, it’s easier for the hero to break it when they’re like, “Hey, Ms. Gleebglorb”… I don’t know if I’m going to keep that name. I hope I don’t and I hope I do. It’s complicated.

Like, “Hey, you, you know, you know, we haven’t known Ms. Gleebglorb our whole lives, right?” And my character has like a, “What? No, of course we have. Don’t you remember when she heroically saved my life? Like she dove in front of a car when I was playing on the road?” Um, and the hero kind of like stares at me and is like, “Why would you have been playing on the road? Like you were super paranoid. You barely left the house. We always just hung out in your basement and your backyard in the tree house. Like, like, why would you have been playing in the road?”

And my character sort of like stutters and then is like, “Wait… yeah. I, I remember playing hockey, like street hockey and having to be rescued. But I never touched a hockey stick in my life; that doesn’t make any sense.” And kind of has the illusion shattered.

Okay, I got a little off track here, but just trying to flesh some stuff out. So, on track and off track. Multitudes.

TOMAS: “Do you have a day job?” As I said, I am a librarian as part of my day job. Now should I be still working as that? I will say that I do. Maybe on– I don’t work full time anymore because Jorge being that well known, he gets a very great pay grade and I receive part of that payment. Jorge is very good at what he does and he pays well.

CALEB: Do I have a day job? Yes. Yes. I have a day job and it is… what is an interesting day job for me to have? I like the idea that it’s something so of the time. Like, this hero would have no idea what I’m getting up to because it has completely disappeared in the future. So what is something that’s like super of the now? I’m like a… food… blogger. So I don’t know how much of a day job this sounds; I’m literally just saying words, but I’m like, I’m like a food blogger, like a food reviewer. I’m like a unknown writer about recipes and food, which serves me very little when dealing with an android, but you know, it means I’m a great cook! And this hero who’s coming from a post-apocalyptic future where they’re eating… um, cockroach bars or whatever, is loving the fact that I have such a wide knowledge and skill set when it comes to food. They love the present.

SATAH: And the last question in the setup is, “What is your relationship with your partner?” Well this is great. Yeah, I’ve definitely like gone over a lot of this, but like, childhood friend, probably still close enough that like we would invite each other to each other’s weddings, you know… we DM memes to each other and catch up on video calls… and like I would stay at their house, you know, if I were, if I were visiting the big city and that kind of thing.

But there is a distance there. And I think, I think that it’s the kind of distance that can be… overcome? Like, you know, we need to grow apart in these, in these times while we’re both like in our early 20s. You’re at college, I happened into this job a little younger than you would expect because the last curator was, you know, 160 years old, and as soon as she saw that I like knew what a painting was, she was like, “Do you want to take over my business? So that it can live on?”

So yeah, childhood friend a little distant now, but still close, testing our boundaries as we grow up separately, but ultimately probably come back together.

CALEB: What is my relationship with my partner? Unrequited love, I think. I think they’re so focused on saving the day that they’re not thinking about romance, but they’re doing that thing that people in stories like this and with energies like this do where they’re like treating me so much like a boyfriend ultimately that I get to feel like that’s what’s happening? Even when, uh, to them, they’re just kind of existing. Big energy, moving from place to place, leaning on everybody because it’s the only way they can then save the day in the end. Uh, and so I have a mixed, complicated feelings about that. And I just wish we could have a sincere conversation one day about our feelings.

[Laughing]

So that’s, that’s, I think my relationship with my partner in this.

TOMAS: I have a good relationship with Jorge, but because I want to put a bit more juice within all this, I will say that even though I have a great relationship with Jorge, I am worried from him. I know that Jorge has a terminal illness and should not be spending his time doing what he does. He should be with his family and because he has two children.

Yeah, my relationship is a good one. I will not say it’s a great one. I may have to withstand his bad temper from time to time. So I may get the short end of the stick at moments when he’s pretty nervous.

SATAH: Great! That’s the setup.

CALEB: So that is my setup. Thank you so much for listening. Is that what I should say? I don’t know.

SATAH: I’m really happy with how that developed. Those are really cool questions that– it’s always satisfying– it’s equally satisfying in different ways when you’re doing character or world creation when the next question leads so perfectly from the last one, like when you’re like, wait, I was just talking about that. And also when the next question is a huge surprise, like you’re like, wait, I was just at a totally different mode. I think both of those things are so cool. And I think there’s a really fun balance of those two different things in here.

TOMAS: Yeah, I’ll say that is the end of the setup.

CALEB: [Laughing] I know you can do a sidekick and not have romance involved, but I’m here playing a solo game, so we’re going to have some gay romance. I’m going to sip my Topo Chico, speaking of homosexual.

BREAK

SATAH: Thank you very much, Caleb, for the unwittingly perfect segue.

[Reverb-y can opening sound]

… My roommate and I bought like a water carbonator, so I don’t really do cans anymore, but I thought that sound is better than the carbonator sound because how would you even know what that is unless you have one? I also think Topo Chico only comes in bottles. I’m not sure. I don’t think you can actually get it in Canada. I tried it for the first time when I was in the States a little while ago. Uhhh… foley! Is hard!

Before we get into the research phase, I want to let you know a little bit more about cool shit that my guests are doing.

Caleb, whose work you can find at CalebZaneHuett.com is the lead designer on Triangle Agency, a roleplaying game of paranormal investigation and corporate horror, which is getting a physical edition! It is printing now or shortly. Triangle Agency is a fucking blast. I’ve rarely been so engrossed by a rulebook as a standalone item, like just as a thing to read and look through, and my love for it really only grew when I had the absolute honour of Caleb GMing it for the whole polycule a few months back. Order a copy at the links in the episode description. It is beyond worth it. Please give it a look.

Tomas, who you can find at TGimenezRGM on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram, is releasing Magnolia: the City of Marvels, which is a systemless setting of art, punk, and rebellion. This is a fantastic resource for GMs. I had so much fun even just scrolling the promotional site for it. It’s got factions, NPCs, items, and full-fledged, completely system-agnostic campaigns. They’re built to be run in whatever game you’re playing. It’s got story hooks, it’s got colour coding, it’s got so much style, and in the episode description, you’ll find a link to put yourself on the mailing list to hear when the Kickstarter goes live. Please do that. Please tune in to what Tomas is up to. It’s awesome.

It’s really exciting. I am– I’m really happy to have these two on my first episodes. I’m not gonna get weird about it. I’m normal about it. It’s just cool. I’m excited. I’m glad you’re here.

Because as for me, you’re already listening to the main thing that I’m excited about doing right now! Thank you for doing that! So let’s get back into it.

In Accomplice, after the setup, we go into the research phase. The rules text I found a little open to interpretation in parts, but we settled on this loop: pull a card to define a source of information and where you found it, then pull 1d6 cards, each of which will prompt a specific piece of information you get from that source. Keep doing that until you have enough information to defeat the foe. For our purposes, I asked everyone to keep it pretty tight at like 3-5 rounds of research, and we are going to wrap up this episode with the first round.

GAME: RESEARCH ROUND ONE

SATAH: Alright.

TOMAS: Alright.

CALEB: Alright! Now we are moving into research round one.

TOMAS: Day one of the investigation of the doppelganger.

SATAH: Let’s get started with the research. First we’re going to pull a research card.

[Sound of a card being pulled]

The King of Diamonds. Yeah, so King is “evidence left behind by opponent”, and diamonds are “sources from the internet, such as websites, forums, and social media.” Great. I mean that’s already very exciting. I’m going to roll a d6.

[Die clattering]

Three. So that means I’m going to pull three cards. I haven’t left myself any space on my desk to put things… here we go.

[Three cards being pulled]

Okay so I pulled a 2, a 6, and an 8. “Previous sightings of foe or one of their ancestors”,
“clues about why they’re behaving the way they are”, and 8 is “facts about the identity of the enemy, such as their appearance and name.” Cool.

So, previous sightings of the foe or one of their ancestors. I immediately– again more pop culture references– think of the sequence in Doctor Who. I believe it is in Eccleston’s season where there is a montage of… Christopher Eccleston’s face photoshopped into pictures… in a way that was befitting of the technology at the time. I don’t think I want to go with that exactly, but let’s see.

So this is evidence left behind by the opponent on the internet. One of the first things I thought of when I saw that the source would be the internet was the idea that this alien has to create social media in order to fit in. You know? Like the other suburban moms were like, “Oh, let me add you on Facebook, I can put you in the cul-de-sac chat.” and this alien had to be like, “Mmm… book of faces!” Classic alien shit, you know? And I like the idea that it was pulled together so fumblingly and like quickly like, “Oh yeah of course! I’ll add you, I’ll add you when I get home. Uh, excuses excuses,” and they ran home and had to create a Facebook account for their new human identity. And they had to put a bunch of images in there…

Oh my god, yeah okay, so it’s like, it’s a Mother’s Day post. Like… this alien just sort of follows the trends that they see all the other, uh, they see the human moms do to try and keep fitting in. And on Mother’s Day they saw everybody posting these like, rhapsodising things with a picture of their mom when she was younger. And so the alien was like, “Well! Gotta have a mom. Gotta have a mom who I love and a picture of them when they were younger.”

And you know, we would see… in the show that is closer to about like, the alien’s journey, um, we would see them like, doing research on what a mom is and being like, “Oh, it’s sort of like… the… Creche Warden. Sure. Well, in my cool alien culture, we always do the same job– or, it’s the highest honour to do the same job as your Creche Warden, that they were sort of like, preparing you for your entire… hatching… and life and whatever.” Um, so, just being like, “Oh, sure, yeah, my quote unquote mother also integrated themself into Earth. Yeah, I can post a picture of that person.”

And I think, I mean, I think it just has to be like a… sort of one of those just moments of hero intuition, I think, where it’s like scrolling Ms. Gleebglorb’s Facebook page and being like, “Wait, who is this woman? Like, the style of her clothes looks a little odd. Like this is– this is supposed to be this person’s mother? But the ages don’t seem to line up, based on, you know, the era that this photo was taken in. Let’s look further into that.”

Trying to decide if I want to define what that establishes… I don’t think so. Because I don’t think that we need to have all the answers yet, so I think it’s just kind of the thing where it’s like, we now know, or at least think we know what’s happened before. Because we like research this person that was in the Mother’s Day post. And we’re like, oh, this person also showed up in a community… like they only start being referenced in newspapers or whatever of this date, but they’re being referenced as though they’ve been there for a very long time. So we know like, this has happened before!

It probably isn’t clear to us if it’s the same person or another person.

Next one is “clues about why they’re behaving the way they are.” Ooh… oh, I mean, again, on their Facebook page, they’re like campaigning for something. And I think it’s probably… the thing I’m most drawn to is that they are campaigning to be like, on a school council of some kind, you know, or like head of the PTA. Like they are making a power grab and it isn’t totally clear yet what that’s leading to. But it seems like they have integrated themself into this community in order to get elected to the head of the PTA. And then… question mark.

“Facts about the identity of the enemy such as their appearance and name.” Yeah, this is interesting because I had just… maybe I’d– maybe I’d put us a little bit forward, like more forward in the narrative. Like we know what they look like. Oh, I guess that we don’t know maybe what they really look like. Name could also… maybe exploring their name… I might massage this a little bit to not necessarily be like the alien’s name specifically, but like, the name of the planet they’re from… or their ship or something…

I think up until this point, we didn’t necessarily know that this person was an alien. Like we’re like, so some sort of supernatural being has moved into the suburb where we grew up and has convinced everyone else, including our families, presumably, that they’ve always been there. But there are a lot of supernatural beings that could do that. Like remember in season one, episode 14? When that basically happened here? Or remember the monsters that we defeated in the like… remember the big bad… of season six? It could be any of those things.

And so what I want to find out here, now knowing that like, this is something that has happened before, now knowing that they’re campaign– campaigning for power in some way, this is where I want to find out that this is an alien.

Oh, and– okay– so it’s their cover photo. It’s their cover photo on Facebook and it is a galaxy and there’s a comment underneath that’s like, “Wow, Brenda, beautiful photo. Why did you choose it?” And then Brenda– which is Mrs. Brenda Gleebglorb– um– comments like “reminds me of home”, smiley face. And then the person who first commented responded like, “Ahh, yeah, the views of our childhood are so important. I’ll always remember the sunsets off of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Um, So Brenda, Brenda, Brenda Gleebglorb’s– fuck. Brenda, Brenda Gleebglorb’s cover photo on Facebook is a night sky, a galaxy. And and they are letting everybody assume that this is just like what the night sky looked like when they were a child. Like this is the view from their backyard, their childhood home, you know. If you asked further, I’m sure that they’ve had conversations about this, that like they could lay out on the… in the backyard of their childhood home, away from the big city where you can actually see the stars, and just stare up into the night sky. And that’s when, you know, she knew that she wanted to… work in… accounts receiving at Enterprise Bank Chain Number 46 or whatever. Um.

[Laughing]

But actually what it is– ACTUALLY what it is, is a photo of where her home planet is. And I think it’s like a thing where it’s like, we’re like looking at this galaxy photo, like stumped, you know, we’ve scrolled up and down this Facebook timeline. We’re back up at the top, just staring at the picture of this person. And then because, you know, I’m the smarty, it has to catch my eye.

I’m like looking at this galaxy photo and I lean in and I’m like, “That can’t be taken from Earth.” And I like, you know, gesture to like point out some like– star bodies, whatever, planets, something– the kind of thing that like could easily be unnoticed, like you just kind of assume, I don’t know, stars look different sometimes in different places. I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere. I grew up in the big cities or the suburb and I’ve never seen a star.

But I recognize like, wait, there’s no way that this could be taken from Earth because we don’t have any of these bodies. And, you know, call in one of our other friends? We like, we Zoom, you know, we do like a video call from one of our friends who had some sort of life changing experience and went off to study astronomy at university. And we’re like, hey, this is your cameo for this season because you were too booked up to come back for the sequel. Uh, but we– the fans love your character and we want to know what you’re doing, so so you’re going to cameo in this episode, but just over video call because we couldn’t get you to the studio.

[Laughing]

And we call her and she’s like, bleep bloop bleep bleep bloop. And is like, “Well, this has to be from this galaxy.” And you know, we find out, you know… there’s there’s there’s cross referencing. There’s always cross referencing. She like sends us a bunch of documents and I’m I’m looking like combing through them and being like, “There’s only one planet that could theoretically sustain life here:

[Struggling to think noises]

Uhhh, planet name. I just want to say Gleepglorp again. Just going to real quick–

[Typing noises]

Planet name generator.

Thank you, fantasy name generators dot com for holding up the tabletop hobby on your beautiful broad shoulders.

Thoth. Thoth C 94. Crabsolutely. So we’re like, “Well, that must be where they’re from.” We find the name of their planet.

So I’m just going to write down a couple of notes.

[Unintelligible “reading the question out loud very fast” noises]

We call our friend who is studying astrology, who helps us figure out Thoth, Thoth C 94. Great.

TOMAS: We will first start our investigation in the…

[Card being pulled]

Nine of Clubs. This is “a location in your area like landmarks, crime scene and other places of interest”. We’re going to start at the crime scene of the last crime. This being a nine means that we are going to find a photo of the crime scene.

Now we roll a D6 in order to see how many pieces of evidence we can find within this place.

[Die clatter]

It’s a four. This means that we are going to be taking…

[Four cards being pulled]

These four cards.

We will start with the Q, which means that there is a possible location of the rival located within the photo. When we got this photo from one of the key investigators of the crime… General Rodriguez, from… the police. The photo showed this sort of note handed by the doppelganger on the crime scene. It stated that, um, he could find him at the planetarium.

Another one is a Q again, which means another possible location of the rival. We will see within the photo there is a map hanging on the backside of the bed. This map of the city has many pins within it. Maybe some sort of message that the doppelganger wants to help us know. Jorge Pugnales told me that these locations may be possible places where crimes have occurred already or where he could appear in the future. These indicate one of the cemeteries– of Recoleta, one of the famous places here in the city of Buenos Aires. We don’t know what may happen in there.

Another Q is the next card, so three Qs in a row. Again, a possible location of the rival. This being the pink house, the government institution place. Similar to the white house from the US, we here in Argentina have the pink house, in which the president usually lays. Maybe he is trying to do something with the president.

Lastly, the last of the details that we can find within the photo is a card who’s named number 7, “info about an incident caused by them or sighting”. By investigating this map, Jorge could identify that one of these places, one of these locations was where some horse races are held, here in San Ysidro. This is where many of the people with high fortunes go and bet on horses. A crime was held recently in there. This murder that occurred was dismissed by the police, saying that one of the people in there just suffered a heart attack. There was no evidence that stated this, but for some reason the police decided to hide this fact. Maybe the police have some sort of connection with the doppelganger. Maybe he has infiltrated in the past or changed some aspects within it.

CALEB: Ooh baby, D6 acquired. My piece of information for you, grounding us in space, is that I’m recording this in a bathroom to avoid echo in my office, which has tall ceilings. So here in the bathroom I’m sitting on the floor and imagining myself in the great city of Atlanta during the peak of its largest…

[Laughing]

Its largest nerd convention, DragonCon, which I personally have visited seven times, probably– seven or eight, but haven’t been since around 2017, 2016 maybe. It’s been a long time.

[Hums a little tune]

Let’s pull a card for research round one. What’s going on with this android and what are they doing at Dragon Con?

I got a jack of hearts. Hearts are “personal library, artefacts gathered from previous cases”, and jack is “journal”. Okay! This actually makes a lot of sense. So, I am looking at the datapad that I received from my hero when he came– which, oh, we need a name. I hate to make names.

The hero’s name, what’s like a future name? Hero’s name is, um, it’s Zill. Like Dill, like the pickles, but with a Z. Um, actually let’s say it’s Z-Y-L-L. Got Zyll. This hero’s name is Zyll. And my name is Charlie. Charlie. I have a bad habit of picking fake names that match the first letter of my real name. And that’s… this one, I feel like this game is inviting me to be me, really, if we’re being mundane people saving the day with a hero, so I don’t mind it not being too far away.

Zyll and Charlie. So Zyll brought with him this datapad of historical record from the future that is accumulated by– that has been like curated and created by people over time despite the futuristic awful world’s control of information, their attempts to hide the truth from the people out there, and to make the average human kind of subservient to the whims of these great evil forces that have taken over in the time since the present. So I have this datapad and I’m able to check it for information on these things that will become a problem in the future, but this information is not always reliable, it’s not always directly true, and it is incomplete. So it doesn’t always tell me like an exact fact about the future, it just lets me know kind of what I’m dealing with– when I can find someone or a particular subject inside of it. So that’s what we’re looking at.

This old… this old future journal in the form of like a datapad and I’m rolling a die to see how much research we get out of it. How useful is this datapad?

[Die clatter]

Whoa, a six! We’re starting off strong with an extreme amount of information on this particular guy, which makes me think this android is a big deal in the future we’re attempting to prevent. Um, so let’s see how much information we’re able to get from it. Six pieces, so I’m going to draw six cards and move through them.

First one, a four. A four of spades. On here we’ve got someone throwing– got a little Kirby bad guy throwing a little shuriken, uh, one of the spades, oh that’s cute. The spades are moved around to be flowing in the same direction as the shuriken.

A four means “info on a similar but possibly unrelated incident”. Okay cool, yeah yeah yeah. Alright so the journal is telling me that there are a… there’s a spike of android sightings beginning in 2024 because someone somewhere is creating them. There has been a breakthrough for a particular scientist, name unknown, origins unknown in this time, a scientist or a company that have begun making androids and have been losing control of them, or perhaps begin losing control of them around now. It has led– it leads in the future to a bunch of minor catastrophes, places getting destroyed, people getting killed.

And so the information I’m seeing on here is that like typically when one of these androids appears at first before whatever the future escalation is or before they have a more direct goal, they tend to be like– almost like Frankensteins where they’re a little uncomfortable around humans, they don’t really know why they’re there, they don’t have really great impulse control, and they’re really strong. So these androids definitely caused a lot of death early on.

I don’t know– I don’t see necessarily information about like a DragonCon arrival, but there is a– at least not at first. But there is an understanding that these androids are highly dangerous, show up, cause a lot of violence, and then disappear, or if they’re stopped, are destroyed.

I got an eight of hearts, which has this little guy who I recognize as being kind of like a meme looking guy. He’s just got like all-black eyes with tiny white dots in them holding on to one of these hearts. An eight of hearts: “facts about the identity of the enemy such as their appearance and name.”

Hmm. I think this android… I think something unusual about this android is that it looks like somebody famous, which is why people think it’s like a good cosplay at first? Or like a show? Is that it looks like a famous person, because maybe whoever was making these androids was trying to make them in the likeness of somebody specific or famous.

So let’s say we’re dealing with an android that looks like a pop star. In fact, let’s say it’s an android that looks like a, um… a… looks like a Paris Hilton kind of famous pop star. Someone who– like Paris Hilton herself would play this character in the show. But it is like someone who’s very very rich, who comes from a rich family and is kind of famous for being rich at first, has a career, and maybe is like connected to some early experiments in android technology that involve like, “Well we’ll use you as a model because it’s fun, and because we know you’re beautiful, and because you’re really rich and kind of funding this, and we’ll try to make an android that matches you.”

So let’s say, um… let’s say their name is their name is… let’s say the book refers to this person as Alice One, and I think this might be the Alice One because there have not been other sightings of an android. So this pop star Alice, um– ugh I’m breaking my own rule. I complain all the time about how nothing can make it through… no TV show can make it all the way through without doing an Alice in Wonderland episode, like a reference to Alice in Wonderland? So maybe I need to change it so that I’m not part of the problem.

[Laughing]

I hate that. I hate it so much.

Okay, her name is gonna be… Ugh, I hate names! Her name is Joey. Joey One. This is a famous person known as Joey, and someone who looks just like the famous person Joey has showed up at Dragon Con, and, uh, once I figure out that she looks like Joey, I’m able to find more information in the book confirming that there is a specific android named Joey, one who is one of the scariest. For what reason? Let’s dig deeper into this data pad and find out.

My next thing is an ace, which has Kirby on it, of course, he’s jumping on the ace of spades, which is a one, which means… I think it’s a one right? Ten, jack queen king, yes. “Possible weaknesses.”

Alright. Let’s think about these weaknesses. I think this is an early model, so we’re not dealing with like– if eventually. Joey One becomes like a tyrant in the apocalyptic sense, we’re dealing with an early version of Joey One. An android, an artificial intelligence that has not yet learned to replicate and upgrade itself. So a weakness in this sense, now, the reason they’re weak now, is that there’s only one of them, and if we can literally destroy that one, we might be able to stop it from kind of figuring itself out enough to create more, which will then take over the world. An army of Paris Hilton-like androids, um… subjugating the southeast US. Which is great, honestly.

[Laughing]

Good premise for a show. Is that what Battlestar Galactica is about? I never saw it.

And other weaknesses, I think they’re still hackable. I think they escaped containment early, so they’ve got some glitches, and I think other than physical strength, they don’t have a lot going for them. They’re still sort of figuring out how to process the world. So they seem human and they are smarter than your average machine in terms of its ability to like, socially interact and interpret new information, but they are not especially accomplished problem solvers yet, and so they might be trappable, foolable, and hackable in a way that in the future they no longer are.

And then another ace, this time of clubs, another little Kirby, an old classic Kirby on this one, that says additional possible weaknesses. I’ve already named a bunch, but let me– I mean, if I’m getting two weaknesses from this, two weakness cards, then there should be something pretty big, huh?

[Thoughtful sigh]

Battery… battery life. I think they are solar powered. They burn through energy fast, but they also charge it fast. And if they’re kept out of the sun for an hour, they will power down, and before that, will begin to act more sluggishly. But if they’re out of the sun for a whole hour, they will shut off, despite how strong they are.

Two, “previous sightings of foe or one of their ancestors”. I think something that’s interesting here maybe is instead of an ancestor, I’m going to do a future ancestor? A later possibility, a development, a stakes upping future thing here? And I think I’ve already described it a little bit, but I bet that this being, Joey One, while they literally might not be the robot tyrant of the future that we’re scared of, for at least part of what causes the apocalypse, because there must be many– Joey One… oh, maybe there’s like a council. Maybe there’s a council of different awful futures, future-causer things, and what we’ve been doing in this show is like picking off piece by piece the things that would later become the council of evil? And one of them is like Joey 13… or Joey 399 is even better, Joey 399, where this Joey One, if not captured and destroyed, figures out how to replicate themselves, figures out how to upgrade themselves, and is the direct progenitor of future Joeys.

If I do this… we know that changing the future is tougher than it seems, and like, defeating one piece of it often means that another piece just gets stronger and isn’t kept in check by the other one, until we kind of get rid of all the problems, so it’s not going to save the southeast from a horrible fate, but it will… it will protect us from a particular horrifying future.

And I think what this tells me, this like previous sightings of the foe, one of their ancestors, I think what it tells me is that also… after this time, if we don’t stop them, they begin to be able to change their appearance as well. So they can start hiding everywhere, and we’re going to be lucky, and it’ll go well if we can capture them now, before they start doing their Cylon behaviour. Because the ancestors I’m seeing, the future ancestors I’m seeing in the datapad, all have different appearances, and all have learned how to blend in, in a way that made them unstoppable later, but right now it doesn’t know to do that.

And then three, “background information on them.” I think this is going to be like a theory of where they came from, and I think it is in line with what I’ve already described a little bit, which is that… the, uh, future, or the company that made them, was interested at first in something very silly. They were like looking for like, “Can we make Joey, this famous person, able to do Hatsune Miku style touring, where instead of seeing her, you see the perfect android facsimile of her?” Unfortunately, the path to making a perfect android facsimile of a person means making extremely smart and complicated machinery that also makes them very good at doing violence and scaring people.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. This first bit, this like um, chunk of information from the datapad, makes me think that we have it pretty easy. We’ve got a lot of future information in here, setting us up for a good time. Hoping that my other ones make it a little tougher. Or maybe this episode, the way that it’s written, is front-loaded with a lot of information so that there could be tons of action at DragonCon. They’re filming on location, and they wanted to get all those costumes in there they could. I think that’s beautiful.

OUTRO

SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.card.co. Oh lord, saying that out loud makes it so much more obvious how much it rhymes. Ooh, gonna have to think on that.

You can find Caleb Zane Huett at hauntedtable.games and calebzanehuett.com.

You can find Tomas Gimenez Rioja at TGimenezrGM on Bluesky, Twitter, and Instagram.

You can find Satah– that’s me– at Posatachips, P-O-S-A-T-A-H-C-H-I-P-S on Twitter, and check out my other work at gaygothvibes.online.

Next week, Caleb, Tomas, and I will continue our games of Accomplice by Michael Klamerus. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there.