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Post by Gigermann on Nov 22, 2013 23:34:37 GMT -6
- My original plan was to nevermind the show, but I've decided to go ahead and keep the show's events/characters more-or-less as-is
- The show's official time-period is 85 mya; the campaign will be ~75-65 mya instead—this is, essentially, Rigil's fault, since he requested Trikes and T-Rexes (when I asked the other group)
- I'm going to post the mission briefing soon (need to do a bit of editing); after you read the briefing, you can make your character concepts based on the needs of the mission
- I kinda wanted to take some time to discuss some upper-level meta-game stuff—campaign settings, rules, etc.—but we can do that here, I suppose.
- The campaign will take place a year or two after the end of the series, so there won't be any spoilers if you watch it
I need to know some basics about what kind of game you want to play so I can work on the content. The setting is ideal for pretty much anything except mass-combat (but there could be a bit of that). I'm presuming you're not so much wanting a dungeon-crawl or fight-porn type campaign. It would be quite easy to tip the balance from hex-crawl random stuff to political/social. My original concept would involve a lot of "investigation." I'll make an official request to that end shortly. FYI, just so we don't end up like last time, I'll add this: if we don't break out the minis around once per session, or every other session at least, I start getting a little antsy. Doesn't necessarily need to be "combat," per se, and doesn't need to be extensive. Anyway, I presume you'll have some questions, about the show or the game. Ask them.
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Nov 23, 2013 18:50:41 GMT -6
Ok, so are we fast forwarding to that time frame, or are we overwriting the series and saying that it occurred in the updated time frame?
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Post by Gigermann on Nov 23, 2013 19:20:27 GMT -6
Ok, so are we fast forwarding to that time frame, or are we overwriting the series and saying that it occurred in the updated time frame? In this case, the series occurred in the updated time-frame
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Post by Gigermann on Nov 27, 2013 16:48:36 GMT -6
Campaign/Setting Stuff Things I've already decided:- 250pts—need to be reasonably competent for the story to work
- Not "episodic" (that is, not to be wrapped up neatly at the end of the session, TV-series styled, etc.)
- Not "procedural" (far less bean-counting than usual—not a needed thematic element here, as it was for ATE)
- Going to go for a minimum of "homework"; as far as character background stuff goes, you know by now what a GM can make use of, so I'll just leave it to you to give it to me or not
Things for you to decide:Impulse Buys (AKA Plot Points): Y/N Cinematicness: None, Basic, Normal, Full Theme: Combat, Investigative, Social, Drama Relationships: Y/N Karma: Y/N I'm going to presume that if you don't express a preference, that you're cool with whatever I throw out there— make certain this is actually true. "No more Task Force Smiths" ( ) Impulse Buys (AKA Plot Points): We've been using these for a while now. While I do like the offset for bad dice, I could see how it can make things a little too easy and remove some of the dramatic tension (the zombie thing might've gone rather differently without them). I'm presuming you don't mind it, but I figure I'd give you the opportunity to disagree. Cinematicness: - None: My usual, thus far
- Basic: Allow Traits that are listed as "may be cinematic," but try to keep it real
- Normal: Use Action templates as-is instead of screening out the cinematic stuff, like Weapon Master, Gunslinger, etc., and pay only lip-service to realism
- Full: Nevermind realism
I really wouldn't want to do any more than Basic—just not my thing—but as above, I figure you'd like the opportunity to dissent. I also tend toward a simulationist style when it comes to overall realism, and I like the crunchy combat stuff; if you really want something a bit more abstract, I will listen to your pleas. Theme:It'll contain all the listed elements, but it could favor one or the other, if you prefer to do something a little different. "I don't really care," is a perfectly legitimate answer. This will, in great part, be determined by your choice of characters, but at the same time, your choice of characters will be greatly influenced by your (expressed) thematic preference. Relationships:Every time I've asked to do this experiment, everyone (including the Sat group) has tentatively said "yes," and then did nothing with it. This campaign would really benefit from it, but I don't want to bother with the extra work if nobody's going to use it. If you think it'll be somehow "uncomfortable," then you're misunderstanding how it works. Karma:My go-to other Plot Points thing, using the Mass Effect Paragon/Renegade thing. As above, you've always signed on, but it hasn't seen any use yet (in this case, because it hasn't seen production).
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Nov 27, 2013 19:07:23 GMT -6
Campaign/Setting Stuff Things for you to decide:Impulse Buys (AKA Plot Points): Y/N Cinematicness: None, Basic, Normal, Full Theme: Combat, Investigative, Social, Drama Relationships: Y/N Karma: Y/N Impulse Buys - I'm on the fence with this one...it has it's perks (bail us out of a bind) but then again, letting the dice fall where they may can be interesting too Cinematicness - I'm leaning toward none/basic just to keep things more realistic and lean away from the action porn feel Theme - I'd like it to be more Investigative with a sprinkling of Combat here and there Relationships - If this is something that would benefit the game, then I say go for it (I know I'll need a refresher on the details) Karma - Not sure on this one
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Post by Rigil Kent on Dec 3, 2013 10:34:21 GMT -6
Impulse Buys: I lean toward yes, but think they probably need to be toned down to a bare minimum. Like 1 pt per session or they cost an actual character point instead of being a free point.
Cinematicness: Basic or Normal. But that's just me. I tend to like cinematic games.
Theme: Will have to agree with Budah - investigative with sprinkling of combat, though I'd like to add some social in there as well.
Relationships ... I don't know. I like the concept, but for some reason, have a lot of trouble remembering it exists and getting it done. I tend to think No for that reason.
Karma - I clicked on the link and didn't see any real explanation for how the Karma system works. While I dig the notion, even in ME, I had some issues with what was decided as Paragon and what was Renegade...
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 3, 2013 13:01:28 GMT -6
Currently there are no freebie CPs for Impulse Buys—only "real" CPs—but see below. The Relationships mechanic serves these purposes: - Forces you to define the nature of relationships, which creates an attachment-point for "drama"
- Creates a game-mechanic benefit for having one
- Creates a game-mechanic effect for changing the nature of the relationship
- Current game-mechanic effect is, effectively, freebie Plot Points
I think what's been happening is that everyone wants to see it work before they use it themselves, and so we have a "cascading waits" recursive loop; each of you have to decide to actually use it regardless. If you're actually willing to see how it goes, my plan is to give you a free CP for one, so everyone has at least one active. If you spend points on one, you're not going to forget about it—or, at least, I'll have an excuse to remind you. Karma is a little blurb at the top of the Impulse Buys doc, and is, essentially, another source of Plot Points (for lack of something better). If implemented, we will work out a benchmark standard of what counts as what, to avoid any confusion/argument. For the record: Karma gives a nice ME-type feel, but isn't as central to the kind of story I expect here. Relationships fits quite well, though, and should see a lot of use.
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Post by LabRat on Dec 3, 2013 13:50:49 GMT -6
Things for you to decide:Impulse Buys (AKA Plot Points): Y/N Cinematicness: None, Basic, Normal, Full Theme: Combat, Investigative, Social, Drama Relationships: Y/N Karma: Y/N *Note*- These are just my opinions, I am not unwilling to do anything, so take these answers with a grain of salt. Inpluse Buys- I am a bit on the fence about this one. I like the fact that they are there in case something really stupid/unfortunate happens, but like you pointed out it does relieve the drama somewhat if this is implemented a lot. I will say that we can put them in but with some reservation. Cinematicness- Either none or basic. I like the realism of just being human, it makes things more challenging and is more relate-able. I get more invested if a T-Rex is going to eat me and I am just a person with a stick, and I get a better sense of reward if I come out of encounters like that with all my limbs intact. Theme: Investigative with some combat and social mixed in. Honestly, if you keep it interesting then I don't really care with the exception of a basic hack and slash. I will assume the drama will follow on its own if we play the characters right. Relationships make sense to me here in this instance. Especially if we have to bring families along and keep our affiliations/real reason for being here secret. Karma is okay too. I agree with Rigil's stance on the acts of karma to be a bit ambiguous (ME series or even DA2 with the stupid relationship mechanic), as long as it is reasonable then I don't have a problem with karma. Honestly I just keep forgetting that these mechanics exist. Even though I know you have brought it up in the past. I don't know why I keep forgetting during gameplay.
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 3, 2013 15:52:53 GMT -6
Still haven't heard from N8, but we've got a fairly solid trend going at this point.
Expect a lot of "mystery" work (so gear characters accordingly), but don't fret too much over getting bogged down. FYI, I'm planning to make use of the Monster Hunters II, "The Hunt," for the investigation stuff. Check it out, if you like, but it won't really matter if you know it or not; mostly just on the GM. The short version: GM makes secret "deduction rolls" for you when you find clues, etc., starting at a huge penalty that gets easier the more clues you find—this way, your character can figure it out even if the Player is having a bad brain day (and if you figure it out first, he gets a sizable bonus).
Regarding Plot Points: Right now I'm leaning toward neverminding the "regular' CP usage and leaning entirely on Karma/Relationships—reduces the amount of CP being used overall, and forces those other items to the spotlight, so they'll get a fair shake. That said, I'm probably going to set a midway point to evaluate those experiments so we can decide if they're working out or not.
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Post by LabRat on Dec 3, 2013 17:18:26 GMT -6
Yeah, don't expect to hear from N8 this week. He is having a hell of a work week.
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Post by Rigil Kent on Dec 5, 2013 0:24:47 GMT -6
Expect a lot of "mystery" work (so gear characters accordingly), but don't fret too much over getting bogged down. FYI, I'm planning to make use of the Monster Hunters II, "The Hunt," for the investigation stuff. Check it out, if you like, but it won't really matter if you know it or not; mostly just on the GM. The short version: GM makes secret "deduction rolls" for you when you find clues, etc., starting at a huge penalty that gets easier the more clues you find—this way, your character can figure it out even if the Player is having a bad brain day (and if you figure it out first, he gets a sizable bonus). I'll probably use this a lot with Red Sky myself.
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Post by Gigermann on Aug 19, 2015 11:20:00 GMT -6
I'm thinking this campaign could benefit from wikitization
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Post by Rigil Kent on Aug 19, 2015 12:07:53 GMT -6
Pity you can't just clone the entirety of Terra Nova Wiki and proceed from there...
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Post by Gigermann on Oct 12, 2015 11:17:32 GMT -6
Slogged through the episodes on Netflix so I may claim my full five bonus points. Also, some additional background: am thinking that Stonebridge and Rachel have worked together in the past, perhaps even been involved. Maybe a mixture of Rhona's character on "Strike Back" and that chick he was sleeping with in season 1 (the one who got blowed up by the Irish guy.) Might make sense if she actually selected him as her partner because they had a past (and its easier to work with something that already exists than create something out of nothing.) What I'm trying to figure out is what her role will be with the Colony. When I built the character originally, I made her an Ally (100% of starting points, 9 or less) so she'll clearly need a job of her own ... when I watched the show, I didn't see anything resembling actual colonial administration. It was effectively just a dictatorship with Taylor (Badass Bearded Dude) being the dictator. Has any of that changed? Because I think it would make perfect sense if she could insert herself into Admin (which would give her computer and database access throughout the colony.) Ultimately, I tend to think of Rachel as a spy and Phillip as the muscle, so the GM should feel free to have her get into trouble and require him to come extract her. Regarding the Stonebridge "official" story, Phillip and Rachel are not newlyweds because she, being a good spy, realizes that if they were perceived newlyweds, they would be expected to be having sex all the time. Instead, she's come up with the story that she is recovering from a miscarriage, which is a good excuse for why she and her "husband" aren't having a lot of sex. This is intended to be a delaying action until she can figure out the next step, even though she has no problem with sleeping with Stonebridge (since, as mentioned before, they've already done so in the past.) As stated in original character post, if this was a television show, there would be much "ship tease" between the two as they transform from battle buddies and partners to an actual fighting couple ala Mr. and Mrs. Smith after their respective identities are revealed to each other. During the game, I intend to have that be covered or resolved through one-off statements - "Stonebridge has a Moment with Rachel during the planning of this op." - and have no expectation from the GM to cover much more than that. I also observed this in the briefing: "Remember that part of the colonial mission is to repopulate" - so, in terms of background story elements, I'm leaning toward Rachel eventually accidentally getting pregnant with the caveat of she and Stonebridge start sleeping together to ensure they 'fit in' as a married couple. For the record: I have no intention of turning this "spouses" thing into something weird or awkward. I'm expecting to do a per-month percentage check for pregnancy, modified by a simple "trying to have kids/not trying/trying not to/not engaging at all" designation, to be assumed until specified or implied otherwise. Such interactions will be assumed and not detailed.
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 12, 2015 18:45:44 GMT -6
Doing a bit of digging lately, and since McN has decided to permanently shelve the Savage Tide campaign, I think I'd like to comb through the "Tides of Dread" stuff (AKA Farshore)—seems like a pretty good fit for what I'm trying to do here, and might give me some ideas.
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 12, 2015 20:10:01 GMT -6
Doing a bit of digging lately, and since McN has decided to permanently shelve the Savage Tide campaign, I think I'd like to comb through the "Tides of Dread" stuff (AKA Farshore)—seems like a pretty good fit for what I'm trying to do here, and might give me some ideas. Nevermind. Rigil had the PDF
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Post by Gigermann on Nov 25, 2017 22:59:17 GMT -6
Restart 2018I'm assuming the previously-discussed characters are still in play here: - Rigil=Stonebridge
- Labrat=Forensics/doc, married to N8=Spy—don't know if the characters were ever actually statted out, but I had created a couple for them in case of emergency, and those can still be used
- McN=Tulk—I'm perfectly fine with this, still, neverminding he's in S³M also
- Gonna need to get ChrisIV up to speed here
- Not sure about Kevin at this point, but it's probably better to have a plan
I think I'm gonna keep everything more-or-less as-is here, as far as background material and character stuff is concerned. This includes the Relationships thing, and the Paragon/Renegade thing. See the General Campaign Info, etc., and you might want to re-read the Mission Briefing. One of my first priorities will be getting the wiki updated with the stuff you need to know—let me know if there's something specific you need detailed. My plan is to make this thing easily one-shottable, with smaller self-contained chunks. More TV series-like. I'm gonna shoot for having an intro bit to do ASAP and find a spot to wedge it in between major campaigns.
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Post by Gigermann on Nov 26, 2017 19:43:15 GMT -6
One addition to the above is that I'm going to have everyone "make" some secondary characters. At this point, one will be a teenager, and one will probably be a security/soldier. These will be backups for one-shots, filler, etc.
(They may not need to be fully statted out; just some basics, and/or tropes.)
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 10, 2017 18:29:47 GMT -6
A bit of catch-up for those that were not here this week: - Got about three weeks (the end of the year) before go-time
- Given the current situation, this campaign may not be a one-shot—this may be what we play until N8/McN are back in the seat
- Not expecting N8(unnamed spy)/McN(Tulk(?)) to be there at the start
- ChrisIV has a character now: Charlie Ray, CIA fixer/support/Macgyver, whose spy "wife" (AKA "Jane Bond") is KIA/MIA at the start of the game
- Some questions/items that need attention:
- Q: Where are the PCs keeping their highly-sensitive mission data?
- Background, Ghost: some incident in their past they consider "their fault" that they still grappled with internally
- Q: player's intended actual "career" for their PC, and the character's expected "career" (not necessarily the same)
- Background: Some kind of "personal conflict" with their auxiliary
- Encouraging overlapping skills/roles due to the potential for people to not show up
- Kinda need to sort out how it is that Tulk ends up working for/with the gov't
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Post by Rigil Kent on Dec 11, 2017 10:14:40 GMT -6
What mission data specifically are you referencing? With Stonebridge, based on my most recent build, he has Bloodlust (12 or less) [-10]; Flashbacks (Mild) [-5]; Light Sleeper [-5]; and Phobia (Claustrophobia: Enclosed Spaces) (15 or less) [-7] so I'm leaning toward him having been a POW by Some Bad Guys briefly during his military career and thus, is still struggling to get over that. With those disads, I think it's probably safe to say that he's suffering from a mild case of PTSD which is a decent explanation for why he's no longer active military (in addition to the whole Phoenix PMC thing.) The Ally (Rachel) has a ghost of her own: she's realized that the Agency has "retired her" by sending her on this mission (which is obviously intended to be her last); eventually, she will come to realize that she had burned out and her direct supervisor @ the Agency recognized this so he sent her to TN not as a punishment but a reward for her service (as opposed to having a cleaner knock on her door one day and put a bullet in her head.) Hmm. What I'm thinking is that the character is expecting to get assigned to Security based entirely on his skillset (and the likely fact that he's not going to lie about being former military), but if Taylor is all sorts of paranoid, then Stonebridge needs to end up doing something else entirely - the original script had " perimeter duty, it’s the most important job we have here. First line of defense against these sons of bitches, planting land-mines in the outer boundary." which could work although I'm actually more tempted to just go straight up with "sanitation" or maybe stick him in the fields to plant stuffs. Manual construction also seems like it would be a good fit for him. As to the Ally, Rachel, she clearly expects to be sent to Admin but ends up as a teacher instead (and then, ultimately, discovers that not only is she good at it, she likes teaching kids...) Based entirely on Stonebridge's stated history, his personal conflict with Rachel is obvious: she seduced and used him to get what she wanted with regards to the Phoenix PMC covert op, then dropped off the planet to let him take the blowback, so he's a little bitter about that (which reminds me: their public story about her having had a miscarriage doesn't make sense upon further reflection. Instead, their story is that she cheated on him, which is intended to explain why he's occasionally angry at her, but they're trying to work it out.) During their original relationship (before she turned him into an asset), he was sincerely thinking about proposing. Now, he blames her (correctly) for his life imploding while at the same time being thankful that he now has the chance to start over. My idea there was the sort of joke I threw out on Friday which I still think could be fun: the identity that Tulk assumed is the actual SME and the PC has been accidentally drawn into this mess as a result so he's completely full of BS the entire time. He's never encountered "aliens" or anything of the like, but he keeps BSing to hide the fact, especially since TN is a chance for him to escape from some of his enemies.
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Post by Gigermann on Dec 11, 2017 10:36:37 GMT -6
What mission data specifically are you referencing? Stuff about Alpha Team—dossiers, emails and such; stuff about Codename Jupiter; data about alien stuff; codes for communicating w/ the Agency; etc.
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Post by Rigil Kent on Dec 11, 2017 10:40:32 GMT -6
Interesting thought: what if the PCs don't know where this data has vanished to? So that's like Mission #2 (after "Getting installed in the colony"): Find our missing data! Could tie that into any potentially missing characters (e.g., Charlie's spook handler.)
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