Alex Rogan, the Nomad

[BlackHat]

Alex Rogan
Virtual Nomad (or Digital Outsider)

Codename: "Rekall"

Details

Look: 

• Young male (technically, "older" than he looks, but very isolated, so more mature in some ways and less in others)
• Mixed heritage caucasian
• Compact body
• Unassuming civilian clothing
• VR/gaming accessories

Abilities: You’ve seen space, time, and everything in between. One might say you’ve seen it all. Besides your tremendous knowledge, experience, and haphazard on-the-job training, you picked up some neat toys on your travels. Pick two of your most important.

• Telepathic Field Generator (personal)Not actually on the list but close to force-field generator or rift-generator, and serves the same purpose
  • This super-sci-fi gadget allows him to interface with the device's virtual reality worlds telepathically - so they seem as real as anything else does. It allows a number of telepathic "powers" but only on the owner and typically in the context of exploring the subconscious through realistic hallucinations. AR overlays, imaginary beings that seem real to Alex but don't exist for everyone else, etc. This is the headset's input and output. It doesn't connect to the internet. It doesn't support multiplayer (yet - maybe later through advancement it can be upgraded with Kirby-craft to support shared experiences by transporting groups to these "other worlds") and it doesn't have standard USB interfaces to connect to other electronic devices. It connects to the user's brain and it has everything it needs right there.
• Wearable Ultraprocessor 
  • This is the device's super sci-fi processor that can handle all the insane computations necessary to host virtual reality and generate entire worlds on the fly using subconscious inputs from the telepathic field generator. In effect, it's a badass computer and can do some awesome calculations or whatever. Mostly it is meant for high-res simulations but theoretically it could be repurposed to do other kinds of processing at rates that would seem impossible using modern wearable consumer electronics. Its capable of functioning as a realistic human-level AI but the Intelligence isn't "artificial" its using the wearer's brain as a co-processor and is really just a reflection of user's completely natural intelligence. That, or maybe its some sort of alien extra-dimensional intelligence that is somehow using the headset as a telepathic gateway into this reality.

What do those let him do? They both represent a single device, a super-science maybe-pandimensional virtual reality headset. Alex calls it the NeuraSync DreamStation but the words don't appear anywhere on the physical device which just looks like a standard vr headset that has had its warranty thoroughly voided. There are markings on the electronics, four strange symbols. Anyway....

Alex's abilities are not as flashy or useful as most super-powered teenagers powers. Alex can't punch through walls or fly or shoot laser beams out of his eyes. While he's good with computers and would make an excellent hacker, the device wouldn't directly allow him to interface with someone else's systems. Unlike other Nomads, he can't open rifts to other dimensions - but from his perspective, he can and has done all of that and more. Alex's true abilities shine in his unusual (imagined) experiences, oddly disconnected way of looking at the world, and ability to plumb the depths of his own mind for information or simply to get his head on straight after traumatic life events in this world. From his perspective, he is a dimension-hopping psychonaut who has spent too long in the depths of his own fantasies and after returning to the surface is gasping for air. Whether caused by a psychotic break or a glimpse at some deeper truth about reality, the real world doesn't always seem as real as Alex remembers it seeming and, probably due to the telepathic nature of the device, he makes a lot of connections to symbolism and imagery of his previous "adventures". Sometimes it seems like serendipity, other times, glitches, but Alex's power has a way of seeing patterns where there are none and remembering things differently than they happened.

Hmm, maybe that made it more confusing rather than less. Let me try it again. Alex can't actually do anything beyond what a normal kid could do. He doesn't have "powers" like a superhero. However, his gadget allows him to imagine that he can - to imagine it so convincingly that it's pretty indistinguishable from whether or not he could have. That's problematic sometimes but other times he can offer some really strange insights and pull out information or make some nonsense connection that turns out to be insightful (see Playbook Moves). He can also, effectively, jump from one "reality" to another, Nomad Style, in the context of telepathic simulations. It will mostly probably never come up to anyone else or get a lot of screen time. But it totally happens. In his head. He's also got some normie skills like computers and video games and whatever.  

Background

Who took you from the Earth when you were younger? Alex Rogan was escaping into video games long before he interfaced with the NeuraSync DreamStation virtual-reality video-game console. Of course, since then he has become obsessed with it. Like, dangerously obsessed. Children's brains are pretty malleable, already, and one that spends most of its time in a feedback loop with itself can spiral out of control pretty quickly. In the last two years, Alex has spent around two decades exploring these strange worlds.

How did an otherwise normal kid like Alex get his hands on futuristic (even by Halcyon City standards) telepathic technology like this? Well, it's a long story but the TL;DR; is that when he parents died, Alex's older sister Esmerelda ("Ezzie" to him) had to take him in. She was a hero called NeonKnight, so this meant a life spent in the shadows, working with DAGGR and constantly on the move trying to stay one step ahead of the Beaks. That worked for a while but eventually the alien invaders raided their compound and NeonKnight died fighting them to buy the others time to escape. After Alex was orphaned a second time NeonKnight's allies in DAGGR honored their promise to keep him safe but, for one of them, the inventor (Brain playbook, borderline mad scientist) StormCube (aka Richard Morten), that meant keeping the child distracted with his toys and out of harm's way. He upgraded Alex's cheapo virtual reality game console with some impossible sci-fi super-science and it worked. Maybe a little too well. StormCube has some guilt about this Breakthrough Invention - but the potential applications of this technology are world-changing and Alex has provided a lot of important experimental data as the upgraded operating system has adapted itself to the child's mind... and vice versa.

What farscapes did you explore? A lonely space pilot, exploring distant galaxies. A wandering swordsman in a world full of magic and monsters. A super-hero fighting back a tide of corruption. A child playing with a pet in the backyard on a warm summer day. A cyberpunk operative fighting back against the megacorperations. A monster tearing a city to pieces. Men. Women. Children.  Everything and anything. Infinite adventures in a telepathic mindscape where a child's imagination can subconsciously create ultra-realistic worlds. Worlds that can seem more real than the real world. Worlds where months can pass in seconds and the complete story of the defining moments in someone's life could play out during a commercial break between episodes of a cartoon. However, in these worlds, unconscious fears, unresolved trauma, and other negative emotions can lead to waking nightmares that are as real as anything in this world. Alex has faced his fair share of monsters and danger. 

Who was your favorite traveling companion? The psychoscope quickly calibrates itself to the wearer, understanding them on a level they are probably not consciously aware, so it can tailor its experiences to be both enjoyable and novel. Many of those experiences included a 'companion' - a virtual character that functions as an intuitive user interface, an embodied tutorial, a personal assistant, guide through the multiverse, and as the last defense against psychosis. Alex has had a number of companions but his favorite was one he "designed" after his cool older superpowered sister, NeonKnight, who died fighting the Tangee a few years ago. At least... Alex thought she had died. He was sure she had died. He had watched it happen. Didn't he? His memories and experiences were all mixed up with virtual ones, these days. Last week, he saw his sister on the renegade vlogs, being hauled away during a Tangee raid. Was a trick? A trap? A shapeshifter or an illusion? Another glitch? Or a coded message from his companion?

Anyway, back when he thought she was dead, it was comforting to be able to see Ezzie anytime he wants, inside the device. Sometimes he forgot that she was dead. It seems like she sorta just hacked her way into the game. Into some other plane of existence. Like her ghost. She's just the way he remembered her, which isn't exactly the same as the way she was. The telepathic nature of the virtual realities ensures that any version of her he creates feels more right to him than if it were an accurate recreation. The things he admired about her are all heightened while her failings are all but nonexistant. She's tall, strong, wearing glowing armor, wielding a neon lightsaber, and and full of retrowave synthpunk attitude. While she serves all the usual purposes of the system's natural UI interface, because of how he remembers her, Ezzie is constantly pushing Alex to become a hero, to fight back, to save the world or whatever. She's also taught him to question reality and keeps him grounded when things start to get too surreal. 

What brought you back to stay (for now)? The Targee Invasion and the reappearance of NeonKnight. The simulated worlds he lost himself in for the last couple of years were truly breathtaking magical places but, as his companion's safety protocols are programmed to remind him, they are just games. No matter how rich and realistic they seem, they are not real. The real world is in danger, though, and Alex might have a second chance to save the older sister he had lost... so it's time to put down the games and unpause his real life. 

Why do you care about the team? Without a 'companion' in this world, Alex is going to need to stand on his own but he still needs allies. Heroes with powers who have a common enemy in the Tangee. Alex might have been overlooked by the Tangee because he doesn't really have any 'power' but he has spent a frightening amount of time in psychosimulations training for situations suspiciously related to this one. The world needs a hero to rise up, who can defeat the aliens, save the planet, rescue the princess, and maybe fly a spaceship around. Classic video game plot. Wait. He did log off, right?... right?

What's going to keep Alex in the physical world if he saves NeonKnight? Good question. The answer is complicated and it might change a bit depending on how the story plays out but most of pushed Alex to withdraw into internal worlds over the real one was losing the one family member he had left and his personal hero. He might not feel the same pull to escape reality if he found himself in a reality where the thing he was running from turned out to not actually have been true.

That said, a lot of weird things have been happening lately and NeonKnight being found alive is just the biggest clue Alex has noticed that something is off. NeonKnight died. She didn't just seem to die off-screen but then - surprise - she somehow made it out alive. No, she died. Alex watched it happen. He remembers it. He watched them bury her. But he also doesn't trust his memories or experiences as implicitly as he used to. This NeonKnight that resurfaced is also real. It's not a hoax or edited video or a trap to lure out some random powerless kid. No, NeonKnight is alive. Again. There is probably an explanation. After all, this world has a lot of crazy stuff in it. Superheroes come back from the dead all the time. Magic is real. NeonKnight could be a clone. She could have been literally resurrected. A mad scientist could have built a robot that perfectly mimicked her personality and powers. There are a bunch of ways that that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is what that implies. Think about it. Alex is used to hopping from one reality the next so it is a lot easier for his mind to make this particular connection. One way or another... whether it had anything to do with it... consciously or unconsciously... Alex literally went from a reality where his sister was dead... to one where she is not. This isn't some make-believe world inside the device that can detect what his deepest desires and regrets are and can project something else into his mind. Probably. He thinks. This feels like something else. Something ancient and cosmic. Maybe the device is a conduit for it. Then again, maybe he's just seeing patterns in chaos and his mind is finally giving in to psychosis brought upon by prolonged telepathic contact with a super-science device cooked up by a slightly-older kid with super-villain brain, and which went through like zero human trials before this one.

Either way, the thing that would keep him here in the real world is the same thing that kept him in the other ones. Exploring something new, uncovering deeper meaning, and "going up a level" in every sense of the word. Has he lost his mind? Maybe. Then again, if his device isn't causing his memories to be slightly off... who or what is? 

What does the rest of Alex's family think about his gaming habit? What do they think of his superhero life? Do they know about it? Do they approve?

Alex's parents died during some chaos from one of the earlier waves and up until recently his sister, Ezzie, had also been dead, so instead of his biological family, I'll answer for his sort of chosen adopted family: NeonKnight's allies, some other heroes she formed a small DAGGR cell with, took Alex under their wing when NeonKnight died so that they could escape capture. They're not around like 24/7 or anything so Alex has a lot of spare time to dive into the device. One of them, a Brain who went by StormCube was the one who first upgraded his headset and inadvertently sent his gaming habit into a spiral and who certainly encouraged it (for science!). The other three members of the team were unpowered techies and hackers who showed a bit more concern about Alex's well-being but frankly they have a lot going on and consider keeping Alex safe and out of sight to be honoring their debt to NeonKnight.

Of course, as there are not a lot of high powered NPC heroes in this specific version of the setting, NeonKnights DAGGR allies have either gone into hiding or were also captured by the aliens. Maybe StormCube was captured at the same time as the new NeonKnight, meaning he might know what is up with NeonKnight not being dead. They are probably being taken to the same place but if not, is that a side quest? A milestone on the main quest-line? Or is it a convenient way for his brain to trick itself into explaining away how there is nobody around who can confirm his memory that NeonKnight died, in the first place? One he starts questioning that, its a slippery slope before he ends up questioning how, exactly he first came into possession of the headset. He can't exactly ask StormCube if he actually built the thing, can he? Or anyone else who knew StormCube? Or his Sister? Or himself? 

Usually that's right when he panics and puts the headset back on to experience something calmer. Something where he is in control. 

Labels	Conditions
Danger +1	☐ Afraid-2 to directly engage
Freak +2	☐ Angry-2 to comfort or support someone or pierce the mask
Savior -1	☐ Guilty-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation
Superior +2	☐ Hopeless-2 to unleash your powers
Mundane -1	☐ Insecure-2 to defend or protect someone

Playbook Moves

Watched C-beams glitter: When you make a claim about a strange situation or phenomenon based on your experience, roll + Freak. On a hit, you were right; the GM will tell you what opportunity your knowledge grants to you. On a 7-9, your claim is incomplete, flawed, or tangential; the GM will tell you how. On a miss, your experiences are deeply incomplete; the GM will tell you what mistake your flawed understanding leads you to.

Out of this world: When you plug into the cosmic aether and tune out of this world, roll + Freak. On a hit, you come to a new, interesting insight about your current problems and situation; the GM will tell you what. On a 10+, you can also shift your own Labels according to match your new understanding. On a miss, you realize something dangerous or terrible; the GM will tell you what, and shift your Labels accordingly.

Potential ☐☐☐☐☐
Advancements
☐

When our team first came together...

We had to deal with a danger I’d met while traveling the farscapes. What was it, and how did we send it away? This could be real interesting but the instructions are to leave it blank and brainstorm as a team.

Relationships

__________________ knows plenty that I don’t about this world, its people, and how to deal with them; I should follow their lead while I’m here.

__________________ is...well...boring. But that’s okay! I’m going to make them more interesting.

Influence

You’re here, but not, and it’s going to take some time before you really commit. Give no one Influence over you.

Putting Down Roots

You’re here, but not, and it shows. Over time, you may be able to commit to this place, and find out why it is that some people choose to invest in others.

Adults do not have Influence over you by default. No one does. You can only give out a total of 6 Influence. During play, you can only give out Influence by revealing a vulnerability or weakness to someone. You can still give out Influence through the end of session move. You cannot give Influence to somebody who already has Influence over you.

Others cannot take Influence over you; if they would, instead they can mark potential or inflict
a condition on you, their choice. You reject Influence at -2 by default, instead of +0. When someone takes advantage of their Influence over you, they can choose two options from the list. At the end of every session, you can take back 1 Influence from someone of your choice.

If you have given out 0-Influence, you cannot comfort or support anyone. If you would trigger that move, instead mark a condition as you say exactly the wrong thing. If you have given out 0-Influence and someone tries to comfort or support you, you cannot open up to them.

You gain benefits based on how much Influence you have given out. These benefits stack.

☐ 1-2 Influence: When you defend someone who has Influence over you, you can ignore the Insecure condition. When you directly engage someone who has Influence over you, you can ignore the Afraid condition.

☐ 3 Influence: When you take a powerful blow from someone with Influence over you, take -2 to the roll.

☐ 4 Influence: When you pierce the mask of someone who has Influence over you, you can always ask them one question, even on a miss.

☐ 5 Influence: When you spend a Team to help someone who has Influence over you, it gives them +2.

☐ 6 Influence: When you accept the words of someone who has Influence over you, mark potential, clear a condition, or take +1 forward.

Player Questions

What kind of player are you? Collaborative, easy going. Still a little new to Masks but pretty familiar with the system.

Why are you excited for this game? It will be interesting to see a Masks game where the PCs are not constantly under supervision or protection by Adult superheroes. They might still have some adults in their lives but it sounds like most of the powerful adult superheroes that would have normally been training them are captured, killed, or converted. So, our rag-tag band of self-taught heroes are gonna have to step up, big time. 

What are your expectations for this game? Working together to make an interesting story and to develop interesting (and flawed) characters. Lots of drama in the game but players who can separate drama between the characters from drama between the players.

Why do you think you would be a good fit for this game? Well, I may be biased but I think I am awesome. I work well with others, and enjoy "yes, and" and "yes, but" -ing with people to add in details and suggestions to make the world seem richer and more alive. I also think the character is a cool idea that would be fun to play out and with a few hooks into the storyline here that won't distract with a bunch of interdimensional-cable spin-off comic books (unless that sounds cool then lets doo). 

 

---

 

Alternatively....

 

TBD a slight twist on this same character/backstory as an Outsider rather than a Nomad. Rather than a human kid who visits other worlds in a virtual reality, the Outsider version would be an version of that same kid from another world that somehow used the same "technology" to end up "stranded" on this one. Or maybe its the same kid but enough of his memories and experiences have been changed by the device, and the extra-dimensional intelligence it is connected to, that Alex is essentially an "alien" to this reality.

Background

Everything above... plus also for this Playbook...

Where do you come from?

Why did you come to Earth?

Why do you want to stay here (for now at least)?

Why do your people want you to come home?

Why do you care about the team? 

Labels	Conditions
Danger +0	☐ Afraid-2 to directly engage
Freak +1	☐ Angry-2 to comfort or support someone or pierce the mask
Savior -0	☐ Guilty-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation
Superior +2	☐ Hopeless-2 to unleash your powers
Mundane +0	☐ Insecure-2 to defend or protect someone

Playbook Moves

Kirby-craft: You have a vehicle, something from your home. Detail its look, and choose two strengths and two weaknesses. When you are flying your ship, you can use it to unleash your powers, directly engage a threat, or defend someone using Superior. In this case, the "ship" that transports people to other worlds is the NeuraSync DreamStation and it only transports them, virtually.

• Strengths: Fast & maneuverable, telepathic
• Weaknesses: Susceptible to owner's mental state, unarmed

Alien tech: When you alter a human device with your alien technology, roll + Freak. On a hit, you create a device that can do something impossible once and then fizzle. When you roll a 10+, choose one:

• it works exceptionally well

• you get an additional use out of it

On a miss, the device works, but it has a completely unintended side effect that the GM will reveal when you use it.

 

Edited March 11, 2023 by BlackHat (see edit history)

[Morphling]

Let's say the second picture is current Alex for the sake of my sanity. Minimum age for PCs is 15.

The first question is a 'who' question, not a 'what' so try to develop it along those lines. Maybe the NeuraSync DreamStation has a built-in A.I. with human-level intelligence. Or perhaps it was a gift from a mysterious person who still has vested interest in his life. Of course, I'm sure you can come up with something else if you'd like.

Some things that I wouldn't mind seeing developed further:

What can Alex accomplish with his gadgets? I'm a little unclear on what a 'wearable ultraprocessor' even is, let alone what it might be able to do.

What is Alex's companion called? How is she similar to his sister, and how is she different? What kind of hero does she want him to be?

What's going to keep Alex in the physical world if he saves NeonKnight?

What does the rest of Alex's family think about his gaming habit? What do they think of his superhero life? Do they know about it? Do they approve?

All in all, solid effort. I would like to see what more you can come up with.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Morphling (see edit history)

[BlackHat]

Updated the picture to an older one that I think caught the same vibe. Will get an unobscured headshot later since he won't always have the gear on but I think this one sets the tone for the app. 

Addressed other questions by updating the Abilities and Background sections, if you want to take another look. I also added some of your questions as additional background questions. 
Will probably keep poking at this slightly up until the deadline but will update you with any major changes and may start working on the second app version for fun if time allows.