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Forum » Dicussion thread for new RP (AETAS 3)

Dicussion thread for new RP (AETAS 3)

Crazy 13 years ago
AAAGHGODDAMNIT

I had been writing this goddamn post for two goddamn hours and then the goddamn forums goddamn logged me goddamn out, goddamn it.

So here's the gist (i quoted all of the bullshit in the AETAS 2 thread before, can't be bothered this time)-

GMs - Agree with Murska's point about GMlessness. Revolving GMs good. Each GM responsible for a "chapter" of the story. Will write own PC/PCs into positions where they cannot affect the major storyline. Maybe use time for character development.

Rules - Dislike idea of GM subjectively calling the shots. Support objective or diceful freeform or intensely simplistic ruleset.

Setting - Dislike, souds like Factions Of Hats. Have following idea based on Murska (all names descriptive, not actual names):

Step 1:

	Earth -----> Colony I

Step 2:

	Everyone under one Federation, based on earth. Colonies 
	completely dependant on Earth for supplies & political
	power (Colonies not independent at all, governors sent 
	there from Earth).

	      various colonies               various colonies
	                 \                       /
	various colonies - Earth -----> Colony I - various colonies
	                 /                       \
	     various colonies                various colonies

Step 3:

	Colonies on the right suddenly lose their entire purpose 
	(supporting Earth) and their upper power structure. Find
	need to become self sufficient. Suddenly stop being 
	"earthlings", start being "[colony]-ians". Do not create any
	large power.

	      various colonies               various colonies
	                 \                       /
	various colonies - Earth - / -> Colony I - various colonies
	                 /                       \
	     various colonies                various colonies

Step 4:

	1 - 2 generations pass until contact is reestablished.
	Meanwhile, protests & strikes on industrial powerhouse
	Mars become riots & eventually guerilla fighting.
	Federation concedes terriotories for political reasons
	(PR damage significant, war damage insignificant)
	Many colonies (colonists mostly working-class,
	colonies further away from hub younger & more poor)
	join new faction (Rebellion (not actually a rebellion)).


Step 5:

	Connection reestablished, some years pass. No open war.

	Factions: Federation (glory, military power, party
	politics, sliding scale of patriotism vs. chauvinism),
	Colony I region (no central power, varies greatly),
	Rebellion (various underdogs, working-class)

	Conflicts: Colony I region not united in goal, lots
	of internal stuggle both between colonies and between
	Independantists and Federationists. Federation claims
	"vested interest" in Colony I region, attempts to
	work behind scenes to gain power, is fairly obvious.
	Federation also wants to dissolve and regain the
	Rebellion (not sure how they would effect their will).
	Rebellion is generally united in opposition, but
	has people who want peace, people who are more
	revolutionary and people who are only out for themselves.
	Also - have no idea what the hell they are doing.



In general, setting younger than normal Star Trek-eque galaxy. Very small amount of planets colonized, tech slightly less advanced.

This setting would still allow Hats Murska described, but would add further options. Very important - in additon to unique characters, would allow unique writing styles.

Of FTL: Suggest Star Wars-esque system. No gates but instead, known safe paths. Finding new paths "dangerous", etc. Would allow for exploration in story, also easily explain why contact lost. Travel takes lots of time, space feels little bit lonely.

Also, would be interested in adding small (small) touches of watching sci-fi while high as balls and listening to The Sword in form of prophecies and other pseudo-magical (not actually magical, like The Force) bits.
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Crazy 13 years ago
Arg, totally forgot an important point.

We should make the RP SMALL. Like, some medium-sized but ultimately insignificant skirmish somwhere not very important. If we like our characters/the setting/the game system and we see that we can do it on a slightly larger scale, we can move forward with that.
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MageKing17 13 years ago
Continually calling our forum RPs "AETAS" is getting a bit old. So I decided to look back over some early stuff, and noticed an old idea for what to call a forum RP, and so I suggest a new name: The Role-Playing Thread of Well Thought-out yet Interesting and Occasionally Argumentative Posts, or "ABD" for short.
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Kario 13 years ago
Summmarize that code thingy i have a short attention span right now.
Also NO quantum rp.
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Murska 13 years ago
Don't mind the new setting type, though what I described was only the background of the factions. We'd obviously be playing people, who will most likely be civilians or at least not part of any rigid military structure and get caught in situations that happen to strike our GM's fancy.

As for rulesets, I'd prefer simple freeform. It works the best, but only if all the players are good enough to work with it; the GM in particular must not use his omnipotence to ruin the story. Building our own system is way too time-consuming and will most likely leave loopholes, plus it makes people feel as though they should game the system instead of playing the game. Adding dice brings an element of randomness but on a forum it takes longer and it tends to sometimes result in rather counterintuitive situations. (Natural 20s, anyone?)

For tech level, I'd like more votes on how to handle FTL, for that's the most important part of scifi setting tech. Other than that, I endorse cybernetics, dislike extensive biological modifications and think that aliens, if present, should be rare, reclusive and hopefully not an important part of the story.

We shouldn't decide on too many details in advance, however. Just go with the flow, the GM can create new stuff as it comes up and all the players can complain and whine in the OOC thread if they don't want that stuff. The main thing we need from the players is that everyone is willing to compromise and listen to others about their vision for the game-world.

As for the scale, yes. Keep it simple, at least in the beginning. We're starting with just ordinary people, in the background of an interstellar empire. We're not going to topple emperors or conquer planets, we'll most likely be busy trying to keep ourselves alive while someone else tries to do something like that.
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MageKing17 13 years ago
"Murska" said:
For tech level, I'd like more votes on how to handle FTL, for that's the most important part of scifi setting tech. Other than that, I endorse cybernetics, dislike extensive biological modifications and think that aliens, if present, should be rare, reclusive and hopefully not an important part of the story.
Aliens should be non-present. I'd like an all-human galaxy along the lines of the Foundation series, myself (I think we went a little overboard with aliens in previous AETASs, although the purely human combat in AETAS 2 was interesting until nobody wanted to play anymore). I don't see how you can have cybernetics without "extensive biological modifications", though. Either you have sufficient biotech to form neural links with machines, and can therefore perform genetic modification as well, or you don't.

As for FTL, it would be interesting to take a "wormholes only" approach according to Murska's story background, where you can only link two sectors by sending a sublight ship dragging one half of a wormhole. It would make for a more hard-science background than we've done before (and would form natural choke points and borders, since the existing wormhole network would only be extended infrequently). The separation of Earth and "Colony 1" would simply be due to the time it took for one side or the other's wormhole-dragging ship to reach the other side, which gives us a natural delay for various factions to form. We could even have the RP start right before an Earth ship arrives with the wormhole, for example, with someone detecting its retro-burn on its way into the system. Every faction scrambles to grab power before we find out who the visitor is (which could take some time, given the range at which they'd detect the retro-burn in a hard-science setting).
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Murska 13 years ago
Yeah, I like the Gates style FTL because it's easy to build a reasonably believable science on and it doesn't result in too big trouble in how space combat is resolved and such. It also limits the size of the gameworld a bit, and allows for more centralized governments and a higher amount of control with the natural chokepoints.

As for aliens, I'm fine with none. I suggest we don't adopt a real 'hard scifi' stance, though, because that is very difficult really and quickly begins to limit the fun. We don't need to play scientists so we don't need to know exactly how everything works, as long as the setting's technology is internally coherent.

Cybernetics would be like extensions to stuff we have now; metal arms and legs, IR-seeing eyes, whatever. Neural links are another matter, and I do like that idea aswell, to some extent. But with biological modification I meant avoiding stuff like humans with wings or humans with five arms or whatever, because that's pretty much just disguising aliens by calling them humans.
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MageKing17 13 years ago
"Murska" said:
But with biological modification I meant avoiding stuff like humans with wings or humans with five arms or whatever, because that's pretty much just disguising aliens by calling them humans.
I have no problem disallowing humans with wings or five arms... we can call it a government ban on absurd biological modification. I'm more thinking along the lines of genetic modification to survive better on heavy-grav planets, for instance.
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Murska 13 years ago
Let's just say you can make humans fare better in different environments, be stronger or faster or such, but there are limits. You can't really alter them biologically too much, since there'll be too many complications.
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MageKing17 13 years ago
"Murska" said:
Let's just say you can make humans fare better in different environments, be stronger or faster or such, but there are limits. You can't really alter them biologically too much, since there'll be too many complications.
I'm really more interested in it being a major crime than having biological complications... although obviously adding five arms to someone may indeed result in, say, heart problems pumping blood through all those limbs.
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Crazy 13 years ago
We can have be a government bad due to medical reasons? Sort of like drugs?

Also, i'm pro-alienless and pro-cybernetics. Not much for hard sci-fi, though, i'd much rather the soft.

Of, and on the FTL thing, i'm still for the Star Wars system, but you guys have me outvoted ATM, which i don't mind.

Also, this:
We shouldn't decide on too many details in advance, however. Just go with the flow, the GM can create new stuff as it comes up and all the players can complain and whine in the OOC thread if they don't want that stuff. The main thing we need from the players is that everyone is willing to compromise and listen to others about their vision for the game-world.
Once we have enough player and we all agree on the points we've already brought up (i want to yet see if my soft-sci-fi-ness is outvoted, also MK has not made any comment on the setting) and have enough players (who also agree on the points) we might as well pick a GM (who keeps out of describing things that the players can) and get this thing-a-rolling.

Oh, and a ruleset. Right now i'd go for a statless where coinflips by the GM (or maybe PM-based rock-paper-scissors) decide outcomes.
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