Play by Post Game for December - Open to All - High Fatality Expected

[Dracos]

Hello.  It seems we've got a bit of a lack of games going on at the moment.  This is the holiday season, so I assume there are a bunch of us with sporadic free-time.  It's also been a while since we've had a short term play by post game.

Let's resolve that.  Recruitment post open for until Thursday the 8th (Last Day to join).  Open for all, planned to run for 4 weeks, from the 10th to the 10th.  This'll be in the vibe of some of the old tomb of horrors board games, casual, playful, and with faces being set on fire.

What is the game though?

YOU(THE Player) are a canon anime character of your choice who has been summoned by a strange cosmic being beyond your comprehension, who answers only to the name of Q.  It has invited you to play in a grand game to navigate to the center of a strange world that he has designed, but the path will not be easy and in the end, only one can get the prize.  A single wish, granted truly, with the power to change the cosmos.  He's promised that win or lose, you will be returned unharmed and unchanged to your world, as if no time has passed.

Once there though, you will find your powers limited, an 'equal playing field' placed upon all contenders, muting the natural supernatural talents and skills of the contenders to some degree.   Your punches might only smash through ten inches of steel, instead of a mountainside.  Your psychic powers are now merely superhuman instead of godlike.  You probably get the idea.

We will be using Dune's simplified Tristat rules as below

Dice Used: 2d6  - DM will be handling all dice rolls.  This is a play by post, we will not be waiting around.


Recovering Hit Points and Energy Points
You recover 10 + body score hit points and 10 + soul score energy points per night of rest.  Unlikely to occur~!  Keep in mind.

Attributes

Spoiler: ShowHide

You have three attributes. These three attributes are body, mind and soul. From these you get hit points, energy points and determine your combat value, attack combat value and defense combat value. More on all that in a minute. For now let's look at the attributes:

Body: This measures how good a shape you're in, how tough you are, how athletic you are and all manner of things like that. This encompasses your physical makeup.

Mind: How smart you are, as well as the strength of your mental psyche. This encompasses your mind, but not anything spiritual such as a soul.

Soul: Your inner self, willpower and spiritual presence.  This encompasses being in balance with nature, being spiritually attuned and other such things.

For reference, a value of four is an average adult.   1 is the value of a small child.  Uneducated in Mind, easily swayed or unaware in soul, and easily tires carrying a bag of textbooks.  12 is bench pressing cars, breaking academic records, or being declared a saint for your clear worldliness.  12 is solving complex challenges easily, leveling a shack with your mystical blast,

  Clearly, there exists reasonable values above this in anime, folks who can take a thousand bullets, smash through buildings, move faster than sound, etc, summon city leveling spells, manage gigantic robots, and puzzle out quantum physics systems in seconds.  Skills and abilities on this level will be nerfed down.  While it is expected that you use all your ability points, as this is not a long running game and intended to cover actual characters, you aren't required to.  It's perfectly fine for your scores to be 8, 4, 4 if that's where you want to go.

Attribute Generation

You have 24 points to divide among your scores as you see fit. The minimum for any one score is 1, the maximum is 12.  Beyond that it's your discretion on how to split up the points. For reference, human average is 4, maximum normal human capacity is about 8 to 9.

Derived stats

Spoiler: ShowHide

Combat Value

You get your combat value by adding up your body, mind and soul, then dividing by three. Any fractions are rounded down. Since all of you are starting with 24 ability points, you have a combat value of 8.

Attack Combat Value(ACV)

This is your combat value and any other variables that effect it. In other words, 8.

Defense Combat Value(DCV)

This is your combat value minus 2, as well as any other variables that effect it. In other words, 6.

Hit Points

You calculate your hit points by adding body and soul, then multiplying by 5. A character with 5 body and 6 soul would have (5+6)*5= 55 hp. Run out of hit points and you're dead, dead, dead.

Energy Points

You calculate your energy points by adding mind and soul, then multiplying by 5. A character with 6 mind and 7 soul would have (6+7)*5= 65 hp. Run out of energy points and you can't do extra-special things until you get some back.

Traits

Spoiler: ShowHide

Every character gets 4 traits. These define abilities above the norm that indicate what your character can accomplish. These aren't mundane things - I assume a character from modern day America knows how to drive, use the internet, do algebra and any other mundane things reasonable to the character. Those don't need traits, unless your skill in them is such that it's exceptional.  A character that took driving as a trait would be someone good enough to be a racer, someone who took math as a trait would be a mathematician and so forth.

Using a trait to boost an attribute is acceptable. Boosting ACV or DCV should have a cap of 2, hit points and energy point boosts should have a cap of +20.

Each trait should be tied to one of the tree attributes, body, mind or soul. This is to resolve checks when appropriate for that skill. Be creative but also be useful. There's nothing wrong with traits that are broad - 'earth magic' for a trait could be fine, just define what sorta magic you mean by it, roughly.

A trait that causes a special effect consumes energy points. In other words, magic and skills should cost MP to cast, to put it into video game terms. 5-10 points for an attack power is about right, with higher costs for unique and interesting non-direct combat powers.

These traits can also be special equipment.  Assume in the absence of a trait, that you are wearing normal clothing and carrying up to one non-violent character approparite thing (So if you are playing a samurai, you can start with your sword, but not six of them).


Flaw

Every character gets 1 flaw. This defines a failing, a phobia or other limitation your character has. A flaw doesn't need to be linked to an attribute, but should define some falling. For example, arachnophobia, severe allergies, cold iron weapons deal double damage to you, and so on and so forth. Try not to choose something that has no chance to come up or is meaningless.

Motive:
Every character should have one clear motive for participating in this madness at all.  Something that they are willing to go all out for a wish for.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Checks and Combat

Checks

When a situation requires an effort above the norm, a check is used to resolve this. It's 2d6 vs body, mind or soul, with the goal to roll at or below the attribute value. A relatively easy task or a task you'd be skilled at may grant a negative modifier as a bonus. A difficult task may grant a positive modifier as a penalty.

Combat

Combat begins with initiative. Initiative is 2d6 plus your combat value. Highest rolls go first, with ties being resolved by rerolling ties as a tiebreaker. Once set initiative does not change, cycling each time around until combat is over. You may choose to hold your turn if you wish.

Attacking

The main purpose of combat is to hurt things, right? Yeah, yeah, we know. You choose a target and attack. You make an attack combat roll against your ACV, you have to roll below or equal to this number. If you roll above your ACV, you miss. If you succeed on your attack combat roll, the target gets a defense combat roll. They roll 2d6 against their DCV, aiming to roll below or equal to their DCV.  If they succeed on this check the attack misses. If they fail the attack hits and damage is dealt. For each evasion past the first one in a round by a target, a cumulative +1 penalty is applied to DCV.

Damage

Barring traits affecting this, damage dealt by unarmed character is equal to their ACV. A weapon increases this to ACVx2. A trait raises this to ACVx3 - for example, setting someone on fire with magic, hitting them with radioactive waves or whatever.  Damage reduces the target's hit points, reducing these to zero causes unpleasant things like death and taxes. Mostly just death.

Critical Hits

If you roll a natural 2 (1 and 1) on your attack combat roll, the attack is a potential critical hit. The following defense combat roll is made at a +2 penalty, and you also roll 1d6. The damage you inflict is multiplied on a critical hit, depending on the roll. A result of 1, 2 or 3 results in double damage, a roll of 4 or 5 results in triple damage, and a roll of 6 results in quadruple damage.

What can you do in a combat round?

I'm not a stickler for this, it's a loose game with a loose system. Try and keep things reasonable, to one reasonable sort of action. Hitting something and falling back a bit, trying to pick a lock, somersaulting in defense, whatever. It's not going to get into feet, inches and types of actions like D&D.

Please reply with:
Primary Character choice (And sheet)
Secondary Character choice (If you would like to rejoin following an Accident)
Primary posting hours and desired intensity

I will try and group folks based on play schedule times and how many folks we have interested.  This is probably themed more like a light-hearted paranoia, with either the Joker or Riddler in the Master Computer seat.  You may die by Fish or by Fire.

Oh, first come, first serve for character selections.

EDIT: Attributes details updated.

[Brian]

Character choice one: Captain Tylor (will add character sheet later)
Character choice two: Tomoe Mami (yyyyeeeaaaaah (character sheet also to be added later))

[Jon]

Play By Post: Giant Robo Edition!

Primary character: Lord Alberto Casanegra de Nueva Castilla (aka Shockwave Alberto)

Spoiler: ShowHide

Charsheet moved here.

Secondary: Kenji Murasame, Agent of Interpol

Posting times: hm. weeknights or weekends, but probably only a couple days per week. I could do a couple hours where I'm expected to react quickly and refresh all the time, or more hours where more latency is allowed. Yes, this is kind of vague, sorry. I live in CA, as you know, and I'm almost always home from work at 7, so "weeknights" starts after that.

[Iron Dragoon]

I'm not really much for the post by post gaming, but then, I'll be honest and admit I've never given it an honest shot.

Primary Character: Tōma Kamijō (Toaru Majutsu no Index)
Secondary: Sousuke Sagara (Full Metal Panic)
Posting times: Pretty much between 8 am and 9 pm (GMT +4:30)

[Dracos]

Well, we have one attempt at listing hours.

Guys, Please post hours in PST time.  The goal here is where possible I try and mix teams up with folks that have similar postable times to keep momentum high.

Oh, I think it goes without saying but 3 posts a day minimum will be expected. :)

[DY]

I believe I'm up for this.

Primary character: Vash the Stampede (Trigun)
Secondary character: Edward Elric (Full Metal Alchemist)
Posting times: Any time from now to 12/20 and then generally after 6/7 pm EST (9/10 pm PST).

Ok, here's my character sheet. Let me know if I need to change anything.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Body: 11
Mind: 7
Soul: 6

HP: 85 (+15) = 100
EP: 65

Vash the Stampede is a wanderer travelling from from town to town in search of his twin brother, Millions Knives. Due to his overly exaggerated reputation, Vash usually acts foolish in order to make people feel comfortable and at ease, and to hide his identity. But when those around him are threatened he becomes focused and in control. Vash's reason for joining this game is to have the chance to heal/revive all those hurt and killed as a result of Knives' actions.

Traits/Flaws

Expert Marksman: Vash is a highly precise marksman with his revolver, able to make seemingly
impossible shots.

Extremely Durable: Years of fighting and travelling has given Vash a very scarred and durable body. He has suffered from a large number of injuries and is used to pain. HP +15.

Highly Agile: Due to his refusal of killing others, Vash is quite agile. He can remain unharmed through a gun fight due to his agility. Most of the time, anyways. DCV +2.

Conscience: Following Rem Saverem's teachings of love and peace, Vash refuses to take the lives of others. This has both helped and hindered him. Because of his refusal to kill Vash has suffered quite a few injuries, including losing his left arm and having it replaced with a cybernetic one.

[Dracos]

Remember: Sheets are needed too and there isn't that long until start.

You'll only be playing your primary character for start.  We'll pull out the second if you get killed and wanna keep going.

Four players so far :)

[Dracos]

Info post updated.

[Arakawa]

Huh. Never role played before. Kind of wondering how newbie-friendly this game would be. If I wanted to join, anything that I should know (that's non-obvious from reading IRC logs from the other games) to get along properly?

First choice: Ika-Musume

Spoiler: ShowHide

Body: 5
Mind: 8
Soul: 11 (mostly due to the 'harmony with nature' bit)

Hit Points: 80
Energy Points: 95

Ika-musume is a fearsome and uncompromising squid invader who comes from the bottom of the sea, and burns with a hatred of humanity and the damage it has wrought against nature! Fortunately for humanity, she is easily distracted and/or intimidated, lazy, and a poor long-term planner. If granted any wish, [spoiler]would wish to eradicate 90% of humanity in order to put a permanent stop to ocean pollution

. She is, of course, devious enough to only talk about her desire in vague terms as an 'invasion', so the other characters should not know about this. And, having the exterior appearance and personality of a twelve-year-old woobie, no one would even take her seriously if she did admit to her sinister motive.

Traits and Flaws

• Tentacles! Instead of hair, Ika-musume has ten highly precise, controllable, and extremely adorable tentacles. These can stretch (to a reasonable length, but still much farther than a hand could ever imagine stretching), pick up and manipulate objects (the end of a tentacle acts roughly like a hand without opposable thumbs; by observation from the anime, about three tentacles are sufficient to lift and restrain one average person), and in general Ika-musume will attempt to do all kinds of crazy things with them without a second thought. Of course, Ika-musume is not in her native environment, so sometimes (often) she'll attempt something she can't do. Any attempt that the DM considers unreasonable will simply result in Ika-chan struggling comedically; some other things might require rolling against the Body trait, possibly with a bonus. {I don't know, this is where I need advice on how much and what to specify.}
• Squid Ink Spaghetti. (by popular request!) Ika-chan is able to, ahem, dispense her energy points in the form of edible ink which can be consumed by others (gaining the corresponding energy points). If the ink is not dispensed onto some form of absorbent food (noodles, bread, tofu, etc.) or into a container (a bucket, or bottle, or something), half the energy points are wasted. If the ink is dispensed onto noodles, other characters will find the concoction incredibly delicious -- assuming you can first convince them to eat something vomited out of a humanoid squid.  We will assume that Ika-chan refuses to eat her own ink, so this trait can only be used to hoard energy points for others.
• Non-Human Idiot Savant. Squids have a hyper-evolved brain with zillions of synapses! (In the ocean, however, they don't use it for anything except making their heads glow with extremely complex patterns for communication, the undersea equivalent of spamming each other with emoticons on MSN.) However, when the same brain is applied to something like a book or other document on calculus, or biology, or spaceship repair, the hyper-evolved squid brain is able to integrate all of the abstract knowledge contained in the material, and instantly develop proficiency in the topic! (As long as it could reasonably be inferred by spending a week or so locked in a room with nothing aside from the actual book, Ika-musume can learn it.) Learning things makes Ika-chan sleepy, so she loses energy points (proportional to the volume of knowledge that she has just absorbed).
• Absolutely Clueless. Ika-chan has recently come from the bottom of the sea and does not have any knowledge of anything besides shrimp. Unless a topic somehow involves shrimp, or she's had it explained to her by another character, or she has learned it during the game using the Non-Human Idiot Savant trait, she will automatically fail any and all Mind checks associated with that topic. Moreover, she will also fail to have knowledge of incredibly obvious things like computers, air conditioning, microwaves, Star Trek, the list goes on and on. (Alternative to consider: just apply a stiff penalty to knowledge checks instead. Everyone acts surprised if Ika-chan turns out to know something.)

[/spoiler]

Second choice: Yoshino, Mio's trollish older sister from Nichijou (character sheet later, since I'm not even sure if I've done the first character properly)

(Actually, I wouldn't mind playing Dalek Sec, but he (it?) is not an anime character, except in a very loosely honorary status due to being the star of a Madoka fanfic: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=190449 If DM judges it to be reasonably close to the spirit of the thing, I wouldn't mind substituting the Dalek for Yoshino in the second-choice slot.)

Note again: I have no roleplaying experience whatsoever and the above character sheet was done up in about 15 minutes of deliberation. I'd welcome any and all advice on how to make it more suitable for the game at hand, up to and including "just give up and use a 'normal' sort of character".

Posting time would be, umm... give me a couple of days to figure out the schedule.

[Dracos]

Man, I have this nice series of responses sitting back on my home comp.  Guess I should get that out tonight.  More details there.

Important: The 8th is the deadline for the 1st character sheet.  Second does not need to be immediately written.  As reminder, this will be a daily posting game.  or rather: as often as you can wander over and post.

[Dracos]

Cool.  Props to Arakawa for the first sheet.  I will make a board for this tonight.  There remains 3 days left to write sheets.  Please do so.  I'd like to at least think over what abilities you have when sketching out the [strikethrough]deathtrap[/strikethrough] adventure location.

Don't need to have the secondary char sheet done by then, just the first one.

For clarification: Any action that is effortless will not require a roll.  It's more things that significantly alter the environment, interact with other players in a positive or negative light, provide a likely challenge, or hinder an enemy.  If none of these apply (Hey, I'm reaching into my bag with one of my ten tentacles), it requires neither energy points nor a roll.

Energy points:
Trivial/Cosmetic Action:  1-2 points.  Hey, I illuminate the room naturally, turn my hair orange, wiggle my tentacles in a complex dance for comedy.  Not tiring for heroes in any practical sense, but not effortless either.
Interactive/Noncombat Action: 3-4 points.  Hey I superjump over this ledge, run along this wall, float for an hour over the floor with flight powers.  The kind of thing people can do almost all day, should they not be doing anything else.
Combat powers/Heal powers:  5-10 points.  This works on the premise that you will be able to use your powers between 8 and 20 times, depending on how much energy points you have.  A fair load considering that not every attack will hit.
Significant Terrain/reality/etc: 25 points.  Get approval early as these may just vanish off your sheets.

Note: This is a bit for fair balance reasons for players.  Something that's effortless (moving your tentacles around) simply gets raised to taking more energy by strangling an enemy, because it also is that costly for everybody else to use their magical beam cannons for the same effect.  If your 'trait' is a natural part of you (like say, Cybernetic hand), you can still use it after running out of energy, but your lack of energy reduces the damage to merely ACV, much like any other mundane strike would be.

I'll make a forum for these things soon.  Arakawa's sheet is fine.

[Dracos]

Board made.  Please place sheets for review (or approved sheets), in the character sheets thread.

[Dracos]

DY:

Your sheet is fine.


Jon:

Your high powered blast has been nerfed by the power drain.  You can only manage your smaller one.

Also, the nature of the place will likely make the radar have difficulty managing much.  If you're okay with that, you can keep it, but if not, here's your heads up to think up a different ability to go there.