World of Darkness: The Darkness of Space - New Game: The Darkness of Space

[LydaLynn]

Originally Posted By: Wyrd

I'd have to find one first. I'm not exactly artistically inclined...

[LydaLynn]

If everyone could, as they are able, please set up a profile thread in the Games subforum.

Please title the thread: Character Name[DoS character]

Feel free to use the character's use name if he/she doesn't share a given name with the rest of the PCs. You can find examples of profile threads here: http://www.rpg-post.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/185/1/Characters.html

Thank you.

[Wyrd]

Thanks. Not quite what I had in mind, but definitely close enough to use. Did you draw any of the images you've posted in this thread, or are you just good at finding them?

Edit:

put the profile here? http://www.rpg-post.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/317/1/Games.html

If I'm reading the rules right, once we have enough characters listed there, DoS will get its own subforum to hold those characters, right?

[LydaLynn]

It was the best I could do quickly - if you find something you'd like better - I'll green the hair for you.

I did the layout for the moon base - the Incarnum races I had commissioned a while ago.

[Wyrd]

So, do we have any characters who don't have mental as their first priority? It fits the characters, and the other two posted so far seem interesting, I've just never had a group of characters so cerebrally inclined.

Tejah, with your young child I expect our characters will be seeing quite a lot of each other, and I could definitely see a friendship forming between them. For one thing, we both have photographic memories. I don't think, realistically speaking, a doctor in my position would be able to keep track of exactly how to treat so many different species without an enhanced memory.

Grimm, being a not exactly legal resident of the base, will likely be visiting me in my professional capacity far less often. Then again, with your own life magic(being Verbena, I presume you have at least two dots) you should be able to fix most minor ailments within yourself.

Now if we could just get some posts from the other players. I want to know the other characters! I'm curious and bored, which is not quite as dangerous a combination for me as for a kender, but rather close at times.

[Grimm]

Wyrd -

Expect Grimm to be turning up in the unlikeliest places to render aid. After all, he's a very mage-y mage, even at eleven. He likes to surf the synchronicity highways.

Another set of interesting interactions will come when Grimm encounters those who feel that he needs looking after or want somehow to constrain the young magus so he doesn't get into trouble. Smart or not, learned or not, however mature Grimm is doesn't change the fact that he IS a child, and people are going to keep trying to treat him as one. Which will lead to some good laughs and good RP too.

[LydaLynn]

I'm going to wait until tonight before I 'stir the pudding' in the thread at all. Please feel free to interact with each other.

[Wyrd]

I can think of a way to give an excuse to meet Tejah in game, but frankly I can't see leaving the medical area much until everything is up and running, and the med bay is restricted for non-emergencies until then, so I am unlikely to see Grimm today. If Tejah or Mik isn't on before you decide to 'stir the pot,' what I'm about to post can just be assumed to have been resolved off screen with a different engineer.

[LydaLynn]

The pot stirring will be minor - until the main command staff arrives the next day - nothing too big is going to happen - I'm just gonna let some NPCs loose to help get people together who otherwise might not interact.

I really want to have some establishing time before 'stuff happens' to help the game build in a more natural manner. I very much enjoy a more co-operative story telling to a heavy plot driven game - don't get me wrong - there will be plenty of plot - but I want the organic feel of a looser game as well.

[Wyrd]

I gm'ed one game where I was making certain to give the characters time to get to know each other before starting the main plot. Then I got really sick and missed a few weeks, killing the game. They never even found out what the plot was, so at least I can reuse it later if I ever feel like trying again. The problem with that particular plot was that I needed reliable players and a minimum number of them to make certain aspects of the plot work.

[Pilgrim]

Ya'll bear me with me, please. This is my first time doing a play-by-post, and I'm slowly figuring it out.

[Justin OOC]

no worries here

[Wyrd]

Originally Posted By: Pilgrim

Ya'll bear me with me, please. This is my first time doing a play-by-post, and I'm slowly figuring it out.

Me as well, so its all good. Mostly right now seems to be about introducing your character. Lyda hasn't complained about any of us inventing minor NPC's, so just try to write something that fits your character and the setting.

All of my prior RP experience has been in person, several groups favoring combat more than I like, but I'm pretty flexible. I just hope to make some positive contributions. I've also started writing my own fanfiction, so this may help improve those.

[Pilgrim]

Yeah, Wyrd, the same applies to me, except I am almost always the GM. It will be nice to be a player for a change.

Edit: By the way, I found a website that is full of fillable .pdf character sheets for WoD.

[Wyrd]

You gonna link to it?

I've been both GM and player. I'm pretty flexible. I make a fair GM, as long as I have a good idea of what story I want to tell before I start. My best sessions tend to be pretty spontaneous, but without a good idea of where in general I want things to go, things get derailed way too easily.

Then again, some of the best/funniest/most retellable moments came from nights where I stopped trying to get my players on track and just joined them in the gutter, like when I gave one of them the Sword of Bump-chicka-bow-wow, a singing sword that played porn music when drawn. Despite being relatively weak, that sword continued to be used for the rest of the campaign.

[Grimm]

I find that particularly when it comes to character development and immersion Play by Post is superior. There's time for you to develop the character's voice without having to worry about taking up other people's table-time. You can write side-fics and backstories that others can read at their leisure, and you're more of an active participant in running the game, from making up minor NPCs to adding in pop-culture references relevant to the time and place.

Combat is better too, at least in some ways. The pacing means that you can think out your actions and actually roleplay how you character fights rather than "Okay, I blast the crap outta X with Y, Z and B." A character's thoughts and feelings in high-stress situations are an important part of the story. And whilst it's not as fast-paced as in TT games, at least here there's seldom the problem of the ONE player who fails to pay attention to everyone else's moves and absentmindedly tosses a fireball into the melee.

[Pilgrim]

Sure, Wyrd. Here you go.

http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/

[Wyrd]

Quote:

at least here there's seldom the problem of the ONE player who fails to pay attention to everyone else's moves and absentmindedly tosses a fireball into the melee.

I played a blind pixie-fairy battlemage who guessed where he needed to target his spells at one point. This was a humour game from the start, so I decided to have fun with it, and he did have an innate sense life ability that helped with targeting.

[LydaLynn]

To facilitate the whole 'making NPCs' I'm going to make a thread specifically for people to note the npcs they create so they can be easily referenced.

[Wyrd]

Works for me. So far I have two named staff members with not many details, but keeping track of them might cause them to become fully fleshed out later.

[LydaLynn]

That's the thought.

[LydaLynn]

Just keep editing your posts as needed to add NPCs - though don't go too crazy - just the ones you interact with regularly need a name.

[Wyrd]

OK. Any of my staff are likely to show up again, or at least have the opportunity to do so. 'Stud' from Tejah's post, on the other hand, might never show up again. Unless she wants him to, or someone else wants to annoy her(which I'm sure you would never do).

I don't have any more details in mind for those characters at this point, though I definitely want them to be from several species, preferably with a few supernatural beings on staff. Just having some orderlies who can hold down an injured were, vampire, or other super strong being such as a troll long enough for treatment would be very useful.

[Wyrd]

OOC question: How many people are expected in the base? Unlike Babylon 5, your admitted inspiration, there is only one medical zone and one set of doctors, so if you are going for anywhere near the same level of population, the med bay will need to be quite large.

I placed a * next to the word dozens because I plan to edit it if you feel that is not the appropriate level. If you want me to use a different system for posted ideas that are pending an answer from you, or just wait for an answer before posting something I consider questionable, please say so.

I''m sure if we come up with something that you actively disagree with/doesn't fit your setting, you'll tell us to edit it. This question is for parts that I am not quite certain I have the right scale or style for.

[LydaLynn]

The base is huge - there are going to be about 50 ambassadors with with their staff [figure each has a staff of about 5-25] - and they're pretty much all going to be housed on a permanent basis in the Auxiliary dome once it's up and going - with huge spacious suites for each ambassador and adjoining rooms for their staff - not to mention the airlocks and facilities for any special atmospheres and extra room for special guests and a few conference rooms - that's just the one smaller sized dome.

I will give more detailed layouts of the domes at some point [and the labels for the domes will likely change as they are filled and I have a better grasp of what's going where] - but the dome the medbays are in is huge - it's shared with the psychological counselors, research scientists, archeologists, sociologists, anthropologists, terraformers, horticulturalists and other science types and their labs and research areas.

The larger domes all have small first aid stations in them for quick care with EMTs on hand to staff them. Some of the alien ambassadors also have personal physicians as part of their staff.

Hopefully that helps some with scale. This is really a fairly decent sized metropolitan area.

[Wyrd]

I keep meaning to ask this question, and keep forgetting it when I get around to actually typing:

From what you've said, all varieties of were have had the delirium reduced, just as mages have less paradox and vampires have fewer issues with sunlight. The kitsune don't invoke it at all. I know from earlier in this thread that someone was at least considering playing a bastet. As I recall(I had the book at one time), all of the were cats already induced a lesser form of delirium in some of their forms. Does this mean that those forms no longer incite delirium at all, with only the forms that previously incited full delirium now causing lesser delirium?

Edit:

That link above included so many merits and flaws that weren't on LydaLynn's link in the interactive character sheets. I'd love to see a list that was that complete. Then again, I would have had a lot more difficulty deciding which ones I wanted the most, so maybe it is better that the list I chose from was relatively abbreviated.

[Dawn OOC]

Originally Posted By: LydaLynn

The base is huge - there are going to be about 50 ambassadors with with their staff [figure each has a staff of about 5-25] - and they're pretty much all going to be housed on a permanent basis in the Auxiliary dome once it's up and going - with huge spacious suites for each ambassador and adjoining rooms for their staff - not to mention the airlocks and facilities for any special atmospheres and extra room for special guests and a few conference rooms - that's just the one smaller sized dome.
...
Hopefully that helps some with scale. This is really a fairly decent sized metropolitan area.

Can we get rough numbers for staff/employees? You gave ambassadors, but can we get medical, engineering, etc? I'd like to know how many co-workers Teej has.

[Wyrd]

Well, you have at least one player coworker...

I'm sure there are quite a large number of engineers at varying levels of skill and authority. With the area outside the base currently uninhabitable, you would want to make certain you can keep all vital systems running.

I found so many lists of merits and flaws that were far longer than Death Quaker's... but not one of them actually described them. I suppose this makes his list the best of the bunch.

I'm not one for abusing merits and flaws, but they can really help flesh out a character, and I enjoy having more options to choose from.

[LydaLynn]

Delirium is reduced by one step for each form/breed. So if reducing it one step takes it to no delirium, then it's gone for that particular form/breed combo.

Staff - for Engineering, it's being reduced - there are about 250 people that were here as part of the building process that will be moving on to other jobs with the completion of the base. The remaining staff should be around 80 or so for the Engineers/Maintenance.

Medical staff is approximately 90 EMTs - 40 Doctors - 150-200 nurses - 30 technicians - 25 mental health professionals - 10 specialists.

I think that would be about right for the base size and covering all shifts.

[Wyrd]

With that many staff members, maybe I should move some points into leadership. With no stats actually being used in game yet, it's not like it would affect anything that has already happened.

It also makes me glad I put as much into medicine as I did--including the aptitude merit for it--otherwise I wouldn't be qualified.

[LydaLynn]

That's not a bad idea.

[Wyrd]

Arggh! (I'm turning into a pirate, apparently)

Finally some posts in the story thread and there is no way I can reasonably interact with any of them! =(

Maybe I'll write up a medical emergency to keep my character from being bored and for an 'and happening elsewhere' moment.

Edit:

Reading through the merits and flaws made me think of one that I would have liked for some of my characters--Curse like a sailor: Allows you to cuss fluently in ten times as many languages as you can hold a civil conversation in.

[Pilgrim]

Sorry, Wyrd. I'll try to come up with some reason to go to sickbay...

[Wyrd]

It's alright. I'm not focusing all that well today anyways, and once again I am heading to bed shortly after you are able to get on. Soon enough we should have some reasons to interact, but with that entire dome off limits except for emergencies and staff, the only ones of you I expect to see are Tejah and Mik.

[Wyrd]

Since we have two different sets of characters interacting in two separate places, I'd like to remind people that LydaLynn asked us to put the location of our posts at the top of each one.

I'm bringing this up now because Mik's post to me was in the middle of a conversation being held in a different dome. Right now it was easy to tell which post went where, but it is probably a good idea to get in the habit now so that when things are less clear we don't forget.

[Grimm]

Mik -

Couldn't help but notice you stuck your character profile in Kylie OOC's WoD game character board.

You need to put him here: http://www.rpg-post.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/317/1/Games.html

Just copy the info, then delete that post and remake it in the board I pointed you at. Once we've accumulated enough posts, Chosen will give us our own board.

[Wyrd]

Ooh, another profile to read. =)

I've gone so long without having a chance to do any rp that I feel like someone who was trying to quit smoking who is searching through ashtrays for unfinished cigarettes...

[Vortican]

--Grimm

I am afraid it tells me that I can no longer delete the post, so I am unable to remove it. I have reposted it in the given forum spot as requested. I do want to say that I wasn't aware in the first place about a specific spot to post characters so I picked one that was labeled such. Sorry for the mix up.

~V~

[Wyrd]

I asked for clarification when she first asked us to post our character bios, but since it was never given the mistake is understandable. I guess since I managed to put mine in the right place, the others figured no clarification was needed.

[LydaLynn]

My apologies for the confusion. Thank you Grimm for catching that and helping get it set right.

Also, for those who are new - there is a Chat set up and there's usually someone there who can help direct you or give answers if need be.