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Post by blantyr on Aug 26, 2013 17:02:32 GMT -5
I am Zuliki. Zuliki Khepri. I'm what the Sea People call indigenous. That means I belong here. I came from here. My parents and their ancestors came from here. I am not one of the Sea People. I remember with the first group of Sea People, the pirates, came. Both my parents served the Old Gods, and both died with the coming of the pirates. Even that young I had been sworn to serve Isis, she who guides and protects nature, magic, mothers, children, birth, death, rebirth, living and the dead. As Isis, my role is protection and healing. The pirates thought me a slave. They thought to own the island and its people. They thought life and death was theirs to choose. And so it was until the second wave of sea people came. I was old enough to know the pirates deserved their deaths by the sword and by the noose, young enough to know that none deserved it. It seems to be the way of Sea Peoples, war and death and taking. All would agree the second Sea People better than the first, but they still think swords make them the masters. And still I heal. I try to protect. The island is still in part ours. The gods once granted us immortality, at least to those who could afford the rituals, and those who served them. The echoes of our past are common on the island. Those who were dead are not. They were promised eternity. They earned eternity. The promises still have power. All they needed the brought with them, into caves and carved passages leading from the light of Ra to eternal darkness below. Yes, there are cave full of things that glitter, things meant to stay in darkness. I have seen them, me and a few Sea Peoples who wander that paths leading to death. Riches and treasure guarded by vile monsters some would say. Who is the vile monster? Who seeks things belonging to the darkness, breaking words sworn between the living, the dead and the gods? A warning. Leave them be. Break not ancient ritual. I am sworn to protect and to heal. I am also sworn to Isis, mistress of life and afterlife. Warriors sworn to protect long dead masters have swords that cut still. The paths to the land of the dead should not be tread lightly. They are meant to be travelled once. There is no guarantee of return.
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Post by blantyr on Aug 23, 2013 15:15:14 GMT -5
Building from last night… Supernatural Abilities & Human Tricks: Glamor, Marked by Power, Swift Transitions, Martial Artist, Redirected Force, Lethal Weapon.Skills, still subject to tweaking: Fists 4, Stealth 4, Athletics 4, Rapport 3, Contacts 3, Endurance 3, Alertness 2, Deceit 2, Rescources 2, Presence 1, Conviction 1, Empathy 1. While some might want to see me running a character that takes names and kicks ass, Jazz isn't it. Between the glamor and the martial arts she ought to be able to advance the plot and play a role in combat scenes, but as usual I haven't created a combat monster. I suspect I'll break down at some point and boost her combat abilities. She has two points of Refresh to spend. Still, it is far easier to spend Refresh to gain supernatural abilities than to acquire more Refresh. I want to fool around with having fate points in hand for a while before deciding how to develop the character. Aspects Isn't entirely here. In part a reference to a tendency to veil into invisibility or shift into Fairy, also reflects that she is a master daydreamer. (One has to be an expert at visualizing things to use glamor. She constantly practices building complex visual environments in her head.) Her reality is subject to change. Balance in all things. Conflict isn't about the strong destroying the weak. It is about restoring balance between yin and yang. This perspective can actually be consistent with the Boston aspect that conflict is eternal. The phrase could also refer to physical balance. That which is teetering is less likely to fall when Jazz is around. This seems to be an element of Sidhe culture as well, that if something is given there ought to be an equal value return. That doesn't look too hard. This is an impulsive overconfidence schtick, most often applying to Athletic challenges, but sometimes to other things. Sure, but you'll owe me one. She goes out of her way to collect favors. If anyone needs a refined thug in a good cause, and that cause doesn't oppose Chinatown or the Summer Court, she is apt to tag along. Not luck. Karma. Looks to set up situations where the universe owes her one. Phases 3, 4 & 5 I've some potential stories for the later phases of character creation. If these make sense to Jazz's co-stars, I'll run with them. I've provided four sketches, where I need three, so if one of you doesn't like the below I'm still good.. Jazz was once a loyal follower of the Wannabe Warden. She visited his bookstore researching fairy and other occult phenomena, and occasionally joined him in his quests to save Boston and the Universe. This would be a while ago, when she was first learning glamour and had not yet developed contacts with the Summer Court or Chinatown Dragon. Since encountering the real occult world, she is no longer in great awe of the Warden's knowledge and wisdom, but she still touches bases on occasion and will occasionally join his various quests, more to protect his other acolytes than to save Boston. She hasn't taken it on herself to enlighten him yet, as this would spoil his character concept. She is also too busy serving other masters to be a full time under warden. She was once given an order by the Summer Court that resulted in a fight scene and arrest. She needed a lawyer. I think her defense was that the description from various witnesses of what went on was contradictory and implausible. Besides, nobody actually saw the invisible woman throw a punch. She might go back if she needed a lawyer again. He got the job done. On the other hand, he's a lawyer. At some point she might have encountered some poor helpless innocent (innocent?) victim being tormented by a White Court Vampire. I'm not saying she would have gone into sacrificial courage mode. It was more a case of her "That doesn't look to hard" aspect cutting in. She hoped to give the victim a chance to run by sparring and distracting the vampire briefly. If she started getting hurt, she might have cut her losses and tried to vanish. Anyway, if Adam wants to suggest how a vampire and an invisible martial artist might have fought to a non decision, I'm open to suggestions. Unlike the other stories, I don't think this one would result in her exchanging business cards and phone numbers, but she might have spent a little time researching vampires and he might have dug for rumors relating to invisible boxers. Fairly recently, as the ghost problem started to develop, she was asked to evaluate a commercial ghost exorcist who ran around charging real money to drive away questionably real spirits. She reported back to the Chinatown Dragon and assorted other elders that there were real ghostly phenomena and they did stop after the visit. The guy seemed to know real ritual, though he used western based rituals so she could pass no real opinion of his knowledge. Anyway, she came out believing him real and might look him up again. I'm supposed to match aspects up to the various stories. Right now, they don't look to fit real well. If others want to tweak how the above story segments might have played out, I'm game. *** Also, since Jeremy said Dresden elves are very tall and slender, I played with my CGI program some more. Sorry, I have flower jewelry, but no grass hair.
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Post by blantyr on Aug 14, 2013 9:34:06 GMT -5
Map from Session Two, Aug 13, 2013 Justium is the major city with the major harbor, where our party originally got together. Going up the Northwest coastal road... Naulus is a mixed village with members of many cultures. Kopis is a 'barbarian' village, populated in great part by off island veterans of the Empire's invading army. Here, the player party had their first series of skirmishes, fighting goblins and undead. Kerma is populated by the 'original natives,' those who were here before the pirate and Empire invasions. Their culture is based on Egypt. There are temples and grave sites scattered about the island, built by their ancestors. Still, the old egyptian civilization is very much in decline. Hogshead... apparently a mining community in the mountains, but yet to be visited.
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Post by blantyr on Feb 20, 2013 18:58:36 GMT -5
I was a bit surprised how far they took it for an introductory scenario. They seemed to want to set an extreme for how their setting might be used. Well, it isn't a bland setting, so I could see how they wouldn't go with a bland introduction.
Still, I for one could do with somewhat less of the horror aspect. I'm not that enthused about insanity point systems, or rolling dice to determine how one must play one's character.
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Post by blantyr on Feb 20, 2013 12:20:45 GMT -5
Just to say where I'm coming from, Mercedes habitually sleeves pleasure pods. Finding touching biologicals repulsive severely impacts the character concept. Part of why she was designed this way was to force her to interact more with biologicals. There is a definite downside to it, as reflected by the social skills penalty. The tension is a big part of the character.
This could be an interesting trauma to role play through. Overcoming the revulsion might not be as simple as rolling a few psychosurgery dice. She might also have a subplot line where she would have to find a male she could trust and would treat her as something more than dirt. Thing is, this doesn't seem to be a Bond movie where the sexual tension side plot is well integrated. I don't know that we want to play anything out. I intend to imagine some off screen scenes that would help resolve the character's tensions. It seems better to hint at them than play them out. This doesn't seem to be the sort of character development you're looking for.
I'm also a bit confused on the game's rating. On the one hand I've been told to keep things PG. On the other hand we have had horror sex scenes complete with descriptions of unusual genitals. I get a bit peeved when the censorship rules allow severe violence, perverted sex, cannibalism and similar extremes without limit but affection and basic needs are taboo.
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Post by blantyr on Feb 20, 2013 3:26:25 GMT -5
Doctor? I will say this experience has helped me understand non AGI culture better. For all my life, I have been AGI, therefore to many I am fearsome and repulsive. For most of my life I have sleeved pleasure pods, therefor to many I am immoral and repulsive.
Now I find biologicals repulsive.
One difference is that I know my behavior to be irrational. I might have good cause to fear and reject exurgents, but not all biologicals.
The other difference is that I am attempting a cure.
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Post by blantyr on Feb 14, 2013 21:51:22 GMT -5
Tricky rules question. If one has a trauma, revulsion of biological functions and not wanting to be touched, does one get modifiers to the recovery roll if one is sleeved in a pleasure pod?
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Post by blantyr on Feb 13, 2013 16:41:41 GMT -5
During the last few runs, I encountered a few unusual rulings from the perspective of a character intended as a first responder engineer.
Some things seem entirely reasonable. Very few ships will be rigged to self destruct. I could see once in a very great while a military ship so secret as to be so rigged. I could see criminals ready to destroy evidence. I agree most to all commercial ship systems would be designed to operate safely. One couldn't make the blow up at all easily, if at all. (Well, one could mix fuel and oxidizer then applies sparks, but the hardware wouldn't be designed to do so.)
The only such ruling I would argue with is evacuating air from a habitat compartment. If there is a fire, that's the natural way to extinguish it. One has to evacuate chambers occasionally for maintenance. There is a modifier for Habitat Systems Hacking for over riding safety cut offs at -30. This would definitely apply. I'd be troubled if the game is being played that it is never possible to over ride a safety cut off. I created a character that is really into cyber security, while the game philosophy seems to be clipping her wings more than expected.
I was also surprised by how the airlocks worked. I can see them as separate systems. If so, I'd have expected that if a pencil sharpener would typically be run by an AI, an airlock might also have an AI. I'd give it facial recognition, retina recognition, infosec, and research. It might be tasked to know who is a trusted member of the crew, what trusted members of the crew are already on board, and notify the bridge / captain / security chief if an attempt at irregular entry is made. Of course, since AIs have limited skill levels, bypassing the above precautions seems possible to a true pro.
At any rate, as Mercedes does security and engineering, that's how she would set things up. Are the Flower and the raided agricultural station back near Locus typical? It is fairly easy to break into ships or stations without raising an alert? This is a two way street. I expect we'll be interested in breaking in about as often as we'll be trying to stop break ins. The approach of throwing away the game mechanics and game environment design philosophy in favor of hard dumb interlocks is just surprising.
Bob
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Post by blantyr on Feb 13, 2013 16:10:48 GMT -5
Professor Ming
We located both the stealth ship Taura used to infiltrate the titan tech containing ship and the titan tech containing ship. The latter is thoroughly infected. Out intent was to search the for Taura's cortical stack, but so much exugent infection is present that even had we located the stack, I would not recommend anything but erasure.
We engaged in a firefight with several badly infected individuals. One of these was large and no longer humanoid. The rest were humanoid if one uses the term loosely, and no longer trans humanoid enough to meaningfully communicate. We did not 'win' the conflict. We survived long enough to retreat out of the infected ship. In addition to the sort of damage one might expect in conflict, I at least have suffered mental damage that seems to involve bio brain, cyber brain and ego alike. I acquired no memories enough worth keeping to continue operating in a degraded mental mode. The morph I currently occupy was intended as expendable. I shall quite likely restore from backup to an undamaged morph.
We could possibly acquire more ammunition, more fighters, recharge the plasma rifle, return to the Flower, and 'win' a continued conflict. I would not recommend this. I would instead recommend finding a warship whose crew needs target practice, or a tug that might place the Flower on a one way trip to the sun. Perhaps both.
In the process of pursuing Taura, we did recover a small ship that we intend to return to its owner. It is possible that the ship's return might be thought a favor enough to recoup expenses and losses.
Awaiting further guidance.
Mercedes
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Post by blantyr on Jan 25, 2013 8:43:03 GMT -5
The scene where we moved from the stealth ship to the Flower was good comic relief, but I'd like to talk a bit about complementary skills.
Fawn has Art / Dance and Interest / Intramural Athletics. Both involve zero g performances. These were intended to justify that she can move well, including in microgravity environments. Might I use one of them as appropriate to complement Freerunning and Free Fall? Her Free Fall skill is 55, which supposedly makes her a skilled professional. I really didn't anticipate her having that much trouble crossing 50 feet of space. Granted, the dice didn't like her last night, but I wanted and intended for her to be graceful and competent in microgravity. I thought I had spent the points for this.
She also has Professional / First Responder. I dithered on how to describe her job back where she comes from. The modern term might be 'fireman'. In the future, fire might not be the dominant emergency. She would also deal with asteroid hits, collisions, crashes, sabotage, explosions, life support failure, bursting pipes and whatever else messes up a habitat. She would also investigate how it happened above after the fact, and be able to make recommendations for preventing similar incidents from happening again.
I would like to think First Responder would complement Hardware rolls made to deal with emergency situations. Putting a quick and dirty patch on the hole in the airlock or cutting power to part of a habitat would be the sort of thing she'd have to do in an emergency.
I'll note in passing some of her skill specialties. Investigation / Disaster - Sabotage. Research / Habitat Structure. Scrounging - Damage Control, (acquire the parts needed for a repair). Infosec - Brute Force. (Open this door NOW!) Academics / Disaster History. These are intended to cover bases to say she is good at putting things back together that have fallen apart.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 23, 2013 1:03:48 GMT -5
I don't know that we should be figuring out how to interpret the rules so much as how to make something like the rules seem believable.
One of the first things Fawn did on the first run was to look for a list of repairs that needed to be done on Locus, and use her skills to pick up a little rep. I've also been half looking for a chance to exchange more social favors. Thing is, we seem to be too busy. I don't know that we should be taking time off from Firewall business to build up personal reputation and favor credit.
We're also spending personal favors and reputation to do Firewall business. Does this imply at some point Firewall will use its resources to do us personal favors, or to restore personal reputation?
In abstract Firewall's work ought to be done, and in theory if we complete the mission successfully we get 'paid' somehow. Should Firewall agents be left holding the financial bag if they can't complete a mission? If they haven't got the credit to complete a mission, should the mission be abandoned?
I don't feel strongly about it now, but I'll be curious to see how the balances shift at mission's end.
Fawn and I have just spent a bit too much time in the old economy.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 21, 2013 17:50:50 GMT -5
That would be a no. We have no Aysnc. And I thought with an AGI pod character, I would be the social outcast.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 18, 2013 5:46:23 GMT -5
Cleggster is the game master for Eclipse Phase. Reply #3 above seems like an invitation to me. I think we could easily take at least one more player.
Eclipse Phase... Interesting, definitely. Silly, definitely not. We're playing it serious. The setting has sizable pockets of idealism, even more sizable chasms of dark horror, and everything in between from corrupt too powerful corporations, idealistic independent anarchists and mafia like underworld elements. The Game Master by emphasizing this element or that could change the flavor of the campaign considerably. I don't know that the current campaign has played long enough to say what the flavor will be, but silly it isn't.
We're currently playing through the introductory scenario that comes with the GM screen. Much of the preliminary investigation is done. As we appear to be outnumbered and outgunned, our criminal enforcer player character hired a few extra thugs. It seems to me that you might take one of the example characters from the book and play it for a session or two as one of the hired thugs, then create your own character for the start of the next scenario. You might confirm this is good with Cleggster.
Creating your own character from scratch takes a bit of time, but if you're a veteran player who grows fond of his character it is definitely worth the effort. The mechanics are reasonably streamlined in play, but for a new character deciding what political faction one follows (criminal, corporate, abolitionist, martian liberation front), what sort of body one has (robot? uplifted chimpanzee? mega glamor rock star?), what sort of enhanced implants have been added (shoot laser beams from fingertips? run three copies of one's personality at once?), selecting skills and equipment... You likely don't want to just show up on Thursday at 5, design a character, and jump in. It takes hours at minimum. I spent a month at it. You'll likely want to get together with Cleggster for a character creation session. I'm a character creation nut, and would be pleased to join in the exercise if you'd like.
Steampunk? I might be interested depending on a bunch of things. What time would you likely run? How often? What flavor and atmosphere are you after? If we are together for Eclipse, I'm sure we could talk.
Bob
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Post by blantyr on Jan 16, 2013 18:04:37 GMT -5
Pathfinder rotates among multiple game masters. At the moment, each day's run is complete and stand alone. You don't need to commit to every single week. The party... is not the most virtuous group I've ever encountered. The problem isn't a lack of players. Of late, we've had the occasional problem with more players than can be easily handled.
Eclipse Phase is dark science fiction, though perhaps not as dark as Dark Heresy. While there is no magic or occult, the science fiction elements are very high powered and strange. The Earth is devastated. The technology includes stuff similar to The Matrix, Dollhouse, Stargate, Startide Rising and much much more. Just creating a character is an adventure. There is lots of background to learn. The plot line is ongoing, and you'd likely have to make a commitment to being there regularly.
The Changeling and Five Rings games have been intermittent to stopped. With another player they might take off, but they haven't been played regularly.
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Post by blantyr on Jan 11, 2013 11:18:37 GMT -5
Last night's run made me want to go home and research Lagrange points. How far away are they from the planets that create them? How big are they? How close do you have to be to the center point to remain in the area? Five Lagrange Points Answers. L4 and L5 are 60 degrees ahead and behind the planet. Thus, our travel in last night's run was 120 degrees along the orbit of Jupiter. This is an impressive distance. Note, L3, L4 and L5 are equidistant from one another, 180, 60 and 240 degrees ahead of Jupiter. As I understand it, one can 'orbit' the various Lagrange points. One doesn't have to sit exactly at one magic point. In fact, even if one does manage to sit in the perfect spot, another planet swinging by would nudge one off the perfect spot. Lagrange orbits aren't stable. It's sort of like walking a tightrope. It's easy to fall off, but if you make tiny little thruster burns, it's easy enough to stay in the neighborhood of a Lagrange. Looking at the diagram above, the orbits around L1, L2 and L3 are fairly small. If one is going to use only tiny little burns to maintain position, one tries to stay relatively close to the L point. This isn't to say there can't be hundreds of stations in slightly different orbits. Space is big. "Relatively close" can still mean quite a distance. But L4 and L5 can have huge orbits. If I'm reading the above diagram right, you might be a fifth of a solar orbit away from an L4 or L5 and still be orbiting the L point. Of course, most stations won't want to be that far away. I suspect a big reason for joining a L point community is being able to easily fly over to the main station for fuel and groceries. Few would choose the huge orbits. There was a note that one shouldn't think of orbits around L points as being orbits around the L points. L points have no mass. L points do not pull things towards them. If we are 'orbiting' the Jupiter L4 point, it is more accurate to say we are orbiting the sun rather than the L4 point. It's just that the duration of L4's orbit around the sun is more or less the same duration as Jupiter's orbit around the sun. One ends up 'flying in formation', but the formations can be pretty big.
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