Team AHere your ancestors sit unremarkable, simple creatures in all aspects. A mating pair probably looking for a place to nest or where to find their next meal, but they could not account for what happens next. Be it a predator forcing them into a cave, a storm causing them to seek shelter in ruins or even the will of some higher power they end up in the presence of a miniscule pool of mutagenic soup left over from The War's horrible bombs. With a simple trip or stumbling they both blunder into the radioactive puddle, soaking themselves in the goo. Getting up and shaking themselves off they do not yet understand the gravity of what has happened to them, already the neurons in their brain are slowly changing. In a season their children will be born, smarter than their parents with brains geared towards higher thought if just a little more than their parents. And so like that your new kind spread, slowly evolving with the help of a little soak in god knows what into a sentient species ready to take the place of Mankind before it.
Hello Team A! Now is your time to design your new species which will be (hopefully) destined to replace mankind and your Anomalous Material resource that will be unique to your faction! I'm going to make a quick re-post of your rules and regulations and am open to answer any questions you have here or on the Discord.
Pretty standard stuff once the game has started proper.
Design Phase: You design your stuff and I roll dice to decide its effectiveness
Revision Phase: You revise what you've designed or a previous design.
Combat Phase: Your new designs are fielded and affects the battlefield.
The following rules are used when determining the results of any proposal:
Difficulty is determined by how complex a proposal is. The further of a departure it is with what your team is used to, and/or the more features something tacks on, the harder it gets.
Unobtainable (-x): An Unobtainable proposal is impossible. This does not mean you gain zero experience, but Unobtainable proposals will never produce something usable on their own.
Theoretical (-3): Theoretical proposals may represent a massive step forward (or backward), and will be difficult, but not impossible, to accomplish.
Very Hard (-2): Proposals that end up as Very Hard tend to be victims of overreach or ambition, but not to the degree of Theoretical or Unobtainable proposals. These actions have a moderate chance of some level of success, at least.
Hard (-1): Hard proposals tend to represent pushing lightly against the unknown or attempting an advanced, but simple, accomplishment. A Hard action is likely to succeed in some form, but are not excluded from the occasional unexpected failure.
Normal (0): Normal proposals represent your typical step forward or a reasonable adjustment to what is available at the time. While Normal proposals are very unlikely to outright fail, fate could still see them perform less than desirably.
Easy (+1): An Easy proposal is likely a minor advancement or adjustment in areas you have familiarity with. Easy proposals never outright fail to produce results, but that doesn't mean they'll always be good.
Very Easy (+2): Very Easy proposals represent work in areas or with equipment that you have a high level of familiarity with and likely don't have a bunch of bells and whistles attached. You're very likely to at least get something "acceptable" out of a Very Easy proposal, even if it likely won't cause a dramatic paradigm shift.
Simple (+3): A Simple proposal is well within the bounds of familiarity and, well, simplicity. Simple proposals are likely the result of prolonged periods of work on a particular area or object, so even though they'll likely be fairly successful, they shouldn't be expected to blow anyone's mind.
Trivial (+4): Trivial proposals fall strictly within the confines of previous work experience and likely at best offer lateral "advancement" or a very small augmentation to an existing design. They are, at least, almost guaranteed to provide something useful or (mildly) beneficial.
Once difficulty is determined, the roll to decide the proposal's fate will be made. All rolls are done with 2d6, and results are outlined below. Note that difficulty modifiers will adjust the final roll accordingly, so, for example, a Very Hard roll of 11 will result in a 9.
Utter Failure (2): It is likely nothing tangible is gained from an Utter Failure, but they can provide experience.
Unworthy (3): The proposal "works", just not as intended, and with a bevy of issues.
Poor (4): The proposal is acceptable, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
Below Average (5): The proposal is missing a few intended features, or has a hiccup or two regarding usage, but is reliable enough.
Average (6,7,8): The proposal generally functions as intended.
Above Average (9): The proposal works, and something about it functions better than expected.
Superior (10): The proposal works much better than intended, and a lot is learned in related fields of research.
Perfection (11): Perfection. Masterworks go above and beyond what development intended.
Unexpected Boon (12): Development of this proposal goes so well that some sort of extra benefit is provided to the side building it.
This game will not deal with resources. Instead, things have a rarity that indicates how plentiful they are on the battlefield. Rarity is not (significantly) randomized, but is based on the complexity/cost of the thing in question, and cannot be lowered without reducing the complexity/cost. (ie, a revision that just says "We make X cheaper or easier to learn" is not always viable)
Note that rarity is measured on a 'unit' level, not necessarily an 'individual' level; A squad of infantry would all be equipped with cheap service rifles while if you had a expensive LMG only one member in the squad would receive one, if its a dirt cheap LMG then maybe two or three members will have an LMG.
The levels of rarity are:
Common: The bulk of your forces.
Uncommon: Five times rarer than Common things.
Rare: Five times rarer than Uncommon things.
Unique: One one exists, and must be deployed in the strategy phase.
Note that the scale of the war will escalate over time, but the ratios will remain relatively constant- ie, the first few turns may involve small skirmishes of a few hundred soldiers, while the endgame may involve colossal conflicts of tens of thousands, but there will be five times more common troops than uncommon ones in both the tens-of-thousands strong army and the hundreds strong one.
The War itself and the repeated detonation of atomic weapons beyond the power of what our current world governments posses has left a significant scar on the geology of the planet resulting in the appearance of Anomalous Materials, these being objects imbued with a strange property unique to them such as trees which have wood easily shapeable and harvestable but when treated with extreme heat hardens into a steel like material or a mineral rock that when fed electricity increases its mass proportional to the charge fed to it and holds that mass proportional to the charge. Each team will recieve one Anomalous Material of their own design.
Some Additional Notes: A special sunflower which shoots rainbow laser beams will not be an acceptable Anomalous Materials design. While the Anomalous Materials are here to add spice and variety to the AR I want things to be semi-realistic as possible. So no, you wont be starting with stuff like 90 foot tall Gundams nor will you have intense reality bending powers.
There will be a total of 5 pre-game turns which you will design your species and affect their characteristics and traits in which you guide them to their Industrial Era state on the brink of the first Total War the earth has seen since the The War ended. The more detail you put into these turns the easier it is for me to run the opening turns.
Turn 1: Tribal/Classical Era; The first Pre-Game will be a dual design turn where you will list both your unique species as an early tribal society and how they discovered your nations unique resource. (IE: Mice the size of men who have impeccable hearing and tinkering but are fragile and weak. Something like Whales with tiny feet so they can walk on land and psionic powers to crush the skulls of their enemies is not acceptable. A race of elephant like beings with a hyper evolved trunk to act as arms would be acceptable within reason, I would have to think about it though it would come with a number of drawbacks.)
Turn 2: Medieval Era; Your First Expansion turn where you will describe the land your nation expands into and their early government and culture plus any advancements in your understanding of your special resource.
Turn 3: Renaissance Era; Your Second Expansion where you will describe two more lands your nation expands into two unique areas of your design plus either a Refinement (Revision of a previous advancement into a more advanced form) or a new discovery (Design on how to use your stuff "IE; Musket but replaces Gunpowder with early railgun tech using magnetic metal or some shit.) on how you can use your Anomalous Materials. You will also discover your neighbor and learn of their race and gain a small bit of info on their Anomalous Material.
Turn 4: Dawn of Industrial Era (Roughly 1860's+ for an idea); Where a small skirmish war shapes the nations military doctrine over a final pair of unique lands you will design and will fight over. Your Refinement or Discovery of how to use your Anomalous Materials will affect the doctrine being shaped in quick and brutal war that causes both nations to stare at each other angrily over their respective borders for the next few decades. Your national doctrine and previous cultural advancements will affect how your nation engages in conflict such as a strong Viking-like warriors culture will be more prone to mass assaults of infantry in the early days of the war and rely more on 'Elan' than newfangled machinery of war.
Turn 5 will be a final pre-game design phase where the players build off their nations military doctrine for an opening armory as they march into conflict as conflict has reared its head once more with. (This will take place in an early 1900's setting roughly.)
A Side Note: The more unique you make your nation, this being a simple as adopting a naming scheme for your weapons make the GM happy but isn't required. Any 'Utter Failure' roll be allowed to be re-rolled but anything between that and 'Average' will be seen as your culture simply being unprepared or unwilling to adopt the advancements at the moment in its intended place.
So, you're probably wondering why this area is called 'The Shattered Coast'. Thats because after the nuclear war the icecaps well...they did a whole lot of melting before they froze again during the nuclear winter. Global warming due to war has affected the coasts of the world in a large way, predominantly with the former Eastern Coast of North America now being primarily now composed of swamps, and river systems that criss-cross through the coast. The 'ocean' as it can be called is little more than one large bayous in which heavy deep ships are unable to sail through. Other nations settled along the Shattered Coast employ fleets of low-draft monitors to patrol the 'ocean' and the river systems moving through their lands so you might want to follow their example....or maybe find your own solution...?
The rivers will also affect the map itself too. The near-coast zone marked as '4 B' is the most heavily stricken by rivers with a few of them continuing into '4 A'. (The A and B marker denoting if the zone belongs to the yet unnamed teams A and B) Zones '3 A' and '3 B' have a very minor river presence similar to '4 A'. Land Forces will be affected by their naval support available and it will affect the outcome of a turn if it provides a significant enough advantage.
As you add new zones the map will be finalized with its look with the ugly numbers removed and little art inside the circles to represent the zones. Each zone will also gain 4 'Pips' orbiting it to show team ownership of the control of the zone. The central #4 zones will start split between the two teams evenly.
Ok so, I know the first thing you guys will try to design is some heavily min-maxed species using its own plot armor to game the mechanics. Sure, you can design your race and give your people a racial buff. No fucking with the mechanics of the game (You can't get a racial +1 to tank designs), and whatever buff you design I will meet with a permanent debuff that you don't get to design but is roughly equivalent in magnitude. You can have fun but a 10 ton elephant race will have trouble making a car that can transport it or a plane that can lift it.
Now that we've got that out of the way,
lets do The Evolution baby!The DiscordThe Core Thread
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Topic: Lets Do The Evolution Baby! Evolutionary Arms Race Team A; Pre-Game Turn 1 (Read 4002 times)