Our Last Best Hope

Eric our GM, and Oscar

Don't be confused by the books in the foreground. Last night we played our second game of Our Last Best Hope, a SF storygame by Mark Diaz Truman. It's kind of like Fiasco, with lots scraps of paper and fiddly bits (and fiddly rules), but unlike Fiasco the characters need to cooperate to save the world from a disaster that will affect the entire planet.

With the really fiddly rule sets that storygames often have, I am really glad to have a player/GM like Eric, who doesn't get flustered by rules - or even by his own confusion about what is supposed to happen. He takes it all as a chance to explore something - as if he's running a scientific experiment - which is very appropriate for a game in which a disparate group have to work together to solve a desperate planetary threat.

If you keep in mind the kinds of plots and types of action that occur in Hollywood SF disaster movies you have the right idea about this game. Over the top threats, and only a handful of people in the world who can resolve the threat. The science does not matter too much: it's a movie.

In our case, we went with the Winter scenario, and decided that the cause of global winter was a Yellowstone eruption. We did the only thing intelligent people would do in such a situation: dive into the volcano with our lava sub, find our way around using deep penetrating lava radar, and use ice lasers to defend ourselves against the Lava Yetis living in the flows.

Our eventual plan was to release a nanite swarm that would "take care" of the volcano. We ran out of time in the game session (we play for 2-2.5 hours) to release the nanites but that would probably happen next scene. Maybe.