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[Nirur Torir]

Congratulations! You have been chosen to colonize a horrible death-world! The Bureaucracy would appreciate you shipping back some valuable resources before your inevitable and unsightly deaths.


The players will be on their own, and must decide carefully whether to have personal power or to bring more resources. (A wizard who spends all his time locked in a tower mastering magic won't have nearly as much wealth as the head of a trading company.)

Each turn will be a month. Players will have two major actions and an undefined number of minor actions available. Minor actions generally don't have much impact on the colony - Tell the head miner to mine out underground housing, respond to an event, or mess up that demonologist colleague's summoning. Major actions are what you'll spend most of your time in a month doing - Cast a big spell to create a stone wall around the colony, personally lead the hunters to hunt some shadow boars, or help with the plant mage's spell to create a plant monster.

Spoiler: Skill Levels (click to show/hide)

Unskilled - Jake understands that fire magic exists.
Dabbling[1] - Jake can light a candle. Arthur can sense a re-animated skeleton in the darkness.
Novice[2] - Jake has a flamethrower spell. Arthur can ritually re-animate a skeleton to follow simple orders.
Competent[3] - Jake can lob an explosive fireball over a wall. Arthur can ritually bind a ghost and empower it to cast ghost-magic, or animate skeletons at will.
Skilled[5] - Jake can lob a fireball through a stone city wall, then explode it. Arthur can drain the life from a squad of soldiers.
Expert[8] - Jake can create a loosely controlled firestorm, causing significant property damage. Jake can ritually create a vampire lord.
Master[13] - Jake can create a tightly controlled firestorm that lobs explosive fireballs. Lich Jake can turn civilians into vampires under his control with little effort.

XP is gained two ways: Spend a major action practicing, or on a perfect roll for a major action. The number in brackets is the XP required, from the previous level (Expert > Master takes 13 XP, not 5). Practice has a low chance of failing, and has a slight chance of earning 2 XP instead of 1. Study materials, teachers, or doing something that will have more of an impact on a failure (Such as straining your skill and repeatedly summoning intelligent undead) will increase this.

Spoiler: Metamagic (click to show/hide)

Metamagic skills affect your spellcasting, and ability to (safely - no second roll that can fail) empower the spells of other mages. You may only use a single metamagic skill with each spell or assist, but may be assisted by people using other skills. It's advisable that casters not wishing to be weak jacks-of-all-trades only buy one.

Name your own metamagic skills. Each one has two modifiers. (Ex: Empowerment, uses strength and scale)

Strength - Make fireball hotter!
Efficiency - Reduces spell costs, in material, mana, or time, or allows an enchantment to activate more frequently.
Scale - Makes spells affect more targets.
Finesse - Useful for making an exploding fireball not harm friendlies, for growing a giant plant just so, and for aiming distant teleports.
Stability - Makes spells last longer. Necessary for enchanted rings.
Safety - Mitigates bad rolls.

Generally, a master with no metamagic skills will beat an expert/skilled in the same field. If you just want to focus on one school, with no ability to assist, you're likely better off focusing on it and throwing any spare points into metamagic.

Spoiler: Starting points (click to show/hide)

Each player starts with 40 points to buy skills and prepare for the expedition.

Each skill XP costs 1 point. Skilled costs 11, while mastery costs 32. You may buy partial levels.

Workers: I'm not tracking 15 different jobs. All laborers can farm one month, then mine the next. Everyone brings their own tools, for free.
Laborers[0.25] - Farmers, construction workers, miners, etc.
Convicts[0.125] - They're like laborers, but aren't as motivated, and may cause problems.
Soldiers[0.5] - They fight, guard, and make adequate hunters.
Craftsmen[0.75] - Blacksmiths, artisans, etc.
(Specialist)[2] - Architects, herbologists, bards, doctors, etc. (You have to choose what they specialize in)
Leaders[2] - They lead, saving a PC a major action. (You can give a quick speech and then have loose farmers do their own things, but they'll be much less efficient.)
Lesser Mages[2] - They help cast spells. Choose a metamagic skill for each. (They may alternatively have a spell school, but it will be weaker than a metamagic school would be; do not expect much from them here.)

You may buy skilled workers for 2x the cost (3x for mages, giving them a skill upgrade or a second skill). Buying skilled convicts is not allowed - It would get messy.


Resources
Food [50 for 1 point] - Feeds 1 person for 1 month.
Construction Materials [50 for 1 point] - Each unit is enough wood or stone to build a reasonable two-person house.
Luxury Goods [50 for 1 point] - Raises morale for 1 person for 1 turn. CANNOT be used on a small part of the colony - Only yourself(selves), everyone, or no-one. May be used in smaller doses to give disproportionately less morale. Generally has no game-play effect on PCs.
Quality arms [0.5] - Better equipment than normal, useful for soldiers or arming militia.


Other purchases are possible, of course - Magic rings, golems, a book on healing magic, or an airship. Say what you want and ask about the price, or ask how much you could get with X points.

Sign-ups will be randomly chosen.
For now, only buy your skills, saving points as desired to buy goods or minions. Remember that you won't have free support. After characters are chosen, you'll have a second buying phase, to discuss what you're each spending the rest of your points on. You may not buy xp during the second phase. (Even with a heavy combat focus, consider some sort of multi-classing. Spending all your time patrolling would get boring.)

You may also buy unique traits which cannot be treated as skills, but grant significant advantage over human-norm. Trait power scales with point investment, capped at 5 each.

Spoiler: Character Sheet (click to show/hide)

Name:
Race:
Physical Description:
Mental Description:
Backstory:
Skills:

Feel free to offer suggestions for death worlds, even if you're not playing. I'll weight world creation based on interest and where people spend their points.

Let's go with six players for this. I expect this to run for 12 turns of 1 month (in-game) time each, unless you die sooner than that. The colony should be decently stable by then. I'll then run a playable epilogue with longer turns and less structure, where we find out what happens to the colony and any survivors.

((IronyOwl and Demonic Spoon haven't updated in a few days; the genre's due for a revival.))

[Detoxicated]

Definitely interesting, but can you tell me what kind of skills I can buy. And also I did not understand how I pick a metamagic skill and if it is truley relevant.



Edit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Silian Salve
Race: Human
Physical Description: Silian Salve is a dark skinned human, with brown eyes, and long black hair. He has a slender built, and an elegant way of walking. His black eyebrows have an arrogant bow, and his thin lips have an amused smile about.
Mental Description: Silian Salve is a guy with an ear for everyone and a mad repertoire of stories, yet he has a very deeply connected healing nature, and wants to bring peace and healing to the world. He regards friendship as important, and enjoys socializing.
Backstory: Upon hearing of the death world, the master of healing has decided to go there and heal it.
Skills: Master Healer,
Assets: 1 Leader, 100 Food, 100 Construction Materials, 1 Blacksmith, 10 Convicts

[Shadestyle]

Name: Literally Unlimited Minions
Race: Summoner
Physical Description: A humble man in a purple robe, he only wishes to be known as the greatest summoner in the world
Mental Description: Highly arrogant, and hyper focused, he only cares about being the best, which he believes he is.
Backstory: As a young summoner, he devoted to his studies with unimaginable fervor, or study, of a single spell, "Summon Small Slime"
Skills:
Summon Small Slime Minion 40

[RAM]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Jakthur
Race: Emu
Physical Description: A bit on the small side and quite shaggy.
Mental Description: A strong sense of ethics combined with a simplistic view of the world and a general assumption that anything that they were inclined to was inevitably ethical and thus needed no investigation has been severely tamed by the shock of being captured, interrogated, and sentenced to death-by-settlement. Jakthur is now trying to come to terms with the idea that some of the things they did may not have been quite entirely justified and perhaps some sacrifices must be made for survival in this new horror. Their thoughts are still dominated by a desire to be left alone to research immortality but this is offset by a general nervousness over all of the responsibilities of a leadership position.

In conversation, Jakthur tends to fixate and latch onto simple concepts, which leads many to assume a lack of intelligence, but they are probably just distracted with trying to counteract the undeath savagery index or breaking the necromantic origin barrier...
Backstory: Likely the result of a druid getting drunk, or an overly bored land spirit, whatever caused Jakthur to become civilised, or perhaps called into being from nothing, did not leave any known trace of its history. With no ongoing projects, a limited ability to construct shelter and the like, and a mysteriously potent magical affinity, the choice to pursue magical skill was obvious, and with little else to occupy its mind, philosophy followed soon after and it didn't take long to decide that death was something that really ought to be avoided and that magic seemed like an appropriate method of doing so.

It was only a matter of time before an encounter with civilisation, and, alas, it came at the peak of a rather frustrating search for compatible subjects upon which to test the latest theory of reanimation... As tends to happen with such things, before long there were some overly enthusiastic zombies mixed with some overenthusiastic villagers, followed shortly by rather a lot of undead and a village rather devoid of anyone who had witnessed much of anything and entirely too many zombies roaming about for safety. In due course the village was saved and armed folk went scouring the woods, who, in turn, met with the latest batch of experiments(Honestly, these ones should have kept their minds, it was completely unfair that living biofields have an inverted pulse that promptly desiccates the mind if it occurs in the presence of critical amounts of necromantic energies) which promptly led to a scuffle and more zombies.
Things continued like this for some time, but an insistence to stay at home and study instead of getting out there and conquering the world led to a steady decline in numbers and before long a rather well-equipped band was barging in and destroying everything "evil" and looting everything that would get a bounty from the magical faculty. A misplaced bird was assumed to be an experiment of some sort and dumped into the latter category, and also dumped into a sack.

It probably would have been quite easy for a misidentified necromancer to escape and wreak havoc again, but being somewhat naive of such things, when brought before several of the most powerful magicians in the land and presented as possibly magical stuff claimed from an evil lair and thus probably of great research value, Jakthur was nothing but indignant and soon made it apparent that it was, in fact, the missing "terror of the woods". At this point, being selected for deathworld duty was only a matter of time...
Skills:
 [19]Expert undeadamancy
 [6]Competent Spirit-shearing(Finesse)
 [6]Competent Rigour(Stability)
 [9]Other stuff

I should rather like to be expert, but I see only prices for skilled and master. I should also like to have metamagic, but is that only available from assistants? I believe that there is an error in "construction materials", I suspect that "enough" is only supposed to appear once...

[Demonic Spoon]

Unskilled - Jake understands that fire magic exists.
Dabbling[1] - Jake can light a candle. Arthur can sense a re-animated skeleton in the darkness.
Novice[2] - Jake has a flamethrower spell. Arthur can ritually re-animate a skeleton to follow simple orders.
Competent[3] - Jake can lob an explosive fireball over a wall. Arthur can ritually bind a ghost and empower it to cast ghost-magic, or animate skeletons at will.
Skilled[5] - Jake can lob a fireball through a stone city wall, then explode it. Arthur can drain the life from a squad of soldiers.
Expert[8] - Jake can create a loosely controlled firestorm, causing significant property damage. Jake can ritually create a vampire lord.
Master[13] - Jake can create a tightly controlled firestorm that lobs explosive fireballs. Lich Jake can turn civilians into vampires under his control with little effort.

I like how Jake has killed Arthur at Expert level and taken over his duties. Anyway, not sure if I'll join this, though I'll note that the update on my version have been largely delayed by sleeping problems.

[Nirur Torir]

Definitely interesting, but can you tell me what kind of skills I can buy. And also I did not understand how I pick a metamagic skill and if it is truley relevant.

Example skills: Elemental magic, fire magic (More focused skills get stronger results), sword fighting, mining, leadership, lute playing.
To get a metamagic skill, pick two from the list of (Strength, efficiency, scale, finesse, stability, safety), then give it a name. It's relevant, but you will see stronger results in one skill from just spending 32 points on mastery than you will from splitting those points. Of course, you won't be as versatile, and won't be able to assist others.
Please do not buy minions and resources yet.

Race: Summoner
Summon Small Slime Minion 40

That is not a standard race, please describe it.
Can't take a skill beyond master, at 32 points, and that's really an intensely focused skill, when I was expecting something along the lines of 'summoning magic.' I could allow it, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to spend every action summoning slimes.

I should rather like to be expert, but I see only prices for skilled and master. I should also like to have metamagic, but is that only available from assistants? I believe that there is an error in "construction materials", I suspect that "enough" is only supposed to appear once...

Expert costs 19.
Anyone can buy metamagic. You'll be able to use one metamagic of your own to enhance your spells.
Typo fixed, thanks.

I like how Jake has killed Arthur at Expert level and taken over his duties. Anyway, not sure if I'll join this, though I'll note that the update on my version have been largely delayed by sleeping problems.

Oops .. I think I'll leave that typo in.

[Demonic Spoon]

Eh, I'll bite. Is there a skill rank above master?

Name: Oertung
Race: Earth Elemental
Physical Description: A massive creature of solid rock and metal
Mental Description: He likes building things
Backstory: Born from earth, he shapes it as he pleases.
Skills: Master Earth Elementalist -32 Points
Novice Enlarger (+Scale, +Safety) -3 Points
Trait: Earth Elemental -5 Points: The Earth Elemental's earthy constitution makes him highly resistant to damage, and immune to many mundane dangers such as poison, disease, asphyxiation, starvation, dehydration etc.

[Shadestyle]

Name: Literally Unlimited Minions
Race: Summoner, so he says, (Human)
Physical Description: A humble man in a purple robe, he only wishes to be known as the greatest summoner in the world
Mental Description: Highly arrogant, and hyper focused, he only cares about being the best, which he believes he is.
Backstory: As a young summoner, he devoted to his studies with unimaginable fervor, or study, of a single spell, "Summon Small Slime"
Skills:
Summon Small Slime Minion 32
Slime Micromanagement 8

Better?

[crazyabe]

PTW

[AbstractTraitorHero]

Yolo!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name:Mori the brillant
Race:Human
Physical Description:Faboulous he may or may not be related to miya
Mental Description:A thoughtfully man who is known to lose himself in his thoughts he believes that the world is a popularity contest and very simply he isent going to win and as such merly wishes to live a intresting life.
Backstory:From the town of Fairport mori hanged out with a young girl in his childhood she was always looking down upon herself and he eventually pushed her away.... He regrets it and heard she recently ran away so he's going on a journey in the hope to find her.
Skills:Expert inventor
Expert lightning magic.

[Nirur Torir]

I really should have anticipated nearly everyone min-maxing. Just remember that six specialists with a few sapient minions (and absurd quantities of slime) probably isn't the most reliable method of colonizing a deathworld. For example, taking master healing is pretty much dedicating yourself to keep everyone nearby in Absolute Perfect Health, all of the time, and there might be more pressing things you could be doing with your time.

Better?

If you really want to, I'll allow it. I'm bumping your magic skill up to Slime Summoning.

Backstory:From the town of Fairport mori hanged out with a young girl in his childhood she was always looking down upon herself and he eventually pushed her away.... He regrets it and heard she recently ran away so he's going on a journey in the hope to find her
Expert lightning magic.[/spoiler]

I suspect that learning Black Lightning Magic would have worked better for keeping the girl.

[AbstractTraitorHero]

Yeah that black lightening is way more attractive then regular lightening pain oh so good or so I've heard.

[Criptfeind]

Name: Wanahca

Race: Dryad (A race or perhaps the female representatives of a race of plant based humanoids)

Physical Description: Wanahca natural biology coupled with her mastery of magic has lead to her taking control of her species natural biorhythms to create two distinct forms for her to take depending on her needs and the environment around her. Currently she is almost always in her Nyctinastic form during the groups journey and colonization of such a harsh land. She appears as an eight foot tall wooden humanoid, her body composed of sharp edged and rough barked wood. Long and thin limbs end in pointed wooden stakes for finger. Thorns jut from her body, and a tangled mess of briers falls from her scalp to frame a rough wooden face with sharpened wood teeth and glowing amber eyes. When Wanahca changes to her flowering form her whole aspect is changed. The rough bark of her skin twists and loosens, lowering her height as previously bound pliant plant flesh pushing up and out until her rough bark is reduce to a soft pattern on her light green skin. Thorns bulge and soften, erupting into a riot of colorful flowers that fill the air around her with a exotic perfume. Even the rough dead looking bush of her hair springs with life, harsh brambles softening and growing into a waterfall of willowy strands intertwined with more flowers. Her hands soften into thin digits made of flexible and soft plant matter. Even her face changes, wooden fangs and harsh wooden looks soften and hide behind a plush face of light green. Only her eyes of glowing amber stay the same.

Mental Description: Wanahca is (in her mind at least) the absolute pinnacle of plant life. The queen of trees, the princess of the flowers and the Sovereign of fauna. As such she has quite a high opinion of herself and her own importance. She believes that she is naturally destined and perhaps the only one capable to lead society into a pristine future. She's of the opinion that the environment is highly important, and should not be ruined by rampant industry.

Spoiler: Backstory (click to show/hide)

Backstory: Wanahca was born in a Dryad grove in the suburbs of a great metropolis. As she grew up her magical powers came to light as much stronger then the normal small amount of magic with plants that most of her sisters possessed. She was treated like a celebrity among her sisters for a time, as the elders of the grove put her power to use in the grove and the surrounding city. Growing wild plants and treating the various urban foliage of the disease and destruction caused by pollution from the city. However over time she came to resent using her powers in this way, often seeing the exotic plants she would be commissioned to grow as nothing more then caged beauties, window dressing for the idle rich. Even worse though was that the work she did on plants suffering the effects of industry felt like she was only extending their life so they could be tortured by the pollution of the other races. Her rare and powerful magic connected her to the plants of the city even more then most of her sisters were, and so she started to speak out against the pollution and corruption spewed by industry in the city. Rallying her sisters, and to her surprise even members of other races into a peaceful environmental protection group. They protested and urged people to boycott the worst polluting factories and businesses, writing letters, holding rallies, giving speeches. She became known as "The Queen of Green" in the city, and slowly her movement started to gain popularity. There was talk of laws being put in place to limit pollution from business and fine those who strayed over the limits. The local corporations were not amused by this possibility.

Wanahca never found out though what combination of bribes, threats, and other gaff they managed to get to the elders of the dryads grove, but she found herself called to a secret meeting in the middle of the night with them, where they urged her to abandon the movement, to be happy with the progress she had made and sequester herself away from the public eye. When she refused the suggestion turned into a command, and then further into an attempt at physical force. That night the grove exploded with a flurry of magic and growth, and when day dawned the next day it was over a ruined grove. Gigantic plants were locked in death embraces with each other, the land was ripped apart by vines and roots, and a majority of the elders of the grove were found rend limb from limb. The guards that had responded to the disturbance failed to capture the fleeing Wanahca, and she escaped into the city. The business controlled politicians and media called her insane, and a murderer. Her fragile movement was almost shattered by these events, hemorrhaging support. Wanahca was unwilling to let this be the end of it though, from her place in hiding she slowly gathered what support she could, her sisters that understood the corruption of the world and of people and radical environmentalists from many other races joined her in secret. Understanding that peaceful methods would never bring about the change they sought the group turned to more extreme ways. Recognizing that they would not be able to withstand the forces arrayed against them directly and a need for secrecy in the future, Wanahca reorganized the organization, placing herself firmly at the head and purging any elements that she thought would be unwilling or unable to follow her in her future plans. Wanahca then lead their new movement from the shadows as they conducted terrorist attacks against any that polluted the world or that they deemed were too corrupted to stay in power.

As Wanahca lead this group in the underworld she came to recognize that her previous ideals were somewhat misplaced, clearly the world could never be trusted to those all too corrupted meat based despoiler, as in the end they would bend to their own corruption. The world was in need of a powerful and benevolent ruler to hold the reigns to prevent environmental and moral degradation. To this end she styled herself as Queen Wanahca, her growing distrust of animals lead to a filtering in her organization. Her sisters and other plant based lifeforms rose in importance, and the animal races were mostly relegated to a lower position in the organization. Only a few fanatic animals were left in her ring of close comrades, until Wanahca came up with a way for these fanatics to prove their utmost loyalty to the organization. She pioneered a new magical ritual where their old animal body was consumed by the rapid growth of a special tree, their minds absorbed the plant would grow into a large humanoid shape and the person would be reborn anew in a more perfect wooden body. Although many outside the organization called this ritual and the resulting 'treemen' an abomination many of her followers saw it as a blessing, as their leader gifting them with new and better bodies. Eventually her leadership took on an almost religious flavor, as her great powers lead to this and other miracles for the organization, managing to keep them alive and destroy many targets over the years of their activity.

But alas, her terrorist activities somehow failed to produce the social change she was trying for. Eventually her location was found by the forces of the city, and the army raided her hidden compound. Many of her followers were slain and she herself was captured. The trial for her crimes was almost nonexistent and she was immediately sentenced to death. However, as the executioner approached her something that not even she expected occurred. All over the city the plants she had spent her whole life working with seemed to go into riot, trees uprooting themselves, indoor plants bursting from their planters and attacking their surroundings, wild bushes grabbing people and pulling them into stinging thorns. Buildings started to crack and sway as the collected fury of the natural world seemed to cause the ground itself to quake with the roots of plants beneath. These activities only lasted for a few moments, until the executioner dropped his axe and fled, the world seeming to calm down as her death receded. The powers that be were perturbed. She could not be allowed to stay in the city, that much was certain, but it was unclear how much damage they would have to suffer to put her to death. In the end was it decided that she would be exiled along with her closest followers to a death world, theoretically a surrender, giving her an area to carve out the society she desired, but in reality a death sentence far enough away that it would hopefully not cause mass destruction.

Skills: Master Floramancy

So. Then. How much would it cost to buy seeds for plant based magics? I was thinking of racial abilities to buy, but I'm not sure if I want any in particular at all. Maybe some protection against damage from bark skin. Also if I wanted to take greater then human for the role workers, would it make sense to represent that with skilled? Or maybe Quality arms. (An example, say I wanted something like, treemen soldiers, tough skin, very strong, that sorta thing.)

[FallacyofUrist]

Spoiler: Walter (click to show/hide)

Name: Walter.
Race: Human.

Physical Description: Walter's buried in enough robes to make most mages jealous. Plus he's wearing a thick mask. Gloves. Thick boots. As a result, no part of his body can actually be seen, and you'd have to work for hours removing clothing from him if you wanted to see any skin. Most who look at his movements, however, can tell that he's moderately old.
Mental Description: Walter is clearly the only one suitable to rule. Nobody could see that in the previous world, aside from his loyal followers... but Walter will show them all! Walter will rule this world, and then he will conquer the old world! HE WILL BE VICTORIOUS!

Backstory: What most people don't know(and will never know) about Walter is that he's a prince. What even fewer people know is that he tried to have his father assassinated and take over his kingdom. When that failed, he tried a(somewhat straightforward) coup. When that failed, he tried explosives, lies, a contract with a demonic monster known as Tem, and an alliance with a neighboring king. Eventually(it took a long, long, time), his father came out on top, and sentenced Walter to exile. If Walter hadn't drugged his father with a little something special, it's likely that his father would have prevented Walter bringing with him some of his minions. Or sent a bunch of royal guards with him. Or maybe just executed him.

Skills:
Skilled Politics [11]
Competent Poison Magic [6]

Also...

Spoiler: The Death World: (click to show/hide)

Why, oh why, are we on a floating island? And is that a storm up ahead? The island's moving?
Wait. This isn't an island. THIS IS A FLYING TURTLE!

Details:
The world is a gas giant(mostly breathable atmosphere, thankfully). The available landmass is made up of flying turtles of various kinds. Thankfully there are entire ecosystems on said turtle shells. And the turtle shell might as well be stone(for the most part). Unfortunately, we have to deal with storms... elevation changes...
pain...

[Nirur Torir]

So. Then. How much would it cost to buy seeds for plant based magics? I was thinking of racial abilities to buy, but I'm not sure if I want any in particular at all. Maybe some protection against damage from bark skin. Also if I wanted to take greater then human for the role workers, would it make sense to represent that with skilled? Or maybe Quality arms. (An example, say I wanted something like, treemen soldiers, tough skin, very strong, that sorta thing.)

Seeds: Probably free, unless you want them to offer a particular advantage, like instantly growing a combat plant at low skill levels. At high skill levels, you could just instantly grow a mutated plant from normal acorns, or enchant seeds while eating lunch, and it wouldn't make much sense to charge for magic seeds.
Yes, treemen soldiers being renamed skilled soldiers works well for me.