SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I am your host, Satah, and I am aiming to showcase multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together!
This is episode 1 of Unplugged Survivor, a game by We Are Heroes Productions and the Tabletop for the End of the World podcast. Unplugged Survivor is a consecutive journaling game about waking up from a corporate VR prison charmingly called True Reality, finding yourself in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, and keeping a diary about it. The main game loop is pulling cards and rolling a d6 to get a prompt for your next journal entry. Each face card is an omen: Kings and Aces are ominous, Jacks and Queens are hopeful. And your character's ending is determined by which category you pull three of first. When your character meets whatever that ending is, their entries are passed along to the next player in hopes that their character will be able to learn something from your journey to carry in theirs.
I chose this game because I love cyberpunk dystopic bullshit and I love the cumulative format. Putting the time into a full playthrough of this and then just handing it off to the next player to keep building on is a beautiful, bizarre, and intimate experience for me that demands a fantastic payout for the amount of trust invested– and oh boy did my guests meet that demand! I'm so excited for you to hear how this develops.
Though, speaking of guests, you're not going to meet them immediately, you're just going to hang out with me for a little while. But they are HappyBirthday, whose work you can find at gm36.itch.io, and Darling Demon Eclipse, whose work you can find at eclipse.gay. You should particularly check out her recent sexy duet sci-fi romance TTRPG, Biotrophication.
Before we get started, I want to note that there are two words for forces in the game that I didn't realise are just real Russian words. They should sound like
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE CLIP: потреблять
SATAH: and
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE CLIP: дурак.
SATAH: That is absolutely not how they sound when I say them. But my character also mispronounces some stuff like names just because it's been so long since our current era that the pronunciations are sort of lost to time… so feel free to accept that as an explanation alongside my apologies.
And with that, let's hop into character creation and start our dystopic diary.

GAME
SATAH: [Quietly, over the sound of shuffling cards] Absolutely classic… forgot to take the jokers out…
So the first thing we do in character creation is choose three personality traits: a positive personality trait, neutral personality trait, and a negative personality trait. I… don't like choosing things. I love randomness, so I'm going to go to a random letter generator. Normally I'd go to, like, a random adjective generator, but there is a list, so I am going to choose from the list, I'm just going to do it in a guided way.
So for my positive personality trait, got the letter P. What P words are here? Positive P words. “Perceptive, personable, purposeful.” Interesting. I think I'm going to go with “perceptive” just because that jumps out to me the most as like a character that is interesting to write from the perspective of?
Neutral personality trait. The random letter I got is L. The L words on this list… ooh, the L words… the L words on this list. Ah. Immediately foiled in my plan. This one's not quite as thorough. There are no L words. What's closest? M. “Mellow” or “moralistic.” Oh, that's very funny. I don't, I don't– mm. I was going to say that I'm not drawn to moralistic because I don't necessarily want to play or write that type of character at the moment, but the phrasing of this game, like the phrasing of this section as “before you're unplugged”– I think, I think it's just supposed to be like, this is character creation, but it does make me think like maybe I've changed a little bit?
Yeah, ultimately I think– so, mellow doesn't do a lot for me, so I think I'm going to go with moralistic and I feel like maybe that has to do with, you know, the situation that I find myself in.
Negative personality trait… D. D words in the negative personality traits. “Deceitful, dependent, desperate, destructive, disorganised, disturbing.” Huh. “Disorganized” is so funny, like in comparison to some of these other very intense negative personality traits.
I guess “moralistic” and “deceitful” is a very fun combination because it's like, so I don't think lying is wrong, or I think that lying is worth it to do whatever the thing I consider important is? Which is great.
So the three character traits I've chosen, which will be crossed off for everyone else are perceptive, moralistic, and deceitful.
Now I'm going to answer the “What's your story?” questions. This is a Matrix situation, right? Yeah.
Who were you when you were plugged in? Hmm. Not a lot of guidance here, so I'm going to look for a random profession generator… keep trying to find ones that aren't claiming to be generative AI… great.
The suggestions it gave me are “shoemaker, plumber, typist, train driver, laborer, advertising executive,” uh, “croupier,” I know that word, but I forget what it is. It's not “croup-ee-ay”, is it? Croupier. Ah, somebody who works at a gaming table. That's me right now! “Disc jockey, leaflet distributor, and courier.” Ooh. Immediately drawn to disc jockey. The idea that in the quote unquote matrix, I was on the radio, so essentially like an essential part of the internal propaganda machine is definitely very appealing to me.
“How long have you been unplugged?” Ooh, a while, I think. It has to be recent enough that there's a reason that I'm starting this journal, though– I actually, oh, it's so funny. I've, I've, I've been considering– I guess subconsciously, I must have been thinking about this– when I was planning this episode, I was thinking about using a framework of a post-apocalyptic radio station and I've, I've walked right, I've walked myself right into that concept.
So I think what it is… I've been sort of wandering and the thing that has changed, the reason that I'm starting this journal, this record, is just that forever, for like ages, I have been– somebody offered me a job working at the radio station and I was like, absolutely not, like, like that, that is, that is like a part of me that was used as a tool, right? Um, I don't want to do that again. And I think just slowly, like, you know, I started doing some sort of mechanical or technical work at the station. Like I was like, I can do repairs. I learned all this stuff. Uh, you know, at least I thought I did. Memory's funny like that, right? Like it's like, well, I remember learning all of this stuff. Those memories were implanted, but I do have that knowledge. So I was just like, you know, helping out with the electronics, keeping the station on the air and then something happened– maybe I'll figure that out in my first entry– that was like, okay, yes, I will do this. I will be on the air. I will be part of you. You know, I've had like a little bit of a whole journey before this even happened.
So, “How long have you been unplugged?” I'm going to say one year. Is that crazy? I think I'm going to do a year, which means the next question of “Have you regained some strength before starting your journal or you fresh out?” is, yeah.
“Are your loved ones still plugged in? Are they still alive?” Hmm. So I think it's complicated. I think that when I was plugged in, I was very much a like, you know, the dad who's going to learn a lesson in the Christmas movie? Very career focused. And so I don't think I had a lot of loved ones on the inside because that was just easier. So I just, you know, was very married to my career. And I think one of the first things that happened when I woke up was remembering like, oh, I did have people, you know, before I got plugged in. And I think they are long gone? Not exactly sure why yet, but I think it's the kind of thing of like waking up and being like, oh, I thought I was alone. I'm not alone. Ahh… yeah, actually, I am. I am alone.
Oh, and I think just to like make sure that I'm playing in the right realm of the game, because it does really want, it wants you a little bit, it seems like to have been woken up recently? I think a part of the thing is that I left the city? Like I woke up, you know, in the city core and I just, everything was too much and I just like went out into the wastes. Um, so I'm– I’m recently returned to the city itself. And so there is stuff that is still like fresh and new because I just kind of like wandered off and was a hermit in the radioactive barons or whatever for a year, trying to figure some stuff out.
So with some of that starting to be figured out, I think I'm going to do the pull for my first journal entry because I think it's sort of in the process of writing my introductory entry I feel like I'll find more of the character. So we're going to shuffle these again, draw a card and roll a d6.
Ooh, okay. Got the nine of diamonds and a six. So diamonds with a six: “betrayal.” Oh my goodness. Okay. So the emotion that is– that I'm feeling as I write is betrayal and nine, the value nine is “surprise help.” Okay. That's a really interesting combination.
The first two things that come to mind are of course, like I was betrayed in some way and then the surprise help was somebody helping me recover from the betrayal. But the other thing that it could be is that the betrayal is the help, or the help is the betrayal.
What are my traits? Perceptive, moralistic and deceitful. Yeah.
So I think– oh, maybe I'm not a host yet. Maybe I'm calling into the radio station? Hmm. No, I think it has to be something about– so I'm feeling betrayed by– I think I'm going to lean into like, I'm feeling betrayed, but by somebody who helped me. Um, the help is the betrayal. So I'm sort of like, I think it's going to be me having landed back in the station, having landed in the station doing a show, my first show. And it is like this begrudging acceptance that I'm doing the right thing.
So I think, I think it's going to be that I was sort of shoved in front of the mic. Uh, like it's like, it's a, you know, “Hey, by the way, so and so called out sick.” And I'm like, “Oh shit, well, what are you going to do for the show?” And they're like, “I actually have a great idea. Can I show you?” And I'm like, “Yeah.” And they pull me into the studio and they're like, “Look over there.” And I look and they walk out and they shut the door and they do the classic, you know, silent and five, four, point for three, point for two, point with one, light goes on. We're live.
So I'm going to go and write my first ever– my first moments hosting this, this radio show. Yeah.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): Good evening, Duraki. You're listening to Doom FM, your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news. Don't touch that dial. Don't caress that panic button. I know my voice might be unsettlingly familiar to some of you, but I promise you're still in the real-real.
I know that sinking feeling too, listener. You miss a step going down the stairs or something isn't where you swore you left it or a wild dog looks at you for a little too long and you just… wonder. If you're anything like me, you do it less and less, but you do it.
It's unnerving. Isn't it? In retrospect, the things our brains could just smooth over– the badly coded neighbour who always greeted you with the exact same intonation, the way food fell apart on your tongue, dissolving like a cheap streamer eaten on a dare at a birthday party. General anaesthesia at every single doctor's appointment. Remember getting knocked out just to have your blood pressure taken? Why didn't they just come up with a better lie?
But I'm not here to do Potrebylat survivor stand up. I’m not that kind of hack. I'm the kind of hack who… I'm here to… well. Still trying to figure that out, if I'm honest. I left for a while, you know. It's a rough kind of freedom out there in the wastes for sure, but it is a freedom. But here I am, Duraki, holed up in a studio in a bunker, one of many studios in one of many bunkers, breathing onto a hot mic, trying to find that flow that refuses to give the air a chance to die, staring at Producer Dag’s shit eating grin behind the glass– oh, she gave me the finger, very professional environment here in the DOOM ROOM– speaking to you.
So I think that must be what pulled me back. There's something I can do for you, Duraki. There's something we can do for each other. We can carve out our own shitty freedom here under the searchlights, over the barbed wire, through the field and into the shelter, until one day it's freedom without qualifications.
For that missed stare feeling, that heart-skipping “was that a glitch or just a human mistake thought,” when your clothes aren't wearing as well the next day and your hair isn't falling in quite the same way and you wonder just for a second, am I still..? Or did I? For all of that, we've got Nine Days with Absolutely (Story of a Girl).
You're listening to Doom FM.
SATAH: Okay, gotta pull the card for my second entry. Gotta grab the PDF again.
Alright, my second card is five of clubs, roll a d6: a one. Okay. So journal entry two, clubs, clubs and a one is “loneliness.” Oh no. And a five for the value is “discovered knowledge about the world.” Oh my god. Yeah, okay.
So I feel like the thing that I should explore here is the thing that I um, you know, thought about in character creation, which is like, not having… people? Like I could discover something that– I could discover something that happened to someone? That, maybe that I knew before?
It could also be like somebody that I knew on the inside. I know I didn't have a lot of people that I was close to, but hmm. I want this to be a little, like, anecdote. So it's something like, ooh, I just learned that something… isn't true… on the outside. It's something like… there's a rule that I thought, ooh yeah, so it's about like… something I was told, something I thought was true about radio? Um, that, hmm.
No, I'm going to totally go in a different direction. I found out that they're still using my voice on the inside, that they've created like an AI model or whatever. I think I'll figure it out more as I'm writing, but I'm trying to decide– maybe I mean, maybe my, the information I have isn't clear. I'm trying to figure out if like they have told people that I died or whatever they tell people when they get– about people who get unplugged, or if I've just been replaced seamlessly. I think that's going to be it. I think it's going to be um, about learning that they're still using my voice. That no one even noticed I was gone basically. Yeah, yeah, totally.
So it's that sense of loneliness of like, “No one even realized that I died.” I mean I didn't die, but I kind of did and no one even knows. And that's incredibly like– that's sad. It's like there's no one to know, there was nobody in my life to even notice. And I think it's also lonely because it gives me that like sense of alienation, of responsibility, of like– something I, something I, I don't remember if I talked about before I went off to write, but something I really thought a lot about as I was writing was the sense of this person– oh no, I totally did. Of like this person having that responsibility? You know, of being like, I don't know if this is good? And I, as I was writing had like the, oh, um, some people might know this person's voice and that might be really unpleasant for them in a lot of ways? And so I think it's kind of like having that reverberation of being like, “Wait, I maybe shouldn't be doing this,” or, “I'm having an experience that other people can't understand.” Uh, yeah, I'll find it. I'll find it in there.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You're listening to DOOM FM. Your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news. Forgive me if I falter my introductions this evening. I find myself wanting to speak very carefully. I have this urge to choose the words I say out loud with impossible precision in hopes that it will stop them from being recycled. Like if I can just avoid some assemblage of phonemes and syllables, I can keep my voice in my mouth. Like it can stay a secret that you and I alone carry, listeners. My tongue, your ears. My lips, your speakers. The electricity that translates the air I exhale into the air that touches the smallest bones of your body.
It's nice to imagine that intimacy. I want to be comforted by being alone with you, listener. It's late. Are you alone with me? Or are you listening with… a friend? A lover? You and another night owl perched on the same branch, listening to some other bird caw desperately up into the black for hours and hours?
You probably heard there was another batch of wake-ups today. Big power failure on the northeast grid popped a whole rack out into the real-real. Some of them survived. Some of them even got out. If you know how many, you should know enough to keep your mouth shut about it. Anyway, one of them– well, they got picked up by a fan of ours. Lucky thing. Still soaked in coolant, calming down in the passenger seat, even jamming a bit to our guaranteed interruption free power hour 9pm to 10pm every weeknight.
But then, as all hours do, that hour ended. And who's the first interruption but the night host, yours truly? And that survivor… damn near clawed their way out of the truck window. Because I'm still… they've still got me on the radio. On the inside. They had enough of my voice to give it to some algorithm and now they don't even have to give it the illusion of free will. They've got a host that can't go off-script, because that's all it is. And it's got my fucking voice.
Sounds like they never even missed a show. No one knows I'm gone. No one has any reason to wonder. I was always at the studio anyway; probably just seems like the natural progression of things. I mean, if any of them have even thought about it. Maybe they haven't.
Yeah. This is Kesha's Fine Line off of Gag Order. Actually fuck it, it's late. Let's play the whole album.
SATAH: Yay! I love to be incredibly lighthearted and chill in a video game. Let's see what the next one is gonna be. I hope that it’s happier.
Got a 10 of spades, uh, oh and roll a d6. Five. Okay. Five in spades is “vigor.” Feeling “vigor,” love that. Reacting to spades– or, sorry, ten. “Discovered resources.” Ooh okay.
Something invigorating. What does my character give a shit about finding? Is it something for them or is it something for their radio station? Because one possibility would be a bunch of music. Which I kind of love. Yeah, maybe that's fun. Maybe I'll figure out a thing that like… so I imagine the thing that this radio station is doing is like playing… like they're digging up like physical media and playing it. And so I'm gonna think on it and find something that this person would be really excited to have. It's very possible that it's going to be Charli XCX's BRAT because that's what I've been listening to obsessively lately and so it's the easiest thing for me to imagine being very excited to find. But I think I'm gonna ponder on that.
Is there anything else that's worth exploring here about like possibilities of what this could be? No, I think… I mean yes of course, but I think I'm gonna stick with this. I like this. Let's do something a little more chill.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): [Laughing] And you're listening to DOOM FM. Your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news and tonight, all night, your number one source for some mysterious long dead bootlegger's number one jams.
For anyone just tuning in, Producer Dag, the dagger herself, sharp blade and thick handle of the DOOM ROOM, once more overachieving in the line of duty, uncovered something fucking ridiculous. A folder of CDs, each one labelled by hand with a number, maybe an adjective if you're lucky. They're in this funny little fabric case clearly designed to hold the discs.
As always, we here at DOOM FM are deeply indebted to the paranoid weirdos who came before us. A toast! To all the paranoid weirdos. A toast– to not trusting data, to not trusting the cloud, to seeing the cataclysm coming and stuffing your DVDs into bubble wrap in reinforced storage lockers. DOOM FM would be nothing without you. We'd all be playing hoop and fucking stick. I'd be forced to try and play guitar– listeners. We all suffer enough.
We've got all our best people on sourcing the artists that we've been playing. Sorry to anyone who was relying on our reporting to uncover something that might save a life, but sometimes priorities have to shift. But for now, all I can tell you is that the song we just listened to was by… some fucking guy.
Coming up next, we've got… well, I'm just as excited to find out as you are. Maybe even more, if you're sick of the songs we've gotten rotation, imagine how we feel.
After that, we'll have a call from an expert in the embarrassingly unscientific practice of handwriting analysis, trying to figure out more about the person who made these CDs by way of me describing the handwriting to her.
All here. All night. You, me, and some music bootlegger– may their presumably irradiated skeleton rest in peace and glory. On DOOM FM.
SATAH: Oh, it was… it was really nice to write something a little more goofy.
Let's see what the next card brings. Got the seven of spades and I rolled a two. Spades two. What I'm feeling is “faith.” Interesting. And what I'm reacting to, a seven, is “usable technology found.” Huh.
Faith. So obviously, there's the religious aspect. I don't think I want to go there. I just don't feel like exploring that. So it could be faith in humanity, faith in the cause… “usable technology.”
So I think it's going to be faith in humanity, sort of, or something like that. Because I think what it is, it's going to be like technology that was gifted to the station? Or to somebody. Like it's going to be… something was found and it was given to somebody else in a way that feels uncharacteristic of the wasteland.
Mm… I don't want to do something as intense as a medical technology. Yeah, I think it's going to be to the station. So– because I think it's both going to be faith in humanity and also maybe faith in the mission. You know, kind of a like, oh yeah, still trying to convince themself that there's a reason that they're here and that they're doing a good thing.
So what is it? What… what technology the radio station… not even need. Because I think I want it to be less than need. It's not like a survival thing. It's like a, oh, I thought you might find this helpful.
One thing I did set up in the last one is like they only have physical media. So I could go a direction of like, they found a hard drive that works, but I kind of, I don't even want to open that up.
The thing I'm thinking about right now is like… something that lets the radio station see inside? Like to the people who are plugged in.
The other problem I'm having is like, there are interesting things where it's like basically like a police scanner or whatever, but… there's stuff that like, you know, the format of what I'm doing makes it strange? Like if somebody found like a working police scanner type of thing and gave it to the station, that would be great, but isn't the type of thing that you'd want to talk about on air?
[Gasp of thought]
Maybe it's a record player. Like the radio station has– like plays– everything they play is off of CDs and like they have a bunch of records, but they've never been able to play them? And somebody like found a record player and rather than keep it for themself, they gave it to the radio station.
Oh, I think I like that. Yeah. Then it's kind of a like, “Whoa, you, you, you want everyone to be able to have this thing rather than just having it for yourself or dismantling it? That's amazing. That's incredible.”
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to write something like that.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You're listening to DOOM FM and that was Harry “Still-us” with Meet Me In The Hallway. Apologies for the rough landing there. We're still getting used to dismounting the records.
We've had the record player for about 13 hours now and it hasn't shown any signs of exploding. So I feel comfortable officially announcing that the Boom Twins didn't miss anything in their inspection of it. Not that I'm disparaging their work, of course– I love my house and belongings being in approximately one piece each, ladies– just that the nature of our business is one of healthy, active concern. Like a good sourdough starter. The tang of hostile suspicion is how you know we're doing what we're supposed to do.
So, I'm reluctantly getting to the point where I have to admit it seems like someone just… did a good thing.
Maybe we'll read the letter again once more for the late night crew. “Dear DOOM,” they begin. Their pen is black. It's running out of ink. A couple of words are strangely bolded from the overcompensation of tracing, giving the whole thing the surreal feeling of a code you can't crack– but we do have people on that just in case, as I'm sure you can imagine.
So they start off with, “Dear DOOM,” and given their actions, I'm inclined to believe that's really how they think about us. Then they say, “Found this. Figured more people get use of it if you have it. Crews got less ears than y'all do overall. Purse used to talk about your horde of unplayable vinyls. Hope you still have them.” We do, listeners, with one minor caveat. They're now playable.
God, I love how raiders and wreckers write. No sentiment they can't fragment.
The thing I keep going back to in this letter is the postscript where they say, “Keep an eye on the belt. Had to replace it.” Isn't that something? They found something broken, took the time to fix it, and then gave it away. Because they thought someone else could give it to more people.
So all night, we're grabbing random records out of the horde and playing the first track. Let's see. Oh my god, I think this one's a musical. Alright everyone, sit back and enjoy, uh, Judas Iscariot singing Heaven on their Minds.
SATAH: Alright, good morning. I wrote a bunch of those entries sort of in one go last night, and I'm gonna try and finish it off today so that I can have this journal to the next person with lots of time to do their part.
So, draw a card, got the four of spades, roll a d6, got a two. Four of spades and two means that I am feeling… oh, right, spades two is what I got last time as well, so feeling “faith” again. That's interesting. Um, and reacting to “new found shelter.”
The first thought I have is a new studio. I think that's… mm. The other potential thing is, like, I talked about how this character lived elsewhere for a while, and I wonder if this is them moving in with somebody essentially or like officially integrating into the community.
The other thing is, I feel like I've been struggling to play into the negative trait of deceitful, and I think, like, part… like, it… playing that out necessitates a certain level of dramatic irony in this form. Like, you need to know the truth of what they're lying about, because I imagine they're a good liar, you know? So I've been trying to… I'm trying to think of, like, ways that they could talk about having lied.
I like the new studio space, but I feel like it's not as… not quite as tied to their arc. Though also I think maybe I'm shying away from it because I don't want it to be taken away from them, because I'm attached.
Yeah, I think it's just gonna be that they found a more permanent residence. Like, they're finally admitting that they're actually gonna stay after, you know, doing this for months. They've been, like, one foot out the door the whole time, and now they're admitting, “Ah, I'm probably actually just gonna stay.” And I might play into the lying thing by, like, you know, explaining, like, “Here's some things that I was lying about.” Yeah, possibly, if I can find a good way to work that in.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You're listening to DOOM FM, your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news.
The horde of vinyls is thinning, slowly, thanks to that anonymous donation of a record player we can't stop talking about, but we're not done yet. All week, I'm picking random records and playing the first track. That was Secondhand News from Fleetwood Mac, one of the few albums we now have doubles of. But it's fun to find some familiarity in all this chaos, don't you think?
Familiarity is a funny thing. The way I invoked it there was positive. The comfort of the expected, of the known. You can come to expect and know a lot of things, though. Not all of them are good. We're remarkably adaptable creatures, and it can be easier to do something routine that sucks than something novel that's actually good.
I'm trying out something new right now that, I guess, is the latter. Some members of the DOOM ROOM found out that I was doing my particularly familiar routine of lying to their fucking faces. In this case, about having somewhere to live for the past few months. I mean, I always had a roof over my head, but even for our standards of stability– we’re your on-the-run station for a reason– learning about how I've been living got a facial expression out of Pursuant Technology herself, if you can believe it. Our weekend morning host, bastion of stoicism, knitted her eyebrows and grimaced at me.
[Soft laugh]
Maybe that's what convinced me to let them give me a hand. The unfamiliarity of her reaction, jarring me out of my routine enough to consider trying something new. Or maybe… something else. Maybe I'm ready to have both feet firmly in. Closing the door one was out of, even. I'm not sure. It's uncomfortable. It's unfamiliar.
But I believe very strongly in what we're doing here. I always have, and I'm beginning to believe I should be part of it. For real.
Let's keep trying new things together, listener. Not sure what this record is. The cover is black with a triangle and a rainbow on the front. Maybe it's a prism, refracting light? There's no name or anything. I prefer to be able to introduce it, but I'm trusting you to be in it with me, even if I can't. All night. Here on DOOM FM.
SATAH: Card time. I am beginning to get nervous that this is going to be an incredibly long run, because I haven't pulled a king or a jack or a queen or an ace yet. I could do three in a row. This is– such is the neighbour… such is the neighbour of randomness? Boy. Such is the nature of randomness. But I don't know.
So pull the seven of hearts and I'm rolling a d6. I got a two. So feeling– hearts and a two– feeling “love.” Haha! Reacting to a seven, which is “usable technology found.” Fascinating.
What does this character love? The revolution? [Light snort-laugh]
I'm not sure how to separate love from like faith or hope. What a sentence. Uh. But I haven't like established any close relationships for this person? I guess members of the crew? Like the radio– the station crew?
What kind of usable technology is exciting? I had been thinking like, phone, but I actually already said in one of the earlier entries that there was a call in. So they already have that. Could be another phone? That's kind of funny. Um, like they now have the ability to have multiple– like they can do call waiting to have multiple people lined up.
No, I think I want it to be more personal. I think I don't want it to be the– for the radio station.
Tape… player… I think… like the radio station has one, but I think this is going to be like for, you know, a birthday or an anniversary of some kind people at the radio station got this character– who I should probably name– a personal tape player so they can like listen to stuff on their own time.
Yeah, I think it's it's going to be like a– it's either their birthday or like the anniversary of them getting unplugged or whatever. And it's going to be like they've been trying– they were going to keep it a secret, but all of the other hosts have been talking about it all day and they're like staring at this gift that was left for them.
It might even be a radio because it's kind of funny to be able to write something like, “I work here and I can't listen.” Yeah, I'll figure that out. But I think I think that's the general gist of it. And so the love they're feeling is for like, you know– I don't have to tell you. I don't have to tell you. You can figure that out.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): Thanks for tuning in to our interruption free power hour every weeknight here on DOOM FM, your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news. It's time to settle in with me, Celebration Establishment, the one who carries you through the night to that sunrise we’re told is inevitable. One day, when the smog clears, I'll carry you to one we can actually see.
So… obviously there's something I have to address. I know for a fact that anyone who works for a highly illegal pirate radio station is capable of keeping their trap shut, so I'm forced to conclude that today was on purpose. Yes, as you heard all day, today is my re-birthday. One year ago exactly, I gasped my way out of a Potreblyat pod, convulsed wetly on the floor for several minutes while groping connector cables out of my skull and spine, and dragged myself out into the wastes to convalesce or croak.
I was going to let this go unmentioned. I may have even… heavily implied that it was a completely different date. But a stubborn gang of ne'er do well reporters and professional busybodies is proving increasingly difficult to keep secrets from, so here we are. They spilled the beans and played my favourite music all day. How dare they.
[Laugh]
Thank you for your calls. I'm glad I can… I'm glad that I've brought you the occasional laugh or rueful smile in the middle of the night. I'm grateful for the opportunity to accompany you from the dim change of sunset to the dim change of sunrise. I am; I'm grateful to accompany you through changes.
Thank you also to the DOOM ROOM. This is a funny thing for me to admit, but times being what they are and all, I've never owned a radio. I catch our show like anyone else, in someone else's car or on borrowed time from a neighbour.
I had planned to spend tonight detailing my theories on why Producer Dag has been so secretive about the results of a recent raid– happy re-birthday, go ahead and rip up your banter prep– but it turns out they were hiding a gift from me. A radio of my very own, recovered from some trash heap and carefully returned to life. Like me, I guess. Like a lot of us.
It has stickers on it. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but they're nice. They're… I like them. And they're there because of the sticker– here, meaning the one who sticks, the placer of stickers– knew that. And that's meaningful. It is.
Well, I'm going to redo my tracklist on the fly, but for now, here's the first song I was going to play during my investigation tonight. Spoiler alert, they're all fucking James Bond themes, that's the bit. Madonna's Die Another Day. May that title be true for as long as it possibly can.
SATAH: Alright, next card is a five of diamonds. Gonna roll.
Ooh, so a diamond three means feeling “hatred.” And a five for what I'm reacting to is “discovered knowledge about the world.” Ooh.
Well, last time I did this, it was about finding out that they were still using me as a radio host on the other side. Um… so I might play off of that? I'm also… I'm drawn to making it bigger. Um, like the idea that this is some sort of big discovery that affects a lot of people, like a data dump.
Yeah, I don't– I'm going to figure that out while I'm writing, I think, but I think like some sort of big data dump that a lot of people will have been affected by– probably even like something that was like covered, like uncovered by reporting from this radio station. And the hatred is, you know, hatred of this corporation. I feel like that's more interesting to me than trying to find like a personal hatred, at least in this moment.
So yeah, not 100% sure. But something in that area for sure.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You're back on DOOM FM. That was General Theory of Nothing by Cosine Tenacity. If you haven't heard of them, blame Potreblyat.
If you're just tuning in for the first time today, I'm sorry and welcome. This morning, Purse started naming names from the huge record excavation we've been working on for months. She talked about the reporters they killed to stop them from causing the cataclysm. After her, Sit did a rare weekend appearance to dissect some internal memos that have only previously been seen heavily redacted. Director and Selection read the words of some assassinated poets. Con talked to callers who found out their friends and family didn't die from a bad unplug, they were purposefully disposed of by corporate thugs.
We're going to be combing through all this stuff all weekend, all week, all month. It's a huge amount of information, and we're sharing all of it.
I'm not as articulate as some of those folks. I try my best and we have a good time. We got different specialties. We’re all– we all have different limitations on how well we can speak when we're angry. So I'm going to let the experts talk. What I'm going to do is my job. I'm going to play some tapes.
Tapes. Ol’ reliable. We can play CDs and records at the station, but if you're not listening to us, you're probably listening to a tape. For a long time, we've assumed that recordings are divided neatly up into pre-cataclysm and post-cataclysm, which felt reasonable to an extent. Who had time to record while the world was actively falling apart? Who would want to? Or maybe tape recorders weren't working. They work now, but maybe they didn't for a while.
In retrospect, it's pretty naive, right? There's one thing humans will do, it's make stuff. Try to share it. There probably isn't an era in history without it, no matter how violent or apocalyptic.
So yes, during the cataclysm, people were making music. A lot of it. Protest songs, obviously, and coded political messages and songs that don't sound like protest songs, I'm sure, but also just… songs. Feelings. Thoughts. Shit people write music about. And they've just been sitting in the box where they were unceremoniously shoved after the creators were killed.
Our corporate overlords never wanted you to hear these songs. We're not giving them what they want. Tonight, all night on DOOM FM: martyr special.
This next one doesn't have a track list, but the band is called Transport. Let the ghosts speak to you. They might be able to keep you from joining them for a while.
SATAH: All right, journal number eight.
Oh my goodness, still not a face card. Eight of spades and a one. Spades one means feeling “overconfidence.” Interesting. And an eight, reacting to– ooh– “secrets of Potreblyat revealed.” Huh.
I think I'm going to make this one kind of easy on myself by not deciding what the secret is because Cel wouldn't, you know, say on the air, but I think I can just write them like doing vague threats. And they did just like find a whole bunch of, you know, records from them. So it makes sense. I think I think, yeah, this is just going to be sort of a chill entry with bait. Just just try to bait– bait them and tease them and annoy them being like, I know something you don't know. Yeah.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): That was Owen Pallet’s What Do You Think Will Happen Now? back to back with Francis and the Lights and Chance the Rapper's. May I Have This Dance and this is DOOM FM, where tonight, we're asking a lot of questions. We're on a bit of a streak with answers, is the thing. We're continuing to dig through the results of our record excavation and we're finding a lot of interesting answers to a lot of very, very interesting questions. Like– well. Wouldn’t you like to know? Aren't you so, so curious what we found out? What they didn't want us to know, but now we do?
In time, I promise we'll tell you. Or you'll see the effects and you'll know. 
But for tonight, since we're on a bit of a roll, I'm just throwing questions at the wall. Questions artists have been asking for a century or more. Here's one I think we'd all like to know the answer to– maybe we're closer than ever.
It's Four Non-Blondes with What’s Up?
SATAH: Okay, we've officially passed the lowest– I did like practice pulls to see approximately how long this game would take and the lowest one I had before I pulled three face cards was nine. So we're about to pass that.
But it is our first face card! Jack of diamonds and I rolled a two. Diamonds two, feeling “scepticism.” That makes sense… because the Jack is… a symbol of hope. Okay. But that makes sense. This character would absolutely be sceptical of hope. I am reacting to “a meeting with peaceful mutant survivors.” That's awesome.
So Cel lived in the wastes for a while. And so they probably saw a lot of mutants and stuff. Um…
[Gasp] Oh, yeah. Okay. So these are mutants from the waste who have been listening to the radio station and they played– they're reacting to um, like us playing the tapes of musicians who the corporation had killed? It's either friends of theirs or one of them. Maybe that's my scepticism: they're claiming like, “That was me. They didn't manage to kill us. We survived. We're just different now.” And I'm like, Mm, maybe. Yeah, that's that's probably what it's going to be. Maybe I'll find out more as I'm writing.
But I think that's what it is. They are survivors who have heard us broadcasting the tapes and they are familiar with them and so they wanted to speak with us.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You're listening to DOOM FM. Your on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news. Coming up next, we've got… well, something pretty exciting.
We're going to debut a new single from TOXOPLASYMBIOSIS. If that name rings a bell, it might be from a couple weeks ago when I spent a few nights playing music from artists who were assassinated by our corporate overlords.
Now, how could a dead musician record new music? Great question. Allegedly, at least one of them didn't actually die. They were left to die but didn't, deep in the wastes. Which should be enough to kill you by itself, but sometimes it doesn't matter what should happen, only what does.
So they laid there in the muck soaking up who knows what for who knows how long and eventually they got up. A little different. More different now after a few years out there, but on their own feet. Just the two of them, even, which isn't the case for everyone out there.
So I guess some of the upgrades we've been doing lately are working and our signal is now reaching further than ever. We're bringing in a whole new audience from where we didn't even know there was one to be found. And wouldn't you know it, they tune in the very day that we end up playing music made by a bunch of their friends and comrades.
You wouldn't blame them for wanting to just keep quiet out there but I guess they wanted to send a little message. Try as you might, you can't just bury the past. Especially if you don't double tap it.
So here we are with the new single from TOXOPLASYMBIOSIS, or what remains of them: STILL FUCKIN KICKIN. 
SATAH: An Ace, the Ace of Clubs. And we'll roll a d6 and get a 5. So for clubs and then rolled 5, feeling “guilt,” reacting to, and an ace is… a bad one right? Yes. Ooo. Okay, reacting to “Potreblyat defenses find you.”
Man, how intense do I want to get with this? Because feeling guilt can mean a lot of different things, like whether it's deserved or not, I'm not 100% sure.
But what, what, what, what could they find? Obviously a radio station. It could be me, specifically. Like I could go back to the well of um, my voice being used, and it's the kind of thing of like, you know, the defenses finding me and mocking me, like “thanks for giving us more material” or whatever. But I don't think I want to retread that. So finding one of the stations is definitely possible.
Maybe… yeah. I think probably they're gonna do a raid of some kind, trying to get back some of the material that the radio station took. And so the guilt, I think, is probably something like, you know, “maybe I shouldn't have played– like maybe I goaded them too much.” Though I did– I did have the characteristic moralistic, which makes me think like they would think like, “I was doing the right thing.”
Yeah, I think, I think I'll find a little bit more of the motivation in the writing, but I know that there was a raid and yeah, yeah, let's just, let's, let's, let's find that in the, in the writing.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): You’re listening to DOOM FM, your particularly-on-the-run station for pre-cataclysm tunes and uncensored news. For anyone just tuning in now, I'll say again, sorry for the change in plans, but I won't be taking calls tonight. Hopefully Talkback Tuesday will be in full swing again soon, but my shows are going to be a little different for… some amount of time. Just while we beef security back up again.
It's hard to balance wanting to explain things to you, share whole truths, never bury something you could uncover, all of the shit we'd have on little embroidered pillows around here if that were something we did… it's hard to balance that with safety. We're always having to evaluate that balance. Constantly, all day, every day, but especially right now.
So yes, I'll say what everyone else has been saying. We are united in this. We're not going to stop. A couple lucky raids and a few smashed crates of tapes will barely slow us down. We're glad they're scared. They should be.
What I want to say that the rest of the DOOM ROOM doesn't necessarily agree with me on is just that… I think… I think that I learned– well, I think I'm remembering that someone with my… stature… my history… needs to be a little more careful than– well, maybe than I have been.
The general consensus is that there's no reason to believe that my presence contributed at all to the increased efforts, that it's just a sign we're on the right track with what we're exposing. I just can't help but wonder if the increased attention I brought bringing my voice to this project…
Well, it isn't– it isn’t worth dwelling on. We're doing the right thing. I’m… it took me so long to be convinced to stay, it would be probably just giving them what they want if I were to leave now. And we're doing the right thing. We are.
Okay. Um.
So, yeah, I usually try to keep my banter in the same tone as the theme, but anyway, um, resilience, right? Uh. This is Childish Gambino's A Place Where Love Goes.
SATAH: Next card. Two of diamonds. I was starting to wonder if this was just going to be the run of face cards that would end the game, but not yet. Got at least one more diversion. So I pulled a two of diamonds. I'm going to roll a d6. Got a three. So with the diamonds and a three, the thing I'm feeling is “hatred.” That makes sense given stuff that's been happening. And two, the thing I'm reacting to, is “a new path reveals itself.” Huh.
Okay. Well, my first instinct is like, you know, I've been wallowing in my guilt and anger over the raid and the new path is like some sort of, you know, direct, like very reckless violence. But I think, you know, as I'm, as I'm thinking about it, I think that what it's going to be is a path that I'm not taking.
Yeah. So I think it's going to be that somebody from the corporation like reached out to me and they were like, “Hey, you've been feeling really shitty, right? About how maybe being around you puts your friends in danger? Well, we'll stop bothering them if you just come back and work with us or something.” I'm going to have to think of like how I want to characterise the corporation. Like if they're doing that in a super naive, overconfident way, or if they actually have a genuinely compelling offer to give.
But I think that's what it's going to be. It's going to be the path that has revealed itself is one that I'm refusing to take and the very act of like considering it or having been offered it is the thing that has like ignited this hatred and probably rage.
SATAH (AS CELEBRATION ESTABLISHMENT): Welcome back to DOOM FM. Your on-the-run station for pre cataclysm tunes and uncensored news.
This has been a… long, long day for me. Long week, long month, long life. Mm… may that last one only become more and more true.
I thought I should let you know something. I got a job offer today. Yes, indeed– from a listener of the show, in fact. A listener who tortured some encryption data out of another listener. A corporate spy with a gun on her hip and a posture like she wasn't worried about having to use it. Not because no one was going to get shot, of course, but because the shot would come from somewhere a little less expected. You know the type.
So what this listener says to me– like a lot of you, she wanted to offer her support after my little show of insecurity last week. I've appreciated a lot of that support, but this particular form of it… well, not exactly what I'm looking for, actually.
The job offer had the standard trade: you give us a little something, we'll give you a little remuneration. Not in money, of course, but in a lack of something. Attention. She claimed they'll lay off the station– no more raids, no more running– if I just pick up where my plugged in version left off out here, become the voice of their propaganda on the outside, maybe do some pickups for the internal station too, just when it's necessary!
She tried to make it sound like they're only bothering us for fun! They don't care about the work we're doing! It's inconsequential. It wouldn't even really be a problem for me to leave, you know, not like we're having an effect!
But that's bullshit. I'm– listen. I'm not going to tell you I don't think I'm a liability. But everyone, every person, every relationship, everything that we do together is laden with liabilities. They're inherent and necessary and we take them on on purpose so that we can access the benefits they also grant us.
The rest of the DOOM ROOM… [Laughs disbelievingly] wants me here. I want to be here. The work is real and I don't believe for a second that we don't scare them.
I'm sorry that I ever made it seem like I might leave. I'm staying here with you until we get what we deserve, one way or another.
Here's another song from the TOXOPLASYMBIOSIS upcoming album: YOU OWE US.
OUTRO
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.
You haven't met them yet here, but you can find HB at gm36.itch.io.
You can find the similarly elusive Eclipse at eclipse.gay.
You can find Satah– that's me– at posatahchips on Twitter, and check out my other work at gaygothvibes.online.
Next week, HB and Eclipse and I will continue our game of Unplugged Survivor by We Are Heroes Productions and the Tabletop for the End of the World podcast, linked in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there.