[Monsterhearts] Prosperity Recruitment/OOC Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [Monsterhearts] Prosperity Recruitment/OOC Thread

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

Interest post. How long do we have to apply?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 20:41

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:29

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

JesterOfAmerica posted:

The OP says about a week, depending on the number of apps.

~~So it does. Well, there'll be an Infernal here soon.~~

Sophie Poe, the Infernal

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Sophie. She was very boring, and her life was very boring, and everyone she knew was boring. Then she found a magic phone, and her life changed forever�yeah, I don�t think the 21st Century�s really cut out for fairy tales. I still can�t say the words magic phone with a straight face. Which is why it�s so brilliant � it�s the perfect cover. I could go up to anyone and tell them straight up that I�m a spy for a secret government department that deals with the supernatural and they�d laugh in my face. Like you�re going to right about now� right?

It�s all true, though. One minute I�m taking a picture of some guy in a weird costume, the next I�m getting all sorts of messages and pop-ups. So I call tech support and the guy at the end explains the whole deal to me, how there�s witches and vampires and way crazier things hiding everywhere, how you can use special magic-technology to detect them. I�ll be honest, I laughed at him and hung up � wouldn�t you? But I saw on the news that evening that the guy was arrested for� something, I don�t know what. And then I tried out some of the apps on the phone (it was second-hand, I just assumed nobody had cleaned it up properly) and� yeah. Wow. Turns out magic is actually a thing! So I called up the tech support guy again, and yeah, that�s how I got this sweet gig as a spy! Just basic surveillance, some courier work - you know, dead drops and stuff - but still, it�s awesome, and it�s all for a good cause!

How did I get so lucky? Nobody cared about me before, I was like the dictionary definition of average. Taylor � that�s the tech support guy, he�s my handler � says they have ways of making sure their tools end up in the right hands, but still. You�d think it�d be somebody in a big city instead of Nowheresville, USA� anyway, I guess I�ve got to kill you now! Haha, just joking� but seriously, don�t take it too seriously, OK? Bad poo poo happens sometimes when the agency�s involved, and I don�t want you getting hurt in the crossfire�

quote:

Name: Sophie Poe
Skin: Infernal
Origin: Lackey
Appearance: Quiet, piercing eyes
Dark Power: The Agency, via their representative Taylor... right?

Stats: Hot 0, Cold -1, Volatile 1, Dark 1

Moves:
Soul Debt
Name a dark power that you owe a debt to. Choose two Bargains that it has made with you. It can hold Strings against you. Whenever it collects 5 Strings against you, trigger your Darkest Self.

Can�t Save Myself
When somebody saves you from forces too powerful for you to reckon with, they mark experience, and you gain a String on them.

Bargains:
Augmented Reality (Uncanny Voices)
You can give the dark power a String in order to realize a secret about someone you�re talking to. The owner of that character will reveal one of
their secret fears, secret desires, or secret strengths (they choose.)

Hack the Planet (Elsewise Power)
You can give the dark power a String to use a move you don�t have, just this once. This move can come from any playbook.

Sex Move
When you have sex, the dark power loses a String on you and gains a String on whoever you had sex with.

Darkest Self
You can�t get what you need, anymore. The world has left you cold and alone, shivering in the wake of your own addictions. The dark power will make some open-ended demands of you, and it�ll promise you some lucrative (and perhaps volatile) things in return. Every demand you fulfill brings you a little closer to feeling whole again, to rekindling the fire in your heart. Whenever you fulfill those demands, remove a String it holds on you. You escape your Darkest Self when the dark power has no more Strings on you, or when you agree to an even worse bargain with an even more dangerous dark power.

Backstory
You owe debts. Give away 3 Strings, divided any way you like between the dark power and the other characters.

Someone thinks they can save you. Gain a String on them.

1) Something about the school or town. It can be fairly big or a minor detail.
Prosperity's got a surprisingly big, well-equipped library. Think some rich industrialist donated his book collection way back when and it sort of blew up from there. I like going there after school sometimes and leafing around in the non-fiction section - would you believe there was a book on spy tradecraft? And before I got the phone, I'd have sworn the librarian Miss Peters was a witch, but apparently not. Oh well.

2) A NPC in homeroom your character knows.
James Bond sits next to me in homeroom. No, really. I don't know if his parents were cruel or just living under a rock when he was born, but yeah, everyone who's not an rear end in a top hat calls him Jim or Jimmy. He's actually a pretty cool guy, and he knows a lot of out-of-the-way places and fun stuff to do in town. It's a shame I can't share my love of spy films with him though.

3) Something odd about the town that only you know.
There was a big plane crash just outside town in the 1970s - I heard about it from Miss Peters. That's not the odd thing, it's public record - but the public record is really weirdly vague. Nobody seems to know what kind of plane it was, how many people died, or even where it crashed. There's one photo all the old news reports used with a bunch of guys standing in a field with a few bits of wreckage, but nobody seems to know where it was taken. That is strange, right?

Gato fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Feb 22, 2016

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 21:13

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

I've finished my character's bio, though I still need to answer the starting questions.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 08:36

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

Heliotrope posted:

Questions for the rest of the PCs
Sophie Poe, the Infernal
Note: in case it wasn't clear, I'd like to keep it ambiguous whether Sophie is actually working for a government agency, and whether her phone actually does what it says on the tin.

quote:

Do you talk to Taylor about anything in your life, or are your conversations limited to being about work? How does he treat you?

I don't really talk directly to Taylor very much now that I've gotten into the swing of things. We communicate by text, mostly, although if the job's more complicated than usual sometimes he'll start off by calling me. He seems like an alright guy, but obviously it's hard to get a good sense of how he is. He gets a bit stress-y and keeps texting me if he thinks I'm not doing stuff fast enough, which can be a bit annoying, and one time he managed to get a message onto my TV screen. That freaked me out, and he sort of backed off. He's ok about letting me have time to myself, not least because I have to maintain my cover, but he's good at making me feel guilty for not sorting stuff out fast enough. That all sounds really negative, doesn't it? I don't know, I don't mind him, but he's my boss. You don't make friends with your boss.

I don't really talk to him about my life. I mean, I don't know how old he is exactly, but he sounds mid-20s/early 30s to me, and yeah, I'm not gonna dump high-school gossip on a grown man. That'd be weird. And the thing is, he kinda knows anyway. He plays it down, but he - the Agency - know a lot about who I'm hanging out with, where I'm going, what's up with my family et cetera. That's the age we live in, right? Snowden did his best, but people just don't care.

quote:

What kind of things has Taylor asked you to do? What's the most dangerous situation you've been in while working for the Agency?

Like I said, it's pretty basic stuff for the most part. I'm not Jason Bourne... yet. Taylor sends me pictures of people in town, I take pictures of my own with one of the magic-detector apps, send the data back to him. A couple of times he's had me sit around in coffee shops or on public benches and keep track of people coming and going. That sounds boring but it's actually pretty relaxing? And it's made me a lot more observant. A couple of times I've picked up packages for him and delivered them - sometimes to other people, sometimes just leaving them in weird places like under trees or in bushes. I've never looked in the packages, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious!

The most dangerous thing I've done so far was probably the time I bugged the police station. I'd picked up the gear from a dead drop the day before, but I still had to come up with an excuse for going in, so I told them I wanted to report that someone stole my bike. I figured I could always tell them I made a mistake and found it later, right? But I was shaking the whole time - just a little, but the lady at the desk noticed and asked if I was ok, which just made me shake even more! And when I went to plant the bug under one of the chairs in the lobby, this janitor noticed me and asked what I was doing! I think I convinced him I'd dropped my phone, but still, scary.

quote:

How does the Agency/Taylor feel about you using these powers for yourself and not in the line of work?

Powers? Oh, you mean the stuff on the phone? Honestly, he's way more cool with it than I'd have guessed. Most of it's pretty subtle stuff anyway - the augmented reality interface which lets me read people's vital signs, the anti-network security programs - but even the weirder apps, the ones that seem to directly affect my brain (how is that even possible?) don't make me, like, glow or anything. So if I want a bit of extra energy to, you know, not suck at gym class, or I want to do some really lateral thinking around a problem, something like that, it's no big deal. Some of the EM apps affect other people too, apparently, but I'm a bit more wary of using those. I don't want to push it too far. Like this one time, I turned on the sprinklers in the school, mostly to see if I could, and Taylor did not like that. He remotely disabled half the apps on the phone until I agreed to be more discreet. Which is... fair enough? I guess? I wish he could have handled it without making me feel like a 9-year-old though.

quote:

How well have you been able to keep working for this department a secret? What do you think will happen if someone finds out about it?

I think I've managed pretty well! I mean, kids these days are always on their drat phones, right? (Imagine I said that in an old person's voice.) Nobody looks twice at a teenager taking a selfie, even in the middle of the street - nobody seems to remember that there's a camera on both sides.

I mean, my parents know I'm delivering packages and stuff, that'd be hard to hide. I told them there's a website that lets you get paid a few dollars for doing odd jobs like that, and, you know, gotta pay for college somehow! They're both so bad at computers they took my word for it... I think. The best lies are the ones where it's mostly the truth, after all. And I don't think anyone at school knows, and it's not so weird that I'm more social and more popular now - plenty of kids come out of their shell about now, right?

I'm not sure what you mean by find out. I mean, I could tell anyone the entire truth, and they'd believe me, right? If I did get in trouble, Taylor would just break off contact, probably scrub the phone remotely, and all you'd have is a teenage girl who got it into her head that she was a spy. It'd be embarrassing, but, you know, I'm not going to go to jail for it. And the vampires and wizards and magic...people I'm spying on? That could be more of a risk, but it's in their interest to keep this under the radar, too. Even if one of them found out, the Agency would protect me.

Gato fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Feb 14, 2016

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 09:05

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

quote:

You owe debts. Give away 3 Strings, divided any way you like between the dark power and the other characters.

I had to sneak into the school after dark not that long ago - don't ask. I really wasn't sure how to do it, so I asked Tatsu for help, since he's our resident rebel without a cause. Normally doing that sort of thing would have stressed me out like anything but with him it was actually kinda fun! I wonder how I can make it up to him...

... speaking of which, I really should do something nice for Mia some time to thank her for letting me copy her test answers that time... and all the other times. She's pretty withdrawn, but I reckon we'd get on well if I could get her to hang out. Maybe I'll bake some cookies?

quote:

Someone thinks they can save you. Gain a String on them.

Ferrosol posted:

Someone is thinking about taking something from you - discuss with them and decide what it is. You each get a String on one another.

Ginny is really big on, like, environmental stuff, she gets quite uptight about it. Which would be none of my business, except Taylor wants to know who's involved in this anti-logging campaign and who's pulling the strings. Maybe they're fairies or something? Nah, that sounds stupid. Anyway, I thought I could just look at those notes she always carries around, but turns out they're pretty detailed and I think I put her guard up. So I guess I'll have to try something else... maybe if she thought I was interested in the campaign? That might be my way in...

Capfalcon posted:

Someone once saved your unlife. They gain 2 Strings on you.

Cassius is a bit of a mystery to me - he's gone from like nobody to the hottest guy in the class, but I can't figure out what's changed? Anyway, I think something weird is going on, because I knocked him out of the way of a car this one time and he got up off the pavement without so much as a scratch. And there was the time he helped me get into that warehouse - that guard was practically drooling. I almost want to point the scanner at him but what would happen if I'm right? Would he be a target too?

Gato fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Feb 22, 2016

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 07:53

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

pre:

[]    [Ginny] []       [Thomas] [Lily]
[Jim] []      [Sophie] [Tatsu]  [Spider]
[]    [Sam]   []       []       [Elliot]

Sophie sits right in the middle of class, more by accident than design. Her friend, the unfortunately Jim Bond, sits by the window.

Lily is a sweet, shy girl who sits in the front row because her hearing isn't fantastic - she's sort of been pushed into being keen by default.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 19:51

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

Tatsu seems like a fun guy, but there's something kinda Cold about him.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 23:37

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

Sorry for disappearing, I always forget to refresh OOC threads. I'm fine with a time skip, gotta get to the ~~fireworks factory~~ party somehow.

# ¿ May 22, 2016 08:45

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:29

Gato: Feb 1, 2012

Got an exam and a presentation in the next few days, so posting may be a little erratic, but I'll try to keep up.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 22:37

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