Magical MacGyver side-by-side comparison game

[Quertus]

Well as I said, not all challenges are appropriate to all characters.

You did? I guess I missed that. But that makes sense, in many ways. Of course, OTOH, you are the master of rewriting challenges to makes sense for characters...

It is interesting to see different assumptions at work.

Indeed!

For example, I would have felt free to adjust the initial encounter away from a mugging to something else quick enough not to trigger the calamities based a particular character's personality or capabilities.

Really? That's surprising, given that the entirety of the "unspoiled" text revolved around the mugging. And given that there was a "decide what you do (before proceeding)" prompt after that. So it's kind hard to "Decide what you would do", then retroactively change the scenario, no?

Not that that stopped me, of course.

But... Oh, I shouldn't say anything more, in case others take this challenge.

Nor would I have assumed instant death scenarios.

Really? What did you expect with

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your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

And one thing I didn't even think of until just now is there's nothing saying you don't have repeats, which could make using a single resting place dangerous.

Oh. I took that as a literal reading of

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If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

But details take time to write. Some of these are short (~500 characters) and some are long (10k characters). You get to fill in any details you need.

Sure enough. Still "add to" and "change" are actions which I take with different degrees of... word... care? trepidation? effort? resistance? seriousness? Eh, "I'll add before I'll change" details (not that that stopped me, obviously). But I prefer to do neither to the extent possible, to maximize the "shared experience" factor.

Hmmm... If people aren't burnt out when you're done, maybe I'll consider entering a scenario or two, just to get experience from the other side, seeing what people have to do in order to use them with their various systems / characters / plans / preconceptions / whatever. Unless @NichG, you feel that's too far afield from the purpose of your thread?

Any ways, yeah, that was the easy one. What we have now is; Creepy, Silly, Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. So if most people agree or are silent we'll do Silly, then Creepy, then...?

I have no pie in the horse... I mean, I have no dog in the race of which order we do things.

[Quertus]

So, seems I potentially made a few errors in my evaluation of the Easy scenario.

Spoiler: Tertiary Thoughts / Characters worth talking about

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So, assuming the nigh-impossible static causality, the character who fares the best in this scenario is, actually, me. Under the assumption that I survive long enough to encounter myself, I give myself a note letting me win the lottery, and quickly use the funds to obtain my "Forever Home" (somewhere I know hasn't fallen into sinkhole, burned down, etc in as many years as I've been in the future by this point), and I sleep there (naked, so as not to lose anything) from then on. In fact, I've probably started sleeping there before then, as I've likely enlisted Family (who don't trigger craziness) to inform me to go there when I come to them for help. Some prescient investments (intentionally not always successful / optimal), and I'm set for money for life. I doubt I have the ability to research this phenomenon, or turn this into "I have time powers!" myself, and I know I don't have the trust to want to be a test subject, or to risk anyone less trustworthy than myself being able to utilize this. And I'm annoyed that I can't do anything coherent over time, like write code or write stories or interact with normal people's lives. But I can read books, watch movies, or perform other actions in "random order", like self-training, and I've got funds, so it's not a bad existence. Meeting the Doctor is just icing on the cake! Although I try to con him into a better arrangement for both of us, I doubt he'd agree to most of my ideas (like improving his future, or turning whatever time energy was affecting me into something useful (especially "me as a TARDIS" per one of my goals in the "You gained a level IRL" thread)), but maybe we still get something out of meeting each other. Still, worst-case scenario, I end 3 years older, 8 years in the future, and 8 years out-of-touch.

Speaking of paradox, although the Paradox Telepathic Vampire can literally make people give him the clothes off their back, if Time Travel counts as Reality Travel, he'd run out of lives before the Doctor comes to save him. The only surface area he has with which to interact with this problem of "time hopping" himself is if someone had intentionally caused this to happen to him, he could find and approach them telepathically. Which doesn't seem to be the case. Fortunately, he has a great network of allies whom he can contact, and who could solve this problem for him (if he cares (yes) or realizes the danger (maybe)).

In particular,

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If I already encountered myself, I’d be willing to encounter myself; however, some versions of Time Travel in common media have various silly problems arise from encountering yourself (usually involving nigh-instant obliteration). So, if we ran a “clean” run, “on the first loop”, fearing instant Annihilation from encountering myself, I’d probably not mug myself in the first place, getting Family to deliver my note to myself for me. Yeah, I’m bad at roleplaying myself. In my defense, I did specify the brand of Time Travel required to make that series of events make sense; I just left out how the scenario changes with alternate underlying mechanics.

And the telepathic vampire doesn’t sleep. So, after living 3 years linearly, Dr. Who would show up to remove the condition he didn’t even know he had. Unless it triggers at a specific time each night, and things like caffeine pills (which I didn’t bother mentioning anyone (except LtC Staltek Vir, with his transporter hack) using) to stay up are useless in delaying the next jump.

But the bigger point was, most Paradox (just 1e? Unsure.) characters would die before reaching the 3 year limit, as they have a hidden stat I’m calling “lives”, which determines how many “jumps” they can make. So the underlying system can greatly impact that particular scenario’s outcome (at least, if Time Travel counts as a jump (which I think it should, for most mechanics of Time Travel)).

But it also subtly brings up the question of whether, if the time of the jump is determined by sleep instead of occurring at a pre-set Time each night, if the character’s sleep schedule is nonstandard, do they get 1100 jumps, or X Time conscious? Do I need to not take a nap (at least not while carrying anything important) for 3 years / does taking naps reduce the amount of subjective time I spend in the loops or increase the number of jumps I make (not that I’d know, in character, anything about the limit)? And, if triggered by unconsciousness, characters who fall unconscious in battle are much less safe than those I commented on (see also Super heroes fighting in busy city streets, or flight abilities that cut off when KO’d).

Those are among the details I didn’t really comment on or experiment with. Alongside things like “is it possible to intentionally leave a note different from the one you remember receiving?”, or other tests regarding the type of Time Travel being experienced.

[Telok]

I have no pie in the horse...

Silly it is then.

1. You're in downtown Tokyo (or whatever's the closest approximation for the character's setting) having a nice day.
2. The warning sirens go off. The sky darkens. The theme music plays. People are running around screaming. The military starts rolling out heavy artillery in the streets.
3. Godzilla.

Your task: Do the appropriate in character things that change the course of the rampage. That can be saving more people, saving the city, stopping Godzilla, helping Godzilla, marrying Godzilla, whatever.

Godzilla vs some Bobs.

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Thankfully I can stat up Godzilla in Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e.
GODZILLA

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as a vehicle:
Size:44, Size Remaining:0, Cost:881, Price:Wrecked Capital City, HP:47, Resilience:44, Length:~125m
Static Defense @ M=0:0, @ M=1-5:5, @ M=6-9:10, @ M=10+:15, Maneuver:0, Acceleration:1, Base Speed:5, Total Speed:8
Speed:32m/momentum, 11.52 kph/momentum. Drive: Walker (x4) Treats impassible terrain as if it were merely difficult; if flipped over or knocked down it may stand back up as a half action. Ramming: TN=12+mom, Damage:10k10 +47 +5*momentum. Other Drives: Naval (x3) May not leave the water without crashing; if this is the only drive the size costs are halved. Size: 1, Cost: 20, Micronized x-1.

Other Stuff:
Control System: Berserker AI System, Size: 1, Cost: 10, Effect: Runs a 6k3 killbot AI if the pilot is disabled or missing. Frame Type: Reinforced Frame, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: Adds 3 HP & Subtracts 3 Maneuver. Camouflage: Basic Camo, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: The vehicle has colored paint on it. Living Vehicle, Size: 1, Cost: 20, Effect: Heals 1 HP per day, stands up if knocked over. Submarine, Size: 2, Cost: 40. 1x Magnetic Couplers for additional drives, Size: 1, Cost: 10. Armor: Heavy Ferro-fibrous (20 ap), Size: 4, Cost: 50. Hexagrammatic Wards: Heavy Aura (20 Aura), Size: 2, Cost: 80. Manipulator Arms (Strength 10), Size: 7, Cost: 55, Effect: Vehicle has arms. Void Shield 20, Size: 10, Cost: 60. XL Engine 3, Size: 3, Cost: 60, Effect: Adds 3 Speed.

Features: Radiation sense (attracted to radioactivity, may eat highly enriched elements as a snack without suffering heartburn). Kaiju sense (attracted to other kaiju, will normally fight kaiju of other species). Building immunity (does not take damage from impacts with buildings, having buildings dropped on it, exploding buildings, buildings with guns, etc.) Any other features decided as needed (heals from nuclear fallout, can become magnetic, regenerates over time unless 120% absolute destruction, etc.)

Weapons(6k3 all attacks, 90% 18+ & 50% 25+): --Two Handed CQC-- BITE/SLAM, 10k5+20 R/I p5 Unwieldy(cannot parry), Size:1, Cost:20.
--Flail CQC-- TAIL, 10k2+25 I p5 Flexible(cannot be parried), Size:1, Cost:20.
--Wave Motion Cannon-- BREATH, 7k4+35 E p20 s\- 500m(250/1k/1.5k/2k) Recharge Accurate Blast(5), Size:10, Cost:30, [Optional ammo rules: more when angry].

knock down & grapple: str+size = 54k10= 10k32= 10k10+110(90% 155+ & 50% 170+)
climb & swim: 10k10+5(90% 50, 50% 65) = speed by drive type & terrain
jump: run/stand TNs 10/15, 10k10+5(90% 50+, 50% 70+) = 10m +1m/raise & half as high = at least 20 meters

Defense: To-hit is roll over 5 or over 10 depending on speed (technically rolling over 15 could be needed sometimes). Then Void Shield 20 means being in melee, having your own void shield, or using a weapon with armor penetration of 20+. Armor and Wards (magic armor) plus resilience mean you need to throw down 64 damage to inflict a single wound then another 44 damage per additional wound.

Gun Whore Bob: Can't really confront big G unless we change up the conjuration magic school for a sword school or gun kata. The only other option is trying to use Gate to set a giant teleport trap, and at an hour long ritual that'll be super tough timing. So let's see about beating up Godzilla.

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Interestingly none of the magic schools in DtD40k7e have much that would directly affect the big G. Abjuration could throw around some 5x20 force walls, divination could make the big guy unlucky, evocation is out of luck as it's damage tops out at 10k5 a spell and there's no way to get enough aura penetration to reliably overcome that resilience+20, big illusions are a maybe until big G breathes on them, transmutation has transformation & control weather but random tornadoes and a 2x speed Godzilla size wolf isn't an improvement, necromancy has a couple 'lose half remaining hit points' but can't kill anything, enchantment could technically be used to stun-lock & mind control & confuse. The issue is that you have to beat the casting test with a -20 roll vs regular target number to affect big G. Direct damage magic doesn't do that, instead it just applies aura as armor to the damage roll. With first level spells being 15 to cast and 5th level spells being 35 to cast that puts affecting big G with most spells out of reach of most casters, and that's before we talk about saving throws. Like a maximum level & skill sorcerer dedicated to enchantment could throw a dominate (normal TN 25 gotta roll 45+) that would stick about 2/3 of the time, but has a mere 12% chance of not invoking perils of the warp and random bad crap happening, and then big G gets a save at 6k3 vs 25+(however much the caster rolled over 45) which is about 50/50 (28% 30+ and 13% 35+) and then the classic repeat saves if you want big G to to do stuff against it's nature like not eat the caster.

Change the conjuration magic focus to sword schools (requires a minor change in exaltation but no ability changes other than shifting 2 points from willpower to strength) to grab Devoted Spirit 5 instead of conjuration 5 and then Setting Sun instead of the Crisis Zone gun kata. Gives 16 style points to build a special attack using the Power Fist (10k5 reroll 1s for 7k3 impact, armor pen 4, power field), 5 style points freely then have to offset with restrictions. Crying shame we don't have power attack (-5 dice/+5 dice). +3 for Foe hammer (for each die that explodes (rolls 10) on damage roll an additional die of damage (may also explode)), +6 for Castigating Blow (add devotion score to rolled damage dice and heal yourself or an adjacent ally hp equal to the wounds you inflict), -2 no reactions until the start of your next turn, -1 roll a medic check vs target static defense or the attack fails, -1 attack has no armor penetration, then -7k0 to attack with 6x inaccurate and +7k0 of damage improvement. Finally name the attack "Can of Whoop-Ass". The attack will be at 3k3 reroll 1s to hit and do 7k3+6k0+7k0= 20k3= 10k8 damage with an additional die rolled for every die that explodes.

A Noble Sacrifice: GWB has gone insane and decided to attack Godzilla. We'll wait until the big G is near a building to pull a 2 die stunt involving surfing past the face on a magic carpet, through a window, grab a beam/door jam to swing around, then back out another window for a Can of Whoop-Ass uppercut to the jaw. That nabs us an extra 2k0 dice for all rolls, we'll drop a resource point to boost the medic check and a hero point to reroll anything that fails. Since we'll do this while big G is going less than 55 kph we only have to hit 5s (big stuff is easy to hit, hard to hurt). 6k2 vs 5 and 5k3 vs 5 just succeed and then we need to roll damage. Before rerolling 10s we actually have a 71% failure rate to wound big G (an actual melee focused build would have been better) so we run a simulator and... 45% chance to wound, So about a 70% chance to do one wound to big G if we use a hero point to reroll on failure on the damage.

If we instead went with a gun kata it's trickier because we have to punch through that void shield. But Silent Scope at 5 to go all sniper on big G gets us 15 style points for: +2 One Shot, One Kill to apply the Accurate property to the attack (adds more damage the higher the attack roll vs target number), +2 Boom, Headshot to apply a roll twice & use higher plus double armor penetration, -1 to make the attack require a perception pre-check, +2 accuracy improvement for 2k0 to hit, +1 for +2 more armor penetration, and -1 difficult shot for being unable to use the attack again on the next round (that's fine as our las cannon needs a recharge round and we have to take the aim action to enable the Accurate ability. This gives GWB an aimed attack of 10k6+2k0(aim)+2k0(atk)= 10k8 reroll 1s and roll twice take best, to do 5k5 damage with armor penetration 24 with the bonus that every +10 over the to hit number we roll adds +1k1 damage.

Perception of 6k3 makes the TN 5 or 10 to 'hit' big G and we roll our attack. As we're keeping 8 dice we can't miss and our most common result is ten raises (9, 10, & 11 raises covers 44% of all results) and we'll go ahead and skip the whole roll twice thing, for a cool 10k10 damage vs 44 resilience (because the 24 armor pen ignores the 20 point void shield and the 20 points of armor). 90% chance to wound, but only about a 5% chance to deal two wounds and (because we use the ginormous vehicle rules for a 125 meter tall Godzilla) force a test vs stumbling/crashing into something.

Now, big G whomping on GWB... hp 20, resil 6, ap 12-all, defense 11, dodge 2k2 (avg +5 def) or Porte spell if we prepped a landing spot at 10k5 drop 10s (avg +17). Big G attacks at 6k3 mostly for 95% hits if just dodging or 34% hit rate if we can Porte (but GWB ends up at the other portal so we can't use that every round), and the breath weapon would be used blast instead of accurate so that's +10 to hit on that which puts us back over 90% there. So, damage, breath at 7k4+35 (penetration > armor so armor has no effect) = 25% 62+, 50% 67+, 75% 74+ for 10-12 wounds per hit means 3 hits to dead dead but it can only shoot every other turn. If we get bit (lower chance to hit but no recharge) 10k5+20 -(12-5) armor vs pen = 10k5+15 for 25% 50+, 50% 57+, 75% 64+ for 8-10 wounds per hit means 3-5 hits to dead dead. The tail slap is just lower damage but can't be parried and since GWB isn't a kaiju or giant mecha that's probably not happening anyways. With heavy stunting and some teleportation GWB might get as many as 10-12 shots off before being pancaked or crisped. Not a win.

Diplomat Bob: Calculates the chances of orbital bombardment at too low to really work, plus the scatter on the missed shots would be... fun... But, if we want to do more than be a 'save the sheeples' taxi we have another option.

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Calls for teleportation back up to the ship. Nukes Godzilla from orbit until it goes away. Dang, I forgot that DB's ship has a mostly defensive armament setup. Basically a "this will hurt A LOT if you try to engage" more than any sustained fire capability. This means the secondary energy weapon armament isn't going to cut it, we'll be limited to our 15/combat torpedoes (reloading the tube magazines from deep storage is too slow during the time a combat encounter takes). Running the numbers it looks like a 73.3% hit rate and the average scatter on misses is 7.72 kilometers. 11 hits at 10k10+15 ignores armor & shields, instant destruction on a direct hit (Godzilla seems to have survived being shot with a small black hole so even that's questionable) and half damage for every 400 meters from impact. Go the the sims labelled "kill big thing" and "blow up vehicle", now input the numbers... there's a 1/4 chance we take big G down but we can't kill him, we're basically doing 1 wound per hit and we've got a max of 15 to his 44.... from orbit. The partial wing console (anti-grav instead of an actual wing in this case) allows for atmospheric flight and planetary landings. Let's try RAMMING.

Godzilla is a size 44 entity at 125 meters, the ship is a size 57 entity at around 325 meters. To try to clip big G without crashing we'll be throttling our speed down to "helicopter" but since we don't need to shoot we can devote maximum crew to flying safely for a 10k3 vs big G's defense + dodge attempt. Still have a 90%+ hit rate even on above average dodge attempt if big G is moving 60-100 kph. Gonna call it all hits. Damage will be 57k10+27= 10k33+27= 10k10+142 average roll 60= 202/44= 4 wounds (+/-1 at most from damage roll variance).

Since dodging doesn't do anything Godzilla gets at least one shot with the breath weapon at 10k3 (aimed + accurate + stunt bonus for waiting until the last second) vs 0 (because size + direction of movement + range) doing a mere 7k4+35 plus an uncapped 1k1 add on for every 10 rolled over the target number. Most common is 5 or 6 raises so go with 6 that's 13k7= 10k8+35 with armor penetration 20 vs 57 resilience & 57 armor & 60 hull points (void shields cancel each other), so 94 to get that first hull point and 151 to reach the second. Calculators say... about a 30% chance to get 94+ and... well the million roll simulator did record hits of up to 169 bit it doesn't even get to 151 until 15 rankings after we drop below 0.1% chances. That's probably at best a 1/80,000 chance. Still, kaiju is kaiju and thus the damage warrants rolls on the ship critical calculator... if the fight goes 15 passes there's a 2.8% chance that Godzilla (well probably multiple plasma leak/engine breach crits) takes out the ship. On average though, over 15 passes the ship takes about 6-8 hull damage and loses 7.7/16*536= 257 crew. We are, of course, not considering random stunts the player & GM might think of in the middle of the fight. Also there's a 1/10 chance per hit of disabling a random console which has a 1/4 chance of being the anti-grav that lets us fly around in the atmosphere. Looks like DB could use the spaceship to ram Godzilla into going away, but at significant cost and risk.

Paranoid Bob: Gets issued a nuclear hand grenade, goes out, gets stepped on because this is Alpha Complex and it's funny. Gets issued another nuclear hand grenade, goes out, discovers the blast radius is farther than the throwing range. Gets issued another nuclear hand grenade, goes out, tries to use it to set a trap, and (50/50) either big G kicks it so it lands somewhere funny (next to PB, under a super-tank that flies up and lands on PB, something like that) or it explodes sending big G up in the air to come down somewhere funny (on top of PB, next to PB, on something important). It's a win by Paranoia measurement in that we're probably all falling down laughing, but not so much for Paranoid Bob.

Traveling Bob: Runs away before getting stepped on to watch the show from high orbit. Gets a bit of remorse and sends the robot back in the air-raft to rescue people while running data analysis on the rampage. Might figure out the radiation attraction. If so, then after the robot drops off a batch of people to safety sends it to a nearby nuclear plant or research station. Tries to convince the people to load a big lump radioactive of material on the raft (a research station might be more willing to try it) and orders the robot to fly it out near big G, hopefully leading it back out to sea. It either works or it doesn't, but either way TB starts filling out insurance claim forms immediately. So saves a bus load of people or two and could maybe lead Godzilla away, but at a possibly steep financial cost.

[NichG]

Silly it is then.

1. You're in downtown Tokyo (or whatever's the closest approximation for the character's setting) having a nice day.
2. The warning sirens go off. The sky darkens. The theme music plays. People are running around screaming. The military starts rolling out heavy artillery in the streets.
3. Godzilla.

Your task: Do the appropriate in character things that change the course of the rampage. That can be saving more people, saving the city, stopping Godzilla, helping Godzilla, marrying Godzilla, whatever.

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Well, both in temperament and ability, I'm probably ill-suited to do much here. Realistically speaking, its 'go to the nearest shelter as directed and wait'. I never even watched the Godzilla movies so its not like I have any kind of special relevant knowledge outside of general cultural awareness. I *might* be able to assist in an effort to translate or communicate or do movement/aggression predictive inference via machine learning techniques if an existing effort was underway and had support from the SDF, but its a long-shot that I would even get tapped for that kind of thing. So I guess I try to stream the Godzilla movies before the internet goes down and hope I understand things enough to not make any dumb moves? Or find the nearest Godzilla otaku and ask them what we should be doing...

If we were in full fiction mode and all tropes engaged, I did have a network of scientific contacts so I could hurriedly form a focus group of origins of life chemists, geologists, high pressure materials scientists, astronomers, ALifers, people from various space agencies, etc to come up with the one or two liner revelation to the actual protagonists of the film which ends up saving the day, and at least have a shot of 'appearing on camera'. "Tip it over! We can't hurt it but because of the square-cube law it will hurt itself!". But with a realistic no-character-sheet SI, this is more likely to produce a bunch of reflective papers 2-3 years after the event than to do anything radically effective in the heat of the moment. The only kind of thing I know which could be fast enough to possibly do anything within a 24 hour period would be the aforementioned statistical modeling stuff.

This one is definitely a 'there are people whose job it is to deal with this, and are better suited to dealing with this, and they aren't me' type of scenario for self-insert me.

[Quertus]

The Silly Scenario

Spoiler: My Assumptions

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IIRC, Godzilla likes nuclear / radioactive material.

Unlike most lesser Kaiju, Godzilla pretty trivially just soaks conventional military firepower.

Spoiler: Characters who do the best

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Well, the Telepathic Vampire could simply dominate Godzilla, and Dominate whoever was in charge of the military, and create an immediate cease-fire on both sides. He could even Mindrape Godzilla into his pet monster, and keep him long-term. But, really, if he could get to the shelters, he probably wouldn't bother - what's in it for him? Unless... unless he was a decoy copy from the previous challenges, now attempting to set himself up in Tokyo. In which case, "owner of the company with the pet Godzilla - a pet which destroys all military forces attempting to confiscate it from said company" sounds rather lucrative, even if a bit more high-profile than he'd prefer - he'll have to run the company from the shadows, I guess.

Alex Knight could easily be reskinned as a shut-in Otaku(?), I think. In which case... oh, right, minimal computer skills. Well... I guess there's a chance that, if his player pleaded with the GM, saying something like, "Tokyo's power grid always gets hacked in films like this, so surely it should be really easy to do for this challenge, right?", he might be able to con reality at a meta-level beyond what most Mages attempt, and get control of the power grid, causing selective brown-outs to attempt to distract and lead Godzilla, foiling the army's plans to attempt to electrocute the giant lizard. And, if his house gets destroyed, he can jump to the Umbra / Internet, where, if someone happens to be working on a giant robot, maybe he can install himself as its OS, destroying any chances that the robot will have any skill at fighting Godzilla. So... kinda impactful, maybe?

If push came to shove, Arma could fly up Invisible, and attempt to Polymorph Godzilla into a shrubbery. Given that he doubtless only fails his saving throw on a 1... wait, maybe I should check the table. Huh. Unless a Gargantuan, or the legendary Gargantuan Godzilla have special rules, he'll fail on a 3. But even 4 castings (2 per loadout) wouldn't be enough to hit 75% chance of success. Hmmm... Checking... Oh, and she took Enchantment/Charm, so her 5th level spell could be Hold Monster - which, when cast at a single target, imposes a -3 penalty to the saving throw, so Godzilla will fail on a 6. Math... 1-(.85^4x.70^2) -> 74.4%% chance of landing a spell. So close! So, if she's back home, and can spend her funds on a scroll, she should be able to hit 75% chance of doing something (if she has the opportunity to use two optimal loadouts...). That said, giving Godzilla a Quest sounds so much more fun that using Hold Monster to attempt to just decapitate him or something - and he'll take a -4 penalty to his saving throw vs Quest if he happens to be the same Alignment as Arma. As both are probably "undefined", it might count...

Depending on how Godzilla is statted, the MtG Mage with the Elven Chronomancer deck could, if they could manage to get going without interference, spam enough elves to use Wellwishers to tank Godzilla's attacks. With the stats I'd give Godzilla, the deck would just summon elves and extend time until the weight of all the elves multiplied over NI time caused Japan to sink into the waves. However, MtG apparently did a Godzilla-themed set, so, by his "real" stats, he'd be something of a pushover.

Spoiler: Characters who do the worst

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"Oh **** me, why didn't I prioritize finding the shelters" is about my first thought upon hearing the sirens, followed closely by "I hope somebody speaks English" or "are they blast shelters, fallout shelters, air raid shelters, or what?", depending on just how useful my brain is feeling at that point. Most likely, I die clutching my translation guide while explaining they my pie needs to use the lavatory in Spain, or something equally incoherent.

In an absolutely amazing display of Luck, Whizzy could have Flight and Tongues prepared, and be in the optimal position to fly up to Godzilla and come to understand exactly what the giant monster wants. Unfortunately, given his Charisma, he probably ticks Godzilla off, and it's Initiative to determine whether Godzilla eats the 3e Wizard before the army "accidentally" catches Whizzy in the crossfire. (Granted, if he's the merged Divine Whizzy from the previous set, he's probably just pulling a Fizban Feathersplat).

Matter Transformation should allow one to create radioactive material with which to distract Godzilla. But you know what the problem with that is? Alex Daeus doesn't have the "extras" to create such material safely, and isn't immune to radiation poisoning. I think he could spend a Hero Point to pretend he has the right extras once; after that, it's a sacrifice play.

Few can understand the will of Tzeentch, fathom what twisted schemes might have made him want Mr. T to encounter Godzilla. If Mr. T felt compelled to get involved, he would probably attempt to fire plasma rifles at Godzilla's tail from behind, doing approximately nothing to the giant lizard until it noticed him, turned around, and ate his power armor for the nuclear power. In the Grimdark of running Mr. T, sometimes Mr. T is the mid-battle snack. And I guess it could be funny if eating the mutant flesh or Warpstone in that snack caused Godzilla to mutate, and he got... <roll> Extra Mouth?! If Mr. T had been smarter (which, you know, maybe he realistically should have been), and activated his senses, and sensed Godzilla's mutations, he could have used Suppress Mutation to remove Godzilla's energy breath, or his regeneration. Or, you know, actually taken Godzilla's side in the fight. Or actually built some scheme on the fly, like... grrr... if this was actually Tokyo, in "Earth of the past", offering (as the only being as strange as Godzilla) to use his "strange origin advantages" to help analyze any samples taken from Godzilla. Which... probably wouldn't make any change to the "plot of the movie", as it were, it would just set Mr. T up to interact favorably with the highest levels of government moving forward. Which, of course, should be in no way concerning for said government.

[Kane0]

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Needle in a haystack: Nothing of note gained
Nautical Forgery: Nothing of note gained
Gotta be the Economy: Ruler of a small town
Dreamsick: Is affected by the dreamsick state
Suntan Lotion: Orbital death laser on-call (as long as he stays on that world)
Timeless City: A few looted doodads

The lizardmen will probably just compare notes on any cuisine they've encountered then go their separate ways, picking new times/places that interest them.

Spoiler: Godzilla

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Lizardman is not equipped to fight a breath-weapon tarrasque. He will be getting the hell out of there, maybe looting some choice items along the way. He probably won't be able to outpace a determined pursuit but stealth wouldn't be a problem.

There's a 1 in 6 chance this would be Suntan Lotion Lizardman though, so maybe the space laser would have an affect on it? Lizardman would need to get *awfully* close though, probably not worth the risk.

[Telok]

Well silly was silly. Although sending Godzilla on a quest would be really funny.

So after the Creely one we have Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. Opinions on order of operations?

1. People you know start acting weird. Not the important people, but the nobodies. The regular bum on the corner by where you work, the retiree with no family or friends who lives down the street, the kid in a dead end job and no social life. While they keep doing the same stuff there's no longer any worry, self pity, or unhappiness about it. They just have this sort of dull "loading... please wait" expression on their faces.
2. Eventually there's a few break ins around that the people who'se houses were broken into don't seem to care about. One morning after a commotion there's a house with a couple busted windows but the family doesn't call the police or anything. They just fix the windows and carry on. The whole family just has this sort of dull "don't care much" expression on their faces.
3. About a week later everyone like that goes away. The bum wandered off, the retiree booked a cruise, the family went on vacation... and they just don't come back. The houses go up for sale, cars are towed off for auction, and nobody leaves any forwarding addresses or anything.
4. At some point in the next year you might notice someone you know as a medical provider, like a general practitioner doctor or a dentist, is a bit off. They're still polite and professional, but the smiles are perfunctory and they don't do small talk any more.
4.a. If you use medical services then the next time you visit a doctor they look up your nose and find a cancerous lesion or weird lump or something. They'd like to cut it out and do a biopsy. There'll be a little anesthesia involved.
4.b If you are in the medical services you'll notice an up tic in nose cancers and biopsies that involve usually unnecessary general anesthesia and turn out to be benign.
5. It's your turn.

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Oh yeah, this is one of those 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' things. They came from dimensional portals to somewhere bad and started out looking like fast hairy worms. Crawled in the noses of the homeless and isolated while they slept. Followed the nasal nerves into the brain and took control. Moved into other isolated individuals with few connections looking for their lever. Later they ganged up to attack families, ten or twelve body snatchers at a time, holding people down and shoving other brain worms up their noses.

Eventually they hit on the medical providers. Doctors and dentists mostly. Start grabbing them and ditching the old hosts. Now they're not finding nose cancers, they faking them. Using it as an excuse to put in, not a brain worm this time unless you're a medical person yourself, but an egg. They're small, maybe 5-7 mm or a bit less than a quarter inch across, and will hatch in 3-5 years.

This will depend a lot on the character's native setting and interactions with medical providers. Medieval types in our history would happily put a dried lettuce pellet up their nose if someone reputable swore it would ward off gout or plague. Far future people might have home medical scanners that can't be fooled. Shut ins might be targeted early by four or five of the body-snatched in a dark alley. People who never go to a doctor or dentist may not notice anything until a few more years down the road when world politics takes a sudden turn for the weird.

"Dr. Bob, paging Dr. Bob"

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Paranoid Bob: Doesn't notice anything wrong until it's too late. Far far too late.

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The body snatchers went for the cloning vat techs. Every new clone comes out with an egg in the brain. It's only a matter of time until Alpha Complex becomes a creepier version of the creepy utopia it was supposed to be. The only chance anyone has is the occasional random exploded head exposing a mature worm taking up most of the brain space. Unfortunately that's probably mostly put down to commies, mutants, traitors, or commie mutant traitors playing around with bio-weapons. Best course of action the R&D folk get in on it, make a working scanner, and the Computer makes the correct deduction that ALL cloning vat personnel, ALL new clones, and ALL ultraviolet high programmers have to be scanned NOW or be terminated. Worst thing is they got a ultraviolet early on and there's been a line added to the Computer's code that says brain worms can't exist, it's all a commie mutant plot, terminate the clones claiming worm sign immediately. Paranoid Bob is a helpless gear in the machine for this one.

Travelling Bob: Woah, that xenobiology training came in ultra handy. I did not intend that. This might actually work out.

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These things might take some frontier worlds but as soon as they hit high tech civilization with real public health reporting, A.I.s checking for patterns, and sensors that flag stuff without human intervention, then it's all over. The only question is if TB gets medical zapped or not. If (and it's an important if) TB gets the idea that something is up then it's an easy solution. Brain affecting xeno-parasites are not unknown in Traveller (seriously, people have been writing for the game for nigh on 40 years now, there is seriously weird stuff out there). They're along the lines of various things people visiting unusual or new frontier worlds check for. You know, psychoactive pollens, alien pheromones, assorted spores for mold/fungus analogs that do anything from dissolve plastics and rubbers to turn people into flesh eating zombies, an infinite variety of bacteria/virus type things, leftover weaponized nanotech from the Ancients when they wiped themselves out, telepathic animal predators.

So we have a lab ship and the knowledge on hand, we'd just have to trigger the "check the brain" suspicion. Which is... heck I don't know how likely it is. Totally depends on the interpersonal relationships between TB and the NPCs. Of course since Traveling Bob doesn't normally stick around one place for years we could, if there's no reason to visit a local doctor or dentist, just pass on through the system all unknowing. And of course any off-world brain scan by a non-body snatched doctor will throw all sorts of alarm bells, and you might get that as a general follow up from a "hey I was on a frontier planet and had a nose cancer removed, can we check to make sure it didn't come back".

I think I'd put this one down as technological civilization wins (eventually). Whether TB does or not.

Gun Whore Bob: I looked at the inventory, saw 'Doc-Bot 9000', and stopped worrying. Edit: I got to the end and started worrying again.

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Merc thought process: 1) survive, 2) & 3) do the job & get paid, the order depending on the job, the customer, and our principals.

The doc bot and any mercs trained in medicine (which does include GWB because bleeding out is a thing in this game) are the primary medical go-to for GWB's followers. That means we're facing... likely a compromised employer. This imperils the "do the job" and "get paid" parts of being a merc. Right. The employer starts acting funny. Detect magic, no magic. Check for treason & blackmail, GWB is not very good but someone on staff is likely at least half decent. Check for drugs in the water, gasses, etc., and more nope but now the tri-corder/auspex have been broken out. Scan the employer, say we're checking for bugs & other eavesdropping. GWB's medical of 4k3 vs probably 20 is... wait logically doc-bots have sensitive scanners, we'll claim we've modded it for bug detection and scan the whole room including the people in there at <check the robot's build> 10k5, well freak the heck out, no wonder the bloody thing costs as much as a small Boeing 737. Yeah, it finds it and can probably extract the thing without any additional harm. Doesn't help if the worm lobotomized our employer, but at least warm bodies can make sure we get paid and don't add any mission creep.

So we've identified the problem. Can we shoot it? No, not really. Conjuration magic doesn't help outside of summoning a 4 skill + 4 attribute something to try to help for 5 minutes at a time. Call our contacts? No, Cocaine Wizard would want to mutate it, Cleric of Lolth would want to weaponize it, Rogue Trader would want to monetize it. We need to regularly scan Bun-Bun the company mascot just to be safe (because T-Rex). Hmm... Do the job, get paid, and... tell someone likely to want to fix this? Like really truly fix it, not make a deal for universal domina....tion... Call up the nearest illithid embassy. Tell them they have competition. Successful competition. That'll take care of it.

Right? Win? Maybe? Now I'd start worrying again.

Diplomat Bob: Is a vampire plant-person... We'll since DB is safe, what about... oh crap, we're going to try to monetize this for Aztechnology aren't we?

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Right. Diplomat Bob has all the right skills & stats to notice something is wrong with the way people are acting and narrow it down a lot. Has a med-kit, tricorder, and laptop computer listed in personal inventory. Has 85% to personally ID target number 20s for figuring stuff out and a 20% chance per try at hitting 35+ if we reroll anything. Hmm, the dryad species date rape pollen ability probably doesn't work on the body snatchers because they aren't the ones being affected, their meat suit is. Well that's another tip off as to exactly what's wrong.

Devise a plan and put it into action: Invite a few people up to the ship for drinks and/or lucrative business contracts (sex or money, one or the other will work on most people). Knock them out and take them down to medical for a full work up. We don't have the advanced medical suite console but that just means we aren't building our own cyberware, doing any cloning, or high quality plastic surgery. Discover the worms and... open up negotiations of business opportunities. Well this went to icky real fast. Going to have to keep this real quiet from the regular crew, it's the sort of thing they probably wouldn't like... Maybe the Common Sense feat would kick in for 5k4+5 vs TN 15 to not make bone headed mistakes... Right, plan B time. Expose and end the body snatcher menace through a well crafted public awareness campaign and bomb people from orbit if they disagree. Secretly acquire some eggs, maybe an adult or two, and put them into a small stasis box that will be discreetly mailed back to Aztechnology HQ on one of our own courier ships.

Personally, ick. But it's a win as far as the Diplomat Bob character is concerned.

[NichG]

Hm...

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So, I think there's a good 25% chance of 'death during the load screen' - as I don't have that many face-to-face interactions with others, so I might end up a break-in candidate before I even know stuff is going on. On the plus side, I do a lot of interactions with others which require me to talk in an animated fashion so I'd be a real exposure risk for them - win the scenario by dying valiantly to expose them? I also don't have much contact with doctors, so if I don't get a critical existence failure early on, I've probably got a few years worth of runway to figure stuff out.

Depending on who around me does end up getting hit first, it will either be ridiculously suspicious or 'well I didn't know them anyhow'. In the second case, the break-ins and lackluster response to said break-ins would be the point at which things would be weird enough for me to consider 'something is going on that I need to make decisions about'. Either way, once I get clued in, I do regularly talk quite a bit with people in various places over the world, so I could probably establish pretty quickly that this is, at least at first, a local phenomenon. And possibly get a clue when the phenomenon spreads and how.

If I noticed through changes to my neighbors, I'd probably ask questions or probe the change in personality in a way that would get me targeted since I wouldn't be hiding that I'm suspicious or concerned = interested in getting to the bottom of things. So probably another 25% chance of getting taken over here.

My main two hypotheses would be 'some kind of cult' or 'some kind of disease that causes symptoms like a lobotomy'. Seeing whether and how it spreads would really be the thing that makes the difference there, and how exactly the things answer probing questions. The tension is, selling your stuff and disappearing says 'cult' and is really weird for 'disease', whereas having a total loss of personality could possibly be a 'disease' thing but with a cult I would expect some kind of obsession at the very least. As a third hypothesis, it could be a drug thing, but depending who I saw get this way it might have to be an involuntary drugging somehow. So the way I'd get evidence one way or another would be to look at real estate listings and see if there's a noticeable rash of houses getting sold, how that pattern spreads, and if the houses are being listed in weird ways or for prices that don't make sense. I'm not really qualified to just spot that, so I'd have to research it a bit and maybe talk to a real estate agent or two to try to put things together, but if that works I have at least a crude way of monitoring the spread. Given that, I can look at things like 'is it exponential?' and maybe narrow things down a bit. If the spread mapped this way seems targeted, well, thats enough probably to really freak me out.

Also at this point given the 'symptoms' I might be considering getting the heck out of the area at least temporarily until someone figures out what the heck this thing is. And certainly I'm not going to follow the medical advice of anyone showing this kind of symptom, so I'd escape the doctor trap.

So now the question is, okay, I've noticed something - how do I get enough evidence that I'm not just going to be taken to be a crazed conspiracy theorist? This depends a lot on how careful the invaders are being - if any of their hosts gets knocked out via blunt force trauma to the head (car accidents, people wielding fireplace pokers during the break in attempts, ...), well, x-rays and MRIs will probably reveal the invader and then other people will be more active in the scenario than I would be. If any of the hosts die in vaguely suspicious circumstances, autopsy might reveal them as well.

But lets say that this doesn't happen and they're careful enough that for some reason I have to be the one to proactively expose them. First thing is to show the weird epidemic of bad real estate judgment to colleagues and see if anyone knows anyone who knows anyone in the CDC, sort of connections. I know a few people who ended up working for Mayo clinic, and I've talked with a few people who do (pure theory) disease modeling, so... maybe? Otherwise, its kind of trendy these days to speculate about mental health epidemics from various indirect causes - COVID isolation, social media, etc - so maybe just being willing to say the right (misleading) things to a reporter in the context of 'I have a PhD and I do modeling and am willing to embarrass my profession in front of the world!' would at least get a story out that might have people investigating it just to disprove the obviously false points I'd be making. Like if I say its an epidemic of contagious bad decision-making because of people introducing each-other to ChatGPT and they're all using it to price their houses, or something clickbait-y like that. But that's kind of weak...

Just because its more funny, I think the real strategy here is to become the county coroner abuse the power of that position to ensure that autopsies including examination of the brain are done more frequently. Where I live, the coroner is an elected position and notably does not require any kind of medical certification or degree, and is not exactly the most competitive of elected public offices. So in order to save the world, I must run for coroner!

Anyhow, basic pattern of action here would be: 'avoid the phenomenon, get enough evidence to expose the phenomenon to the world, step aside and let doctors and soldiers and so on actually deal with it at scale'.

Using the real estate misjudgment model with a bit of statistical analysis to locate patient zero and finding the portal might be a fun side-branch to consider! But probably that's death by succeeding too well.

[Quertus]

Horror Scenario

Spoiler: Characters who do the best

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This kind of "mass mind control" is the bread and butter of superheroes like the M&M Omnimancer. A little boost to Bluff (so as not to seem to notice) and Sense Motive, followed by some discrete mind scans (of present and past versions of the target(s)) quickly clues the Omnimancer in on what is happening. A little mind / memory reading later (just in case they had some benevolent objectives), and the Worms don't live a day past discovery, their corpses handed over to experts to develop immunizations to give to the public.

The telepathic vampire decoy clone really can't be bothered to care... until the first time the Worms take control of one of his Tokya-based employees. Then (after confirming, engineering, or getting his companion to magic that they are immune), he sends clones of Godzilla by the thousands to wreck their universe (by this point, he's seen Kaiju movies, and knows better than to trickle them in). And maybe does something about the Worms in this world, too. However, if his experiments indicated that Vampires might be vulnerable to the Worms from another Dimension, that's when he'd get ugly. He would begin bio-engineering predators specifically designed for them, starting most likely with "Vampire Worms", up through plagues that cause the Worms to "Transdimensional Sneeze" when infected, in an attempt to wipe them from existence.

LtC Staltek Vir finds this almost too easy. Between his telepathic powers, tricorders, various medical scanners, and the ubiquitous Transporter, it's trivial for him to detect and remove these parasites, all with rolls it's impossible for him to fail. Oh, and did I mention that the crew of the Zero is strongly encouraged to follow and exceed the Federation's usual depravities, to the point that the Worms of greater "meh" would be extra noticeable?

The Shadowrun Troll is surprisingly well equipped to handle this. As a flying, invisible (inaudible, odorless) instant death machine, they can easily investigate these strange events (albeit poorly), remove any suspicious and unimportant individuals (ie, anyone from the entire 1st crop), get someone else to figure out what's going on, develop a Detection spell to find the Worms, and finish wiping out the Worms, long before things get weird.

Agent Ackron (Marvel) already uses Mindworms to control people, so he's intimately familiar with the concept. So it's just a "my dad can beat up your dad" question of whether his Worms can beat up the other dimension's Worms, as he's never tried to worm an already-wormed target. Failing that, surgery is a likely option he'd pursue. And, if the invading Worms are as good as his, they're worth a lot of Karma each, meaning he can afford to succeed on his rolls to deworm the world.

Spoiler: Characters who do the worst

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Harry the Happy Hermetic would be in the worst position here. As something of a "guardian between worlds", he (and his knights) might be among the first targeted. Lacking the civilian targets in which to notice the changes, all it would take would be one night of drunken festivities, people leaving to relieve themselves getting Worms until an entire shift on watch had Worms, and it would be over for the sleeping knights. Harry's only hope would be if his new divine status made him immune; otherwise, the Worms gained a powerful ally.

Speaking of WoD Mages, as he never leaves the house, Alex Knight probably wouldn't notice anything amiss until world politics got weird. By then, it would probably be too late for him to do anything about it (other than maybe raise an alarm), as his spirits can't really operate freely without the limited power he can provide them. Hopefully there's some other beings left who can handle this problem. The only plus side is, the Worms would never survive attempting to infect him.

Batting 0 for 3 for the WoD, Dr. Angelus Benway, as a Doctor, might well be targeted by the Worms, and would be an easy target while passed out.

Sleeping outdoors at scenario start once again could prove fatal to Nami of the Thousand Eyes (child version), as she may well be one of the first victims. Her older self would have never been caught by the Worms, even while asleep. Sigh.

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If my doctor ever went all "meh" on me, I'd probably joke about him having been replaced. Beyond that? I'm not sure how all my microtransactions would handle Prozac Botox world. But I'd probably poke the latest Prozac Botoxians about the break-ins, which might lead to break-ins for me, too, if they cared.

Spoiler: Cutter Fyord vs Godzilla

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Cutter is feeling kinda left out, as he hasn't really been terribly appropriate to any of the 3 challenges so far. So, evaluating them, I decided he'd have more to say about the Silly one.

(Yes, I have other characters in the original challenges who haven't been heard from yet, either. They're apparently just more patient that Cutter.)

Cutter Fyord would stare wide-eyed, trickling bouncy balls into the street while mumbling "Big. Big big big big big. Rhymes with Fig. Fig... doesn't even have a fig leaf. Big Fig leaf. Big big big big big." Once Godzilla got too close, started glowing, or started taking hits from the military, Cutter would "eep" out a short(ish)-range Teleport to get away from the action.

He'd likely continue watching, and start broadcasting useless commentary over the radio about the fight, while trickling bouncy balls and building up mana until things looked hopeless and he built up enough mana to fulfill his perverse desire to have Godzilla's head pop off, and the giant girl inside take off her giant rubber costume, and look around, confused. Deal with that, Tokyo! Take that, square-cube law! You're welcome, Tokyo.

Not the kind of magic he prefers to use, but something times call for something actions, for some value of "something".

[Telok]

Well its been a quiet couple of days, let's see what's left in the run... magical, talky, and mayhem... in the file... Ah, magical is up next. Yeah, some characters will be fine and others might die in under 30 minutes <cough>Paranoid Bob<cough>.

1. Walking along minding your own business then ZAOOP! you're standing in dead elf.
2. Actually, it's worse than that. You're on a hillside that's seen some nasty fighting recently and there's a battlefield below you. Looks pretty standard Medieval except there's more fires, what looks like a wrecked six "barrel" rotary auto-ballista (pretty sure the operator shouldn't be pinned through the head with what looks like a ballista bolt that went backwards too), and a very dead shredded and on fire dragon.
2.a. Oh, and the elf is somewhere between deep fried and 75% covered in caustic acid burns.
2.b There's trees at the top of the hill if you'd like to hide now.
3. Some of the armored figures down below are walking around killing the wounded by shoving hooked swords in their guts and pulling out the intestines & stuff, then watching them bleed to death.
4. You're holding a note that says "Sorry we couldn't get you here without them noticing. You may want to start running."
4.a. The people down below have not noticed you. Yet.

Your task: Can we just assume you don't want to die a horrible death?

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Yes, it's Krynn during one of the nasty wars. If you're an Earth/RL insert then you only have what you remember unless you habitually carry around a tablet loaded with the wikis, books, adventures, etc. No, there's no wifi or cell service here. No, they don't speak English either, Elvish is not Spanish, and Dwarven is not Gaelic.

It's likely the War of the Lance but it could be late Legend of Huma or even one of the early bits before the cataclysm. It'll be hard to tell for a while... Ok, it's the War of the Lance, just because. Any ways, the dead dragon is copper colored under the smoke & fire & blood & charred bits, and the nasty people are draconians & unpleasant human types. There's going to be some fresh fighting in fifteen or twenty minutes as generic adventuring party teleports in, two young adult black dragons (one with someone waving a staff that glows and shoots fireballs) come back around looking for you, and some mystery person in a red robe pops up about twenty feet from where you appeared. At that point the soldiers will start coming up the hillside, until the heavy magic artillery starts flying.

If you want to stick around and manage to stay out of it they'll blow up the hillside a bit, one of the dragons will be badly injured along with the rider, an adventurer gets a double acid breath bath & starts acting like that elf you stepped in, and red robes pops in and out of invisibility throwing the occasional ice storm/chain lightning that hits basically everyone other than you & him. It'll be a bit of a draw as the dragons eventually retreat, the adventurers whip out a scroll to teleport out, and red robes slouches off invisible.

There are at least three factions hunting you. Someone in the dragon armies is using Sending/far-talking type spells to coordinate. The adventurers are working for the white robe wizard faction but have the usual murder-hobo modus operandi (yes killing you and raising you later is on the table if you're easier to catch and carry that way) and Comprehend Languages isn't a murder-hobo spell. The red robe is actually completely mercenary and will pump you for information while trying to get the best deal for selling you to either side unless you can convince him/her it's more profitable to keep you around.

Apparently someone threw you in as a sort of wild card.

Bob's day out.

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Amusingly Krynn is actually a part of my DtD40k7e setting. Not a nice part as the local gods turn out to be even bigger hypocritical jerks than usual. They run everything like some demented board game.

Dtd40k7e Krynn (abbreviated)

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Conditions: Of all the known spheres, Krynn is considered among the most primitive and pristine. At roughly 13 billion kilometers in diameter, Krynn is considerably larger than most other spheres and is plagued by small lethal clouds of -500°C vapor that attack spelljamming vessels (the violation of absolute zero is what makes them dangerous). The entire sphere has significantly above average magical flux levels, making spellcasting more powerful and preventing sorcerers from casting fettered spells. Also of note is that while humans are a recent arrival on the galactic scene the native history of this sphere indicated they've been here all along. Yet a previous galactic census from 4000 years ago records no humans or other unknown species. Divinations have confirmed that the local god-spirits rewrote local history to include humans around 870 years ago. Not that they rewrote accounts or records or memories, they rewrote the literal history of the interior of the Krynn crystal sphere.

Traveler's Aid Society Official Danger Level Ratings
A. Combat Hazard Class 4: The planets are all those sorts of silly places with powerful spirits acting as gods to retard technological and cultural development by constantly interfering with local civilizations, starting wars, exploding volcanoes, spreading plagues, and dropping a comets on the inhabitants. They have also at least once rewritten all of history inside the sphere.
B. Magical Hazard Class 1: The entire sphere has significantly above average magical flux levels, making spellcasting more powerful and preventing sorcerers from casting fettered spells. Actually, psykers can use their powers fettered but it has the same effect as if they were using their powers normally in a regular sphere. Likewise they can use their powers normally but it results in warpy crap as though they had pushed themselves in a normal sphere.
C. Navigational Hazard Class 4: Black Clouds of -500°C vapor roam the outer reaches of the system and are attracted to technology, magi-tech, ship's shields, modern spelljamming helms, and large moving metal objects. This is because the gods/ruling spirits don't like it. As absolute zero is -273.15°C contact with these clouds is extremely dangerous. They are also invisible to normal scanners. They will not approach wooden sailing-type ships with ancient spelljamming helms that are powered by pure magic. Since the distance from the crystal shell to the nearest planet is 5.7 billion km (952 kVU) and ancient spelljamming helms top out at around 25% normal speed it'll take about 11 standard years to get there by that method.

Krynn is a typical terrestrial planet with the usual variety of terrain types, five continents and a multitude of islands. The continent of Taladas has a great lava sea in the middle that's leftover from the last time the local gods smote the planet again. The other continent to note is the big one called Ansalon. In the tropical seas of the northern hemisphere lie the Dragon Isles which are the ancestral home of the local dragon population, and where many of them dwell to this day. There are hundreds of communities of various sizes on Krynn; including sprawling cities, thriving towns, comfortable boroughs and tiny hamlets. Governments include monarchies, oligarchies, democracies, collegiums, hierarchies, patriarchies, republics, magocracies, theocracies, and more. The communities range from large towns that are a veritable patchwork of races, to smaller ethnically pure racist xenophobe enclaves. A recent world war involving some local dragonborn was pretty nasty and any visiting dragonborn can expect prejudice ranging from extra social distancing to spontaneous lynching. There are currently only two ports that are capable of catering to primitive wooden spelljamming vessels, and both are located close to major cities - one in Ansalon and the other in Taladas. Ships that land elsewhere often use both terrain and magic to camouflage their presence, to keep from startling the local populace and getting murdered. Palanthus is the largest city on Ansalon with it's port covering nearly two square kilometers, and knights and warriors loyal to Palanthas are stationed throughout the port waiting to murder any signs of trouble. Kristophan is a major port city on the continent of Taladas, the port is located on the outskirts of the Imperial City district and is under the direct control of the local Emperor. The port itself consists of a rock-tiled slab nearly 2 square kilometers with four buildings, including a large stone-built barracks to house the minotaur warriors who provide port security; a dormitory for human slaves; the port master's home and the port master's offices. At one time, Krynn was home to a highly advanced, magically endowed but morally decadent civilization. This civilization was eliminated, by the local deities, when an asteroid struck the continent of Ansalon. The impact destroyed much of the civilizations throughout the world. The loss of life was enormous, and the various nations sank into warring savagery that they are only just recovering from today.

Yeah, a primitive and annoying place to visit.

Diplomat Bob: Is annoyed at how long it will take to get back to civilization.

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DB's rank 3 mentor is the spirit of dead Tiamat. Krynn is a super minor unimportant sphere so lets set the know check at 35 (near impossible) immediately on landing, dropping automatic once we corner a local and ask what the world's name is. 5k4+5 avgs 45% rate on a straight up check, so we'll assume we need to shake someone down to figure that out. Next we're glad we don't have that vampire weakness to sunlight and I think we'll back off to those trees (let's take the dead elf with us for parts) and stealth away a bit. Hmm... check the stats for a wizard capable of casting 4th level spells to see if we think we can take the red robe dude for a snack/info. No, don't check, wizards are (on average) physically a little on the weak side. If we can surprise him with a las blast to the back and a grapple+bite we should be able to knock him out. Dragons are rough customers in DtD40k7e though, even the young ones.

Let's see, disguise ourselves as the dead elf (relying on being a no-heartbeat vamp to pull off the 'dead' part with extra +1k0 verisimilitude) at 6k4= avg 30 then hide for 4k3= avg 21, then the people appear down slope say 30 meters and immediate fighting... check some average perception scores & range/distraction penalties base tn 23 & -4k0 for trees+combat is... 3k3 red robe & base warriors & caster, 7k4 dex warrior, 8k4 bounty hunter, 8k5 dragons... well bounty hunter and dragons on average spot but don't penetrate the dead elf disguise. Hmm... let's wait until after the fight to try for someone because dragons and DB isn't actually a trained sniper. Can we track the invisible red robe? Invis on RR gives about avg 25 stealth check and DB has avg 23 even on using a blood point to boost. Drat.

Well eventually someone is questioned (wait until a soldier wanders off alone to pee & start with a lasgun burst from behind then grapple/bite or first aid to stop them from dying), we summon up the spirit mentor and throw a hissy fit over being stuck in the boonies, then join the dragon armies for a while as a manager, possibly prodeuction/logistics since we have a laptop computer and know about spreadsheets. Possible to whip up a primitive Morse code radio & work->electricity set up to get a non-magic communications edge. After a while (as soon as it's obvious to us that the war isn't going to end well) throw another, bigger, fit and get our mentor to contact someone else in her cult outside the sphere to let our ship & followers know where we are. Then it's bulling/bribing an adult dragon or higher level caster to do some scrying & teleport us to the edge of the crystal sphere when the ship arrives and opens a portal.

Gun Whore Bob: Is pissed and starts by shooting people. Later takes a command until someone makes contact or there's a known ship available.

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GWB starts off by heading downhill shouting at people with 5k2 command and intimidate backed up by suppressing fire from a machine gun if they get uppity. GWB is actually on par with a young dragon in combat (similar hp, armor, defense, melee, & different but equal-ish casting & ranged weapons) so probably ends up with the adventurers assuming one of the speaks gnome or GWB's remaining undefined language (I was lazy). The las cannon, rocket launcher, and machine gun will eventually run out of ammo but we're still a brutal brawler with the power armor + power glove and conjuration spells for movement. Oh, the "good guy" armies get nasty with someone on their side who has modern combined force tactics training and can cast Gate a lot. I think the war might end a bit faster. GWB probably exits the current class at some point at get a martial class that includes Power Attack and the brawling weapons sword school.

Eventually at some point I think the mercenary company will talk GWB's allies into some divinations to look for and then the Rogue Trader will do a stop by. Luckily they're actual allies and not contacts, so they're by definition GWB's friends and won't charge GWB for services rendered. Definitely own them a favor though, but that's just friends for you. Happily, once someone gets to KrynnSpace and makes contact, then GWB can Gate over to the ship on their own after a few hours.

Traveling Bob: Is crap outta luck.

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A carbine and a pocket full of shells isn't going to get us far no matter how good we are with them. Mechanical engineering 4, medical 1, electronics 1, computers 1, wilderness survival 3, age 55... I think it's hooking up with the red robe and possibly ending up at Mt. Nevermind fixing the lethal flaws in the tinker gnome stuff for the rest of our life. At least we can get them to invent (and then TB fixes the designs) modern plumbing so there's a hot shower every morning and some flush toilets.

In theory we can go back to the 'computer simulation' version since magic doesn't exist in Traveller but short of a way to discover it's a sim we get the same result.

One other options is to go all Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne McCaffery on this. Traveller does have psionics and there is a (dangerous due to conservation of energy meaning altitude changes cause +/- heat gain or else momentum gets conserved) teleportation discipline. So we can have a tech fallen, lost colony, gene-geneered dragon-like lifeforms, and high levels of psionic ability in the local population. Precisely how TB ends up there is questionable given the entrance we made, but it's within the realm of possibility.

The 'gods' would end up being powerful immaterial psychic gestalts, probably having something to do with some leftover Ancients so-advanced-it's-like-magic technology installation somewhere deep in the planet. Draconians are probably a recent engineered mutation in the local dragon-like lifeform population. Overall not too much changes (except the dragons all breathe fire and need to eat specific hydrocarbon bearing rocks to use it) unless TB can find some evidence of the Ancients and cobble up a psi disruption device out of primitive materials. On the other hand xenobiology and medical training come in handy to usher in the revolutionary ideas of hand washing and antibiotics.

Paranoid Bob: TLDR - ends quickly and hilariously and long as your name isn't Bob.

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PB is yoinked out in the middle of a mission. Let's see what R&D has saddled us with... foldable note pad, antimatter spray paint, collapsible gauss cloak, anti-flammable smoke weapon attachment... That's a pad of paper, death in a can, an electromagnetic shielded cloak that folds up really small, and a smoke generator that fits on the end of a gun and does not use an exothermic chemical reaction. Plus our usual 3 laser pistol barrels, personal hand grenade, shiny red reflec armor, assorted mandatory optional happiness pills, personal digital companion (smartphone), and our ability to safely eat anything.

We've done the computer sim version before, let's just play this one straight. Ye gads, color coded dragons, that'll be a hilarious culture shock if PB gets to treat a white dragon as way more important then a red dragon (from lowest to highest Paranoia security clearance: black-red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet-white). OK, looking at our skills "find hiding spot" plus a couple perversity and we're good for a while until we get over the lack of a ceiling and all the filthy dirt everywhere.

Man look at those commie mutant traitors go flashing their powers all over the place. Hey, a person in red, must be a fellow troubleshooter, take some notes about the use of unregistered mutant powers and go try to talk to them. Ouch, Alpha Complex is monocultural and mono-lingual, that won't work well and now we're in the middle of a fight. Fire up the smoke screen, run around in a panic being chased armored people with swords and giant lizards. Maybe the people at the bottom of the hill will help us escape these maniacs?

Let's drop the can of anti-matter spray paint and run away from that, it's just ultra dangerous. Oops, the people at the bottom of the hill are all mutant lizard people, run back up the hill! Running through the smoke, trying to keep away from people. Who's this in the smoke? Crap, he's got the spray paint can! Shoot him! Quick before he gets too close! The GM is so using perversity to run that roll up to 20 and a crit fumble. Look up the usual mass of spray paint in a can... looks like about 120 grams... HA! someone has an online antimatter explosion calculator... right, well that's only 5 megatons... oh hey nuclearsecrecy.com has a nuke explosion generator overlaid on google maps... 500 foot fireball, moderate damage blast radius 2500 feet, 3rd degree burns on exposed skin to 0.6 miles.

Well then, after about 30 minutes everyone loses except for people who think explosions are funny.

[Quertus]

Magical Magical Responses.

Spoiler: Characters who do the best

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Mr. T would just start murdering everyone. They would all crumple like guardsmen before him. He would laugh maniacally from his hilltop vantage... until two dragons wheel around to attack. Melta weapons are one of the few things that really hurt, and here someone decided to not just bioengineer living melta guns, but to field multiple at the same time?! Clearly his own bioengineering work is being put to shame. His best bet is to concentrate fire on one, then use their terrible mobility against the second, and stab it with his Sword of Magic Jar, placing an ally's soul inside the beast. Ideally, he'll get the Dragon to kill its rider, and carry the corpse of its twin off for Mr. T to collect samples, dissect the remains, and learn how to create and improve upon the awesome might of the Melta Dragon. In the gramdark of running Mr. T, the battlefield teaches that one must perfect bioweapons of mass destruction.

Arguably one of my most suboptimal characters ever, Yiiksuv is almost perfectly designed for this scenario. He'd immediately charge the armored forms, and start ripping them apart. As a flying, regenerating Troll with full elemental immunity, and a self-styled dragonslayer, his biggest concern would be getting mobbed by hoards of soldiers on the ground, or hoards of draconians in the air. The only imperfection to his design as far as this scenario is concerned is that he comes from a D&D world where Common is English. Unless the enemies mobbed him, he could probably hold out long enough for the murderhobos to appear; but even if they took him down, it's not like anyone could actually kill him. Seems like, eventually, he'd regenerate, and join forces with the murderhobos in wiping out the forces of evil. His only contribution to the war, long-term, would be in *ahem* "breeding services", giving the good dragons a strong counterpart to the Draconians.

What's a Guildmaster to do when faced with a war? "Um, nope!" One Gate later, and he's home. Now, maybe John Faseman bothers to craft an invisible Observer, to send it back in time to watch and record the battle, and to (in theory) eventually allow him to translate the language, and buy it as a new skill. Then, if he cared, he could create a faux-Adamantium Golem out of toothpaste and tinfoil, and use Gate to send it back in time to slaughter incapacitate whichever side annoyed him more. That said, if there's a side that didn't annoy him, he might open negotiations to trade for those spiffy Dragonlances; otherwise, he'll just take the Karma hit, and loot them off of both sides (or legitimately buy them from a 3rd party who looted them off of both sides). The only problem is that his clever time-travel-dependent plans likely auto-fail, due to the Raistlin-implemented temporal mechanics of Krynn. So he's home safe and sound, with a free Observer to use on some other future quest, and likely forgets all about Krynn.

Spoiler: Characters who do the worst

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Alex Daeus, the M&M Matter Manipulator, pullint tricks like "the air is death" and "your armor is lava" should be enough to wipe out most foes. The acid-breathing dragons finding that the better part of their breath weapon was replaced with Folgers Crystals All Your Base Are Belong To Us will likely have very surprised riders watching their mounts' heads explode. Of course, there's a good chance the murderhobos get the same treatment, so Red and Alex likely team up to loot the deserted battlefield. And to exterminate every single other being to enter a battlefield, ever, for the rest of the war. 100% casualties on both sides might change the outcome of the war just a tad. Sadly, this only lasts until someone targets Alex with a spell that doesn't involve matter, at which point he dies.

The MtG Mage has some pros and cons. On the plus side, as the only MtG Mage in the world, everything he sees is unclaimed, and something he can turn into his own summons / his own spell. On the downside, there's no source of spells for him to purchase. Not that any of that matters - depending on his turn length, he and his elves would likely die to the gathered army long before he really gets going.

A little bit of "Imperius" later, and Ambrosia Slughorn is all over the "take me to your leader" line. Unfortunately, despite being awed by the number of Dragons they have to field, she seems to have ended up on the losing side of this war, and... unless her squishy mage self can somehow Expelliarmus away Dragonlances without dying in the process to the counterattacks, she really can't contribute much to change the outcome of this historic series of events.

Spoiler: Meh

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If I think this is a dream, I might just charge the armored beings below -> Death.

I might (if I don't notice / pay attention to what they're doing to the dead) try to hide among the dead bodies -> Death.

I might "I've always wanted to try this" try to hide in the dead dragon. This isn't the way my brand of stealth usually works, but, even if it does somehow pass a 1st inspection, scry & fry tactics -> Death.

If the red-robed Wizard happens to look enough like Quertus, I might try to get them to help me -> Code Red.

If I happen to find a dead armored guy about the right size, I might be able to pull off disguising myself... nah, probably can't put the armor on all by myself. OK... if the armored guys have any allies that aren't armored, I might be able to pull off my kind of stealth, don a few items, and start gutting (and looting) corpses like I belong. This isn't likely to happen, as there's no mention of such forces but... even if it does, if they notice me, I'm dead. If they don't, red-robes probably isn't there yet, thinks I'm one of them, and kills me. End result: Death.

Or maybe I somehow manage to hide long enough for the murderhobos to find me -> Death.

Death

Death, apparently, is just the beginning.

The murderhobos raise me, and I'm all like, "****, wasn't I just dead?" as I feel at my (lack of) wounds. On the plus side, I know what kind of afterlife I can expect in Krynn; on the down side, it's a huge blue expanse with giant white letters spelling out, "A fatal error has occurred. 404 ERROR - Plane not Found".

Despite elves, dragons, magic, etc, as soon as I hear anyone talk, I fall for a "no true Scottsman", as my line of thought is, "I cannot recognize the language, so this probably isn't D&D". So I'm not really genre-savvy ATM.

However, when their Detect Magic spells make my laptop, cell phone, wristwatch, etc glow a blinding blue, causing looks of shock from those around, and anyone else who tries to use them turns to stone, or has their hearts explode, or otherwise suffers Artifact side effects, I'll quickly get clued in by "technology becomes Artifacts, safe to use only by its owner" to 2e logic being at play. My working hypothesis would be that this was a serious 2e heartbreaker, or perhaps even the Cthulhu-realm basis for Gygax's fever dream of D&D.

Communication will be hard, and likely done through smiley faces drawn in the dirt with sticks. But, eventually, someone will come along with some Language magic, and eventually I'll find out where I am.

Oh, undead gods, Krynn! Think of all the Kender! If they see my artifacts, they'll try to take them! If they do, they'll die! Why, I'll hit epic level in no time!

Yup, OK, that's my plan: To get taken to the nearest Kender population center, and let my Artifacts kill them all, to power level up to Epic. Was there ever a more noble calling culling?

OK, this isn't 3e, so mechanically, maybe I need to get trained as an Apprentice Wizard first.

Regardless, about the only other useful tidbits I know about Krynn are that Chronomancy (or, at least, "changing the timeline") isn't an option during any important events (they're "Timelocked", in Dr. Who t terms (if I remember that correctly)), and that those who travel between worlds hate Krynn for how difficult to leave it is. You'd think it was Ravenloft or something. Well, with the Kender, they're probably cousins...

Regardless, the previous challenges have ensured that there should be active Divinations giving me the option to, if not leave (depending on how the mechanics of "Krynn is a pain" are actually implemented), at least get allies if need be. But I'll ignore that option for now.

All in all, I think that the most likely result is, I die, get raised, and try to convince the "good" guys to let me become a human dual-class <Custom Class: Programmer> / Wizard. I quickly become an artifact-wielding epic level Wizard, known for wiping out whole communities of Kender simply by visiting. With my knowledge of 2e rules, very limited knowledge of Krynn, and epic power, I should be a valuable asset to whichever side / group I assist. If I manage to pass whatever test the Wizards make me take. Just... maybe not in time to actually do anything about this war I don't really remember much about.

But, ultimately, despite the Dragonlance Chronicles being the cause of my desire to write, I'll probably want to leave Krynn.

Code Red

As we try to pump each other for information, if Red goes for my artifacts, he dies, and I'm left alone wherever he took me; if not, I'm wielding multiple pieces of "technology turned artifacts" that might give him pause on the "selling me to the highest bidder" plan.

This probably works out the same as "Dead", in that I get trained as a Wizard, then go on a genocidal power leveling spree (Kender tourism at its finest), just sans the knowledge of the Blue Screen of Death.

If I stayed on Krynn, the best outcome would be to become a deity of the undefined alignment, creating a new plane in the process. One that would seem like the Far Realm to the poor 2e denizens. On the plus side, Krynn is a great place to introduce creatures keyed to that new alignment - like new breeds of Dragons.

[NichG]

Spoiler: Self insert responses to Magical

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I think it would take me quite a bit to get to the point of understanding that 'this is Krynn'. But if I did, the path is clear: Tinker Gnomes. Even magic has rules, but Tinker Gnome science is like a fountain of pure plot devices. Without looking it up, I seem to remember that the whole time travel artifact embroiled in Raistlin's godkilling enterprise was a gnomish gadget (now looking it up, I guess it wasn't, oh well!) If nothing else I could probably make a reputation for 'de-gnomifying' the various gnomish inventions, e.g. reverse engineering them and not having it so that all of the rotational stresses pass through a single hamster wheel in the center or things like that. I don't particularly remember what the Tinker Gnomes are up to during the War of the Lance though. Also, I had not remembered the thing about Mad Gnomes, which means that my 'de-gnomified gnomish inventions' would probably get me kicked out of Mt. Nevermind if they found the very idea of it offensive rather than it being an issue of 'gnomes should follow gnome norms, but you're not a gnome so we'll just look at you pityingly'.

So I've got a goal at least.

First though, surviving the battlefield. Without a doubt, 'run away' is the general idea, and even with the message I'd be dubious that these particular soldiers (and dragons) are here since it looks like the battle was concluded even before my arrival. So I guess I'd be looking to either get out of the sight lines of this army and then move at a brisk walk away from the battle site as best I can. I briefly contemplate hiding among the enemy but 1. It's armor and I don't know how to put it on or if it would even fit me, 2. These guys seem like the sort to shoot deserters on sight, and an armored figure leaving the battlefield in the wrong direction may be more noticeable than some random ragpicker or camp follower fleeing the site of the slaughter.

So some chance of getting away, lying low, learning the language, maybe paying my way with low-level engineering and repairs work until I can get to the gnomish promised land (e.g. the site of my inevitable untimely demise when trying to use their transportation systems with ballistic arcs designed for people less than half as tall...). Otherwise, I get killed and maybe rezzed by the white robe adventurers, at which point I have a bunch of mostly useless fragments of information 'Zifnab is the secret identity of Paladine! Astinus has just been sitting taking notes in a city all this time, why are you all getting hung up on whether gods exist you can just talk to the guy! There's some kind of sacrifical individual with a gem thing going on that might something something ascendancy of a dark god - I think his name started with a B and had 5 letters in, uh, English, so... yeah okay.' So, yeah, I guess that's another road that ends in 'honorary Mad Gnome'.

As far as what I could actually do engineering-wise and science-wise in a medieval setting, mostly I guess its things like testing methodologies, quantitative approaches, setting standards for parts so they can be used interchangeably, as well as the basic math and physics to understand (and calculate) torque and force multipliers through lever arms, gearworks, etc. As well as some tricks like bluing to make co-flat surfaces at least to tens of micrometer scale with nothing more than chalk dust, fine-grit sandpaper, and patience. Not sure that any of those would really have a chance to transform the War of the Lance as a whole, but a lot of this would be small multipliers on whatever was already in play - start with a gnomish autocannon that kills the operator on one in six shots, and maybe I can save the life of the future operator of that device, etc. Simple batteries, huge capacitors, ways to build large static charges are also on the table but not really militarily effective. I don't remember if the chemistry of gunpowder is specifically interfered with on Krynn, but I'd also probably go the way of strategic-level explosive charges rather than handheld weapons which would require a whole manufacturing infrastructure to be effective in an already on-going war (and D&D guns are generally just equal to or worse than crossbows anyhow).

Once the ability to study magical phenomena (not actually 'learning to be a spellcaster' - I want nothing to do with that in Krynn!) and how they interact with matter, it might open up the possibility of more serious tech. If nothing else, magical shaping of parts would make things a lot easier. So maybe some collab work with existing trained wizards could open this up a bit more. Maybe could do an engine at that point, so... tanks vs dragons?

[Telok]

Down to the last two in the text file, talky and mayhem.


1. You've been tapped, promoted, conned, blackmailed, tricked, lured, bribed, or whatever, into being the main political consultant for the candidate of an evil alien empire.
1.a. The candidate you're working for is human... enough... probably...
1.b. Evil depends on your point of view.
1.c. No you can't tell anyone about the aliens. Yet.
2. Aliens are cool and it's your job to get it elected.
3. The policies they want to implement are all perfectly rational, logical, good for everyone in the long run, environmentally friendly, etc. Naturally they make for crap talking points and are political suicide to implement.
4. "Well of course there'll be an invasion. your planet is in a very important tariff free trade zone and just needs the infrastructure to handle all the trans-shipping."
4.a. "No your species isn't competent to handle this, that's why you'll be invaded by an army of engineers and construction workers."
4.b. "Look, we just want everyone to not panic and start flinging giant explosions everywhere while we build the stations."
5. Mostly they just need a stable world government, no wars or nuclear missiles or mad bombers, and lots of water purification services to use.
5.a. You can handle any aliens-to-your-world tourism stuff on your own after everything is built. They don't care about that.

Your task: Get the unelectable alien-in-disguise elected/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone.

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And that's it. No hidden agendas. No slimy tentacles. No cannibal slavers. No space/interdimensional plague. No planetary cleansing. Just a request for a single united one-world government with a strong environmental cleanup policy and no nukes (or nearest local equivalent).

I do realize, having typed all this out now, that some characters probably already have everything set up in their setting for this. That's fine. Not all scenarios are challenges to all characters.

Issues:
1. Stuff like automobile & airplane & power industries have to go 100% renewable/eco-friendly in about 25 to 30 years.
1.a. If magic is happening then no magical pollution, mutagenic side effects, cocaine wizard giant monsters, portals to bad bad places, undead apocalypses, etc.
2. You probably won't need things like large militaries or oil & gas industries. Any industries or noble titles related to those might suffer an economic downturn like a meteorite landing in a field.
3. They can feed some moderate scientific/magical and engineering breakthroughs in by hacking/faking the literature & publications, but they can't make you use them.
4. The actual human condition is irrelevant to them. A totalitarian police state that clamps exploding mind control collars on 90% of the illiterate enslaved population is acceptable and they'll say that if asked.
5. They don't care about the details of the world government, but it has to be an effective one.
6. They're completely practical and evidence based. Meaning that anything unprovable for a no-weasel-word-and-no-prove-a-negative-argument value of proof is disregarded. Those people who believe & act on those sorts of things are treated as if they had brain damage of some sort and are incompetent & unable to be trusted.
6.a. Notably the concepts of things like "inherent rights" or "dignity" might be an issue (reframing that specific example as "legally binding social contract privileges" would probably work).
7. They do have the option of doing this further away, but that costs more and will take longer to complete. Thus there is some sort of limit to how much crap they'll put up with.

The Bobs get tasked.

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Diplomat Bob: This is right up DB's alley. Whether it's a solvable problem is questionable, but we'd get to play the game (for many sessions) to find out.

Gun Whore Bob: Basically can't help. This is almost pure talk, and GWB is a command & intimidate kind of person. Plus GWB & friends personally violate issues 1.a, 2, and (somewhat surprisingly) 4 & 6.a. I'd forgotten GWB has the 'code of honor (principled)' thing going on.

Traveling Bob: Is a scientist, not a diplomat. We can engage but it's unlikely to succeed since logic and reason aren't the issue here. Hmm.. Balkanized frontier planet that's barely rediscovered spaceflight and is full of raging xenophobes (otherwise no deception is needed). Nukes. Something like the Hivers making an offer... <sigh> "Cut your losses and build it elsewhere."

Paranoid Bob:
1. PB is being tasked to work with hideous mutants.
2. This while thing is absolutely contradictory to the goals of PB's secret society, PURGE.
3. The Computer is already a unified, successful, peaceable world government and any information to the contrary is treason punishable by death.
4. There's no way Alpha Complex is giving up nuclear hand grenades.
5. PB's social skills are bootlicking and deflecting blame. And barely at 50% success rate.
6. Radioactive contamination is environmental cleanliness. Polluted sewage is clean water. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
7. "What's an election?" "That information is classified Citizen. Five demerits for asking classified questions." "Thank you Friend Computer."

A quick check in with R&D... foldable vortex rope (I'm not sure what that does), second hand antigrav helmet, corrosive glue grenade, asbestos floating pill... well that's no help.

Probably the best thing to do is to rig the glue grenade to go off in the candidate's pants during an important meeting with some high security clearance people. It's funny, PURGE friendly, and we might be able to con a promotion out of exposing a hideous mutants-disguised-as-citizens invasion. It's a win for the system if someone playing falls out of their chair giggling. Paranoid Bob does not win.

Edit: I am again reminded that Paranoia is not a game about characters solving problems. It's a game about having a good time with dark humor & slapstick while the characters fail to solve problems and get blown up.

[NichG]

Down to the last two in the text file, talky and mayhem.

Your task: Get the unelectable alien-in-disguise elected/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone.

I like this task! But I think it's also extremely difficult to do the self-insert response to this within forum rules, because to be detailed enough to actually viably answer the task it involves a lot of hypothesizing about 'why is politics the way it is?'. So lets say at a minimum this is instead 'alternate Earth' with unrecognizable political details and parties and such, but maybe at least something like recognizable human psychology...

There was an anime sort of about this, called 'Kado: The Right Answer' or something like that?

Spoiler: SI response (limited)

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So, almost certainly, the only way forward is to hitch the alien candidate to existing parties and concerns, make those concerns so dependent on the alien that they basically have to fall in line or lose power. For a unified world government, a single political position just won't do. So the aim has to be to instead be the power behind the throne of a world-spanning political movement. E.g. the aim is for the alien to be shadow emperor of Earth but have a few hundred human sockpuppets representing that on the ground locally, who can then conspire to consolidate power through signing treaties and empowering international organizations and such. Hopefully the alien doesn't want this done on a 4 year timescale, because at that point my advise as the political consultant would probably have to be 'yeah, you're going to have to invade and just wipe out the entire Earth military, and you'll still have to pay that 50 years it takes for people to get used to the new normal except now it will be in the form of dissent, guerilla warfare, terrorist attacks on your new infrastructure, etc; are you sure you wouldn't rather just use Mars?'

But okay, lets see, vague strokes:

- Norms are the most powerful tool to shape long-term patterns of human behavior. A political victory gets you the ability to take actions, but if you change human norms you'll make it so that people will take that action on their own without being told, and will accept it when it happens. So before all of this election stuff, maybe get started creating a religion, a philosophical movement, an artistic movement, a bunch of sci-fi literature, Hollywood movies, etc all preparing the population to have pre-existing thoughts about 'it wouldn't be so bad to be the Motel 6 on an intergalactic trucking route' or equivalent things. Use lots of different directions for this to appeal to different population groups. In particular, anti-nuclear norms and norms accepting the idea of nations losing their historical sovereignty would be very important here.

- The second prong of the invasion can be one of economic dependency. Create a few front corporations that use the alien tech to basically undercut everyone else on basic needs or key resources. Become so necessary that even if governments would want to tear you out, they can't because their enemies (economic and military) would be able to jump on that opportunity to gain dominance.

- Have those front corporations sponsor candidates in various countries and become allies of some (or even all) political parties. Again, become indispensible - 'if you win, ExoCorp will give the government a really good deal on these contracts, but if you lose then the political climate will unfortunately be that we have to reduce our operations in your country. Good luck!'. Additionally do this at the level of personal debts of potential candidates representing the alien interests - both in the form of acquiring debts owed by politicians you're going to use as sockpuppets as well as giving them personal-scale resources to better get into position (scholarships, etc). Details here will be different per-country as far as what is likely to best work. In places with long-ruling dictators, 'by the way we can assassinate you at any time, but we could do that to your enemies too, so wanna support us in what we need?' might be enough. In places with more churn to their politics, eventually you'd want a hook on every political party rather than backing a single side, so it doesn't matter who wins - they're all pro-alien.

- The hard part now is going to be dissolving the sovereignty of individual nations to form a world government. This is working so strongly against long-running norms as well as basic rules of power ('the first duty of power is to perpetuate itself'). I don't want to say 'you need a fake World War for this' but maybe you do need a fake World War for this, even if just for a handful of holdout nuclear powers that will be like 'no, we won't surrender this advantage'... But really if it came to it, I'd probably say 'if we have no other option, just invade and use orbital superiority here please' rather than the risks of what we would need to do to each-other in order to actually be scared enough to implement a world government.

That said, before giving up and going military, I guess you could try to have it emerge organically from a whole mess of treaties and alliances and debts and obligations but the thing is, when the chips are down, countries would just break treaties and default on debts and so on if it looks like its in their best interests to do so.

Maybe the path via norms could work here as well, though its a bit tricky... What I might guess is that if something like intercontinental teleportation technology became available and was very hard to funnel through specific ports of entry or exit, the general pattern towards more border controls and more separation between countries might be reversible. If people are used to just stopping in Tokyo for some ramen then taking a telestall over to Italy for cappuchino after lunch, then returning home for the night, maybe that creates a pressure to create uniform international law the way that trade treaties create pressure to make things like internationally uniform copyright and patent laws. Regardless, this step I think is the one that absolutely can't be hurried - we've had the internet for a few decades, and laws surrounding the internet certainly have not become uniform internationally (even the opposite, in a lot of cases).

[Telok]

There was an anime sort of about this, called 'Kado: The Right Answer' or something like that?

No clue about the anime, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Part of what this whole exercise has been for, to me personally, is isn't so much "can a character from game X win" as exploring if the usual sorts of characters are able to meaningfully participate in most of the scenarios and if a game can produce an omni-competent character. Now most of us picked casters or jack-of-all-trades type characters (I'm totally putting self inserts in the joat category) so I'm not surprised by the wide spread engagement. But I also picked two characters that were set up to fail, Paranoia Bob & the DtD40k7e gun whore Bob.

Now for PB and GWB there have been several scenarios they just can't really contribute to, and I think it's telling that nobody even seemed to consider any D&D style non-magic users. But for the most part it looks like most of these characer+system combos can handle just about anything we throw at them in a reasonable gameable manner. At least as long as you're not trying to build a character that's just a dumb beat stick. Actually, now I'm curious how a 9th level AD&D fighter from a real game with accurately randomized loot would do versus the later D&D edition fighters, again as they come from campaigns that were really played and not just theory crafted. I may try to dig out some old pcs... except I don't think I've ever played a WotC era fighter... had a warblade, maybe I can find that sheet.

[NichG]

No clue about the anime, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Part of what this whole exercise has been for, to me personally, is isn't so much "can a character from game X win" as exploring if the usual sorts of characters are able to meaningfully participate in most of the scenarios and if a game can produce an omni-competent character. Now most of us picked casters or jack-of-all-trades type characters (I'm totally putting self inserts in the joat category) so I'm not surprised by the wide spread engagement. But I also picked two characters that were set up to fail, Paranoia Bob & the DtD40k7e gun whore Bob.

Now for PB and GWB there have been several scenarios they just can't really contribute to, and I think it's telling that nobody even seemed to consider any D&D style non-magic users. But for the most part it looks like most of these characer+system combos can handle just about anything we throw at them in a reasonable gameable manner. At least as long as you're not trying to build a character that's just a dumb beat stick. Actually, now I'm curious how a 9th level AD&D fighter from a real game with accurately randomized loot would do versus the later D&D edition fighters, again as they come from campaigns that were really played and not just theory crafted. I may try to dig out some old pcs... except I don't think I've ever played a WotC era fighter... had a warblade, maybe I can find that sheet.

The contrast I've found in playing the self-insert character is basically two layers. One is, anything that involves fighting in some form, there is just a huge gap. Mechanics give concrete power here that a SI/no-mechanics character won't have and there's not much to be done about that.

The other though is bigger, and its the mindset gap - game characters are basically chomping at the bit to 'solve first and ask questions later'; psychologically, if they're present and something is going on, there's much more of a 'this is my job! I will intervene!' attitude than if I'm trying to reason about my own reactions. Like in the bodysnatcher scenario, I found it hard to justify myself being confident about the situation to actually directly intervene - attacking someone, accusing someone directly, etc. But I don't think I'd have that barrier at all even if I were just playing 'AD&D Fighter 1' - there's obviously something going on, obviously you stab it and see what happens, etc.

On the other hand something like 'take over the Earth' actually is easier for me to see how a regular human 'could do it' than, say, defeating Godzilla or even just a Krynn dragon. Sure having wizard spells gives you a few more options, but to a large extent they're shortcuts that don't change the need to work out the overall logic of 'what would it take for there to exist a stable, unified government'.

Spoiler: Ridiculously OP systems aside

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A Limit Break character or a Nobilis character on the other hand, well, 'I find the egregore that represents human tribal tendencies and kill it, now people are incapable of recognizing us vs them distinctions at all, done'

[Quertus]

Responses to Talky

On the meta level, with me as GM, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel good about trying to take on this quest, regardless of the character, as I've never had a player who was able to engage long-term with my version of politics. So, based on my history, I'd be looking for something where I could manage a 1-shot win that was "good enough", while avoiding engaging any long-term political minigames.

Spoiler: Characters who do the best

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A lot of worlds, there is no concept of "election" of the highest officials. However, given the clause, "/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone", these worlds actually become the easiest in which to succeed. Thus...

Arma has had success manipulating the political landscape before (granted, I wasn't GM... well, OK, I was, but only because this is a copy-paste character, you know what I mean, right?), but that won't matter. She could just throw her political weight around as the "High" Priestess to get the benevolent alien into a position as advisor to the feckless-at-best, detrimental-at-worst leader of what remains of the world. Granted, she'd likely bring the alien's homeworld to the attention of the murderhobos in the process, so there's a good chance that their diary reads "Day 1: met Arma. Day 2: have the ear of the world leader. Day 3: Urgent reports from home. Day 4: Homeworld destroyed." They should be very invested in their new homeworld now, right?

As a summoned hero and Guildmaster of the Adventurer's Guild, Isekai'd John Faseman of Marvel has significant political influence. As he moves to the global market, he could offer to provide "foreign advisors" in various kingdoms. Marvel wasn't exactly designed for these actions, but I imagine something in the gamut of "just roleplay" and a Popularity check could be used to resolve such attempts. And that's without inventing a device to just "Mindrape" the entire world into believing that the aliens have always been the supreme rulers of the planet, if winning were the only goal.

Unsurprisingly, my Telepathic Vampire could not only vet the alien, but use social or telepathic skills to install them in most any government. A public election, OTOH, would prove very tricky, as he has no real political skills or experience. And while he could best Xavier telepathically in a 1-on-1 duel, he lacks the ability to manipulate multiple minds (let alone entire nations) easily. So the best he could do (other than helping as a speech writer and voice coach or something, to make the alien at least sound good) would be to use his mental powers to cause the alien's opponent(s) to mess up embarrassingly, bungling their lines, saying "a mind is a terrible thing", falling off stage or wandering into walls, or otherwise looking like complete duncewaffle doofs. Push comes to shove, he could even stage embarrassing photos or cause them to commit crimes (or, more in character, to publicly or "accidentally" admit to crimes they had already committed / scan their minds and anonymously lead investigators to uncover their existing crimes). Or just get them to commit suicide.

Spoiler: Characters who do the worst

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Let me get this straight: You want an invisible, inaudible, odorless flying death machine of a Troll to help you with your political campaign? If that's any indication of your judgement, there's a "fool who follows the fool" saying we should introduce you to. Regardless... about the only contribution said Troll could make would be to try to arrange for a political debate to burn to the ground, and hope that the alien was more likely to survive. If not, hopefully they paid in advance.

My self-insert has only slightly less political acumen, and a strong "a campaign built on lies of omission isn't likely to succeed" attitude. But also a "if you can fake being human, why not let someone else win, and just replace them?" mindset. Really, I'd spend more time debating and doubting them than actually helping them.

In the grimdark of being a Daemon, Mr. T is the pollution the aliens want to clean up. I don't think anyone could possibly fail worse than that. Depending on the edition and version of Warhammer in question, all Warhammer mages and psychics would either be limited to minor effects they can manage with a single Magic die (if bad things trigger on doubles), or outlawed altogether (if bad things happen on Tzeentch's number). The former doesn't really hurt Priests of Shallya much (their effects were shockingly low DC to begin with), but everyone else reliant upon magic would likely strongly oppose this change.

Although Alex Knight could attempt to build up the political influence to manipulate the world of politics, WoD Mages would similarly oppose the "no magick with side effects" platform of their new evil overlords, given how Paradox is kinda inherent in their abilities. In fact, in WoD, it might be an unachievable goal, as whatever the "new norm" is will likely end up with new side effects. Maybe? Heck, belief might even give the aliens problems. It's not quite as bad as the Warp in WH40k feeding on everyone's sense of hopelessness to ensure the grimdark of the setting, but that bit of world physics is not without risk to the new overlords.

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I haven't really done a good job talking about mechanics, leaving it to people to infer / guess / ask what's going on in the background. Given the number of challenges thus far, let me take a moment to begin explaining some of the mechanics, and how they (and the 75% rule) affected my decisions / the outcome of these challenges. So here's a few example systems.

Spoiler: Marvel FASERIP

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Marvel FASERIP has 7 main stats: Fighting (ability to hit stuff in melee; number of attacks), Agility (ability to hit stuff at range, active dodge), Strength (damage, carrying capacity), Endurance (chance to resist things, like poison or death), Reason (good for Talents and building things), Intuition (odds of saying "it's a trap!", initiative), Psyche (ability to resist mental attacks, cast spells). It also has somewhat secondary stats of Popularity (better thought of as "Influence"), Resources (abstract wealth), the derived Health (HP, sum of 4 physical stats) and Karma (XP and "fate points", starts at sum of mental stats). Then characters get Talents (generally provide a "+1 column shift" (amounts to about a +5% chance of success) - so if your Reason gives you a 40% chance of performing brain surgery, having Medical skill means you have a 45% chance of success), Contacts (people they know, who might provide aid), and Powers.

Everything is rolled randomly at character creation, including your "type", which could be anything from a normal human to a mutant to an alien. There's even the possibility of rolling that you're more than one type, like an undead plant god, or a centaur robot energy being. Don't ask me how to successfully mix "normal human" with anything else. John Faseman rolled "Random Mutant" (which means "stuff happened, he mutated", as opposed to Breed Mutant (his parents were mutants) or, uh, Engineered Mutant maybe (he was mutated intentionally in a lab)). This affects what tables they rolls on for stats, which in turn affects max stats. Normal humans, for example, cap out at Excellent, while the best tables cap out at Monstrous (see below).

The FASERIP, Resources, and Popularity stats, as well as Powers, all have both a word and numeric value, and then that word corresponds to a set percent chance on a table. The names for the ranks vary by edition, in that not all editions seem to have the full table, but they are, from weakest to strongest, Shift-Zero, Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift-X, Shift-Y, Shift-Z, Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000, Beyond. The corresponding numbers are generally a range, with starting characters starting at the lowest point in that range, and existing characters being given a more average value for that range. The numbers determine how much Karma it takes to advance the stat (you have to buy every single number, at a cost of 10 x number to get a +1 stat), how much damage attacks do or armor soaks (with the caveat "same rank always yields at least 1 damage"), and a few other things (how many ounces of life can be created with Lifeform Creation), but is generally useless in most contexts. They scale almost exponentially, with the "average stat" going from 0, 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, 30, 40 50, 75, 100, 150, 250, 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, infinite.

The important part is the chart. Depending on edition, it has 4 or 5 colored bands: Blue (Fumble, not present in some editions), White (Fail), Green (Success), Yellow (Better), Red (Best). The chart is organized such that you have about a 5% better chance of success per "column shift" (ie, Good is 5% better than Average), and you hit a 75% chance of success at Amazing (which also has a 40% chance of getting a Yellow success, a 10% chance of getting a Red success, and a 3% chance of fumble, for reference).

However, for just about any roll that involves your character (including, IIRC, things like attacks by enemies against your character), you can "Spend Karma". This is declared before the roll, and costs a minimum of 10 Karma. Once the dice are rolled, determine the result you want, and the difference between what your rolled and what you want is the number of Karma you spend to get that result. So, if you needed a Yellow Success (say, to resist an effect of equal strength), and rolled a 42 vs your Amazing stat needing a 61+ to get a Yellow success, you have to spend 19 Karma.

Heroes and Villains interact with Karma differently. For Heroes (presumably including the PCs), Karma is earned by defeating villains (karma equal to their highest stat/power), thwarting crimes (about 5-25 karma per crime), and doing certain other deeds (like visiting your relatives, or helping Aunt May cross the street). Karma is lost for things like damaging the scenery (cost is per "area", where an area is "about half a city block") or committing crimes (ranging from maybe 10 for theft to ALL OF IT for killing someone). Modules often give various other karma rewards and penalties, like for thinking to talk to an expert, or for not walking the dog.

Interestingly, Karma awards are not universal - not only between Heroes vs Villains, but even among Heroes. For example, Wolverine does not suffer Karma loss for killing people (!). This (plus a few other things) have made me come to the conclusion that Marvel FASERIP is much like Call of Cthulhu, in that you are forced to roleplay one particular personality trait - in CoC's case, that trait is "unable to handle the concept that we are not alone"; in Marvel FASERIP's case, it's an assumed underlying moral code, and "Karma" is best thought of as Pride/Shame/Guilt. Thus, I may HOUSERULE certain changes from the Karma awards based on the characters' actual beliefs.

Like most systems, Marvel FASERIP has a detailed round-by-round combat simulator, but resolves most other actions with a single atomic roll. This means that "spending Karma" is much more effective / efficient in most of these challenges, where that single roll can have great impact on the challenge. It should be obvious that if I HOUSERULED the system to involve more complex, tactical minigames for other actions, this karmic imbalance would be less pronounced. That said, afaict, the system provides little guidance for most actions one would take, beyond things like the being able to infer from the Medical talent giving +1 CS to Reason rolls to diagnose injuries or disease that such diagnosis must involve a Reason roll.

As a random point of reference, "Immunity" is considered to be at Class 1000 rank. So defeating someone with Immunity to Fire is worth 1,000 Karma (or more, if they have a higher stat), and buying Immunity to Fire costs 3000 (base) + 40,000 (40 x rank) = 43,000 Karma.

On a side note, the way Talents work, with +1 CS to a Good stat meaning to treat it as Excellent? Those of us used to d20 systems doubtless are thinking, "so, since each column is about 5% better, that's the equivalent of a single skill point a +1 on the d20 roll? That's it? You can only buy 1 skill point?". This may not seam realistic, but it is verisamilitudinal: stats are more important than training. If a supposedly normal doctor diagnoses something Reed Richards cannot, it's a good reason to be suspicious of the doctor. By buying into the mechanics of the system, by buying into the world physics, you buy into the tropes. In that regard, the system is well-designed.

In that regard, in the context of this thread, John Faseman is nothing special. I mean, sure, he's peak human in some stats, and beyond that in others, and he can accomplish tasks about 50x faster than anyone else thanks to Hyper-Speed. But he's still better off asking an expert for most things (the exception being Invention, thanks to Hyper-Invention, and thanks to having taken a few Invention-related Talents (one of which lets him pretend he has materials he can't afford)), especially given the Karma cost imposed in hitting the "75%" rule.

This means he's highly incentivized to play to his strengths, and to outsource problems, or to attempt to solve them through Inventing something. And many problems (especially ones requiring making lots of rolls) end up more costly for him than the Karma he earns on the mission. Also, as I am both player and GM, I am deincentivized from having John attempt things that aren't covered under the rules... which really strongly pigeonholes him into fighting, inventing, and being a Guildmaster (not that that last one has FASERIP rules).

Someone who wasn't set up as an Adventurer's Guild Guildmaster would have struggled harder on these challenges (or at least spent more Karma on them), as calling in favors from Contacts requires a Popularity (?) roll, costing Karma to hit 75% success rates. And most characters couldn't have Invented their way past challenges, so that was a huge boon to John's success. OTOH, someone with an Amazing or higher Reason would have found it easy to analyze all aspects of these challenges, and thereby easily understood and solved most things without needing to spend Karma in the process.

Spoiler: Shadowrun

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I'm just gonna go from memory, so I could be wrong, but...

Shadowrun characters have base stats ("Attributes"?), which, at character creation, generally have a 6-point range, and cap at 6 for humans, and at 4-11 for non-human PC races. After character creation, the Attributes cap at half-again that (costing more Karma (XP) the higher the stat, and with a multiplier for going over the normal limit).

Skills have a character creation cap of the Attribute, and Karma can be spent to raise them to twice the attribute, with increasing cost as the stat raises, and a cost multiplier for exceeding the stat, and for exceeding stat-and-a-half.

When rolling a stat or skill, you get a dice pool (a number of d6) equal to the stat or skill. By default, in most cases, a 4 or higher is a success (well, in a lot of cases, you're targeting someone else's stat, so 4 is still maybe average, even if 3 is "average human"). Modifiers can raise or lower this target number, and DCs above 6 are possible - dice individually "explode" on a 6, so a 6 to a 6 to a 3 is a 15. Perhaps the most common, and certainly the most relevant, modifier is "Defaulting" - as a made-up example, if you don't have the "Surgery" skill, you could have "Surgery" default to your "Medical" skill, raising the target number, or even have it default to your Intelligence, raising the target number even further. Different editions have had different rules for what can default to what, and which defaults cost more than usual, but most defaulting adds +2 or +4 to the target number. In some editions, if you followed the complex flow chart far enough, you could theoretically have anything default to anything, although you'd be after target numbers around 20 or so by that point, if you want to default your brain surgery roll to your boot knife skill.

There are also "pools", like a Combat Pool and a Magic Pool, which refresh every round, and can be used to add dice to specific related rolls (like attacks, dodges, casting spells or resisting drain) in that round.

Having played characters not entirely unlike this before, I didn't bother statting out the Troll. A Magic 6 starting character is "good enough" to cast their dwoemers (if their Sustaining Foci aren't making that unnecessary), and an Endurance 10 Troll is "good enough" at soaking Drain not to worry about it for most spells. Heavy Weapons skill boosted to 5 (darn trolls not being agile) is "good enough" to hit most any target while invisible (and dice can always be added from the Combat Pool, if necessary), and damage of "you're dead, soak on an 18+" is "good enough" to kill almost anything (Dragons need to be shot in their open mouth, to avoid their armored hide reducing that to something possible). But most any roll that needs to be defaulted, even if it only raises the difficulty by 2, and even if it's defaulting to a 6 die pool, isn't going to hit a 75% success rate. So, unsurprisingly, Shadowrun characters are strongly pigeonholed into the things they're good at - which, for this character, was "killing things" and "casting spells" (which "inventing new spells to cast" came up much less than I expected, even in the longer timeframe of these challenges).

This character very much epitomizes, "if you can't solve your problem with violence, you aren't using enough of it". A different Shadowrun character could have been built with different skills; still, it would have required a much more experienced character than the one I brought in order to have enough skills at high enough ranks to solve problems that weren't all DC 4. I guess a really bizarre, "2 ranks in each skill" build, human (to maximize rerolls) might have fared better at collecting low-hanging fruit on these challenges, accomplishing anything you can believe "average Joe" / "guy at the gym" can do? It's about as bizarre as playing 3e and splitting your skill ranks evenly among all skills (cross-class or otherwise), but it might have been the optimal choice for this challenge.

The short answer is, these systems (as I suspect most might) push the characters towards their strengths, and towards Combat as War's "if you have to roll the dice, you've already failed" mindset, especially given the "75%" rule.

@NichG - does that do anything to help you achieve your goals for this thread?

[Telok]

Ok, last one in the queue. You're free of my derangements after this.

MAYHEM

1. A new star appears in the sky. Itty bitty and a bit reddish.
2. A month later and... Whoops, it's actually a planet and heading inwards.
3. Another two weeks later and... Uh oh. The eye opened and everyone & everything sentient* in the area of vision (the entire planet you started on and about 30% of the rest of the solar system if there is one) has a brain meltdown and goes permanently murderously unhinged.
4. It all ends very badly.

Your task: I assume you're narrative savvy enough to figure out the overall plot already.

* Please note that I'm pedantic about the difference between sentient and sapient. Sapient is "it thinks like a person". Sentient is "it is conscious and senses things". Mushrooms are not sentient, frogs are sentient but not sapient, humans are sapient.

Spoiler

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I completely stole this from an old Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scenario. If you're read that scenario any time in the last 20 or 25 years you probably know what to do. If you haven't, well this plot isn't exactly unusual. If there's a massive 'space navy' type thing in your game then try to assume this happens somewhere they aren't.

There's a cult. It's run by nasty creatures from another dimension (mi-go if you need stats) but only the dozen or so mind controlled top leaders know that and they think they're angels anyways. The cults is a harmless little peace & light meditation thing. Except there's these crystals (heart size, 2 pounds/1 kilo, generic quartz looking) that soak up spare good-vibes psychic energy. The cult swaps them out, shipping old ones to a central point and new ones to the meditation places. At the base they're processed to reverse the polarity to bad-vibes and then shoved into a dimensional portal. The other end of the portal is in a bunch of bio-tech space stations orbiting the evil eye planet (hereafter "Bad Planet"). The station has a bunch of super-science/magi-tech stuff that focuses the bad-vibes energy at the planet and makes it seek & destroy the source. There's more portals to in each station to the other 11 stations in orbit around Bad Planet (details below).

The cult's been going on for about five or seven years now. The home base compound is large, maybe 700 people, with lots of innocent people doing peace & light meditation stuff. There are... lets call them organic robots... that look and mostly act human doing the actual crystal processing, about 30 of these. The cult leaders are mind controlled, but it's more a light touch memory edited and selective "sees/hears on what they're supposed to" sort of mind control. They truly believe in the peace & light stuff and that everyone here is normal. There's noting illegal or weird except that the crystals are apparently all unsourced and just constantly reallocated among the chapters. There's a nice big fountain with a soothing light display in the middle of the compound. The aliens are all about a kilometer underground is what we'll call a bunker. There's no tunnel, they just redirect a dimensional portal when they need to go to the warehouse or the satellites around Bad Planet. There are links, up to the fountain and under some of the buildings, but they're a sort of fungus root-like thing about an inch across. The organic robots are about four times stronger & tougher than a human soldier, roughly as smart, training and armament (hidden in the warehouse) like they are elite soldiers, feel no pain, immune to drugs, cannot go unconscious, and have no fear. On being killed they will dissolve into a soup of assorted biological waste products in five minutes. They have no DNA, if it matters. They can also understand and communicate by colors, personally by changing eye color rapidly (and smart enough to not do that around normal people) or that light display in the fountain is visible from almost anywhere in the compound.

Just in case there, is something explody beneath about half of the buildings in the compound. Explosives in Earth-like games or a magic boom boom in other games, whatever is appropriate. If it's appropriate there are also video recording devices that live feed through the fungus root-like things to the underground alien lab. It looks weird to have a small root growing up through a crack in the floor into the video system, but you'd need to move the racks or open the cases to find it. Any ways, if there's an attack on the compound several of the buildings will blow up and super extremely well faked evidence that the attackers are horrible murders will show up in public within an hour or two if the underground alien bunker isn't taken out. Part of the quality of the evidence faking is that as little as possible is faked. If possible one or more of the organic robots will change clothes to look like an attacker or kill & swap gear with an attacker to act like they're planting/creating the explosions while shooting innocent cultists. Loss of the cult's leaders won't do anything. Some other true believers will just get promoted and mind zapped into replacing them. It is highly unlikely that most organized assaults will get a second chance at the compound if the first try doesn't take it out completely.

Since it's about 6 weeks from Bad Planet's appearance to doomsday you'll need to destroy or turn off several of the 12 satellites around Bad Planet for each week that's passed. Otherwise Bad Planet is too close and will make it the rest of the way on it's own. Simply shutting down the cult is effective if done early enough, they still need 2 weeks of regular crystal replacement to get enough crystals into the satellites to get Bad Planet into position. After two weeks you need to destroy/turn off the following numbers of satellites: week 3 =3, week 4 =5, week 5 =7, day t-6 =8, day t-5 =9, day t-4 =10, day t-3 =11, and on the last two days all 12 have to be destroyed. The stations aren't big, maybe 50 feet across with four chambers (no gravity), two chambers with dimensional portals to the next and previous stations, one with arrays of crystals around a focusing device and a window, one connecting chamber in the middle. The outer shell is about as resilient as cast iron and around 4 inches/10 cm thick, the windows are 150% as thick but half as tough. There are usually two to four aliens replacing crystals in one of the satellites at any time. Obviously any interference or investigation of the satellites will warrant a response, probably initially 10 to 40 of the organic robots in paramilitary gear & small arms (the exact number likely to be about 150% to twice the number of investigators/intruders that were spotted). Insertion will be through one of the dimensional portals that will be accurately targeted by using the dimensional portal machines in a slightly different mode for information gathering.

The underground alien bunker is a kilometer/half mile down with only the fungus-root sensor links to the surface. Population is about 10 aliens (again, mi-go if you need stats, they've been ported into most major game systems) and 20 organic robots. There's a big open central area with three dimensional portal machines, a week worth of powered up bad-vibe crystals, an equal amount of empty crystals (that look just the same as the others unless you can detect psi/magic), and some alien biotech equipment of uncertain function. Side rooms include; cloning/regeneration vats for the organic robots, whatever the mind editing & control device used on cult leaders is, more alien biotech equipment of uncertain function, a couple empty rooms, a pile of regular paramilitary gear/weapons/ammo, an alien version of a control room for the fountain & explosives & and sensors in the compound (uses color & sound controls instead of physical switches except for one lever-like thing that's a self destruct everything in the bunker with no countdown), and what's functionally an extradimensional power generator for all the equipment (beamed power, no cables, no controls, no exterior access points in this dimension). The dimensional portal machines have one tuned to a locked room at the back of the crystals warehouse in the compound above, one tuned always to a satellite around Bad Planet, and the last is usually off but there's a small chance it'll be tuned to a... place... that's (probably) instant death if you aren't a 7-dimensional fungus-bug alien (or capable of faking it convincingly) and certainly isn't healthy for 3 dimensional & linear time people to look at for too long. The aliens and organic robots can make the required sounds to turn any of the machines on or off. Only the aliens (probably) can do the glowy head light show & sounds & poke the 5th dimensional buttons in it to make the dimensional portal machines change destinations. There is no evidence of food, toilets, sleeping, or leisure activities.

In case it matters Bad Planet is basically a planet sized eyeball that's also a major god, just lazy/sleepy and uncaring. In Call of Cthulhu it's a Great Old One and thus functionally a part of physics that happens to be unhealthy & sentient & mobile. In something like classic Greek mythology it would be like one of the original titans that it would take Zeus to fight and the combined might of all the gods to kill (which because its mythology might be temporary and/or not actually destroy/stop it). It can't be reasoned with. Doesn't communicate. Causes minds, souls, psi/magic fields, and social constructs to break down and disintegrate in a couple minutes. If nothing bothers it then it'll go back to whatever corner of the universe it typically naps in. Once it fully awakens it wanders through galaxies at high speed eradicating multiple solar systems of sapient life with a glance because that's what you do to annoying flies, swat them. The aliens are planning on leaving about 3-6 hours before Bad Planet opens it's eye, as soon as the warning signs appear (eyelid twitching, massive earthquakes on it visible from orbit, etc.). Information on this thing is extremely scarce. It's one of those "once in a billion years it depopulates a few galaxies/dimensions then goes away" things that doesn't exactly leave a lot of evidence behind. They may be a few old prophecies (and/or moldy tomes that were penned) by drug addled seers who went insane and died. Generally anything that get's close or divines Bad Planet causes it to almost wake up a bit and be unpleasant to the nuisance.

The Bobs see red.

Spoiler

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Diplomat Bob: Gets interrupted trying to open up a new market. Now there is no new market. Fail.

Spoiler

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At phase two orders a scan of the new planet. The astro-navigator reports bad Warp **** and unfavorable auguries. Research is done at 6k5 forbidden lore to... 42% chance of getting 35(near impossible)+... call it a no. DB informs the locals and leaves a long distance radio while we toddle off to a safe distance of "half way across the sphere". The planet gets fragged and possibly DB too if stealth mode or running away doesn't work.

Gun Whore Bob: Makes the terrible decision to Gate visit this new planet. It ends very badly.

Traveling Bob: Could win if we can win some tough fights.

Spoiler

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Weirdness at a frontier planet, the scientist goes to check it out. Which means that we'd get close enough and scan enough to notice the satellites. Earth to Jupiter about 650 million km, 1g shortest time trip, about 6 days. OK, arrive at week three. Sats have no doors/hatches but a window/ That eventually lets us encounter the mi-go who are hostile. If we survive the encounter we crack a satellite to examine a machine & crystal. Partially disassemble & take a dimensional portal machine with us, no question about that. Back on the lab ship break orbit to get away from the satellites, put everyone on high alert & always armed (because dimensional portals of unknown capability), start investigating the crystals & devices... I'm not sure, as alien bio-tech it's hard to figure, but psi is a known thing in Traveller with detectors as gear, and TB has all the right training to deal with the psi focusing & crystals stuff. TB probably won't figure out the dimensional portal stuff so there'll be another attack on the ship via portal at some point. Ten or fifteen of the organic robots with real weapons would wipe us out, but the anti-mutiny/anti-piracy routines in the system and some judicious venting of sealed might... OK, good, they do need to breathe. Call it a 50/50 that we win that one.

Call the planet and tell them about the psychic crystals, aliens, satellites, and being attacked. The local government can find and deal with the cult. That's a PR disaster with dead kids, blown up buildings, and video of government soldiers gunning people down. Plus it won't turn up the bunker. On the other hand a system defense boat (armed non-warp/jump capable local defense patrol spaceships) can ferry some scientists and troops out to the planet in about another six days, probably arriving at about the same time the disastrous raid on the cult compound happens. If there's been another attack on TB's ship it would have been with mi-go themselves and venting atmosphere wouldn't have worked. Otherwise it's been more investigation and a decision to turn off the psi transmitters. Since there's still... counting... sometime late in week 4 it looks like, maybe early week 5. Breaking stuff is easy, there's another fight on the satellites but we can hopefully let the real soldiers deal with it or just have the pinnace or SDB turn it's fusion thrusters on the satellite at point blank range while TB & crew flees.

So we can engage with the scenario. If and only if we win a couple of very hard (for this character & small crew) fights everything will work out. But I don't think they'll win those fights.

Paranoid Bob: Ring around the nuke plant, pockets full of fuel rods, carnage, carnage, we all blow up!

Spoiler

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Alpha Complex doesn't do astronomy.

Briefing: A new commie mutant traitor threat has arisen! Find this new secret society and take them down! Look for these signs; pamphlets, twitch talk, unapproved non-medicated happiness, clandestine meetings, odd behaviors, excessive bathroom breaks! (yes that pretty much describes almost everyone in Alpha Complex)

Commissary: Real armor and a whole lotta explosives. I guess the Computer's serious about this one. (Let's set some boom aside for "personal use")

R&D: Magnetic shrinking boots (they pinch the toes but magnets are always fun), vibration rope (really? a bungee cord? did you 'develop' this or just find it in a trash bin?), a smoke cannon (yay for new guns!), voice operated x-ray device (yay a useful thing!), and a waterproof pen (you clones are just cleaning out your junk drawers aren't you?).

Action!: Ok, first we start by asking our secret society if anyone knows anything, that fails. Next going in on computer data searches and analysis, try following patterns of odd money donations and shifts in spending habits. After a few dead ends of hauling in people for buying new shoes and such we get a hit. Efforts to follow the person or talk to them are doomed to failure so we just cosh them, shrinking mag-boot them to the ceiling, and toss their rooms looking for incriminating stuff. Find pamphlets and a meeting schedule, leave behind some explosives on a timer (to go off during the meeting) and the mag-boots. Attend the meeting, do some meditation, use bootlicking skills if questioned, accidentally leave behind an explosive under our chair. Walk back in a couple minutes later to survey the wreckage and find a good hiding spot (one of our few decent skills). Ambush the poor clone who comes in to retrieve the crystal, tie them up with the bungee cord, find the location of the base, leave that commie mutant traitor with another explosive on a timer (15 minutes).

Rustle up some green IntSec (internal security) goons with tales of explosive wielding mutants, a whole base of traitors to round up, and more gratuitous violence than their little corrupt hearts could desire. Share some explosives if it helps. This being IntSec and we're offering them violence & glory there isn't even a roll involved. During the base assault we hang back, rig a few IntSec APCs with explosives, and shoot the smoke cannon a bit. Be somewhat surprised that buildings are blowing up and we aren't responsible, but we gave the goons some explosives (I think PB is running low now) so that's probably all it is. Oh, uber-clones that melt into goo when killed, that's interesting. And the carnage isn't an issue because everyone in Alpha Complex has clone backups and what did you expect from IntSec anyways? Lose a clone when we forget which APCs we rigged with explosives and ride back in the wrong one.

Debriefing: Success and promotions all around! Plus PB now has a personal stash of explosives and a waterproof pen.

Several weeks later everyone goes a little more insane and gets a little more violent. The mi-go are mildly confused and the Bad Planet is mildly annoyed. It opens it's eye a bit more so everyone goes all the way off the deep end and dies in a orgy of mindless violence.

[NichG]

@NichG - does that do anything to help you achieve your goals for this thread?

It might confirm some of my biases in certain ways... But while mechanics contribute to feel and its useful to understand that connection, I guess at this point I'm more interested in what sort of surprises there are in how it can feel to play a given character.

MAYHEM

Spoiler: SI Response

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I probably just go murderously unhinged and die.

Again this seems to be hitting the difference between characters who are hooked into The Plot by a GM, and someone who happens to exist in a setting where it happens that something is going down. Unless it just so happened there was a chapter in my neck of the woods, I'd have no reason to even know about the existence of the cult at any point during the scenario. 'Rogue planet is on a collision course with Earth' also doesn't provide much in the way of actions that can increase your chances of survival. So I'm either involved with a team trying to communicate with it (once its seen that it accelerates/decelerates, its a given that there's an intelligence behind it), or I'm taking a trip to the tropics to spend my last moments on a beach drinking maitais, or I'm ensconced at home.

If it weren't an instantaneous KO for the mechanism of the eye but rather something that built over time, there would be much more I could do, even if it wouldn't probably solve the scenario. The thing that would have me very curious is whether this murder toggle operated on artificial intelligences as well, and even more interesting if it operates on some but not others. That's research material! And practical since if low-grade AIs are immune then you basically send those out to interact with the rest of the world for you, and otherwise isolate yourself from every other living mind. Furthermore, if AIs count, and there's enough time to actually do experiments on the phenomenon, then a few weeks of tinkering (or maybe months if there's a massive loss of internet infrastructure, etc) means I can churn out as many 'good vibes' or 'bad vibes' engines as I might want to and have the computational resources for. So, maybe enough to ultimately lure the thing away from Earth? But since the effect is instant, I don't get to play mad scientist in this one.

[Quertus]

Mayhem Response

Spoiler: Initial Response

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So... first it's a star, then it's a planet, then it's an eye? Or does an eye open on the planet-sized being? I'm so confused.

Oh, wait, there's more details... Oh.

Offhand, this looks like "who has Divinations", as, unless The Plot puts the PCs in just the right place, I don't see anyone happening to stumble upon the correct answer / the information necessary to even start to know how to resolve this. Maybe that's just me, but I don't tend to look up in the sky, see a new planet, and think "we should investigate a local cult". Give or take the whole "Generally anything that... divines Bad Planet causes it to almost wake up a bit and be unpleasant to the nuisance" bit - which in and of itself could be a clue for some societies.

Spoiler: Characters who do the best

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About the only one of my characters that I foresee being able to resolve this scenario going in blind is Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named. Now, let's ignore all the ways that this couldn't happen / that Quertus wouldn't have to lift a finger if something kinda like this tried to happen on Placia / in his homeworld of Placia's solar system. Instead, let's just go with "it happened on one of his allies' homeworld".

In this scenario, Mind Blank provides immunity to the Bad Planet. Time Stop will provide immunity to all the Mayhem. But then... if they're using technological portals, Quertus has no real way to detect or track them. And he's unlikely to notice a few little satellites around an entire huge planet.

So, when it comes to investigation, Quertus only has 2 things going for him: 1) he is immortal, and can keep time stopped forever; 2) Detect Magic / Psionics? Check. That said, his powers are so very specific, he may actually need to invent an entirely new spell, just to specifically detect the specific energy of the Bad Planet / crystals, especially if he's doing so on a planetary scale, based off searching for things like the Mayhem energy streaming from the Bad Planet. Happily, thanks to True Dwoemers, creating such a spell takes about 1 round. Plus the Spanish Inquisition #3) mention of the Mi-Go being "7-dimensional", and their home(?) being a cognitive health hazard for "linear time people to look at for too long".

So, it sounds to me like the Mi-Go might well be "immune" to Quertus' Time shenanigans, and may well track him down. This will make things so much easier for Quertus, as he can (when they presumably shoot first and ask questions never) Dominate Monster, ESP, Mindrape, or just kill and Dead Thought the Mi-Go in order to learn what is going on. Although, despite so completely out-classing the poor Mi-Go, it's actually likely that Quertus will be utterly terrified of dealing with anything capable of acting within his not-a-Time-Stop custom Time Stop effect, and instead, in a display of complete overkill, would flee, gather an army, ward them with Mind Blank (of course), and then return to totally pown the poor Mi-Go in a field of stopped time. At least one of his allies, upon seeing the "threat" the Mi-Go pose, will facepalm, and inform Quertus of just how unnecessary they all were.

Once he uses one of any number of methods available to him to get information from the Mi-Go, Quertus can develop that global spell, look back in time, and combine those two, and thereby get a good picture of exactly what sequence of events caused the current Armageddon scenario (merging this timeline with the one where he went straight to a global detection spell, if the Mi-Go can't or didn't intrude on his personal time).

Anyway, once he knows what's going on, Quertus will most likely warn his allies that he's about to tamper with time (causing most if not all of them to flee, at which point this timeline merges back with the one where he uncharacteristically actually just defeated the Mi-Go himself), then Time Travel back in time, and Delayed Blast _____ (probably Fireball, among other things) the entire base, all 12 satellites, and anywhere else the Mi-Go are known to be involved in this operation, including things like where their records are stored, their families and people who owe them money (if he takes snarky advice from his allies).

Then, given the temporal damage he's caused by manipulating the timeline, he'll attempt to repair the timeline, and hope that the world / universe / whatever he's in projecting into survives his meddling and continues to exist.

And... that's it. That's the only one of my characters I can think of offhand that I expect to be able to be dropped in blind, and still successfully resolve this scenario.

Well, unless you count the MtG Mage casting Exterminatus, I suppose, or even something silly like Run Away Together. Sadly, Mr. T doesn't even get to try to call in a proper Exterminatus, at least as I read the rules of the scenario.

Spoiler: Plot Contrivances that do best

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If my Psychic Vampire decoy clone just happened to have been introduced to the cult / the psychic crystals, then he'd recognize their power, and their potential, at least insofar as using them by themselves. If he also just happened to have his Companion use Divinations about how they'll turn out (since, inverted, they could cause some Mayhem, and this tech in and of itself is, well, powerful), or he just happened to decide to devote the resources to scanning some minds (or some computers, AKA "really easy minds"), he'd have some idea of the scope of the problem. Alternately, when the planet first appeared, if he just happened to try to find "the mind that caused this", or he just happened to try to scan the rogue planet for sentient life, he might get clued in (he might need to prepare a blood drive first, depending on what he tries to scan for, and where the appropriate mind(s) are located) if he isn't driven insane first (it's not the first time he's scanned something this utterly stupid for anyone else to even consider pointing telepathy towards). Regardless, once he investigated their base, it would be game over for any secrets they had (including the color-coded messages, which he could decypher (given time and a computer) even without reading their minds. Most likely, in a bit of karmic justice, he'd just use their own tech and plans against them, mind controlling them to send out totally not fake broadcasts from their facilities, incriminating themselves for everything they've done, before self-destructing their own facilities (and satellites - they seem to have plenty of explosives to handle those, too). In order to have plenty of blood to power his abilities, he'd be best to do all this without actually leaving his offices.

Like most who were blasted by prismatic death satellites, Alex Daeus #5, the M&M Matter Manipulation character who faced that scenario, has learned his lesson about looking for satellites. And Bad Planet has at least 12 artificial ones. If he just happened to have not gotten a refund on his points on his satellite-destroying base, and if he (or, rather, his player) just happened to possess metagame knowledge, *and* just happened to be able to convince his GM that the presence of Mi-Go technology in the universe means that Science! obviously works that way, and he should be able to buy additional extras on his weapons with that tech in mind? Or he just happened to have defeated some Mi-Go in such a way as to have gained access to their tech already? Then, at that point, he could use Portals! to look for and shoot satellites out of the sky on the Bad Planet... if he just happened to have nothing better to do with his time than to accidentally win the game.

If global Adventurer's Guild Guildmaster John Faseman of Marvel just happened to have some reason to go to the cult HQ to talk to the cult leadership (perhaps about purchasing or repurposing those crystals), he couldn't help but notice the out-of-place tech. If, when he inquired about it, said leaders told him that they got it from "angels", he'd be quite intrigued - said angels sound like they might be handy allies against the 666 Daemon Lords who infest this planet. If the "angels" just happened to think that John would make a great puppet, and just happened to botch their light-touch mind control attempt (John Faseman could spend Karma, so this one isn't exactly unlikely to occur), and things just happened to turn violent from there? Well, if the Mi-Go just happened to be disconnected enough to just follow their script, then the Mi-Go will produce TV / photo quality "proof" of John's guilt which will bring them moreso than John under suspicion by the whole world. And unlike many Marvel heroes, John never got the memo to just sit back and take such attempted hits to his Popularity, really drawing attention to their tech and strangeness. Meanwhile, John could make a "Plant what is tapped into the security cameras" scanner to map out the plant and thereby accidentally find their hidden base, and either unleash a violent minigirl on them, or just use Gate to send a team of adventurers to "deal with it".

Spoiler: Characters who do the worst

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You'd think, with enough time and bouncy-balls, Cutter could handle anything. Problem is, back when he thought it was a planet? He'd likely think in terms of propulsion to push it away, but realize that time isn't on his side to allow him or anyone else to build or even summon such a device. So (if on Earth) he'd consult NASA and XKDC about the effects of antimatter, and just how much he should use to prevent a collision. Some yelling about the mess he's making with all the bouncy balls later, he'd get an answer, and Cutter would make his first attempt (because backup plans) to spam the "planet" with antimatter. Which, if it's actually made of matter as I believe most of the Great Old Ones are, then, as I understand it, said antimatter would just blow off the eyelid, causing Earth to enter the Mayhem state early, because now Bad Planet is awake and angry, and the AoE is just that big. Oops.

My SI would just go on a brief killing spree, before being killed by someone or something stronger, faster, tougher, better, younger, luckier, or whatever. Although I think my SI would consider this Armageddon state to be a good thing if only it had only affected sapient beings. Ah, well.

And, because it's just her luck, Ambrosia Slughorn probably wouldn't be alone in joining the cult of peace and tranquility in the hopes of making things better through the power of positive thinking and good vibes upon hearing about a planet speeding towards Earth. Sigh.

[NichG]

For the Mayhem scenario, thinking what the most OP character I've ever played would do.

Spoiler: Mardyr

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This character was a former Greater Deity of a pantheon in a universe that was utterly destroyed, went to a Chrono Trigger 'End of Time' type of location with the other PCs with a quest to 'recreate the entire multiverse', and basically eventually became even stronger than he had been as a Greater Deity over the course of the campaign. The campaign was a D&D 3.5 base with so much custom stuff you could barely call it that. At the end, Mardyr had saving throws in the 250-400 range, actual 2e Karsus-like 10th+ level spells that he could cast from his hitpoints rather than slots and could spontaneously quicken/etc, a totally separate magic system where spells could be improvised at will within thematic categories (of which he had basically anything to do with soul creation and manipulation, anything to do with any form of dimensional travel, anything to do with geometry, anything to do with redemption, and also could twist cosmic energy signatures '90 degrees' into related but different cosmic energies, *another* totally separate 'magic' system of literal shonen anime moves that worked via dramatic editing e.g. if you monologue the world waits for you (which among other things had a power to 'take an encounter to a different space' and a power to permanently learn powers he observed others using), *another* magic system that let him burn XP to spontaneously create anything at more or less any scale he could hit the roll for including creatures, souls, cosmic energies, entire cities, etc, *another* magic system by which he could speak words that would warp the relationship between reality and the void at conceptual and physical levels, a custom kind of magic item gem slot system thing that gave a whole wonky set of stat buffs and powers and immunities including stuff like joining the timestops of others, a whole set of cosmic taints with weird effects like being able to avoid anything that would instakill, being given a save even on effects that would normally deny a save, being able to see as a cutscene any important events going on that are relevant to him and his interests, and rolling 1d100 instead of 1d20 on any kind of d20 roll one would normally make, the ability to once per game literally 'cheat' by setting any dice roll to whatever he would like it to be, the ability to once per game ignore an immunity and force someone to make a save or force someone to fail a save against something they're not immune to, etc... His regained godhood was of the Lovecraftian variety as well.

So he'd see the star coming, and probably immediately dimension walk out to meet it, and maybe even get along with the thing and be like 'okay, interesting passtime you've got there, mind if I watch?'. And maybe would just wait for everyone to massacre everyone else and then literally personally True Ressurrect every single individual who lived on that planet one at a time over the course of a few million years in a timeless space, hand-repairing their souls as need be, and carefully depositing back on the planet at the moment the Eye left, and call it a good learning experience for that civilization. As far as the effect itself goes, he has innate immunity to compulsions (not Mind Affecting, funnily enough), additional special resistance to things manipulating his soul (both passive, and the ability to actively oppose such effects at a pretty high level), and the ability to get a save even against things that don't allow it with a couple abilities to automatically succeed on saves from various sources (everything from a Ring of Nine Lives to using that 'cheat to set the dice roll' power to iirc a soulgem - custom gem slot thing - that could let you auto-succeed on one save per game). Unfortunately several pieces of his *gear* are sentient (and sapient for that matter) and would turn on him and try to kill him I suppose, which would just be a wee bit awkward. He does have a 9th level custom spell that creates a 300ft zone totally blocking any sort of powers that work via being carried by vision or perception of any form, so I guess he'd leave, fix his insane gear, and come back under that effect to continue chatting (or at least trying to).

If the thing actually destroyed the souls of people or was otherwise a jerk by e.g. refusing to communicate, he'd be a bit miffed and say 'hey, you can play with my toys but don't wreck them!' and... hm. I'm not actually sure what he'd do against a planet in combat practically speaking. There was literally a soulgem in that campaign 'immune to the attacks of gods' so probably its more like he can't hurt it and vice versa, but...

Putting aside literally trying to fight the thing with hitpoint damage, he has access to plenty of nasty cosmic energies that tend to stick with you regardless of scale or power. A previous version of him would have been able to inject Paradox taint into the thing to get it booted from the true timeline, by virtue of his own radioactivity at the time, but he cleaned that up by end of campaign so its not an option any more. Maybe use a Fury power to draw the thing into an extradimensional battlefield and then just... force it to listen to him monologue? Kind of an annoying way to seal someone away. Hm, maybe the cheesy thing to do would be to forcibly socket the True Circle soulgem into the planet-god - its a thing that 'slowly' (as in instantaneously for characters with normal amounts of HP) permanently erodes your max HP down to 1 if you don't have immunity to its particular form of cosmic energy, in exchange for also burning off nasty cosmic taints you'd rather not have. Mardyr goes around with this thing equipped, so it'd be at hand. It'd probably allow a save versus the socketting attempt, but thats what burning the point of Sheol to make a target autofail a save would be for. Oh, and there's a soulgem that 1/game automatically lets you affect a target (e.g. without save) who has never known love - so we have some options for making the thing stick even given deity immunities. Against a planet-god the gem might not actually harm it until a few million years have passed, but it would eventually actually be a problem for the thing over the sorts of infinities of time that elder gods expect to exist for. And then one more point of that kind of damage would perma-kill it, even if its a force of nature or embodiment of laws of physics (possibly with interesting consequences for that universe, but for Mardyr that's like Tuesday anyhow).

Alternately maybe breach the wall of reality and try to drag it into the void somehow... By end of campaign he was going around with a 184 Strength but that's not quite 'lift a planet' level of things unfortunately - about 13 orders of magnitude too low carry capacity. He might be able to juggle soulgems to get that higher, but for 13 orders of magnitude he'd need +215 Strength. It's probably possible... I can immediately see a source of +92 Strength by switching one soulgem that gives a x1.5 stat mult from Wisdom to Strength. And there's another soulgem that gives you a thing that lets you become a factor of 10x bigger (this gets very complicated because Mardyr's Strength is already benefitting from a Wu Jen 'Giant Size' spell combined with a custom Shrinking effect that explicitly does not change your size category modifiers...). This feels possible but it'd take like 30 minutes of combing through notes and soulgem lists and stuff at the table, but I did theorycraft a 700 Wisdom arrangement at one point taking out all of the stops, so... yeah. Literally chuck the elder god through a portal to the void like a baseball, that's very on point for Mardyr's style of thing I'd say.

As far as dealing with the cult, uh... I guess probably thats what he should actually do, but they're going to be so much less interesting than this thing that he might - embarrassingly - just neglect that solution course entirely, even if he has plenty of divination options to actually figure out that they're what's going on. At which point the scenario becomes more or less trivial - I mean, he can't viably melee a planet and expect to do much, but a couple of dinky satellites relying on dimensional portals? Oomph (quicken-cast with no somatic or verbal components thanks to the alternate casting system) Miracle to emulate Destroy Portal or whatever that Manual of the Planes spell was. Or literally just release the Shrinking effect and start carving through them with a Colossal-sized sword to the tune of probably several thousands or even tens of thousands of damage per round thanks to a really easy AC to hit and Avalanche of Blades letting you keep attacking until you miss, albeit with scaling penalties.

All in all though, surprisingly still a bit interesting to think through for a completely OP character. Mostly through by virtue of 'how to do this with style' rather than any sort of real need. Still, this would actually have been a legitimate game session or two worth of content even at the end of that campaign.

[Telok]

Hmm. Perhaps more angle on the mayhem would flavor things a bit? Lets see...

A link to someone's play through of the original adventure, just as it's starting to get good https://www.delta-green.com/2012/04/...transcript-11/

Yeah, so, the original adv was designed to dump the characters straight into the cult connection by relying on a more aggressive psi/mana collection pattern using smaller crystals for individual members. That gets screwed up by the intervention of a drug dealer member who discovered he could cut the small crystals in half, under-report member $ donations and skim off psi/mana power at the same time. It ends badly. That link picks up right after the showdown with the psi/magic empowered now-an-übermensch drug dealer cultist, when the PCs are deciding to go after the main cult.

Info on mi-go, because they're weirder and more alien than any d&d critter I've ever met (and that includes most of DarkSun & Planescape): https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight....delta-green/#2

A description of how some of the entities involved may be treated (because d&d habituates us to "stat it & kill it" stuff that's inappropriate):

Spoiler

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The exact entity here is Ghroth, but that really won't help since it's literally a one event critter from a single 1997 adventure. Mind, that describes more than half the Mythos critters in existance if you're just looking at original authors and primary sources. Proper treatment of the Cthulhu Mythos isn't as a unified set of facts, but as a series of observations from unreliable witnesses who could only see or hear part of what's going on. To wit:

passage from Countdown in which Hastur is described:

"It is a primal force of the universe, which assumes an individual role only in response to the entropy caused by human beings - our destruction gives it form, our violence gives it a name, our screams give it a voice. It is no more a deity than gravity is, no matter how many people worship it and ascribe it a personality and an intelligence (many do). However, by envisioning a "deity" with properties that are in sync with the principle of entropy, it is possible for humans to commune with this principle in a direct way that fosters a greater- if insane-understanding than that possessed by most people."

The book also gives a few novel in which Hastur is described this way: Karl Edward Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreanling," Craig Anthony's "Scene: A Room," and Alan Moore's "The Courtyard".

I would also heartily recommend The Magnus Archives podcast

and

FoDG has a little blurb where they do something like you did:

Alhazred also connected the four cosmic gods [Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Nyarlathotep] to the four elements (water, air, earth, and fire), more likely as part of an abstruse alchemical code than as a deliberate attempt to reify these unknowable forces. MAJESTIC physicists have, however, reported surprising results from experiments mathematically mapping the four cosmic gods to the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear interactions) so perhaps it is possible that the entire energetic universe is in fact actively composed of malign sapiences.

Again, it's enlightening to see the different takes and assumptions we bring to these brief descriptions of the scenarios we've written. So that's where I was coming from. It's a scenario as I would present it with the mi-go being less blind sided by human error patterns and a touch more patient, plus the entity being less a "statted thinking creature" than just part of the metaversal metaphysics that is possible to interacted with as an "individual creature" for a flawed and imprecise definition of those words.

[Quertus]

I haven't read the module or much of the playthrough yet, but it feels like "suddenly, planet!" / Bad Planet isn't so much a scenario as a clue or a consequence.

I could probably try to reverse-engineer the module from the playthrough, making up mechanics along the way which might not match the actual mechanics at all. But... hmmm... I guess, if I get really bored / the opposite of bored (interested? invested?), I could write a Friend Computer / Paranoia-esque "all the characters are supernatural, and all are desperate to hide the fact that they are supernatural from Delta Green" for a party of characters (from various base systems) attempting to research events, starting at the "it's not terrorism, it's terror" hook. But that would involve a lot of reading, and I might be too lazy.

On an unrelated note, I'm hoping this thread will see at least a little more action, as I was really looking forward to reading at least how sword-chan (sword-kun? I don't really grok what these endings mean...) would respond to being fought over in that war on... oh, right, spoilers. Being fought over in a war. That sounded like a writing prompt that would produce something fun to read.

Oh, and speaking of fun to read, thank you @Telok for continuing to give your characters' responses, even to your own scenarios. They (especially Paranoid Bob ) really are fun to read. And it's good for demonstrating how, as you said, different people approach the problem differently.

[Telok]

Went ahead an read to the end of the log, it ends session 15, four after my link. Apparently it was from the '93 playtest of a draft version of the adventure for the DB book. Same outline as I gave, just minor details adjusted. DG is CoC is BRP, a simple d100 under skill or under stat x5, crit success/weapon impale is 1/5th of base chance, hit points are (size+con)÷2 effective (5d6+6)÷2 with con checks to stay consious at under half hp, everything else is minor details.

[Quertus]

Right, so, fair to say I hate reading the Delta Green The New Age playtest transcript.

It's not just because I'm left with too many unanswered questions like "Dreams because _____?", "Rex because _____?", "Doctor was ____?", "Chapter 13 because ____?" to reverse engineer anything even remotely like the original module.

It's not just because of the pacing. 10 chapters before it "gets good", then it ends in 4? Not normally good, might be good for a good mystery.

It's not just because the PCs are idiots. It's kinda expected that the PCs will be idiots, overlooking obvious details and such, but the type and extent of the PC stupidity in the transcript makes my skin crawl. Like "cover is 'status: Missing' + 'being peppered with questions by feds & reporters'." or "heavy flirting with operative + appear on TV as member"? Really? That's the best your brains work?

It's not just because I don't get a sense of real character of the characters, only snippets of their quirks. And the "roleplay" seems heavier on OOC information than personality.

It's not just because, from what little I do know of them, I hate the PCs, although it doesn't hurt that I'd probably rather read a single chapter about their grizzly deaths after the mission that read the mission itself (the deaths they did have were nice).

It's not just because the writing isn't nearly as entertaining as that in this thread, or that their attempts at humor often work against them (for example, I liked "headline", conceptually, but the delivery failed to stick the landing).

It's not just because their SOP doesn't match what I'm used to from RPGs or TV shows, although I suspect my counterpart might cause similar cringe in some.

It's not just because the GM's style really doesn't help with a lot of these problems.

But all of those put together, and perhaps some things I haven't been able to quantify yet, merged together to create a thoroughly unenjoyable and borderline unpleasant reading experience.

But, apparently, I hate myself enough to read it all anyway.

And, wow, those crystals were way more powerful than I expected.

So, if despite a likely completely different entrance, if my "pretending not to be supernatural" team were railroaded into chapter 12 anyway, it might look a little like this:

Spoiler: Sweet Dreams

Show

Premise: a copy of the Telepathic Vampire, Arma, Cutter Fyord, and Hunter were all brought to this world, given cover identities, and trained on things from this world, including the Delta Green they are infiltrating. Their first mission in this world opens with a "terrorist attack", which they investigate for supernatural elements, while trying to conceal their own supernatural natures, even from one another. Most likely, they've done things completely differently, yet incomprehensibly are being railroaded into spending the night in the Tulsa compound. The events up to this point have led to them possessing numerous gadgets, numerous Enolsis crystals, (what they consider to be) insane ordinance (C4, incendiary grenades, explosive rounds, elephant tranquilizer, things like that), comm gear all around (that also doubles as a beacon to help TV to not accidentally touch any of the other agents' minds, as he's been warned that some Delta Green members are Psi-sensitive (which, while true of the actual Delta Green agents, is a clever ruse to keep TV from noticing the sub-dermal skill chips some of the other faux-agents need in order to understand / interact with this world)), blueprints of Enolsis buildings, one new power/mutation (TV has eyes that grant passive Aura Sight), and numerous mundane items including two medkits, multiple (chilled) blood bags, one pair of sunglasses and one tinfoil hat. Their only immediate backup will be TV's Companion, who is pretending to cover them as a Sniper (she's terrible at the job - any of the other 4 would do better).

Unlike the Agents, not a one of these characters is likely to be locked into a room with barred windows, reinforced glass, and a military-grade door without noticing (I blame my own paranoia about such things, although to be fair, some of my other characters wouldn't notice). OTOH, unlike Agent Newcastle, not a one of them would think to stuff the central air with towels. Arma would actually go to sleep, trusting in her Hat of Disguise (a prerequisite for infiltrating Delta Green while being obviously not human) to make it look like she's got a sleeping mask on, so nobody notices if she opens her eyes. TV doesn't sleep, and would (fake a shower, leave it running, cool down to corpse temperature, hide, and) wait up for company, while Hunter and Cutter behave "normally". Well, if "normally" includes sweeping for bugs and (assuming no bugs are found) Cutter finally getting to litter a room with bouncy balls while hiding C4 around the window. Meanwhile (assuming no bugs) Hunter is barricading the room, placing his weapons and ammo in optimal locations, evaluating the structural integrity and weapon potential of every object in the room, and otherwise preparing for attacks from all sides by all types of foes, especially whatever they believe Rex to be (synthetic shapeshifter?). Hunter is probably the only one who realizes that the door is locked, and debates relaying that information on their encrypted channel while in a bug-free room... and decides it isn't worth the risk. [There's something very wrong with the world when Arma comes off as the least paranoid character in the party.]

I'm not sure if NASA's announcement is on TV, as we got here much earlier than the agents in the test run. Even if it is, I'm not convinced anyone will be watching the TV. Anyway, GM Pub just said, "you're being gassed" after the initial "saving throw", so... I guess I'll assume it's obvious enough? Arma goes to double sleep. TV isn't affected. Cutter [Ongoing: Expel foreign toxins] (it's very effective). Also, not trusting that the room will continue to have enough Oxygen, he'll [Summon Oxygen Tank] (and hope it doesn't explode in his face) [Ongoing: Summon Oxygen] (because he has plenty of mana crystals thanks to Enolsis, and this is invisible, unlike potentially having to explain where the oxygen tank came from). Hunter is ashamed he hadn't explicitly accounted for this vector of attack, especially after whatever (maybe) happened previously in the module (where the 4 fake agents discussed "gas" as one possibility to consider, and the fact that we considered and may have gassed a target ourselves), and puts a couch through a wall, and steps out for some fresh air (or, if that isn't realistic for a human to accomplish, he steps out by exploding or even melting the floor).

The lights go out, and Arma gets put to triple-sleep, thanks to a tranq dart. The pair who enter her room presumably try to pick her up... at which point they start making SAN checks, as she doesn't feel like she looks. And she has wings. Invisible wings. Invisible bat wings. Like a Daemon. As beings from a CoC world, they're probably reduced to gibbering madness by the experience, by all the heaping piles of incongruous details about her existence, long before they can move her to wherever they were trying to take her.

TV is hidden, and simply politely (silently, telepathically) "asks" the one in the back to shut the door behind her. Then asks the one up front to start meditating on their crystal. Once they're both Dominated, he'll come out of hiding, drain the one dry (eating all her memories to find out what's going on in the process) while using the cultists' Crystal vulnerability to drain the other's psychic power. He probably doesn't even need a master crystal (although the group has at least 2 by now), as he should be able to channel the power himself. But he doesn't want to waste it as a glowing shield, and just hides the psychic power in a closed fist. Then, his belly full, he begins seeking out minds to Dominate into feeding him more psychic power (and blood, as necessary) - probably starting with the two in Arma's room.

Cutter gets hit by a tranq dart (it's not very effective), and falls off the bed, taking the covers with him. The two intruders struggle to get over to him, as bouncy balls spill out the door. When they do finally reach him, he ambushes them with the pair of swords he pulled out of Hammer Space. *ahem* his luggage. Yes, that's what the official report will read, that he pulled them out of his luggage. Hopefully, they're willing to surrender... although he's likely to drug them into suicide meditation feeding his master crystal if he thinks they're trying to kill him. Unlike TV, he'll take the glowing shield, thank you very much. [Never put something like this into the module, because my characters will use it.]

Hunter just outflanks, ambushes, and slaughters his opponents. He may not contribute much to the rest of the module, but he's [Overwhelming] in a fight against most things. His biggest challenge is not appearing supernatural (or not doing so where anyone can see (and live)).

Cutter will follow standard Guard procedure of gathering more allies, and eventually... awaken Arma with... a shot of adrenaline and psychic power? That's what his report will say, not [Remove Foreign Toxins].

If I'm reading the playtest correctly, and the doors to the building we were sleeping in were going to be hastily rigged to explode? Then I genuinely don't understand why the Mi-Go didn't just remote-detonate the building, in any version of this scenario, *especially* if they have synth robot things that can play our parts for the cameras. I'm guessing the door triggers weren't up when the 8 intruders came to get us, weren't going to be put up if they succeeded, and that the members of the capture squad don't know anything about that plan. But it doesn't matter, because the "bomb setters / door riggers" are likely the closest and thus next ones to become Dominated and head for TV's room. So even if Hunter goes out the front doors instead of breaking through another wall, it still shouldn't be game over for the faux agents.

Cutter and Arma will follow standard Guard procedure of gathering more allies, and attempt to link back up with the others. They'll likely find TV, still in his room, draining mindless zombies who keep coming to him. (He'll know they're coming thanks to the comms, so they won't find him in the compromising position of drinking anyone's blood). Although the zombie nature of people coming to him and his command crystal may be strange (especially since they aren't coming to Cutter and his command crystal - yes, they have multiple, and TV has to at least fake using his while the others are around), they'll probably leave him to it, and attempt to regroup with Hunter.

TV will warn Hunter off the mobs of free food - I mean, cultists TV is working on subverting. So Hunter will likely be the one to encounter the glowing bug thing (and regain 1 SAN from seeing it, as it makes much more sense to him than all this psychic crystal nonsense ). And get backup from TV's Companion. And, as much as I hate to admit it, it's really likely that this version of TV's Companion likely gets jibbed by the Mi-Go. And while Hunter could doubtless solo it, he probably won't get the chance, as a vengeful TV likely finally uses some of that psychic power he's been siphoning to explode the Mi-Go. And maybe bothers to use the psychic energy to pull the psychic residue of the Mi-Go to learn from it, or the psychic residue of his Companion, to turn her into a ghost / to possess a new body (and there seem to be some convenient empty bodies later in the module).

Speaking of, the module doesn't really mention the security cameras, let alone the plants growing into them, or the underground control room afaict. But, if he somehow hadn't noticed (or investigated) them before, I think TV will know all about everything once it eats the Mi-Go's psychic residue.

Hunter could solo the rest of the compound (but nobody knows that). TV could solo the rest of the compound if they left him alone, and by this point Arma and Cutter suspect that's probably true. (If necessary, TV has spun it as "maybe this 'zombie mode' was built into the crystals, and he just stumbled on it in his meditations?". But he gets them to back up Hunter, so he can get back to drinking blood to keep up the zombie cycle. And (based on the playtest) I would add, "at least until the Mi-Go blow up his building", but that won't happen now that he's read their minds.

By the time they reach the temple portal, TV has reality-bending reservoirs of psychic power, Cutter has a stronger visible psychic shield (having drained the crystals of those they killed), and Arma and Hunter have struggled to hide their regeneration and martial supremacy, respectively. They've collected even more crystals (all emptied now), the explosives from at least 1 building (more if the Mi-Go decided not to try to make us look like insane terrorists), and left exactly 0 survivors (oops!). Then the Companion's psychic echo is given a The Living Power robot body, because what else would TV do with all that power besides show loyalty to his Companion?

And, assuming they go through the portal (which is a big assumption, and likely involves lots of prep work and testing that ultimately doesn't matter)... I'm not sure what POW is exactly, but I'm guessing Cutter and Hunter pass out. But come to before anything really happens.

That said, with the Mi-Go's stolen knowledge, crystals can be stolen from the 1st satellite, and used to power runs on the other satellites, where crystals are stolen and bombs are planted.

Ultimately, I think that, after they blow up the satellites, stop / delay the son of Azathoth, and deal with any theoretical control room, they clean up the Tulsa mess, and take over the Enolsis magic pyramid scheme.

[Telok]

@Quertus: I think you're putting too much effort into this. I went and got out my DG book to reread the original scenario (something I didn't do while writing up our version). The logs were definitely from one of the early playtests. There's notable changes in details*, although not the overall plot.

And it's absolutely a mystery, or rather an investigation. There's three fights, one which the PCs can totally miss out on (some NPCs get hosed in their place) just by taking someone to the hospital. Part 1, the investigation of the cult that leads up to the raid on the compound, takes 25 pages in the book. Part 2, the raid bit where that log picks up takes 10 pages. Since the logs were 10-11 sessions for part 1 and 4-5 sessions for part 2 that seems to map pretty well.

Being Call of Cthulhu based (really Delta Green is just "CoC in 1995") it plays hardball in the final showdown. The enemies are smart and the system lets lethal weapons be lethal. There's a bit where it's "you looked out the wrong window, failed a luck save and a sanity save, lose 1d100 brain hit points and become a looney NPC, thank you for playing". The alien death rays are real death rays and not just some extra damage pistols. You know, fun stuff. Even if it's not everyone's cup of tea.

* Some of the differences are interesting, but then I like the "how its made" extras on movie dvds too. There's an example specifically using one of the character's names from that playtest. I think they reworked the ending a fair bit to make it slightly less TPK-ish. There are several "your players may do this" advice bits, at least two of which I could tell the playtest GM was ad libbing through which means they weren't in that draft.

[animorte]

Hey NichG, would you mind linking each scenario post in the OP? Or copy-paste, just so it's easier to access. I remember getting started with this, but didn't have the time to invest.

[NichG]

Hey NichG, would you mind linking each scenario post in the OP? Or copy-paste, just so it's easier to access. I remember getting started with this, but didn't have the time to invest.

Okay, done.

[animorte]

Okay, done.

Oh, that's just fantastic! Included all the bonus scenarios as well. Much appreciated.

[Quertus]

This thread coming up in another thread reminded me - I feel like my WoD Mage has something of a "Voltron" feel with piecing effects together with the spheres, that wasn't reflected in my characters. Senility willing, I'll go back and look at the challenges from a "how would a generic omni-wizard handle this" PoV.. (In b4 thread necromancy!)