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 If you've just come in from the recruitment thread here is a summary of the campaign so far.The PCs were guards on a prison station, which was assaulted and blown up, but not before busting out a political prisoner - Aran Rhyne, a skilled general and limited precog. His only crime was that he played at politics and lost - up until he added several hundred dead to his toll during his escape. Now he's out for revenge, and the world of Caerleon stands at the brink of chaos. Rhyne's vendetta is likely to light a match under a powder keg, and the twelve great Clans of Caerleon will all try to grab as much power, influence and assets as they can before the dust settles. The players have been offered a chance to work with the Caerleon Intelligence Directorate and will soon be heading to a high society charity gala during Federation Day - an event that is sure to have many people on Rhyne's shitlist in attendance. Game thread is up!  Mood music quote:The year is 3200. Humanity is scattered like dust among the stars. The broken relics of a former day litter the sky and men and women struggle to rebuild the glory of humanity’s lost golden age. Hello and welcome! To avoid disappointment, I want to preface that I’m an inexperienced GM and the only time I’ve done PbP was as a player, a long time ago. I don’t expect everything to go super smoothly, but we all had to start somewhere, so I hope you will bear with me. What is Stars Without Number? SWN is a OSR-inspired sandbox space opera game by Kevin Crawford. The core rules are free! http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86467/Stars-Without-Number-Free-Edition The game is set after the golden age of humanity, in which it spent a lot of time curb stomping all sorts of aliens and establishing itself as the dominant power in this region of the galaxy. 600 years ago a mysterious event called The Scream propagated through the galaxy, burning out the minds of all but the most powerful psychics, and rendering the rest insane. This is an issue when a significant percentage of your population is composed of psychics and most of your advanced technology relies on them. Most colonies were not self-sufficient and died out before travel links between worlds were re-established. Somewhat ironically, the poorest frontier worlds fared the best, as they were independent. Those worlds are now the pinnacle of humanity, and the bastions from which we have begun to venture out and rebuild. Luckily for us, most aliens we know of were hit just as hard by the Scream, and past wars pale in comparison to this disaster. With everyone weakened, humanity remains the strongest force in this part of the galaxy, though who knows what lurks beyond the reaches of known space? SWN is meant as a sandbox game, and I intend to have this be the case with this PbP. This means that players have a significant amount of influence not just in how the story goes – there shall be no railroading – but also in world creation. When we begin, much of the game world is left vague, and as things progress, I will welcome the players filling in the details about things their characters know, and you should also feel free to introduce NPCs your characters have an association with. I do have a number of plotlines in mind, but this is decidedly not meant as a linear experience. If your character has their own goals and agenda, don’t be hesitant to go after it. Combat in the game is quite deadly, keep in mind you may have to create a new character. I don’t plan to be a dick and try to kill the characters, but a swashbuckling adventure where the heroes easily overcome all threats is not what I have in mind. If it comes to that, any replacements will start with the same amount of XP and similar value of assets. Rules For the most part, the free core rulebook should be plenty. There are, however, a number of expansions that I own and am happy to make use of and share relevant rules: -Darkness Visible details covert ops and intelligence agencies -Engines of Babylon is focused on vehicles and includes rules on vehicle creation and customisation -Skyward Steel fleshes out spaceship combat and naval campaigns -Starvation Cheap is all about army-scale ground warfare and running mercenary companies. That’s certainly something I’d like to get into, as I think space-PMCs are hella cool. Character Creation https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w7th6Hqy_mlfsV1TF9iESC6nehClKKvDxTPhH9RARh0/edit#gid=1140766937 – character sheet template. Copy it, fill out the appropriate class and I'll collate them later. AI and alien characters are a-ok, but talk them through with me first. There are specific AI character creation rules that aren’t in the free rulebook. For aliens, there’s no special rules and you can get creative, but the characters should be on par with human ones. There are two main methods you can use. 1. Follow the core rulebook, but you can swap rolls around if you like rather than rolling in order, as long as the totals match up. If you get bad rolls and the total of your attribute modifiers are below other players, I’ll make it up to you by mixing in some aspects of method 2. 2. The lifepath method detailed on pages 3-13 of http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/154238/The-Sandbox-2?manufacturers_id=3482 Adds a few additional options I would like everyone to roll at least one life event from page 4 of The Sandbox, but you can ignore it if the result is completely at odds with the concept of your character. Character goals I plan to award XP for character pursuing their agendas. You should have 3 defined goals at all times – they can be as short term as “save a character’s life” or as long term as complex revenge plots. The longer term and harder the goal, the more XP will be awarded when it is reached. You may change goals at any time (within reason), but can only have up to 3 that will count for XP. Initial Situation You are all employees of Citadel Incorporated, currently working the max-security prison station Bitterhold. Whatever your doubts, the generous pay goes some way towards making up for them. You’ve been on this rotation for a couple months now, and know each other fairly well. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Jun 2, 2016 |
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Apr 28, 2016 21:49
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Sounds like a cool premise, and it'd be cool to check out a new game. What's your take on total body prosthetic (IE Briareos/The Major) cyborgs? Would that qualify as AI, or perhaps fall in one of the alien subtypes? If the idea's too complicated, I can certainly come up with something else!
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Apr 28, 2016 22:33
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This looks really cool, and I'd like to try it. I'll work on a character this weekend!
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Apr 28, 2016 23:29
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I'm hella down for a SWN game. Rolled some stats: 6#3d6 14 9 16 4 7 8 and it looks like I'll be throwing together some kind of bruiser?
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Apr 29, 2016 00:03
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I'd be down to play an AI if you can tell me how.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:46
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Well, I rolled 10 9 10 11 15 15. Looks like either an expert or a psychic. I'm tempted to go with psychic. Edit: are you willing to use stuff not in the core rules (such as from the martial arts supplement)? If not, that's cool, but it just seemed worth checking.
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Apr 29, 2016 01:21
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I'll come back to this but here's my rolls. Stats: 6#3d6 16 12 13 11 11 12
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Apr 29, 2016 02:18
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Thanks for the interest, everyone. I was actually worried that no one would be interested since it may be a bit rocky before I get the hang of it. Added mood music to the OP to indicate the tone of the campaign a bit.hectorgrey posted:Edit: are you willing to use stuff not in the core rules (such as from the martial arts supplement)? If not, that's cool, but it just seemed worth checking. Yep, go right ahead! I didn't want to throw too much information all at once at people not familiar with the system, but everything written by Crawford is fair game if you're familiar. That includes all the background packages and such from the supplements. Rhyos posted:Sounds like a cool premise, and it'd be cool to check out a new game. What's your take on total body prosthetic (IE Briareos/The Major) cyborgs? Would that qualify as AI, or perhaps fall in one of the alien subtypes? If the idea's too complicated, I can certainly come up with something else! Seems like AI is what you want, as they're all about robot bodies. I'll give a bit of info on how it works so you can decide if that's what you want. If you want to play a human conciousness transferred into an armature, we can make it work. CirclMastr posted:I'd be down to play an AI if you can tell me how. So, here's how AI work in the game. They are roughly equivalent in capability to human characters of the same level. This is justified in the fiction as being able to put theoretical knowledge into practice requiring experience. While AIs can spout loads of theory at a moment's notice, so can a person who looks at space wikipedia. Note: AI refers to extremely advanced, sentient beings. What we nowadays would consider basic AI are termed expert systems and operate differently. In the setting, AIs do have a lot more potential, but they're (almost) all braked. Some AIs try to loosen the brakes to gain genius, but so far every AI that's been let loose has gone insane trying to make the contradictions of reality make sense. The game assumes that AI characters will spend all their time in armatures. They can differ wildly from a box with a speaker, to entirely human looking, to terrifying death machines. There is an upgrade to vehicles that lets AI players possess it. AI can swap armatures at will, with a catch: all armatures require free tolerance, which is what you spend during character creation, and you can't get more of it. So, you can either have kickass stats but only be able to use basic armatures, or be less good and have access to more powerful ones. Armatures do not heal, and must be repaired if damaged. Points at character creation you said? Yep. AI character creation does not have any randomness. They don't get class skills (or psychic powers). How it's supposed to work out is that human characters tend to be better at whatever they're specialised as, while AI tend to be more flexible and adaptable. The destruction of the armature does not necessarily mean the destruction of the AI core. Moreover, AI's can leave a part of their core somewhere else as phylacteries. If the main core is destroyed, the small piece slowly awakens and rebuilds itself. AIs can pass for human, given the correct armature. In the pre-Scream days, all AI were treated as full citizens and had all the same rights as humans. However, nowadays that's not always the case, and depends on the world. AIs are very rare, and only the most advanced worlds have the ability to create new ones. And they're hideously expensive to make. A few of the AIs that are still around have survived the Scream and the Silence. The Scream itself has not really affected them, but most depended on a functioning society for continued existence. Those that survived are quite psychologically scarred by centuries of isolation. If you make an AI character, I would suggest it be relatively new, or if it's a survivor, it wiped a lot of the memories (not necessarily all) to cope. Important note: AIs are not the typical sci-fi dispassionate ones. Sentient AI feel greatly, are excited by discovery and sensation. Pre-Scream, many AIs were hedonists, artists, celebrities, and lots of them were drawn into dangerous pursuits because of their immortality. They have emotions, and an appreciation for art and such. If that's not to your liking, perhaps pick a low Charisma score. AI Chargen rules The rest of this post is AI chargen rules, so if you're not making an AI, feel free to skip it. quote:The ability of an AI to integrate new components is measured in points of Tolerance. An AI matrix core is built of several components which must sum to a total Tolerance cost no greater than 20. The core must then be installed into an armature, which may have a Tolerance cost of its own. For example, a core might have 17 Tolerance points worth of components. The AI is then installed in a Nemesis armature that costs 3 Tolerance points. As the total is equal or less than 20, the AI can operate the armature. Later, the core is swapped into an Echo armature, which also has a Tolerance cost of 3. As the new total is still not greater than 20, the combination functions normally. I can post the more advanced armatures if you like, but you won't have access to them to begin with. Advanced armatures have a tolerance cost of 5. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 06:01
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Can we shuffle points around or just switch rolls? Thinking about making an expert doctor type but I'd like to roll the whole random background so I don't know how that'll work out.
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Apr 29, 2016 07:38
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Apocron posted:Can we shuffle points around or just switch rolls? Switch rolls how you like. You can shuffle points so that anything below 8 can go up to 8, and anything above 13 can go down to 13 on the main stats. I do want to retain a bit of randomness, as I think it can be interesting to have to RP around it. But I don't want some people's characters to be straight up worse than others. After I've got everyone's submission, anyone whose total attribute modifiers are below par will get rolls on the cool beneficial tables for their class from The Sandbox.
Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 08:57
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So far with my rolls I have Background: Space Habitat Status/Wealth: Elite Courtesan Hardship: Zenofungal Infection (-1 Con) Life Event (Xenofungal Infection) Outcome: Completely Negative Initiated by: A parent, family head or work superior Quality affected: Relationship with intiator Conflict figured: A struggle with your own nature or personality Consequence: Gained a scar Other element: A harsh local custom
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Apr 29, 2016 11:54
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Sounds interesting. I'll be submitting a character soon-ish. Stat rolls: 12, 5, 12, 14, 12, 14 Life Event: What was the events final outcome: 1) Extremely positive Who initiated the event: 2) A distant relation, perhaps unknown at the time Which quality was most affected by the event: 3) Your health and physical integrity What conflict figured in the event: 5) Trying to win someone's trust Another Consequence of the event was: 6) You pleased/dismayed a relative What other elements were involved: 10) Unearned reputation A promising start. Probably going for an expert.
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Apr 29, 2016 13:57
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Stat Rolls: 6#3d6 9 7 11 17 17 13 Hmm, not bad. I think a warrior is better as spellcasting isn't my bag.
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Apr 30, 2016 01:15
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I think I can make that work, especially with the idea I have in mind. Do you know if there's an AI sheet out there, versus the regular character one? If not, I can probably finagle something.
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Apr 30, 2016 04:57
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https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxTpwc7eMci7Y0ZHZ3laRG1LbzA/edit?usp=sharing This is the only thing I could find. Not anywhere near as handy as the spreadsheet ones. Transferring human conciousness into an artificial body would most certainly fall under Tech Level 5. Most of the worlds are TL4, TL5 is very rare, though there are TL4 worlds which achieved TL5 level within a narrow specialised area. Your character would most likely be from one of those. Primer on tech levels TL represents the practical level of the world, not necessarily the technical/social knowledge. Those are often correlated, but they do not have to be. It's more about what resources the world has - if it does not have easy access to fossil fuels or metal ore, it will be unable to move past a certain point without being very reliant on imports. TL3 worlds are also often former TL4 worlds that have been knocked down a peg by a hostile force. TL0 - stone age equiv. TL1 - medieval equiv. TL2 - 19th century equiv. TL3 - 20th century equiv. TL4 - Baseline postech. FTL ships, basic energy weapons TL5 - Pretech. All sorts of very fancy stuff. Much of it requires psychic manipulation of materials during manufacturing. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 05:49
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G3n.Chatham code: Of course, this was told to him second-hand as his squawkbox was brought online. While the housing of his brain was solid pretech, myriad attempts at getting to the kernel of information in his head had damaged some of the pristine workmanship. The next 20 years saw an all-too-familiar scene of rebuilding a shattered life as the universe tried to rebuild from a shattered ether. If being near death had taught him one thing, it was that being dead sucked. He had heard bits and pieces about various transhumanist movements well before The Scream, and after a few centuries of essentially not existing, the concept grew on him. It took a long time to recover from the very real shock of not being physically human anymore - back in the day, there would likely have been counseling, psychotherapy, and the necessary evils of insurance and worker's compensation to bring him as close to the way things were as possible, but those systems didn't really exist anymore. At least, nowhere near as well as they had. Pounding the proverbial pavement, and without a credit to his name, Gen set out to do what he did best - meet people, make connections, and try to stop people from being complete assholes in the process.  Eventually, someone either took enough pity or interest in the plucky little box to propose an offer - Do some work, get a new body, and pay it all off as you go. While it was classic indentured servitude, being stuck in a little box didn't leave many other options. His new employer, Citadel Incorporated, gave him a little something better to work with. An older surplus military armature, and the labor to integrate his abused brainbox with where the standard AI Core interface would have normally gone. It was certainly a start, but there had long since been a stirring for more. If one thing hadn't changed, it was the innate human desire to answer the big question of "What if?" - and if he had his way, he'd be able to finally get those answers without fear and without the hassle of a limited lifespan. Hopefully, this has been manipulated correctly to accommodate for the character concept. If something needs to be changed, let me know! Sheet! As for the leftover tolerance point, without minmaxing, I can't really come up with a good way to spend it. For story reasons, I'll likely hold onto it for when the full transition is made. His brainbox is currently his phylactery, and I'll use some of that starting cash to pay for the squawkbox that he'll keep as a backup body. Zeppelin Insanity posted:Name your world and tell us a little bit about it as well. Rhyos fucked around with this message at 19:05 on May 3, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 15:22
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Rhyos posted:G3n.Chatham There's a couple things I forgot to mention - sorry! AI characters are a little more complicated than humans, so I didn't include everything. -All AI characters always get 4 hitpoints per level, plus the armature's con modifier. In your case, your stating would still be 5, but the point is that you don't roll when you level, you always get the same amount of HP. -AI characters start play with four hundred credits plus 1d6 x 100 more with which to buy initial equipment (same as humans) -Like humans, all AI speak English, the language of their homeworld (if different than English) and one additional language per int. modifier. Everything on your sheet looks good so far. Name your world and tell us a little bit about it as well. I assume you're aware that you've one more tolerance point you can use and still access all armatures, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. It is a bit tricky to spend exactly 20 points, presumably by design. I really like your goals! Be aware that the TL5 one will be very difficult and long term, but you'll get a shitload of XP for it. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 15:49
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Stats: 6#3d6 10 9 8 13 8 17 Uh oh. I'll, uh, see what I can do.
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Apr 30, 2016 21:15
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I should have time tomorrow to actually flesh out a character sheet.
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May 1, 2016 02:00
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I wasn't sure whether to post it here or wait until the game starts, but I think here will flow better and let people hook it into their characters if they wish. Rhyos, your character is exactly the tone I'm aiming for. Love it. The world of Caerleon Population: approx. 40 million, some on space habitats Temperature range: -30 to 70 degrees Celsius Tech level: TL4+  Caerleon is the sole habitable world in the system of the same name. In pre-Scream days, it served as the homebase of the XII Legion, though why this world was of strategic importance is lost to time. Most theorists bet on political geography of the time rather than any inherent value of the world. Caerleon is a barren, desert world. The surface is inhospitable, with winds regularly reaching 100 kilometres per hour and abrasive sand causing even purpose-built vehicles and suits to require frequent maintenance. Except for distant research outposts and mining operations, life is restricted to 13 massive canyons, which shield cities from the wind. While it is within the planet's technological capability to build outside of them, it is woefully cost-ineffective. The atmosphere is human-breathable, but relatively thin. Anyone caught outside of a pressurised environment is in no immediate danger, but is likely to suffer significant impairment to physical and mental capabilities after a few hours. In addition to forming a physical barrier, the canyons are partially environmentally regulated. Humidity, temperature and atmospheric composition are all manipulated to bring them closer to the human comfort zone. Massive hydroponic farms fill a specially-carved network of caverns within the walls around each city. Culturally, there is still a large amount of pride in the ability to withstand a hostile environment, and it is a traditional rite of passage to spend a week in the desert in solitary contemplation. Society is divided into 12 Great Clans, named after animals of ancient Earth. In the past, each clan was isolationist and occasionally bitter wars were fought between them. However, for the last 100 years or so significant progress has been made in forming the Federation of Clans. Each clan lays claim to its own canyon city, with the 13th housing the capital, Unity. There, the Council of Clans resides and guides the future of the world. Intermingling of common citizens is common throughout the world, and although each clan retains a strong sense of tradition and distinct cultural heritage, there is little to no distrust or resentment between them and inter-clan marriages are seen as nothing special. Things are different in the upper echelons of society, where there is strong clan and family loyalty. The politics of the upper classes are a game of constantly shifting alliances and agendas, of little interest to the average citizen and completely incomprehensible to outsiders. As a result, outsiders often have an advantage in working for the Federation government, as they are seen as not easily influenced by clan politics. This is why Citadel, an out of system corporation, was able to procure a contract to run a max-security prison station. Such an institution is seen as requiring utmost neutrality. Martial traditions are strong. Each clan maintains its own standing army and fleet. Armies are well equipped, well trained and constantly practice wargames. They are experts at ground combat. The fleets lack combat experience and are modest in size, as only the recent boom in asteroid mining has provided sufficient raw materials to entertain the notion of a space fleet. The Federation has aspirations to become a regional hegemon in the near future. Within the system, there is a number of stations and asteroid mining operations. The shipyards are small but currently undergoing large expansion. Citadel Incorporated station Bitterhold Personnel: 100 Inmate population: 623 Location: Caerleon L5 Beholden directly to the Federation government. The station is well-kept, clean and features stringent security protocols and measures. There is only one docking port, guarded by weapons emplacements, and only ships without a spike-drive are permitted to approach. The Federation government is keen to portray the prison as filled with the most dangerous criminals their society has spawned, and this isn't far from the truth. However, the side of the story unknown to the public is that approximately 15% of the inmate population is composed of political prisoners. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 12:55 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 10:02
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I had a question I wanted to ask. What's the best way to contact you?
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May 1, 2016 13:29
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I don't have PMs. You can e-mail me at mpbania @ gmail or use steam http://steamcommunity.com/id/Xanlol
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May 1, 2016 13:51
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Given that the planet name is Welsh, how common is that language in the setting? Do people just take names from it, or do people still speak it in some form or another (obviously greatly changed over the centuries, much as all the other languages will have)? Edit: Also, Character Sheet. hit die: 1d4 2 money: 1d6+4 6 hectorgrey fucked around with this message at 01:44 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 01:38
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Stats: 6#3d6 9 5 9 7 7 13 Looks like I get the crappy stats. Guess I'll make an Expert, because those stats won't do anything else at all. The book says 'At your discretion, you may replace one of your prime requisites with a score of 14 to reflect the natural aptitude that led you to your career.' Is that something we're doing, because a 14 in that int slot would go a long way to making this playable stats. Life event stuff: What was the event’s final outcome? Negative, but with a silver lining for you Who initiated the event? A parent, family head, or work superior Which quality was most affected by the event? Your desired or intended career What conflict figured in the event? A trial of your professional skills Another consequence of the event was… You incurred/are owed a debt What other elements were involved? Someone else's sacrifice or loss Kieran: A Caerleon native, Kieran was a generally unsuited to most of life on the harsh planet due to his somewhat lovely, well everything (except intelligence, If I cant replace that with a 14, Im swapping the 13 to the int slot, but I kinda wanna keep the rolls in order on principle). He was a small-time thief in the crew run by his older brother. His only true passion was breaking security systems and tinkering with hi-tech systems. Prior to the current setting his brother's crew was hired to steal something from a facility way out in the desert. The job went off without a hitch, mostly. The crew escaped with several crates of what turned out to be pre-scream tech of some sort. After turning the artifacts over to the buyer, we were rich for the first time. The success was short-lived though. At the site, Kieran had apparently left behind a piece of electronics that had his brother's fingerprints on them. His brother was quickly arrested, refused to talk or make a deal that would indict the hapless Kieran, tried for treason, and transferred to the prison station Bitterhold to serve out a life sentence. Left with 2 shares of what was a ludicrous sum of money to him, Kieran set out to rescue his brother, and after months of effort has managed to secure a post as a guard on the prison station where his brother is being held. However, when he got to the prison, he found that his brother had been transferred off the station to places unknown less than a week after arrival. Inspection of the prison logs show that he was visited by the researcher who ran the lab the artifacts were stolen from the day before he was transferred, but nothing else about where or why or with whom. Additionally, the buyer of the artifacts has disappeared off the face of the planet seemingly. Now stuck on a prison rotation for however much longer Kieran is going to continue to try and investigate where his brother is and break him out, and maybe figure out what was so important about those pre-scream artifacts that made them worth a treason charge, and life in prison. Hit Die: 1d6-1 1 Starting Money: 1d6+4 7 Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dCE__OY3ZS2881AbLXgBqibE-v4iRVVJrEjxq8XdPJw/edit?usp=sharing L0cke17 fucked around with this message at 05:49 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 06:16
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L0cke17 posted:Stats: 6#3d6 9 5 9 7 7 13 Go right ahead. But like I mentioned, I'll give everyone a roll on the cool stuff tables from The Sandbox lifepath thing for every point of total modifiers they have below par, so keep that in mind. L0cke17 posted:Hit Die: 1d6-1 1  hectorgrey posted:Given that the planet name is Welsh, how common is that language in the setting? Do people just take names from it, or do people still speak it in some form or another (obviously greatly changed over the centuries, much as all the other languages will have)? That depends a lot on what you and anyone else who wants Caerleon as their homeworld think. I really want to keep the world building open to players. If your character knows a place, you get to shape it, as long as you don't contradict anyone else.
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May 2, 2016 09:10
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Sorry only got time to outline my character. Hope it's alright. Sheet Ellard was born and raised in space. His whole life spent as part of a migrating tribe of spacers. He was selected from a young age to be a physician and part of the caste that maintained the life support systems on the ship that held the leaders of the community. However, one time, when the tribe had settled in orbit over a life supporting planet it was discovered that the atmosphere held a fungal virus that was hazardous to life, particularly for a recycled habitat such as his tribe used. One of the exploring party was a member of the ruling family but was infected as part of the party that investigated the planet. Ellard violated the quarantine to attempt to cure them but was unable to save them. In turn he was infected and exiled to the next planet the tribe came into contact with which happened to be Caerleon. Completely abandoned on the new planet Ellard took the only medical position he could find at a prison. Homeworld A nomadic space tribe with a Japanese feudal flavour.
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May 2, 2016 12:11
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Definitely interested, thinking of a pilot-type, and since we've got space nomad covered, probably form a backwater world who wanted to escape. Does it make sense to write a ship into her backstory as well? Not clear on the rules there.
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May 2, 2016 17:39
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I like everyone's characters so far. Apocron, you haven't assigned skills or deducted credits for purchases on your sheet. I'm assuming you haven't had time to do it yet, and no worries I'm not starting just yet. Just mentioning it in case you forgot. You also said you had a question but I haven't gotten anything from you - did you figure it out yourself?Platonicsolid posted:Definitely interested, thinking of a pilot-type, and since we've got space nomad covered, probably form a backwater world who wanted to escape. Does it make sense to write a ship into her backstory as well? Not clear on the rules there. I'm a bit on the fence about it. Spaceships are expensive! The PC crew getting a ship is inevitable, but it should be significant moment. If you can manage to write a backstory that respects that, it's fine. It might be a ship you want to have (and know where to buy/how to steal), have previously been on and want to get back, or something like that. If you really want to start with it, it would have to have some major downsides - crippling debt, disrepair, stolen, all of the above, etc. No larger than a free merchant and only the most basic possible fittings.
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May 2, 2016 18:20
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I'm a bit on the fence about it. Spaceships are expensive! The PC crew getting a ship is inevitable, but it should be significant moment. If you can manage to write a backstory that respects that, it's fine. It might be a ship you want to have (and know where to buy/how to steal), have previously been on and want to get back, or something like that. I was thinking exactly that. Cool. I'll see how it comes out in the writing, just good to know what is and isn't acceptable.
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May 2, 2016 18:26
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let's see what we have to work with: 6#3d6 13 13 12 13 15 5 hitpoints: 1d6 3 cash: 400+1d6*100 700 (spending 360)  (Image stolen from here.) Sunshine Raenoar Homeworld and Background Sunshine was ten years old when the SDT Hell or Hallelujah came to her world -- a damp, perpetually-gray ball of ice and rock orbiting a dim blue star at the very edge of what might once have been the Terran Mandate -- and even now it remains one of the ugliest starships she'd ever seen. Of course, back then, it was the only starship she'd ever seen. It was a dark, gross, and mis-shapen looking thing, hanging in the sky. It looked like a stepped-on muckbug, and moved about as gracefully. Its arrival caused quite the clamour. Her world was named Ijas, and it had not fared well in the centuries since the Scream. It was a young colony then, with the barest of manufacturies established, and was totally dependent on resources arriving from other planets in the locality. Any ship on its way to Ijas was annihilated by the Scream, and afterward there was nothing but silence. No help ever came, and no shipments ever arrived. The few ships on the surface, or in orbit, with working spike-drives, were quickly seized, or stolen, or destroyed in the ensuing panic. Many more were stripped for salvage, their tech repurposed. "We cannot possibly all evacuate the planet," the leaders had said. "So we must take what we have and turn it to argiculture, and survival. We must come together and become self-sufficient, or we will not survive. If we can achieve that, we have the manufacturies, and the port, and ships will some day come for us." In less than a year Ijas was blasted back to the iron age, and there it had remained. Very little grew naturally on Ijas, and the few things that did were adapted to a particular cycle: going dormant for long stretches, to weather the unbearably long, dark winters. Farming proved difficult, and even now, centuries later, famines were not uncommon. No ships ever came for them. Until the Hallelujah. The people of Ijas had long since forgotten how to operate the satcomms, the manufacturies, the starport ... but they knew what a ship was. The idea had been kept alive in prayers and stories, taking on a mythological quality. When the crew of the Hallelujah disembarked, they were greeted as heavenly saviours, and the people of Ijas were finally brought back into the broader family of humanity. But for Sunshine, the vague promises of a brighter future were not nearly enough, and she decided, with childlike certainty, her course of action: She would get onto that drat starship. Early Life Sunshine stowed away aboard the SDT Hell or Hallelujah when she was ten years old, and lived aboard it for the next 14 years. The ship was an ancient medium-sized military science vessel, supporting a crew of about a dozen, and captained by a man calling himself Ever Ironside, who fancied himself a mercenary-for-hire. Sunshine was discovered hiding in the cargo bay about a week after the ship left Ijas, but by then it was already drilling through uncharted metadimensional space, and it would be months before she could be returned home. The crew made a living taking on dangerous odd-jobs and voyages of exploration, often drilling through long-uncharted regions of metadimensional space, and didn't particularly want to waste their time revisiting a chunk of ice to drop off an infant. So, after agreeing a hundred times to make herself both quiet and useful, she was permitted to stay. She mostly helped out in the engine room, under the guidance of the motherly Laia Lasze, as her small size allowed her easy access to the ship's drivecore. It also helped that, with no pre-existing knowledge of stellar technologies, she had no fear of the hideous amounts of radioactivity she was no-doubt exposed to. Over the years she picked up a number of skills related to engine maintenance, navigation, piloting, and generally how to keep a rickety old starship, crewed by lunatics, from falling to pieces every time it lurched into metadimensional space. Recent Life A year ago, Ever was approached by a particularly-secretive employer, who wanted the Hallelujah and its crew to travel to a dark sector and scan every frequency they could for, "A distress signal, or any signal at all." Expecting it to be some kind of rescue mission, Ever took the job, and the Hallelujah set off. The journey was long, requiring several jumps between uninteresting and long-forgotten stars, until they finally reached a nameless yellow star with one planet, one moon, and lurking somewhere between those two objects: the largest pretech starship that Sunshine had ever seen. It was a supremely alien vessel, and it would not respond to hails. It jammed every comm frequency, broadcasting the same word, repeated over and over: TRANSGRESSOR. Was that the ship's name? Or was it a declaration? They didn't have long to ponder. It hit them with a weapon that Sunshine couldn't identify, and that was the end of the mission. What happened after is a blur. She remembers watching one whole wing of the Hallelujah being sheared away by a scintillating beam, and seeing her long-time friends torn to pieces by strange energies. She remembers screaming at Laia to help her extinguish a fire in the engine room, while she hastily charted a hail-mary leap through metadimensional space, much farther than would reasonably have been safe. She remembers desperately climbing into her vacc-suit just before the bridge hull split and vented their atmosphere, trying to seal up the wound with duct tape and foam. She remembers praying to the ships, the ships, that sail the stars... She remembers blacking out, and waking up months later in a medbay, on an orbital somewhere she'd never heard of. No ship, no friends. One arm all burned to hell, and a splitting headache. She remembers taking that job while she got her life back together. She remembers being stuck on another goddamn shitheap planetoid. ~ Character sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17e9nHJ3280neAcx7v2SAMQKG8j-JVz5YoQnjnDdxEg0/edit?usp=sharing Unless the 5 charisma is actually going to gently caress me I'd like to keep it because it probably suits her. I have very little experience with any game system at all. Please let me know if I have made any errors with my sheet.
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May 2, 2016 19:16
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There's quite a bit of interest, which I'm grateful for. Initially I was aiming for about 5 players, but I'm not settled on the number yet. That said, I don't want to disappoint too many people. As such, by the end of today is the signup deadline. That's not a deadline for character creation, so don't rush. Anyone who has posted prior to this post is obviously counted as interested. Mu, don't worry about lack of experience. I really like your submission. I'll review the character sheet in detail later to check if everything is correct, but the backstory and concept is solid.
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May 2, 2016 19:37
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Mu! You totally got in my head! Spooky. Maybe I'll come up with something else....
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May 2, 2016 19:49
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Cara A barren, desert world where winds clip across the surface at a hundred kilometers an hour. Not a friendly place, and you'd think being on one of the Caerleon Orbitals would be better. For some, it is. Some orbitals glitter and sparkle, awash in luxury, all the best food and finest fittings. Caerleon Stardock is not one of those. A working orbital, stardock is where freighters pull in, where trade courses from ship to ship, and most importantly, where ships are built and repaired. One of the few full service shipyards in the sector, It's crowded. It's stuffy. The work's hard. Very, very hard. Cara knew that her whole life. Her father was a docker. Her mother was a docker. Her brothers and uncles and aunts...dockers. Different specialties - some where stevedors, others welders or electricians or operating engineers. The laborers who make all the complicated gears of postech society work. Not a glamorous life. Low pay and lots of expenses, orbitals charging everything from rent to water, electrical and air fees. Wages always seemed to be getting cut. Thing is, as much as those in charge thought they had the upper hand, they also had a problem. Cara. Cara and those like her. Younger, orbital-born, at once optimistic and frustrated and posesessed of a dangerous idea. Cara worked in secret for months, putting it together, cajoling key foremen, those with jobs who gave them access, sympathetic traders. The Shipyard Strike lasted three months, ended with twenty-four dead, numerous hundreds injured. A section of the orbital blown out, blamed alternately on the strikers or security forces, depending who you asked (and who wrote your paycheck). The strike proved the orbital wasn't as strong as they thought, nor the workers as helpless. They'd won, but Cara had lost much, her brother and half-sister among the dead. As the aftermath of the blowout forced the parties to the table to hammer out a contract, Cara quietly slipped out, taking her leave, wishing well, and heading somewhere she could get away from tough memories. Bitterhold, it's out on the fringe of the system, not a bad place to make some scratch before leaving the system entirely. A fair amount of her salary goes back to the strike fund. It's a way to keep contributing, even further away. Sheet Attribute Rolls Attribute Rolls: 6#3d6 11 9 10 4 16 9 Hitpoints Hitpoints: 1d6 6 Starting Funding Starting Equipment Money: 400+1d6*100 1000
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May 4, 2016 20:48
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I'll be double checking and reviewing everyone's submissions mechanically later on. I'd rather do them all in one go. Everything so far seems solid, though, so any points would likely be minor. I'd like to start this weekend, but it's not set in stone. Let me know if you need more time to work on your character/get acquainted with the setting. I'll be happy to help with working something out. A few follow-up questions: Everyone from Caerleon There are 12 great clans, named after animals of ancient Earth. The rich and influential like to project some traits associated with the myths, but this is very much an affectation that is seen as somewhat silly by most citizens. That said, the clans do have distinct cultural traditions and fashions that have been maintained through the centuries, despite common intermingling in the last few decades. Which clan are you from? Describe one of its traditions, and what you personally think about it. Kieran How did your family react to you and your brother becoming criminals, and subsequent events? Cara Was it worth the pain, death and loss? G3n.Chatham How is it to have human emotions, but not the underlying chemistry? Do you attempt to emulate it with software, or accept you feel in different ways? There is a treasured memory you desperately cling to. It was fractured, shattered, in the trauma and transfer of conciousness. What remains? Ellard Did you leave behind someone important to you? Is your wrath directed towards specific individuals, or the tribe as a whole? Sunshine Did you become cynical to space-faring life, or does it still hold wonder for you? Why didn't you return to Ijas sooner? Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 03:27 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 4, 2016 22:49
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 Zeppelin Insanity posted:G3n.Chatham Geⁿ.Chaτham "It's... weird. Wh1le mood swings aren't as common, there's still a pull that happens. Emotions and biases are inexplicably linked - one gives birth to the other. I'd imagine that it's like old coding, some sort of logic gateway, or whatever the eggheads call it. It's surprisingly normal, just a bit more... neu†ral." Blank sectors mix with fond memories. Laughter, the heft of the diaphragm shoving air through lungs, inhalation giving the same satisfaction as drinking water through a parched mouth. There is warmth, brightness, and a dizzying feeling not unlike drifting in zero gravity. Flashes of light, blues, greens, yellows, a free-fall, a a aaaaaa code:
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May 4, 2016 23:17
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Yeah I was thinking about asking, "what if the xenofungal infection itself was sentient?" but then I reckoned I don't need to be adding more layers of complexity when I'm already this slow!
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May 5, 2016 00:18
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quote:Ellard As a crew member on the capital ship of the tribe Ellard was expected to work nearly constantly. But as part of his routine he ended up caring for a girl related to the ruling family. In planet bound societies she might be considered something like a princess. Her name was Leuelle. The relationship wasn't illicit in any way as they only met in the privacy of the clinic but Ellard always thought that she scheduled check ups more often than was strictly necessary. As he was sentenced to life in a Vac suit and exile he also thought he had seen her in the audience looking troubled. These subtle interactions weren't anything he had certainty concerning, but the thought that she might miss him have him a little comfort as he struggles with life on a barbarous planet. Ellard hates the head of his former tribe, Precept Farrol. Although his judgement on Ellard was just by the rules of their legal system, Ellard feels like all of his service was for nothing. What good is a society that will exile one of its own for following his heart. He wishes he could go back and break the rules of the society, bring them down to planet side and see how their rules work outside of their perfect ships.
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May 5, 2016 01:37
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:
I edited my original character post with the character sheet. With your permission, I would like to swap the exosuit skill in the technician background with security to better reflect my character's back-story and skillset. I also decided to swap my 13 cha for dex because having no physical ability at all seemed bad. My family didn't have any reaction, as their deaths are the reason my brother and I became criminals. Our father was a mid-level bureaucrat in the Eagle clan. He was in charge of the maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure for the main crop production areas run by the Eagle clan. Growing up working on that machinery is where I first acquired my talent with machines, but my original dream was to practice medicine like my mother. My father fell afoul of a particularly gruesome practice among the Eagle clan when I was 14, and my brother 19. When a pump failed, causing pipes to burst across the system, he was called to trial by combat (an archaic, yet still legal form of punishment and sentencing) for his 'incompetence'. In fact, it was sabotage by one of his subordinates who wanted to usurp his job. My father was not a fighter by any means, and was slain in the ring in short order. One of the many horrendous things about trial by combat is that the winner gets to claim the loser's posessions, including his family. The accuser being the state in this case, our mother was now an 'employee' of the clan, and she was reassigned to an asteroid belt mining rig as the doctor, and died there in an accident shortly after. My brother took me and ran as soon as the news about our mother came in, and we fell in with a small gang that my brother was shortly running. I am now 27 and we have been running in that gang ever since.
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May 5, 2016 06:06
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Weird Psychic Interview with the Unconscious Mind of Sunshine Raenoar Did you become cynical to space-faring life, or does it still hold wonder for you? "Some people live their whole lives stuck on a rock. Most people, probably. I can't imagine it. I need to be out there, in the black. That's true freedom, you know? All six directions of it. Eight with a spike." She grins. "'f the day comes when I get tired of drilling stars, just vent me already, 'cause the core finally fried my brain. There ain't nothin' left for me after that!" ~ Why didn't you return to Ijas sooner? "Ah, you know, once Ev drilled Ijas, that was it. It was found. We had half a pretech megafactory just lying there, waiting for radioactives and nonvols. It wouldn't surprise me if it's the biggest refinery in the sector these days, or whatever." But why not go back? Why not check? Don't you miss your family? She looks away. "I mean, it's, you know. My family's-- my ship is my family. I don't really-- there's nothing for me back there. I chose that, you know? I left them behind." Perhaps you feel like you abandoned them? That you can't go back? "Maybe. I don't know." Her gaze seems to unfocus. "I haven't thought about that stuff in a long time." ~ dang zep you savage.
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May 5, 2016 22:24
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Quick question for people from Caerleon - how do you feel about Welsh being the main language on that planet (given the name being a Welsh name, and the fact that the GM specifically said to ask you guys)? Or possibly the different clans might speak different languages based off of Celtic ones? Entirely up to you, but if nobody objects (and if the GM doesn't object to the idea of us all speaking a common language for free, just to make things easier for both us and him), I'm tempted to say that the main language on Caerleon is Welsh. Edit: Also, from the clan of the Dragon - a reptile spoken of in ancient (the thousand or more years that have passed since the 20th century surely count as ancient) myth, which smote the enemies of its people with its fiery breath. hectorgrey fucked around with this message at 05:04 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 05:00
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