Rule ClarificationsCharacters
Depending on their biography, each character will have scores in the following skills.
Combat: Includes all knowledge and ability required to engage in combat (and hopefully win). This includes all types of weapons, hand-to-hand combat techniques, tactical command of engagements.
Diplomacy: Ability to talk your way through a situation, put people at ease near you, gather information in a city, achieve compromises everyone would respect.
Stealth: Anything involving stealth such as following targets, sneaking around, disarming or avoiding traps and alarm systems, picking locks.
Piloting: The skill to use any kind of vehicle.
Science: Includes all theoretical and applied knowledge related to sciences. Physics, electronics, medicine, agronomy, astronomy, mathematics, etc.
Each skill is ranked from 0 to 5, 1 being a novice, 2 is a trained person, 3 is a professional, 4 an expert and 5 a world-renowned master of his trade. These abilities will improve as the game progresses. Characters who start less skilled will progress faster than more skilled characters.
There are also hidden skills and abilities which will be discovered as the game progresses.
Characters may be wounded during the course of a mission. There are three states of wounds.
Injured: The character has received some light wounds. These do not endanger his life and will heal on their own after a turn passes if the character’s wounds do not aggravate in mission.
Wounded: The character has received severe wounds and will need to rest for a turn to fully recover (this means not going on a mission for a turn). Due to pain the character’s traits are reduced by 1 while he is in this state.
Crippled: The character has received mortal wounds and is in need of medical attention. All traits are reduced by 2. The character must spend a turn doing nothing under the care of another character with Science 3 to fully recover. Further injury results in the death of the character.
Note that wounds may make a character’s skills negative, which means he would be more of a hindrance than a boon on a mission.
Characters may be given equipment when they go on a mission. Equipment increases the value of a specific character’s skill for the duration of the mission. Unfortunately most equipment is consumed afterwards due to lack of ammunition/batteries/reliability/etc. Some pieces of equipment may be reused, and a few rare items are not consumed during a mission. Items may increase a character’s skill over 5.
Missions
Completing a mission requires the team in charge of it must meet its skill requirements. There will generally be subtle hints of what kind of abilities are required in a mission, although sometimes teams will have to move on blindly. A completed mission will be marked as such on the mission list.
If the team does not meet the requirements for completing a mission, they will still progress in it. This progress will still produce a positive outcome but the mission will remain marked as incomplete in the mission list. There will also be more information provided on what is required to progress in the mission. More characters with the right skills increases the chances of completing it as well (don’t forget to use equipment when in trouble).
Sergej Genja is an old man, though he doesn't like to be reminded exactly how old. He was born in Kotovo, Russia, less than a decade after world war II. Like his father and two older brothers, he was drafted into the army at the age of 18. Unlike his brothers, however, he decided to stay. He served his country in the army for about 6 years. He was not the strongest, nor the best shot, but he excelled in stealth and his wits were as sharp as those of his comrades combined. And that is why, after 6 years, he was asked, and agreed to, join the KGB.
He served his country well, and proudly, under 4 different chairmen. He was blindly loyal to his superiors and his motherland. But all that changed under the short reign of chairman Bakatin. Bakatin being promoted left an empty bureau in the officers' halls, and Genja was the one to get it. It was then that he finally saw the ugly truth. Yes, there were those who fought valliantly. There were those who stood for what they believed in. But the great majority of the officers he would have to work with were as corrupted as their western counterparts. They, too, used their status to leech wealth from the people. To defile that which Sergej thought, no, knew he had fought for.
So he left. To the one place that could protect him against his former employers: America. And sure enough, they offered him protection. A new identity. A new job, where they wouldn't ask questions.
The offer expired once they knew he wouldn't talk about his past. And with it, his job contract. His rental agreement. His car lease. The governement denied they had ever helped him. He was on his own.
Somehow, he ended up in Gary, Indiana. The old steel mills made a perfect place to sleep, although he had to defend his spot from some drunk - or wasted - street scum more than once. Not that any of those kids left much of a mark on the veteran. He got cut a few times, sure, but never more than that, and not even that once he met Martin.
Martin was a nice guy, if you didn't know him. If you knew him, you knew he was nice as long as you kept an eye on him. He'd plant a knife in your back for a smoke if he had the chance. But the most important thing about Martin was that he had weapons. Not much, but he had some. And he could get some more, if he needed to.
It took Sergej a few months, and some very dirty jobs, to earn Martin's trust, but it was worth it. Since he had that cheap Beretta knockoff, no-one tried to take his sleeping spot or what little cash he had left.
Since then, he worked for one of the underground fighting rings in Gary. Find people who didn't pay, make sure they do. Find people who don't want to fight anymore, make sure they do it anyway. That kind of stuff. It paid, not too bad actually, enough for some food and a pack of cigarettes every day. As Genja himself would say it: "The world is screwed anyway. Might as well make a few bucks off it."
A possible example of what a short and simple character bio might look like:
"Jim Barlow, alcoholic English professor. A short and stout man, Caucasian decent, has brown eyes that are just a bit too far apart, above too large a nose and mouth. Hair is dark brown and always well combed back. Has a loud and boisterous demeanor, especially when drunk, yet always manages to speak in perfect and slightly outdated English.
Jim grew up in the middle of New York City, part of a borderline-poor family. At a young age, during usual teenage shenanigans, he tripped down stairs and suffered a rather severe concussion as a result. After recovery, he and his relatives and friends noticed he had somehow acquired a perfect English accent, as well as a fluency and ease in learning the English language in general. He decided to get a university degree in English at the University of New York, and excelled so well at it that he continued to get a Master's and then a PhD in the English language at Oxford, and then searched for a university position in the UK, being given an assistant professorship position at the Imperial College of London.
Now 36, he has been an assistant professor of English at the Imperial College of London for a few years. He enjoys boasting at bars how 'He has come to teach the English their own language!'. He is not much in touch with his family back across the ocean in New York City. His alcoholism started half a decade ago after the death of his recently-wed wife in a car crash, and sometimes gets in the way of his work when he comes to the university so drunk that he only speaks in Shakespearean-era English."
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Topic: New Horizons NOW RECRUITING - A Post-Apoc Forum Roleplaying Game (OOC Thread) (Read 815 times)