Third RtD! Since it's summer, I figured I'd have a lot more spare time than during school.
Playerlist:-
Spiderking50-
Playergamer-
Yourmaster-
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WaitlistnullYou are the equivalent of a space pirate... except that your goal is to pirate antimatter transports that were meant to be pirated. Still, there are others who want the same loot, and the filthy Terrans are trying to take the antimatter as well! Your goal is to stop them, get the antimatter, and get paid.
The players will begin with a spacecraft on the edge of becoming obselete... but still functional and far superior to the Terran boarding craft. By taking the antimatter, you may decide the fate of the whole human race, so be careful who you hand it over to.
The Plight of The Colonies In 2070, a starship had been sent to Beta Pictoris containing self-replicating probes. Over the next thousand years, these 'Starminers' would construct magnetic filters to sift antimatter molecules out of Beta Pictoris' colossal dust ring, formed by cosmic rays impacting the disk and trapped by the star's magnetic field. They would begin shipping near the end of the millennium, which would arrive after hundreds of years of interstellar travel using antimatter propulsion.
It is now the year 3010 AD, and the Starminers are beginning to return. The first shipment is due to arrive soon, but the factions of the solar system have already begun making plans to be the first to secure it.
Since 2400, Terran space exploration has been limited to data collection and probes sent to the inner and outer planets to gather scientific data. The five colonies that existed past this point have since been cut off from support, populated only by reactionaries who rejected the common culture of Earth and stayed behind, developing self-sufficiency at the cost of many accidents and disasters.
Earth-Luna (the Moon at this point had a population of ~100,000) had adopted widespread use of virtual reality and neural interfaces. A world-government had formed and passed, leaving Earth divided among the service providers which at this point basically controlled the virtual world uncontested--they controlled, in other words, everything that mattered. Cultural borders had disappeared and people hardly reproduced, spending almost the entirety of their lives living online as a second self. This virtual world was dubbed the WorldNet, and the three biggest service providers--Comcast (in the former USA), Polarnet (based in Antarctica, where cooling is cheap and nuclear power holds little environmental concern), and Userbase (formed in the remnants of a collapsing Japan overrun by immigrants)--controlled every facet of it, deciding what citizens of the WorldNet could and could not do.
Over the centuries that followed, Terran society progressed greatly in the sciences and engineering fields, but it confined itself to the Earth's orbital island, having no reason to leave the paradise-world and its titanium-rich satellite.
In the meantime, the colonies were forced to play catch-up, stealing technology whenever they could and trading with each other. There were five colonies: Venus, Mars, Ceres, Europa, and Neptune. Each had a distinct society and culture which developed over the years, and while they never grew to match even Luna, they made staggering progress for societies so limited by their starting situation (by the 4th millenium Luna has a population of 1 million. None of the colonies have more than 100,000 souls).
Earth-Luna Centuries of peace and warfare between the three Service Providers of the world had pushed the physical sciences to the limits. Fiendishly rich, these massive corporations were willing to shell out inordinate amounts of dough for pretty much anything that would give them an advantage. Antimatter is no exception.
Though the SPs fight each other on a regular basis, having no political lobbies available through which to continue negotiations, their affairs need not concern the citizens, who can plug into the same Worldnet regardless of their SP. The SPs simply run the world and its outward politics with the colonies, although Terrans are often chauvinistic and look down on the backward colonies.
Comcast remained despite the fall of the USA in 2202, which dissolved into constituent states following the bankruptcy of the federal government and collapse of the bureaucracy. Comcast managed its entire supply chain, from the power plants that fed its server farms, to the indoor farms which fed its workers. As its workforce approached greater levels of automation, more of its workers took up a permanent residence in the Worldnet, and now the country is effectively a playground for CEO Aurelius Jackson Periwinkle and his close officials.
Polarnet was one of the few providers on the South American continent that Comcast failed to merge. Retreating to their Antarctica datacenters, Polarnet began to service worldnet-deprived countries in Africa and eventually moved on to Europe and South Asia.
Userbase was a response to Polarnet's rise to power. Originating in Japan, Userbase was started by a Polish political scientist and economist who cooperated with a local provider in order to exploit the shifting economic landscape and consolidate power. Userbase services Japan and most of China, along with most of the Pacific ocean.
The situation on Luna is very different, as the Lunar government survived the breakdown of Earth's governments. Luna is hardly a power in its own right, although its citizens have comparable worldnet access to Earth's population, and it remains a center of major economic exploitation.
The Colonies The colonies, through centuries of hard work, have caught up in tech to Earth-Luna, and have even begun to surpass them in megaconstruction and starship engineering. The Terrans have no need of such frivolities, but to the colony dwellers it is what makes them different from the overindulgent Terran society.
Venus (called "Limbo") is populated by skycity dwellers. They have a highly technological, harnessing cheap solar power and developing most of the arms and equipment used elsewhere by the colonies. Limbo has adopted a culture revering pilots and airship captains. Their society can be described as militaristic but lenient on the regulations, rewarding skilful feats of piloting.
Mars (called "Dune") remains a research outpost for the most part, known for their astronomical progress and biological research. Most of their population consists of scientists rather than engineers. They have little culture to speak of, as most Martians are sociopaths who keep their labs and housing to themselves. Living long and rarely reproducing, their culture has declined more than ever.
Ceres (called "Voile") is a sunken base powered by geothermal power. It is the host of much nanotechnological and computer research, and is where the Ghosts first originated. Voile's architecture was heavily inspired by vestiges of the old East Asian cultures, but their society is highly western owing to the large proportion of western immigrants to Japan and the subsequent cultural fusion that occured.
Europa (called "Rapture") hosts undersea domes anchored to the world's inner surface. Only research into high-pressure physics and materials science has allowed this colony to develop this far. They have a dominant Victorian-era inspired culture.
Neptune (called "Avalon") is populated by aerostats similar to those on Venus, although the populations cannot simply go outside in an acid-proof suit like they can on Venus. Avalon hosts the system's leading mathematicians and has made the most progress in the abstract fields as well as Cliometry--the art of predicting history. The atmosphere is mostly regal. "Counts" own small blimps, while Dukes and Kings own much larger vessels.
A typical colony-dweller is bonded at birth to a piece of neural emulation hardware, and spends his childhood raising an emulation of himself known as a
Ghost. Ghosts are akin to artificial intelligences, but rather than being confined to a computer chip, a Ghost lives inside a quantum computational matrix known as Logic Crystal. This substance is housed in nearly all the decorations and ornaments found in a colony's interior, and individual patches of logic crystal are appropriated and released by ghosts so that they may follow their human hosts whenever possible. Most citizens and their ghosts behave as one, solving problems together and talking to each other in private, but representing only a single individual in public. When a host dies, however, his Ghost is made free and allowed to roam the colony. As such, the ghost population of the colonies has been steadily increasing as the centuries have passed. Some people separate themselves from their ghosts before death, living as close brothers but walking separate paths of life.
Technology Technology has not evolved into rayguns and energy shields quite yet, although there have been several much-appreciated advances in the sciences.
VR Tech allows a person to convincingly enter a virtual world which simulates sensory input. Using specialized drugs, individuals can remain in a trance-like state where they do not receive input from their bodies. Most VR interfaces are non-intrusive, although intrusive methods (requiring surgery) typically give better results.
Smartmetal, made from titanium alloys, is a substance which can change its form to one of several recorded forms using rectified AC current. The metal will only respond to a selected frequency, allowing for intricate pieces of work such as whips, muscles, armor, and machinery.
Nanotech hasn't performed any of the miracles described in fiction, but it has achieved some of the more modest medical goals such as longer lifespans (average of 150 years) and advanced medical procedures. Smartmetal nanobots can be made to move on a surface or inside a substrate using high-frequency radio waves, which has culminated in the Apparition, a piece of technology that allows smartmetal platelets to be suspended in the air by magnetic fields and animated to behave like an ethereal human body. These are used to give ghosts their appearance.
Xypotech, or Artificial Intelligence, has allowed the creation of Ghosts, but is unable to create beings that interface with modern digital electronics. They can only run on logic crystals.
Nuclear Fusion is an expensive means of producing power, and only feasible on a large scale. As such, starships rarely use fusion as their primary power source, but do regularly use inertial-confinement fusion as drives. The colonies have built a few working fusion reactors, but most remain on Earth where they are used to power the gargantuan mainframes of the Worldnet.
Biological Augmentation is a field mostly practised by the Martians, who have been meddling with genes since 2700. The other colonies are hesitant to allow their citizens to grow new glands and organs or to modify their biology, as such a thing is extremely difficult to regulate and prevent from being abusive. Mars' small population of 10,000 allows this to work without overturning existing social systems. Martians tend to live much longer than other humans (some were born in 2700), but they do tend to go a little crazy. They also don't reproduce much, hence their small population.
Mechanical Augmentation is a field that has been avoided for the most part, but is most prevalent on Earth-Luna. These consist mostly of interfaces to the Worldnet. The colonies do not have the industrial base to produce finely-tuned augments for every child, whereas logic crystals can be mass-produced.
Mechanics This RtD is time-based rather than turn-based, so you can perform multiple significant actions in one turn if you can physically fit the action in. I might truncate an action if circumstances change and you didn't state how to respond to changed circumstances. For example, if you want to empty a magazine into an enemy behind cover, reload, and fire again, all 3 actions will require a roll. If you fail the reload, you might get gunned down because you're no longer suppressing the enemy. So I would cut off the roll as you fail the reload and allow you to take a different action like diving behind cover, for example.
Actions are rolled with a d6, but the results are worded slightly differently. 1's and 2's have the same effect, except that 1's cannot be repeated while 2's just lose time. Same with 3's and 4's.
[1] Failure, action will not be possible to do again (eg. your desk explodes, losing all of your extremely vital science data)
[2] Failure, but you only lose time (eg. you drop a magazine while reloading, wasting time and possibly getting you hurt)
[3] Success, but it can't be replicated (eg. you cobble together a laser pistol, but the welding tool got too hot and melted)
[4] Success, can be reproduced (eg. you build a revolutionary smartmetal controller that fits on a wristwatch, fully documenting your steps)
[5] Good overshoot (eg. you spray machine gun fire at a helicopter and somehow hit the pilot, causing it to crash)
[6] Bad overshoot (eg. you try to pick a door lock and succeed, only to find an armed assassin on the other side, waiting for you)
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By default, actions involve 1 roll. Agile characters might be able to roll a die to dodge an incoming attack, but otherwise combat for the most part is also dependent on single rolls. In general, the damage you take, the degree to which you can convince people, and the complexity of what you can build is based on your character's own subjective capabilities, so wearing armor will still help even if it doesn't directly modify any rolls.
Actions can be interrupted mid-turn, which may in some cases lead to a character comboing several actions before the other has a chance to respond.
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Traits are effects that modify actions with respect to the dice. These are a couple of examples of what you'll see:
Heavy Lifter: Physical feats always succeed (but can still be dodged)
This means that punches, heavy lifting, ripping a drone in half with your bare hands, etc, will always happen if it's physically possible for you to do it, but you can't overshoot. Your punch won't break your fingers or fail due to improper balance, for example. This trait works by removing the random factor.Fast Hands: Actions that require dexterous hands (like reloading) are always reversible.
This one overrides your roll, basically giving you a 2 instead of a 1, a 4 instead of a 3, and a 6 instead of a 5. It means you will never do stupid things like dropping your arc sword into Neptune's atmosphere while drawing it.!!Science!!: Replace all odd science rolls with Good Overshoots, and all even science rolls with Bad Overshoots.
This would be a fun trait to have. It's balanced on paper, I guess.Smartmetal Jinxing: This character has implants that let him interfere with smartmetal activations that aren't simultaneous.
This is an example of a system trait. It doesn't modify your actions but simply extends what your character is able to do, physically. In this case, smartmetal whips and movements won't work against this character unless they are done in extremely quick succession, or the character allows it to happen.Cautious: Good Overshoots are replaced with reproducible success, while Bad Overshoots are replaced with irreversible failure.
This is a universal trait, meaning it applies to all actions.There are also some boring traits, like "+1 to using guns, unless you overshoot," but those are typically rare because they are, well, boring. Also, a [3] is not strictly better than a [2], as an example, since a [3] locks in the outcome while a [2] lets you retry or change your plan.
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Some actions won't make sense for your character to do. For example, if your character jumps in the cockpit of a helicopter, but doesn't know how to pilot, then he can't possibly succeed. For these situations, a success counts as a "you don't screw up" moment, which can mean that, for example, the helicopter doesn't start and you end up not hurting yourself.
In this kind of scenario, you'll receive a warning from the GM (me) that 3's and 4's will not succeed. However, overshoots will still be overshoots, so if you roll a 5 your character will miraculously be able to pilot the helicopter and save his friends. Should you wish to try your luck, you can go ahead and ignore the warning.
Sign-ups You can play either as a colonial or a Terran, but be warned that starship engineering is the one advantage the colonials have over the Terrans. Terran ships are likely to be shot down a lot.
For your traits, simply list two or three things that your character is good at or bad at, and I'll do my best to balance it. If special considerations are needed, then I'll send a PM.
[b]Character Name: [/b]
[b]Place of Origin: [/b]
Choose a colony, or Earth/Luna.
[b]Bio: [/b]
Background, any misc. info you'd like to point out
[b]Specialties: [/b]
List a few things your character is/isn't good at
Author
Topic: Roll to Sieze Antimatter Shipments (Read 2632 times)