EditorBFG
Explorer
Every member of the Frequency has a special cell-phone that only Aleph, the Global Frequency operator, has the number for. When it rings you pick it up in a hurry. At that point the operator Aleph tells you the situation and tells you what you're doing, and then you do it. It's that simple.
But the storytelling trick isn't really the methodology so much as the urgency. In game, PC gets a call from the Agency (or whatever): "We have a situation in Kazakhstan. There's a driver coming to take you to the airport, who will give you a disk for your laptop with maps of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, then put you on a commercial flight to Ankara. From Turkey, a special courier will be meeting you to convey you to Baykonur. In the meantime, we need you to generate three viable scenarios for disabling a satellite in geosynchronous orbit over Afghanistan without the notice of Russian or Chinese intelligence. The courier in Ankara will have the usual gear, including weapons. The driver will be at your door in 7 minutes." Then, cut to the next player.
I'm just going off the top of my head, but you see the idea; it's that scene where all the main characters, spread across the world, get the call that it's time go kick butt somewhere. It creates that sense of Important Things Happening. And Warren Ellis has a great sense of pacing as a writer, so he presents it in a way I can't do justice to here. Plus, part of the conceit is that for each mission they pull together a group of disparate experts (ex: the satellite technology guy, the ex-CIA assassin, the computer hacker, the Kazakh-speaking expert on the region, the rogue former astronaut, etc.) and so they give each one a fairly autonomous job ("Meanwhile, I need you to create a vaccine for this virus in 48 hours") that they accomplish with little or no oversight. Ellis uses all the tropes and makes them new again.
Trust me: read Global Frequency.
(I shouldn't be so nice to Ellis, though. He slapped me in the face once. Not hard enough to hurt, but still.)
But the storytelling trick isn't really the methodology so much as the urgency. In game, PC gets a call from the Agency (or whatever): "We have a situation in Kazakhstan. There's a driver coming to take you to the airport, who will give you a disk for your laptop with maps of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, then put you on a commercial flight to Ankara. From Turkey, a special courier will be meeting you to convey you to Baykonur. In the meantime, we need you to generate three viable scenarios for disabling a satellite in geosynchronous orbit over Afghanistan without the notice of Russian or Chinese intelligence. The courier in Ankara will have the usual gear, including weapons. The driver will be at your door in 7 minutes." Then, cut to the next player.
I'm just going off the top of my head, but you see the idea; it's that scene where all the main characters, spread across the world, get the call that it's time go kick butt somewhere. It creates that sense of Important Things Happening. And Warren Ellis has a great sense of pacing as a writer, so he presents it in a way I can't do justice to here. Plus, part of the conceit is that for each mission they pull together a group of disparate experts (ex: the satellite technology guy, the ex-CIA assassin, the computer hacker, the Kazakh-speaking expert on the region, the rogue former astronaut, etc.) and so they give each one a fairly autonomous job ("Meanwhile, I need you to create a vaccine for this virus in 48 hours") that they accomplish with little or no oversight. Ellis uses all the tropes and makes them new again.
Trust me: read Global Frequency.
(I shouldn't be so nice to Ellis, though. He slapped me in the face once. Not hard enough to hurt, but still.)
