I'm certain you'll be terribly, terribly shocked to learn that I have opinions about the focus issue. They're irritatingly opiniony, so I'll spare you the details, but I can boil them down to a recommendation.

The solution is:

1) Design the game with a broad setup (like Shadowrun's, for instance). Vague is not the same as broad.

2) Provide for a variety of starting characters and character types (like Dollhouse's).

3) Imagine and write the initial setup as a kicking-off place, as only the first situation to be resolved, not the entire situation to be resolved. This means writing sandbox rules, not story resolution rules.

(Sandbox rules can still create stories, of course.)

Broad setups:

“The characters deal with their problems” is vague. It allows for all kinds of potential action, but doesn't actually suggest any.

“The characters take on corporations, gangs, and rival operatives” is concrete but broad. It also allows for all kinds of potential action, and furthermore it's easy to see what kinds of actions and what they'll mean.

The latter is a design brief, it tells you what you're going to need to design rules for. Corporations, gangs, rival operatives, and the taking on of them, when why where and how. The former doesn't tell you what rules you're going to need to design. You'll have to build upon it - until it resembles the latter, in fact - before you can start.

Sandbox vs story resolution:

Take an example setup. Um, “you play people in a war ravaged refugee camp dealing with their problems by swapping bodies.” Do you treat that as a summary of the game's potential fiction – like Misspent Youth does – or as just one circumstance possible in a whole potentially realizable fictional setting?

If my character swaps bodies with an international aid worker, and then six weeks later with a US senator, married with grown children and owing her reelection to corrupt union officials … can the game make all of those transitions with her? If my character swaps bodies instead with a soldier, then later with an ambitious warlord fighting for stability via mass murder … can the game make all of those transitions too, just as easily? If my character gets killed, can I make a new one?

Does the game accomodate every possible development, or does it drive and limit deveolpments to suit its prevision of story?

This'll be crucial if you want to keep introducing new transhumanizing technologies as play continues. My character starts out as a refugee in a war camp, swaps bodies to get out, and ends up 1000 years later, 20 sessions of play later, as one of the 4 core seed-personalities in a massively distributed AI who's preserving human culture from gray goo, right? If your game treats “people in a war ravaged refugee camp” as the boundaries of the fiction, play can't go that way.

OK, here we go. Now I'll go back and read this thread.

So. That ep was a bit frustrating to listen to toward the end… probably mostly just because it was 2 freakin' hours long, and I don't even want to listen to MYSELF for that long.

Anyway. Some interesting stuff in there. Here's what went through my head while I was listening:

The “mysterious benefactor” thing: it's a framing device. A clever one, potentially. Rob likes it. Josh isn't so sure. Here's my idea, stated as a semi-example:

First Scenario: Pick a Current. Make up a character who is at the crux of that Current. This scenario is about them, and how transhumanist technology changes their situation (and the world around them), for better or for worse. The vehicle for introducing this technology is the Agent, who shows up out of nowhere and says “Hey, it looks like you have problems. I'm in a position to give you the power to change things.” (NOT, “I'm in a position to rescue you”, or whatever). This mysterious Agent provides financial and maybe political/beaureaucratic (jesus that's a lot of vowels) backing to whatever the subject (focal character) decides to do with themselves. Somehow, this gets played out, with players creating and playing supporting roles as needed. At some point, the subject, who is now Patient Zero for whatever transfigurative technology they got into, achieves their goal- having paid whatever costs along the way, and with whatever potentially unforeseen consequences that goal may have incurred, through play. Scenario ends.

Next Scenario: Some Duration Later (importantly, a duration during which the results of the previous scenario have permeated the setting to some degree, such that these results will have some impact on the current scenario). Pick a Current. Make up a character who is at the crux of that current, *as it relates to/is influenced by established technological trends resulting from prior scenario(s)*. This scenario is about them, and how transhumanist technology changes their situation (and the world around them), for better or for worse. The vehicle for introducing this technology is the Agent… who is one of the focal characters from a prior scenario.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

So. You have your serial fiction thing. You have your framing device. You have your technological progression. You have your freedom to reincorporate, to reintroduce old characters (including supporting cast if desired). You have your freedom to NOT reintroduce old characters directly (the former-focus-as-Agent need not be more than the Mysterious Benefactor unless you wish them to be, in which case they can be as much or as little informed by their previous fictional incarnation as you like).

I'm imagining the chain as a product of a sort of vague intersection between “pay it forward” and “we helped you, now you owe us”, with each protagonist, as a condition of their acceptance of the gift of support from the Agent, agreeing to be a representative of <insert mysterious agency or whatever here> in their turn. What happens after that is negotiable. Maybe they only show up once. Maybe they keep returning. Maybe they go rogue. Maybe they try to recruit for their own ends. Who knows.

So. Some ideas. Take from them what you will.

Other thoughts:

Does the addict who's been granted immortality lose the motivation to overcome their addiction now that they can't die?  “Wait… you mean I can stay f*cked up… forever?”

Character vignettes are just representative of the broad strokes of world-altering technology. (I'm not sure what that one means exactly, I just scrawled it on the back of an envelope as I was driving home).

That's it!  Looking forward to the next 'cast… although I hope it's not 2 hours long again >_<

Thanks for the commentary, Dave. Good stuff to think about there.

We won't be doing another two-hour episode.