First One In The Breach

[Grudge]

20 minutes ago, Thramzorean said:

Don't worry, we'll make it up. I still want the monoblade/vibroblade/diamond axe type weapon of sharpness in the boot sheath, heh.

 

One more serious question Grudge - you mentioned 'countries', what is the politics of the place? A unified solar system under the all-guiding benevolence of a unified organization? (not)

I'm trying to resolve things with mods since they are the only ones who can "rewind the clock" If that fails I'll try to use Wayback Machine. As for the serious question. Well, we ended where we are heading, basically "Corporatocracy". Earth is still ruled as is now but even there large corporations more overtly exert their interest so it's still U.S.A. and Russia and not Lockheed Martin Unity and Gazprom Federation. However, while I have no intention to use real names well over 80% of the space industry and colonization is under the private sector.

Mainly, while most of the countries are still there, new coalitions emerged. N.A.T.O., EU, and Russian Federation are gone. Coalitions are fewer but they are larger. For example, N.A.T.O. bit the dust because it by definition exempts countries that are allies but can't enter due to Geography (Australia, Japan, South Korea) Russian Federation is down because focus on "Russian" in the name drop and look China is right there as is hungrier of 2 Koreas. I did not hammer that down because of politics and because it's Earth and not make belief. But basically, the entire Earth is a shithole ruled over by 4-5 coalitions that overtly are becoming just peons for corporations with old baggage added on.

There are set comes in both Mars and Venus Colonies are not claimed by world governments but by Corps that made them (think about Old West Company towns but on a planetary scale) As we come closer to start I'll hammer out some names but for now Mars is taken over by mainly Western companies, Venus by companies from Asia. What is important to understand from the get-go is that this is a new beginning. For simplicity's sake, you still can be from Earth and be from U.S. or U.K. or Dutch and have that heritage. But, especially younger, can be born on Mars and be from General Motors Saab Unity (as I said I'll change the names but I hope you get the gist) Also, you can move from say Sweden to Venus to Sony Nintendo Coalition and that is not only your new country but the planet. Political things from old planet do not transfer here, just profit does. So if the Largest Taiwan Microchip Company ties the knot with a Chinese Mining conglomerate (which are both one of the leaders in those fields) and makes a Colony because one is best at making microchips, and others are best at mining and they are near Silicon rich moon/asteroid/ even dang cloud. Check your politics at the atmosphere door, you are neither Chinese nor Taiwanese you are a dude from Venus from whatever Companies decide to call it. This is the time when all things computers will be in crazy high demand and you have the best people to mine and produce them and have claimed a motherload of it. Mony hose will spray as crazy and if your devotion to CCP to Taiwanese equivalent affects your performance you might find yourself on the next ship to earth with "accidentally" miscalculated food load, or if you are extremist fuel load. Food you can ration, if you don't have enough fuel, you don't have enough fuel.

The entire goal is naturally selfish, maximizing profit, but on the other side generations born on those Colonies will likely think about Earth as a backward Hellhole. They might live as sheep, but no racism, no politics, nothing that can shift the focus from almighty profit. Only near essential thing Earth owns as a space resource is the Moon. For things to go from Earth, and Earth due to a gradual decline in resources is still the largest importer of basically everything. Rockets would not be able to lift without Moon, wherever a rocket goes, once it escapes the shackles of Earth's gravity they need to make a pitstop on the Moon and refuel with a special mix of fuel that doesn't need oxygen and moves faster. Many companies tried to petition for artificial refueling stations but were denied, those that tried anyway got accidentally wiped off the even outer atmosphere telescope sensors... Somehow.

[Thramzorean]

You can see what they are trying to do with the site. Flatten it a bit like the classic SharePoint versus the modern experience. The navigation I think will sort itself out with a bit of usage understanding... need to try their tagging.

[Thramzorean]

A request from my side please Grudge. Could you make a topic in the Characters menu for the character creation rules. That way we'll have a convenient reference to check when building the characters and a dedicated thread to discuss any points about it.

Edited May 29, 2023 by Thramzorean (see edit history)

[Grudge]

1 hour ago, Thramzorean said:

A request from my side please Grudge. Could you make a topic in the Characters menu for the character creation rules. That way we'll have a convenient reference to check when building the characters and a dedicated thread to discuss any points about it.

I'm trying to undo my screw-up with Erik (he's trying to return the table by returning the time in that part so anything new I make will return too., I'll try one more time and then continue tomorrow with making new stuff. I'll jot down your thingie for first tommorrow.

[Grudge]

Finally, Armor, Melee, and Ranged tables are there. As promised to Thram I'll tackle his question next. Since we aim this to be a narrative freeform game things will be as simple as possible. Example names of Attributes will be the same as D&D and PF also you will be able to use the OGMW tool for calculating your character (I still tither between 25 and 27 points and 5E and PF 1 system as by points go) As you can see most of this is rigid, not particularly freeform, I have a reason for it. That's all I'll say, but there you can have some...structure for lack of a better word. You KNOW 25 or 27, 12 is +1 mod, 14 +2 etc. Skill is where freeform raises it's head first. There are none. None fixed that is. There will be a way to calculate the number of skill points once you assign your attributes. The important thing (and different from the fantasy games I mentioned) all attributes can decide a number of points. Because frankly that never made sense in most games. Int is your skill decider even if you are Barbarian?

I'll give 2 examples here. Security McCoy is a large git with not too much going up there, but his family was smart enough to recognize it and he is in the Security riot squad. His number of skill points is 4+Str Mod. Second Psycho Kay-Kay, this entire world is so damn stupid some nice planetary erasure would be so fun, what voice in my head yeah we should polish our 4 degrees tonight. 6+INT skills. As you see it is not... shall we say 1 to 1. Skills are the second part. All skills are the same, that is to say, there is no bonus points for class skills. But there will be hidden bonuses, known only by me. So third example Fox McLoud has 20 points, and since he is the pilot places 4 in flying other 4 in dogfighting and since his secondary, as the pilot is a pistol he plumps 2 into energy weapons and takes a Shock Pistol. That would help him in a dogfight too since while his aircraft uses laser weapons on short lasers and those are energy-based he'd get +2 he meant for his fun.

Also, also when I say there are no skills I mean it. If it is a skill you can choose it, from pizza baking, sniper shooting, bare-knuckle fighting, or beer chugging, you wanna skill and everyone agrees it's a skill, feel free to invest in it. Will it help you? I have no idea. That is to say, the most important parts are: your job (because they decide which Attribute is tied to it), the number of points you place in skills tied to that attribute, Your not going blind, ask me the skill I'll tell you the attribute.

[Grudge]

Character Creation mechanic posted. Any questions field here.

[Thramzorean]

Yeah, it's a difficult balance between rules light and creating the scene to give things life and an atmosphere. The old issue of a few rules requiring more rules. Sometimes better to drop them altogether and just run with it in 'pure' freeform mode.

Any particular reason for the 5E point buy Grudge? I see it force flattens by limiting start stats to 15 and we're not playing level stats progression here.

 

 

[Grudge]

5 hours ago, Thramzorean said:

Yeah, it's a difficult balance between rules light and creating the scene to give things life and an atmosphere. The old issue of a few rules requiring more rules. Sometimes better to drop them altogether and just run with it in 'pure' freeform mode.

Any particular reason for the 5E point buy Grudge? I see it force flattens by limiting start stats to 15 and we're not playing level stats progression here.

 

 

Oh, that's a simple one. As I said Stats are mostly based on DJ's model. He gave 27 points I believe. Why I shoved that in OGMW 5E? Because unlike him I use mods from Str and Dex and INT and have no idea what they are by just number. I want to be fair with a game that is deadly, so going by the feeling did you, or did you not hit meat-eating Worm-Mushroom that Fiery will inevitably make seems unfair and all of us collectively here know that I suck at math. I tested a few ways (giving you 27 points and letting you go to town, PF model, self-made model, "eye it" model, 5E model) 5E gives constant relatively low mods on both 25 and 27 (between 1-3) so it will be easy to plug them in and they won't affect the outcome too much. Skills (which are pure freeform) will be deciding factor. If your crazy scientist tries to hack a terminal +2 in Int will not be so effective as some skill adjacent to computers that give him 10-12 points in a roll just ensure there are fewer those I missed by 1 moment and also fewer those "why did he succeed and I failed" moments if we go full freeform. After all, there are just 2 rolls. Not much of a system. I have never been comfortable being the supreme arbiter of all things. If all 3 of you are against this, removing it is easy, but by that, you remove any right to complain by my decisions.

 

Also while on the subject point bonus on skills: You called them by Tiers so I'll stick with that. Tier 1 skills give you +10 mod. Tier2 +7 mod, Tier 3 +5 mod. Two mods can be active at the same time combining them to +17 to +12 or whatever else. You have to make a convincing case why both skills are applicable IC or OOC

Edited May 31, 2023 by Grudge (see edit history)

[Thramzorean]

Hmmm... I wonder if you could manage a true free form with no complaint about our decisions 😁

But in truth it's more what you're comfortable with Grudge, in terms of how you prefer to best manage it going forward. No doubt DJ had personal reasons for the 27 point buy and structure.

In 5e do we get a floating +2 to add to an attribute?

[Grudge]

1 hour ago, Thramzorean said:

Hmmm... I wonder if you could manage a true free form with no complaint about our decisions 😁

But in truth it's more what you're comfortable with Grudge, in terms of how you prefer to best manage it going forward. No doubt DJ had personal reasons for the 27 point buy and structure.

In 5e do we get a floating +2 to add to an attribute?

I'm trying to figure out bonuses yet because while we used 5E point buy it's not 5E game. I'm open to suggestions. We can do 2 free-floating points, and have bonus points tied to the profession (Malcom would have +2 to intelligence for example) We can have a mix 2 points tied to the profession and 2 free-floating that could be split into two 1 points to put wherever. Or not have them at all. It's up to the 3 of you what you think it is best. There is no starting cap so you can go as high as you want place all points in Intelligence and leave all other at 8 fine by me. But on the flipside 8 is the minimum so no dumping some stat to 2. We should decide how to decide health I saw a few interesting options around freeform games. We can go the classic HP route since we have Constitution. But we can figure something else out. For example, I saw one game deducting Physical points starting from Str and Dex (players choice so melee character could knock Dex first and ranged Str), once those 2 falls to 0 Character is unconscious and further attacks go after his Con, and once that hit 0 he is dead. We can go a more narrative route like DJ with Healthy, Barely Injured, Injured, Severely Injured, and Dead. Deciding severity in the narrative, Redshirt No1 eats a revolver shot to his dome, no matter it's like 8 damage, it's 8 damage to his head he is either Severely Injured if he is lucky or dead. If he ate the same shot to his leg then 8 damage would be enough for Injured while 4 or less would be Barely Injured and so on. If you have some ideas about that voice them. We can hammer out some new way together.

[Thramzorean]

As a general comment I like the two floating +1 points. Always prefer giving players as much flexibility as possible. I like the narrative route for free form damage. Forget trying to calculate numbers and track them.

[Thramzorean]

Pls don't mind me on the Equipment fred. Just playing with the tables.

[Grudge]

35 minutes ago, Thramzorean said:

Pls don't mind me on the Equipment fred. Just playing with the tables.

For some reason, so far with both quote and clone, I had the best experience with CtrlA CtrlC and then pastinh

[Thramzorean]

Is there a name of our current employers? Hope I haven't missed it somewhere...

[Grudge]

Nope Not yet, I haven't decided on names, Same as moons. I don't want it to be too close to real names I settled on one of two Moons. IoWiki Facts:
Distance to Earth: 628.3 million km
Gravity: 1.796 m/s²
Radius: 1,821.6 km
Orbital period: 42 hours

Unique facts:
Io takes 1.77 Earth-days to orbit Jupiter. Io is tidally locked, so the same side always faces Jupiter. Size: Io has a mean radius of 1,131.7 miles (1,821.3 km) making it slightly larger than Earth's moon. It has a slightly elliptical shape, with its longest axis directed toward Jupiter

Atmosphere: Io's very thin atmosphere is primarily sulfur dioxide, which on Earth is sometimes used to preserve dried food.

Impact craters: Io has no impact craters even though it has a rocky, solid surface. The surface must be very young because something has erased the impact craters. Even though Io has nearly the same size (3643 km across) and density (3.53X water) as the Moon, Io is the most geologically active world in the solar system.

Lowest temperature: A typical day on Io reaches temperatures up to -225 F and at night reaches a low of -300 F. There is a very strong radiation belt of electrons and ions trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field that affects Io's atmosphere. Google Map Of Io EuropaWiki Facts

Europa, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System.

Gravity: 1.315 m/s²
Distance to Earth: 628.3 million km
Radius: 1,560.8 km
Orbital period: 85 hours
Surface area: 3.09×107 km2 (0.061 Earths)
Surface pressure: 0.1 µPa (10−12 bar)
Temperature: Temperatures range from as high as approximately 140 Kelvin (about -210 degrees Fahrenheit) in dark material at the moon's equator to as low as approximately 50 Kelvin (-370 degrees Fahrenheit) in bright icy patches at the moon's poles. Learn more about Europa here.

Composition: Structure. Like our planet, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle, and an ocean of salty water. Unlike Earth, however, Europa's ocean lies below a shell of ice probably 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick, and has an estimated depth of 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers).

Unique facts: The Latest. Scientists are almost certain that hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa is a salty-water ocean thought to contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans combined. And like Earth, Europa is thought to also contain a rocky mantle and iron core. Google Map Of Europa I included some Wiki facts about them in OOC as the Google maps (I must say Zoom them managed to get is sick) Bothe have pluses and minuses volcanos VS basically working on top of 100 Miles deep ocean waiting to wake up one of Cthulu's cousins. I narrowed to those two since they are cool enough size-wise, While Ganymede and Calisto are too dang big. These two are the perfect size for adventure.

 

As the name of corpos they are joint ventures between Science and Mining Sectors so the name would likely be something like Enron-Pfizer Ventures 😂 Also there would be obviously different outlooks from both sides. Miners just want to finish their 6 months pick up their (hefty) paycheck and enjoy themself during their 6 months off. While scientists are obviously more enthusiastic about their job. I mean imagine if we chose Europa possibility to find life in all that water underneath, so while there is no tension one side finds the other section weird. Who knows how that went if crap hit the industrial ventilator who knows how well it went, I mean unless all took a relaxing walk at the Planetlight at Balmy -210 Ferenhait or 140 Kelvin or-135 Celsius.