SangoProduction
2016-07-23, 06:03 PM
I asked quite a few questions before applying to the game....and then for the first time in all my years on Roll20 the DM encouraged even more questions. So, can I get some help from people smarter than me?
I'll have a copy of the questions/answers so far.
[Setting is a far, far future where the technology is nearly magical, power plants that could run today's houses can fit in your pocket and body modification is basically ubiquitous. The game system used is D20 Modern/future]
It has been 186 years since FTL warp speeds have been fully incorporated into interstellar travel. Mars is now devoid of natural resources due to the power hungry corporaticratic nations there mass mining and exporting anything they can get their hands on in order to keep up with funds lost from space pirates raiding trade vessels that travel between Earth and Mars.
The United Earth Federation is now looking for a suitable planet to establish human life on, as the world government views the Independent Martian Nations as another failure on their part, along with the Earth Prime Ape Enlightenment Doctrine. Initial attempts at terraforming Wolf 1061c and Tau Ceti e have been going well, with colonists expecting to arrive at both planets in approximately four months. The Gliese Solar Complex colonists have reported no major complications in fully integrating the human population to the newly terraformed planets, excluding the Gliese 667Cc incident where the indigenous fauna there nearly wiped out an entire military outpost.
Reports of scouting expeditions to HD 40307g, the K-12 Solar Complex, and most notably the Kepler Solar Complex have begun to surface. Experts believe the expeditionary starships will be crewed by a mixture of both Humans and Androids. The Council of Collective Androids have yet to comment on this. The scientific committee has been disappointed with the lack of intellectually advanced lifeforms near our star, but their hopes are high with the three scouting expeditions into deep space.
This is the Universe you currently live in. It is ever expanding, and has existed for several billion years. How could one possibly ever make a mark large enough to compare? We live lives so short that we don't even register on our galactic timeline, and we're so small, the planets we live on don't even take up enough space in our universe to be considered in any way significant. How could we possibly compete at such a scale?
Well one thing is for sure. It's your job to try.
How prevalent are star battles and dogfights in space going to be? Or are conflicts going to be mostly relegated to ground combat?
Both in general for your world, and for what you plan to happen in the game we play.
Also, in a universe of basically pinnacle of technology, just how many of your humans are "meta-humans" or highly altered humans (whether genetically or mechanically). And how much of the population are intelligent robots? How many of those are nanoswarms in the shape of people (I guess the liquid-state robots would be the closest to that idea)?
I could go on with the ridiculous questions of the population question...but I think that's more than enough questions on that topic
1. Dogfights and starship combat would mostly occur around the Earth-Mars trade lane, as piracy is rampant there. Ground combat is most likely on Mars, possible for mining colonies, kept short and decisive on earth, and rather intense on the colonies that have indigenous fauna.
2. Enhanced humans are frequent anywhere you go. The more money someone has, the more likely they are to be genetically and cybernetically enhanced.
3. There are sentient androids everywhere, regardless of where you go. They have the same rights as humans and have been fully integrated into human society. Androids are indistinguishable from humans in every aspect unless they wish to reveal themselves. Population ratio of android to human is about 2/5.
The System we will be using for this campaign will be the D20 Modern system which is based off of D&D 3.5. We'll be using the Future D20 [removed link] module to incorporate science fiction into the system.
I am barring spell casting advanced classes and high fantasy creatures as they do not match the theme I want to run with.
We will be playing in a Progress Level 8 setting.
Some rules, not many, will be fudged and played around with for thematic reasons.
We will be starting with Level 1 Heroes.
Players will be using voice chat (Roll20, Skype, etc.) while I, the GM, will be using a mixture of both text and voice chat.
The game setting will be determined once all players have been selected. I encourage you all to get to know fellow applicants, as applicant's characters with backgrounds that involve other applicant's characters are more likely to be considered.
The game's pace will be slow, so be in it for the long haul. The more you are engaged with the story and roleplay, the faster the game will move.
Roleplay will be a heavy focus. I'm not interested in power gamers. I'm here to tell a story, and have my players give me the inspiration I need to write it. If all you care about is min-maxing your damage, this isn't the game for you.
The posted game time is tentative. It can be moved based on the needs of the players, but this will need extensive conversation in order to do efficiently.
Do you use class skills? Or can we freely allocate skills just based on the personality of the character rather than the class?
Also, do you allow d20 books that aren't on that website, like D20 Cyberscape and D20 Future Tech (or the parts of D20 Past that are relevant to the guidelines you gave)? (I can link online PDFs if needed)
Do you use the Unlimited Cybernetics alternate rules, like CyberScape says is common for PL 8 (which replaces negative levels with "cybernetics slots")?
If so, what happens to prosthetics that say they don't count towards negative levels? Do they not count towards the slots, or does that bit just get left off?
Are we going to use point buy, or rolling? If I were to give my opinion, I'd much prefer point buy as it prevents someone showing up with all 6s and another showing up with all 18, and the uncomfortable feeling that you're cheating if you roll well.
1. Class skills are derived from one's class. If you want to multi class to get to certain skills, that's how you can achieve what you're asking about skills based on personality.
2. I haven't looked at those books in depth, but I will probably be cherry picking from each.
3. Yes I will be using the unlimited cybernetics alternate rule. Prosthetics [that say they don't count towards negative levels] will not count against someone's cybernetic slots.
4. We'll still be rolling stats, but rolls will be done live during session 0. And don't worry about ability score gaps, I have homerules for that.
Also, I was reading on the Hologram recorder. Seems it only has enough memory for 1 hour's footage, and there's no other equipments that give explicit amounts of storage (other than other recorders, but that's not relevant). Picking up the Computer, Card (or other computer) equipment should work, but again, no explicit explanations.
So, what's your ruling? Do you have a custom item that's just raw storage, do I need to buy another camera, or can it be hand waved if I have a computer?
Also, there seems to be a noticeable lack of dumb drone technology (like a flying camera that would just follow you). Would I need to make a robot for that?
In the original d20 future book, it says cybernetics can look like obvious cybernetics, or look like flesh and blood (indeed, it even offered a "bio-engineered" cybernetic fluff). Then in Cyberscape, we get the"Inobvious" cybernetic Gadget, which makes the cybernetic not obviously cybernetic.
I'm trying to find how they can work together in any way, other than one overriding the other, and I can't find one.
So, do you use the "free-fluff" version, or the expensive "inobvious" version? (I don't want to either be cheating, if you're using the inobvious one, or wasting wealth if you're using the free-fluff.)
1. Computers at this time would have ridiculous amounts of storage space, so if you have one, it won't be an issue. There would also be external memory components that can also hold memory, so I'd say you have unlimited storage space for holo footage.
2. This can be addressed if it's important to creating a character. I have a lot of homebrewing to do, as D20 Modern doesn't have a lot of rules on these kinds of things. But to answer your question simply, there are robots you can buy for that purpose. I will stat them out when it becomes necessary.
3. If cybernetics are going to be rather prevalent in the campaign, then we'll be using cyberscape rules, which override Future D20's rules on cybernetics, meaning cybernetics would need the inobvious mod.
I'll have a copy of the questions/answers so far.
[Setting is a far, far future where the technology is nearly magical, power plants that could run today's houses can fit in your pocket and body modification is basically ubiquitous. The game system used is D20 Modern/future]
It has been 186 years since FTL warp speeds have been fully incorporated into interstellar travel. Mars is now devoid of natural resources due to the power hungry corporaticratic nations there mass mining and exporting anything they can get their hands on in order to keep up with funds lost from space pirates raiding trade vessels that travel between Earth and Mars.
The United Earth Federation is now looking for a suitable planet to establish human life on, as the world government views the Independent Martian Nations as another failure on their part, along with the Earth Prime Ape Enlightenment Doctrine. Initial attempts at terraforming Wolf 1061c and Tau Ceti e have been going well, with colonists expecting to arrive at both planets in approximately four months. The Gliese Solar Complex colonists have reported no major complications in fully integrating the human population to the newly terraformed planets, excluding the Gliese 667Cc incident where the indigenous fauna there nearly wiped out an entire military outpost.
Reports of scouting expeditions to HD 40307g, the K-12 Solar Complex, and most notably the Kepler Solar Complex have begun to surface. Experts believe the expeditionary starships will be crewed by a mixture of both Humans and Androids. The Council of Collective Androids have yet to comment on this. The scientific committee has been disappointed with the lack of intellectually advanced lifeforms near our star, but their hopes are high with the three scouting expeditions into deep space.
This is the Universe you currently live in. It is ever expanding, and has existed for several billion years. How could one possibly ever make a mark large enough to compare? We live lives so short that we don't even register on our galactic timeline, and we're so small, the planets we live on don't even take up enough space in our universe to be considered in any way significant. How could we possibly compete at such a scale?
Well one thing is for sure. It's your job to try.
How prevalent are star battles and dogfights in space going to be? Or are conflicts going to be mostly relegated to ground combat?
Both in general for your world, and for what you plan to happen in the game we play.
Also, in a universe of basically pinnacle of technology, just how many of your humans are "meta-humans" or highly altered humans (whether genetically or mechanically). And how much of the population are intelligent robots? How many of those are nanoswarms in the shape of people (I guess the liquid-state robots would be the closest to that idea)?
I could go on with the ridiculous questions of the population question...but I think that's more than enough questions on that topic
1. Dogfights and starship combat would mostly occur around the Earth-Mars trade lane, as piracy is rampant there. Ground combat is most likely on Mars, possible for mining colonies, kept short and decisive on earth, and rather intense on the colonies that have indigenous fauna.
2. Enhanced humans are frequent anywhere you go. The more money someone has, the more likely they are to be genetically and cybernetically enhanced.
3. There are sentient androids everywhere, regardless of where you go. They have the same rights as humans and have been fully integrated into human society. Androids are indistinguishable from humans in every aspect unless they wish to reveal themselves. Population ratio of android to human is about 2/5.
The System we will be using for this campaign will be the D20 Modern system which is based off of D&D 3.5. We'll be using the Future D20 [removed link] module to incorporate science fiction into the system.
I am barring spell casting advanced classes and high fantasy creatures as they do not match the theme I want to run with.
We will be playing in a Progress Level 8 setting.
Some rules, not many, will be fudged and played around with for thematic reasons.
We will be starting with Level 1 Heroes.
Players will be using voice chat (Roll20, Skype, etc.) while I, the GM, will be using a mixture of both text and voice chat.
The game setting will be determined once all players have been selected. I encourage you all to get to know fellow applicants, as applicant's characters with backgrounds that involve other applicant's characters are more likely to be considered.
The game's pace will be slow, so be in it for the long haul. The more you are engaged with the story and roleplay, the faster the game will move.
Roleplay will be a heavy focus. I'm not interested in power gamers. I'm here to tell a story, and have my players give me the inspiration I need to write it. If all you care about is min-maxing your damage, this isn't the game for you.
The posted game time is tentative. It can be moved based on the needs of the players, but this will need extensive conversation in order to do efficiently.
Do you use class skills? Or can we freely allocate skills just based on the personality of the character rather than the class?
Also, do you allow d20 books that aren't on that website, like D20 Cyberscape and D20 Future Tech (or the parts of D20 Past that are relevant to the guidelines you gave)? (I can link online PDFs if needed)
Do you use the Unlimited Cybernetics alternate rules, like CyberScape says is common for PL 8 (which replaces negative levels with "cybernetics slots")?
If so, what happens to prosthetics that say they don't count towards negative levels? Do they not count towards the slots, or does that bit just get left off?
Are we going to use point buy, or rolling? If I were to give my opinion, I'd much prefer point buy as it prevents someone showing up with all 6s and another showing up with all 18, and the uncomfortable feeling that you're cheating if you roll well.
1. Class skills are derived from one's class. If you want to multi class to get to certain skills, that's how you can achieve what you're asking about skills based on personality.
2. I haven't looked at those books in depth, but I will probably be cherry picking from each.
3. Yes I will be using the unlimited cybernetics alternate rule. Prosthetics [that say they don't count towards negative levels] will not count against someone's cybernetic slots.
4. We'll still be rolling stats, but rolls will be done live during session 0. And don't worry about ability score gaps, I have homerules for that.
Also, I was reading on the Hologram recorder. Seems it only has enough memory for 1 hour's footage, and there's no other equipments that give explicit amounts of storage (other than other recorders, but that's not relevant). Picking up the Computer, Card (or other computer) equipment should work, but again, no explicit explanations.
So, what's your ruling? Do you have a custom item that's just raw storage, do I need to buy another camera, or can it be hand waved if I have a computer?
Also, there seems to be a noticeable lack of dumb drone technology (like a flying camera that would just follow you). Would I need to make a robot for that?
In the original d20 future book, it says cybernetics can look like obvious cybernetics, or look like flesh and blood (indeed, it even offered a "bio-engineered" cybernetic fluff). Then in Cyberscape, we get the"Inobvious" cybernetic Gadget, which makes the cybernetic not obviously cybernetic.
I'm trying to find how they can work together in any way, other than one overriding the other, and I can't find one.
So, do you use the "free-fluff" version, or the expensive "inobvious" version? (I don't want to either be cheating, if you're using the inobvious one, or wasting wealth if you're using the free-fluff.)
1. Computers at this time would have ridiculous amounts of storage space, so if you have one, it won't be an issue. There would also be external memory components that can also hold memory, so I'd say you have unlimited storage space for holo footage.
2. This can be addressed if it's important to creating a character. I have a lot of homebrewing to do, as D20 Modern doesn't have a lot of rules on these kinds of things. But to answer your question simply, there are robots you can buy for that purpose. I will stat them out when it becomes necessary.
3. If cybernetics are going to be rather prevalent in the campaign, then we'll be using cyberscape rules, which override Future D20's rules on cybernetics, meaning cybernetics would need the inobvious mod.