Last Dispatch: The Game Moves

This story was made using the solo RPG Last Dispatch, by Symbolic City. I used the Freestation Tethys template, rather than get wrapped up in designing different possible factions.

What follows is a chart of the rolls made, the cards drawn, and the following actions:

Event	Roll	Cards	Result	Rescue/Promote	Discard
Background	3	5c,3c,6d	Opposition	6d	3c
1	2	7c,3s	Opposition	3s	7c
2	5	Jh,7h,6s,As,3d	Intervention	As	Jh,3d
3	3	Kd,5s,2h	Intervention	Kd	5s,2h
4	6	Kc,2c,Ac,Qs,6h,5d	Assembly	Kc	2c,Qs,6h,5d
5	3	Kh,4h,2d	Opposition	Kh	4h,2d
6	6	Jd,7d,Ad,8h,3h,6c	Intervention	Jd - Ad	3h,7d,6c
7	3	Ks,Js,7s	Assertion	Ks	Js
8	5	Qh,9h,5h,Qd,Jc	Intervention	Qd	5h
9	6	Qc,10c,8c,4c,8s,2s	Opposition	Qc	4c,2s
10	4	9d,8d,4d,9c	Opposition	9c	4d
11	6	10c,9c,4c,10h,Ah,10d	Intervention	Ah	10d,4s
12	6	8s,3s,8h,7h,6d,8c	Assembly	8c	7h,6d,3s
13	5	Qh,9h,10c,9c,9d	Intervention	Qh	9h,10c,9c
14	4	10s,7s,8d,5c	Intervention	5c	7s,8d
15	4	9s,6s,As,Ac	Opposition	Ac	6s
16	2	10h,10s	Opposition	10h	10s
17	1	8c	Assertion	8c
18	5	9s,8s,9d,8h,5c	Assembly	9d	9s,8h,5c
19	2	As,9d	Opposition	As	9d
20	4	END

Final Thoughts

As a game, Last Dispatch has some interesting design choices, which on first glance are quite complex. Consider that after each draw, you pick one card of each suit, save or elevate one, discard the others, and then save the remaining cards. That’s four steps instead of a far quicker and simpler “save/elevate one card, discard the rest.”

Why make it more complicated? Well, the game is a little longer, this way, and if you randomly draw four spades in a hand, that will severely reduce Spades’ influence on the rest of the story. All in all, I think it’s a bit of complexity that maintains the overall shape of the game.

That shape is well constructed. Throughout the game, the four suits ebbed back and forth among who challenged who, who succeeded, and who directed the course of the station.

This is certainly a game that relies on the narrative to support it, however. I tried my go-to method of solo-RPG play; playing the game first and then writing the narrative, and I feel the overall structure of my narrative was weak.

I believe a lot of this was due to the fact that I didn’t have a solid background in the setting before I considered each draw. If I had written dispatches as I went, solidifying exactly what happened, what the situation was, and how people were reacting, I might have had a better foundation to draw the action from.

This is a regular issue I have with my writing. I’m not great at action. For any number of reasons I live in my head, and that makes action a secondary concern in a lot of ways. I wholeheartedly believe that action scenes in movies are about the characters, not the bullets or explosions. It’s a dance, not a fight, and different actions tell you different things.

For me, I spend so much energy on translating thought to words, that translating thought to actions is something I’m quite inexperienced in. As such, I fall back on the “talking heads” method of storytelling: Focus on dialogue and what people are saying, because the environment is just a distraction that might make you miss something important. Yay Autism!¹

All of this connects to where I’m going next with my work, so stay tuned for that post!

Back to the game: All in all, I think this is a great little system, and I think I got maybe too wrapped up in the idea that it needed to create a “story.” I’m going to play this game again, and try only writing dispatches, as the game suggests.