Re: IRC Roleplaying
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
