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[Iituem]

So, after glutting a lot on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, I really wanted to run a game based around the storyline and technology of the setting.  I'm looking for four players, rule system is largely ad-hoc, mostly using d6 as a base for random checks.

The Brief

The U.N.S. Unity was launched from Earth orbit by the United Nations as a last-ditch effort to save humanity from a dying, polluted, war-torn world.  Following its departure in the mid twenty-first century, its fifty year journey is set to bring it to Alpha Centauri, where evidence was discovered of a world both habitable and inhabited by alien life.  However, in the last week of the journey the ship has faced a critical malfunction.  As one of the 80,000 crew aboard, you are woken from cryosleep to deal with the crisis.


Your Character

During the last days of Earth, you were picked as a specialist aboard the U.N.S. Unity as one of 80,000 others responsible for colonising the new world of Chiron (or, as people aboard have begun to call it, Planet).  You were picked over thousands others because of your skills, or perhaps for political motivations, or perhaps because of bribery.  Either way, you have useful skills and you bring these to the Unity's service.

You have 4 points to distribute amongst skills, with a maximum of 3 points in any one skill (3 points represents someone quite skilled at their job; 4 would represent the sort of expert that should be part of the Unity's command staff).  If you wish to be in this game, please post a character sheet as below, detailing your character's name, background and role aboard the Unity.

Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)

Any character can have any skill, but listed beneath each skill is the suggested role someone who has it might have been brought aboard the Unity for.

Firearms - The use of pistol or rifled ranged weapons, and derivations thereupon.
 Role:  Security Officer
Hand-To-Hand - The use of melee weapons and martial arts.  Adds to defense during melee combat.
 Role:  Security Officer
Athletics - The abliity to perform feats of physical strength, speed and endurance, as well as one's ability to dodge attacks.
 Role:  Security Officer
Stealth - The ability to remain hidden and move silently, and to spot others doing the same.
 Role:  Security Officer
Sleight of Hand - The ability to perform tricks of legerdemain, palm items and pick pockets unnoticed.
 Role:  Security Officer
Datatech - Communications, data collection and processing, general computer work, hacking, dataprobe work.
 Role:  Technical Specialist
Engineer - Constructing, modifying and maintaining equipment and machinery (including the Unity drive systems).
 Role:  Technical Specialist
Physicist - Theoretical scientist, gathering scientific data, performing research.  Covers inorganic chemistry.
 Role:  Technical Specialist
Ecologist - Breeding, caring for and managing plants, animals and ecosystems.
 Role:  Ecological Engineer
Geneticist - Gathering data from and manipulating the genetic code.  Also covers biochemistry.
 Role:  Ecological Engineer
Medicine - Covers prescription of medicine, diagnosis and surgery.
 Role:  Medical Officer
Pharmacist - Covers synthesis of medicine and drugs, production of basic medical equipment such as synthflesh.
 Role:  Medical Officer
Psychology - Understanding of mental frameworks, psychological conditions and sensing hidden motives.  At higher levels, hypnosis and similar techniques.  Pain resistance.  Interrogation.
 Role:  Psych Chaplain
Persuasion - Speechcraft, diplomacy, outright lying, generally convincing people to do what you want.
 Role:  Psych Chaplain

Spoiler: Sample Character: Dr Gayle Nambala (click to show/hide)

Name: Dr Gayle Nambala
Appearance: A black woman in her mid-thirties, brown hair and eyes, favouring white uniforms.
Background: Born into poverty in Rwanda, Nambala struggled to educate herself until her later teens, when she received a scholarship from Morgan Industries to study medicine and radiation sickness.  After graduating she joined Morgan Industries as Director Nwabudike Morgan's private doctor, caring for his dying wife.  She was eventually placed aboard the Unity after some string-pulling to help Morgan upon his recovery from cryosleep.
Role: Unity Medical Officer
Skills: Medicine III, Pharmacy I

Spoiler: Sample Character: John "Ghost" Second (click to show/hide)

Name: John "Ghost" Second
Appearance: A rather unassuming white man in his early thirties with slightly greying brown hair and grey eyes.  Typically wears the standard grey Unity tech uniform.
Background: John Second was brought up in the American Midwest, educated in a Computer Sciences degree and lead a rather boring life as a computer specialist for a major bank.  He was actually employed as an 'ethical hacker' to test bank security systems, and engaged in more than a little unethical cracking on the side.  He got assigned to the Unity by cracking his way into the registers and inserting himself, along with other crackers such as the elusive "Sinder Roze".
Role: Unity Datatech, 2nd Class
Skills: Datatech III, Stealth I

Player Characters

Spoiler: Peter Resnov (click to show/hide)

Name: Peter Resnov
Appearance: White male in his 20's with dark green eyes and light brown hair. His skin is pale and he wears old wire frame glasses.
Background: Grew up in Moscow, Russia with little to his name. The state took him up for his inteligence but he's sought to expand his horizons and open all doors. He took many classes on wide varieties of subjects and physically trained himself to keep in shape.
Role: General Assistant
Skills: Athletics I, Engineer I, Medicine I, and   Psychology I

Spoiler: Dr Hal Ford (click to show/hide)

Name: Dr. Hal Ford
Appearance: A stout, balding, and graying man, always serious, always wearing a Hawai'ian print shirt under PPE or uniform, rarely far from spice coffee, far-sighted with noticeably thick, reflective glasses
Background: A well-published researcher on selective genetic modification, Ford received his doctorate and multiple awards for his work in adapting highly selective genetic insertions in nematodes to rats with great precision. For his work, he was recruited by Zakharov for the purpose of adapting existing plants and animals to better serve humanity on Planet. As a result of numerous setbacks, he has become very irritable and temperamental.
Role: Director of Biological Sciences under the University of Planet, Principal Investigator for the Ford Lab (Ecological Engineer?)
Skills: Geneticist III, Pharmacist I

Spoiler: Dr Rail Armage (click to show/hide)

Name: Dr Rail Armage
Appearance: A fair-skinned woman in her mid-twenties, with black hair and dark blue eyes. Usually wearing a ponytail, grey uniform, and deep scowl.
Background: Rail was born to a pair of respected geneticists in Germany, but her family continued to move around quite a bit, following various offers and opportunities. She quickly began to take after them in talent, but managed to develop a seething transhumanist contempt for those who would deny their destiny that was all her own. Her father eventually landed in an Italian jail for his "reckless and inhumane" experimentation, cutting off his ability to aid humanity and enraging Rail to no end. She soon appeared set to follow in her father's footsteps, receiving a string of citations and convictions for unlawful behavior in the name of science. Despite this, her ruthless ambition and considerable talent managed to keep her well-employed by those looking to gain a potentially not entirely legal edge, and in some cases have a convenient scapegoat for when things got out of hand. Her inclusion aboard the Unity was a deeply controversial one, softened somewhat by her role being phrased as an "Adaptative Consultant" to help assess previously unknown diseases and conditions on their new home.
Role: Unity Chief Xenoadaptation Consultant
Skills: Geneticist II, Ecologist I, Medicine I

Spoiler: Nicolas van Tonder (click to show/hide)

Name: Nicolas (Nico) van Tonder
Appearance: A tall man in his early thirties with broad chest and dark hair. Prefers jumpsuits or light training clothes offduty and uniform on duty.
Background: Born in Netherlands, Nico excelled in athletics at school and followed the career futher, getting into military instead of professional sports. As part of his country's armed forces, Nico served in several UN peacekeeping missions, and with worsening of international situation, decided to sign up permanetly to UN security detachment. Chosen for Unity mission due to his previous deployment history and impeccable psychological profile, marking him out as a calm determined individual with more than a penchant for protection of others and conflict managment.
Role: Unity Security Officer
Skills: Firearms I, Athletics I, Hand to Hand I, Psychology I

[Iituem]

For those not familiar with the setting, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (A Brian Reynolds Production) was the second game released by Firaxis, during a period after Civilisation II where they weren't sure if they'd get the rights to produce another Civ game.  So instead they made a spiritual successor to Civ (long before Civ III came out) following the concept of the "Space Victory" from the classic Civ games where you were the first nation to send a colony to Alpha Centauri.

In the framework of the game, the ship is not sent by a nation but a multinational crew under the auspices of the U.N. during the darkest days of Earth's history, a time when nuclear fallout and genetic weaponry has devastated Earth and humanity fights amongst itself for survival.  Eighty thousand crew are picked from the world's best and brightest in a last-ditch effort to save humanity from its own poisons.  Yet when the ship begins to fail near their destination, the leadership of the mission fractures and the crew split into seven factions (or 13 if you're counting the Alien Crossfire expansion) aligned not around nationality but philosophy.  It is in the guise of one of these factions and their leader (pumped full of life-extension meds) that you play through up to 400 years of the future, leading up to the eventual fate of all humanity.

And so I wanted to play an RPG based on it (inspired by but not using the rules for the GURPS version).  Any takers?

[Weirdsound]

This looks awesome. I love me some SMAC. Not sure if now is the best time for me to be joining new games though... Rest of the month seems busy for me.

[Worldmaster27]

ptw

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I'll bite
((Tell me if I get anything wrong or need to add more))

Name: Peter Resnov
Appearance: White male in his 20's with dark green eyes and light brown hair. His skin is pale and he wears old wire frame glasses.
Background: Grew up in Moscow, Russia with little to his name. The state took him up for his inteligence but he's sought to expand his horizons and open all doors. He took many classes on wide varieties of subjects and physically trained himself to keep in shape.
Role: General Assistant
Skills: Athletics I, Engineer I, Medicine I, and   Psychology I

[Kilojoule Proton]

Name: Dr. Hal Ford
Appearance: A stout, balding, and graying man, always serious, always wearing a Hawai'ian print shirt under PPE or uniform, rarely far from spice coffee, far-sighted with noticeably thick, reflective glasses
Background: A well-published researcher on selective genetic modification, Ford received his doctorate and multiple awards for his work in adapting highly selective genetic insertions in nematodes to rats with great precision. For his work, he was recruited by Zakharov for the purpose of adapting existing plants and animals to better serve humanity on Planet. As a result of numerous setbacks, he has become very irritable and temperamental.
Role: Director of Biological Sciences under the University of Planet, Principal Investigator for the Ford Lab (Ecological Engineer?)
Skills: Geneticist III, Pharmacist I

(I hope this is not too over-blown/Marty Stu-ish)

[evilcherry]

Holding a slot

[Iituem]

Dr Hal Ford

You come to to the unpleasant sensation of breath being forced into your throat by the breathing apparatus.  Your vision is blurred at first, your extremities cold and unresponding, but you feel the sharp prick of hypodermics and the sudden rush of artificial hormones, stimulating your body to life.  Around you, the cryogel bubbles and liquifies before draining down to the bottom of the tank.  The lid of the cryosleep chamber opens and a white-gloved hand reaches in to help you out.  You're naked, but that concern is secondary to the aches of the poisons in your limbs.  With the aid of your reviver, you stagger to the lockbox beneath your chamber and punch in a code; with a hiss the lid opens and reveals your handful of possessions, including a single loud Hawaiian shirt you were able to bring aboard.  The reviver stands on hand with a folded grey jumpsuit for you.    You pick your glasses out of the lockbox and put them on; now that you are able to resolve your sight in more detail you can make out the appearance of the medic who revived you - a white man in his twenties with dark green eyes and light brown hair.  He looks Russian to you, although you don't remember him from orientation.  He has a particularly distinctive pair of wire frame glasses.

He holds the jumpsuit out to you.

----

Peter Resnov

As the flush of prickly pain and deep ache suffuses your body, a white-gloved hand reaches into the cryosleep chamber to help you out.  Your lockbox is open, and the hand passes you your wireframe glasses.  It takes a moment for your eyes to recover, even with the glasses on, but you resolve the face in front of you; that of Ship's Surgeon Dr Pravin Lal.  The corridor around you is full of unopened cryochambers, dark but for the tiny blue lights on the side to indicate function - similar, larger blue lights illuminate the corridor, casting a ghostly gloom upon Lal's face.

"Hello, Peter," says Lal.  You try to respond, but your tongue hasn't woken up yet.  "It's okay, that should wear off soon.  We've been woken up a few days ahead of schedule.  There's been a fault with the drive and we need to wake some people up.  Only a handful, Dr Zakharov's personal team.  Let me help you get dressed, I'm going to need your help immediately."

Lal helps you on with your uniform, a pale blue jumpsuit with white gloves and boots and the symbol of the U.N., similar to his own but without the rank insignia.  The suit is cold and clings to your damp skin unpleasantly, but taking a hot air shower to dry the last of the cryo-goo off will have to wait.  Once your limbs are semi-functioning again, Lal hands you a datapad with a small list of names on it, no more than twenty.  You head off to the cryopod nearest to your own while Lal begins the process of awakening more medical technicians.  You scan the name on the pad and the pod; Dr Hal Ford, Ecological Engineering.

You can just make out the form within; a stout, balding man with thin greying hair.  You wander over to one of the uniform racks and pick out a scientific officer uniform for him, grey with matching gloves and boots, bearing the same U.N. symbol on its breast as your own.  You begin punching in the revival sequence, monitoring the vital signs that begin to appear on the chamber's status screen...

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Peter looks at Dr. Hal Ford: ¨Waky Waky Dr. looks like there's been a fault with the drive and a few people got out of cryosleep a bit early¨

[Kilojoule Proton]

Dr. Ford begins re-robing and responds grumpily through the horrible headache: "I have no training with the drive. Only a mad topologer would think up that stuff. Go bother someone else. Is there any coffee on this [blasted] [ship]?"

(It looks like you forgot to change your diaereses into quotation marks. Are you using an intl+deadkeys layout?)

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Peter begins thawing out the next person while still talking, ¨I dont know about the coffee but aparently you were needed enought to be on the special list of 20. Mind grabbing me a uniform to hand this next guy?¨

((using a samsung chromebook, no idea on the otherstuff. me=not tech savy))

[Kilojoule Proton]

Ford sighs, tosses a uniform over, and walks off to what seems to be a more central location, muttering.

"grmblgrmbljustonedoctorateandsuddenlygrmblgrmblphysicsconfounditgrmbl"

(Assuming the layout and usage are similar to a typical graphical Linux distro, you can either use AltGr/Right Alt + Shift + ['] or Shift + ['] and then Space to get quotation marks instead. The same applies for `, ~, and ' (as opposed to what you would use for è, ẽ, or é). You can type lots of interesting characters by using AltGr on just about any key, e.g. asdfjkl; -> áßðfjœø¶.)

[Iituem]

Peter Resnov

[Medical: 4+1] You continue with your duties and awaken the remainder of the science staff you were assigned to.  A couple of the pods show alarming shifts in vital signs, but you are able to compensate for the problems and awaken them with only minor issues; one has blood poisoning, so you send him off to the medbay with a more capable awakened medical technician to sort him out.

Once your duties are completed, you see a note on your datapad calling you to report to the command deck.  Your stomach and muscles protest your need for food and relief, but orders are orders.  You make your way through the dimly blue-lit corridors, heading towards the centre of the ship - you feel the apparent gravity of the ship lessen as you approach the command module, where the centrifugal force of the spinning ship has less effect.

Upon arriving at the command module, you can see the command staff gathered around the monitors.  Handsome, square-jawed Captain Garland in blue and gold sits in the captain's chair, staring at the displays ahead.  Old, wrinkled, crabby Dr Zakharov in grey is punching commands into the console.  Dr Skye, the (rather comely) ship's Xenobiologist in the dark green of the Xenobiology staff uniform is staring at the data with a slight frown.  No sign of Dr Yang, the ship's XO, or any of the security staff.  Dr Lal, standing to one side, gestures to you.

"According to Zakharov, a piece of space debris, probably no bigger than a bullet, impacted cryobay seven.  The bay is lost, and we have to assume that all ten thousand of its occupants are dead.  The damage has reached the ship's drive as well, but Zakharov thinks he can repair it.  We've had to awaken around four hundred crewmen, plus another twenty of the medical staff, yourself included.  You have engineering training, don't you?  I want you with Zakharov's team.  Help them out and..." he lowers his voice, "keep an eye on them."

He taps his datapad to yours.  "Oh, and here's a few ration tokens to your pad.  Get something to eat."

You have gained 6 Ration Tokens to use on dispensers.

Lal draws away, and you see a handful of grey-suited scientific staff arrive, including Dr Ford.

----

Dr Hal Ford

You drag yourself into the command module along with a handful of other science officers.  Zakharov, in his typical red and green glasses, snaps his fingers at the lot of you.  "Arkham, Ivanov, Jensen, Vilnan, I want each of you in charge of eighty officers.  Arkham, Ivanov, check the physical drive system.  Jensen, I want you and yours examining ship structure.  Vilnan, life support and secondary system damage.  Petrov, Ford, to me."

Zakharov steps away from the command console and draws the pair of you to one side.  He speaks in a low voice to the pair of you.

"I don't want you working on the drive problem.  There are inconsistencies in the security system I want examined.  Fedor, start analysing security logs, all access points including the armoury.  Hal, there are tools on the engineer decks, concussion hammers and laser cutters.  Pick twenty men or so, arm them, set them on patrols.  I don't want any surprises."

Orders given, Zakharov returns to his post.  On an unrelated note, you remember something about there being coffee set up in the ration dispensers down on the mess deck.  It's been 50 years, but maybe it's still good!  In the corner of the room you can see the tech that woke you up again.

[Kilojoule Proton]

"You! You in the light blue from earlier! Do you want a more interesting job as temporary security?"

(For the cause of better RP'ing, I will pretend I did not read the Cryxis narrative (?) and avoid using information from there. Also, is there a more preferable format for the IC stuff, e.g. 1st person vs 3rd person vs imperative, present vs past vs future tense?)

[Iituem]

3rd person is preferable, present tense, just to keep us all in the same format.  Sadly I've only been able to read the free narratives, not the Centauri trilogy by Michael Ely, so a lot of this is based on the initial "Journey to Centauri" narrative.