2B, or Not 2B?
GM Notes
A Tale from the Time of Virtual Existence for 5 players
by Jeff and Jordan Diewald
Tale Materials
The Tale requires the following characters:
| Characters | ||||
| Name | Species | Race | Summary | |
| 4.01 | el-Dinar Storycrafter | Wetware | Ashtaran | Scholarly expert on the works of Sonia/2B |
| 4.02 | Irregular Tesselation v12.4 | Software | ★★★★Tran+ec | Claims that the work is theirs. Also may be Sonia/2B. |
| 4.03 | Painting Planetscapes | Software | Dances With Everyone | Expert in VR systems and design. Also may be Sonia/2B. |
| 4.04 | Senior Captain Pamir | Wetware | You don't remember | From the Council of Captains. Has to decide what to do. Also may be Sonia/2B. |
| 4.05 | Zylk Speaker-To-Data | Hardware | Tiptree | Blogging detective believes they know who is really Sonia/2B. |
The Tale requires the following materials:
| Component | Copies | Copies to: |
| The Tale | 5 | Everyone |
Framing Text (Read Before the Tale)
2B, or not 2B? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to leave on top, with the people wanting more, or to work anonymously in a land of dreams, unknown to all. And who knows, in that anonymity, what imagination may be inspired, where journeys may wander through undiscovered countries? 2B, or not 2B. That is the Tale.
Location of the Tale
This is in the VR space for Crystalline Thrones of the Lustful Pirates of Berg's Quasar.
Props
None
GM Notes
See Really Detailed Notes at the end, for the concept behind this Tale.
Safety Concerns
None?
References
This was Jeff's idea, which Jordan promptly made better.
The title, 2B, or Not 2B, is from Hamlet, in the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, which is entirely meaningful when searching for clues about the famous Sonia/2B in Fleet virtual existence.
Ashtarans and Ashtar Unique are ripped off blatantly from The Stars of Al-Ashtara, a LARP by Alison Joy Schafer Salomone and Brian Richburg.
Ice-9 is a reference to Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.
★★★★Tran+ec is Star Four Tran EC, which is also a rough abbreviation for *FORTRAN Engineering Counselor. This is a very, very old Jeff reference, dating back to the late 1970s.
Captain Pamir is a reference to one of the main characters in Robert Reed's Great Ship novels.
The Tiptree are named after James Tiptree Jr., a well-known science fiction author who was actually Alice Bradley Sheldon.
The Tiramisu of Traversp-J is a reference to P. J. Travers, who wrote the Mary Poppins series of books.
Tale Concept Notes
Someone is Shakespeare and wanted to be in hiding because they were tired of writing the damn plays all the time?
2B or not 2B? = Tale name
One is a fan, one is a scholar, one is a detective. The fourth one is someone claiming to be 2B. The fifth one is actually 2B, in disguise. Clerk of some fan society? 1+5 together?
Did this all start because some hack of something occurred? Did some new play or play fragment leak out? Did this take place with some new VR technology? Is it some sort of environment that looks like a immersive larp experience?
Sonia 2B...
Well fährvergnügen, you just had to go in to sling some code didn’t you? now you’re screwed. you knew that Tessellation was going to be a problem. It’s all that honor crap. They were going to find a way to do the wrong thing even with all that honor.
Fährvergnügen!
Zylk loaded up on detectival software, which was going to be from Mycroft Conan O'Brien, Ersatz Poi-Roe, R. Darjeeling Olivaw, and more, but that was too silly.
"the game is thirty centimeters now!" → "the game is afoot!"