[idea]Transcendence-themed Roll To Dodge! (IRC or forum?)

[Aury]

Here is the post that gave me the idea: [the content of my post is BELOW THE QUOTE!!!]

[quote=Pheonix IV (of gpgnet forums)]I got this idea from the Bay 12 Forums, the home range of Toady, who makes Dwarf Fortress (epic game you should check out.)

Anyway, Roll To Dodge is basically a silly little forum game in the style of a tabletop RPG.


RTD is very simple; at it's most basic you guys are characters, you tell me what you want to do, then i roll a 6 sided dice, add or subtract some modifiers and see how well you do.

Different RTD's vary in deadliness, from rolling to see if you successfully walk 10 feet to surviving three 1's in a row in the middle of combat, this one is going to fall somewhere in the middle, and will take alot of cues from DF.


In this RTD, you have two action types; Free Actions and Standard Actions. You can perform as many Free Actions as you like (within reason) and there are no rolls involved; you just succeed (or fail if it's impossible). Free Actions include (but are not limited to) communicating, moving around, picking things up, dropping things and so on.

Standard Actions are the meat of RTD; you may perform one Standard Action per turn and they require a roll to see how well you do, the rolls are as follows;

0 - Epic Fail. You're probably dead, and you might have taken somone else with you. Only achievable with a penalty.
1 - Big Fail. That didn't work, and you just made things worse as well!
2 - Normal Fail. That didn't work, try again.
3 - Success! Just.
4 - Comfortable Success. You did what you wanted to and you learned a little bit in the process (+1 skillpoint).
5 - Great Success. Excellent! Not only did you succeed, but you did even better than you expected to! (+1 skillpoint)
6 - Incredible Success. You went above and beyond the call of duty and did something truely superhuman. The earth trembles at your approach. (+2 skillpoints)
7 - Epic Success. The laws of physics hold no power over you! The best possible outcome occurs, and you're loving it. (+2 skillpoints) Only achievable with a bonus.
8 - Overshot. Whoops, you went a wee bit too far. The result is definitely what you wanted to, but with some unintentional side-effects; like you targeted the enemy cultist and blew up the entire city. (+3 skillpoints) Only achievable with a big bonus.

Anything below 0 or above 8 is treated as a 0 or 8 respectively.

You can get bonuses from many sources, including magical buffs, skill training (see below), good equipment and random circumstance.


Skills are another part of RTD; Skills can be anything, if you focus on it you can become skilled in opening doors. There's no list of skills and the only way to see if you can learn a skill is to try it.

Skills have 12 levels, each level requires more XP than the previous level.

Dabbling - 1
Novice - 2 (+1 bonus if the die rolls a natural 1)
Competant - 4 (Static +1 to all rolls)
Skilled - 7 (Static +1 to all rolls, successes are improved.)
Adept - 11 (Static +1 to all rolls, extra +1 if the dice rolls a natural 1, successes are improved.)
Talented - 16 (Static +2 to all rolls, successes are improved)
Professional - 22 (Static +2 to all rolls, successes are greatly improved.)
Expert - 29 (You may choose to take a +1, +2 or +3 bonus to your rolls, successes are greatly improved.)
Master - 37 (You may choose to take a +1, +2 or +3 bonus to your rolls, successes are substantially improved.)
High Master - 46 (Static +3 bonus to all rolls, successes are substantially improved. You cannot Overshoot.)
Grand Master - 56 (Static +4 bonus to all rolls, successes are massively improved. You may choose to Overshoot, or not.)
Ledgendary - 75 (You choose which number you roll from 0 to 8.)

You get bonuses at different skill levels as well. Note that each bonus replaces any previous bonuses.


WEWNDS! Invariably you will meet people who are not very nice and who will try to hurt you, and whom you will try to hurt. You will be engaged in conflict and some of you will be hurt. These are the wound levels;

Lightly Wounded - Don't worry about it. You'll recover with a short rest and take no penalites. Just try not to get hit again.
Moderately Wounded - Ow. You take a -1 penalty to any rolls you make with this body part and may suffer some extra penalties if the part is important (like your brain). You'll heal after you take a fairly long rest.
Broken - Aaah! -2 penalty to any rolls made with this body part. Can only apply to brittle parts (like bones). Worse still, this will not heal by itself; you're going to need medical attention!
Mangled - Damaged beyond recognition. You'll be copping at least a -3 penalty to anything you try and use with this limb, and will probably be suffering a butt-ton of extra effects. Like Broken, this will not heal by itself.
Lopped Off - It's gone! Holy hell it's gone! You can't do anything that requires this part, and if it's an important part (like, say, your head) you are now dead. Worse still this cannot be healed by mundane means, and will require at least an Incredible success to fix!


There are also a number of status effects which may vary from time to time, i'll explain each effect when it turns up.


For Fighting, i first roll to see if you are successful in making your attack, the enemy then gets a roll to see if he dodges, if he doesn't, i make a third roll to see how much damage you do.



The process is fairly simple; i'll wait until i have at least 3 people signed up and then we'll start the game. Once the game is started you simply declare your actions, once everyone has declared their actions or more than 24 hours have passed i'll do a summary and tell you all how you did, move any NPCs around and then we go onto the next round.

I would also appreciate it if you'd keep the spam out of this thread (looking at you toot) and if Funky could clean it of spam every now and then. Although this is OT, so i expect to see some silliness.


If you have any questions, fire away, otherwise sign up and we shall begin. I'll most certainly use the results of this thread in the OT Comic, either as inspiration or a direct translation.

Go! [/quote]

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Now, when played on a forum, its a very slow game, so I was hoping to do it on IRC in maybe sessions of an hour or two (we could get A LOT more done in just that time)

I was hoping you guys would be interested in doing a Transcendence themed game of R2D...

You CAN get out of your ship (if you get a space suit or if you dock with something). YOU CAN BUY A NEW SHIP TOO!

We'll be starting with standard transcendence items and ships- so nothing crazy or OP goes on. However, if you loot and roll a 6 or 7 or 8, you may get a rather epic and unique item that would otherwise not normally exist (though it will still be realistic in terms of transcendence)

As GM, I'll also control the actions of non-player entities (such as the pirates that gated in when you chose to investigate the crate they were using as a hideout). The NPE's also get a roll (so yes, if the pirate attacking you scores a 7 or 8, it means you blew up or got some major damage done. Our game still follows the levels set in Georges transcendece, so the most a pesky little corsair will do to someone with a lazarus shield and a hyperion reactor enhanced with a roll of (7) to 5GW is maybe drop the shields by 10% per uber-roll- however that's still a MASSIVE bonus to a little corsair)

We'll start in Eridani, each of the players on a pilgrimage to the core...

And lastly...

Mostly, this game is limited by your imagination (and my imagination, as GM), but you can't go do ridiculous things for your action such as "I use my laser cannon to tear a hole in spacetime to make a shortcut to the core" or "I become supreme being of the universe"... anything dumb and over the top like that automatically gets limited to a max role of 2.

and even more lastly...

And yes, you guys each get to choose what your starting ship will be and you get a roll that will determine what condition your ship is in and what you have in your cargo hold and the number of credits to your name.

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So sign up here, with the starting ship class of your choice.

We also need to try to find a time when we are all on IRC...

[alterecco]

The idea sounds fun. For rolling the dice, i can suggest you use one of the bots in the channel, to make it nice and impartial. Ttech should be able to set you up with that, otherwise let me know.

.]

[Prophet]

Count me in!

I can probably put together some sort of character sheet if you like. Something to keep track of stats, equipment or whatever...

• Character Name:
  Player Name:
  Credits:
  
  Ship:
  Equipment:
  Inventory:
  Personal Items:
  
  Skills
  Name - Rank

Other necessary info can always be added.

[Aury]

BTW-I've decided to add a bigger plot element to this (as seen by atarlost's comments and phoenixIV's example on the gpgnet forums)...

Much of the information and storyline will be uncovered as you explore/meet people/go to restaurants or bars/find data roms, etc. (btw- to find stations/certain stations/certain ships/wrecks/stargates, etc, you need to use a standard action). You could of course also find a system map rom, but of course, using any rom can still fail.

However, what you do know, is that there are rumors of an attack on the commonwealth, a large attack that could wipe out even stk's. But you don't know when, or by whom. And it must be stopped.

I'll have drawn out the systems before hand, and they won't necessarily be exactly like what you see normally in transcendence. Same for topology.

BTW- if you or your ship loses any of the following items (lopped off/amputated, or in the case of your ship, vaporized/blown clear off/all out of energy[running out of energy gives you 1 turn to salvage the situation/refuel your ship/whatever]), you die and have to restart.

head, lungs, heart; life support, hull, main computer, reactor

[Aury]

More info: ok, I made the star chart (so now I know what systems link to what). BTW, the system topology is NON LINEAR. System map roms (depending on the success roll of using them/discerning their type) will generate one of the following out comes: [you can examine the rom as a standard action instead, but it takes a full turn and doesn't have full chance of success]

Roll Rom type Result
0 - Very Defective - nav computer crash [forces standard action of restarting computer before any attempt to travel. Traveling sans nav comp results in -3 penalty to all traveling rolls]
1 - Defective - loss of stored map data OR loss of main screen [must be repaired (or -4 penalty to all action requiring view screen resulting in insta fail for all said action), as standard action]
2 - Blank - nothing happens
3 - Basic - reveals one particular station
4 - Standard - reveals civilian friendly stations + names of adjacent systems
5 - Standard++ - reveals enemy stations as well + names of adjacent systems
6 - military - reveals all stations + names of systems to a depth of 2
7 - global - reveals all stations + all system names
8 - global (overshoot) - reveals all map data for all systems, overloads nav comp RAM and crashes nav comp. Nav comp req reboot, but data is saved.

[schilcote]

Dicerolls (and indeed many other things) could be done with a modified Schilbot (Well, actually a totally new bot using Schilbot's IRC engine but that's beside the point.) If somebody can give me a list of features that such a bot would require (No, I did not read the thread in detail, and no, I do not plan to in the future) and I can begin work.

[Aury]

All it needs is a 1->6 random number generator (it would be best if it could just handle a pre-specified dice system, so we could do a command like:

"Shilbot: 1d6" or something, similar to the notation used in transcendence already.

[schilcote]

Well, we can start with just that. I suppose that's simple enough to just tack on to Schilbot. Still, a fully featured IRC bot could make this game more interesting and/or easier to play.

"Shilbot: 1d6" or something.

And never, ever forget the c.

Schilcote is my name. Not shilcote. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to pronounce that.[/b]

[Prophet]

Here's a neat little dice roller that everyone can see. It even supports chat.

http://rpgp.org/dice/?p=group



What about backstories for the characters?

Should the players create their own or are they predetermined?

[Ttech]

If you want ot use IRC let me know on there and I can set you up with a seperate channel you can use and manage for that.

[schilcote]

A seperate channel might actually make the bot easier to work with, instead of having to figure out a way to turn him on and off we could just leave him running at all times.

[Aury]

Yeah, I guess so... maybe "##transcendenceRTD"?

[Betelgeuse]

sounds cool, I have never played these types of games but I am interested.

[Aury]

Neat! I'm GMT-8 btw- perhapse we can gather on the main channel tommorrow at around noon or something (GMT-8, I don't know what your timezones are) and discuss this further and perhapse even start

[Prophet]

I'm in your timezone Wolfy but I work nights so noon is no good for me.

In anticipation of that I prepared a brief history for Prophet:

Born to a middle class family on Starton Eridani, his mother was he port master for the Korolov Transportation company on the station his father worked as an ore miner but was killed in a pirate raid when Prophet was only 6. Prophet had difficulty making friends and spent all his free time playing in the port where his mother worked. Pretending the cargo containers were his fortress and he was the mighty Arco-Vaughn, pirate king! The freighter pilots became Prophet's friends and they would often give him toys and candy from other stations and systems, often just to get him to leave so they could get his mother alone for a half hour, but the trinkets meant more to Prophet and he began to amass a small treasure trove of them. Holo-cards from the Merchant Prince Hotel and an empty bottle of bombay sapphire gin. A cracked thannogram and a bolt of sub-standard neo linen. Prophet's treasure trove grew slowly, hidden away in an unused container that he frequently used as his hideaway from the other children. Prohet's eduction was standard, an average student with no average marks. His fellow students barely noticed him and he quietly sat and day dreamed about flying through space like all the freighter pilots he had met. Visiting different worlds in different star systems, meetings neo-humans and aliens.

Prophet had become very close with Ty Rummol, a Korolov freighter pilot that carried food and water from stations in the outer systems back to Eridani. Ty became a surrogate father for Prophet for the 6 days out of 23 that he was on the station and he shared many tales of dventure with Prophet who would interject with questions about everything. An outbreak of an engineered virus nearly shut down the station and Ty's crew was hit hard. Down to only 34 crew he offered Prophet a position on his ship for the voyage until the regular crew were able. Prophet could barely contain himself when he asked his mother for permission and she grudgingly allowed him to, asking for daily vid-phone calls when they put into port. The work was long and hard aboard Ty's Antares I freighter and time was difficult to measure without the schedule of school and meals
and business bustling. Life on a starship was everything he had imagined, except for all the exciting adventure. His days were filled with countless chores and errands. He would use his free time to wander around the engine room and study the engineers as they calibrated the reactor or reinitialize the energy conduits. On his 3rd day he managed to find Ty walking down a deck hall and while chatting Prophet learned that Ty was to pick up some containers of fresh megathere meat from Cygni and the price was 300 credits a ton. Having spent his life with many frieghter pilots he told Ty that the price was inflated and that he could get the meat for less than half that price from the Agri-station in Jotunheim which was one days travel further. Ty brought Prophet to the bridge and they mapped out a
course with his crew, changing nearly half the scheduled stops and adding a few more just to catch a good deal.

They were half way back to Eridani, and a few days late already, when Ty recieved a vid-call from Korolov Assistant Director Sheppard. When Ty emerged from his office he was scowling and tensing his fists, obviously his superiors were not happy that he had accumulated a higher margin than what they had accounted for. Later that day Ty spoke with Prophet and explained that his Antares was not to be used as a shopping cart and he could not make any more unscheduled trades because Korolov was sending an escort to ensure strict adherence to their flightpath. Ty gave Prophet half of the earnings the ship had made with his help as well as directions to an old friend that had an old EI500 personal freighter for sale, suggesting that Prophet follow his destiny and find a new home among the stars.