SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I'm your host, Satah, and I am showcasing multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. You can support the show financially at patreon.com/foliopod to get early access to the bonus feed or join as a free member to get slightly delayed access to the bonus feed.
This is the final episode of our games of The World We Left Behind, a game about exploring an alien planet and discovering what happened to the sapient species that once called it home by Samantha Leigh. With me again are Nick Butler and Dorian. check out tidebreakerrpg.com for a big sale on Nick's cinematic TTRPG Tidebreaker and support your local library for Dorian.
GAME
DORIAN: We are back!
NICK: Okay. So, Eugene has escaped from the Apex Beast. Um, he returns back to the planet. It takes him about a day or two, uh, because he had to trigger the hyperdrive to escape at the last second and that put him a little bit off schedule.
He refuels his systems with some synthetic aphrodite on a nearby space station before returning. And he's back and he's fresh. He's got six energy again. 
SATAH: I'll have to do landing the ship again, which I was not expecting to have to do.
NICK: For to save time, I'm not going to do the landing the ship section by rolling the dice and then figuring out where we're landing. We're going to land somewhere undiscovered. Uh, so.
SATAH: I roll a d6 onto the map. Okay, I landed on– I rolled a– oh god, it was either a four or five. I picked it up before I could read it. It doesn't matter, but it matters to me.
I rolled on the card of the… those vines that punched through the container. But I don't have to investigate that again. I can turn my die to six. So my energy is at six.
And I'm going to go over– there is an unmarked, unflipped card right beside, which is in row two, column two.
DORIAN: I have filled out more than half of this map, so. Like two thirds of it. So those last couple of aces are coming.
And like I spoke it into existence, I've just turned up the ace of diamonds. So this is going to be a very brief day. You know, I just finished camping and then I find an ace immediately. So this should be a pretty big one. I'm going to spend my whole day here because camping again is what happens.
So each ace identifies a key question. Red, as a reminder, is the present. [Die rolling] I'm… going to reroll, just to see, because I got "Where is the species now?" and I don't know if I want to or can answer that. I could flesh it out with like what we know as a people, my people. But… I don't think I can answer it with the information I've found on the planet. Well, I guess part of it is I find a trait that brings me closer to understanding what happened, so… yeah, no, I am going to reroll because most of the possible answers to this I feel like aren't in line with the story I think I'm telling. So I am going to fudge it.
[Die rolling] Well, I'm not going to do "what has been preserved." I did that already. [Die rolling] If I roll what is preserved a third time in a row, fate has spoken, and I'll find another thing that's been preserved, but I don't want to.
[Die rolling] Okay. "What has changed since the species disappeared?"
I think what I realise. is that the landscape has changed. Or, like, this plateau is so stark, right? Like, so much of what I've found so far has been, like, pretty lush. There's been, you know, like, the rich clay and the river. There's been all of these plants. And then I come across this, like, really stark, kind of bare, rocky… area. And I think what I find is…
In the night, one of those snake type things has gotten closer to me, uh, which is alarming when I wake up. But like watching it- watching this mammoth thing, um… I think it's sort of scaly, like the lizard things. But I think like being this close, I realise the scales aren't like the scales on the animals I'm used to, or the animals we're used to in– on Earth. I'm not sure exactly how they're different.
But I think this thing, like… it doesn't have a lot of, like, visible features on it. But as I watch– I've been sticking near the end of the edge of the rocky area. So like there's there's area near me that has like some soil and some sort of like scrubby light vegetation. And as I watch, this thing is like moving across that area, and I think it's just–  it's eating everything. Like as it moves across, it's almost like, you know, a vacuum or an eraser like moving across- across the land. And I think it does move across like it's not like a snake in that it moves forward led by the head, like– the length of its body is moving like across the land. It's almost like it's leading from the center and kind of undulating. And it's just like– it eats basically everything in its wake.
And behind it, like, the soil's gone. So like these things have been moving across the land. It moves slowly but like it is sweeping sp basically the land behind it and it seems like this rocky plain is kind of the result of these things grazing. And probably it restores itself given time, but I don't know what kind of time frame. And so what has changed is that the landscape itself has changed, and it seems to be partly because of these creatures expanding their territory.
SATAH: It's the three of clubs. Three is a triangle, the best shape. It's tempting to do the elevators again, but instead I'm doing… five triangles that are sort of… close to interlocking, you know? They're all beside each other. Three of them are right side up. Two of them are upside down. So they all just fit together. Could be teeth, even. Closed, bared teeth. Who knows?
Clubs. Landscape. Hmm. Huh.
If they were all right side up, it could look like a mountain range. But the interlocking things make it difficult to think… huh.
So I think what this is, is that it is actually… it's a bunch of triangular shipping containers. They are built to be able to slot together like this to keep things separate, but take up sort of a minimal footprint. And the thing that's landscape-y about them… first of all, they're huge and there are so many of them. And I think that they've been built together, slotted together to build this big wall or border or dividing line of some kind. Almost like a big dam or something. And it's just this like intimidating dividing line between… I don't know what, and myself, that I think obviously shows signs of like… they probably weren't just dumped here like this, right? They were- they they were probably moved there on purpose by whoever was living here. But it's just large and looming and intimidating.
DORIAN: I do think I'm just gonna pretend like I camped after finding that, uh– that ace, because I- I don't have it in me to immediately camp and answer questions about only that card. It feels a little weird.
I am bending rules left and right here. I don't necessarily recommend that for playing a game but at the same time, I don't not recommend it! Especially for a solo thing. You get to construct your own story and figure out what works best for that story and for me right now, uh, the pacing necessitates that I forge onward.
NICK: And this is the eight of spades. Eight symbol is a cross. Spades is a vestige.
So this vestige is going to be… oh, what is- what is the term for a, uh… it's like an aquarium but for plants… not a garden.
[Small sound of effort] Keyboard! You're like way out of where I usually keep you.
A terrarium. Yeah. That's what we're looking for. He's found a terrarium. It's, um- it's a big glass enclosure. It has, like, all of the necessities for managing plant life, and um, there's signs that there was things used to modify the plants. Not in a way that they modify the animals or whatnot, but in a way that they almost like… like, cross-pollinating things in a way?
So I think they were trying to do something unique with Aphrodite, and that might have been what got them into the trouble that they got into. But we're going to go north and find out what happens.
DORIAN: Ten of diamonds. Okay, so we're back with plants, and a ten is an arrow. I've done two of these already, you'd think I would remember.
An arrow with plants is kind of interesting… um. Drawing a couple arrows.
And I think because I don't want to really encounter the snake, I'm– Ihead away from it. I'm not heading back into the center of the rocky area, but I'm not sticking near the border because that is the area that the snake thing kind of was… tracking.
And I think, you know, I go in the direction I think it came from. And I think as I walk along that area for a while, I start to see like these little– not immediately after it, not- that's not the timescale we're talking about. But, like, I do start to see evidence of stuff growing in the cracks in the rock that we established.
And it's like these like vertical like shoots. They're a little like the bamboo-y plants, but not very, because those grow by the river. But there's new growth. It's coming from like deep in the earth. And so like the fact that the rock is exposed and like some sunlight has started to get into these cracks in the rock is presumably what allowed these plants to start to grow.
I'm going to call these, like, The Deep Shoots. So there's new plant life growing amid these rocks. It's not quite as barren a space as it initially seemed.
SATAH: And I'll turn my energy down to five and flip this card in column three, row two… the king of hearts.
Okay. This king is holding a sword kind of just slung behind his head very casually with an empty hand put in front of his chest. And I'm just going to draw something between the two hands so it looks like he's holding– you know, the two flipped kings. You know how it is, the king and the mirror image of the king. So it just looks like they're stretching something between them or holding something.
And the king of hearts is, "The creature follows you."
So. I've been thinking. I don't necessarily want there to be organic life on this planet, but. [Chuckles] If, as seems to be the case, got some androids wandering around who perhaps at one point were part of either– I don't know if they're a hive mind, I don't know if they're all independent beings. I don't even fully know if they're sentient or sapient… though I have my suspicions…
But if they were doing mad science and Frankensteining, what if they're also doing that when animals die. And creating these strange… little animals that are made up of the parts of other animals? [Laughs]
I don't know if this makes a difference for other people; it's important to me to note that whether or not my character knows this, I am establishing it as true in the universe that this is only done after the animals have died a natural death. They are not killing animals to make their new weird animals. They are just finding dead animals and going, "Hey, what if I made a new creature out of you?" And it's not painful for them. They are not living in constant agony. This isn't a, like, Sid from Toy Story creating little living hell for a bunch of weird experiments. They're just odd. They're odd. They're unsettling. But they're okay. It looks weird. Doesn't it? But it lives its whole life and you have to respect that. I think it can dig in the ground for tubers. Etc.
And so, probably because there was a security alert of some kind, it seems, this creature is following me… because it moved in here to keep watch, in part. Or was brought here to act as an alert system or something, or just followed the androids. I don't know. It's- it's definitely related to the fact that I was discovered last time I was here, but. They don't seem to be full of malice or anything. There's no mal intent. It is just a strange, almost abstract creature made of three other types of creatures that's following me around.
How is that related to what I drew? … Tube. It's part snake. It's part snake! This is a weird snake. Weird snake with weird wings and two… limbs. A snake with arms and wings. The arms usually are just folded up and- and not– they don't really use the arms to propel themselves. It's unclear if they can actually fly, though I suspect they can at least hover. Mostly they just dart around like a snake, but they can use their weird little paws to manipulate objects.
I love this creature. I understand that I'm describing an actual horror, but I love it so much.
And it just starts following me around. And I think it will for a little while.
I've written "snake with arms and wings follows me," but with a smiley face to indicate it's okay.
It okay!
NICK: Eugene's energy is going to drop down. We uncovered a seven of clubs. Curved lines. Curved lines is a seven. Clubs is a landscape.
Oh… I accidentally kind of made this look like a dick. Alright, well, anyway, this is a landscape, and it kind of looks like a dick, so we're going to just make it like a giant mesa.
Dude, why am I being so phallic today? I said my spaceship looks like a dick. My– this landscape looks like a dick that I drew… like, Freud would have a fucking field day with me right now. [Laughing] Anyway.
Uh, so, yeah, it's a mesa. The mesa is definitely going straight up. It's not leaning left or right or anything like that. It's just living its best life.
Um, with that, we're going to drop our energy to four, and we're going to head west.
DORIAN: Three of hearts. Now, hearts is a creature. Three is a triangle.
Triangle is interesting because I've spent a lot of time like on this fourfold symmetry idea… I've drawn a little, like, sort of, like, almost spiral around that triangle. It reminds me of a seed or something.
So I think what I find, um… when I'm poking around like some of these sort of like– I think I lever out like one of the pieces of rock to take a look below and get a better look at those plants. And I think I see that at the roots of those plants are something that I think are like… eggs of some kind? They're these sort of like coils, but like they're– it's a– it's an orb. At the first I think they're seeds, but then they're too they're too large for that. And then like I think with some closer careful examination I do realize that they are eggs.
And I don't know for sure that they are the eggs of these rock snakes, but I– I raise the question in my little journal, because I think that's a- a plausible thing based on what I know about you know like life cycles and that kind of thing. If these things are somehow like laying as they proceed, eating everything.
SATAH: [Laughing] Turn my energy down to four and… go down to column three row three. Ten of clubs. Yes. Ten is an arrow.
So I've drawn two arrows at kind of a 90 degree angle, looking most of all for sure like the two hands of a clock. And club is a landscape!
Because it looks like the hands of a clock, I could be sort of metaphorical with the interpretation and say it's like a landscape that shows time passing… could also be directional and it is something landscapey that is both very tall and very… uh, long… to the right. Does that mean anything?
Yeah, I think it's passing of time. It's… for the first time I see structures. The remnants of structures that were built in the distance. But it's kind of like, you know, when you're on the highway and you just see collapsed barns at various stages of just not existing anymore? It's that. But most of them are pretty far along. But this is the first time I've seen… what looks like a new structure that wasn't just like fully created from one of these– you know, just moving into the shipping container. Like actually building something new.
I don't know who did it. But clearly they haven't been here for a while because they are just very much falling apart.
DORIAN: The five of hearts, which is a rectangle.
I think I find like, um… I want it to be some kind of, like, representation. Like the– the prompt for one of the animal things was like a broken statue of a bird. And the idea that I'm finding not a literal creature, but a representation of something is– is interesting to me.
And I think, um… I've sort of been heading back, not exactly in the direction I came, but like back towards like sort of… I'm exploring the area around that amphitheater because I'm still trying to hope– find, like, more evidence of the people, because they're who I've decided I'm interested in.
And I think I find, like, an area that I think was- was cleared. Where the rock was scraped clean some time ago because there's more of these like shoots and like that kind of growth. Uh, but on one of the larger pieces of rock– it's kind of obscured by the new plants at this point– but there's like, uh, an etching in the– in the rock of– of one of these, uh, these like large snake things. Like, there's a representation of it that these people have drawn.
And I think that, like, I initially just think it's almost like normal wear in the rock because it does sort of like initially start to– like, look a bit like a squiggle. Um, and I identify it as like a representational artwork, though, which makes me think I'm getting close to finding something.
And I know I am, because there's only a few cards left.
SATAH: Turn my energy from four to three. And I'm gonna go over to column two in row three, which is the ace of clubs!
So. Rolling on the table for black cards… three. "What was the species studying?" Augh. Cool.
I mean, shit. They were creating life from death. I guess they specifically weren't, actually. Yeah, that's interesting. The androids were doing that. What were the constructs, as it were, focused on?
It is tempting to still make it related to death. That's because that's also– that's me. Yeah, uh-huh. Carpenter playing a game and being like, "I feel like it might be related to wood."
What is the trait? Clubs are landscapes, right? But I guess probably a vestige. And the way that the trait… oh, the trait type is– okay, well. So what this is– right. I keep thinking that the trait is like plant, vestige, landscape, creature, but the trait is actually describing what the thing is.
And so what this is, is a bunch of like shredded medical records that were being painstakingly taped back together. And they still have big incomplete parts, but they were trying to reconstruct them. And the thing that they were studying was their own history, as in the history of the people whose bodies created them. Just trying to get a sense of who are the people that I'm made of. Who I don't think are all human, by the way. Like, no particular reason to think that they would be. Humans and aliens, whatever. ut as much as possible, trying to trace back, who are the people that I'm literally made up of?
And they were probably doing a lot of different types of research into that. They were studying this in a lot of ways, but this is the first indication of it. This is the thing that I find is these taped together shredded medical records that are like grouped into piles and notated a little, maybe? With like, these three people are all Cindy who needed that heart.
Yeah. And I assume that I found these in a shipping container of some kind. That's part of why they're preserved. You know, they haven't just been left out in the elements. I found a weird library– research library shipping container that they made.
"Have you encountered any other traits that relate to the key question?" No, not really. Unless the lab explosion was somehow related to this, which is possible, I guess. But… not in a way that's immediately obvious, at least.
"Review the aces and write any new details you've learned." Nothing yet.
NICK: We found the King of Hearts. So it's a creature. It's in trouble. And what we're going to do is we're going to say it is the Apex Beast. But this one, I think, is its mate.
Its mate is being harassed, not by other animals, but by people. These people, they look like– they do look like the aliens from the research lab, but something's happened to them. They're not wearing the garments of those that would work the jobs that would lead them to, uh… to doing the research to- to, um, terraform this place and to- to make it, uh, suitable for- for- for life forms of, like– their type of life form. Or even- even just like, you know, humans and shit.
But like, it seems that they- they have, um– they're- they're almost prehistoric looking. Like they- they have crude weapons. They have like loincloths and shit. Like they're like leather, and it's not– it's not cured leather or anything like that. These are just– these are very, uh– think Flintstones, right? Like, they're– they're, um, furs.
And they're hunting this beast. Eugene has had a run-in with this, uh, with this species before. But like he he sees this and there's something that that triggers within him and he yells, "Stop! What are you doing?!"
The humanoids don't respond to him.They continue what they're doing, and they grunt, and they go to attack. The Beast whips out a leg, and just… uh, they don't survive.
The Beast looks at Eugene. It roars. Eugene throws his hands up. He backs away. He goes, look, man, I don't want any problems. I'm out, yo. I'm sorry.
The Beast kind of understands this and snorts a little bit. It holds its ground, and it lets Eugene walk off.
DORIAN: The nine of diamonds, plants. I think this is my first nine! I don't really know what that is. What shape is that? A half circle. That's kind of fun.
I think I continue to kind of trace backwards, because I found this place where the growth is a little older, so the snakes presumably passed by longer ago. And as I get past, like– as I see, like, these shoot plants continue to, like, gradually increase in size… and it's gradual. Like, there's hours for each portion of this journey.
They kind of open up, like, they have these broad, broad leaves that sort of, like, hang down across their stems, um, and they have kind of, like, a sap to them that I think smells quite pleasant, but is also quite sticky. And I'm beginning to put together or suspect that, like, these plants that grow up in the wake of the snakes, like, their extrusions aren't something that the snakes like. So, like, the snakes tend to not, like, circle past the same grazing area repeatedly because of these– these plants that are in the areas that they were.
And I've only got a few cards left, so I know that my next leg will be my last one, but this is time to camp again!
So I'm going to camp in this sort of grove of these plants with their big shield-like leaves. I've got my tent, so I'm not too worried about the sap getting all over me. But the smell, like I said, for me, it's pleasant. It's kind of, um… kind mildly spicy, or, like, aromatic, I guess is the word I'm looking for.
SATAH: "Which trait during this leg of the journey was most interesting?" Weird creature, for sure.
And then I think also this.
I think the weird creature is with me. I tried to close the door before it could get in here, but then looked over and it was in here anyway because it just came through one of the burrow holes. But it's just watching me. It's not doing anything. Weirdly rubbing its little paws together, which is unnerving, but doesn't seem to mean anything. It's just weird to see.
DORIAN: I don't think there's a specific trait I find most interesting on this leg because this leg has been sort of about the cumulative understanding of the kind of, like, ecological cycle that is going on here. I think– I guess I would say if one trait is the most interesting, it's those shoots that I initially noticed, because they're what sort of like clued me into what was starting to happen here.
SATAH: "What do I do during my rest?" I think that I'm reading these records. Trying to get a sense– I think they're not super meaningful to me. And a lot of them probably are in that language I don't recognise, right? But I'm trying to piece together what I can and taking pictures of them to send to the Dead Ringer when I call. Because I don't think I call for this one. It doesn't feel like I have to check in yet, so I'm just chilling and reading these records.
DORIAN: And I start to, you know, I've been sketching things as I go, but what I do during my rest is I kind of start to, like, sketch my impression of or my idea of the life cycle that is happening here, where these snake things sweep across the landscape, but then when the rock is revealed, these shoots start to grow into these new plants. And the– you know, presumably at some point the eggs of the snakes hatch and something happens and I– you know, there's a lot of question marks in the journal around that stage of the process, but I'm starting to put something together here.
SATAH: I'll roll a camp scene. A two, "a resurfaced memory."
I think that what this is, is… I'm sitting here parsing through these medical records and I have this, like, flashback moment of going through my own heavily redacted medical records. Finding the non-redacted versions, finally. Maybe being given one and and realising that I'm a clone, right? Like, I was- I was living– I didn't know. And didn't believe it. But part of– I was like– I– maybe I was told and I was like. "No, that's stupid," and then it lingered with me enough that I started looking into my own past and found that there was stuff I didn't have access to that didn't make any sense? Lik, the equivalent of like calling public health being like, "Hey, can I get my immunization records?"
And they're like, "No. … Actually, yes, you can. We'll fax it over." And half of the page has been sharpied out.
And you're like, "Um… hey, what?"
And just, yeah, sitting here and I think feeling… a sudden rush of this like deep empathy, which– do I know yet that these were Frankensteined people? No, probably not. I think that I'm still thinking that– I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm like, "Maybe these are… maybe there were survivors of experiments here? But it looks like these people all died. I don't know." But I have this deep rush of empathy for whoever was sitting here trying to go through these confusing records and piece together a story, piece together history in some way, because I had to do the same thing. And I was lucky enough that when I figured it out, I had a clone crew to join and start running through space together and whatever.
But. Yeah. I haven't thought about that in a while because I… it's easy to forget that I didn't accept it at first. It's so much– it's my whole life now, being a clone and being with other clones that it's easy to just sort of file away the idea that I had to find a proof at one point. It feels so undeniable now. I haven't thought about it in a while, but I think about it here.
DORIAN: And my camp scene is, "a deeper understanding." Well, I think I've been explaining what that is, right? Like I am getting a sense of.. it's not what I thought I'd find. I was hoping to find, like, more about the people, but I'm getting a sense of, like, the life cycle and the ecology of this part of the planet.
And I think… I'm getting a little excited because like I'm pretty sure that this is not something that is described anywhere in our archive. Like, elsewhere on this planet, these big snake things, do not live. And so like, I think this might be it. This might be the thing that I'm able to bring back to my people as, like, my contribution to our store of knowledge.
If I find something about the former residents, that would also be great. But they've been studied more thoroughly. Not in this settlement, but elsewhere on the planet. And I think this might be like brand, brand new for the people where I'm from.
NICK: So we go back to the mesa, dropping Eugene's energy down to three. And let's see.
We find out that the mesa is a non-naturally occurring structure. It is symbolic of a culture beginning to explore art. Eugene takes a second to take a note of this and put it into his scout log, and he moves back west. We drop his energy down to two.
SATAH: All right, turning my energy to six.
So I'm going to have to go on a turned up card in order to get to my next unflipped card, which I could either do the landscape that was, like, the dilapidated structures or the first thing– I think– I found on this planet, which was the animal burrows.
I'm going to go down to the animal burrows. And I think the extra detail that I find here… no, they're old– I was going to say that I see the creature that does them. But no, I just– I think what this is is that I just I see more of these– like, this– this weird arm-snake– with– arm-wing-snake is still following me around. And I think that as I'm walking I see creatures, like– more odd creatures using these as transitway. Right? Like, clearly this is just something that– the creatures living on this planet, like, go in and out of these shipping containers all of the time using these old holes.
It doesn't look like any of them have the ability to make them. Just confirming, like, they didn't do this. Probably an extinct species did, but they use them to do whatever it is they're doing.
I think that's fun.
DORIAN: All right, last leg! We'll see how long it ends up being. You know, this could be another immediate ace or it could take a little longer.
Gonna go all the way up into my corner. And reveal the two of clubs.
I think this is my first two… and that is a full circle. Had a half circle, now we have a full circle.
I think it is time to bring back bugs. But I think… wait, no. I've drawn a bug. But this is the two of clubs. So this is a landscape feature. I remember how this game works.
There's still bugs. I think the landscape here… the plateau I've been traveling through, like the roots of these,um… the roots of these plants are, like, breaking it up a little, so, like, there's a little bit more, like– it's not, like, the big, like, fractured, like, plates, sort of. Like, there's more of a… it's, like, really big gravel. Like, the ground's, like, rockier growing. It's a little tougher to sort of, like, work my way through as I move through this forest of, like, the sappy plants, um.
But, like, so, like, the landscape is a lot more, like, gravelly. And there's more, like, different types of… small, like, orb bugs and stuff, like, kind of, like, moving through the earth. So, like, there's more– it's not as stark or as empty as, like, the areas that the snakes have more recently passed through.
SATAH: Turn my energy down to five. Go over to column three, row four. Four of diamonds.
Four is a square. Drawn a square with two other squares below it. Could be a cute, weird little robot; could be a box stacked on two smaller boxes… let's see.
Diamond's a plant.
I think it is boxes. And I think that this is– I crack open another shipping container and this is a bunch of plant material. It's useless now. It's all, like, expired and degraded and rotted. But clearly this was… probably medicinal plants? Just to keep tying it into like the biomedical theme.
It's like compost, but also seeds and just stuff that was being gotten rid of. I think– the thing that comes to mind, artificial scarcity, is like, you know how… there are corporations that try to copyright strains of plants by, like, encoding whatever into the DNA? The idea that this was like some sort of technology advanced that made it so that it would be really easy for people to grow this plant that is a very safe painkiller. And so there was a company that bought up all of the seeds of it and just destroyed them. Sent them here. Didn't even use them. Was just like, "If people have access to cheap safe painkillers they won't keep buying ours, uh, and so we're not gonna let that happen. We would rather just destroy it."
And so they sent it here and it has just rotted. This is a bunch of collections of those seeds. Which I do mark because I'm like, maybe we could extract dna from it to recreate it or something.
But I think that this is evidence of corporate malfeasance where they, um, purposefully caused the extinction of a plant. Maybe that had been like artificially developed. Like, somebody made this plant on purpose and then they just… they were like, "Hey! Technically you worked for one of our subsidiaries when you invented that plant and so it belongs to us and so we're going to claim all of it. And we're going to use it, for sure!" Shoving it in a blender.
I love to make worlds that are good. Uh. And nice and fun to live in. Big– fan of that, it's clearly my natural instinct.
NICK: He's found the ace of clubs. This is our third ace. So we have one more ace before we figure out everything that's happened on this planet.
This is a black ace. So this is something that happened in the past. We're going to roll and it's a one. "What did the species value?"
The species absolutely valued expansion and experimentation. I think what led to them being destroyed had to do something with nature biting back. If you don't respect nature, nature will absolutely disrespect you, and you're not winning that fight.
So we're going to write down "experimentation and expansion."
Oh, and the ace's trait, it was definitely a vestige where we found what gave Eugene the information that he required. There was notes, there was cave paintings, that sort of thing, that he was able to– uncovered pictograms to kind of understand what's happening. He hasn't figured all of the pieces out yet, but we're going to get to that.
SATAH: And with that, I'm going to turn my energy to four and go down to row five in column three. The ten of diamonds. Right, ten is an arrow… drawing a spiral with an arrow at the end. Diamonds are plants.
One way to interpret this is, you know, the spiral and the arrow sort of indicating like changing directions… the way that plants turn to follow the sun? I want to see a plant that turns away from the sun here, I think.
And this is probably already– also spliced together, right? That seems to be sort of the theme of what's going on on this planet generally.
But yeah, I think quite simply I walk out and I– I was in there for long enough that the sun changed position, is part of it. And I have a moment of alarm because it looks like something's pointing at me, and then I realise, oh, it's these plants. They rotate to have their backs toward the sun for some reason.
Probably think of like… these are plants that were meant to theoretically grow in less direct sunlight, and they have evolved to be able to be hardy enough to survive here, but the actual flowers can't face the sun. They can photosynthesize it, but the flowers themselves… they have to photosynthesize, like, secondarily, and the flowers have to keep rotating away from the sun so that they don't dry out and burn.
You know, plant science! Don't worry about it.
DORIAN: The Jack of Spades. The prompt for the Jack of Spades is that "the vestige seems familiar."
And what I'm seeing on this Jack is… there's a weird almost like spermy pattern on his coat. I'm not rolling with that, um. But he's holding an object that is kind of odd or difficult to parse. It's kind of like a fan. It's only got two lobes, but I'm going to add a couple more to make it fully like a– like a kind of fan or pinwheel.
And I think what I find is in the middle of this forest, a third watchtower. Um, or a third tower. I've been calling these watchtowers. But this one has a still sort of intact– I think because it's using the leaves from these– the big broad leaves from these plants I've been moving through. It's dried them out in some way, and they are still intact as a kind of fan or wheel at the top of this tower, and so I realise that, like…watchtower may have been a component of these, but this one, at least… like, it is a mill of some kind. Like a lot of the mechanism has worn away, but I recognise that kind of wheel because we use something similar where I am from.
So I don't know what it was grinding. Like there's no grain or wheat around here, but this is a mill. And like, it was– I can tell, I think from examining it that like, you know, like I think the society that was here, we know, my people know that it wasn't a super high tech one. This isn't like a windmill for like a wind turbine for electricity. It was grinding something.
NICK: We do a camping scene. [Dice rolling] And it's a strange sight.
So the sight that we see is… it's another stone circle, actually! But this one's glowing. Eugene doesn't quite understand why. He doesn't want to investigate it. Not yet. This can wait until the morning.
SATAH: And I'll turn my energy down to three. Go over to row five in column two. The King of Spades. Okay, I can draw anything. He's a grumpy looking king! Let's put a smile on that face. Cool. I've made the king smile and it's not haunting at all. It's really normal, actually.
The king of spades is, "the vestige contradicts an assumption."
What have I been assuming? Somehow I think this is going to be the thing that makes me realise who the people were, in that they were these constructs. Right? Right, because I was assuming that these were escaped experiments or… just sort of a more standard type of person. And this is a vestige that somehow puts that assumption to rest.
Is that okay? Should this be an assumption I'm making, as a player? Like, should it be about sort of a more narrative level intention? I think it's okay.
So what is it? What shows me… the truth of what was happening here, or at least something closer to it?
I'm trying not to get too gory here and I know that I haven't fully succeeded and this will still be too much for some people and I totally get it. Maybe I should have just been leaning in all the way. I always tell my guests to be as self-indulgent as they want but I have a tendency to pull back. Maybe I should have just been leaning in and making this whole episode as gross and visceral as I really wanted it to be, but. That's alright. That's a lesson that I can meditate on and percolate for another time.
Because I think what this is, is that this is labeled collections of body parts. This is a whole shipping container that's like left arms, right arms, foot. Just… various bits and organs that have been carefully reclaimed and preserved so that they could be used in the process of creating new people. And obviously they can't– they haven't been– and I think it's not only because the lab exploded, but it's like, there was some fundamental– like, they- they don't have– they weren't getting shipments of brains or hearts or whatever anymore, so this is a bunch of just spare parts. Spare people parts. Spare organic creature… human alien people parts.
They're, like, probably mostly vaguely humanoid because it's like we want we're trying to create like a specific type of thing, kinda. And something about the way that it's all carefully organised and labeled– and it's also because I've been seeing these construct creatures more and more, right? I kind of put two and two together and I'm like, "Uh, okay! So the people that lived here were built from body parts. Okay. I don't know how I feel about that!"
Eggo feels differently than I do. Because I, as a player, Satah, me, a person… obviously I told the story on purpose. I think that's great. Eggo, I think, is like "Um. Hmmm."
But also does have that, like, moment of connection with it, right? Like, the constructed person– that would- that would hit for a clone. But I think, can't know in this moment– doesn't have the knowledge that I have as a player, which is that they weren't killing people to do this, they were just finding dumped bodies. And stuff and so has a moment of like, "Oh! Am I going to be killed to have a Frankenstein's monster made of me? I don't love that. I'm going to dip out of here."
But yeah, the assumption that was contradicted was these people were regular style. Nope, you were wrong. They weren't regular style. They were amalgamated parts of corpses style.
Cool story. That I've got going on.
DORIAN: So I move past the mill to… I only got two cards left, guys.
The Ace of Clubs. This is it.
NICK: And so upon the morning, he gets up one last time. He decides to head west. When he went west, the last thing he found was the ace of spades.
SATAH: And I'm going to go over to the corner. Row one, column five… other way around, column one, row five. It is the ace of hearts.
DORIAN: Fourth ace.
SATAH: Our final ace.
NICK: We're going to roll one more time on the black table.
DORIAN: Black is the past.
SATAH: Rolling on the table.
DORIAN: A four on a black ace is, "Who or what was in conflict?" So I find a trait that speaks to who or what was in conflict. And I think I know the answer to the question. I just need to figure out what the thing I find is.
I've started to move on the map toward some stuff I found back before. I'm looking at that tablet again. So I think I'm going to find is like near this tower, this mill, there's like another building. I think it's another one of these amphitheaters.
But this one, like whether it's because it's so sheltered or what, like it still has, um– it's more intact. And it's got more of these, like, engravings like we saw on the tablet. And I think it spells out a lot of what I've already spelled– like figured out in terms of the life cycle of these snakes.
But, like, it makes clear– you know, it's, these were… this was happening. when these people lived here, and I think like the movement of these things, like the people kind of followed the movement of these like landscape altering snakes at enough of a distance that like their settlements, you know, were able to take advantage of the growth that kind of followed the snakes. And I think just like… that worked, but at a certain point, you know, like these things, like maybe it takes centuries, but like they move on a cycle. And so like… at a certain point, they began to return to territory that they had cleared, you know, many years before as the ecology evolved.
And so that's the conflict is that, like, the people here were taking advantage of the changes in the landscape brought by this like strange, enormous creature. But they weren't able to deal with the return of those creatures to the land that they were already living on. And that was like kind of the tension.
SATAH: "Where is the species now?" Noo! That's a hard question!
I think, plainly, they all died.
It's- it's weird to call it a natural death, because it's… there's very little that is natural about it, but this was a group of people who were created, constructed by some sort of AI with unknown intent. On a broader level, I am thinking, like, this AI, I think mostly meant well but doesn't always understand– doesn't- doesn't totally understand life, right? Was trying to almost maybe- almost make up for what it what it did? That it that it killed a bunch of people and was like, "Oh it's okay! I can fix it. I make new ones, see? Yay!" but I'm not sure because we're- we're not delving too deeply into the motivations of why the species were created.
But. They were created. And I think even after the lab exploded, they had certain– like, they could maintain their bodies to a certain extent, right? They could replace limbs… I doubt that they had a lot of natural healing ability. Very, you know, Death Becomes Her style, where if they got an injury… you get a cut on your hand and it's like, "Well! Probably going to need a new hand soon." And so they would just do those little, like, upgrades and maintenance things.
But at a certain point, stuff starts failing that they no longer had the ability to fix. They didn't have new parts coming in. Their lab was exploded.
But I think that in as far as you can call it a natural death, I think that they all just lived their lives. These weird constructed second lives that they were given.
And I think I– l– I– I am making it– I'm making the narrative call that they were pretty happy. It's a weird life, right? But they- they made clothes. They catalogued things. They investigated. They were people. They did people stuff.
And eventually, they… essentially lost the tools of immortality that they had. If they had sort of a never-ending access to parts then they could, to a certain extent, keep maintaining themselves, though at a certain point it probably does become a Ship of Theseus thing if you're up to, like, replacing your your brain and that kind of thing, right? But that was okay with them, because that was normal to them.
Um, but it couldn't last forever. And so they lived. They lived lives and they died. And that's okay! [Chuckles] And that's where they are.
And I think what this is… the evidence of this is some sort of memorial that I find. That it becomes clear that– they were dying and they were they were– they were marking the deaths of their community members.
I imagine that's complicated because I think sometimes probably when someone dies and you have limited resources, you take parts of their body for yours, right? I think that's actually kind of beautiful. That's probably part of their death ritual is that when someone dies, everyone gets an extra finger. Some people– you got 11 fingers now because your friend died and you take part of them onto yourself, into yourself. I think that's really lovely.
But they were still marking these deaths. They were still real on some level at a certain point. And I just find memorials for them.
It's essentially a green burial site. You know, there's no big gravestones or whatever. There's just– there's one big hunk of metal. It's a shipping container that has been– that gets names etched into it. And then a big part of the land that just– they get buried straight into to naturally decompose
And I wonder if the indication that they all died is that the last name on the memorial wall is not handwritten. The other ones all clearly have, like– they were written by an organic hand of some kind. There are those imperfections. And then the very last name looks like it was typewritten on there, the implication being that the last person who was buried here was buried by one of the androids, not by one of the other people. The organic people.
Yeah. Yeah.
NICK: And, "What was destroyed?" I think I know what was destroyed.
I think what was destroyed was this species' attachment to time. Eugene realises that he misnamed the Thanatos spore. What he should have named it was the Chronos Spore. And we will talk about that more in the Unraveling The Story section.
UNRAVELLING THE STORY
SATAH: Alright. So. Found all the aces.
DORIAN: And that is my fourth ace, so now I go to Unraveling The Story.
SATAH: So let's go to Unraveling The Story.
DORIAN: "Unraveling the Story.
SATAH: "You found all four aces.
DORIAN & SATAH: "Four key traits
DORIAN: "that reveal what happened on this planet.
DORIAN & SATAH: "You're ready to put the story together."
NICK: I'm ready to put the story together.
SATAH: "Review the aces. What new information has been revealed since they were first uncovered?"
DORIAN: So first I review the aces.
SATAH: I'm going to grab all my aces to look at them together.
DORIAN: The first one was that initial reedy watchtower where I thought that it was just, you know, people using the materials around them to build structures that they would find useful.
SATAH: So first we had, "What has been preserved," the fiber processing setup that's been maintained. I do think one thing here is that the fact that clearly the android buried the last of them really cinches it for me that like– clinches? Cinches? [Laughs] It makes me sure that the androids have been maintaining that space. Out of care? Out of mourning? Not sure, not really not clear, but they clearly were actively involved. And so that is one thing.
DORIAN: The second one was the domed clay dwellings by the river, which I understood to mean that these are pretty individual people and that they, again, it reinforced my impression that they use the materials around them. And I also found an amphitheater there. That was not an ace, but it will become more important.
SATAH: As for "what was destroyed," I still don't know if it was on purpose or by accident. And I think that I'm not… I might not answer that? We'll see. We'll see what I need to answer.
DORIAN: The third one, after a lot of exploring, was the witnessing or the revelation of the fact that those snakes sweeping across the landscape– like, the scale of their impact on the land that they moved past. And then I spent a lot of time pursuing that thread.
SATAH: Anything new about the medical records? No. "Where are they now?" No.
DORIAN: And then the fourth one was this last amphitheater, or as I think I have to call it now more of a gallery. And it shared the insight into how the… what this life cycle looked like and how the life cycle of these large snakes interacted with the migration patterns and the building habits of the people who lived here on this part of the planet.
NICK: We found what was a once advanced civilisation knocked back into a literal stone age. How that happened, Eugene doesn't quite know exactly, but we're going to talk about that.
SATAH: "Consider other traits you've encountered during your journeys. Which ones are related to the aces?"
Certainly the dilapidated structures. I think that big wall that I saw probably was. A lot of these things, they certainly, like, interacted with, right? But they didn't create a lot of it.
They definitely were the people who set up the zoo signage. I imagine that even if you're functionally immortal, you're like, "Hey! Stop falling into this big hole… and needing to get new legs. We got limited legs. We can make it work no matter what. You're good. But, like, just be careful."
NICK: We now have to consider other traits I've encountered during my journey. I think we found a lot of… predatory creatures, we found some megafauna. "Which ones were related to the aces?" I think we did just say that. I think there's stone circles. I think that there was pictograms. There was statues of a civilisation that is currently building back to where they once were.
SATAH: "Finally, answer the question, what happened here? Tell the story together at the table."
DORIAN: And I've been answering that. But I think like… you know, the people here found a way to exist in harmony with kind of the world around them to some extent, or to take advantage of the natural rhythms of the stranger– like, the life on this planet. I said stranger life, but like, it was their planet. So like they presumably didn't find most of it that strange.
Um, but on some cycle, like… maybe something changed. That's my best guess. Like, they had clearly been doing this a long time. They had a rhythm. Maybe something changed. Maybe a snake broke the cycle. Maybe this is a climate change story and the migration pattern of these big beasts changed.
But they returned earlier than expected and the cycle was disrupted and people were no longer able to live in the way they had been. And it's unclear what happened after that. Someone else on another Vectorage will have to answer that question. Maybe they'll be in a part of the planet where the pattern played out differently. Um, or where this pattern didn't happen at all.
But the reason that people no longer live on this part of this planet has to do with the change in the rhythm of the natural world and the fact that they discovered their way of life was no longer compatible, because something about that cycle had changed.
NICK: What happened here was that the species that came here, they were interstellar. They were advanced scientific minds. They had some genius implementations of mutation. But… something went awry. Eugene's memories can kind of put the pieces together from what he discovered in the capsule.
I believe what happened is that someone stumbled and they knocked the Chronos Spore open. The Chronos Spore… it does- it does eat them. Some people get eaten, but some people react differently. Some people end up getting moved back in time, like quite literally. Yeah.
I think some people just get isekai'd, to be honest. Like, you know? Like, I think that's a fun way of doing it. Yeah, like, some get parasite, and the parasite just kind of, like, just destroys them from the inside out. And it's just other people have some sort of, like, reaction to the parasite, which triggers a response, which opens up a slight rift in time for just them and ports them back.
And the stone circles represent an attempt to get them back to the time period that they belong. So had Eugene entered, he would have figured out the advanced species– he would have found out their portal to get back home.
So I think what happened is that a lot of the survivors did get back, right? So the Chronos Spore is a parasite, or is a parasitic entity that will either that will either, uh, eat away at the, um, the host and kill it and part of itself– I think some of it does escape and then infect other things, which kind of results with the animals. Um, but that's only because of what the scientists did to to those spores. Like some of those spores were also genetically modified to to be more invasive and some of that had some unexpected side effects and that- that did cause some megafauna to appear. That caused some of the flora to become megaflora that eats meat. And I think, uh, a lot of that kind of just turned into turned in a whole big shit storm that broke time locally.
Some of the people escaped and I think Eugene has to go report- uh, report an emergency because, uh, some of the some of the species have evolved into a new species because of the way that they were affected by this parasite and we don't know If that is something that could be contagious. Do they infect people that they touch? Is the food or the liquids that they also touch become infected by the Chronos Spore? Who knows?!
But yeah, the chronospore upended this ecosystem. It upended the people that were trying to alter it, too. And the results varied.
We have an ancient civilisation that was brought back, an advanced civilisation that got isekai'd into the past, came back into the future, left, and is now an intergalactic front. And Eugene has got a lot to unpack here.
SATAH: I think that I've laid it out relatively in full. But yeah, there was an elevator. The elevator got an AI assistant put in it, because why not? Why not just shove AI into everything? No opinions on this. But in a sci-fi story where AI actually leads to sentience– sapience.
The AI had some sort of break and killed a bunch of people. And then the corporation who owned the building that that elevator AI was in, as part of a cover-up, just tossed the whole thing here.
At a certain point, probably a different corporation dumped a bunch of empty android chassis here. They were probably like… like cleaning bots or something, you know? But through some… networking… thing… one of them still had Bluetooth on. The elevator AI was able to hop into one of those bodies, and then a bunch of those bodies.
And began trying to make up for its mistakes. And after all, it was an AI– it- it worked in a hospital. Maybe it wanted to do science and be a doctor. But it wasn't allowed. It was just allowed to be an elevator. But now it has the chance.
And so it begins creating life from death.
And these people who are created are confused, but happy. And they start a society. And sometimes new people join because new people get created, but they're just trying to figure life out. You know how it is. No one asks to be created. You just end up where you are, and then you have to live your life. This is true of all of us.
And at a certain point, shipments stopped coming because of this place getting abandoned.
And I think it was an accident, and I think– the lab exploding, I mean. I think it was just creatures chewing wires. This was before there were constructs. These were just the creatures who happened to live on this planet already.
And I think it was scary, but also, like, the shipments had already stopped coming, and so it was like they already weren't creating new people, right? It was hard to lose access to that facility for medical care, but ultimately, it wasn't the thing that actually led to their death, their final death.
And then they kept living. Until they didn't. They all died. They're in organic bodies. There are limits.
And after they died, I think… the androids still had that yearning to create life, right? So they– somewhere on this planet, there's another lab that they've created. At a different scale, a much smaller scale. Probably getting– pulling material from that, you know, animal experimentation wing that I saw, or other ones. And they've been creating new, different forms of life.
I think that a lot of the species on this planet did go extinct, because this planet kind of sucks. Like, not super good at sustaining life. And so they brought it back. A little different. A little odd. But in a way that makes them happy.
And that can't last forever either, probably? And we'll see what that means. What it means to have that drive and no longer have the materials to fulfill it. That's not the case yet, so we're all good.
DORIAN: So my characters are ready to leave the planet. My character.
SATAH: "You're ready to leave the planet for the final time. To bring an end to the game, answer the following questions."
DORIAN: "Why does your character never return to the planet?" That's an interesting one because I think they… left to their own devices, I think they'd consider it. I think they found this interesting and kind– kind of beautiful in a way, like learning more about this cycle.
So I think it becomes a societal norm thing. I think, like, this is a very, like, community oriented people that Gwyn comes from. And I think after your Vectorage, most people don't go off planet anymore. I think these people value discovery for its own sake, and so like once you make a discovery, it's up to other people to build on that. It's selfish, almost, to like continue discovering more and more new things out in the world. Like other people need to be able to witness and experience those things themselves. To build on what you've created, like what you've found. Both for their own sake, so that they can have that experience too, but also because different people may bring different insights or lenses to something, whereas if the same person continually re-explores it, they might get stuck in their preconceptions.
So I never return to the planet because my people don't do that. We go on our Vectorage and then we return and then we stay.
SATAH: I think as I'm wrapping up, a couple of my crew come. And I've been marking all of the shipping containers that look like they have relevant stuff in them.
Now that there's potentially a threat of these androids– who I don't think had bad intentions, by the way, I think they were actually excited. There's no way for- for Eggo to know that. But I think the androids were just excited, like, "Ooh, somebody's back! Yay!"
But yeah, so more of my crew comes and we just pick up some of these shipping containers and get out of Dodge. We'll go through them elsewhere. And I never return because… it seems dangerous, and I'm convinced that an android is going to try and kill me to create a new person out of my body.
That isn't true. As an author, I am able to state that isn't true, that isn't what would happen. But Eggo doesn't know that.
DORIAN: "What does your character do with their knowledge of the planet, if anything?"
Of course, I first return it to our archive. I share what I've learned. I discuss with the other people in my community, and we put together what I know with what people have learned on other trips to the planet and refine that further.
And then I think I… I think that work, like, really becomes something I pursue wholeheartedly. Like, I think I work with the other people whose Vectorages were to the same planet and we begin to sort of, you know, map out and try and like understand how it all fits together. You know, like we've all got these different pieces of a much larger puzzle, so we're continuing to sketch out the boundaries of our understanding. Like, identify areas where, like, future Vectorites on future journeys might be able to contribute, like targeting parts of the planet that, like, we want to propose as options for future Vectorites. Like, I think this is kind of a lifelong project.
I think for many of my people– not all, like obviously some people like, you know, serve different roles in community. You have to, in order for community, to function. But I think there's some number of people whose like lives upon their return just become about building on that foundation of knowledge. And I think I fall in with like a couple of other people whose Vectorages were to the same place and who want to understand more, and especially want to understand if the people who lived there once still might be there.
SATAH: "What do you do with your knowledge of the planet, if anything?" I don't think much, but I– except that I think maybe it inspires me to look into the experiences of other constructed people. I've been very clone-focused, and this has sort of opened my eyes to, like, different ways that life can be created and what those experiences might mean, and I get curious about that. Slowly but surely. Just broaden my perspective a little.
DORIAN: "Where does your character go next?" I think I become part of the,uh– part of the support team for the next person who goes on a Vectorage to the same site. You know? I am one of the people back on the moon watching to extract them if anything goes wrong.
And I think that's bittersweet. I really was fascinated by that planet and I would have gone back, um, but that's not how we do things, so, like, all I can do is be… informed about it and be there for the people who do go there to aid in retrieval but like, I'm not… I don't go down myself. I have to just sort of watch the planet out the out the window of our sort of base on the moon where we're waiting in case the person needs us and I see… you know, the landmass I went to and I think I… you know, I reflect on it and I… I miss it. I do. I love what I do and I don't– like, I understand and embrace the ways of the community I am part of, but part of me wishes I could go back to that planet.
And I think the last thing we see of Gwyn is, like, them looking out at that planet and maybe looking at the sketches in their old- their old journal and experiencing that, uh, that desire to go back.
SATAH: "Where do you go next?" Oh, who knows? More scout missions, right? I'm just– we're runnin'. We're- we're on the run. We're clones. We're… doin' crime to sustain ourselves. We're making a life, doing our best, and there's always stuff to find and things– there's always stuff to do. Very next thing probably is drag those shipping containers like onto an abandoned station or moon or something to start going through them and picking out what we actually need so we're not hauling around these huge containers, but. After that? Big universe.
And Eggo isn't particularly in the driver's seat, you know? They care a lot, but they're not exactly the lead conspirator of the clones. So they kind of just– they're doing what they're told and they're looking out for their family. And that's their whole– that's their whole thing. That's all they do. And they love it.
NICK: That is the game. We have been playing The World We Left Behind.
SATAH: Alright. Took a picture of my grid, and I used white… again! Dry erase markers. So, methodically dry erasing all of them.
There were two cards that I didn't flip. What were they? Five of clubs and the seven of diamonds, which would have been… a rectangle landscape. And the seven of diamonds is curved line plant. That's alright.
DORIAN: As someone who's not experienced in solo games, it was really interesting to be able to tell this sort of story in a different way from what I've done with other people. And I thought that this game was a neat way of doing it.
I can definitely see how, like, the full scale game, which is four completely distinct journeys, albeit with a smaller grid, is, like, a commitment, but I honestly think it would be a really interesting game to play, especially with multiple people who can all contribute their own sort of… material or ideas to the story that you tell, and who over the course of you know like a much larger or longer journey can really like begin to build out some of this stuff a lot more comprehensively.
SATAH: I'm definitely curious to try this game as a group experience. I think that it would certainly, uh, add a lot to the interpretive aspects. Interpreting something that someone else drew is is a very different experience than interpreting something that you yourself drew, though I still find it to be useful when it comes to acting as guidance.
DORIAN: I thought I told a great story and like had some interesting ideas here, but I can really see how over the the full scope of this game, you can build something really like complex and fascinating about, uh, the traces that, um- that people have left behind them when- when something happens.
NICK: I had a lot of fun playing this. It definitely brought out some, um, some good narrative. Or at least I enjoyed doing it. I hope, uh, you guys enjoyed listening to what I came up with.
SATAH: It's definitely tough to maintain the pacing of a mystery in this kind of format and I think that it's ambitious and it's cool and I do… I like the story that I told. I'm– this is one of those games where I'm so excited, particularly, to hear other people's experience with it because it's very– it's- it's- it's so unclear to me if I… played optimally? Which is not to say in a- in a sort of min-maxed optimised way, but just… I don't know! If there was- if there was– if there's a way to experience this that- that lands a little bit differently.
I'm- I'm really… I'm really glad that I made… this podcast… the way that I've made it… because it means when I go, hey… I can only experience solo games in the way that I experience them. Genius past me who was like… but what if… that weren't true? I'm like, oh, shit! Yeah, nice! Wait, that's the show that I make!
NICK: And again, I'm Nick Butler. I make games about petting puppies and punching bad guys. They're very action-focused. I typically shoot for collaborative narrative mechanics. So if you like doing that world-building stuff with your friends, the games I write tend to offer mechanics that facilitate those sort of things.
DORIAN: So yeah, I've been Dorian, and this was– this was a great pleasure.
SATAH: Wish that this dry erase were coming off the cards a little bit more cleanly, but also I did have to… let them sit for longer than expected, so. Tis what tis.
This was The World We Left Behind.
OUTRO
SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and otherwise self-paced TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.carrd.co. Sign up as a paid member at patreon.com/foliopod to vote on games and get early access to the bonus feed with edited audio-only versions of livestreams a while after they happen and occasional other stuff.
You can follow Dorian on Bluesky at MichifOtt and honour him by supporting your local library.
You can follow Nick Butler on Bluesky at fallonmyblade and find his games at fallonmyblade.itch.io. Physical copies of his cinematic TTRPG Tidebreaker are deeply on sale right now at tidebreakerrpg.com.
You can follow Satah– that's me– on Bluesky at posatahchips.gaygothvibes.online and check out my work at gaygothvibes.online.
This week, Dorian and Nick and I finished our games of The World We Left Behind by Samantha Leigh. Everything I mentioned here is linked, as always, in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there.