Red Dwarf knock off

Started by Fior, December 31, 2009, 05:10:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Fior

Firstly, this is NOT actually Red Dwarf. It's not the Red Dwarf universe. I just totally stole their premise and mutilated it for my own pleasure. So, if you're not familiar with Red Dwarf, it won't matter at all. Play if it sounds fun! There will be fun, some silly versions of mystery and drama and even horror, but always fun.

In the year 2220, the United Nations of Earth launched the work of generations. It was a monumental project, the creation of every brilliant mind on the planet. They had conquered united earth, but the rest of the universe was still in need. It was called Fortes et Liber.

FeL was a city unlike any other. Their purpose was to colonize the known universe, discover the rest of the universe, and colonize that too. FeL had a variety of pods and vessels of varying sizes and purposes that were constantly flittering to and from the ship. Some were scanning distant planets. Some were flying ahead to those planets to gather useful resources. Occasionally one would drop colonists off at vaguely habitable planets with whatever they needed to create a livable colony. Most of this was taken from other planets along the way.

In the year 2222, a mining crew was working on a planet unfit for human habitation. It was not completely devoid of life, and they somehow contracted a virus. The few that returned to FeL where unwitting carriers. The virus was deadly and spreading fast. Anyone that hadn't contracted it was put into stasis. The ship was programed to wait until all crew and passengers had died, then treat the ship with high doses of radiation. When the last traces of the lethal radiation and virus were both gone, those in stasis were to be slowly revived.

It's been much longer than expected. At the starting point of this story, FeL in seemingly empty space. No where near any planets, asteroids, debris, or other substance. FeL is still traveling.

Who are you? What will you do?

Are you;
Someone that was put into stasis while everyone you knew was dying?
Someone that was put into stasis before any of this even happened? (for medical, disciplinary, or other reasons?)
The personality of a deceased crew member or passenger: and AE within the ship's computer with a holographic representation?
A somewhat recent hitchhiker? (of human or non-human species)
A piece of robotic equipment of questionable intelligence?
Something I haven't thought of?

Aliens do exist. They will occasionally turn up. Other people do exist. They will occasionally turn up. A lot of the story will simply be the characters dealing with their life alone aboard an unmaintained and slightly senile ship, though.  I  have a somewhat dry sense of humor, and it would be great if you can play through absurdity with some realism. Killer bunny rabbits ARE terrifying...if you just play them right.

angeli

Fior, I am willing to play. I have a few questions, though:

Is this one on one or group?
Is the background you provided all that is required for the game?
What kind of info are you looking for in terms of character description?

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Starlequin

Wow. Spaaaaace, maaaan. Like...cool, you know?

<cracks up> Sorry...couldn't help meself. I'd love to play, if you'll have me! Lot of cool character choices you mentioned. I've never done anything more than 1-on-1 scenes before, but this sounds tres fun. Would you prefer to assign us characters, or shall we just jump in with whatever tickles our fancies? Is the virus already gone, or are portions of the ship still "hot"? Are natural immunities conceivable for human/nonhuman hitchhikers, or salvage crews looking to make a quick few thousand creds on what looks to be a floating piece of dead arachnoweaved nanocarbon?
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

Fior

ooo...friends to play with! woot! =D

this would be a group. the sheer size of the ship makes it easy to bring on new players at any time, and also to lose them (temp. or perm.) when needed.

the background I provided is all that is needed.

character description should include race, gender, physical description, position on the ship before stasis (if applicable), and any other background that might flesh the character out. It might be helpful to think about their time right before stasis, too. What happened from the time the virus hit, to when they went under (or died)? Or if they weren't in stasis, what was going on right before the less basic ship systems started suddenly coming online?

Absolutely come up with your own characters. Post them here first, though, so I can give you any info you might need, and work everyone into things. I'll start a thread once I have a couple characters to throw together. ;)

The virus is gone. The radiation is gone. The ship followed the plan properly. Natural immunities would be conceivable for non-humans. The problem was really the deadly levels of radiation that killed everything that wasn't specifically protected from them (including all traces of the virus)...then took hundreds of years to dissipate.

did I answer all the questions? I think I answered all the questions. lol

angeli

Last set of questions:

Is FeL a planet or a ship? Do they just share a name? I was just curious about that point.

And what are you thinking will be the group size? I'm hesitant to play in a group game because I've never done that before. I'm used to sharing a story but splitting into separate threads.

I'll start working up a char bio for ya.

angeli

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Fior

FeL stands for Fortes et Liber. FeL is the abbreviated name of the ship. It is the size of a city. It was built, collaboratively, by the United Nations of Earth. Earth is the planet all the crew and passengers (anyone that went into stasis or died and is now a hologram) came from.

Right now, it looks like the group size is 2 plus a gm. lol I haven't run a pbp for a while, so I'd  like to keep it to a maximum of 3 players for now. I'm used to a more players and gm style pbp, so this will lean that way. No dice or anything silly though. Free form, and I don't have a rigid campaign in mind so it can be a very collaborative work.

angeli

Okay, thanks for answering so promptly. I'm going to try my best with the game. Here's the char bio--please do let me know if you can't fit her into the story.

Name: Siren
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Position: Med tech for Fortes et Liber

Description: Siren is a petite woman who has an slim, athletic build. Her dark hair is cut short in a bob that is easy to maintain since she is focused on her work and not on maintaining perfect looks. Her dark eyes are alive with intellect, but she rarely smiles and her face is usually set in an expression of fierce concentration. Most people think she's overly serious and determined to overcome her 'shortcomings' in life, and some people think she's brusque, downright rude, and nasty in pesonality. Her best quality is her efficiency--and a few people claim that she has the best hands this side of the galaxy.

Background: Siren is a 25-year-old med tech who was raised on United Nations of Earth by an adoptive family. Her biological parents had been killed and put into stasis when she was 4 years old, and she grew up hearing the stories about her parents' combined intellect and genius--they had been two of the leading physicians in the medical revolution of the 2100s, in which all human diseases had been erased.

Unfortunately for her, her parents' genius did not produce similar qualities in her. Although she tried her damnedest to emulate her long-dead parents, the highest her ability tests could place her was in the field of medical technology--a glorified nurse of olden days.

She signed onto FeL to get away from her disappointed, clingy adoptive family and to get closer to her parents, who had been placed in stasis on the large ship. When the virus hit, she was one of the first to ask for stasis mode.

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Starlequin

Well, I've got a character all lined up, but I don't know if I should post it here or wait till we settle in the main forum. Guess we'll leave that to our esteemed GM, yeah?
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

Starlequin

<face plant> Didn't think I'd want that 'post editing' privilege quite this soon...

Anyway, here's mine:

Name: Ratigua dis Cabrinta sor Tibretzsi ("Rati")

Race: Merkhalian

Gender: Male

Age: 28 (thought about calculating some kind of galactic standard time units for this, but <shrugs> I suck at math. If anyone else cares to give it a go, you're totally welcome to it.)

Height: 1.7m

Weight: 89kg

Skin: Thin, translucent membrane, color changes according to physical states (blue=rest, purple=exertion, red= exhaustion, etc.)

Description: generally humanoid in appearance, slender, sinewy build, smooth skin, pale green eyes with vertical pupils and a second, thin tissue covering beneath the upper eyelids, dull, serrated teeth that break easily and regrow rapidly

History: Rati was born on a small moon orbiting a gas giant in a slowly decaying orbit around a binary star in the Epsilon Eridani system. His mother, Cabrinta, was a bit of a free spirit, and in a culture who's firmest guiding principle amounts to "Do whatever you want, so long as the next generation can do it, too", that's saying something. Merkhalians achieved short-range FTL almost a full two centuries before the human race, but in their opinion there wasn't much 'out there' to be worth trifling with. A fiercely individualist species, Merkh's don't really care about communities or tight-knit bonds with others, and Rati is no exception. He joined up with a small salvage outfit that stopped groundside a few years ago because he was bored, a little drunk, and generally liked the shape of the ship. He'd be the first to tell you his reasons were lousy, but the contract he signed with the crew's chief was rock-solid. The last couple years he's spent wandering in the dark, scanning every square Km of space for useful or valuable cosmic debris in a one-man shuttle on loan from the salvage outfit. It's been quiet, real peaceful-like...until he caught sight of the FeL about a month ago and thought he'd hit the motherlode. The moment he got close enough to scan it, however, the massive ship's onboard systems reached out and hijacked Rati's dustwalker and mistook it for a loose escape pod, drawing it in to itself and locking it down. Now Rati's trapped onboard a half-crazed ship with severe separation anxiety--and plenty of ways to make certain he'll never leave...
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

Fior

ooo...this is going to be fun. Wonderful characters, both of you.

angeli, I have a question. I don't fully understand part of your background. If your parents are dead, why are their bodies being kept in stasis on the ship? Stasis is an artificial pause that stops all physical and chemical processes, including those of life; they resume as if uninterrupted as soon as the stasis is ended. I'm not disallowing it, but what would be the reasoning behind these dead bodies being brought on a mass colonization mission?

angeli

For some reason, I thought you had allowed that in a previous post (being dead and/or put in stasis afterward). Maybe I misunderstood. As for why (if you're allowing it), they were kept in stasis as a precautionary measure to solve any medical crises that arose in the future.

The dilemma could be easily solved if I removed the "killed and" part of the background and just say that her parents were put into stasis. Would that suffice? I can expand, too, and make it explicit that her parents had trusted the adoptive family--they weren't a random family but someone who was listed as the next of kin for Siren.

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Fior

That works. It could work that groups of people with special talents that would be very useful on a new colony were put into stasis because their talents were of little use on the actual ship, to insure each colony had strong leadership and support. Stasis carries higher risks for children than adults so you were raised by an adoptive family instead of being put in stasis, too.

So. that gives us another potential "character class" too. Someone could play one of the specialists put into stasis back on earth hundreds of years ago, thinking they'd only be under a few months or years. lol

angeli

Cool. Works for me.

Sounds like the ideas are flowing. =)

Wish I could edit but can't. Would you prefer an updated bio to be posted?

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Fior

naw. it's fine as is. I'm working on the first post now. This can be our OOC thread, and I'll post in here once I have the IC thread up. ;)

Fior

ok. you're both near each other. You can wander down the hall and find each other, or do a little solo play first if you'd like. I will be playing FeL as my "character" and I think we could definitely take on 1-2 more PCs if they want to join in at some point.

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=56923.0 whenever you guys want. =)

Starlequin

<Face plants. Again.> Sorry, didn't think to check this thread before posting, so I didn't realize we were that close to each other. I am planning on Rati bumping into Siren soon, but since he's really the kind of guy more interested in dealing with his own problems than looking for trouble, I figured just a little scream of terror wouldn't really be enough to get his attention. Well, not someone else's screams, anyway  >:) .....
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

Fior

no problem at all. totally workable. ;) I probably should have mentioned ahead of time that there were signs of a fast mass exodus not long after folks went into stasis.

there is also a "malfunction" that's making a lot of the manual overrides nonfunctional. There are a variety of service robots on the ship that just need to be told to do things, though. No idea why the ship's AI (why do I keep typing AE? when I do that, I mean AI, btw. sheesh) isn't telling them to clean up and maintain things, only heaven knows.

angeli

Or maybe the GM knows and isn't telling. Naughty naughty! =D

I think AE = artificial extraterrestial (sp?)

And so the ship is dirty, dusty, and empty of life. Was the mass exodus of the non-humans of the ship?

I will head off to post now, but I am using my cell phone. Have you ever typed an email on your cell phone?! *walks off grumbling*

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Fior

I don't have email on my cell phone. Oddly, I use it primarily for talking...

ya, the ship is in a sorry state, but it's mostly superficial and all minor. erm...without giving away too much about the mass exodus too soon (just cause it will be more fun to spring it on you later), you can't really tell who left. The right number of people are in stasis (though mostly in life-free format), all the bots are still around (though the ship put them in "power saving" mode some time ago). There are no sign of the dead, but the ship would have had the bots dispose of their remains anyway.

angeli

Excellent info. I'll keep all of that in mind =)

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Fior

I don't really have anything useful to throw at you guys in the main thread, but I wanted to let you know how much I'm thoroughly enjoying reading it! lol I was figuring on mainly playing the ship and bots and such, and they'll start kicking to life and becoming more active very soon. ;)

Starlequin

<sneaks in quietly, looking around and wiping off a fine layer of dust from the furniture> So, um...I, uh, guess this one is dead, then? Or did we just put it in stasis, like the rest of the crew, maybe?
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

angeli

No, it's not dead. Or at least the story isn't. I feel like it, though. I've been sick for the past few days--still feel rotten, but I also feel guilty, so I'm heading over to post now. Sorry for the wait!

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]

Starlequin

Hey angeli, really sorry to hear you've been less than well. If it's anything like the murderous lil bug going around down here, I don't envy you. No need for guilt, I haven't really been too active here (or anywhere, for that matter) lately, either.

On a more depressing note, I just wanted to let you know you're roleplaying with a total idiot. (That'd be me, in case there's any confusion; I'm the idiot.) Somehow I got the idea that the ship had provided Siren with a drone for protection as she went to confront Rati, and that was what I described making all the noise and sounding like an approaching army: Siren's robo-bodyguard, pieces missing, parts falling off as it accompanied her down the corridors to find Rati. It actually only dawned on me a few minutes ago that Siren is, in fact, alone.

My bad.

In my defense, all I can really say is I've never actually done a game through forum-posting before and am unused to the luxury of taking my time in generating my responses, thus my seemingly paradoxical lack of attention to detail. Again: my bad.

BUT have no worries; I do intend to find a way to transmute my little error into a workable reality and (hopefully) find some small measure of redemption. In the meantime, hope you get to feeling better soon!
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

angeli

Oh, no worries. I play several threads, so it's always hard for me to keep up with all the little details. But nope, Siren was alone. I thought you had meant to activate a room of drones or something, which is what I posted in my last.

I'm feeling great today! I slept like the dead yesterday for about 10 hours and woke up with all of my sinuses clear and properly working. Now, if only this weather would cooperate and warm up a bit. =)

I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me I could write a bad romance


ONs & OFFs
Apologies & Absences [09.25.2014]