Poll

Since I now have a proper sourcebook, what should we do?

Keep going with FTL, we're barely into it yet!
0 (0%)
Add some of the mechanics of RT to FTL, and keep going that way!
2 (66.7%)
Drop FTL, and play some RT!
0 (0%)
I don't care and regret signing up for this!
1 (33.3%)
Since you apparently have all our collective sourcebooks, let's run something completely different!
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 2

Author Topic: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)  (Read 2307 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

RedVulnus

  • POST LORD
  • **********
  • Posts: 2,312
  • Dapperness +20/-4
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #15 on: September 15, 2016, 11:02:42 pm »
I figured there would be things like lasers I just thought they would fit the character pretty well. Though I'm thinking of changing the shotgun to a kind of double barrel laser weapon of similar purpose, but I'm not sure at this point.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #16 on: September 15, 2016, 11:14:25 pm »
I figured it was an IC thing, and they are still effective against lotsa people. There's fancier armour available too, but good old metal is still decent, and it's maybe more important to just avoid getting shot if you can help it.

Can change whatever you'd like in that regard though.
Gone. Cheers guys.

Siege-Loli

  • Admin
  • God Teir
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,290
  • Dapperness +14/-4
  • ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Resident Lolicon
  • Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2016, 02:34:47 am »
Name: Mark Hansen
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Role: Captain
Skills: Navigation, Piloting, Bargaining, Fast-talking (which is different from persuasion since fast-talking is for talking your way out of situations while persuading is convincing people to do stuff).
Backstory: (So I'm going to do a list since I know what I want to backstory to be but haven't figured out how to write it out into a story format. Don't worry, I'll actually fix it eventually.)

Inherited ship and title.
Earned skills by working alongside previous Captain (father) passed due to sickness.
Father used his ship for mostly hauling freight and people across the galaxy. (Aka he was making da dosh as a merchant)
Character grew up on the ship as well and his mother was never in his life.
He has a hedonistic streak.

Equipment: Plasma pistol he inherited from his father, a pair of thick gloves he wears in case the pistol over heats (though it would appear it's had to do this a couple of times already), a light pair of clothes, an old gold watch.
Other stuff: A bracelet that when activated provides a personal shield.

Stats:

Melee Skill: 30
Ballistic Skill: 40
Strength: 25
Toughness: 25
Agility: 25
Intelligence: 40
Perception: 25
Willpower: 50
Charm :50

Free points: 0
There is probably no more terrible instance of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man — with human flesh.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #18 on: September 16, 2016, 02:36:26 am »
The shield debate shall continue tomorrow. Right now I'm 'Nam-ing it up. Everything else looks 100%.

EDIT: Ok, after thinking and stuff, personal shields, no. The tech is too big. PORTABLE shields, yes. With some caveats, which I'll detail in the ships section tomorrow.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 04:53:16 am by ApatheticExcuse »
Gone. Cheers guys.

Forrest

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
  • Dapperness +20/-3
  • Gof'nn Hupadgh Shub-Niggurath
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2016, 06:03:04 am »
Name: Hamilton Locke
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Role: Bionic Juggernaut
Skills: Firearms (all types), Melee (all common types), Intimidation, Murder.
Backstory: Hamilton Locke was born on Valdosta Station, the first permanent space station established in the frontier system of Septimus Majoris, a large star with several mineral-rich, uncolonized planets orbiting it. Suffice to say, within a few years, team after team of mercenaries, scientists, and less than scrupulous characters looking for an out-of-the-way system were positively swarming the station and the surrounding planets. It wasn't a place for the faint of heart, weak of body, or slow on the draw. Thankfully, Locke turned out to be the exact opposite of all three of these.

He joined his first merc expedition when he was fifteen years old, trekking out with a group of men and women looking to construct an outpost on one of the nearer, smaller worlds before anyone else. It was on this trip that Locke killed his first man, or, first seven or eight, to be exact. The element of surprise and a high rate-of-fire gun sure can fill in a lot for experience, and once he ran out, most everyone on the rival team was dead or dying. He sped along those just dying with liberal application of hands-to-throat, and, if you ask him, that's when he was really born.

Locke participated in countless expeditions after this, making somewhat of a name for himself as a man who doesn't turn his head at less than clean work, a fine soldier when he needed to be and an absolute monster if he was being paid to be one. As the worlds around Septimus Majoris developed a bit more, he used what money he had to 'borg himself up, finding that there was little else to spend his money on. After a few years, he was hardly recognizable, so full of backwater bionics and implants that wires poked out of his skin at the joints, and he could scarcely be called human anymore.

Pretty soon, he was leading expeditions, not joining them, a bionic juggernaut colonizing world after world for shadier and shadier employers, and killing anyone who said otherwise, as long as the price was right. After a while, he found that there weren't anymore worlds to colonize in his home system, and, feeling no particular attachment, and aching for freedom, for more frontier worlds where law and civilization can't confine the beast hiding within every human, he left his home.

And thus, he signed up to the next ship he saw heading out into the cosmos, eager for more plunder and more action in the name of human expansion, as long as the price is right.


Equipment
Weapons
-A mag-pistol, a bulky, powerful handgun firing magnetically-accelerated flechettes manufactured with integral power supplies, meaning nothing's required to shoot it but the ammo and the gun. It's also near-silent, thanks to its firing mechanism.

-A mag-rifle, the beefed up version of its smaller cousin. It's more accurate, and hits harder, but is obviously more annoying to lug around, and harder to conceal.

-A plasma projector, a cumbersome rifle firing magnetically-shaped charges of superheated plasma. They dissipate at shorter ranges compared to lasers, but they're unaffected by particulate matter and tend to leave far more grievous wounds.

-A "void carbine," a sleek little rifle designed for ease of use and reliability in zero-g environments. It fires specialized gyrojet rounds, essentially mini-rockets, which won't penetrate ordinary ship equipment plating, yet still reliably kill people when reasonably placed.

-A short, three-round-burst-fire combat shotgun, plain old ballistic weaponry. It's inaccurate from the shortened barrel and stock and the nature of the ammo, but after all these years it's still almost unmatched at killing a bunch of people in close quarters.

-Locke's gloves are packed with powdered steel in strong pouches on each knuckle. Thanks to this, and his enormous size, he's pretty good at knocking people the fuck out, should it be required of him.

-A few cases of good old standard shrapnel grenades. They still work well, packing a real punch.

Armor
-An enormous duster-style coat, composed of a metaplast overlay on sintered microceramic plates. It absorbs impacts, thermal shocks, and shearing blows very well, while being substantially lighter than most woven body armor.

-A sturdy helmet of strong ballistic material and thermal shock dampener. It's pretty reliable.

-A mouth-covering filter mask, for breathing in toxic atmospheres, or oxygen-low environments, as long as you're not in the middle of space. Also useful in case of poison gas attacks and riot control spray.

-An old-fashioned, wide-brimmed "cowboy" hat, synonymous with the frontier and human expansion, and thus perfect for a man like Locke. He wears it like a badge of office, when he's not using his helmet.

Other stuff
-Hydraulic muscle enhancers installed into most major muscles (biceps, calves, thighs, abdominals, etc.), giving Locke quite a bit of force behind his physical escapades.

-An aim-enhancing apparatus installed in Locke's eyes and hands, giving him increased reaction times, steadiness, target identification, and quick draw capabilities.

-A mess of wires and a microphone in the center of a partially-healed mess of scars in Locke's throat. Seemingly, he took a serious hit there, and the device serves as a replacement voice to his damaged vocal cords. It's rather old and dinky, meaning Locke's voice randomly rises and lowers drastically in pitch, sometimes clogs over with static, and, other times, makes it sound like a few people are saying the same thing at once through a shitty AM radio. Suffice to say, it makes him sound scary.

-A large, old-fashioned leather suitcase. Inside, you find your average toolbox's worth of items, with a few extras. Pliers, saws of various sizes, an awl, a few good hammers, a hand drill, and some small knives and scalpels, the like. It's probably not best to wonder what the purpose of this is.

-Another suitcase of a similar type, if a bit smaller. Within it, Locke keeps a large assortment of semi-legal narcotics. New synthetic designer drugs, stuff mimicking earthly narcotics, only made with alien materials and is thus treated differently, things chemically similar yet different enough for there to be no law against it for now, etc., etc. Amphetamines, opiates, LSD-derivatives, dried psychedelic plants, the like. Most of them will be illegal/legal yet taxed by the UTA within a few months, but by then, Locke'll have new ones. Deep space can be boring, and Locke's not the type of guy to handle boredom easily. These probably aren't helping his already-shaky grip on sanity.

Stats:

Melee Skill: 45 (How good you can swing a sword or a chair)
Ballistic Skill: 45 (How good you can shoot, or throw things)
Strength: 50(How strong you are.)
Toughness: 50 (How well you ignore pain, poison, etc. etc. Also slightly affects hitpoints, though I will intentionally not touch on how damage works too much unless you guys insist.)
Agility: 25 (How quick you are, as well as how good your reflexes are)
Intelligence: 25 (How smart you are, how much random trivia you know, reasoning skills, etc. etc.)
Perception: 25 (How well you perceive things around you, like dildos that have been left out, blips on sensors, ambushes)
Willpower: 35 (How well you resist mind altering effects, and fear. Space can be a terrifying place, what with all the unknowns and shit)
Charm: 25 (How well you get along with other people)

Just so it's known, the aim bionic, in my opinion, would basically increase Locke's Agility and Perception stats a good amount, but only when it comes to drawing weapons, shooting people, and the like.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2016, 12:21:32 am by Forrest »
Area Record 1782:
Date: 08/29/██

Event: An elderly human feeding itself to a group of kakapo. Did not express pain, appeared ambivalent.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #20 on: September 16, 2016, 06:11:17 am »
Looks good.

And yeah, bionics or whatever will be applied situationally. It wouldn't help him dodge a falling rock (or whatever), but would help with the tasks it's specific to. You've got the right idea.

Alright, so, gonna wait a bit more to see if Blitz is still in, and cause it's fucking late. Post on ships will come tomorrow, and that will cover the groundwork. Think most of us have spent some time in the IRC tonight, so hopefully everyone has the basics of the gameplay down. If you don't, all you really need to know is that you shouldn't let Lork do anything because he's a terrible shot, doesn't understand space craft fuels, can't seduce his way out of a paper bag, God hates him, and so does everyone else including dogs. He will probably lead you all to death and destruction with his luck.

If anyone needs to tweak their character sheets, just let me know and feel free to.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 06:43:59 am by ApatheticExcuse »
Gone. Cheers guys.

Forrest

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
  • Dapperness +20/-3
  • Gof'nn Hupadgh Shub-Niggurath
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #21 on: September 16, 2016, 07:34:41 am »
Looks good.

And yeah, bionics or whatever will be applied situationally. It wouldn't help him dodge a falling rock (or whatever), but would help with the tasks it's specific to. You've got the right idea.

Alright, so, gonna wait a bit more to see if Blitz is still in, and cause it's fucking late. Post on ships will come tomorrow, and that will cover the groundwork. Think most of us have spent some time in the IRC tonight, so hopefully everyone has the basics of the gameplay down. If you don't, all you really need to know is that you shouldn't let Lork do anything because he's a terrible shot, doesn't understand space craft fuels, can't seduce his way out of a paper bag, God hates him, and so does everyone else including dogs. He will probably lead you all to death and destruction with his luck.

If anyone needs to tweak their character sheets, just let me know and feel free to.

I might add some more tomorrow.

And yeah, I would think that's how bionics work. The muscle one, thanks to Locke's huge strength score, basically (to me) would probably mean if it's at all within the confines of metahuman strength, Locke can probably do it with little difficulty.
Area Record 1782:
Date: 08/29/██

Event: An elderly human feeding itself to a group of kakapo. Did not express pain, appeared ambivalent.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #22 on: September 16, 2016, 01:50:36 pm »
Alright, I slept in today and am now at work. Ships and shipbuilding info will accordingly get posted tonight - we're mostly all night owls anyway, so it should be ok.

Little more mechanics info:

Experience - Since everyone is a notable, powerful individual in one way or another, experience will not be rewarded for mundane acts such as killing a dude. Instead, you'll usually get it in two ways:

1. Really good RP, and having original ideas. I like to see people think. There will be small rewards for surprising me or using good logic to achieve a goal.
2. Accomplishing notable goals. As I mentioned in the IRC yesterday, the way this will mostly go is that you guys will say "Ok, we wanna go here and do this". I'll come up with some things that need to be done for "doing this" to be successful, and leave you to figure out how you want to do those things. If you accomplish your goal, there's EXP for everyone! How much you get depends on how lofty and tough I think the goal is (more for settling a new world than for starting a trade route, for example), and on how well you succeeded (similar to the levels of success thing I described earlier, you can just scrape by and set up a tenuous colony, or you can succeed wildly and set up a burgeoning center of wealth).

There aren't really levels per se. After you get a set amount of EXP, you can choose to spend it in one of two ways: On a stat increase (spend, say, 500 EXP to increase from 35 to 45, scaling up), or on a skill. Some skills are easy to learn, others you will have to be taught. You want to learn about mining and rare minerals, you'd better spend some time on a mining colony, or with a geologist. This also applies to new bionics, special skills (which we don't need to worry about just yet), and other fancier stuff.

Your ships' crew will also share in the EXP. They will gain less, but more often. Since there's LOTS of stations to be manned on a ship, and not a ton of PCs to man them, you'll likely be directing your crew around a bit. Crew stats start low, but I think I've got it well set up to increase them.

Wealth - Essentially, wealth is an abstracted number we're gonna use to represent your riches. You have far more resources than many people in the universe can even dream of, but they are not unlimited. Buying a gun will not affect this, though you might have to do some rolling to actually find the gun if it's rare enough. Buying enough guns of top quality to outfit 10,000 men will. As a heads up for when you guys go to put the ship together, the better the ship you have, the lower your starting wealth will be, and vice versa. I will post a bit more on this when we actually get the RP moving.

I will also likely put up a lore thread tonight, with a post in there detailing what you can expect from the armour and weapons you guys have picked. It occurs to me that surprises there aren't really nice. I'm at a wedding rehearsal for most of the evening, and at a wedding tomorrow (I picked a crap weekend to start this), but after that posts will come as frequently as you guys want.
Gone. Cheers guys.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #23 on: September 16, 2016, 04:13:45 pm »
Ground combat is going to be pretty much abstracted and thematic in terms of representation. Space combat might move a bit slower. I finally have the rules done for it (it's a slow day here), so the question is, how involved do you guys want that to be. I can have graphics of your hologrid, showing ship facings, distances, astronomical features, etc. etc.:

Spoiler (hover to show)

Or we can keep it nice and simple and treat it the same way we're going to do personal combat. Which way you choose will affect how ships are designed when I get that up tonight, so feedback would be appreciated.

Also, do you guys think I have too many mechanics and shit going on here? Would you like me to stop planning stuff and just start playing? I like complexity, but it occurs to me that maybe not everyone else does.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 04:17:51 pm by ApatheticExcuse »
Gone. Cheers guys.

Forrest

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
  • Dapperness +20/-3
  • Gof'nn Hupadgh Shub-Niggurath
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #24 on: September 16, 2016, 04:24:27 pm »
I'm pretty okay with everything you've got going so far, and I'm fine with holding things up until we've got everything figured out.

And I do like the sexy space map idea you've got thus far, but if it'd be too much of a hassle to do that every round of space combat, I'd say it'd be fine to just use text. If not, I'd be cool with space combat being slower and more methodical like that.
Area Record 1782:
Date: 08/29/██

Event: An elderly human feeding itself to a group of kakapo. Did not express pain, appeared ambivalent.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #25 on: September 16, 2016, 04:36:45 pm »
From a "how much work is it" point of view, neither method is really any more labour intensive than the other. One takes a few minutes of putting a couple lines on a pre-made map each combat related post, the other takes a few minutes of writing in further detail.
Gone. Cheers guys.

Siege-Loli

  • Admin
  • God Teir
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,290
  • Dapperness +14/-4
  • ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Resident Lolicon
  • Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #26 on: September 16, 2016, 05:11:26 pm »
Maps are da best.
There is probably no more terrible instance of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man — with human flesh.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #27 on: September 16, 2016, 05:46:05 pm »
Spoiler (hover to show)

Righto, in that case images it is. Let me know if the sizing doesn't fit your screen well, and if you can't roughly figure out what's going on there, and I will tweak accordingly. EDIT: Note that there are a few inconsistencies in this map, but I just wanted to make sure everyone got the idea.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 05:49:16 pm by ApatheticExcuse »
Gone. Cheers guys.

Forrest

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 925
  • Dapperness +20/-3
  • Gof'nn Hupadgh Shub-Niggurath
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #28 on: September 16, 2016, 05:48:41 pm »
Yeah, going with Lork. If it's not too much to ask then, the images do look really badass.
Area Record 1782:
Date: 08/29/██

Event: An elderly human feeding itself to a group of kakapo. Did not express pain, appeared ambivalent.

ApatheticExcuse

  • God Teir
  • *
  • Posts: 1,043
  • Dapperness +2/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Faster Than Light (Interest, Lore, and Sign Up Thread)
« Reply #29 on: September 16, 2016, 05:51:12 pm »
If anything, it makes shit easier TBH. Five seconds to make pictures. Five seconds to write, then realize I forgot where a ship was, re-write, realize I forgot movement specs for something, re-write, realized that torpedo should hit by now, re-write. Would have happily done it either way, but this is much better on my brain. That's less important with people for whatever reason.

Also, as with PC stats, you can pay as much or as little attention as you want to ship stats. I've made it easy for myself to track stuff without headaches for anyone else.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2016, 05:54:07 pm by ApatheticExcuse »
Gone. Cheers guys.

 

NOCTIFER IS A FAGGOT