Tiān Dēng (6/29/2024)

GM: Sophie Lagacè
Players: Sen-Foong Lim, Banana Chan, Meguey Baker, Sean Nittner
System: Tiān Dēng: Tales from the Immortal God Ship

Tiān Dēng is done with public playtesting but there were enough revisions that we wanted to play some follow up playtests to see how everything was holding together!

Sophie ran a game from us (using one of the adventures from the game) and space hijinx ensued.

Character Creation

To get the most out of the game, we created our characters offline before the game:

• Song Jiang (they/them), Rebel (Meg) – Navigation
• Yang Guang (he/him) the Caregiver (Sean) – Shrine
• Choi Hong (she/they), Artist (Banana) – Engine
• Keilam (they/them) the Nerd (Sen) – Comms

Together we created our ship and bonds with each other:

Chang’e

• Who’s God Ship is this? Where did it come from? We decided it was my grandmother’s ship and that Nainai still was part of the crew even though we had taken over all the duties. The ship was a 100+ year old military interceptor that Nainai got after it was decommissioned. All weapons removed and military codes locked n the AI mainframed (notably disabled but not deleted).
• We had a lot of debt both from Nainai’s unpaid bills and a very long docking fee. The moment Chang’e showed up on the ship’s registries, the bills started coming in.
• The Engine Room is having some trouble because Choi Hong “tuned” the engines to make sounds ideal for her art (she works in soundscapes and multimedia).

Gameplay

Sophie introduced the mysterious Mr. X who gave us a job:

Hello. I am Mr. X and I have a proposition for you. I apologize for the high degree of secrecy, but one cannot be too careful these days. I can tell by your GEAS geotag that your ship is very close to the object of my desire.

I need you to get to Asteroid DW-2A4, infiltrate the mining base, and take a sample of the Grandium that they found. This needs to be done as quietly and quickly as possible, with a large potential bonus if you can accomplish this job per my request.

Not suspicious at all! After a bit of internal discussion we (of course) too the job. Song Jiang took a direct course to get their (space off-roading) and when we arrived we noticed another ship (a pirate ship at that) also encroaching on the asteroid. Using the model of our ship as a bluff, Keilam convinced the pirates that we were a military vessel and it was a good idea to steer clear of of us. Meanwhile Yang Guang gossiped with our ships AI Diety to appease Chang’e and to get some dirt on the other ship.

One the surface Song Jiang and Choi Hong obtained a sample of the Grandium, but just as they did there was a huge explosion and the mining facility went up in flames. We barely got off the rock before the whole thing blew up!

What Rocked

• Balancing the favor of the AI family deity and our own goals is a lot of fun. Imagine Firefly, but Serenity can talk and let you know how she feels about that missing manifold!
• Our relationships were really touching. Yang Guang inherited the ship from Nainai. His younger sister Choi Hong was part of the crew but really focused on her art. Keilam was sure he could make Choi famous. Song Jiang was the wild card who both inspired with their encouragement to try new things and (sometimes) terrified us with their wonton disregard for any rules.
• The adventure as written had plenty of fun bits. Sneaking around, investigating the asteroid, trying to figure out what happened and who Mr. X is. Good stuff.
• Sophie created an amazing Milanote board for us to play from (pics below)

What could have improved

During the game we discovered several systems that are still not fully dialed in. Banana and Sen are going to keep working on those, and we’ll playtest again soon. Particularly I’m looking forward to testing out:

• Personal Deity moves
• Boons and Curses
• Character creation when all the rules are consolidated and standardized
• Having terms for money, distance, and time.
• Knowing a bit more about the eight planets
• Trying out moves for things like intimidation and duplicity
• Powering up signature moves (vs. accumulating stress)

This game has so much heart, and I’m really excited to share it with people soon!