Urwumpe
Not funny anymore
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2008
- Messages
- 37,657
- Reaction score
- 2,378
- Points
- 203
- Location
- Wolfsburg
- Preferred Pronouns
- Sire
I am planning hosting a small experimental Pen&Paper roleplaying game session in the OrbiterIRC this weekend. Pretty spontaneous and currently pretty bare handed, I need some feedback from the players to get a lot of stuff defined.
First of all: As GM, I will have the last word on any rule question in any case. Including in the scenario creation process.
The rules will be an adaption of the Classic BattleTech Role-Playing Game rules, converted into an DG-Tech scenario. Who owns the rules and a few source books will sure have no problems with adapting. Shadowrun players, with the latest incarnation should also feel pretty familiar, both systems are comparable. In general, you don't need to know the rules. I will know them for you. If you have questions or you are not sure something is possible, ask me.
The Character creation process is the tricky part currently, I would need some feedback first, which kinds of characters the people would like to play, I will do my best then merging them into the background. Before all post their wishes here in public, the first rule carved in stone:
Your raw character information is top-secret for all times. Only you and the GM shall know it. Who posts character information in public (Game and forum), can be sure to not play this kind of character or get other adequate punishments. *
This includes posting skill levels or other raw information in the game. If somebody asks you "How good are you in repairing pyrotechnics", don't answer with "I have a +3 skill bonus", but instead say "I am pretty good at it." or other prosaic descriptions. If asked about your attributes, like agility or intelligence, let actions speak for themselves.
For solving the creation process, I would like to use the following scheme: You PM me with a rough biographical outline of your character. I will then create the life-path stages for creating your character according to the biography. This means you will have some freedom more than usual, as I will try to bend the rules around your wishes. But for balancing, please remember: I have the last word if a step in your biography is acceptable or not.
To explain a bit about the usual process before getting to the special one:
Usually, you would select a starting point in life (affiliation, blue collar/white collar, etc), roll for events in each stage of your biography (early childhood (0-10), late childhood (11-16), higher education(16+), real life). The later stages can be repeated - at a small penalty for the event rolls (the longer something takes, the higher is the chance that something bad happens).
For the start, the early childhood paths which I can instantly adapt (as they have little Battletech specific stuff in them) are:
Back woods (Far away from civilization)
Blue Collar (worker class)
Farm (more modern than back woods)
Fugitives (You had been forced by war or other catastrophic events to leave your birth place, and did not find a new home quickly)
Nobility (So rich and spoiled...)
Street (Think about the fairy tale of the hip hop ghetto kid)
White Collar (parents worked more with the brain, than with the muscles)
This is not possible yet, because I don't have all paths and stages done. Ask me, if you are not sure if your biography makes sense. If your biography gets too good to be true, I will correct this a bit.
In the mean time, the players and GM should post and coordinate here, which time between friday and sunday would be used for gaming. There should be about 1.5-3 hours in which the whole group can play, if more is possible, it is even better.
------------------------------------------------------------------
A short abstract of the campaign
------------------------------------------------------------------
The campaign history begins on 18 April 2049.
We will not play in real time (one week here = one week in game), the chronology of the events of the campaign follow the actions of the players.
The major locations and the spacecraft will be known from Orbiters default installation, add-ons only on reasonable popular demand. We will not play the RPG in orbiter, but if somebody has the desire to follow the game in Orbiter, I will not hinder him. I assume that the world is mostly looking like it is today, with only mild political changes. There is still no war in space, but you can expect a pretty aggressive competition. There is no coast guard or police in space yet, but the bases will have security personal in that scenario.
The characters will be new employees in an astronautical company. You will get trained together and do your missions together (Your application for the company will be the character creation).
This means for your character:
1. It should come from a western country, exceptions can be negotiated. Russia counts as western, just in case you are not sure.
2. It should be between 18 and 30 years old.
3. It should not have any serious injuries at the beginning of the game.
4. It does not need to have an academic background, but it is recommended.
5. English is a required Lingua Franca. All characters will need to be able to talk in English.
6. Your characters are not immortal, and not robots. Give them a life, but know that sometimes even the GM will not be able to keep harm from him.
For getting a useful mixture of specializations and professions, the rule is first come, first served. If we start to get 5 pilots and no specialists, the later players will get notified to change their biography towards a different profession.
The maximum number of players should be 8.
Otherwise, the game will get too slow. smaller numbers of players also makes it easier to coordinate times.
The game world and story will be developed and filled with details while we play - I promise to write the stuff down and if possible, also work on a small source book with the changed rules and background information, to be used in later campaigns. You are encouraged to fill the world with details over your character biography.
So, if you want to play, the important steps as summary:
1. PM me with a rough biography of your character. Details will be created in IRC or by PM, finally you will get your character sheet before game starts.
2. You post that you take part here. Don't post your character name until game started and you have your final character data. I will add a list of characters and their players to this post after the game started, important information will also get remembered here.
3. Find a time with me and the other players when we play. I calculate with about 4-5 weekends for the first campaign, we can organize different times if needed, but a general time for playing on the weekend would be necessary for planning. Adding more weekends or doing a follow on campaign can be decided later.
I will post more once I know it. I also need to get some memories recalled about how we organized such games in Quakenet, years ago. Don't hope for too much fun with the DiceBot we have. The players will only roll dices for events, which directly affect their characters, and usually, the dices will happen secretly, not known to the other players (exception are rolls, which are for the public entertainment of the group).
Also, it will only in exceptional situations happen, that two separated groups play simultaneous in-game at different real times of the weekend. It is a lot of work to bring the time lines together then.
*If you are not sure if you should fear the possible punishments: There is a cute trait called Madness in my book, which has many possible ways to manifest itself in varying intensities. You don't want to find out more about that when in outer space.
First of all: As GM, I will have the last word on any rule question in any case. Including in the scenario creation process.
The rules will be an adaption of the Classic BattleTech Role-Playing Game rules, converted into an DG-Tech scenario. Who owns the rules and a few source books will sure have no problems with adapting. Shadowrun players, with the latest incarnation should also feel pretty familiar, both systems are comparable. In general, you don't need to know the rules. I will know them for you. If you have questions or you are not sure something is possible, ask me.
The Character creation process is the tricky part currently, I would need some feedback first, which kinds of characters the people would like to play, I will do my best then merging them into the background. Before all post their wishes here in public, the first rule carved in stone:
Your raw character information is top-secret for all times. Only you and the GM shall know it. Who posts character information in public (Game and forum), can be sure to not play this kind of character or get other adequate punishments. *
This includes posting skill levels or other raw information in the game. If somebody asks you "How good are you in repairing pyrotechnics", don't answer with "I have a +3 skill bonus", but instead say "I am pretty good at it." or other prosaic descriptions. If asked about your attributes, like agility or intelligence, let actions speak for themselves.
For solving the creation process, I would like to use the following scheme: You PM me with a rough biographical outline of your character. I will then create the life-path stages for creating your character according to the biography. This means you will have some freedom more than usual, as I will try to bend the rules around your wishes. But for balancing, please remember: I have the last word if a step in your biography is acceptable or not.
To explain a bit about the usual process before getting to the special one:
Usually, you would select a starting point in life (affiliation, blue collar/white collar, etc), roll for events in each stage of your biography (early childhood (0-10), late childhood (11-16), higher education(16+), real life). The later stages can be repeated - at a small penalty for the event rolls (the longer something takes, the higher is the chance that something bad happens).
For the start, the early childhood paths which I can instantly adapt (as they have little Battletech specific stuff in them) are:
Back woods (Far away from civilization)
Blue Collar (worker class)
Farm (more modern than back woods)
Fugitives (You had been forced by war or other catastrophic events to leave your birth place, and did not find a new home quickly)
Nobility (So rich and spoiled...)
Street (Think about the fairy tale of the hip hop ghetto kid)
White Collar (parents worked more with the brain, than with the muscles)
This is not possible yet, because I don't have all paths and stages done. Ask me, if you are not sure if your biography makes sense. If your biography gets too good to be true, I will correct this a bit.
In the mean time, the players and GM should post and coordinate here, which time between friday and sunday would be used for gaming. There should be about 1.5-3 hours in which the whole group can play, if more is possible, it is even better.
------------------------------------------------------------------
A short abstract of the campaign
------------------------------------------------------------------
The campaign history begins on 18 April 2049.
We will not play in real time (one week here = one week in game), the chronology of the events of the campaign follow the actions of the players.
The major locations and the spacecraft will be known from Orbiters default installation, add-ons only on reasonable popular demand. We will not play the RPG in orbiter, but if somebody has the desire to follow the game in Orbiter, I will not hinder him. I assume that the world is mostly looking like it is today, with only mild political changes. There is still no war in space, but you can expect a pretty aggressive competition. There is no coast guard or police in space yet, but the bases will have security personal in that scenario.
The characters will be new employees in an astronautical company. You will get trained together and do your missions together (Your application for the company will be the character creation).
This means for your character:
1. It should come from a western country, exceptions can be negotiated. Russia counts as western, just in case you are not sure.
2. It should be between 18 and 30 years old.
3. It should not have any serious injuries at the beginning of the game.
4. It does not need to have an academic background, but it is recommended.
5. English is a required Lingua Franca. All characters will need to be able to talk in English.
6. Your characters are not immortal, and not robots. Give them a life, but know that sometimes even the GM will not be able to keep harm from him.
For getting a useful mixture of specializations and professions, the rule is first come, first served. If we start to get 5 pilots and no specialists, the later players will get notified to change their biography towards a different profession.
The maximum number of players should be 8.
Otherwise, the game will get too slow. smaller numbers of players also makes it easier to coordinate times.
The game world and story will be developed and filled with details while we play - I promise to write the stuff down and if possible, also work on a small source book with the changed rules and background information, to be used in later campaigns. You are encouraged to fill the world with details over your character biography.
So, if you want to play, the important steps as summary:
1. PM me with a rough biography of your character. Details will be created in IRC or by PM, finally you will get your character sheet before game starts.
2. You post that you take part here. Don't post your character name until game started and you have your final character data. I will add a list of characters and their players to this post after the game started, important information will also get remembered here.
3. Find a time with me and the other players when we play. I calculate with about 4-5 weekends for the first campaign, we can organize different times if needed, but a general time for playing on the weekend would be necessary for planning. Adding more weekends or doing a follow on campaign can be decided later.
I will post more once I know it. I also need to get some memories recalled about how we organized such games in Quakenet, years ago. Don't hope for too much fun with the DiceBot we have. The players will only roll dices for events, which directly affect their characters, and usually, the dices will happen secretly, not known to the other players (exception are rolls, which are for the public entertainment of the group).
Also, it will only in exceptional situations happen, that two separated groups play simultaneous in-game at different real times of the weekend. It is a lot of work to bring the time lines together then.
*If you are not sure if you should fear the possible punishments: There is a cute trait called Madness in my book, which has many possible ways to manifest itself in varying intensities. You don't want to find out more about that when in outer space.
Last edited:
