So. While I'm currently working on a campaign with my IRL friends, they have been somewhat inconsistent, and I want to get in ahead of the next, and you seem like a bunch of cool people, so I'll drop my an invitation here! ... problem. I have way too many ideas. So, I'll list five of them (for now), and set up a poll to see which ones people like best. Select the two you're most interested in, and we'll most likely go with the plurality, assuming it has enough votes. All these campagins will almost certainly be run in TAFFY, my own variant of the FUDGE system. FUDGE is basically the less narrativist ancestor of FATE, although still pretty rules light. TAFFY is just a tad more structured, but I'm willing to walk you through it. Most of the really complicated stuff is in either on my side or in character creation. The campaign will be run through an online virtual tabletop of some sort. I'd likely prefer Maptools, but Roll20 is available as a fallback. Because I am a slacker, I am pretty much available at all times, except for Fridays and Saturdays. As a a word of warning, I am... well, pretty much anything that I do is likely to have Problematic Content of some sort or another. I will preemptively admit I am not capable of handling m/m or 'gender stuff' well, at least not in any sort of detail. Sorry about that. Each of the campaigns has a detailed description under the cut. I considered putting pictures, but then realized I didn't have accurate ones for most. Explanation of rating system at bottom. Menage de Marionettes A coven of Succubi fight to survive - and establish their territory - by any means necessary. Spoiler You are members of a newly formed ad-hoc coven of Pleasure Demons - Succubi, for short. In the midst of establishing yourselves when you discover a dimensional vortex in the Daemonlands, allowing you to pass from one realm to another, with a bit of effort. It's a wonderful little bit of convenience, and could prove quite.. useful. Unfortunately, you aren't the only ones to take interest - such a find is quick to attract a great deal of attention from a great number of parties, most of which think of you as a rival, a tool, or an abomination. If you hope to keep what's yours, you must act. Choose sides. Play your rivals against each other - your enemies are also potentially your greatest weapon. Fight in the shadows, in the clubs and cafes, in the bedroom. Run, if you have to, or fight with tooth and nail. Show these mortal busybodies, these parasites, these interlopers, that you are the master, not the slave. This is yours. You are desire itself, and you will not be denied. Personal Interest: Extreme Preparedness Level: Good Setting: Cytan Universe Location: Earth TNU, Cincinnati; Daemonlands, Walls of Fungus and Spiders; Others Type: Multifaction subterfuge, social, occasional fighting (generally small scale), possibility of PVP. Span: Situation Based Rating: "LEWD" to "Like an overtuned CIWS to a flock of seagulls"; Sex, seduction, rape, slavery, combinations thereof, general assholery. Location is up for debate, I went with Cincinnati because it's a moderately large city and could be interesting, but Darksiders are everywhere... tell me if you have other ideas. Incidentally, 'Succubi' is used for brevity, Incubi are included. You're shapeshifters, after all. Also not pure evil! Just kinda selfish edgelords. Apparations At Dawn Unwitting Magical beings try to survive the facist Empire of Japan. Spoiler As (theoretically...) loyal subjects of the Nihon Empire of the Rising Sun, you're not particularly concerned when the Kempetai arrive in modest city, seeking renegades and yokai. You are very much concerned when a strange messenger arrives in your home, informs you that kempei are coming for you, now, and if you hope to live, to run and meet her at a secret location. Arriving at the meeting place, she informs you that you are, unknowingly, all covert magical beings. As such, you owe your fealty to her liege, the Nine-Tailed Empress, ruler of all Yokai. Pledge allegience, and she will provide as you see fit - in exchange for your loyalty and service, of course. Fail to do so, and... well, in that case, she can't guarantee your safety. The Emissary doesn't intend to help for nothing, but... it's honestly better than what you're used to doing, isn't it? And if you refuse, can you possibly survive on your own? Either way, you can't stay here, but what will you do? Live in the wilderness, dodging drones? Hide in plain sight? Flee to the Oceanic Archipelago? To the wastelands of Siberia, or the warzone of mainland Asia? Or fight the empire you call home? Personal Interest: Extreme Preparedness Level: Okay Setting: Cytan Universe Location: Earth TNU, Japan Type: Subterfuge, Travel? Span: Time/Situation Based Rating: "Dystopian YA Novel" to "Elmer Fudd at a Wedding"; Stupid Oppressive Government Tricks, Reckless Misuse Of Japanese Mythology, General Assholery To be clear, this is set a more or less modern setting, in an alternate history. The Empire of Japan uses a different classification system than others, but note that 'Yokai' aren't a distinctive category by most measures... and most of the full spectrum of oddness is possibly-actually-mythical or at least gone after the Fade. Keep The Peace Semi-Secret Magical Police try to keep the peace in the southwestern United States, amidst a great variety of nonsense. Spoiler As members of the 8th 'Flying' Squad, Northwest Rockies branch of the United States Paranormal And Extraterrestrial Operations and Intervention Unit, you are part of a precinct spanning three states. Your mission is a complex and difficult one - to enforce the law as it relates to the the magical, the otherwordly, the supernatural; equally for all beings, from humans to lycans to dragons to Eyan to Transcendent. You are not exterminators or wardens. You are police officers, and your job is serve and protect. Everyone. That makes your job considerably harder. The fact that the existence of your populace, let alone your agency, is an open secret you're nevertheless supposed to keep doesn't make it easier. The massive inventory of gadgets at your disposal... honestly only helps when things are already badly wrong. Your main tools are persuasion, your wits, and your knowledge of all the diverse groups under your watch. Between dimension-hopping dragons, trigger-happy citizens, fringe (or not-so-fringe)religions getting up to god-knows-what, a bona-fide spaceport, sinister conspiracies' based on a few scraps of mistranslated parchment written by a drunk scribe in 1463, conspiracy theorists, half-baked hedge mages, 'and the den of madness that is Las Vegas, and a few actual sinister conspiracies, you're going to have your hands full this month. Just like the last month... and the next month... Personal Interest: High Preparedness Level: Good Setting: Cytan Universe Location: Earth TNU, Mostly Utah Type: Investigation, Social, some action (if SHTF) Span: Time Based Rating: Ill-Advised Science Project; General Crime Stuff... mostly. Possible *significant* spikes if you look in the right/wrong places. I got nothin, notes wise. Digging Up Trouble MGLN: Aboard the Dimensional Patrol Cruiser Helios, a newly-minted team of TSAB Enforcers head out on what's sure to be an interesting patrol. Spoiler Judging by your orders, your first patrol as the Enforcer Contingent aboard the Helios is going to be... interesting. You're heading to Sector B1T-887, far from Administrated Space. Colloquially known as 'The Burrow', the sector's considerable resources - archaeological, biological, and mineral - make it a warren of outposts, Bureau, foreign, and independent. And that's on top of the natives - relatively primitive, for now - but in some cases still capable of interstellar travel. And wherever there is opportunity, there is danger. That's where you come in. Your mission is the opposite of simple - interdict any pirates or smugglers, locate and apprehend any dimensional criminals, detect and prevent any inter-state conflicts, shut down any unliscenced excavation operations, all while keeping an eye out for the sometimes-catastrophically dangerous - and priceless - remnants of lost civilizations known as Lost Logia, and any other hazardous materials. Given the Bureau doesn't know exactly what's out here, you have discretion in the direction of your patrol, and in how you address these objectives. It's still a lot - and you're pretty much on your own. Luckily, as qualified Enforcers and Mages, you're each arguably a superweapon in yourselves, equipped with the most advanced technology and graduates of years of training in magical combat; capable of hypersonic flight, reducing a skyscraper to dust, slashing an armored vehicle in half, and holding your own against scores of conventional soldiers. The Helios, likewise, is almost certainly the most powerful vessel in the entire sector, with advanced weapons, high performance N-space and 3-space, and a plethora of assorted facilities. One way or another, it's certainly not going to be a boring cruise... Personal Interest: Extreme Preparedness Level: Medium Setting: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (More or less) Location: Sector B1T-887 Type: Investigation, Action, High Power, Space, some social Span: Time Rating: Ill-Advised Science Project; Violence of both magical and non-variety, canon-typical... unpleasantness. MGLN is a series rife with high-powered action, magitech, and Friendship through laser beams.. This is, in some ways, more 'serious' (though still with crazy magic superpowers), and will involve fairly regularly facing enemies with conventional (i.e., potentially lethal) weapons, and generally operating outside the relative paradise of the TSAB. It's post Strikers, so... lots of even more advanced tech! Spears of Athena Parthenogenesis: The women of the IES Reciprocity and its starfighter squadron bring the fight to the genocidal terrorists of the PPP. Spoiler Half a century ago, the Great Raping nearly consumed the Earth, stopped only by the Dimensional Ban reverse-engineered from the abominations own powers. But they left a parting 'gift', in the form of the Genesis Virus. Supernaturally resistant to any attempts at a cure, the Virus is mostly benign, with one overriding effect - the induction and sustaining of spontaneous parthenogenesis. As if the devastation wasn't enough, the advent of the Virus changed the nature of humanity forever. With the population rocketing toward pre-invasion levels, followed by the invention of tesseract-based FTL travel, humanity expanded towards the stars. In a few short decades, mankind - or, more accurately, womankind - was an interstellar nation of half a trillion adults, and still growing and prospering. It is not an age without its troubles, but, paradoxically, a time of great ambition and hope. And yet, there is something else. Not long after the invention of the TRSD, Doctor Liberius Emmanuel, fled with his 'untainted' followers into deep space, pledging to contain the virus before it infected the galaxy. It was considered a good riddance at the time... but decades later, they returned at the head of machine empire, with swarms of self-replicating drones and advanced warships, bristling with nuclear warheads, obscenely marked with the red cross, murdering millions before fleeing into the black. The war against the so-called 'Population Preservation Patrol' has claimed enough lives. You are members of the flight crew of the Expeditionary Carrier Reciprocity. Your mission is to interdict the tripe bastards, annihilate their raiding forces, and hunt them where they live. They may have technology and swarms of drones, but you have firepower, training, teamwork, and an invincible spirit. They want to draw a line in the sand, they want to kill you, your family, your friends, all to preserve an antiquated sense of 'nature'? To hell with that - show them you are not some beast to be culled, you are the inheritors of humanity! Let them draw their line, and strangle them with it! Personal Interest: High Preparedness Level: Low Setting: Parthenogenesis Location: Perseus-Auriga Type: Space Combat focused, with possibility of other action types. COIN-type investigation. Span: Time Rating: Elmer Fudd At A Wedding; Pregnant Badass (with interesting clothes) the Campagn, the whole thing where the villains are genocidal fanatics masquerading as doctors, also the backstory. While I readily admit to the background being somewhat... odd, and life in the new world of the IESF can be strange, it's mostly SPACE BATTLES (and quaintness). Of course, this requires the development of a satisifactory space combat engine, hence the 'low' preparedness rating. My Trademarked Authoritative Dead Dove based rating scale. Spoiler: Patent Pending (Not Really) A Passenger Pigeon level of thoughtless bird-murder: Warning for everything. This is probably a bad idea and will make all involved hate themselves. Or maybe it'll be a horrible kind of fun. It's anyone's guess. It's sure to be fucked up either way. It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a tentacle monster. (Except in specific scenarios, this is probably above my squick level, so don't expect to see it much) Like an Overtuned CIWS to a flock of seagulls: This is probably going to get a bit disturbing. The prospect of horrible things happening, to the actual characters, is a real possibility, but unlikely to be focused too hard. The prospect of the characters *doing* exceedingly horrible things is also not unlikely. Elmer Fudd At A Wedding: Potentially disturbing content, but mostly not 'in-your face'. The threat of worse may be there, if only as a lose condition. The characters may experience or do unpleasant things, but not too extreme. Ill-Advised Science Project: A fairly 'baseline' level of disturbingness. Nothing worse than you'd see in the less-extreme action movies. Worse stuff, if it happens to come up, will be fade-to-blacked. Sings a song we're singing: The dove has been maimed, but lives on. Character death or serious injury may be threatened, but unlikely to actually be carried out. Any serious content probably happens offscreen. Flying into the Sunset: The dove is happy and smiling... or whatever birds do. Flapping? Dunno. Nothing offensive. Also unlikely to be seen.
That was the plan. At least two other people seem interested in MGLN/Digging Up Trouble? That's definitely one of my higher-interested projects but would take a while to work up. I'd definitely appreciate any commentary people have to offer...
So, I suspect this is all we'll be getting from Kintsugi, at least for a while. Though if you can contact other people and ask if they want in, that'd be nice. However, to move on to Step 2, there are a couple of options. We can outsource. This would probably require us to have... somewhat more defined plans, and somewhere to outsource to. While Roll20 is a very active site, I've had... problems... with players from there before, and it may not have some of the options I'd like (though, looking at the API, it might). It also requires a subscription fee for the more advanced stuff, so we may end up something different, like Maptools - which comes with a pretty flexible API for all sorts of shenanigans. Like tracking momentum. Or multi-level combat. (Or, if I can find a virtual tabletop that handles 3d well half decently). There's also the MGLN discord I'm in, but, well, that'd be more for a specific thing.
Belated thank you! Any luck? I've been poking around at MapTools, and am reasonably confident of my ability to handle things. Maybe not all right away, but increasing ability to Handle Things. I made up a quick mana regen system for MGLN, if that's what we want. Anyways, I think I'll post around, and see if anyone else is interested?
not yet, unfortunately. i tend to have bad luck about people doing stuff with me during the summer. i'll keep asking around tho
Posted on the RPTools forum, waiting for mod approval. Edit: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=27265&sid=b264145f0aef6b525cb1b2e040b29310 Linky. No obligation to post, but feel free if you want to bump/push the poll. Double Edit: Engh, just realized the most recent post (other than mine) to the RPTools LFG forum was April. Probably need to look elsewhere...
