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Aberrant: Stargate Universe - Stargate Nova game


Mr Fox

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As some of you may know. The Long March is coming to an end soon, and since most or all of my players want to continue, I've decided to ST a new game.

The setting is the Stargate universe.

The time period would be right at the beginning of the Stargate Atlantis expedition.

The premise for new characters would be that the NID or some other shadowy government group found an ancient device that could impart special abilities to normal humans. The catch is that most of the people they experimented on were hopelessly flawed and had terrible side effects of the process (ie Taint). Only those with the Ancient gene who underwent the process were free, or partially free, from the side effects. SG1 discovered the conspiracy and shut down the project sending the device off to Area 51 to be put under guard. But what to do with all those special people? Why enlist them in the program of course. smile

The game will be run, ITB style. I will be the ST and create stories and metaplot. However, each character will have their own story and does not necessarily have to be involved in group stories. Because of the premise of the game, each character can come and go from the group stories as they desire. Each character will will be at least loosely associated with the Stargate program (so that you can have access to the stargate on Earth.)

The game is open for as many players as wish to join. I am not setting any limits on the number of players, however, unlike the Open Board games characters, you do have to be approved by me and I reserve the right to veto anything that I feel might hurt the game/setting.

Characters need to be created with 30nps max. (Those coming over from LM get an additional 5 nps as a reward for their 2.5 years of helping to make that game so much fun for me.)

Taint is limited to 6 maximum, and the aberrations have to be ones that can be concealed, since you have to be able to fit in with Earth society. The Stargate is a secret after all and so is the existence of the Novas.

Your characters background is pretty open in the new game. Since the 'novas' are all folks that were experimented on by the NID (or some other shadowy organization) it can be pretty much anything, but there would likely be quite a few military types that

took part before they discovered that the Ancient Gene was a key to success.

Players that have expressed a desire to join so far:

SalmonMax

Troll

Omar

Malachite

Joani

Luchian

Long

Sky

Ulric

If you have interest in joining please let me know.

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Just tossing ideas around...things to think about.

1) No more than 1 dot in mega-attributes. Because of how these suckers scale geometrically per dot, they VERY quickly move from "superhuman" to "ridiculously powerful." Multiple enhancements would probably be fine.

2) I'd be tempted to say 'no' to Invulnerability. Just use Armor or Force Field or one of the other umpteen billion ways to get high defense. Especially in Stargate, where Invulnerability: Energy would be extremely valuable, even as an L3 power.

3) Role is really important, and will have almost as much to do with our skills as our powers. Because of this, and the huge cheapness of skill points bought with NP, it's a very good idea for us to know in advance what we want as far as role...if someone else claims 'The Brain,' then I won't spend an NP to get high scores in Electronics and Mechanics just because I had a spare one handy. Remember too, as far as skills go, 3 dots is skilled, 4 is the best most people will ever meet, and 5 is the world champ. You don't HAVE to have 5 dots, even in your specialty field. smile

4) I encourage Fox to mess with series continuity A LOT. The Ancient defense station on Earth might be in the Marianas Trench. Or on the moon. Or there may not be one.

5) As a corollary to 4, I also encourage Fox not to make the PC's "that other SG team." It might be a good idea if the TV show characters either aren't around anymore, or perhaps never were around.

Those last two apply to any sort of 'gamification' of pop media IP.

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Hmm... some very good suggestions. Not much is set in stone at this point and I am open to considering different ways of running the game.

1) 1 dot in mega-attributes max. I like it.

2) Also a very good suggestion. One of the things that could easily break the game would be to have the characters too difficult to damage by your opponents.

3) Role is important, but keep in mind that teams are not necessarily permanent and we have enough players to form 2 teams at this point so there could be more than one expert in any given field and it won't break the game, so don't discount something you want to do just because someone else is doing something similar.

4) I will be messing with continuity some. We will be starting at the beginning of the SGA time period, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still Goauld out there causing problems or plotting Earth's destruction.

5) There will be an SG1, but this story isn't about them so they won't be an issue for you guys. They will be NPCs that you might run into in the SGC, but given the time period they are simi-retired as it is. Jack has become General O'neil and rarely goes through the gate any more and is most often in Washington or elsewhere. The other members of SG1 have their own duties and have stepped back from regular gate travel. That leaves the PCs as being Earth's first line of defense and the ones that go out to make those first contacts and such.

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I might also suggest a limit on the more out-there powers. Telepathy, telekinesis, rapid healing, even molecular manipulation all have canon examples (although the last one is Replicator/machine only). Things like gravity manipulation, weather control, etc. were all either the province of Ascended beings only or simply not a part of the setting. Just a suggestion, though.

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I'm not necessarily going to rule out any specific power just yet, but keep in mind when creating characters that some powers wouldn't really fit too well with the average SG mission. Weather Control for example would not come in to play very often in a normal story. If you have a good enough character and story I would let you take something like that, but you might be disappointed in how seldom those powers got used.

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Cross-posted from the Long March Table Talk thread:

Fox, if you want a 20 or 25 NP game, then let it be that. I'll cry as I cut down Kyria even more, but I'd rather have a fun game with room to grow than start out more powerful and loose steam more quickly.

An option on that power level, too, might be to cut out Mega's, and just have enhancements and powers. This cuts down the number of things to spend points on and takes away some of the over-the-top superhuman effect. You can duplicate most megas with some power, and again it removes the 5 auto successes on rolls. That or let Megas be but at a 1 auto success per level instead of 5 per level.

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Ok, changed, I'm in, I'm in, I'm so far in that I can't explain it. I'll have a character sheet to you Fox as quickly as I possibly can.

Due to personal experience, thinking science/techie/computers. I know that has been done in 'cannon', but I still think that there's room for originality.

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I am debating between a scaled down Omar and an entirely new character. If I do go with Omar, I will adjust his powerset slightly to fit the setting. I am thinking of Density Increase instead of Sizemorph: Grow. Maybe a Bodymorph set.

I will need a day or two to decide.

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I'd think that just because some powers didn't appear on the show doesn't mean they're impossible.

Weather Control's a good example. The powers in that array seem in line with the powers displayed by advanced humans...especially with the Ori arc, and the priors.

Remember, there's nothing in the power description that requires Weather Control to be done in a place of natural weather. You can make mist, shoot lightning, meddle with temperature...all that freely. The only thing that you need a large area to work with is the actual Weather power...a relatively small part of the array.

Anyway, just saying... Just because advanced humans on the show only got a handful of powers (healing, regeneration, TK, telepathy for the most part) doesn't mean those are the only things we can get.

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I was thinking of a counselor/ambassador type character, someone socially and mentally focused. The great thing about Stargate is that not all problems require you to blast the enemy into oblivion. In fact, sometimes that's a really bad idea...

I'll get a write-up to you as soon as I am able.

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Kyria has a point on the power levels. I've been thinking 30 points, but since you guys are going to be facing things much weaker than nova opponents, would anyone have objections to scaling it back a bit more to say 20 or 25 nps and thus have more room to grow? If folks want to stick with 30 I can deal with that though.

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I think I might prefer the higher pl, but I'll start my character with 20 just to be on the safe side (tis easier to add points than to take them away).

Also, you said at the beginning of the Atlantis story, so this is just after Anubis attacked Earth, so the Goauld are still reeling and the Ouri have yet to show themselves/may not exist. Right?

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And keep in mind that not all the Goauld are reeling. Some are taking advantage of the situation to increase their power. And Baal was a threat right up to the final season and even into the movies. So don't count them out in terms of being a threat.

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Gotcha. And I do agree. Most of the Gouald are on the ropes at this point in the storyline.

Btw. We do have our thread up. Feel free to wander over to the Aberrant: Stargate Universe thread and post character concepts or questions in the Table Talk thread.

Chosen, you rock!

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