Scarlet sunshine bathes the hallway in an eerie glowing aura, warm against your skin. A quaint red sun gradually overtakes the horizon and hangs in the azure sky of dawn.
The man in the black suit to your side tells you there is nothing that can be done about your ghost. This world is your home now.
What is this?
This is a game where you and five others are trapped in *gasp* the real world on a space colony.
Where is this?
Planet Valhalla, in orbit of the star Hawking 47. It was the first potentially habitable planet to be named by public vote; such is how it got its relatively uninspired name.
It is a 6.8 billion year old, superterran icy world with 1.1G surface gravity, a small marine biosphere, an atmosphere in the early stages of oxygenation, and a landscape dominated by glaciers over mountains. Humanity lives inside pyramid-shaped habitats built on bedrock, each with its own self-contained ecosystem.
For centuries, humans have been born in vats and implanted with neural interface software, allowing them to raise an artificial emulation of themselves. A person's emulation is known as his Ghost, and said Ghost is connected to the Reality Network, an offshoot of the WorldNet technology used on Earth.
Ghosts
A man and a ghost are viewed as
incorporated entities under the law. That is, a ghost and a man are considered one and the same, and due to the synchronization process both believe themselves to be the same person.
The Reality Network must be accessed by the ghost, and since the human and the ghost share memories, the human believes himself to be present inside the Reality Net. All of human society is built inside the Reality Network, but not all structures present within the colony pyramid are actually built in real life. Instead, ghosts access what are known as Portals, nodes in a non-euclidean space that allow ghosts to access virtual spaces. All virtual spaces are connected in the Overworld, i.e. the colony.
When a person explores the Overworld, he explores the outer hallways of the colony in a ghost form--it is an artificial mapping of the colony's structure into a 'meta portal' of sorts. The Overworld also contains things that are not really there in the real world, such as floating text.
A portal entrance takes the form of a glowing mirror. When entered, the ghost ins transported into the portal's realm.
Divergence
When a ghost and his host's consciousness split off from each other and the illusion is shattered, both enter a divergent state. A divergent ghost cannot enter the Overworld and must transfer between portals using a terminal command on any world-linked terminal. Likewise, a diverged human cannot enter the Reality Network. He is essentially trapped inside the Overworld.
Knowledge of the real state of the colony triggers divergence. When a person realizes that the world around him is not real but a matrix-like illusion, it becomes nearly impossible for the ghost and the host to act in unision. Thus, the majority of persons are educated so as to believe the Reality Network around them is reality itself, despite its non-euclidean spacing and general lack of adherence to physics.
Deep pondering of philisophical thought also tends to cause divergence. This is due to subtle differences in the ways humans and ghosts process information. By law all media encouraging deep thought is heavily restricted.
By limiting daily human life to simple pleasure-based activities, divergence is minimized and most humans can live a happy life, while also remaining productive so long as management tasks are framed as entertainment.
Happenings
Most divergences occur because the host's body fails. Indeed, no human body lasts forever, and aging disrupts the ghost synchronization processes due to physical differences between the ghost and the host. As such, humans have been genetically engineered to almost not age at all past young adulthood, at the expense of total lifespan; no human lives past 50.
Yours is a special case. You bodies did not die, but rather... your ghosts simply vanished from the Reality Network! Without a ghost, you cannot interface with the virtual world anymore... this means, you are locked out of portals for good. The Reality Network is now invisible to you, and their ghost forms no longer walk the halls.
However, you are not alone. The outermost part of the colony, known as the Outer Reaches portal within the Reality Network, is populated by fellow divergees. Divergees are essential for the proper functioning of the colony, and are also necessary to guide and plan the future of the colony. However, they are a tiny minority; most of the intellectual labor is assigned to humans in the Reality Network as objectives in the various portals.
Note that this is all what your characters know, so you may cite this information at will.
Mechanics
Actions will use a base d20, and bonuses can add or subtract from the base roll.
1-2 is Dismal Failure
3-6 is Normal Failure
7-10 is Partial Success
11-14 is Normal Success
15-18 is Perfect Success
19-20 is Overshoot.
There are two bonus formattings. The first is "+x" or "-x" which always adds that flat value to the roll. If the value spills over 1 or 20, it contributes to a "Luck" bar which you can spend at will to get a "+x/-x" bonus if positive. If negative, the Luck bar is unusable.
A "+x/-x" bonus is a bonus which always applies its points in the direction of the range 15-18, a Perfect Success, also known as a Critical for combat actions. Unlike normal bonuses, a "+x/-x" bonus will not spill over, so if you roll within the 15-18 range, this bonus has no effect.
Any sort of reciprocal action such as a competition or a fight will involve two dice rolls. The actual results of the action are entirely subjective, and based on the relative rolls.
Weapons will have parameters which are displayed in an abbreviated format as "difference condition:effect," where 'difference condition' is a boolean based on the difference between the rolls. Example:
Stun Baton (Difference>3: Stun) (Melee)
This item, if (your roll - defending roll) is greater than 3, will stun the target.
If something other than the defending roll is relevant, it will be stated using the syntax "Entity.Variable" before the boolean. Example:
Armor-Piercing Rifle (Difference>-3 & Target.Armor>0: Ignore armor)
This is a gun that ignores the effects of armor if you roll at most 2 below your opponent's roll and he has any armor. 'Armor' refers to the armor attribute. (Attributes will have their effects on rolls stated in parenthesis. Armor in particular just adds +1 to your defense rolls, except against Armor Piercing weapons)
Some terms:
Range = Subjective range between the user and target. Values are 0-4 for Melee, Short, Mid, Long, Far
Armor = Armor value for a character. Armor adds +1 to your defending roll when you get attacked
Evade = Evasion value for a character. Evasion gives -1 to your attacker's roll.
Characters
Your characters have just been separated from the Reality Network, and while you have been told the above your experience in real life is marginal. You will have to re-learn much.
There are two "characters" you must design. The first is your human self, which is whom you will be playing as. The second is your ghost self, which defines your past life inside the Reality network.
For your Ghost, you will have to define a power level from 1 to 12. What this basically entails is how much you invested in your ghost-life that won't carry over to your real world. A powerlevel of 1 means you basically lived like you would in real life, albeit a more carefree one, while 12 basically means you were fond of minmaxing and grinding, in typical MMO fashion.
A low powerlevel will give a bonus to levelling "physical" skills such as engineering, piloting aircraft/vehicles, using weapons, and so on.
A high powerlevel will give a bonus to levelling "cybernetic" skills such as hacking, optimization, tactics/strategy, and so on.
[b]Name: [/b](Can be anything from "John Doe" to "XxIceFirexX." You won't have a name tag floating above your head though.)
[b]Human Age: [/b](Limited to 50)
[b]Human Appearance: [/b](Give a general body type and preferred clothes. 3D printers can whip up pretty much any style of dress you want)
[b]Ghost Appearance: [/b](Can be non-human, or even shapeshifting, although most choose human forms)
[b]Ghost Power Level: [/b](Give a value between 1 and 12, 1 being 'casual' and 12 being 'hardcore')
This isn't first-come-first-serve.
Current Players: Waitlist: ((College is ending soon, which gives me time to manage another game.))
Author
Topic: You Are Cybernetic Avenger: Turn 8 (1/7/2016) (Read 8045 times)