Space Mercenaries - Game Restart [REOPENED]

[BlackFistKronos]

After being forced into a hiatus, I'm returning and restarting my Space Mercenaries storyline, and opening it back up for new players to join in. Looking for small group, about 4-5 people tops, all working for the same mercenary team.

Once again, the main elements will be borrowed by the Heavy Metal series (where sex and violence runs rampant), as well as the Mass Effect series, Army of Two, the Expendables, Losers, and the like. The overall vibe is high action, lots of colorful energy, fun sarcasm, and very raunchy sex. In this galaxy, anything goes.

I'll be game-mastering once again, and the story will follow a PMC (Private Military Company) working in the reaches of the Centaron Galaxy, a galaxy that's in total anarchy. Within the core worlds, large money corporations act as the government, monopolizing basic needs that people need to live. In the outer worlds, small time pirates, mobsters, and slavers rule those worlds, creating the economics. All over space, PMCs are hired as military to help defend their clients, as well as attack others.

Character guildelines:
-Male, Female, or Futa. Must be a centient humanoid. Two arms, two legs, and some sort of genitals. Feel free to give a brief description of the race and the homeworld.

-Must specify a specialty. Melee weapons, sniper, pathfinder, demonlitions, recon, psionics, etc. Only one major specialty and one minor specialty starting out.

-Weapons and armor must be low-to-mid grade starting out. Like starting a D&D character, we can't have them with the highest stuff just yet. Trust me, there will be more than one opportunity to upgrade and 'pimp out'. They should at most one good weapon starting out, which would accentuate that characters specialty.

-sticking to sci-fi, all magic will be in the form of psionics, a la Mass Effect or Starcraft. To keep balance, though, tune down the weapons and gear if you're opting to make a psionic character, and vise versa if you're making a weapons heavy.
PS. I'm open for any type of style of game running. I prefer IRC based myself, but will be more than willing to run it on the board. I'm also looking to see if a good game system would fit, or just to go freeform.

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So, For those loving wild shoot-outs, and even wilder sex, create a character and lets have some fun.

[yuna0417]

I would be interested in something like this. 

Female, with some cybernetics possibly.  Either Psionics w/ a Melee bent or Heavy Weap specialty and demo minor. 

As for systems, well I like Cyberpunk, and would prefer it more on the board, if at all possible.

[Brittlby]

Sheet submitted for approval.

[kckolbe]

I would be interested in playing a male engineer-type.  As for system/freeform, I generally prefer system though understand if ya go freeform, as that usually appeals to more people, or some light homebrew system.

[Senel Coolidge]

Sounds like an interesting concept, I would be happy to join in. I don't suppose you have any particular character form you would like submitted?

As far as Systems go, I am a major advocate for the Alternity system as I know it inside and out... That said I know every loophole there is to make a super powered character. I would prefer a system type game for combat sequences, but freeform when not. The system used is not that important to me.

I will likely end up playing a Boarding Crew Shocktrooper, the guy you send out in a space-suit to cut into a different area of the ship and hit the defenders from behind. Usually this guy works alone or with a hacker/ system operator to take over crucial ship systems. Shotgun and hand to hand skills.

[BlackFistKronos]

looks like you 4 would fit the bill. This would be a small strike force style team.

I'm probably gonna go freeform, even for combat, as systems rp can get a little complicated and stats dependant.

Let me just go through the list:

Senel- your shocktrooper concept i like. if we need to tweak the speciality a bit to fit the team, we can do that later
KcKolbe - the engineer sounds good. FYI, the team will be operating out of a single ship, so if you wanted to expand him to be the technician, that'd be great. I'll even allow piloting skills if need be.
Brittlby - got your submission. looks real good. for everyone else, she's a sort of 'mistress in disguise'/hand to hand specialist.
Yuna - considering we have a lot of people opting for close quarters combat, if you still wanted to play as a heavy weapons/demo girl, that would be awesome.

if everyone's cool with this, we can close up recruitment and get things going.

[kckolbe]

Pretty sweet, I can do that.

[yuna0417]

I'm thinking I like my close quarters Melee/Psion.  n.n

[kckolbe]

A team doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, after all.  And my char sure as hell isn't going hand to hand.

[Brittlby]

And I'm set up to be less combat, more... sneaky sneaky, stabby stabby. And I can be Senel's hacker for infiltrates! It'll work out great! *laugh*

[Senel Coolidge]

Actually, having this many hand to hand specialists would make it easier to take control of a ship without killing off essential crew. The biggest problem with boarding actions in the first place is that in the end you have two ships and only one roster to crew them, and that's if your side hasn't taken casualties. Taking prisoners you can later recruit into necessary positions or even offer a job would make taking the whole ship possible. Imagine building an armada completely with captured vessels.

Mind you, that only works if we are working with PL6 Tech (Firefly type ships), otherwise countermeasures would make that plan far too dangerous. Would we be able to have a character thread opened so we could keep track of the crew including any NPCs? I would like to hear about them.

So, what kind of ship are we crewing exactly? I am very interested to hear about it's features and perhaps customize it a bit. Put the right mods on a ship and it can be nearly undetectable and pack a huge punch as well. I don't mean to geek out, ship to ship combat was my bag with tabletop gaming.

[kckolbe]

I'd say our ship's abilities depend largely on what kinda company we work for and what they want from us.  Any thoughts on that GM?

[Senel Coolidge]

Well, as mercenaries or a small PMC ourselves I would expect a great degree of freedom when it comes to modifying whatever vessel the Captain was assigned or owned. Also if a ship's owner chose to work for said PMC he would no doubt retain ownership of the vessel. At least I hope so, otherwise we would be working for the intergalactic equivalent of Ikea in a bunch of identical vessels.

I have no intention of taking the Captain's position myself, but if I were I would push to give my people the best equipment for the task. To do that you would need to set up your own operations account to purchase the necessary edge you might need for a given mission, one the company had no sway over. A few operations on the sly or some "salvaged" merchandise that "went missing" could take care of that of course.

Anywho, that's just my long-winded way of saying that I think the Captain and crew have more say as to what goes on their ship than the PMC does.

[TheHangedOne]

Is their room for one more?

[Gladiator0161]

I've been seeing this thread pop up for the last couple days and I just read it. Sounds interesting, got room for another player?

If possible I'd like to make my character weapon and unarmed combat savvy. I'll probably play a female, seeing as I haven't played a bad ass tom0boy chick in a while.

Do I need to submit a short character bio? Because I can do that if needed

[Senel Coolidge]

I would think that we should be able to take in some more people, as long as we receive applications in pairs. I don't see any reason why Gladiator or HangedMan should be turned away. That and I always liked tomboys.

But that's up to Kronos of course, it's his idea as much as I want to run off with it. 

[Gladiator0161]

K, I'll PM him seeing as he's offline for the moment.

[Senel Coolidge]

After looking over the confirmed roster again I see that we have:

A Shotgun toting Melee Specialist (Myself)
A Stealthy Melee Specialist (Brittlby) - [Would you mind if I took a look at your profile you sent to Kronos? We could use that as our official template.]
A Psion/ Melee Specialist (Yuna)
And an Engineer/ Technitian (kckolbe)

and hopefully:
A Weapon (?) and Melee Specialist (Gladiator)
A Sniper with Medical Skills (HangedMan)

I am picturing us using our cargo hold as a dojo quite often, considering that the whole crew save KC and HangedMan are hand to hand fighters. May have to invest in some kinetic barriers so we aren't all gunned down as we rush the enemy. "Ah, they had guns! How clever..."

[Gladiator0161]

I haven't sent a bio to Kronos yet, didn't know if it'd be needed or not, lol.

I can write one up though, it's easy enough. My fem character would be ex military (probably the Marines if there is such a thing in this universe) that likes guns and unarmed combat (punching, kicking, grappling stuff).

Any particular structure to the bio you want me to use?

[TheHangedOne]

The seed of an idea I have right now is a Sniper major, medic minor. He'd basically be a supportive role, assisting the others indirectly with covering fire, picking off enemy snipers, assassination, patching up the wounded, etc. As a more superfluous skill, he could be the teams cook; an army marches on its belly, as the saying goes.

[Senel Coolidge]

Well, as Kronos has the final say as to whether it is alright to accept more people I wouldn't worry about the profile till he gets online. He did mention that he only wanted a small (4-5) man team. But I would argue that the team also needs a pilot and a gunner, maybe even a comms expert to jam enemy radar AND any distress calls. (5-7 total crew) Those are positions that still need filled even while the boarding action is underway.

HangedMan brings up a good point that we should think about other duties we each perform when not fighting. There's a lot of work to be done on a ship... I'll have to give it some thought.

[kckolbe]

Some great quotes.  As far as combat goes, I figure my character would be proficient in small arms, though by no means a marksman.  I imagine I will absorb the lion's share of the non combat tasks.  Senel seems to be organizing combat roles.  We have a medic (HangedMan), and someone who will have skill in electronics (Brittlby), and a technician (me) so we really just need a pilot.  Anything beyond that might make things easier, but isn't necessary.  I agree that we are very combat heavy, but we have a fair bit of stealth and technology on our side, so as long as we don't charge in, we'll be fine.

[Senel Coolidge]

So, I was looking into the duties aboard naval vessels back when ships were interesting and found this site: http://www.thepirateking.com/historical/ship_roles.htm

It lists several official positions aboard that may help everyone come up with their specific role when not being shot at. At this stage I am not really sure what role everyone will take, but some skills are starting to take shape. Do we have a Captain in mind yet? I think Kronos would be able to steer the plot best from that position.

As far as the following goes, the titles are not really necessary but the roles themselves are important to fill.

- So far I would nominate KC for Quartermaster as he seems the most capable at keeping the ship together, and his usefulness as an engineer and technician would keep his interests squarely focused on the ship and the crew's happiness.
- As my particular interests lie in upgrading the ship and organizing the crew I think I would be best served as the ship's Purser. Organizing the pay and allocating resources.

Still looking forward to learning more about everyone's characters.

[yuna0417]

I'm envisioning my girly as a comm officer, mainly dealing with other ships, and docking/landing assignments and things of that nature. 

As for the whole killy making things scream and blead, i'll likely be melee with psionics and basic hand to hand.  I'm right now going to work on a little bio, history and all that.  Just got home from work,

[BlackFistKronos]

Alright, we have our team of seven. The ship is actually a smaller freighter. Think Ebon Hawk from KOTOR as far as size and scale. It's large enough to live and travel comfortably, but that's about it. If the plot and opportunity comes for an upgrade to a larger ship, we'll go from there.

Go ahead and flesh out your character sheets. While I made more details of mine, the things you need to know are:

-The parent company your characters will be starting out in is called Titan Inc. It's one of the largest PMCs in the galaxy, with the numbers of ships in the 6 figures, and the number of soldiers in the small millions. Many times, they operate in companies at a time, their numbers ranging about 100 troops per company.

-However, a few divisions of Titan act as a smaller, special forces groups. While many of the larger divisions operate in the core worlds, serving the rich and wealthy corporations that control those planets, many times the small spec-force operate in the outer territories, where it's more barren, dangerous, and deadly, many times ran by syndicates.

-You have just been assigned to one of those small groups. Unnamed, and newley formed after the leader's last team was disbanded. The leader of this new team (my PC) is a human with skeletal cybernetics named Ebon Fenris. Having a reputation as a sort of renegade, he's usually a PR nightmare for Titan Inc. While he does all it takes to get the job done, the body count tends to stack up whenever shit hits the fan. For all his veteranship within Titan, it mostly consists of very successful outerworld missions, getting reassigned to the more 'civil' core worlds, then getting 'banished' back to missions in the outer territories after being in the middle of a huge mess.

-Many leaders within Titan trust Ebon and his abilities, yet the political and corporate side of Titan nearly despises him. As far as weapons and personnel go, Ebon normally gets his lucky breaks from fellow captians, the black market, or some sort of deal Ebon has to arrange with the higher ups. Keep this in mind when creating your characters. Your character may be really good, but there should be a creative angle on how he/she gets assigned to Ebon's team. Someone 'that damn good' would've been better fitted with a team that's the lapdog of the company president.