Like a dork, I don't act like everybody else. A while back I posted a skeletal backdrop for a game I'm developing, and didn't start a discussion thread for people to discuss my ideas. Oops! Sorry!
Linky (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?39727)
Well it's here now. Discuss!
Quote from: the_takenNimbus Enterprises - An enormous corporate juggernaut. Has operations in many fields including farming and asteroid mining. Since the alien invasion, the family heads have all prioritized excess resources to be donated to military orders that protect the planets they have investments in. The company originated from what is now know as The Chicken Farm Planet, and made obscene profits in the Chicken Craze Era.
Recently a feud has developed in the family as a young upstart male made a reckless bid for the position of Family Head. He lost, but harsh words were exchanged between him and the current family leader. Later, three star ships with all sorts of cargo were reported missing from Space Port.
Zipnotech - A secretive organization that provides human colonies all across the galaxy with an early warning system against alien attacks. Their system is far from reliable, but an increase in donations to Zipnotech often increases the reliability of warnings.[/quote]
Dark Star Pirates - Considered more of a group of violence crazed madmen running a rogue fleet of military vessels hiding in deep space. It is suspected by a few experts that half of the ships that go missing are the results of the pirates, but that would require that they know when and where a victim ship's faster than light travel system would fail.[/quote]
Eden Guard - A group of conservative bureaucrats that govern the Earth system. They've set up a series of laws that prevent any human born off of Earth from setting foot on it based on an ancient law stating that the primordial home world is restricted until all the humans that didn't embrace technology either learn to do so, or go extinct.
The Eden Guard where very quick to acquire the alien mech technology, and now have nearly a hundred mechs dedicated to guarding Earth itself.[/quote]
Lords of Flesh - A collaboration of peoples of the medical and psychiatric professions that teach the laws of human biology and mental well being in many star systems. Recognized psychics argue that more and more, their prescribed drugs inhibit and suppress psychic abilities.
The LoF manufactures and supplies the military organizations that have mechs with devices that can repair damaged mechs in battle conditions.
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So, these guys don't like psychics. This might be getting repetative by now, but, again I'm gonna use the word "why." Why not? What's so bad about psychics?
Overall, I think this setting has a lot of potential, but it also needs to be fleshed out a lot. Motivation seems to be something that's lacking to some degree. You don't really explain why these organisations are the way they are, why they do the things they do.
Part of the reasons behind the huge lack of answers and information is that I've been concentrating on making the mechanics of the game. I think I'm close to done, but who knows really, numbers cane be so fickle and add up to funny sums when you don't pay attention. But I was hoping a load of questions/suggestions would show up while I worked on the mechanics so that I could just get the fluff to gently fall into place.
I'll try to answer your queries now.
[blockquote=Kindling]I can't really think of much to say about this except that, for an organisation that is spread over dozens, if not scores, if not hundreds of worlds... doesn't it seem somewhat clumsy for its power to be centralised into one Family?[/blockquote]Yes it is clumsy, but part of that is the point. When you can't send information virtually instantly between two offices (due to the fact that their own different worlds), a lack of communication makes keeping loyalty difficult. This loyalty is enforced by a subculture of respect based apon a connected bloodline. Any where else in the human controlled parts of the galaxy, humans will just mozy along their way thru life with only a care for the people they make a part of their regular life. Nimbus Enterprises is a family. All of the employees are related, or married to the related, and this makes company loyalty very much encouraged. It's not perfect. And yes, the sheer nature of interstellar travel makes this a very slow company. But it's massive, and it ain't going nowhere.
Part of my inspiration for this organization was the Mafia of the early 20th century. I removed the illegal aspects of this system of government. Then I gave this the infinite size of Wal-Mart, and the scope of Stock Speculators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculator).
[blockquote=Kindling, on ASSASSIN]... why don't they like the alien tech?[/blockquote]
To the school, a person's life is the best thing that happened to him. Anyone that attempts to limit or control a person in a fashion that is disliked is an enemy and must be dealt with. Additionally, the school teaches that their is no such thing as a compromise. At no point in time should one person ever have to actively seek their death to help another person. Taking a life-or-death risk is one thing, but enabling a situation where you will die is taught to be impossible and unrealistic.
The alien technology is at odds with this ideology, in needing to sacrifice someone to power the mech. That's a compromise, and a no win scenario, everything ASSASSIN's stands against.
On Zipnotech: The distinct possibility is that the organization is doing a protection racket to profiteer in a scorched earth kinda style. Greedy bastards that try to milk their customers for every penny they have, and if you don't hand over all the cash you got, the booggy man gets you. They use the extra resources they obtain to fund saboteurs to attack their rivals with "accidents" and "malfunctions".
There's another Dark Secret, but that one's only available if you actually play the game. ;)
More to come...
I'm sort of curious about the pirates too. Why DO they do it?
To understand The Dark Star Pirate and piracy in general with this setting, an explanation of how travel, stealth and communication works is required.
[list=1]It is possible for matter to travel faster than the speed of light.*Faster than light travel has nothing to do with mass. Just volume and energy.*Faster than light travel is not infallible.*It is not possible to send a signal faster than the speed of light.*Is is not possible to detect something moving faster than the speed of light.*[/list]
In a universe where faster than light travel is not possible (ours), you can detect anything with enough of the proper equipment, making stealth exceedingly difficult if not impossible. No Stealth in Space (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth)
But for the purpose of making a game fun, suspend your disbelief and accept that faster than light travel is possible, but not faster than light detection. A vessel moving faster than the speed of light does not have light bounce off of it, nor does it produce any light. It is undetectable. So it is possible to sneak up on someone by moving faster than the light that bounced off/was generated by you.
Most pirates have a suitably powerful warship, and travel from starport to starport, attacking and robbing every other one they reach. Pop in, zap something, board something else, steal cargo, capture slaves, then disappear before the authorities can generate an overwhelming response. Before they attack, pirates usualy spend several light weeks away from the their next target, studying it. This tactic isn't fool proof, as the pirates can only see what happened weeks ago.
The Dark Star Pirates are different. Sometimes, while going from point A to point C, a vessel's FTLE hiccups at point B, forcing a complete stop. This is usualy not a problem, as there's literally nothing in deep space, and point B shows up randomly. The Dark Star Pirates, are for one reason or another, at point B during this hiccup. They could have figured how to predict hiccups, or found a place where hiccup are likely. Or maybe they figured out how to make a hiccups happen. The point is, they're at point B, and enough ambushed ships have escaped from point B that interstellar-police-equivalent are aware of the Dark Star Pirates.
Oh, and yes, piracy is profitable.
Jaybox Unlimited
Here's a question: Do you know who the employees of Valve are? While you can look up a manifest list of the employees, that'll only tell you their names, which might as well be a list of serial numbers. You don't know {b]who[/b] any one person is 'till you've interacted with them.
And get this. Using a catalog and a courier service, without actually talking to someone, you can buy anything.
And thanks to being in the future, with a simple automated spaceship, Jaybox can send software to anyplace in the galaxy without ever talking to someone. In this futuristic setting, planets get their own government, 'cause FTL travel is not instant, and it's way too much of a hassle to run too many things over X amount of lag. Nimbus pulls this off by having a "go somewhere, makes lots of money real good, come back" business model, while governments actually have to care about other people to get anything done, and star lag interferes with that.
At planet Jaybox, this opens up a whole lotta opportunity for dark and terrible secrets. Like, what would happen if the soul hungry aliens took over the Jaybox colony? They could send subliminal messages thru out the galaxy using the popular Jaybox name, hypnotize everyone to worship Satan and burn churches and let their hair grow and do drugs and...
OK, we can figure out a better adventure hook than that. In any case, I've set up conflict between the entertainment business and the health business.
Lord of Flesh don't like psychics for a combination of a few reasons.[list=1]The completion of The Human Genome Project led health officials to declare exactly what a human is being is. The LoF is under the sway of the notion that what a human is can't be more than that. And having a supernatural power means you're more than human, and therefore not human.
Short Answer: LoF is being run by racists.*Being able to read someone's mind makes manipulating someone's mind allot easier. While this translates to a genetic advantage in the world in general, it's a double edged sword for psychologists and psychiatrists. Telepathic psychologists can help you get thru your deepest problems in a tiny fraction of the time it would take a normal psychologist.
When you treat someone, a portion of their bill get's sent back to the Lords of Flesh as a licensing fee. Since a tele-psychologist needs fewer sessions to treat you, the big boys at the top of the pyramid get less GP from each psychologically disturbed patient.
Short answer: There's a complamicated greed complex involved.[/list]
Eden Guard
Our mother we leave with our siblings, sacred and protected from us, for we are selfish and would destroy them for our own, pathetic, gains.
The Eden Guard are a military faction of fanatical bureaucrats with one missions statement: Earth is Closed.
See, right now, there are tribes of people that live in jungles all over the world, without electricity, or running water, or cotton. It's not that we drive them out of our modern societies, they just don't accept that cameras don't steal your soul. Outsiders are chased away, or sometimes even attacked, 'cause we're soul stealing demons. Plus we have freaky metal monsters, and we don't always eat what we kill. They don't like us, or phi, so there are laws in place that prevent people from interacting with theses savages, 'cause they're like a society of werewolves.
The Eden Guard, being a futuristic warped reflection of modern policies, have taken wildlife preservation and the Prime Directive to a whole new level. They won a war at some point and kicked everybody that had an education off of Earth, all in the name of respecting another's beliefs and wildlife preservation. So those technophobic tribes I mentioned a paragraph ago got Earth all to themselves 'till they figure out that star travel is awesome, or die off/evolve into something else.
Every member of the Eden Guard is hardcore warrior. The organization itself is really big on military hardware, and continually pushes technology used in destroying people and things forward. They also sell out use of their soldiers as mercenaries and obsolete war machines to factions of interstellar conflicts, given that the party they're supporting doesn't have any strong interests in Earth. They're also more than willing to sell both sides nukes to obliterate each other with.
But there's always somebody that wants to take Earth back, leaving opportunity for PCs to engage a human opponent that doesn't run, hide or crumble easily.
Almost everyone that asked was given access to the reverse engineered alien mech tech, and The Eden Guard pounced on the opportunity to maintain military superiority.
Racers of the White Desert are my Gerudo knock off. They have a belief system that is interpreted as stating anything with a Y chromosome is a mutated freak with debilitating mental deformities.. In ancient times, the first man, who was in a time of great magical potential, stole half of all women's abilities to make life, and took it for himself so as too force women to fulfill his twisted needs.
Many of their citizens (all women) specialize in medicine, especially genetics in hopes of developing a "cure" for sexual reproduction. There belief system pisses allot of guys looking for wives off, so they travel to another colony often.
I seriously just picked a name out of my ass. I'm requesting suggestions for a new one.
Is there anything creepier than making something abominable out of love?
Awesome work. Reminds me in some places of Evangelion. Also a short story whose name I can't recall (with the people farming).
Quote from: beeblebroxIs there anything creepier than making something abominable out of love?
If there is, I don't wanna know.
Quote from: the_takenI'm not the kind of person that would run a game that would include a person saying exactly what Shinji said, while another person would say exactly what Asuka said, and then expect me as the DM to stare blankly into the abyss of my own psychotic heart while my XXL glasses reflect the vapid look on Rei's face.
I'm infinitely more likely to have a "Bill Nye" running Nerve and a "Lucy Diclonius" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfen_lied) running the medical facilities than play out one of the four cannon continuities of Evangelion as if it was a drama script. If I wanted to the latter, I join a drama club.[/blockquote]
I love being complimented. Makes me feel as if my efforts are worth it.
No idea what that short story is. Maybe a Starcraft novel? The second one. Had "Xel'naga" in the tittle.
Zombies, farming, soul sucking machines and psychic shenanigans. Sounds about right.
I've run into similar problems ripping off -er... emulating? the subgenre of mecha that Eva was.
You do keep the stuff that would be cool in game though... monsters, warped mech premise, conspiracy, etc.
As for the short story, you probably haven't read it. I read short story compilation after short story compilation and can hardly remember one from another. This one was in a collection of stories by Orson Scott Card, IIRC.
Halos and Spells
Floating in space with lasers and cloaking and missiles is cool, but I still don't think there's enough tactical diversity to warrant the "Ready to Play" tag. So I'm adding a couple of gameplay mechanics that increase the complexity of the game.
Halos: It's a passive buff that you choose in the first phase of the turn that provides some sort of bonus, kinda like a stance in a fighting game. You can only have one halo active at a time at first, but later levels will allow you to have up to four.
The most basic one will generate 1d6E at the end of the turn, while a higher level one will provide a 1d6 boost to your initiative during the shooting phases. I have two others that grant a non-stacking bonus to hitting and dodging.
I think I need more, but I'm out of ideas.
Spells: Theses are actions you take instead of shooting with a gun, taking up a whole shooting phase. I'm not sure what to have here, but I do know that one option available to team bad guys is psychic attacks, and that generally these will cost energy depending apon your level and power.
oops!
I'm at the point where "spells" and "abilities" are acting as pretty much the same thing. Essential being a neat trick you character can do that enemies and mooks do not.
The plan now is to take every single MtG card of my siblings and see if I can come of with an equal ability that I would let a PC do. I am, however, open to any and all suggestion as to what kinda things a heroic mech pilot should be able to do that the general mook can't do. I already have a few ideas, such as the ability to not use movement in move phase to dodge attacks in the shooting phases.
A couple o'others:
Halo Option: Charismatic Leader: During the Regroup Phase, all allies' Ego Score within 30hex lowers 1 point (to a minimum of 1)
Halo Option: Concentrated Firing: During the Regroup Phase, pick an enemy this character hit with a ranged weapon in the First Shooting Phase of this round. During the Second Shooting Phase, this character's allies within 30hex gain a +2 bonus to their attack rolls to hit this enemy with a ranged attack.
Quote from: the_takenRacers of the White Desert are my Gerudo knock off. They have a belief system that is interpreted as stating anything with a Y chromosome is a mutated freak with debilitating mental deformities.. In ancient times, the first man, who was in a time of great magical potential, stole half of all women's abilities to make life, and took it for himself so as too force women to fulfill his twisted needs.
Many of their citizens (all women) specialize in medicine, especially genetics in hopes of developing a "cure" for sexual reproduction. There belief system pisses allot of guys looking for wives off, so they travel to another colony often.
I seriously just picked a name out of my ass. I'm requesting suggestions for a new one.
I don't know why but the name Sisters of Purity kinda struck me as fitting for them. Overall I like the feel of it, very smooth flowing system overall with lots of potential for plot hooks.
Quote from: NomadicQuote from: the_takenRacers of the White Desert are my Gerudo knock off. They have a belief system that is interpreted as stating anything with a Y chromosome is a mutated freak with debilitating mental deformities.. In ancient times, the first man, who was in a time of great magical potential, stole half of all women's abilities to make life, and took it for himself so as too force women to fulfill his twisted needs.
Many of their citizens (all women) specialize in medicine, especially genetics in hopes of developing a "cure" for sexual reproduction. There belief system pisses allot of guys looking for wives off, so they travel to another colony often.
I seriously just picked a name out of my ass. I'm requesting suggestions for a new one.
I don't know why but the name Sisters of Purity kinda struck me as fitting for them.
Maybe... kinda obvious that they're up to something with that name, but it certainly is a vast improvement.
Thesaurus terms I like: virtue, freedom (from sin), irreproachable, sinless, dove (???), impunity (?)...
Excellent! Now we have different sects; Sisters of Purity, Sisters of Virtue, Sinless Sisters, Sisters of Impunity, the Irreproachable Sisters. And "dove" can be a derogatory term having something to do with all these anti-man people.
QuoteOverall I like the feel of it, very smooth flowing system overall with lots of potential for plot hooks.
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