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[Sean Mirrsen]

Since I have some time between waiting for the action queue in my RTD to fill up, I'd like to conduct a little experiment partly inspired by the indie game Night of The Cephalopods (and borrowing the sub-title from it).

In essense, this is still the usual relaxed-realistic RTD like the main Madness one, but with an important twist - there's no order to the actions, I pool the actions and their rolls together and try to weave a story from everything that happens during a turn. This is not going to be any sort of real game, just an experiment to see whether something like this can feasibly be run.

I'll need a party of five volunteers that can make up any characters they want (within reason) and post a string of actions they'd like to do in the nearby future. Skills, abilities, wounds, penalties and bonuses are at your discretion, but interpreting the rolls is at mine. Rolls will not be shown, since it'll make no sense within the story, but they will be made. Don't expect plot armor.

The situation is the following:
You're a party of five unlikely adventurers participating in... let's say one of the Tolkien's battles. You're out in the Pelennor fields along with the 7-something thousand allied human warriors, up against the Gates of Mordor and surrounded by vastly superior numbers of orcs. You're friends with Gandalf the White and the surviving Company, as well as the rest of the humans since you've helped at Minas Tirith. There's no goal here, think like a party of adventurers out to get some practice. Make your characters accordingly if you like, but I won't protest against someone piloting a mecha.

I say again, this is an experiment and not a game. I just want to get some storywriting practice myself, and possibly provide some entertainment for you people.

In short - I need five random characters doing something out on the Pelennor fields. Make a character, a background, some skills and equipment, maybe some penalties and wounds if you like to roleplay a bit. The characters don't need to be aligned with Tolkien at all. But it won't hurt.

[Aqizzar]

I've never understood the utterly wacky crap that goes on in RTDs, but I'll take a stab at this.  Let's see what kind of ultra-lame I derive from my lack of random imagination or knowledge of the setting.

Name: Aqizzar
Character: A Haradrim mercenary rider from the southlands.
Stuff: Horse and tackle; pennants made of orc-skins; a blade stolen from a dead elf; riding bow and poisoned arrows; piecemeal metal and leather armor.
Why I'm Here: I know a losing war when I see one, and defected to the Army of the West once it looked like Mordor was going to fall.  At the moment, we may be surrounded by orcs, and I'm pissed about that, but this war will be over soon enough, and I can get back to some proper brigandage.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I can quantificate the effects of your skills and bonuses for you if you like. As in, put in some numbers regarding the underlying system.

I presume you're an ex-NPC in this? You don't need to be from the setting if you don't want to. Also, some kind of action would be nice.

[Aqizzar]

I know I don't need to be from the setting.  Like I said, I'm horribly unimaginative.  I've also been awake for about 40 hours.

Action: Shout challenges to the orcs, peppering them with arrows.  If any bold fools or small groups come running out, I'll harry them and lead them to their death.  Basically, run around fighting orcs with skirmisher tactics and foul language.

Quantificate away friend.  It'll be nice to see someone make a system with actual rules and numbers.

[neo1096]

Name: Neo
Character: Lothlorien Archer
Stuff: Mallorn Wood Bow, strong silken quiver, traveling outfit and ranger's cloak, dual short swords.
Reason to be here: A wandering elf, Neo was commissioned by the Gondorians to help train their rangers in stealth and archery. He was abandoned in Osgoliath when they fled to Minas Tirith and decided to fight the orcs on his own terms. He followed the army to the Pelennor fields, remaining hidden and dispatching enemies by stealth. He is also unfortunately trapped on the orc side of the lines.
Actions: He is on the move, killing orcs and quickly recovering arrows before moving like a shadow on to the next target. He is currently looking for help and is very observant.

[Flintus10]

Name:Flint
Character:Human spearfisherman
Stuff:Fishing spear, nets, gutting knife, simple leather clothes with a peasants cloak and a small bag containing an assortment of baits.
Reason to be here:Was originally from a historical novel which showed the advancement of fishing through the ages. Flint was meant to be on page 19 which gave a good insight into the life of a fisherman during medieval times. Unfortunately due to a series of wrong turns he ended up in the middle of a battle field and decided it would be best to simply fight his way out.
Actions:Tries to find a decent shield to protect himself from arrows. 

[Jay Kayell]

Name: Kratos
Character: God of War
Stuff: Manly skirt-like thing on lower body. The wargod's armor. Blades of Athena, attached by chains to his forearms. Sandals on feet (duh ).
Reason to be here: After soundly kicking the asses of the entire Greek pantheon he decided to move on. He found his way to Middle-Earth and ended up right in the middle of a fight, not one to back down from a fight he started helping those he thought were the "good guys".

Action: Starts swinging his blades at anything and everything hostile nearby. If nothing hostile comes near he goes closer to the hostiles.

[Vlynndar]

You mean a bit like Vaiolis RPG? It looks like how you describe it.

[Vlynndar]

And if I get a spot, I will be

Urist, Dwarf.
Hammerdwarf, to be exact. The mentioning of LotR has opened a rift, directly below the feet of Urist. He started hammering on orcs, despite there being elves.
He was wearing goblin bone armour and wielding an iron hammer, adorned with pictures of cheese. On his back he has, instead of a slightly more logical shield, a keg of ale.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Quite possibly it's similar, because I didn't really follow it since it was announced. It's still an RTD, not an RPG (maybe an RPD - RolePlay to Dodge), and it'll likely have far less talk than that.

In the meantime, we have the five players (which are, admittedly, far less random than I'd hoped) and registration, if you can call it that, is closed.

The list is:
Aquizzar the Haradrim mercenary horse archer.
Neo the Lorien elf ranger.
Flint the average fisherman with a spear.
Kratos the sword-wielding greek god of war.
Urist the ale-loving hammerdwarf.

Quite a boring party, god of war excluded, but we'll see what comes from this.

Don't expect a turn soon, this might take me a while.

[Armok]

You could always add me in as BSOD, seventh horseman of the apocalypse.

[inaluct]

Quite a boring party, god of war excluded

I'm pretty sure that that's a video game character. Like Master Chief or Mario.

[Aqizzar]

And only now do I think I should have been B.J. Blazkowicz.

Hey, that's not a bad idea.

Sean, I'm changing my character to B.J. Blazkowicz, two-fisted slayer of Zombified Nazis and Nazified Zombies.  I don't really know how I got to Middle Earth, but I'mma have some words with the OSS when I get back.  In the meantime, Orcs seem like bad enough guys to me, so I'm killing them with the wicked spear I pried off of Hitler's smoking corpse.

[Strife26]

This really looks like it might be fun. Curses!