Each game session will be the monthly meeting between the Angelic Tethers at the Art of Diplomacy tether.
The Art of Diplomacy is officially declared sanctuary, which means that those seeking refuge can come, so long as they act in good faith towards all within and do not commit acts of violence against any within. In practice, the Old Man in the Attic punishes this...creatively.
This meeting has traditionally been conducted in magical lockdown once the meeting is in session, to avoid dangers from outside the tether and as a compromise to avoid the disruption of meetings. This means in practice that offsite investigations do not happen during game sessions. There are two tools to alleviate this that have been built by the Old Man in the Attic. The mirror in the lobby can be used to scry on places within a hundred miles of the Art of Diplomacy tether for the price of one essence. One of the rooms upstairs, the Echo Chamber, can be used to duplicate another specific room within the city for 60 minutes for the cost of one essence.
Game sessions will feature events taking place as part of these meetings, official visits from important dignitaries and opposition diplomats, information sharing between factions and interpersonal drama. Game sessions will also feature coordinating sessions for missions and downtimes, and assignment of important tasks for tethers. The sessions are about the political, social, and ideological crises and debates that occur and the decisions that need to be made.
[Note: this is entirely theoretical, content will be strongly driven by actual character relationships and goals. These are just the multi-participant events of a game, too. Throughout the night, there are plenty of opportunities for scenes and discussions between characters and within factions.]
7pm(Main Room) Arrival and Welcome of Tether representatives, new arrivals sign guest book
7:15pm(Attic) Demonic prisoner escorted in stealthily by Forever Open representative
7:30pm(Echo Chamber) Echo Chamber used to duplicate lab space in Crescat Scientia to share findings on mysterious techno-relics recovered from mortal police
7:30pm(Attic) Interrogation of Demonic Prisoner by representatives from each tether
8pm(Main Room) Arrival of Representatives of Heavenly Inquisition, performing investigation into allegations of disloyalty.
8:30pm(Front Room) Memorial service for deceased mortal soldier from Celestial Bureaucracy.
8:30pm(Attic) Mortal from Fires of Haymarket runs workshop on street medic methods open to all interested parties
9pm(Echo Chamber) Echo Chamber used to duplicate room for pre-arranged meeting with deep cover spy sent by City News
9pm(Dining Room) Official negotiation between Celestial Bureaucracy and Art of Diplomacy over guardianship of the Newberry Library's collection of artifacts.
9:30pm(Attic) Planning session for joint assault between Forever Open and Crescat Scientia on Demonic hideout on Navy Pier, tactical debate over best method to get innocent mortals out of harms way.
9:30pm(Kitchen) Celebration of the Feast of St. Lydwine by Priest from City News
10pm(Main Room) Announcement of Findings from Heavenly Inquisition, Double Agent Arrested for transport to Heaven
10:15 Game Wrap
Downtimes will be used to resolve most individual or small group investigations and engagements in the game. Actions that occur outside of the game space will be resolved with two different types of downtime actions, individual downtimes and missions.
Individual downtimes represent personal actions such as research, solo investigations, material acquisitions or direct interactions with NPCs out of game space. Downtimes are mainly used to gather information, achieve personal goals or take off-site actions in support of a tether's mission.
Missions represent multi-participant actions, coordinated tasks that involve more than one character. These actions will be resolved somewhat differently. For some actions, the resolution will involve an open ended write-up with openings for characters to fill in details of how the results were achieved. There will also be opportunities between games for some missions to be run either in person or via digital conferencing. Missions are generally used to achieve a specific shared goal and should be loosely planned during game time, enough to say who is participating and what the goal is.
Overall, downtimes are present to provide results for some of the plans made at game. They are an opportunity to gain information and materials to bring into game to share and to move forward personal development. Missions are an opportunity for characters to work together in downtime to achieve goals that change the conditions of the world and affect the context of game.
Many of the interactions in the game space will not use the system. The system is primarily there to resolve disputes and to represent powers and abilities that are difficult to represent in play. Many of these abilities may come up in the event space. Songs and resonances that have social effects or gain information from a scene may be very useful in the game space.
As combat is unlikely to break out in the game space, combat abilities are unlikely to be relevant during a game session. You may ask yourself, why take a power that I won't get to use in the game space?
There are several reasons why you might do this, and several reasons why you might not. A lot depends on your preferred style of gameplay. One reason to do it would be to engage in downtime actions and missions that make use of those abilities. Covert actions, military raids, even active defenses may require the use of combat abilities. Another reason would be for the purposes of character definition. In a play a character may wear a sword to represent a level of combat prowess even if the sword is never drawn on stage.
Reasons not would be if you don't connect with powers your character has that you don't actively use. Another would be if you do not intend to be involved in downtime activities or missions(in which case we recommend pitching an APC).