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[Digital Hellhound]

So are you randomizing which subtype the players end up as, or letting them choose? I don't think the first is bad per se, but you might end up in a situation where a player would've liked a completely different set of skills - if they know it's going to be randomized, there's no problem.

[Mr.Zero]

So are you randomizing which subtype the players end up as, or letting them choose? I don't think the first is bad per se, but you might end up in a situation where a player would've liked a completely different set of skills - if they know it's going to be randomized, there's no problem.

I was thinking of letting the players choose, though randomizing would be fair for this. If I were to add something, then the differences won't be that big, just minor differences. The night dryads could see slightly better at night for example, the day dryads would heal slightly faster,etc.

It's essentially a subrace choice. Like all the different varieties of elf.

Might want to replace all the ares with tend to bes, though, unless dryads are supposed to be like ants or something.

I see, thanks. No they are not intended to be ants, would make for a pretty cool concept though.

[Fniff]

Would anyone be interested in this RtD?
I'm afraid I can't reveal much more then the first post without spoiling it.

Spoiler: The OP (click to show/hide)

This barn is that remains of your family. This winter has not been kind.
No winter in Tejekov is kind.
The wind whistles through gaps. The children sleep in the loft in furs. The elders crowd around the fire and the young get what little heat they can.
One of the elders cries, "The fire is dying!"
One of the elders says "That is what fires do."
One of the elders says "Such fatalism. What are we to do?"
One of the elders speaks practically.
"We send someone out to the shed.
The fire is almost out, so we need some wood for it.
We need more stew, so get ingredients and water.
And when did we last have vodka?
Yes, they should be gathered from the shed."
An elder says "I will not do it. The wind howls like wolves, when it rains it is an ocean, and what little time it does not rain it is a flurry of snow."
They turn outward. It will be the young's duty to provide.
An uncle stands up. "I, Uncle Andrei shall volunteer.
I am fast on my feet, even in my old age."
"No," says an elder. "You are flighty, Andrei."
A cousin stands up. "I am Cousin Vola of 19 years, and I am volunteering.
I am sharp with a rifle, so no wolves will attack while we gather wood."
"You are of slow wit, Vola," says an elder. "You will not do."
You look outside. The elders were right: the night is fierce. But even in a dying family, prestige is paramount.
You volunteer, and are elevated above your peers when you are accepted. Three others are alongside you, some faces you know and others you don't.
Your task is simple. Gather firewood, some rations, and a bottle of vodka from the shed.
But it is a cold, dark winter night.
The Lock and the Key

What is This?
You are a member of a family that has fallen on hard times in the Russian province of Tejekov, sometime in the 1920s. The fire is dying down in the barn and you need to go out to the shed for supplies along with three other volunteers.
It is the middle of the night.
It is very cold.
How Do I Join?
Your sheet is what your character calls out when they volunteer. Put it in their words, but be sure to mention these four things.
Your Name. Old, European names are preferred.
Your Skill. A quality of your character. Can be a piece of equipment, a skill, or an aspect of their personality.
Your Issue. A failing of your character. You should have this be what the Elders say of your character unless they have self-esteem issues.
Other things can also be mentioned.
Your Relation. Here's a few ideas. Aunt/Uncle, Cousin, Sister/Brother, Niece/Nephew, Father/Mother, etc, etc.
Your Age. Anything below 12/above 65 implies determination, respect, or overconfidence.
Your Personality. If you can fit in a quirk, go right ahead.
Try not to have it be longer then 3-4 lines.

I will be using standard RTD rules and will take four people into the night.

[Harry Baldman]

Seems okay enough, though probably largely devoid of the actual concept. The problem with the premise of the game being revealed over time, or based on a reversal of expectations, is that you don't know what you're getting into, and so the result might not be to your taste at all.

For instance, right now it smacks of monsters showing up. But it could just as well be anything else at all.

[Yoink]

I'm not sure I get a 'monster-y' vibe from it, but I suppose you could be right.
It seems like fun either way! Something new is always good.

[Fniff]

Seems okay enough, though probably largely devoid of the actual concept. The problem with the premise of the game being revealed over time, or based on a reversal of expectations, is that you don't know what you're getting into, and so the result might not be to your taste at all.

For instance, right now it smacks of monsters showing up. But it could just as well be anything else at all.

I did want to go with a premise that isn't typical for RtDs. Not many 'roll to be a member of an impoverished kulak family in the Soviet 20s" that I know of. This also probably means that it's not immediately obvious what the direction is.
Here's one solution I thought of: spoilers that have variable levels of explanation. So, the post you see there is the minimal explanation and I would have another spoiler which goes into detail about the concept and what's coming up.
Kind of like how trigger warnings work, thinking about it.

I'm not sure I get a 'monster-y' vibe from it, but I suppose you could be right.
It seems like fun either way! Something new is always good.

Thanks!

[Draignean]

So, what do people think of this kind of character selection?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before you ever start sketching out a character, you need to consider one thing: is your character the captain of the mercenary band? If you want to be the captain, remember that there can only be one captain, and the captain needs to be an interesting and dynamic enough character that they can glue everyone together. It’s better for a captain to have a good personality, an interesting story, and a bit of flash than for the captain to be a perfectly stat-optimized machine. If you don’t want to be the captain, remember that it’s the player who is selected as the captain that selects his team members, not the GM. Thus, the captain will determine what kind of mercenary outfit this is, and non-captain sheets may need to conform slightly to what the captain needs in order to be attractive as team members.

In essence, if you want to play as the captain, it’s important to impress the GM with an interesting character and a good amount of charisma and mystique. It’s not as important to fulfill any roll perfectly- you’ll be able to hire on a team of other players in order to accommodate your shortcomings. It’s also important to remember that the captain isn’t the be-all-end-all of the game. The captain is like Malcolm Reynolds, Colonel O’Neill, or Gandalph- he holds things together and keeps everyone on the same page, but he doesn’t solve every problem by the power of his grace and majesty alone.

However, if you want to play as a mercenary under the captain, it’s more important that you impress the captain, not the GM. Granted , if the GM is extraordinarily impressed, he may choose to put in a good word with the captain, and the GM reserves the right to veto any character sheet, but both vetoes and recommendations will be sparing. Impressing the captain with a character that shows a good potential for fun interactions, team synergy, and party building is what’s important. This is not to say that team characters should be “I work well with people. I have no strong interpersonal conflicts. I love all living things except the ones my captain doesn’t like.”, that misses the point. Jayne Cobb and Simon Tam are opposite ends of the spectrum, but they interact in beautiful ways that make their team more interesting. Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson exist with similar chemistry, and, if you look at any good book/show/movie with an enjoyable team, every team member has some amount of conflicting personality. You are not a band of magical friendship balls that are destined to become power rangers and save the world.  You’re people, with all the flaws thereof, and being a mercenary is just a job.
 
As a final tip for character building, you’re absolutely allowed to weave your bios together as long as you have the consent of the other players. You’re a pretty new mercenary group, still working out the kinks, but all players on the team will have had a good amount of time to learn about each other. Two characters that have good chemistry, good story, and complementary skillsets may be a far stronger entry than either one alone.

Name:
Captain: (Yes/No)
Race:
Archetype: (A brief description of the character you’re playing as. This descriptor is free form, and can involve whatever you want as long as it describes what your character does and is three words or less.
Attributes (80 points)
Strength:
Finesse:
Speed:
Grace:
Wisdom:
Brilliance:
Skills + Special Abilities (5 points)
List skills taken and any abilities gained here. If you purchase a skill multiple times, mark it with an additional I for each re-purchase. List the abilities immediately after the skill they came from.
Personality:  (The personality of a character is a brief description of their attitude, their way of life, and their style of thinking and problem solving. Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses.)
Biography: (For captains, this is brief snipped of who you are as a captain.  How you got here, what you’ve done, maybe even a little bit of information on how you met your team members if you already have people picked out. For the other mercs, this is a brief description of how you came to be a mercenary under the captain. You can play with the things you want, the things you’ve done, the things you regret etc.)

Character Selection Process

Stage 1: Selecting the Captain
Captain selection is open from the moment the OP is posted, and the captain selection process will continue until at least one week after the OP is posted. One week gives potential players time to read up on the lore, get into the setting a little, and build a good captain regardless of timezone.

Naturally, players are also free to post non-captain sheets during this time, but there is a good chance these sheets will need to be tweaked a bit when the captain is chosen and announces his intent for the mercenary company.

Stage 2: Selecting the crew
After the captain is selected, they must post a description of the kind of mercenary crew they’re running. Are they sellsword pest disposal, killing monsters and saving babies? Hired guns who fight battles too ambiguous to involve the military forces of the ten? Assassins who make the mighty lord and the poor peasant both equal in the grave? Thieves willing to plunder the homes of the living and the ruins of the dead to make their living? Combat researchers determined to plumb the ruins of the past and solve the riddles of the present?    The name of the crew, purpose of the crew, the general legality and moral ambiguity of the jobs the crew is willing to take, those are all things that the captain decides, and will undoubtedly influence what kind of characters the captain is looking for.

The captain is not allowed to start hiring on crew until 24 hours after they post the description of the Mercenary Crew they’re hiring, and they’re encouraged to wait a little longer and weigh the options thoroughly.  Character sheets still have a little fluidity at this stage. They have to be complete, including skills and attributes, but there will still be room to change details until the end of stage 3. Hiring on crew takes as long as it takes for the captain to be happy with their team.

Stage 3: The Prologue
After the captain has picked out his crew and everyone is ready to go, the prologue will begin. The prologue is a short mission that consists of a defining job taken by the mercenary crew, the rough description of which is worked out between the GM and the captain ahead of time. The prologue is designed to be relatively short, but made to flesh out the interaction between all the characters and provide a chance to field test their builds and chemistry.

The prologue is a testing mission, and it provides one last opportunity to tweak a character. Realize that a personality trait combination isn’t as interesting, or a lot harder to roleplay, than you thought it would be? Write in that your character grew up a little between the prologue and the current day, and shift the personality. Same thing if a skill combination doesn’t work quite right, just change it at the end of the prologue. Major changes, like a complete race swap, need to be handwaved a little, but it’s still fine.

Essentially, the prologue gives you a concrete series of events to weave into a character sheet, patching holes if necessary, and adding depth if not. Dying in the prologue is bad, but, if the captain wants to keep you, you’re just knocked around a bit and potentially gain a brave scar or three.

Tips:

As a captain, don’t feel that you need to get the united federation of races onto your team. You don’t have anywhere near enough slots to get representation from all ten races, and trying will give you a very unusual team. Not necessarily bad, but certainly a factor that’s going to come up when outsiders evaluate your outfit. If you’ve got one character with the kind of libido that makes them hit on everything that moves, it might be good to hire on a few members of the same race but opposite gender so we can all watch the sparks fly, but it could also be fun to surround them with members of a completely incompatible race and watch them hit desperately on all the NPCs of the correct species that the party comes across.

[Digital Hellhound]

@Draignean:

Innnnnteresting. The prologue and extended character creation is an idea I've never come across before. I suspect it could also be used to weed out players you (the captain or the GM) finds they don't think a good fit for the game too, if you were so inclined. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but there. The core aspect of tweaking your character seems fantastic - as long as that prologue is varied enough you can touch upon botch mechanical play and roleplay.

The Captain player choosing their team of course leads to the risk of them choosing their friends only, but ehh, I don't know if that's a big problem.

I also like the Archetype section there - three words seems just enough to describe your core idea.

...rambling, non-practical comment over; very interesting! Are you planning on making this?

[Draignean]

The Captain player choosing their team of course leads to the risk of them choosing their friends only, but ehh, I don't know if that's a big problem.

I thought about this, but then realized I don't really care. I already choose based on a combination of nepotism, insanity, and a desire to watch things explode entertainingly. So having a player, who at the very least has a vested interest in preserving their character's life, choosing by the same rubric isn't so bad. Friends can have a lot of fun tooling around with their friends, and, as long as everybody is having a good time, it's mission accomplished.

...rambling, non-practical comment over; very interesting! Are you planning on making this?

Of course not! Heaven man, perish the thought from your mind. Frankly, I'm aghast at the suggestion- it's absolutely impossible and completely unthinkable that I would run a game like this until the morning of May 4th.

[monk12]

...May the Fourth be with us all then.

[Yoink]

I'm so gonna sign up for that.
Hell, I'll start thinking up my app today.

[origamiscienceguy]

How would people think about an Ender's Game themed RTD? During the 3'rd invasion with space battles and stuff?

[Parsely]

So, what do people think of this kind of character selection?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before you ever start sketching out a character, you need to consider one thing: is your character the captain of the mercenary band? If you want to be the captain, remember that there can only be one captain, and the captain needs to be an interesting and dynamic enough character that they can glue everyone together. It’s better for a captain to have a good personality, an interesting story, and a bit of flash than for the captain to be a perfectly stat-optimized machine. If you don’t want to be the captain, remember that it’s the player who is selected as the captain that selects his team members, not the GM. Thus, the captain will determine what kind of mercenary outfit this is, and non-captain sheets may need to conform slightly to what the captain needs in order to be attractive as team members.

In essence, if you want to play as the captain, it’s important to impress the GM with an interesting character and a good amount of charisma and mystique. It’s not as important to fulfill any roll perfectly- you’ll be able to hire on a team of other players in order to accommodate your shortcomings. It’s also important to remember that the captain isn’t the be-all-end-all of the game. The captain is like Malcolm Reynolds, Colonel O’Neill, or Gandalph- he holds things together and keeps everyone on the same page, but he doesn’t solve every problem by the power of his grace and majesty alone.

However, if you want to play as a mercenary under the captain, it’s more important that you impress the captain, not the GM. Granted , if the GM is extraordinarily impressed, he may choose to put in a good word with the captain, and the GM reserves the right to veto any character sheet, but both vetoes and recommendations will be sparing. Impressing the captain with a character that shows a good potential for fun interactions, team synergy, and party building is what’s important. This is not to say that team characters should be “I work well with people. I have no strong interpersonal conflicts. I love all living things except the ones my captain doesn’t like.”, that misses the point. Jayne Cobb and Simon Tam are opposite ends of the spectrum, but they interact in beautiful ways that make their team more interesting. Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson exist with similar chemistry, and, if you look at any good book/show/movie with an enjoyable team, every team member has some amount of conflicting personality. You are not a band of magical friendship balls that are destined to become power rangers and save the world.  You’re people, with all the flaws thereof, and being a mercenary is just a job.
 
As a final tip for character building, you’re absolutely allowed to weave your bios together as long as you have the consent of the other players. You’re a pretty new mercenary group, still working out the kinks, but all players on the team will have had a good amount of time to learn about each other. Two characters that have good chemistry, good story, and complementary skillsets may be a far stronger entry than either one alone.

Name:
Captain: (Yes/No)
Race:
Archetype: (A brief description of the character you’re playing as. This descriptor is free form, and can involve whatever you want as long as it describes what your character does and is three words or less.
Attributes (80 points)
Strength:
Finesse:
Speed:
Grace:
Wisdom:
Brilliance:
Skills + Special Abilities (5 points)
List skills taken and any abilities gained here. If you purchase a skill multiple times, mark it with an additional I for each re-purchase. List the abilities immediately after the skill they came from.
Personality:  (The personality of a character is a brief description of their attitude, their way of life, and their style of thinking and problem solving. Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses.)
Biography: (For captains, this is brief snipped of who you are as a captain.  How you got here, what you’ve done, maybe even a little bit of information on how you met your team members if you already have people picked out. For the other mercs, this is a brief description of how you came to be a mercenary under the captain. You can play with the things you want, the things you’ve done, the things you regret etc.)

Character Selection Process

Stage 1: Selecting the Captain
Captain selection is open from the moment the OP is posted, and the captain selection process will continue until at least one week after the OP is posted. One week gives potential players time to read up on the lore, get into the setting a little, and build a good captain regardless of timezone.

Naturally, players are also free to post non-captain sheets during this time, but there is a good chance these sheets will need to be tweaked a bit when the captain is chosen and announces his intent for the mercenary company.

Stage 2: Selecting the crew
After the captain is selected, they must post a description of the kind of mercenary crew they’re running. Are they sellsword pest disposal, killing monsters and saving babies? Hired guns who fight battles too ambiguous to involve the military forces of the ten? Assassins who make the mighty lord and the poor peasant both equal in the grave? Thieves willing to plunder the homes of the living and the ruins of the dead to make their living? Combat researchers determined to plumb the ruins of the past and solve the riddles of the present?    The name of the crew, purpose of the crew, the general legality and moral ambiguity of the jobs the crew is willing to take, those are all things that the captain decides, and will undoubtedly influence what kind of characters the captain is looking for.

The captain is not allowed to start hiring on crew until 24 hours after they post the description of the Mercenary Crew they’re hiring, and they’re encouraged to wait a little longer and weigh the options thoroughly.  Character sheets still have a little fluidity at this stage. They have to be complete, including skills and attributes, but there will still be room to change details until the end of stage 3. Hiring on crew takes as long as it takes for the captain to be happy with their team.

Stage 3: The Prologue
After the captain has picked out his crew and everyone is ready to go, the prologue will begin. The prologue is a short mission that consists of a defining job taken by the mercenary crew, the rough description of which is worked out between the GM and the captain ahead of time. The prologue is designed to be relatively short, but made to flesh out the interaction between all the characters and provide a chance to field test their builds and chemistry.

The prologue is a testing mission, and it provides one last opportunity to tweak a character. Realize that a personality trait combination isn’t as interesting, or a lot harder to roleplay, than you thought it would be? Write in that your character grew up a little between the prologue and the current day, and shift the personality. Same thing if a skill combination doesn’t work quite right, just change it at the end of the prologue. Major changes, like a complete race swap, need to be handwaved a little, but it’s still fine.

Essentially, the prologue gives you a concrete series of events to weave into a character sheet, patching holes if necessary, and adding depth if not. Dying in the prologue is bad, but, if the captain wants to keep you, you’re just knocked around a bit and potentially gain a brave scar or three.

Tips:

As a captain, don’t feel that you need to get the united federation of races onto your team. You don’t have anywhere near enough slots to get representation from all ten races, and trying will give you a very unusual team. Not necessarily bad, but certainly a factor that’s going to come up when outsiders evaluate your outfit. If you’ve got one character with the kind of libido that makes them hit on everything that moves, it might be good to hire on a few members of the same race but opposite gender so we can all watch the sparks fly, but it could also be fun to surround them with members of a completely incompatible race and watch them hit desperately on all the NPCs of the correct species that the party comes across.

Can I steal this?

[Draignean]

Can I steal this?

Sure. Just send me a link to wherever you use it so I can watch how it pans out. (And probably apply)

I'm not going to use it for a month, so anyone who wants to use the idea is welcome to it.

...May the Fourth be with us all then.

I don't sig things, but if I did I would sig this.

I'm so gonna sign up for that.
Hell, I'll start thinking up my app today.

Huh. That might be interesting on contact with the lore.

How would people think about an Ender's Game themed RTD? During the 3'rd invasion with space battles and stuff?

I'm interested in anything with the word Sci attached anywhere to the front, so you had me at space. Granted, the Ender's game world is pretty damn dark, and I'm not sure how well it would translate to an RTD, but I'd play it if I had time.

[mastahcheese]

That character selection idea is brilliant.

Also +1 to the Ender's Game idea.