Excursions

A key theme of Emporium is exploration; of wandering through a cavernous superstore, sifting through the dizzying output of a consumerist culture, and repurposing and finding meaning in things. This is something that is difficult to capture in a normal Society game format, either in uptime or downtime!

As such, the Emporium GM team will be including a system of Excursions in the game. Like linears in other games (such as Sanctum, Voyager-47 and Romancing the Toaster), these are small group activities and adventures ran by a single GM, a little like a tabletop game. The GM describes your surroundings and the actions of NPCs via text and you and your fellow player characters can respond to them, or carry out your own dastardly schemes. Excursions are opportunities to creatively overcome obstacles while exploring, engage in contested RP against NPCs (and sometimes PCs!) seeking to block your path, or carry out actions where the ability to rapidly respond to rapidly changing environments is important.

Excursions can either be NPC-initiated or player-initiated. On some occasions, NPCs will highlight the possibility for an Excursion, indicating a pressing issue that has emerged - an opportunity to explore a recently discovered wing of the Warehouses, or a spill in Aisle 4 that has somehow become sentient and needs to be extracted and rehomed. These will be clearly announced and highlighted in the week’s news, as well as the Employee Taskboard.

Alternatively, PCs may decide to go on adventures of their own. Define a goal that you’re interested in pursuing or area you want to explore (the more specific the better!), let the GMs know, and saddle up for adventure! Adventures don’t necessarily have to be to a distant location, either - if you want to enact some sort of complex ritual or investigation (or something that might require a similar amount of GM focus), this could be an Excursion too.

When thinking about Excursions you’re interested in, here are a few key considerations.

• All excursions have a maximum of 5 and a minimum of 3 players. This is to ensure that everyone gets a chance to shine, while also making sure that multiple players can enjoy them (solo actions are better suited to downtime; see below). If more than five people want to go on an Excursion, consider splitting it up into two sub-Excursions. If you can't find someone to go on an excursion with (perhaps because your character usually acts alone), let a GM know, and we'll work something out.
• All players will be able to go on at least one player-initiated Excursion over the course of the game. We plan to be running a lot more than this, but this depends on player action and GM availability; it is unlikely that you will go on more than one Excursion per session. As far as possible, we intend to ensure that every player who wants to can pursue plot they are interested in via Excursions. Given GM:player ratios, we’d prefer that people don’t all wait until the last session, but in any case we will make sure that everyone who wants to go on an Excursion will be able to, and ensure that they get something useful or interesting for their own personal story out of it. Note that this only applies to Excursions initiated by players; if you are going on an adventure that Emporium NPCs or one of the GMs has directed you to, this doesn't count as your one player-initiated linear.
  • If you've already gone on a player-initiated Excursion and want to go on another - let a GM know, and we'll see if we can fit you in! That said, if an Excursion is already heavily subscribed, please be considerate of other people who haven't had a chance yet; even if your character might not, stepping back and making sure everyone gets a go is good and polite roleplaying.
• Going on an Excursion is strictly optional; we will make sure that players who can’t or don’t want to get on an Excursion will have interesting and unique content available to them as well.
• Let the GMs know if you are planning a player-initiated Excursion as far in advance as possible. While we can run things based on events and plans arising in session, giving the GM team more time to prepare means that we can prepare even more cool and fun things for you to do and interact with. Informing us of your plans after you get your turnsheets is helpful; informing us of your plans in your turnsheets is ideal.

Excursions are relatively freeform GM-led adventures. For details on how we plan to address conflict resolution, dramatic clashes, and other PvE and PvP content, see the relevant page.

An Excursion could take a wide range of forms! It could involve:

• An expedition into the Deep Stockrooms, navigating its depths and overcoming obstacles to recover an impossible concept from a cryptid’s lair.
• The heist of a departmental supervisor’s safe, to recover documents shedding light on the true history of the Emporium, and the subsequent subtle - or obvious - getaway.
• The detailed investigation of a strange object or location, where several Entities pool skills and resources to scrutinise hidden dangers or miraculous boons, accomplishing together what they couldn’t do alone.

Between ‘regular’ uptime, Excursions, and turnsheet actions in downtime, there are a wide range of ways to play Emporium, each with their own advantages. To help you get the most out of your roleplay, here are suggestions about what works best for each format.

• If you want to engage in social interaction-heavy roleplay or plot, browse aisles, or interact with NPCs or PCs, that’s best handled in uptime.
• If you want to go on a dungeon crawl with other PCs, if moment-to-moment interactivity is important to your plans, or you want to achieve a specific goal but don’t know exactly how you’d get there, that’s best handled in an Excursion.
• If you want to engage with in-depth personal plot, pursue metaphysical shenanigans, prepare complex plans to set in motion later, or receive something with a multimedia outcome, that’s best handled in downtime.

The above are only meant as guidelines - plans change, and, as GMs, we will do our best to make sure that everything is fun and exciting for you! If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to contact your GM who can advise on how best to explore or pursue a given plot.