Oh. I hopped in on the money shot two nights ago. I couldn't not shut up. I felt a little bad about it but things were going so deliciously wrong.
That's the thing with these redux ER sessions - it lets you get a feel for what a mission with a legit 80+% fatality rate would play out like.
For instance, as mentioned, me, MJ and syv (who have just wandered in some time after a spaceship Egan catastrophically failed to steal unexpectedly self-destructed and vaporized both him and Doc while they were standing on guard duty) stare down a massive blinged-out alien flea. It's three on one. It stares us down, inflicting two damage straight to MJ's mind, then we move.
I throw a flashbang, it connects, alien flea shields its eyes and is mostly unaffected. MJ is about to try and go in for the kill. Then syv drops a grenade at our feet when he superfails his throw and we all get showered in shrapnel. MJ goes down. I miraculously make the save to not go down. syv is still on his feet! I run like hell, seeing how this is about to go. Alien flea, completely unharmed, jumps over to syv and shanks him with deadly machete forelimbs, syv goes down. I just keep running straight out of the alien pyramid with what little loot I have (a golden headdress, chitinous remains and three alien gimp suits), which I turn in for a pretty decent chunk of change, leaving Dev and spaz still inside, hanging out in a bunch of vents (one of which Dev fell out of in the middle of trying to snipe some zombie hippies some time earlier, falling 40 feet for 3d6 damage - we have 1d6 HP and 3d6 strength, for comparison, and damage when your HP is depleted overflows into strength damage, prompting a save - using your damaged strength - to see if you basically keel over and are out of the fight) and against all odds mostly failing to set up explosives (Dev mostly rolling 18s, 19s and 20s, failing despite consistently having at least a 70% chance of success).
It plays out a lot like UFO Defense: Home Invasion Edition, high lethality and stellar examples of fucking up all around (and an interesting dynamic where going alone or in pairs is almost as viable or more so than going all together, since it shields you from other people fucking up and the explosive results that can entail). I had quite a lot of fun with it, but you other guys should also give it a try, since it does have a markedly different feel than current ER.
We can always just keep IRC open in another window for people watching to talk on. The problem is that I don't think everyone has a mic to talk with and I do better at explaining things in text.
In any case, HB, I did figure out the turn order thing so hopefully it will work tonight.
Or actually I was thinking of starting in a few hours, assuming Spaz and Dev are around, since they're the only ones still living (Or at least still in the building). Everyone else can be new.
Can't really make it today, have a different commitment, but if you're doing a morning game you could probably round up some of the other Europeans instead. I do have a mic, though, for what it's worth, though if you're doing voice I'd advise against using Roll20's inbuilt system and instead trying something like Discord.