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Finished my home game of Electric Dreams: It is another HUGE hit with my home group, along with Alien and Vaesen. This is the fourth time I've run Electric Dreams and I get better at it each time, finding a new angle with each run. I'll start running it with strangers for the first time at my LGS the Sunday after next. It really is a great scenario, even if BR is my least favorite YZE game. Free League has definitely cracked the code on presenting scenarios. If anyone official sees this, please pass on kind remarks to Tomas and Joe LeFavi.

Electric Dreams consistently clocks in at ~12-15 hours of gameplay. I've run it with 1 player (7 hrs), 2 players (12-13 hours), and twice now with 3 players (15 hours). I won't say that I preferred the duo, but the partner energy was strong and I felt they brought out the best narrative; three man seems to have a tendency towards being exhaustive in the clue gathering. The climactic scene to this playthrough was an exciting, cinematic assault with guns blazing (memory lab ending) which saw a player sacrifice themselves for an innocent. A bit too much rolling for my taste (especially since there was little effect to either side for several rounds), but the players tell me that it kept them on the edge of their seats (I suspect that had it dragged on any longer I would have lost them).

My "Room for Improvement" remarks to myself are largely tied to the fact that I play most of the YZE games, and BR differs in many small rules differences:

• I need to incorporate Key Memory and Key Relationships into the gameplay. I need to remind the players that they have a signature item. Similarly, I need to find ways to incorporate leveraging assets, working with players to draw upon characters other than Corgi and Amara.
• Though it hasn't come up yet, I need to keep the Disciplinary Action for replicants in mind for when lose/spend their last promotion point. This and Baseline tests.
• I pretty much get everything right, but I mentally fumble sometimes. I plan to use Hidden Initiative in conflicts with more than 2 participants. I need to go over Close Combat and Vehicle Combat rules since those haven't got any play yet.

My players gave interesting answers to my exit interview:

• They are split on whether they prefer the experience with Alien or Blade Runner. They love BR's immersion and presentation of the mystery, though my wife said she experienced moments of terror in Alien. Taken with appropriate salt grains, it still surprised me that she preferred the experience of Chariot of the Gods since she absolutely loves the BR IP and the rpg particularly.
• They like feeling that anything could happen in BR and Alien, that their decisions really matter even though the outcome is pretty certain. One of them, however, definitely does not like the sandboxy Forbidden Lands, and even my wife is lukewarm on it.
• Forbidden Lands is their least favorite YZE game so far. The setting alienates one player, who got turned off at the name of the god Huge. My wife doesn't like the heavy lore (which doesn't bode well for Coriolis). Overall the FbL rules seem too crunchy for them, and take them out of the action—holding them at arm's length.
• We're not done with the first Vaesen scenario yet, Dance of Dreams, but, like BR, they already love it for the mystery and rules light approach to YZE. I sense a theme.
• Overall, they give my performance high marks. This is due more to the nature of the YZE engine to anything I might be doing, methinks—I struggle with online gaming through FoundryVTT.

Great timing as I am planning to run this with 2 people for the first time in the next week or two so I appreciate your call outs to what you think you could improve on.

Any other hints or suggestions to get the this running smoothly? Both players are experienced rpgers but have never played a FL game.

Great timing as I am planning to run this with 2 people for the first time in the next week or two so I appreciate your call outs to what you think you could improve on.

Any other hints or suggestions to get the this running smoothly? Both players are experienced rpgers but have never played a FL game.

• The comment I get most often from players is that they appreciate that all their decisions and rolls matter. Over rolling can dilute this. Timing is key to minimizing the number of Observation and insight rolls, so find a good back and forth flow in your RP.
• I've begun to tell the players up front that they can trust both Holden and Coco fully. Neither will ever lie to them (though the information they pass may be bad), nor will they ever throw the detectives under the bus. This puts it into their mind that suspects will lie to them. When it comes to docking Promotion Points, make sure Holden is tough but fair.
• Don't charge them for talking to Metrokab; play it out over the phone. It's great for corroboration, but there's not enough new clues and it ruins the flow imo.
• After the Snake Pit, Styles knows their faces and maybe their names, but the event where Styles calls them still feels too tenuous to me. Later on I have him tell Leah, who pulls up their records on her KIA before Styles takes her KIA out to Piss Alley (near the safehouse but far enough that it's not obvious) and destroys it. This accomplishes a number of things: Leah is forewarned, Styles becomes more menacing because he suddenly knows details about the detectives (especially useful during interrogations inlock up), if the detectives are stuck you can have Dispatch tell them the mainframe pinged Leah's KIA in Piss Alley and they can narrow down their search area.
• Styles is better out in the world where detectives can chase him, listen in on his conversations, and lead them to the safehouse. Once he's in lockup, they lose all leverage since he knows he's going to be retired. I made Manipulations against him at disadvantage and required a critical success. If this scene happens, make it important, make it costly, and give them nothing directly but hints they can potentially put together with a Connections roll.
  
  Have fun!

Styles is better out in the world where detectives can chase him, listen in on his conversations, and lead them to the safehouse. Once he's in lockup, they lose all leverage since he knows he's going to be retired. I made Manipulations against him at disadvantage and required a critical success. If this scene happens, make it important, make it costly, and give them nothing directly but hints they can potentially put together with a Connections roll.

This is important.

It's not obvious - to GM or players - until gameday that Styles is the key NPC. How the GM and PCs deal with Styles can make or break the investigation.

Great write up! Gearing up for my first session. Excellent tips.

Ran this again, with four players running 16 hours of gameplay. I cannot overstate how consistent and well structured Electric Dreams is. It was, again, a huge hit with a familiar refrain: players love the system (more than other versions of the YZE, even), it's cinematic and the mechanics are invisible enough to makes them really feel like they're in the world of Blade Runner. The numbers tell the whole story (although I didn't keep a spreadsheet like I wanted).

This time, because they were gobbling up the clues so efficiently (despite The Snake Pit being a complete bust), I decided to fold in their key relationships and explore their key memories. This made a huge difference, and really tightened up the narrative when I made Remy Krumpak Quell's agent. I started on shift 3, which is too late as Mirren was really only a mention; but in the future I feel I can start seeding it in shift one. Doing this also accelerated the Humanity Point gain, and I think 3 out of 4 characters had at least 1 skill increase—making this the first time I had positive feedback concerning character progression. The scenario is so short that it's been difficult for me to do this in the past (and I've heard similar reports), but the trade off for slowing the pace slightly is well worth it,

Every time I run this I find something new in it. And I feel that if I started a new game next week, that'd still be the case. My favorite moment is the player response I got after a short monologue that came in the very last scene, when Novak and Fenna are trying to de-escalate an increasingly unstable Leah who demands Lillith defend what she's done:

The nexus synthetic is a tool, Detective—like your blaster. Do you draw your blaster wondering if it feels like shooting? Wondering if it lacks motvation? No, I suspect you demand reliability. I implant memories to ensure purpose-built compliance. Are you who you are because you had a happy third birthday? Or because you broke your arm and have subconciously spent your life to date avoiding a repeating incident? Our trauma defines us, Detective—it is the lens through which we view the world.