Re: IRC Roleplaying

Darkhawk wrote:

Ok, here's my view on this.

In many ways, it is very tempting to wish for a continuation of Seed, with the same chars as Norah says. That could potentially, ideally be very great. However, I don't believe it is feasible.   It would take too much knowledge to get right. And I only think the GM's and certain TM members have an overview of that knowledge (and yeah, I'm not volunteering for GM duty here, that's the kind of guy I am wink). That would be too much, and perhaps the GM would also think it too limiting. So here's my suggestion:

Alternate Seed universe. Same background story, same NPC's (TSR and so, plus of course whatever the GM's come up with), same everything, apart from the chars we played. Like our chars waking up for the first time, that 4th May last year. Ah, without the bugs ofcourse wink

I like this quite a bit.

Seems like the only way we're going to get enough players on board is for me to GM a campaign closely related to Seed. (Tantavalist, will you join such a game?) And this one is the most interesting to me so far, so unless there's an objection, let's do it.

Darkhawk wrote:

Everything but the chars would be there. And of course things might and would develop in completely different ways from there. You could say only a few colonists were out (we woke up after that huge storm took out much of the tower, wate r gushed into the reactor, and 40000 or so died), or that thousands of new colonists were. You could do what you wanted of course. I think this is the best way to do it. Obviously, there's interest for it to be quite Seedish, and without that aspect, we won't have enough players. Ideally, I'd say at least 5 players, more would be fine, it's easier to handle on IRC, and with a potential helping GM.

We played a five-player Harry Potter campaign for a while, and the GM said it got quite hectic, so if we go above we should either accept there will be long pauses in GM attention, focus on different groups on different sessions, or have several GMs.

Darkhawk wrote:

Now some practicalities for the GM's. You should speak to Ahnion and or Sandling. They wrote down the complete datasets. These are invaluable for background lore. And you should speak to me and, of course, especially Esme, with specific questions about rings, lore, happenings, such things. My memory is bad, but at least I was in the middle of everything. Esme would have the advantage of actually having had access to all the secret knowledge though (at least I think she did wink).

It's naturally a good idea to consult those sources, though I think we can play a few scenarios even before reading them. (Now how would I contact Esme? She's been pretty absent lately.) The story itself could probably be used pretty much as it is. However, I'd make at least the following changes:

1) No standing around hatches wawing a tool at it. Instead the repairers will have to get fully into it, crawling in tight spaces inside the machines etc.

2) No need to wait for the implementation of different features, so injuries would be there from the start, as well as maybe steambaths and other such things.

3) Generally, there could be small spaces and plenty of other details

4) Less bookkeeping, which would mean a far more abstract economy than Seed had.

By the way, I never quite figured out where the floatbeds were supposed to be. In the floatbed chambers, yes, but I never saw any doors or tanks or anything there. And how did all our hundreds of floatbeds fit into those two little rooms?

Darkhawk wrote:

Also, I have a very nifty tool for tracking trained skills. It's up to the GM(s), but why not keep the general idea of the skill system? TAU speedlearning things into you all the time. What skills these are could be modified to fit in with what the GM wants, and you could easily think of a TAU hacker getting TAU to teach him combat skills, etc. Whatever you want. Anyway, this tool can be set up with any kind of skill you'd care to include, and can keep track of all players for the GM. Nifty.

TAU speedlearning would be fine, but the rules should be changed, I think. For example, the repair system: In the MMORPG, it was all about how fast you could repair the damage, and you kept repairing similar hatches for long periods of time. In the IRC RPG I would, however, use a more traditional method, where repairers would be given specific repair tasks, and depending on their skills (and perhaps tools) and a roll, you would either succeed or fail, with appropriate consequences. Due to this, most of the original skills would need to be either removed or given a different meaning, as they usually dealt with time-related things.

Darkhawk wrote:

There are probably other things too, but.. Anyway, I'll leave all of that to the GM(s).

I'd say the GM's gather knowledge, prepare story, then make backgrounds with interested players? And that we get as many on board as possible. A RP session once a week or even more is not as problematic as playing a MMOG each day, so.. Should be possible.

And Norah, you should really join in you know. Why? Because it's Seed, you're bored, and you crave RP.. There wink

What do you mean by preparing a story and making backgrounds? Newborns don't have any backgrounds, and the story we already know. Or do you mean, prepare the first scenario? I figure being born and familiarizing with the world, with something extra to spice it up, would be a good way to start.

One more thing, before we get too excited: scheduling, the death of most campaigns. Considering I need to wake up at 5:00 GMT weekdays nowadays and that both Saturday and Sunday are taken by face-to-face RP already, it'd be very nice if we could play in the Friday evening. Alternatively, we could play from, say, 16:00 GMT to 21:00 GMT one of the other weekday evenings. Please tell me if your limitations on the schedule.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Kryigerof wrote:

By the way, I never quite figured out where the floatbeds were supposed to be. In the floatbed chambers, yes, but I never saw any doors or tanks or anything there. And how did all our hundreds of floatbeds fit into those two little rooms?

I think those were just the chambers that the beds came out into. The holes in those chambers were where a floatbed would be lowered so the person could get out, I guess. There was this whole drawing/diagram of it in the concept art. You could see there both what a floatbed looked like and how it fitted into the Tower, I think.

-Norah/Liath-
"Do not follow! The milk is not ready, and you are not ready for the milk!"
-Psychonauts: Milkman Conspiracy area

Re: IRC Roleplaying

So, as far as I know, we have five players interested: Tantavalist, Darkhawk, Mehken, Dustman and Mir (and maybe Norah). Please, all of you, and anyone else interested, reply to this thread once more to verify your interest (or lack of it) and let me know if Friday evening is okay for you.

Last edited by Kryigerof (2007-01-10 23:57:44)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Ok, I'm interested. And friday evening is ok, but I have to work at 01 GMT+1 every other friday.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Well, I'm more than willing to give it a try. Since it'll be my first text-only RP experience, I can't promise, I'll stay on, however.

As for the scheduling; friday evening will be suitable for me too.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

/signup

Friday looks right for me too wink

Re: IRC Roleplaying

ok,
/me signs up

For now, anyway. We'll see how it goes...

-Norah/Liath-
"Do not follow! The milk is not ready, and you are not ready for the milk!"
-Psychonauts: Milkman Conspiracy area

Re: IRC Roleplaying

What the hell... I'm in if it goes ahead. Not busy most Fridays either.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Hello. Here's a draft for the skill system to use:

The skill development system is basically the same as Seed's, and I'll keep track of it using the Seed Skill Tracker program. The skills, themselves, however, need heavy redefinition.

The GM makes all rolls and describes the outcomes to the players.

All skills have a range of 10 levels at the start, but the limit might be increased by research.

The repair skills:

Mechanical repairs
Electrical repairs
Structural repairs (old: Engineering)
Electronical repairs
Contamination cleaning

These are the basic skills you need to do any specific kind of repair job. They measure if you have the required knowledge to handle the task if given enough time. Every repair job involves rolling against at least one.

Juryrigging

If time is limited, another roll against Juryrigging is required to see if you were quick enough to finish the work on time.

Quality Assurance

After making the repair, a roll on Quality Assurance will determine if the problem will reoccurr later.

The rest of the tradeoff skills are excluded.

Medical skills:

First aid

Helps keep people from dying but won't heal any injuries.

Surgery

Enables the doctor to heal injuries.

ANY SUBFIEDLS FOR EITHER? MORE MEDICAL SKILLS?

Science:

There's a skill for every relevant field of science, such as:

Medicine
Mathematics
Biology
Physics
Chemistry

The skills are used whenever you try to remember information about something or find new information through research.

SUBFIELDS LIKE MICROBIOLOGY OR SOMETHING?

Production skills:

I'm not quite sure how to handle production... it's such a complicated thing in the original Seed and not very suitable for a traditional campaign due to the need of repetetive, complex resource handling.

Administration skills:

I'd rather not have any administrators in the campaign at all. Instead factories would be controlled by rings, as they practically did in Seed anyway. Not quite sure about the ingame mechanism for how they control them. Perhaps anyone can configure factories but it's a lot of work so whoever puts their time into it, can do it? Perhaps there's some sort of deals in place to keep people from fitting and refitting factories and thus wasting time.

Social skills:

In addition to traditional Seed skills, I thought we could add some social skills for handling the masses of NPCs present. Such as:

Argumentation

Used to convince others that your point of view is the most reasonable. Because these discussions can get fairly detailed and lengthy, and the common workers don't have time to listen to them day and night, this skill is generally used to convince leader types.

Populism

Used to convince the masses that your ring and your goals are worth their support. Because Seeds are generally smart they're not susceptible to obvious propaganda. Nevertheless, efficient marketing of your ideas becomes at least as important as the actual wisdom in them.

Leadership

Your ability to lead the people immediately around you, for example a damage control team in a complex repair effort.

Management

Your ability to manage the complexities that come with working together in a ring or project. Rolled to determine how efficient your underlings are in some task.

End words:

Please give your comments on how to improve this further.

Last edited by Kryigerof (2007-01-12 20:02:42)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

for now, I would say:

maybe field science and lab science devisions? The science stuffies as described would be the same, but they'd have two parts to them? If that's even possible.

And for medical skills, either stemming the bleeding (so to speak) or cutting people open, seems like we're missing something. Like: analysing symptoms and administering medication, to cure a disease. Seems a bit drastic to have to perform surgery to cure everything...

Last edited by Norah (2007-01-14 23:02:44)

-Norah/Liath-
"Do not follow! The milk is not ready, and you are not ready for the milk!"
-Psychonauts: Milkman Conspiracy area

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Let's add tdb to the list of the interested.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

I'll come with my skilltree suggestions soonish, now that the forum is up. At least before friday I will wink

Re: IRC Roleplaying

So the players so far are:

Darkhawk, Mehken, Norah, Dustman, Tantavalist, Mir, tdb, and Esme (I'm still sure I forgot someone...). That's eight players, and that's pretty many for one GM to keep entertained. It would be a pity, though, to have to refuse someone entry, though.

It was suggested on IRC that someone would take the role of a co-GM to ease my burden (Esme was suggested to this role). If anyone would like to take the role of another GM instead of player, please say so in this thread.

Or if someone has some other idea on how to help this situation, I'd be happy to hear it.

Last edited by Kryigerof (2007-01-16 08:24:47)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

I don't think 8 players will be too many, unless they are all very active and very scheming (i.e. private talks with the GM and each other). Well, they might be, but the first playing session will reveal this and other stuff, which can then be corrected for, for instance with an extra GM if needed. But didn't Tantavalist himself offer this?

/me steps back quickly, disappearing in the crowds, giving Tantavalist a push forward first

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Tantavalist doesn't want to GM Seed, he says so on the previous page.

It's just that I prefer wo work some stories based on the individual characters into my games (not necessarily solo stories). With eight players I don't think I can give everyone equal attention.

Last edited by Kryigerof (2007-01-16 10:07:10)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Okay, first session will be held on Friday January 19th, at 18:00 GMT, unless someone objects. Please try to have some sort of a character concept by then (you can tell it to me on IRC).

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Any chance, we could push it an hour? To 19:00 that is.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

EDIT: Since tdb also had a problem with 18 GMT, we'll start at 18:30 GMT. (Erased earlier message.)

Last edited by Kryigerof (2007-01-18 18:51:55)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Ok, I tried making a fantastic, totally advanced skill system. Then I ran into the obvious problem of what to place where, and the whole thing getting ridiculously ad-hoc and unintuitive. Naturally. Then my laziness told me to quit, or rather, default on something simpler.

So, without going into the actual skills at first, here goes. I think we should have skills and skill levels up to 5 (not 10). There should be generalist skills that you have to learn before you can learn more specialized skills, those you would need to really make a difference. That way, you can have some differences in your various fields, even if you have 5 mathematicians in a group for instance. Having only generalist skills means everybody would end up knowing the same things.

Generalist skills should be easy to learn, but the things you can learn after those should first pop up after or around lvl. 3. So for example, Biology (difficulty 3) level 3 = Possibility to tart specializing in Microbiology (difficulty 4). Physics (difficulty 3) level 3 = Possibility to start specing in Geology (difficulty 3). Etc.. And all are of course just examples, also in regards to difficulty levels.

Now, let's take a concrete (such as it is) example: You want to research a terraforming project. Terraforming would involve a lot of specialized and generalist skills. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology. Geology, Microbiology, Meteorology, Astronomy (possibly), Statistics, Computer Science and various other Biology, Physics or Chemistry skills depending on what you were actually going to do.

It would be a true example of nearly everyone in every field being able to contribute and working together. Whereas Genetic Modification would need somewhat less different specializations.

I can't bother to come up with a complete skill set, because even to try to do that would be foolish, it is something that can grow as we play, decided and tempered by the GM, maybe some skills will move around a little or have their difficulty changed. That usually happens. Players will come up with new skills, most of these specializations on the broader and more stable generalist skills. This can happen as we go. The reason science skills were difficulty 2 in Seed was probably that they weren't really usable, but here they will be, so I think difficulty 3 is more suitable for the generalist science skills? At least if we use real time time measurement. Otherwise everyone could be a generalist scientist in all fields after 2 play sessions.

Now, the generalist skills. We could say there are two fields, if we really want to divide (not usually that clever, unless it's totally easy and unproblematic, which it usually isn't.), namely Applied Science and Theoretical Science. Applied would be everything that takes from the environment and creates or changes something, whereas Theoretical would be that which studies the environment, producing more knowledge about it. That means skills such as Repair, Production and Administration are in the former, while Mathematics, Physics, etc. are in the latter. Theoretical knowledge about medicine could be a Theoretical Skill, while First Aid and Surgery would be Applied skills.

Don't know if we need suich a division, but it might be useful for.. something?

As for Repair, Production and Administration.. These deserve a special mention.

Whether these should each be several skills, or just one generalist skill with some specialization skills is of course up to the GM. We also discussed that if you for instance had a good knowledge of Electronics, then you could both build, repair and operate electronical equipment, removing the need for a Repair, Production or Administration skills as such. The only problem with this approach is that it might not be possibly to cover all the different things you can build or repair in several skills. Electronics and Mechanics are easy and very broad. But what if you have to repair a system in the powerplant oozing radioactive material, loose cabling with electrics, possibly underwater? When repairing, or producing for that matter, you'd always have to use several skills (or need them) in order to do something, and some of the skills would have to be made up or ignored. Wouldn't this get too complicated? Not sure.

On the other hand, it does make more sense to go for generalist skills that can be used for several things. Image you had a repair generalist skill, with a possible specialization in 'Electronics' at level 3. Then you couldn't use a computer before you had learned to repair in general? Not good. So these skills should probably stand on their own. This goes for Repair, and it goes for Production and Administration too I think. No need to have these as skills in themselves. Administration in particular should be easy. A little programming maybe, to set it up, meaning you need knowledge of the Programming skill (or Software as a catch all), and knowledge in the thing you're trying to produce. No need for Administration.

So, under Applied Science I could see the following generalist skills:

- Power (eh, what's a person called who specializes in power systems? Something like that)
- Mechanics
- Structural/Engineer (Engineer is a broad term, Structural confusing. But someone who can build structures)
- Software (general use of computers/interfaces with TAU, programming/hacking as specializations?)
- Hardware (that's electronics really, but since I have a software skill, it makes more sense..)
- Doctor (First Aid, Surgery, other practical fields as specializations. The generalist skill should have low difficulty, 2 perhaps?)

Looking around our house here, I believe everything in it could be built or understood with these skills. Minus the knowledge in our books and bodies. But my computer is hardware and software, the building is structural, the circuits with electricity is Power, the waterlock installed is Mechanics, and so on. So the same, on a larger scale, -should- hold true for the tower. I think we could work with this system. I might be forgetting something incredibly obvious of course, but..

You could say that Therapy was a subset of the generalist Doctor  skills by the way (or the Psychology Theoretical Science skill. Or both), just to give an example of how to add to the generalist skills when something comes up. Therapy wouldn't warrant standing alone as a generalist skill with specializations unless the game really focused on it.

Now, Kryigerof mentioned Jury-Rigging and Quality Assurance (or something like that), as skills to have. Well, yes. It doesn't fit in well with this system (either generalist skills, that are not all that generalist, or specializations that would have to be learned for each type of repair), and personally I'd say knowledge of how to do both things comes with the relevant skill itself. As in, a modern-day electrician would have in his general skill the knowledge of how both to do a quick, shoddy job, and how to do a careful, methodical job. It's not like that requires a special kind of study for him.  I am biased in that I don't place much importance on making a huge system for running around and repairing (or much else really), I prefer these things to be up to RP and a general GM judgement (maybe to some part helped by a dieroll), but if Kryigerof wants a complete RPG Repair mechanic thing, this system I'm outlining here is probably too simple to carry it.

Well, that's it for Applied Science. Now to the Theoretical Science skills.

Mathematics
Physics
Biology
Chemistry (can have Medicine as a specialization, or Medicine could possibly stand on its own, but it might be too small then, as medicine = chemistry and biology in the first place)

These are the hard sciences, very broad ones too, with many specializations. But there are many more generalist sciences of course, such as History (with MANY specializations), Religion, Sociology, Philosophy, Antropology, Languages, etc. Some of these could be dumped into History, but that would make History way too big and 'powerful'. When it comes down to it, these other generalist skills are probably for our chars to take to make them more fleshed out and special, but most of them might not have much of an actual impact ingame, while some will. It should be discussed with the GM on an individual basis I guess. And of course I also think TAU would have everyone start out with a smattering of historical knowledge.

As for the suggested social skills, we discussed that on the IRC. I don't exactly remember who said what, but it was agreed to drop them? The reasoning, which I was giving was that those skills negate RP to at least some extent and are not needed. I'd also say it creates too many skills to focus on and administer. A GM should judge by the personality of a char, and his actual interactions with others, how persuasive that char is, what he is known for, what he has done, etc and then make improvised judgments in regards to NPC's and general reputation based on that if needed. Much more simple, and actually also more intense/good for the flow. Imo.

If this turns out to be too simple, it can be changed of course, we're experimenting here I think. And these are just my suggestions for a skill system (1 day before we start playing, yes.. Excellent timing wink).

It's also not super-thoroughly analyzed at all, so that's the disclaimer.

There you have it. Actual play will as always mold and change and decide things ultimatively.

Last edited by Darkhawk (2007-01-18 21:12:51)

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Let's use your skill system, Darkhawk.

Re: IRC Roleplaying

Well, the first session is over, and it appears to have gone quite nicely. Tantavalist, Mir, and Esme, you're still welcome to join us if you like, though I must admit five players is quite enough of a chore.:)