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Suzerainty: The Board Game - In your hands you hold a brand new copy of the game 'Suzerainty'. It's snugly wrapped in a skin of plastic...
Suzerainty: The Board Game - The cover features a charming illustration depicting a mass of grinning labourers loading goods onto a ship while a richly dressed administrator oversees their work.
1. - Shake the box.
2. - Remove the plastic wrap.
3. - [Leave it perfect and undisturbed.]
Suzerainty: The Board Game - The box has a nice heft to it. You hear the rattle of individual wooden tokens and feel their weight shifting back and forth...
Inland Empire - What treasures wait in store for you?
Suzerainty: The Board Game - Even before you open it, you can tell that this will be a meaty game of grand strategy and complex player interactions.
1. - Shake the box.
2. - Remove the plastic wrap.
3. - [Leave it perfect and undisturbed.]
Suzerainty: The Board Game - The plastic wrap rips off as easily as a bodice in a tawdry historical romance.
1. - Open the box.
Suzerainty: The Board Game - There's a hiss as the lid slides off. Inside you find a thick, full-colour rulebook and more than a dozen pouches of various wooden components.
Perception (Smell) - Ahhh! Savour that new board game smell! A mix of wood, paper, and ink, all wrapped in the sweet must of cardboard.
1. - Examine the components.
Suzerainty: The Board Game - You open up a number of pouches containing wooden tokens. There are also several punchboards with other cardboard components that will need to be punched out before you can play.
1. - Punch out the cardboard pieces, one by one.
Reaction Speed [Challenging: Success] - Hold on! Out of the corner of your eye...
PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - The lieutenant is staring over your shoulder. His fingers are twitching, but only barely.
Composure [Formidable: Success] - He wants to do it. You should let him punch out the tokens.
1. - Wave the frame of pieces in front of him. "Kim, help me with these?"
2. - No, I'm greedy and selfish. [Punch out the tokens alone.]
KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant clears his throat, embarrassed at your perception of his eagerness. "I have no interest in doing this."
DRAMA [Trivial: Success] - My skills are wasted on this one, milord! An obvious lie!
INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - There is no way Mister Confiscated-Indulgent-Spinners-And-Smokes-Once-A-Day can resist a sensory experience as simple and pleasurable as popping cardboard tokens out of their frames. Show him how good it feels!
1. - Slowly, indulgently begin popping the tokens out of their cardboard frames- right in front of the lieutenant.
2. - This is getting a little weird. I'm not doing that.
Suzerainty: The Board Game - The satisfying *chhhk* each token makes as you press down on it visibly tortures the lieutenant.
INTERFACING - Keep going! He'll give in soon.
Suzerainty: The Board Game - You get halfway through the second frame of tokens before the lieutenant silently reaches down and begins helping you.
KIM KITSURAGI - He pops them out at a far faster rate than yourself- almost like he's daring himself to outpace you. By the time you finish your current set of tokens, he's already cleared out all of the others.
1. - "I knew you wanted to do it!"
2. - "Thank you, Kim."
3. - Check out the wooden tokens.
KIM KITSURAGI - He looks at you, his otherwise stoic expression betrayed by a softness in his eyes.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Godly: Success] - There are very few people Kim would spare this kind of patience for. The others are all dead, but you remain. Why does he care about you?
EMPATHY [Impossible: Failure] - Because you're a broken person, Harry. He pities you. Hurting you would be a form of animal abuse.
DAMAGED MORALE -1
KIM KITSURAGI - As if he senses the shift in you, he speaks up quickly. "It was no problem, detective. It's just a board game."
Volition [Challenging: Success] - He's right. It's just a board game. We can come back to it later.
1. - Check out the wooden tokens.
2. - Put the game away.
You - You put all the pieces of the board game back inside their box, and the box is stowed away. The lieutenant watches from a distance, then nods to you.
KIM KITSURAGI - "Let's get back to the case."
END ■