Space Crew Stranded in Fantasy [Recruitment thread]

Started by Sain, January 12, 2015, 04:25:59 PM

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Sain


First off a perfect summary: A spaceship crashes into a D&D 5th ed fantasy world.


The premise


Space crew that formerly flew around in a vessel capable of hopping from and to every dimension in space and beyond (think hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy kinda spacecraft) crashes into a fantasy world after their reality drive malfunctions. They soon realize that the world they’re now in is just like in the books and virtual reality immersions that some of them have enjoyed, a world where magic and wildlife run rampant and all that they’ve learned so far is rendered useless. How will the crew manage the transition from perfect comfort and luxury of material replicators into an archaic fantasy world where starvation is a thing and the wilderness is not just a big genetically engineered park?

The game will be a survival story of sorts, though it will probably include dungeon crawling, exploration and some political elements later on. It’ll focus on the personal lives of the ship crew from a highly advanced scifi world adapting into a fantasy reality and living their lives there. In a way this is a small twist to those island shipwreck stories. When surviving is no longer a problem, but before the characters get too comfortable some conflict with surrounding nations is likely to arise; people don’t fall down from the sky with stars every day and even the Gods are interested in creatures that come from beyond their imagination.

Because of the theme of crashing into the unknown I’m not going to bother with a map for the fantasy world. Most of the lore will be pretty generic fantasy stuff, though the surrounding area will be rather low tech; think tribal communities rather than kingdoms and knights. Like usual, the world will take its unique shape overtime as details get established in play and I’m open for player input on the worldbuilding. You’re also free to establish details for the scifi world from which your characters originate.


What to expect from the game


The game will be run in NC: Exotic, because I don't want to set too many limits for the reactions that local wildlife/primitives may have towards your characters. That said not all encounters with NPCs are going to be of sexual nature and there will be overarching plots as well as character driven ones. Prepare for everything. We’ll be using D&D 5th edition as the system.

Important to note though that I will impose a house rule that makes short rest take one night and long rest one week. This will make the world slightly less high fantasy as magic and healing are more difficult to come by. I will likewise try to maintain a certain mood of grittiness in the world. The world is not a paradise; in character you should rather treat it rather as one big death trap.

I’m expecting people to bring to the table characters packed with potential for drama, conflict and interesting relationship potential. In addition at least some of the characters should be proactive go getters equipped with the mentality to adapt to this strange world you've landed in.

For posting length I tend to prefer minimum 2 paragraphs. As for the pace, post or few a week is to be expected. If you know you are going to have troubles keeping the pace during certain periods of time then tip me ahead of time and I will be most understanding.


Characters


I can scale this to work with pretty much any amount of characters, but for starters I am looking for at least 4 interested players. I’ll work on character sheet after seeing if this starts rolling or not. Game will start at first level and there will be some restrictions to starting gear. You will also get some extra equipment like laser pistols etc. (though their ammo will eventually run out for good). I was thinking of allowing the current races to be re-fluffed into whatever scifi creatures you have in mind while keeping the stats of the original races.

Some additional details about your starting package.

Starting level: 1st level.
Class: Spell casters awaken their abilities for the first time during their first post. RP it accordingly.
Race: No fantasy races (humans allowed of course). Treat the existing races as stat-blocks that you can re-fluff to your hearts content.
Bonus proficiency: Everyone has proficiency with futuristic weapons.
Background: I’m removing all the background traits. You may re-fluff the backgrounds otherwise to have a more scifi feel to them.
Equipment: No gold (you can have as much credits as you want but they will be useless). You don’t get the standard equipment, instead below is a list of goodies you do get (you may add few personal items to the list, though they may not have more combat value than a dagger).
  • Space suit. Your typical skintight space overalls (or uniform, whatever you prefer) that are both comfy and practical. It protects from most environments, but offers very little protection from direct harm (AC: 11+dex).
  • Communicator. This handy little wrist mounted device that lets send and receive messages at light speed with each other via various channels from almost any distance (you need to test limits of distance yourself).
  • Void mask. Putting on this rebreather like device on your face will let you breathe in almost any environment. Comes with an internal retractable plasteel helmet bubble that wraps around your head upon activation. Can be worn as a collar or a necklace when in its inert form.

In addition the ship has the following equipment in its storage room of the space ship:

  • 4 laser pistols
  • 2 antimatter rifles
  • 2 laser rifles
  • 8 energy cells
  • 10 spare space suits
  • 5 spare communicators and void masks
  • 1 month’s emergency rations for the crew
  • 5 doses of emergency space stim that cures everything (death too.)

The spaceship is still nigh impregnable fortress/house despite being no longer operational. The doors and lights work fine, but there is not enough power for anything else.




Questions, comments, ideas welcome (especially ideas, at this stage I'm very open for those).
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

rikka

So starting class is some homebrew space man?  If not, did the holo deck really instill standard class abilities, including spellcaster ones?
Whatever the outcome, it's on you.

Ons/Offs

Sain

Starting class would be any normal class Rikka, the crew gains magic powers :P

Also, while I like 3.5 and pathfinder as a player they are much more of a chore to run than 5th ed so nope for that.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

rikka

Quote from: Sain on January 13, 2015, 02:31:54 AM
Starting class would be any normal class Rikka, the crew gains magic powers :P


So like the crew reacted to the physics of the world?  Seems plausible enough.  Hope interest in this picks up?
Whatever the outcome, it's on you.

Ons/Offs

Florence

The concept made me think of Star Ocean: The Second Story... which is always a good thing in my book!

Quote from: Sain on January 13, 2015, 02:31:54 AM
Starting class would be any normal class Rikka, the crew gains magic powers :P

Also, while I like 3.5 and pathfinder as a player they are much more of a chore to run than 5th ed so nope for that.

Out of curiosity, would sorcerers be an option? Wizards, and learning magic academically make total sense, but I'm curious how you'd explain the characters spontaneously developing innate magic.

Personally, I'm interested and I think I'd go for a Ranger, one of the ship's military/security type people, perhaps, one who's done a lot of survival training which would probably come in handy.

I'd have to look over the 5e book again before coming up with a more clear character concept than that, though.
O/O: I was going to make a barebones F-list as a rough summary, but then it logged me out and I lost my progress, so I made a VERY barebones F-list instead: Here.

Sain

The space ship would have come from a different reality altogether, the Reality Drive made some changes to them so that they could survive the laws of physics in the new world. I don't think explaining innate magic needs too much more explaining :D
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

Florence

Quote from: Sain on January 13, 2015, 09:27:51 AM
The space ship would have come from a different reality altogether, the Reality Drive made some changes to them so that they could survive the laws of physics in the new world. I don't think explaining innate magic needs too much more explaining :D

Works for me. xD
O/O: I was going to make a barebones F-list as a rough summary, but then it logged me out and I lost my progress, so I made a VERY barebones F-list instead: Here.

Sain

Added some extra info including starting gear and some rule modifications that I would impose.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

Florence

Should we run any alien race fluff by you before submitting a character sheet with them?
O/O: I was going to make a barebones F-list as a rough summary, but then it logged me out and I lost my progress, so I made a VERY barebones F-list instead: Here.

TheGlyphstone

This sounds like a very neat concept, count me in.

Looking at 1d4Chan, they make an excellent pitch for the Barbarian class, and I haven't played a melee brute in a while. So while I'm not sure what job my character had onboard the ship (going with Human for simplicity), he had some really deep-seated and suppressed anger issues that the fantasy interface latched onto and gave him superpowers for. Maybe the doctor/medic, just for entertainment..."do no harm? I'LL SHOW YOU SOME HARM!"
'

rikka

Are you going for a balanced group (healer, warrior, spellcaster, stealth), or anything goes?

Also thinking of a race fluff, that is not necessarily alien but genetically modified humans.  I would like to call them Animans - humans with animal features, particularly ears and tail, that were used as advanced pioneers to colonize new worlds. They get +1 or +2 bonus on one or two skills of their choice depending on their animal genes e.g. one with cat genes would add their bonus to acrobatics.

EDIT:

It just occurred to me, the fluff above could work as a background too.
Whatever the outcome, it's on you.

Ons/Offs

Sain

I'm still looking for at least one more, so hold off for writing anything before then :P, but I'd say pretty much any fluff goes for the race so long as the stats can still represent them. For example I would have hard time imagining incorporeal race of energy beings being played with any existing racial templates.

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on January 13, 2015, 03:18:25 PM
This sounds like a very neat concept, count me in.

Looking at 1d4Chan, they make an excellent pitch for the Barbarian class, and I haven't played a melee brute in a while. So while I'm not sure what job my character had onboard the ship (going with Human for simplicity), he had some really deep-seated and suppressed anger issues that the fantasy interface latched onto and gave him superpowers for. Maybe the doctor/medic, just for entertainment..."do no harm? I'LL SHOW YOU SOME HARM!"
'

What's 1d4Chan :D? I could only find some wikipedia with a quick google.

Quote from: rikka on January 13, 2015, 04:23:53 PM
Are you going for a balanced group (healer, warrior, spellcaster, stealth), or anything goes?

Also thinking of a race fluff, that is not necessarily alien but genetically modified humans.  I would like to call them Animans - humans with animal features, particularly ears and tail, that were used as advanced pioneers to colonize new worlds. They get +1 or +2 bonus on one or two skills of their choice depending on their animal genes e.g. one with cat genes would add their bonus to acrobatics.

D&D 5th ed doesn't really have typical party composition per say. I feel it's generally balanced (bar from druid but lets not open that box of feels) with pretty much any sort of party composition. That said this game tilts the balance slightly with the increased rest time and with players starting with a bunch of powerful weapons. Basically until you run out of ammo from those most encounters of your level should feel easy. In addition since it's a survival game there might be especially in the beginning encounters that don't happen with the full party so you should not count on always having a healer with you.

Kemomimi humans are fine, but I think the regular races and race variants are enough to represent them pretty well. Human with cat features for example I would imagine could easily be an elf with the dark vision, increased dex and proficiency in perception (trance you could replace with regular sleep if you want.) I'll refrain from making any changes like flat skill bonuses in addition to how the skill system regularly works, but with the fluff of the backgrounds being freely shape-able (and without the trait or equipment bonuses) I think everyone could construct race-background combo with skills that fit the character concept as a whole. I'm not at all against claiming IC that certain skill proficiency gained from a background would actually be part of the character's racial bonuses just so long as things add up.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Sain on January 13, 2015, 04:52:36 PM

What's 1d4Chan :D? I could only find some wikipedia with a quick google.


http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Main_Page

The 'official' wiki of 4Chan's /tg/ subforum. Lots of commentary and information about all sorts of tabletop and RPG stuff, with the expected heavy dose of fa/tg/uy snark and humor.

D12

I am interested in this game, I'm thinking some kind of support class, maybe scout or rogue.

However I have never played D&D5 before; I am an avid Pathfinder player and am familiar with the basics of the d20 system through that (and D&D3.5).
Quote from: Angiejuusan
D12 has earned the power of the GM's Laughter! This does nothing but tell the world you made the GM laugh out loud!

Sain

Quote from: D12 on January 13, 2015, 05:21:20 PM
I am interested in this game, I'm thinking some kind of support class, maybe scout or rogue.

However I have never played D&D5 before; I am an avid Pathfinder player and am familiar with the basics of the d20 system through that (and D&D3.5).

Rogues are pretty nifty in 5th especially with dex automatically applying to weapons that used to require the weapon finesse feat. I am willing to guide those unfamiliar with the D&D 5th ruleset to the game. It's a lot more streamlined than pathfinder and 3.X so if you're familiar with those and have access to the player's handbook for 5th edition then it should not take too long to get familiar.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

rikka

Whatever the outcome, it's on you.

Ons/Offs

Sain

Would like to confirm from those who have shown interestif I infact do have four volunteers willing to throw their characters into a crash site now :D Please respond and I'll see to providing more information for you to work with.

Quote from: rikka on January 13, 2015, 07:06:01 PM
Are ability scores randomly rolled, set, or point build?

I was thinking 25 point buy (remember that 5th ed point buy works slightly different than previous ones) with 15 as max before racial modifiers.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

rikka

Whatever the outcome, it's on you.

Ons/Offs

TheGlyphstone

Confirmed. It looks like the 5e PHB suggests 27 point buy as the default, though. Go with that, or stick with slightly-under-average 25?

Sain

Ah right. If 27 is the new suggestion then we'll go with that.
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

Florence

O/O: I was going to make a barebones F-list as a rough summary, but then it logged me out and I lost my progress, so I made a VERY barebones F-list instead: Here.

TheGlyphstone

^. Very relevant, since I'm a human and would definitely take the stat bonus+feat package over the +1 to everything if feats are being used.

Sain

PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301

TheGlyphstone

Too bad bonus actions are limited to 1/turn. I could make a pretty hilarious ping-pong barbarian with Eagle Totem and the Charger feat otherwise.

Sain

For maximized ping pong potential I recommend looking at warlock's invocations for improving eldritch blast.

Anyway, kinda want to wait to see if D12 is still in or one more player hops on before I upgrade this away from interest check. Although, I guess 3 people is still within doable for this game. It'll just be a bit smaller space crew trio :D
PM box is open. So is my discord: Sain#5301