Possible forum Role Playing Game.

Just wondering whether there'd be any interest in a Role Playing Game among forumites.

I have a vague idea for something that might be good fun, I haven't done any work fleshing it out yet (Mainly because I don't want to waste time if there's not enough interest), but the rough idea is that I'd require two teams of 3+ each. Each player would have a character, it'd be up to the player to chose equipment, weaponry and armour for their character, I'd also require a few background details like gender, age and about a paragraph or so about your character's background. To keep things neutral and rule out any accusations of cheating I'll assign stats and possibly skills.

The two teams would have an objective to complete and whilst there'd be plenty of none-player characters (Controlled by myself) to work your way through, they may come into competition with one another, then again, they might pass each other by unnoticed.

The game itself would be set in a dark-future type environment (Possibly with zombies or mutants thrown in, just for good measure, but as yet undecided). Weapons wise, it'd be firearms from WWII to present day, if you want Katana type swords and ninja stars that's fine too. Anything that's more modern than what was available around 1990 though and I'll need a good link so I can knock up the data sheet I need for the weapon.

Once the game's started I'd aim to get about two or three turns a week (Personal life permitting and depending on what players feel they can cope with), I'll send an update out then set a deadline for orders to be back by (24-48 hours), if you miss the deadline you miss your turn.

The intention is to do this by e-mail rather than PM (Since I may need to send images), with a general overview to be posted on the forum game's section too.

Hopefully this could be a bit of light-hearted fun. If you're interested post your thoughts here and I can gauge whether it's worth putting the effort into doing the more detailled work.

 

you should get yourself a copy of Cyberpunk 2020 by Talsorian

FNG

 

Played it, over a decade ago, the rules that I'll be using are homegrown and owe a lot to CP2020. I started off writing up local house-rules for CP2020 plus source books and when I got to 30+ pages I decided to scrap it and rewrote the rules from scratch. The rules I'll be using are thorough, fully written out and unrecognisable (I think) from their starting point, but on the whole pretty gritty and realistic and proved popular with the groups I playtested them on.

 

a fellow roleplayer heh?

I love Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020, 2nd edition Runequest, Chiverly and Sourcery, Marvel Superhereos, TMNT/Heroes Unlimited, Space Opera and Oriental AD&D.

I am certainly interested but we shall see what the others say.

Never done it except face to face though. Have you?

FNG

 

Nope so it could be interesting, I guess it gives you the ultimate poker face!

I mainly played old style (2nd Ed I think) AD&D (Various worlds) and Shadowrun, the moved on to CP2020 back in the mid-1990s before knocking up my own rules, which amount to well over 100 printed pages excluding a (Long lost :cry: ) weapons handbook which was a tome in its own right. The weapons I'll have to reinvent (Luckily I included in my rules a guide of how to work out weapons stats), but this time round I only intend on doing those that the players request rather than giving them a couple of hundred to choose from (At least that's basically all I have time for).

Pen and Paper RPGs have a charm all of their own, I'm hoping it'll translate decently into a Play-by-eMail format.

 

Were you around when I tried this about six months ago?
Either way I'm in.

Here's a basic char sheet, if you want to use it as a template for you RP's characters Simon.

Name:
Gender:
Height:
Weight:
Age:
Occupation:

Physical Description:
Hair Style:
Colour:
Length:
Eye style/colour:

Tattoos/distinctive markings:

Clothing description:

Weapons/offensive items:
Armour/defensive items:

Skills:
Personality:
Brief Bio:

Looks like it covers everything you were looking for feel free to edit it if you want to add or change anything (or tell me and I can do it within the post)

 

Thanks Siberian Black, I must have missed it back when you attempted it , that looks pretty good to me, weight I determine from the character's other characteristics (Not realistic having the strength and size of a sumo wrestler and the weight of a supermodel), skillswise I currently intend giving the players a number of points to devide between skills as they wish (Within guidelines, but the idea at the moment is if you think it's worth creating a skill for then go for it).

Aside from that, this seems a pretty good summary of the sort of things I'm looking for. Are you interested in having a character?

 

I'd be interested in playing this game since I do enjoy participating in an RP game on another forum and it's going very well there. The gritty setting also sounds very interesting.

However, there's a couple of reasons why the previous attempt to play an RP on here fizzled out. One was that there were too few people participating (four at maximum), another was that there were no teams and very little in the way of plot direction, and the third reason was that there was no attention whatsoever to realism. I do not want to be in another RP game where everyone fancies his character invincible and of superhuman strength.

As long as your rules take care of these problems, Simon, I'm eager to start!

 

Trust me, the only way to stand a chance in this game is to avoid being hit altogether. Find yourself in the path of a bullet and you will probably find your character having to be dragged along, bleeding by your comrades (Or quite likely, being left one last bullet for yourself). Your characters will be pretty normal, prick them and they will bleed.

I reckon I could make a go of this with as few as 3 players but the more players and teams the better. 6 minimum would be ideal. The potential is for more characters to be added in as the game/plot allows, but I'd rather not go down that route if I can avoid it.

There will be a plot of sorts, don't expect it to be mind blowing though.

 

Heh, that was a major flaw of mine wasn't it Roel....

I'm in for sure although I think I'll 'build' a character from scratch after someone else get one in....something to aim for otherwise they tend to end up *ehem* uberstrong.

Weight I usually stick in more because it help get an idea of build. Somebody with the size/strength of Sumoman woudl naturally weigh about 400lbs or something like that.

Rattrap 'Siberian Black' Gonzales (one of two namesake characterson mine) weighs 290lbs and stands 7' 2" tall.....but he's Jahorian.
Gary 'Blue62' Williams is 130lb and 5' 6" (?)

 

OK then, I'm willing to consider letting RPers/wargamers with the approproate dice create their own characters if no-one else objects. Under the system I have you roll against a set of stats rather than "building" a character, it tends to give a more a more balanced character and leads to a more satisfying game (Whilst still allowing a degree of customisation by choosing Skills) rather than allowing players to build characters that are practically combat optimized clones of each other. Makes you work with what you've got rather than choosing what you want.

The only notable difference will be that the dice will be in your hands not mine.

 

Sounds very interesting.
I'll be Karl Boom, the suicide bomber who gets strangled and dies in chapter 1

 

I'd like to join.

 

Great, the more the merrier! I'll try to start getting the details sorted out over the weekend.

Hopefully should be in a position to start things off next week some time.

 

The rules will be my own home-made ones which were a sort of development of Cyberpunk 2020. Dunno if you remember but what happened way back in the good old days was our little group house-ruled a lot of stuff in CP2020 and I typed it up into a booklet. Once this booklet reached about 30 or 40 printed pages I decided to rewrite the rules from scratch.

The rules themselves are very combat orientated and pretty deadly, the only way to avoid being killed or crippled very quickly is to keep your head down and stay in cover as far as possible. Body armour is available, but it isn't as effective as in other games and will slow you down. Cybernetic replacements for wrecked limbs are available, but that's all they are, replacements, they wont offer any improvements on the original.

Equipment-wise, basically anything WWII to modern day. Your characters will be going into a free-fire zone, so concealment wont be an issue. You'll want stuff like webbing, rations, plenty of ammo and enough magazines to carry a practical amount. For weapons anything past about the early 90s and I'll need at least a good link. I wouldn't worry too much about the fine details yet though, your characters will have the chance to draw what they need from an armoury in game. If you just want fairly generic kit, I can have you issued with fairly standard stuff with some deference to your character's background.

Don't worry, I wont be really mean, if I think you've got a gaping hole in your inventory there will be some in-game prompts to that effect (Like if you've got your character carrying 20 kilos of plastic explosives but you forgot to ask for detonators and timers...)

I'd recommend having one character nominated as a medic, one a technical specialist (Bit like Hudson off Aliens), there might be old CCTV systems etc, to hack into which might prove handy.

The only thing that is really left is to decide on the background of your group as a whole. Realistically for this, you can either be a sort of rough collection of Mercenaries or criminal freelancers, belong to an organised crime syndicate of some description or be a member of a Police SWAT/Military Special Ops unit.

Being a Merc/Freelancer will offer the greater in-game rewards with the least back up if things go wrong, SWAT/Spec Ops there's the greater back up, but the only reward if things go right will be knowing you did a job well done. Organised crime will be somewhere in the middle of the two.

Either Private Message amongst yourselves to decide, or post in this thread and we'll go with the most popular.

I've been able to recruit a second team externally, so Team TIWW2 (Provisionally named until someone can come up with something less sucky) is:

Blaster
Siberian Black
Roel
Stix?
FNG

Once you've decided what you want your group assignment to be, I'll need a brief outline of your character from each of you and we'll take it from there.

 

A group of mercenaries would likely leave room for a wider variety of characters as well as 'mini-RPs' in the form of character differences and arguments (although these would be better if we kept them minimul to avoid taking the interest off the actual RP)

So that's got my vote.

Are we entering characters now or later?

 

One thing though, Simon - I have never actually played a role-playing game that involved anything other than people taking turns to write part of a story from their character's perspective. As soon as you start talking about dice rolls, I am completely lost. Is there any part of the game that does not happen on screen, in the form of text?

As for the character, how much of it can we determine for ourselves? When you say that some of it will be randomized and some of it assigned, what exactly are you talking about?

Thanks for clearing these things up.

 

Your character will have a set of statistics which will determine such attributes as their speed, dexterity, intelligence, strength etc. Those stats are used to determine with the use of a list of skills, the likelihood of certain actions or events.

Broadly, I will describe the situation as your character sees it, for example:

It will then be up to you to describe your character's actions to me, this will take place within the time frame of a set time slot, roughly 5 seconds of game time. In this case, you could describe your character doing a number of things, you could depending other circumstances, greet the other individual, shout a warning, approach with caution, draw a weapon and open fire, randomly decide to dance the fandango, etc. You might act faster or slower than the other individual, if your character's reactions are slower the effects of your opponent's actions will take place first.

Depending on the your response and the circumstance I may roll a set of dice to randomly determine the outcome of the encounter, the outcome may be pre-determined or the outcome may depend on your actions, for example, act aggressive and the individual may be aggressive in return, or they may be cowed by aggression, or aggressive in the face of timidity, or neutral towards your party, or they might not like you regardless, or they might only like you if I roll a 6, etc...

Your responses may also affect the future responses of non-player-characters (NPCs), for example, if you're running around blasting everyone you meet with machinegun fire, you might find the same reaction in return when you meet new people. If you talk to people first, you might expect the same in return (Or if they're a Zombie they might just try to pull your character's head off regardless of your actions, try not to get too close to characters you don't already know). Or in the time it takes you to work out that the random stranger ahead isn't a threat, another unseen NPC might have jumped out of the shadows and be already on top of you...

Now equally, I'm not expecting you to describe every moment of your character's existance in 5 second intervals, if there's nothing happening for a stretch of time it can be speeded along or slowed right down as the circumstances demand.

As for your characters, the stats work on a system on 2D6, that is the sum of two ordinary 6 sided dice added together. The average for a human male in each Stat area is a score of 7 - that represents the mythical John Smith / John Doe - less than that is below average, above that is above average. Female characters have some modifiers to that to reflect that females on the whole have a slightly different mental and physical make-up to males. For example an Intelligence score of 2 means your character is really dumb and would probably struggle to lace up his velcro shoes unaided, a score of 12 and your character is a pretty smart cookie and can figure most things out pretty quickly.

The relevant stats combined with the relevant skill plus/minus modifiers to be assigned depending on the ease or difficulty of the task will reflect the likelihood of success.

Under this system though, even a score of 12 in every area would only make you special, not superhuman or invincible. A bullet through the head and your character is pretty much as dead as a straight 7 guy. You can't dodge bullets or swat them out of the air with a swipe of your hand, when bullet meets flesh, the vast majority of the time flesh loses.

I can roll the dice for you, or (As I cannot imagine their are many households that can't find an ordinary six sided dice) I can post a list of characteristics and you, the players, can roll the stats yourselves. I'll then give you a set of skill points you can allocate to improve your chances of certain tasks succeeding. I prefer this kind of system personally since it means you have to work with what you roll, but it's obviously unrealistic if your rolls indicate your character is a fat, weak, slow, stupid Special Forces Officer, so you may swap or re-roll some of your stats if they seem especially inappropriate, just talk to me about it first.

As an alternative, I can just ask you to roll a number of dice and divide the total between the characteristics as you want, personally I dislike this style of character generation as the characters tend to come out as combat optimized clones of one another with very little individuality.

Once your characters are in game though I will be rolling the dice, this eliminates any accusations of cheating (OMG I rolled a double 6! Again! For the fourteenth time in a row!), but also I have no real interest in beating the players, the objective is for the player teams to get through this and enjoy an interactive adventure. If I kill all your characters in the opening turn, which would be very easy to do in such a setting i.e. "As you hit the ground the last thing you see is the flash of rockets and chain gun fire as twenty Hind gunships open fire on you. Game over. You lose." it would however be just as boring for me as it would be for you.

What I am hoping to happen is that I will describe the scene as you see it, you will then individually react by replying to me via email and I will post an overview in the Forum Gaming section.

For example again:

Roel:

General overview:

And each member would recieve a seperate response depending on their actions, I'd weight them up depending on reactions, skills, etc on a turn by turn basis. For example, it might be that FNG spots the guy is a Zombie before you start walking towards him and shoots him first, in that case you'd receive:

Now what do you do? Have a go at FNG's character? Offer the injured civilian (Zombie) first aid? You might even decide to open fire at FNG's character since you might not be sure whether he meant to shoot at the zombie or at you. You might have a go at someone else since you might not be certain where the bullets came from. The shots might not even have come from one of your own team...

FNG, just using you as an example...

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what you tell me is what your character intends to do, I will tell you what the outcome is, for example:

"I shoot him in the head."

My response: "You miss."

"I talk her into give us free dinner."

My response: "You're charged full price."

"I jump across the gap."

My response: "You fail to land on the other side."

Or, who knows, you might succeed...

Ultimately it is not possible for you to create or deliberately role-play invincible superheroes, if you tell me:

"I leap tall buildings in a single bound"

You'll be told: "Your character jumped face first into a brick wall."

 

Will we be using the character template Siberian Black suggested?

 

Thanks for your explanation, Simon. All clear now. And I agree with Siberian, I think playing as a mercenary unit would be the most interesting because the side they choose is not fixed.

I'll whip up a character description as soon as possible.