((Was the magic ball the Mysterious Orb of Medium Awareness?))
Be awoken from my sleep by the apathetic cry for help!
"This looks like a job for magic!"
Timmy, still half-asleep, shambles over to Cloud.
"Whoa, dude, you're all dismembered and stuff. I can help you with that, I think."
As Cloud rushes off, Timmy shrugs.
Sit back down on the couch and watch the shuttle thing.
EDIT: ((I would like to request an update for the armory list. A whole lot of potentially useful equipment is unlisted, even though it's technically available at the armory.))
((I request that the penalties for the technician class be reworked. I say that you should get rid of the penalty to uncon rolls, since techies would have had a hand in making such things.))
Look further into this shuttle story.
Bishop stops on the Channel talking about the experimental craft.
Apparently it was an instrumentation ship, manned by only a few crew members, and stocked with extremely precise instruments. It's mission was to measure radiation levels, gravity fluctuations and other such things during a "jump" between two areas in space. The actual mechanics of what happens when a ship jumps are still almost completely unknown and it's been a long standing goal to discover what makes this "jumping" effect possible. The ship itself actually jumped years ago but it is only now that it has gone beyond the threshold of expected time loss and has been declared missing.
Cloud remember the AM sells medical equipment and rush down to the armory " I need a med kit now and you need to fix this " Shoves wounded arm in hes face splashing him with blood " Or im going to take one of those guns and beat you to death with it. " Reach for the nearest weapon and attack AM with it if he refuses to help .
The armory master takes one look at you, rubbing your bloody stump against her window, and shakes her head a bit before pointing at you. Your stump steams a bit and you stop bleeding.
"Now stop getting blood all over the damn place."
"There's a problem with inhibitor 3."
Try to find out what's causing the problem.
((I suggest adding some of us new players to the games tvtropes character page. That is all I ask.))
The tvtropes page is handled pretty much exclusively by Cael when he feels like it. Plus, you guys haven't really done much of note beyond screwing around. After your first mission that will no doubt change.
[aux:5] You tap away on one of the keyboards near you, bringing up a diagnostic panel and scrolling to the bottom.
"Error: Inhibitor 03 Neuroport blocked."
You sigh and open a command window, typing in
"Execute: Inhibitor 03 Neuroport purge"
There is a mechanical hiss and then a wet popping sound followed by a metal click. The start up check flicks back to green and continues as it left off.
"Fixed it."
"30 seconds till dropzone." You feel yourself move, the track you're suspended on shuttling you slowly, jerkily forward toward the open bay doors you know are waiting for you ahead. You wait for the computer to finish it's checks.
Well people, it was roughly 6 months ago, on april fools of all days, that I Copy pasted the rules this cobbled together RTD out of a text folder marked "space thing about rolling to die" and onto these forums with the hope that I'd get at least a few players. Now we've reached the top of the hall of fame, we're rolling with something like 20 or more regular players, with more coming all the time, and we've still got a long way to go.
Thank you to all my players, insanely active to mostly comatose, for all the time you've spent here. Your willingness to roleplay, your desire to develop your characters and explore these rather poorly explained and ill defined worlds of mine, and your patience with my occasional ineptitude in running all this has been what made this game great, more then anything I could ever do.
I don't know what I could do for you all to mark this occasion, I don't really just want to start handing out gifts, but if you guys have any suggestions for the game, any questions about the mechanics, inspirations, conception, etc, or really anything to say, let me know. After all, without all of you I'd just be sitting here, typing snarky messages to myself.
((I think you're doing great. I know i've only just started, and have no experience with rtd's before this one whatsoever, but I can tell you for sure that I haven't had this much fun with a game of any kind in a long, long time. Major kudos to you. Only addition I could think of would be some event of sorts that happens on the ship, like that time Steve went offline. To entertain people not on mission, and give them a chance at horrible death too ))
'Hmm, I wonder how strong this bad boy is. Let's try and find out'
Go to VR, select dual, and pull up a wooden bar, steel bar, human arm, synthflesh arm, and a plate of MK.III armor, and attempt to bite through them, one by one. After each test, reset jaw with no damage, and observe how easy/hard it is to bite through. Also try to see if there are any limitations or drawbacks to the jaws.
((Also, if mesor dies, who will we get extra for the mission? A vet, or another rookie? ))
(The MK III has slightly better armor then the MK but it's still nothing special. Milno's specially modified his though, so that may be what you're thinking of.)
You summon a collection of materials and start testing your new teeth.
1.Wood snaps nicely without any real resistance.
2. Steel gives you a good deal more trouble but you get through it after a minute or so of gnawing.
3.Human arm doesn't stand a chance.
4. Synth-flesh seems to work fine at first but you quickly get stuck, your teeth goo'd in place by the white fluid leaking from the flesh.
5. You bite through the MK III easily.
The door pad warmed and the hatch clicked. In you go Havel.
The large man stepped forward and walked through the portal, his steely gaze swept the corridor methodically, pausing occasionally as if searching for something.
Look at me for a moment would you?
Havel turned and the Guardsman spoke.
Try not to get yourself into too much trouble hey? He said softly. The corner of his mouth twitched pleadingly.
You're all I've got. He paused and averted his eyes, hesitating for a moment, then haltingly. Look, we're brothers, so just do me this one favour and keep safe this time alright?
Havel stared. The Guardsman sighed, palming the lock and removing the bands from his captive's wrists. He stepped backwards through the portal, eyes still down.
Please. The door eased shut, and Havel watched as the shuttle broke away from the docking band and drifted off into the dark, engines flaring.
Havel blinked once and strode towards the nearest airlock, the image of the Guardsman still burned brightly in his mind's eye.
Brothers..
Well, technically you spawn from a Stasis pod in the barracks (We keep most of the inmates nice and frozen till we need them) but it doesn't really matter to me. I'll just say it's all a case of Stasis dementia or something
.
((@piecewise Thank you for running this game! Well, I guess, that's it in a nutshell.
Actually, I'm still unsure at times whether it is truly a RTD, or something beyond that scope, for it has quite a distinguished and well-thought background and set of rules, rivalling some of the 'major' RPGs - yet, at heart, it is still governed by that same Roll to Dodge/Die. At some point I even considered asking you to flesh out the rules and key setting information so that a 'Einsteinian Roulette RPG' ruleset could be compiled for use by other GMs/roleplaying groups, and I still haven't given up on that thought - but it's you, your sense of humour that defines this game, and that one cannot be easily (if at all) reproduced. So comes it: 'thank you for running this game' - and every word in that phrase is equally stressed and important.
As for suggestions/questions, I don't have many, and those are mostly side notes. Nothing major or really worth asking for.
Say, when you finally get to the weapons and their ranges, what about introducing the fourth, 'very long' range (with LESHO rifle and heavy gauss cannon in mind)?
Could the tech profession bonuses/penalties be somewhat changed, so that it won't be the only one with two major skill penalties, and only one skill bonus? An additional skill(/stat?) bonus might be good, I think, as it would greatly set that profession apart from the 'one bonus/one penalty' grunt option.
Could a pilot profession be introduced, either as a separate entity, or as another option for the mercenary (adding Aux to the list of available 'weapon' skill options)?
As for ship events, I think there are some already planned, and they can really turn not so well for characters whose players are absent at the time. Though if a solution came somehow, I think the concept would be rather cool.
Now that I think of it - maybe an open-space mission? Then again, probably already planned.
...It is indeed hard to think of something to make this game even more fun/Fun than it already is or planned to be. ))
I may write up a more in depth ruleset at some point. Maybe sell it to Games workshop and then you can all buy little overpriced miniatures of yourselves
.
Now that range problem is one thats been haunting me for a while and I think I might have a new system that might work, but we'll have to see. The big problem isn't with things like rifles. Rifles are easy. The problem is with Manipulators and Amps, since they're more line of sight then range.
((This game is so amazing Piecewise. I doubt you want to here my giant soap-boxd about how great it is, so I'll go ahead and simply say this universe is better than the Warhammer Universe. Eeyup.
Also, I'm glad Tiruin brought up the kitchen. I think it would be cool to have a kitchen. It would be semi-trivial, since you couldn't build or create anything that helpful, but on the other hand, FUCKING BACON & CUPCAKES.))
Well, the kitchen as it stands, is all automated, so very few people ever go in there. The few cooks that are around do more special things then everyday stuff. However, if people really want a kitchen, I see no reason we couldn't add a few appliances to the rec room and let you request ingredients through the armory master.
In before someone starts cooking meth.
((It's well thought out, and just the right amount of restrictive and challenge to make you think, but enough leeway to keep it from being "You roll 1, you auto-die". The perma-death, temp-death with the med-bay is also very, very awesome. So yeah, it's really good. But the gambling guy still needs a title.))
Internally I've called him Nyars, in reference to the character in the lovecraft story Nyarlathotep who dealt in strange and other worldly items. More that specific character then the elder god he grew into. You can call him that or we can hold a little competition to see what his name is.
( Dunno it never said the suit was removed. But i doubt it could cut off that kind of bleeding in any case. )
It's in your locker. It was removed for the surgery.
Alright, so things on the to do list are basically :
1.Kitchen
2.Rework the broken Range system into something that works worth a damn.
Changelog
Tech now no longer has the -to uncon. I've updated your sheets accordingly (in my notes at least) so now all of you techies are slightly less terrible.
I'm gonna go fuck around with the ranges and see if I can make the system I'm thinking of work.