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Hi!

Please use this thread to post feedback and report any typos or errors in chapter 7 of the Alpha PDF for The Electric State RPG. Please note:

• This is not the full game - the complete game will add three more chapters (2, 5 and 6) and expand chapter 7 a great deal. We estimate that the full game will have about twice the page count of the Alpha PDF.
• All page references are still marked "xx" in the Alpha PDF. Please do not report this - we fill fix all page references once the layout of the full book is completed.
• Before reporting an error, please check to see if it has already been reported. If so, don't report it again.
• For feedback on chapters 1, 3 and 4, please us the thread in the General section.
• Please report your feedback no later than March 1.

Page 99: bottom right: physical weapons, neuroscape weapons: some text mention base Damage and some Base Damage.

On the Pacifica maps, the area near the border with Blackwelt is named "Silver Lake Machanized [sic] Weapons Site".

Page 89: The Blocker - in the text to read out, the brakes should fail, not the breaks.

On the Pacifica maps,

• "Elk Groove" should be "Elk Grove"

• "Folsorn" should be "Folsom"

• "Sankt Helena" should be "St. Helena"

• "Borro Bay" should be "Morro Bay"

• "Colombia" should be "Columbia"

• "Ahwahne" should be "Ahwahnee"

• "Oakherst" should be "Oakhurst"

• "Reedly" should be "Reedley"

• "McKittrik" should be "McKittrick"

• "Willow Sprints" should be "Willow Springs"

• "Saltsdale" should be "Saltdale"

• "Beumont" should be "Beaumont"

• "Los Palos" should be "Dos Palos"

P81

• Under the personal goals for the Doctor, it reads: " If there is a Drone Pilot or Inspector on this Journey...". I think this should be " If there is a Drone Pilot or Investigator on this Journey...".
• Under the personal goals for the Drone Pilot, it reads: " If there is a Doctor or Inspector on this Journey...". I think this should be " If there is a Doctor or Investigator on this Journey...".

The scale on the Pacifica map is in kilometers. Wouldn't a US map use miles?

p82 Runaway Kid - "...they lost all interest in the world outside the neuroscape. in you." Either needs a capital "I" for the first word of the second sentence or some other punctuation mark to extend it as a single sentence.

p92 #2 - "This is a test by Father Gabriel..." - should be either Marcos or the archangel

p94 Residential Houses 1 - "The windows are broken, and the walls are covered..." doesn't need a comma.

p96 Daisy Williams paragraph 1 - "She has seen members of the congregation wither away and die, and no one is allowed to leave" - the comma wraps on to the start of a new line

p98 Jimmy Shute - Reactions - "If the Travelers enter Jimmy’s store to get their car fixed, he’s very friendly, but claim that he unfortunately doesn’t have any functional car batteries." - should be "claims"

the Buick comes to a stop, its Maneuverability reduced to zero and unable to drive on. The car battery is completely dead and it won’t start.

This completely broke me out of immersion, and as a player I'd be wanting to argue with the GM that that makes no sense.

The problem is this. Once a car is started it doesn't need the battery any more. The power comes from the alternator. After ignition the battery's power is only used if the alternator has died. In that case the car will suck power from the battery until there's none left, and then die. However, in that scenario replacing the battery would get your car running, but you wouldn't make it far before the new battery was also drained.

I understand that later on it's semi-explained via the not-quite-magic of the entity sucking power, but the player doesn't know that until near the end of all this. This completely broke immersion for me. As I read on I kept thinking about how the entire reason we're stopped here makes no sense.

I'm not sure what a good solution to making the car stop in a way that can be easily repaired, but anyone who knows anything about how a car works electrically is likely to be tripped up by this. Even knowing the cause I'm still wondering if that would actually stop the car, because you can bump-start many cars with dead batteries so, even if the being sucked ALL the power for a moment and caused the car to die, it'd probably start right back up because it was in gear AND in motion at the time.

Once you get past that there's also the question of what happens to all the other battery powered things the players might be carrying, including (i assume) drones. The way its described it's like some sort of proximity field, so it wouldn't be able to target only car batteries, and not phone batteries, or calculator batteries, or whatever.

When running the Angel in the Machine Stop in the alpha PDF, in the final scene, 3 out of my 4 players decided to enter the neuroscape and fight the Archangel.

They just went completely ham. They didn't care how much Bliss they accumulated because there really was no negative impact for accumulating it in the immediate term. They all managed to accumulate over 10+ Bliss, and they didn't care.

It seems that the only negative things that could happen for accumulating too much Bliss are:
1. You can't voluntarily leave on your own if Bliss>=current Hope. Aside from the one friend they left in the real world to pull them out after, one of my players decided to go on a rampage and fight his way out until his Health dropped to 0. He'd become Incapacitated and would be forcibly ejected (so he'd be both Incapacitated and suffering from a Breakdown when he emerged), but it was still a sure-fire way of getting out. And you'd eventually recover Health and Hope, and have a chance to reduce your Bliss.
2. It may take some time before you're able to re-enter the neuroscape, with a possibility that you could never again without being trapped there. Not that big a deal though because of the loophole where you could just fight your way out again until your Health dropped to 0 and you were forcibly ejected.
3. You might suffer some long-lasting mental trauma. But 50% of the time, you won't suffer any, no matter how much Bliss you've accumulated.

So to me, Bliss might need a bit more work, as mechanically, it doesn't really carry a lot of weight in the end.
A few things things I might consider changing:
1. Find a way to close the "slap me hard enough in the neuroscape to knock me back to reality" loophole.
2. I would add the amount of Bliss the player currently has on any Mental Trauma roll they make related to the neuroscape, whether they have a Breakdown while in the neuroscape, or suffer one when forcibly removed from it.
3. Every consecutive day you spend in the neuroscape, you gain one additional Bliss.

P. 80: Devotee: "Threat: The Convergence – but what to they really want?"
Should read: "Threat: The Convergence – but what do they really want"
P. 82: Runaway Kid: "they lost all interest in the world outside the neuroscape. in you."
Should read: "they lost all interest in the world outside the neuroscape - and in you".
P. 89: Right column: "Between those, streets lined by low residential houses with small gardens shoot off from the main street."
The sentence is somewhat difficult to understand in the first reading but I think otherwise correct.