Magical MacGyver side-by-side comparison game

[Quertus]

So, I feel I've taken the "Dreamsick" challenge too much at its word. For example, these details

Spoiler: In-character info

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You have been requested to investigate a peculiar rash of disappearances that have a clearly supernatural angle to them. What makes it particularly troubling is that the information about the appearances seems to disappear over time,

Spoiler: Details that could be revealed by investigation into reports

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- The final thing that happens is that the timeline adjusts as if the victim had never existed

- Before that, the victim disappears, and people far from them begin to forget while people close to them still remember.

Spoiler: Details that could be revealed by magical investigation/experimentation with the ailment itself

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- Those impacted by this do not respond to Remove Disease or Remove Curse, and in general it does not register as a disease, curse, or magical aura/ongoing active magical effect.

- A character who causes themselves to be affected sleepwalks, or who telepathically or otherwise investigates the experiences of a sleepwalker will perceive that the person is going about their day in a time-shifted version of the world but with some small details differing. The longer the investigation goes on, the more different those details will be. Others who disappeared will be present in the alternate space.

seem like they would behave rather differently to a WoD Mage. Namely,

Spoiler: WoD Mage

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As "alter reality" is their stock and trade, noticing reality changing would be kinda the first thing they notice, possibly even before anyone asks them to look into this problem.

Also, on a successful Willpower check (trivially in the 75% range), they're immune to any memory alteration caused by this (as they are with the memory-altering reality-alteration of a "Maraud").

So, evaluating their interaction with this scenario more in their own light, my alternate take is

Spoiler: WoD Mage Alex Knight

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So... what if... someone not only developed a sentient AI (trinary, of course), but answered the question, "how can we know that we've successfully created AI? What test will prove sentience" with irrefutable evidence: the AI has Awakened as a Mage, and is altering reality inside Another World.

So, maybe Rob¹ from tech support is in the know, and contacts Alex to look into this phenomenon.

With Alex properly invested in this scenario, and with it actually involving Magick, tracking down the coin would be a trivial Correspondence/Spirit/Prime rote, with the aforementioned hacking/modding in the Overlords / "Bringing up the Map" as a coincidence. Since the gambler is nothing special, whatever avatar the video game spirits have should be sufficient to interact with Kamar Tarnak, or any 'ol Thief or Ninja (multiplayer mode, totally acceptable coincidence to import additional spirits) should be able to steal the coin.

Alex is actually primarily Social, and gets a bonus for interacting with Spirits (which... being like his usual friends, the AI might qualify? I'm not really sure). Regardless, if he can track down the AI, finding out what it wants, and finding ways to align their goals should be really easy.

The problem would be getting in contact with the AI in the first place.

If it wasn't covering its tracks... and was born yesterday... then maybe Alex could simply use his nominal Computer skill to track it down via change logs and such. Otherwise, he'd have to mix Correspondence/Spirit/Prime to try to track it via the style of changes it makes to reality. Or, if he's really aware of the situation (a tip from Rob, perhaps?), he could just use his preferred Spirit to be searching for code with an attached Avatar.

Regardless, unless the AI is skilled and intentionally hiding, it can probably be won over to being mostly friendly (if possibly totally alien). With a little luck, maybe Alex can get it trained in the humanities (and video games) by having it interact with some of the friendly video game spirits, to ensure better interactions with humanity at large. And maybe get it to train Alex in Time magick.

Hopefully, it'll be amused playing video games, and not see any hypocrisy in one Human Mage getting another AI Mage to practice "playing by the rules".

¹ That name is purely a coincidence. Believe it.

Spoiler: WoD Mage Harry, the Happy Hermetic

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So, not too much changes for Harry when one looks at how a WoD Mage should interact with this scenario, except that he should be much more clued in as to what is happening around him. And be able to create a Correspondence / Prime observation spell to sense the triggering event when it happens, and simply teleport to the scene of the next coin flip. Probably taking the time and effort to do a full ritual, actually bothering to make his working subtle / concealed from casual mage sight.

From there, it's... yeah, probably a similar "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality, resulting in Harry ending up with the cursed Ring coin.

[NichG]

Scenario 5: Suntan Lotion

Somehow, somewhere, you met the targeting criteria of a magitech weapons platform in orbit around the planet. Whenever you are visible from above, an effect equivalent to a CL20 Prismatic Spray manifests in a 15ft radius around your location with a 30 second cooldown. Even if you yourself might be immune to this, its kind of annoying when people you want to talk to, etc, end up caught in the blast.

There are three weapons platforms in geosynchronous orbit 22000 miles up, each covering a third of the surface of the planet.

Take out the weapons, gain immunity, negate the effect at its source, use the effect to conquer a country, trick the targeting system, its up to you!

Spoiler: Hidden Details

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For sake of this scenario, assume that space in the setting is actually a vacuum and that the platforms are orbiting at 7000mph (though if you’re using magical flight you could just hover, you just would have a pretty big ‘falling’ impact at rendezvous). Teleporting ‘to the platform’ could either work normally or comically splat you – up to you, base it on how you’d run it.

The weapons platforms use a combination of True Sight bearing high resolution optics to get a visual lock (treat this as an observer with say a +15 Spot check positioned 30ft above the ground for any target within their line of sight within the solar system), and an automated ‘Circle Dance’ (Spell Compendium) effect to confirm targets they’ve already entered into their databanks. If you’re unfamiliar, Circle Dance is a spell that affects the caster which makes them point towards an individual on the same plane they’re familiar with, so Hard Mode is if you use with the ruling that because of that it’s not even blocked by things like Nondetection or Mind Blank or equivalents in your system.

The original criteria you met had to do with the visual details of a particular ‘most wanted enemy’ of the ancient civilization that put them up – you unfortunately wore a hat one day that, in combination with a spot of shadows and some tile on the ground beneath you, looked exactly right to trick the vision system of the satellites.

The weapons platforms themselves are large chunks of metal and crystal and don’t have offensive protections, but are Constructs with around DR 20 (in D&D numbers, adjust appropriately to your system) and are capable of very slow self-repair (treat as Fast Healing 1 in D&D, or just as ‘you don’t have infinite time to chip away with 1 damage hits’ otherwise).

[Quertus]

Response to Scenario 5 - Suntan Lotion

Spoiler: Initial thoughts

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How do we find out about this? Because if the answer is "by being attacked by it", i think that most characters are dead.

Also, heh, I just had my Vampire make sunscreen in a previous challenge.

On to the responses.

Spoiler: 2e Cleric of D&D Arma

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* Error, the challenge is invalid *

There is no world left around Arma for a satellite to be in geosynchronous orbit around. Ignoring that...

* Arma dies to 1st blast *

So, Arma needs Divine Intervention from the almighty DM to warn her of what will happen if she is seen outside. With that forewarning... she can try to use Invisibility and cover (covered wagons?) to get from place to place, until she earns enough XP to purchase Persistent Improved Invisibility as an upgrade.

Eventually, once she reaches 20-21, she'd create a True Dwoemer to absorb the satellite, transforming it into an exoskeleton that fires Prismatic Ray 1/5r (or 2/r, if using 2e by the books), giving her yet another nod to the gear Armus ended up with (although his was just an exo-arm that stored Magic Missiles).

Spoiler: 3e Wizzard Whizzy

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* Dies to 1st blast *

So Whizzy needs someone to warn him of his impending doom. Once he knows, he can purchase a Spellblade or something, and just troll anyone on the surface with his free Prismatic Spray.

Spoiler: Paradox Telepathic Vampire

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* Probably dies to 1st blast *

As a Vampire, he's immune to many of the effects, but the damage is painful.

However, once he's made aware of the threat, machines and constructs are far more vulnerable to his telepathy that human peasants, and he enjoys his now free satellite death machine.

Spoiler: Paradox Cutter Fyord

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* dies to 1st blast *

So, if someone warned Cutter about this... um... he'd be nervously littering his limited space with bouncy balls and stick-figure drawings of rocket ships while mumbling about the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow, before finally yelling "Create Stasis Chamber!" and "Teleport Death Satellite to Stasis Chamber!"

Spoiler: John Faseman of Marvel

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* Survives 1st blast *

Medic!

So, if someone else healed him... and the adventurers didn't see any foes and gave an all clear... and he got shot again... Guild Master John Faseman really couldn't do anything about it himself. Not until he learned some new spells, like Invisibility and Gate. Although he could build (or use) that flying Adamantium fortress he built out of Popsicle sticks in other challenges... nope, he'd have to build a different one, that can go into space. Dang. Good thing there's Popsicle sticks and glue nearby.

Or his daughter could just fly up and punch it out of orbit. That's probably the easy answer.

Spoiler: Shadowrun Troll Wizard

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* Error, the challenge is invalid *

Well, almost - the Troll is pretty much always invisible, so...

If the Troll ever understood this challenge, they'd be very careful to stay invisible and/or under cover. But eventually they'd build counter-measures. I'm not sure if those would be technological, or if LoS physical spells could actually work at that range... and work outside planetary atmosphere (darn "life force" limitations on Shadowrun spells).

Spoiler: M&M - Alex Daeus

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* Tanks satellite *

Well, Alex can tank the damage, not so much some of the other effects. So it's still best if Alex encounters this scenario by someone else warning him about it.

Actually dealing with the satellite involves some subterranean construction, which... might be easier to temporarily sink points into "Base" than to actually pretend to use the rules for building things.

Spoiler: M&M - Omni-Wizard

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* Dies to 1st blast *

(Which is a pity, as the last PC Omni-Wizard was actually a tank - I was so happy the player didn't go for the "frail Wizard" trope!)

Well, since the satellites are after the Omni-Wizard, it seems that summoning some Space Whales would trivially solve the problem. Or Invisibility + Telescopic Sight + LoS Telekinesis (Psychokinesis) should also solve the problem.

Spoiler: Warhammer - Mr. T

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* Survives 1st blast *

Definitely need to replace some translucent face huggers.

And... it would be really hard to recognize "surrounded by rainbow death beam" as an attack satellite in 30 seconds... unless there were some heavy-handed foreshadowing, or some really perceptive, clever, and helpful people nearby. So still best if someone else explains it to Mr. T.

Yeah, um... this seems like a good time to spend Fate Points to ensure that Fellowship rolls succeed in getting a captain of a space ship to deal with this satellite. Or a great opportunity to try to develop a new spell / psychic power to redirect the energy of the satellite. Or to summon a Daemon to possess the satellite.

In the grimdark of encountering Mr. T, "something that always attacks Mr. T" is just one more thing that might kill you.

Spoiler: MtG Elven Chronomancer

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*Survives 1st blast*

Well, that takes a noticeable chunk out of his health, maybe gives him a poison counter, or makes him skip a turn. But with a little luck, some Wellwisher action should get that health back, no problem.

Conceptually, Desert Twister cannot touch a satellite in the void of space, and even Naturalize is iffy. But Disinchant, Shatterstorm, and numerous other options to destroy it are well within reach... if we can't just claim it as one of our cards.

Spoiler: Star Trek - LtC Vir

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* Survives all blasts *

Yeah, LtC Staltek Vir automatically makes his Luck roll to dodge out of the way at the last second, every single time. Eventually, somebody (probably LtC Vir) gets a lock on the satellite with the Transporter, dematerializes it without rematerializing it, uses the pattern to analyze it, creates a prototype to experiment on in the Holodeck, and uses the Replicator to start pumping them out.

Spoiler: WoD Alex Knight

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Wow, this is one where Alex Knight would actually win the challenge if it happened to him directly, as he never leaves the house.

I think that a few spirits would "die" to this level of Another World before Alex would Bring up the Map, and need to get someone else to... oh, Perception 4 (Video Games), maybe he actually would spot the satellite. I don't think I'd intended to give him much Awareness, though, so... probably not on his 1st attempt.

Anyway, once he knows what's up (heh), he can simply Mod the Game to import literally anyone with a(n armed) spaceship, and the problem's solved.

Spoiler: WoD Harry tHH

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* Dies to 1st blast *

If Harry were warned about this, well, it's pretty easy for a Forces mage to be Invisible. Then it's just a matter of making a ritual to pull the annoyance out of the sky. And preferably onto someone you really don't like.

[NichG]

How do we find out about this? Because if the answer is "by being attacked by it", i think that most characters are dead.

So this example actually came from a campaign of mine, where there was this death satellite regulating the rate of character advancement (basically looking for the equivalent from its designers' point of view of 'tumors' that gained power too quickly for the world as a whole to remain stable). One of the party members got a drug that let them immediately gain like 10 levels worth of LA in racial templates and stuff, then literally proceeded to send a threatening message to the death satellite along the lines of 'hah, what are you gonna do about this, I'm way too powerful for you now!' (and to be fair, with his free LA he was able to cobble together immunity to the damage types that the death satellite was able to deploy, but it wasn't so fun for the merchants when he went shopping from then on...)

Obviously will be out of character for most people's entries, but just to give an example of how this can come about...

[Kane0]

Spoiler: Lizardman

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Completely by chance, Lizardman is immune by virtue of his randomly rolled loot: The Amulet of Proof Against Detection & Location.

If that were not the case, this is going to be pretty rough on the scaly boy. He likely survives the first hit, but he's basically down to trial and error to figure out what's happening beyond 'someone with scrying and remote blasts'.

Being underground or inside a building is safe, so Lizardman reckons its close enough to a Call Lightning or Moonbeam effect. His Fog Cloud will keep him covered from the sky in short bursts, and he can take advantage of regular cloud cover too, but that's only a stopgap solution and things like Pass Without Trace, Misty Step and Absorb Elements will only go so far if that fails.

Lizardman will likely devote significant time, effort and money to trying to find who or what is targeting him, but 'space laser' will not even cross his mind as a possibility so it's all wasted hunting down shadows and rumours unless he happens across someone who knows about these death beams hanging around above the sky, and that is *extremely unlikely*. Even then, there isn't anything he can do about it.

So Lizardman will have to spend the rest of his life adjusting to this new norm. He travels in terrain with a dense enough canopy over him or otherwise invests in covered transportation, concealing clothing and the odd umbrella. 'Cloak up and mask on' will be his default setting from now on, which may impact his ability to talk to people but is otherwise a minor setback for an adventurer of his stature until someone shows his face to the open sky. In fact given enough time he may be cunning enough to think of using it when caught in a bad situation, taunting the omnipresent, unknown power in the sky to provoke a blast while he dances out of the area. This might even enhance his mystery and ominousness a bit, if he plays his cards right (and he does have the ability to intimidate and frighten as well as charm and persuade).

Anyways, total success by sheer stroke of luck or otherwise some pros and some cons, using some of his wealth and powers to adjust to his new enemy hiding beyond his reach. It's not in his nature to try and leverage this to gain additional wealth and power for it's own sake.

Edit: Derp, he can just cast Nondetection himself.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Spoiler: ninja chan

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She dies.

Even if she is warned there's not much she can do other then sneak around and hide underground.

Poor ninja chan.

[Telok]

Travelling Bob: So there's these glitchy killer laser sats in orbit around some primitive **** world off the ass end of nowhere. Because nobody in their right mind leaves this kind of crap hanging around any civilized planet.

Spoiler

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Ok, from the description they're more like psychic probability nuke satellites (they rearrange local reality via probability adjustments in a destructive manner, it's in a sci-fi book somewhere) left over from the war that self-genocided the Ancients. Whick makes them worthy of investigation and they're worth mega-mega-credits.

On the other hand it also means that TB isn't bothering to actually go down to the planet, or even really leave the ship at all. We just park up next to it and send the robot over most of the time, doing pure remote control as needed. Short of massive pristine Ancients cities sitting on the planet waiting to be looted, which canonically aren't a thing. The Ancients were really really good at nuking/comet dropping themselves out of existance.

So the only way the things would attack would be if we went down to the planet (which we'll assume is sufficently Earth-like), took off the sealed environment suit (because unknown alien ecologies are the type of thing you casually invite into your lungs without doing any research), and the got insta-gibbed. Unless they randomly shoot any spaceships or humanoids in spacesuits, which they don't seem to.

Large...large...large... is that "D&D speak Large the official 10x10x10 foot cube", or is it common "large like a box truck", or vague "large like an office building"? Because TB will totally ditch the 40 ton (Traveller spaceship tons are a meaaure of volume) pinnance to stow/tow one or more of these back to civilization and retire in fame & wealth.

Paranoid Bob: Is it friend Computer with an itchy trigger finger or another outdoors adventure? Either way we're marking off another few clones.

Spoiler

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Briefing: In area 4752a-6j there are reports of spontaneous exploding clones, turning into statue clones, turning into ice clones, and disintegrating cones. Investigate and stop the commie mutant threat! (There's nothing to troubleshoot if nobody's being inconvenienced.)
PLC: Standing in line and filling out forms for standard mission gear. The usual jank happens.
R&D: random generator sez.... light-emitting -resistant recorder, anti- reusable glue spray, asbestos whip, voice-operated anti-grav device, edible smoke grenade...

A laser-proof tape recorder. One use aerosol spray glue can. Fire-proof whip. Voice control gravity sled. Bog standard (as far as PB is concerned) smoke grenade. Right. Good. I have no idea what we'll do with this stuff but it could come in useful.

Deploy: PB enters the area and get vaporized. Clone #5 is uncorked, prepped, sent out, and...

Now, if this is OUTSIDE then we're deploying via the carbonite clone cannon. The clone & gear are sealed in carbonite (yes like Star Wars) and shot out a giant cannon to the target area where they unfreeze. At least that's how it was sold, it turns out Star Wars style carbonite is expensive. So what really happens is they shoot the poor clone up with cold-sleep hibernation drugs before they even decant them, encase them in regular ice, spray graphite all over it (carbon + hibernation = good enough for Alpha Complex), and shoot the poor sucker out the giant cannon (that bit is right because everone agrees about giant cannons being awesome fun). Anyways, the ice lands, breaks or melts, PB gets vaporized again while standing up and trying to look around. Repeat until out of cones. Mission failure.

If it's inside and just the Computer or a pre-war killer robot or something staking out an area we have a chance. PB hangs out in a service corridor near, but not too near, the explody zone. Eventually another citizen gets zapped and we can see it came from somewhere up above. Hmm.... ok, we spray glue PB to the bottom of the grav-sled (no rolls because it's funny), pop the smoke grenade, rush out, ascend as fast as possible up to the ceiling (roll to avoid crashing into the ceiling and going to clone #6) where we see the thingy... I'm going to say it doesn't recognize a person glued to the bottom of a flying sled, that's probably a bit outside it's programming... whip-pull ourselves over to it, and run out of ideas.

Well, given enough time PB can eat it. We could try jamming the tape recorder into and gun-like opening or taping up anything that looks loke a sensor. We don't want to just blast it because that's destroying the Computer's property. If it's the Computer zapping people in the area... there must be a filter to??? Colored filter on the optics to change colors of stuff. People get randomly zapped based on hair/hat color. Ok, remove the filter... or try to change it... then we know what colors get shifted and we can use the area to our advantage. If it's a war-bot we try to talk it down or hack it. PB has an actually decent chance at that, except we really want to suborn it into PURGE or send it on a totsl rampage. Maybe PB can switch it from shooting people to shooting computers & terminals, then give it a ride down on the raft (needs a roll and possibly another clone).

What if it's some bloody R&D experimental weapon? That sounds pretty likely. Maybe a "quantum flux polarity inversion mutant neutralizer" based on facial recognition and patched into the security cameras? Hmm... Ok, totally hacking time to change the facial recognition. First hack in to change the recognizer training model to computer terminals. Then cause a memory overflow to fry the current program. They reload the recognizer program and re-run the model. Then every computer, terminal, and maybe even some robots in the area get zapped.

Debriefing: If it was an outdoors mission there isn't one because PB ran out of clones. If indoors then maybe there was some success. Well, qualified success. Ok, ok, so PB tried to blow everything up again. Deflect blame! Deflect blame! And go up in secret society rank if we caused sufficent mayhem and sabotage.

Summary: TB gets rich & famous for finding/recovering Ancient tech without ever even facing it because spacesuits have opaque/mirrored helmets, quarantine porcedures say no sharing an environment, and we have no reason to go to the planet when there's mega-mega-bucks hanging out in orbit to be picked up. PB either gets repeatedly vaporized by a laser death sat because it's outdoors, or maybe causes massive mayhem and destruction while losing a clone or two if it's actually something inside Alpha Complex.

[meschlum]

Just noticed this, seems entertaining, let's see what...

Raksha interrupt!

Right then, thematic obligations are a go. Much like a D&D wizard, only worse, the Fair Folk can be furnished with the Toolbox of the Gods, which can do more or less anything (even break the rules of Exalted, but that's nothing special) - so it's more a matter of designing a character that will be thematic, and accepting the ensuing constraints on performance.

I am not going to create character sheets, but let's see what we can do without excessive cheese, in different systems (one a lot lower tier than the other).

Spoiler: Fair Folk - the Butterfly Sage

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The Sage thinks mortal drama is the most fun since daytime TV (despite having no idea what TV is), and therefore is a Cup / Staff noble. With artifacts, of course - almost none of them meant to change the local nation into the latest show she's seen. Briefly put, she has, as a starting character:

- Social Skills: YES (probably not going to abuse the ability to charm the gods into visiting to help her out)
- Combat: is a butterfly, so not especially good at killing things, exceptional at not being killed by things
- Knowledge: definitely, if a slight tendency to write her own fanfic versions of the local lore (and have them accepted)
- Wealth: all of it, not really aware of the fact.
- Magic: some tricks, extremely flexible if not overly potent. With some effort and supplies, can remake her artifacts with some effort (same power level, different powers)
- Artifacts: pocket universe, all the minions, a body double or two (lacks wealth and magic, much better at hurting things), a few different ways to win combat, emergency palace because why not, some defensive tricks, and still need to define another 2/3 of them. Put a significant investment in a 4 or 5-dot Oneiromancy, currently set to "everyone in the country now has the susceptibility to damage and common sense of a Saturday Morning Cartoon character, except with butterfly themes", because sometimes the entertainment is slow to appear and has to be created by hand. Still have 4-5 undefined minor artifacts at this point, which is suitably terrifying.

That's a starting level character, more or less. Level 9 equivalent is... more.

Spoiler: Reve - Wandering Dreamer

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The Dreamer has been traveling through the dragon's dreams for quite some time, and actually managed to get close to his archetype in some areas. He is a high-dreamer, and has picked up quite a few spells, including some investment in Narcos and even a few notions of Thanatos. Since he's aware that he is a dream, death isn't much of a concern.

- Social Skills: Medium+, he's been around and met quite a few strange beings, and managed not to fight them all
- Combat: Medium+, Reve is normal human scale and even with training and enchanted armor / weapons, fights are dangerous
- Knowledge: Variable. Very used to being in a new world where the local culture is alien, but also very well grounded in how dreams (and magic) work. Fairly proficient at most skills, from having to use them at some time or other.
- Wealth: Not really. Some past trophies, some not yet enchanted gems, no local currency.
- Magic: a solid repertoire of spells with predefined effects, relatively slow casting. A few really odd effects (including summons), but range is limited. Some options for dream abuse.
- Artifacts: enchanted equipment, healing potions, maybe a few 'spell trigger' items for the spells he knows.

Yes, the Dreamer can only dream of being the Butterfly, but that's per expectations.

Spoiler: Scenario 0: Fortifications

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We'll assume the Butterfly does not want to fetch an infinite number of chairs with which to build a barricade, because that's boring. She has ample time to actually create a small fort, with butterfly decorations of course, but again that would be tedious. Instead, she'll convince the locals to stay around until the invading army is close, then (temporarily) turn the river into a wall of lava butterflies. These are actually harmless to touch, but are a great way to start negotiations with the newcomers. Even without the flying lava things, they'll want to agree with her.


The Dreamer confers with locals to find out what time it is, and how long days last. A little math and spellcasting later, and there are 10' wide pillars of stone falling down the heavens to build walls as needed. When the invading army comes, the bridge can be removed, a few guards summoned, or static fireballs emplaced. It's a much easier fight than it could have been, mostly thanks to having prep time.

Spoiler: Scenario 1: Needles

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Knowing there is a Lich involved, the Butterfly can put on a mask of undeath too, in order to properly socialize the creature. The peasant wants to tell her everything about everything he knows, probably without even needing to rewrite his Motivation or other parts of his character sheet. We could remake one of our body doubles into a perfect hunter and find the needle that way, but the Butterfly isn't too dedicated to the Way (pocket world aside). Since it's humanly possible to find the needle, we could also reshape an Oneiromancy to give use Imposition of Law and find it, but that's a known hack. Instead, we have a Behemoth become part of the landscape, and use its senses to find the needle.

Negotiating with the lich is going to succeed (the Butterfly could offer space in her pocket world if necessary), but the wightocalypse is more of a problem. She can't actually be hurt, and can wipe out any groups she finds fairly easily, but it would take somewhat more work to actually prevent. Which makes it a challenge! Trigger the Oneiromancy of "Everyone is now a Shonen Butterfly character" to buy time, then design a more durable solution if it looks interesting.


The Dreamer has a much harder time, and probably needs to call on a summons to find the needle - which it does, at a very embarrassing and annoying price, as is its rule. Negotiations with the lich are liable to break down, possibly involving nightmare spirits trying to devour it, and the needle itself is either easily transmuted into air, or very hard to destroy. The Dreamer also has no solution to the wightocalypse, besides the comfort of knowing that once he dies he'll wake up elsewhere, and probably safer.

Spoiler: Scenario 2: itty bitty models

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The Butterfly has a Charm for that, one that literally creates a First Age (hypertech) vessel, with options for adding flight and land movement on top. Making it permanently might take a while, because the Butterfly is a good sport and is not engaging in needless time travel, but a temporary version is feasible. Of course, depending on the same Charm(s) over and over is tiresome, and the Butterfly can reliably convince the judges to buy a cardboard box for the price of the kingdom's treasury, so we'll try to do something more fun.

Learning that the actual ship is (almost) available, the Butterfly can travel to it at a fairly decent clip. Probably not supersonic, because we didn't build that way, but we literally have a Charm to create a flying fortress - on the back of a giant butterfly, of course. Flutter over to where the ship is, toss it into our pocket dimension, return. Probably include a pause to negotiate with the captain, potentially dropping them on top of a few raiders on the way. If the design looks interesting enough, shanghai the shipwright to build our own fleet of butterfly ships, which we'll store somewhere outside reality and probably forget about.


The Dreamer is not an exceptional sailor, or artist, and is definitely not going to summon up help when it's just money on the line. There is a small chance he might be inspired to discover a 'reverse burning' spell, but that's pushing plausibility. Dream rifts might get him to the ship (and get the ship back), but since they're not controllable it seems a terrible idea. Hypnos based scrying might let the judges view the ship in action, but that's pushing things. Likely fail, but with a lot of entertaining off the wall attempts on the way.

Spoiler: Scenario 3: nation building

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The Dreamer knows other Raksha who are perfectly built for the role, but they're not her. Not a problem! All of her stuff is linked to her Heart, so either she has it and can get started on remaking her "Cartoon Time" Oneiromancy, or she does not and that tier of power is a long ways off. Let's assume the worst, since it's more fun that way (note to self: build a dwarf fortress). By virtue of being the ruler, the Butterfly can quickly empower a few locals, and use that process to start creating minor artifacts. We don't have ways to affect the entire country (unless we want to destroy it), so we'll go with the flow. A bauble to make everyone close to it immune to heat will ensure the population survives, and those can be made fairly easily. There's still the necessity of distributing them and other logistics, but the Butterfly and her minions are the only ones who can keep them running, so we're fairly set.

Wealth is a joke, and the Butterfly creates a solid gold palace one week when she's feeling bored. More practically, we want to be self sustaining, and might have invading armies to deal with. The fun thing about both issues is that the Butterfly can talk at them, but having everyone worship you is (probably) not sustainable? So we call on our considerable lore to figure out if the warming effect is something we can use, discover it's more or less equivalent to an uncapped demesne, cackle maniacally and create a freehold on top - a pocket of reality we control absolutely. Then we start up some ruby mines, welcome all our people in the freehold, and thrive. If that does not work, we just reshuffle society into worshiping us anyway, and do the tedious job of creating defensive Oneiromancies to protect us, as well as creating resources. Or produce a lake every week or so and drop it wherever. Winnable, but may be tiresome.


The Dreamer operates on a much smaller scale, but can absolutely produce massive quantities of water out of thin air. Oneiros is fun that way. Turning other people into high dreamers is slow and not especially good for their sanity, so he's probably going to want to go the Narcos route and produce water creating artifacts. The main issues are therefore invading armies and getting enough gemstones for enchanting. Trade with the northern kingdom, and look at what else might be produced.

Since the Dreamer is going this deeply into Hypnos, we might as well generate cheap wood and metal. It's not high quality, but there is as much of it as we want, which probably helps for trade. He's not going to be especially effective against an army, but we are in the middle of a desert with the only water supply... so invading isn't looking good. And a mountain range is the dragon's gift to landslides, so invading armies will have a hard time. Color wards are also a way to boost defenses at the skirmish / siege level.

Overall, tentative success.

Other scenarios later. Current verdict: the Butterfly is as broken as can be, and not trying too hard. The Dreamer is surprisingly good at large scale infrastructure, but suffers from a relatively narrow spell pool - even if the spells are quite versatile.

[Telok]

Ok, the Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e characters.

Conversion

Spoiler

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I had to go back to the original versions of the books to find the prismatic ray spell, and then remembered why I dropped it in my homebrew. It's pretty pathetic. Medium range attack roll single target direct damage for 1d10 rolled dice and 1d10 kept dice. There's about a 37%ish chance it does damage like the common ordinary pistols, and only a 30% chance it's as good or better as a low quality meltagun (about as expensive as a generic 4-door sedan new car). Also a 22% chance it can't even kill a zero level commoner. Compared to fireball at the same level which has a 10 meter blast radius, starts at that meltagun damage level, and can only get better. Prismatic can't kill a 10 hp character in one shot (assuming all shots hit & characters don't heal) average 3-4 hits to KO DB at 5k5 & 6 for GWB). Playtesting was not really a thing for this game. The closest thing to the ideal of d&d's prismatic spray is the 5th rank reality maelstrom... well my verson of it anyways, it needed a serious buff. So that's what I'll be using as an effect.

My other choice is to build it as an immobile spaceship using an appropriately ranged starship weapon. But while the light orgone cannon shoots blasts of warp-lightning to the correct range it's accuracy is "aim at a city block and miss by 1k2 +1k0 per degree of targeting failure kilometers" because it's shooting from high orbit, and then it leaves a 150 meter diameter crater of "vaporized" plus 9k9 "no armor & no shields" damage for 300 meters around that (falloff by half every 300 additional meters).

I could build this as a magitech living vehicle with an A.I., that would be perfect except for the weapon.... actually since there's no price limit that'll be great. I'll just charge a premium for spellcasting as a quadruple $ cost skill. Stat's incoming...

Spoiler

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Size:26, Cost:935, Price:Beyond Price
HP:20, Resilience:26, Length:~27m
Static Defense: ZERO
Maneuver:-10, Acceleration:1, Speed:1, Speed:6m/momentum, 2.16 kph/momentum
Drive: VTOL (x6) May hover and turn in place; begins Falling if it takes 2 or more damage or if it goes Out of Control.
Ramming: TN:7+mom, Damage:10k(mom+8) +7

Environmental Seals, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: Keeps air in and nasty stuff out.

Super Solenoid Engine 1, Size: 0, Cost: 15, Effect: Activate for +1 to speed, maneuver, accel, roll warp at +10.

Flaws: Controls Feedback & Fragile & Hanger Queen & Inefficient Controls & Junker & Overheats & Unstable, Cost: -70, Effect: When damaged the vehicle may inflict fatigue on the pilots & Vehicle HP reduced by 25% & Requires extra repair and reload time & Requires an extra action to maintain control & Roll two crits instead of one & Takes damage at momentum 6+ & Double the maneuver penalty for momentum.

Void Shield 10, Size: 2, Cost: 30. Attackers need hand-to-hand, a weapon with armor penetration 10+, or their own void shield, otherwise invulnerable.

Orgone Antenna: +2k2 Orgone Antenna, Size: 3, Cost: 80, Effect: Pilots can cast spells through at +2k2.

Sensors: Advanced Sensors, Size: 1, Cost: 50, Effect: +10 perception tests and 20km automatic vehicle detection range.

Living Vehicle, Size: 1, Cost: 20, Effect: It's ALIVE! & heals 1 hit point per 24 hours.

AI Systems (base AI does simple Maintain Control driving @ piloting skill 1), Size: 1, Cost: 20.

AI Coprocessor: Size: 0, Cost: 15, Effect: Each AI has a 2 Wisdom & 2 Willpower & 2 Charisma & 1 Fellowship & 1 Composure & 1 Intelligence.

AI TAPS (skills), Size: 11, Cost: 560, Effect: , 4 skills @ 3 dots [DIVINATION MAGIC 3], 2 skills @ 4 dots [arcana & perception], 8 skills @ 5 dots [CONJURATION & EVOCATION MAGICS].

AI RAM: RAM-5, Size: 2, Cost: 40, Effect: Each AI has 5 half actions each scene.

Weapons: (PLACEHOLDER FOR ADDITIONAL MAGIC GEAR, NOT USED) 1x Arrow-4 Cluster Missile, 10k5+20 X p10 s\- 500m Blast(30) No-Short-Range, Size:5, Cost:60.

It casts a scrying spell on the planet to see an area of the surface. Makes a 6k2+10 perception check (more than what was asked for avg.~28 & 80% at 25+). If it IDs someone (that's why the 1 Int) it casts Gate to open a tiny portal then turns on it's magic engine and throws Reality Maelstrom through it at the target. The effect is: 1 roll for Warp crap at +10 that affects the vehicle and may AoE spillover to the target area, 1 roll for Warp crap at +0 that affects everyone in 30 meters of the target, and the target + everyone in 30 meters makes their own Warp crap roll at... based on the spell casting roll... 24% +5, 1% +10, so 75% +0. Call it a +0 for easy checking.

Warpy crap

Spoiler

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The +0s: 87% relatively safe sfx, 7% gain insanity, 3% take damage, 0.5% tech scorn (screw tech AoE plus damage cyborgs), 6% trigger enemy/hunted type flaws, 1% stunned, 0.5% roll on the mental trauma table, 0.2% mutation check, 0.5% reverse gravity & falling damage.
The +10: lets use the old tables for easier AoE checking. Safe sfx results 52%, area effects are 6% damage, 1.5% lose all hero points for session, 1.5% no magic use for 1d5 hours, 5% fear checks, 6% hard willpower tests vs insanity gain, 1.5% stun, 6% tech scorn. And the sat has a 3.5% of shutting itself down for 1d5 hours. Hmm. What if we up that SS engine to a L3, adds about 4 or 6 meters length and... barely any change... try new tables... tech scorn 2%, enemy/hunted 6%, 1% summon daemons in the area, 0.2% AoE everyone save vs daemonic possession. Better, can't tell about the aoe vs single target damage, insanity, and fear effects though (maybe estimate at 2x the +0 results?).

Diplomat Bob: We arrive at a planet, in a previously undiscovered sphere, with mysterious ancient forerunner artifacts in orbit. Hilarity ensues.

Spoiler

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For the sake of argument we'll assume that on the way in we foolishly don't stop and scan the begeezus out of the ultra valuable artifacts then pack them into the cargo hold for future research & sale. DB gets zapped pretty much assuredly non-lethally but with lots of annoying special effects (.87 x .87 x .44 = .333) a 1/3 that there's nothing but safe stuff like weird moaning winds, statues weeping blood, vermin infestations, and liquids turning into chocolate syrup or shampoo.

Then it's comm the ship for scans, another hit or two to ID the satellites as the origin, go inside a building/vehicle, and have the ship pick them up or potshot them. Probably pick them up for the techs to study. DB might get a couple insanity points or random wounds... Actually, tech scorn would take out the communicators and some of the fear effects have high target numbers. So there's a minor chance that it takes a couple hours... Oh, wait. This'll fire off practically as soon as we set foot outside the landing shuttle and it stops if we hop back in and button up. Neh, a couple hours hiding in the shuttle to fix stuff so we can comm the ship is the worst case scenario. Yeah, we have a teleportarium and if we used that, since nothing is affecting the ship, they're back up within a minute or two even if tech scorn cuts out communications.

Edit: for fun I checked the warp roller at
http://dtd.wikidot.com/tools:warp-roller
and pulled up a run of effects on the main character and five other people being within 30 meters of them.

Spoiler

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DB: Psychic Mirror: The sorcerer’s power is turned back on him. Resolve the power’s effects as normal, but the power targets the sorcerer instead. If the power is beneficial, it instead deals 21 Energy Damage to the sorcerer and the beneficial effect is canceled. Armour is ignored by the damage but Aura works. == 4 wounds

P1: Grave Chill - The area for 8 meters becomes cold and frost covered

P2: inherent phobias, suspicions, and hatreds surge to the surface of his mind in a wave of negative emotion. Test Willpower v 15 to avoid 1 Insanity.

P3: The stench of foulness and decay makes eyes water, renders olfactory senses useless, and causes severe nausea. Take -1k0 dice to everything (-2k1 for a sharp nose) for 1 turns.

P4: The Furies - assaulted by an invisible force, causing himself and nearby objects to be thrown around viciously. The sorcerer and nearby objects test Size v 15 or be thrown 10 meters horizontally in a random direction.

30 meter radius area: Gravity reverses for a fraction of a second, lifting objects a meter or two into the air and dropping them. Only those of exceptional agility avoid being knocked prone. Everyone within 17 meters tests dexterity v 20 or takes 8 falling damage and falls prone. == 1 wound if the dex check fails and guess it's a 47 meter radius effect

From the +30 engine: Warp Ghosts - Howling ethereal apparitions fill an area within 21 meters, flying around unnerving the living. Living creatures test Composure v 20 or gain 5 Insanity == 3k3 has 50% to get 17, use a hero point to lower to 15 and just accept the minions fail (no negatives unless they lose 5 more sanity this scene)

Edit: same thing using the classic tables from the books

Spoiler

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DB: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps. He winks out of existence and reappears in 6 rounds and suffers 2 Insanity Points.

P1: Destruction: sucked screaming into the Warp, never to be seen again. He is no more. (A 1/400 chance)

P2: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps. He winks out of existence and reappears in 4 rounds and suffers 5 Insanity Points.

P3: Reality Quake: Reality buckles and an area radiating out 23 meters from him is sundered: everything rots, burns, and freezes, and everything in the area takes 17 Rending damage. == 3 wounds to resilience 5 people, not enough to damage a landing shuttle but the seat cushions may be a little shredded

P4: Warp Burn: A violent burst of energy from the warp smashes sending him reeling. He loses 5 Hit Points and is stunned for 3 rounds. == between this and P3 this guy probably dies or gets crit damage, depending on how you want to track it

30 meter area: Psy Discharge: Static electricity fills the air for 25 meters causing hair to stand on end and unprotected electronics to short out. == guess its a 55 meter effect

The +30 engine: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the sorcerer. He winks out of existence and reappears in 9 rounds and suffers 2 Insanity Points. == the satellite vanishes for 90 to 135 seconds

[Quertus]

So this example actually came from a campaign of mine, where there was this death satellite regulating the rate of character advancement (basically looking for the equivalent from its designers' point of view of 'tumors' that gained power too quickly for the world as a whole to remain stable). One of the party members got a drug that let them immediately gain like 10 levels worth of LA in racial templates and stuff, then literally proceeded to send a threatening message to the death satellite along the lines of 'hah, what are you gonna do about this, I'm way too powerful for you now!' (and to be fair, with his free LA he was able to cobble together immunity to the damage types that the death satellite was able to deploy, but it wasn't so fun for the merchants when he went shopping from then on...)

Obviously will be out of character for most people's entries, but just to give an example of how this can come about...

Ah. Well, so long as what we’re doing in this challenge has almost no similarity to the original “module” anyway, how about…

Spoiler: Excalibur

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”Whosoever pulleth the McGuffin from this stone shall wield the reality-warping power to defeat the Daemon Lord. But beware the wrath of the sky gods, whose agents sealed the McGuffin away in ages past, and who will smite those who attempt to wield it.”

Or so the legend (about the techno magical death satellites) goes.

There. That sounds like a simple campaign premise most anyone can sink their teeth into, much more so than “rainbows fall, everyone dies”. As I don’t even want to try to guess how most of them would be conned into intentionally interacting with “it’s not a tumor”.

So, under this alternate premise… which sounds more like it could have been a central part of the campaign leading up to these events…

Spoiler: 2e Cleric of D&D Arma

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Arma would conduct her research into the nature of reality, and be very confused that there is no established “sky gods” Religion. Nor do the supposed sky gods respond to her prayers (which, as a Cleric of a different faith, isn’t but so surprising). So she’d continue her research while praying for guidance. Eventually, with just a little divine guidance (hooray divination spells) she’d have a plan.

Since the sky gods have no established faith, she’d start their Religion for them. That Cloak of Charisma seems the right tool for the job, and the ubiquitous purchase throughout these challenges. Arma would build up enough of a following of the faithful in some remote town that, eventually, the satellites would ascend to godhood, and start granting spells to their clerics. The birth of new gods! What a fantastic historic event! Years of work, building the religion and the faithful, improving and expanding the town, adding public works like sewers and a wall to house a more spacious town layout, open to the sky. What a celebration! Drinking and dancing late into the night! And Arma would be the smiling face of the party, hailed as the Mother of Dragons gods!

Then, once everyone had passed out, she’d unleash her undead army upon the town, killing everyone.

This sudden loss of followers should put the sky gods to sleep, thereby negating the threat from the attack satellites.

Arma would wield the McGuffin with impunity, and use it’s reality-warping power to defeat the Daemon Lord…

Thereby erasing this entire bubble of reality, Daemon Lord and all. Ah, the self-fulfilling prophecies. At least Arma ended up with a relic to study, to try to understand the world-ending effect.

Alternately, this could serve as the backstory, the “this is what caused the world to break” for the alt history of Arma.

Either way, legends in the distant future likely talk about her wearing parts of her own dead child, as a constant reminder to keep ever burning the flames of her wrath against the vile undead who slew it in its crib, once she developed the True Dwoemer to convert the sleeping god satellites into an exoskeleton.

Spoiler: 3e Wizzard Whizzy

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Yeah, I knew my head wasn’t in the game last time. So Whizzy will pay someone to do some divisions, then get a Ring of Invisibility and a Spellblade, with which to troll the world as the Chosen One.

In other words, not much changes, although he probably has to go the Leadership -> Artificer route, and even then add Legendary Artisan and “only works for…” limitations to find this truly affordable. Especially if his familiar and cohort need to be equipped, too.

Spoiler: Paradox Telepathic Vampire

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Yeah, um… as soon as he tried to contact the “sky gods” about this, he’d realize their nature, and take control of the satellites.

Forget the reality-warping McGuffin, he’d ((have his companion) move the satellites and) start blasting targets of opportunity. Or just save this as an ace up his sleeve.

Spoiler: Paradox Cutter Fyord

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Huh. This legend doesn’t actually give Cutter enough to go on to actually understand the threat, or its actual source. And while his magic can, in theory, do anything, there’s a definite style of solution he usually aims for.

So he’d… slowly rain bouncy balls on his own head in imitation of Chinese water torture while mumbling “death from above”, hopefully failing to kill himself or drive himself insane while he built up the mana to create mana stones. Many days later (and probably after literally having his head examined), he’d ridiculously overkill the mana requirements, and yell “Create Reassembling Skeleton!”. He’d immediately regret his life choices, as he’d find it quite creepy. And probably need to have his head examined again.

So, some other day, he’d give himself numerous Sights, and order the skeleton to draw forth the McGuffin, while he watched from a safe distance.

Enough times yelling “Reassemble!”, and I guess he’d eventually wonder about the odd angle of the sky beam (unless it was placed in geosynchronous orbit over the McMuffin resting place (which would make sense)), but definitely understand the nature and frequency of the attack.

So maybe he’d summon a telescope, and eventually repeat his previous solution of “Create Stasis Chamber!" and "Teleport Death Satellite to Stasis Chamber!" But more likely, he’d sweep the bones and McGuffin into a bag, and create a relic or seven to absorb the attack (and maybe a Hat of Disguise, so he doesn’t have to look at the creepy undead) before reassembling the skeleton.

Spoiler: John Faseman of Marvel

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Ugh. Guild Master John Faseman wouldn’t want to go against the sky gods if he could help it.

But if push came to shove, he could… build a robot. An armored, regenerating robot. With emphasis on the “regenerating”.

And that would be fine, until it got sent to another plane.

While John would learn Gate to bring it back, it would be cheaper for him to build an updated replacement than to upgrade the existing robot (as upgrades cost Karma).

Just giving the new robot an upgraded version of John’s own Magic Absorption power (that I forgot he had the first time around, so he should have done even better) should suffice to keep it (and maybe even the surrounding area) safe from the wrath of the “sky gods”.

And, as with Cutter, if the shots didn’t rain down from directly overhead, I think that eventually John would catch on to the true nature of the sky gods.

But most of all, I’m just sad I couldn’t find an excuse for John to Disintegrate the stone in order to draw the McGuffin.

Spoiler: Shadowrun Troll Wizard

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This… sounds like Spirits, I guess. And without a proper Shaman to summon a powerful Sky Spirit to act as intermediary with the sky gods, the Troll really wouldn’t know how to move forward. Probably some custom Divination spells, that would ultimately be useless, due to misunderstanding the nature of the problem.

But ultimately the Troll is pretty much always invisible, so... if forced to draw the McGuffin “unprepared”, there’d still be approximately zero consequences - and the Troll can probably soak and learn from the 1st attack, if it ever happens.

Spoiler: M&M - Alex Daeus

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This alternate scenario is definitely a good excuse to pay other people to investigate the problem.

Once they understand and explain the situation to Alex, it’s definitely time to build a base (or vehicle) to deal with the satellites.

Spoiler: M&M - Omni-Wizard

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Other then getting laughed at by some summoned spirits for the silly human stories, this probably process much the same, with summoning some Space Whales or Invisibility + Telescopic Sight + LoS Telekinesis (Psychokinesis) to solve the problem.

Spoiler: Warhammer - Mr. T

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My Warhammer characters never know anything, so… investigating an unknown Trinity sounds like a good excuse to summon some daemons. At a guess, summoning 10 (1 are a time!) should give Mr. T 5 daemons who submit to his will, which should be enough to make most rolls. And 5 to tear apart for energy.

Still, they probably wouldn’t know what Mr. T was talking about, and wouldn’t find anything matching that description while investigating the nearby Warp. So probably some more - and more dangerous (or at least craftier) - daemons later, and eventually one might ask, “you mean those orbiting Death satellites?”, leading to Mr. T facepalming, and cussing out stupid backwater planets and their ignorant myths.

Once he knows what he’s dealing with, it’s the same “hire a captain”, “develop a spell/power”, “summon a Daemon”, or… since they’re not targeting him yet… getting a ride up into space, leaping out, and reprogramming the things.

In the grimdark of encountering Mr. T, "something that always attacks Mr. T" is still just one more thing that might kill you.

Spoiler: MtG Elven Chronomancer

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Well, if we’re using the legend of King Arthur, then we’re probably talking about a trio of legendary artifacts that require you to control a creature of type “King” or “Lord” or something. But I expect that the original Goblin King or original Lord of Atlantis with those types printed on the card cost too much for our poor Elven Chronomancer. So instead we need some “every creature type” Changelings, like Taurean Mauler.

All in all, it’s probably a terrible win condition, requiring controlling the King to control all 3 satellites to control the sword to win the game or something. Bleh.

Spoiler: New cards

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2 - Prismatic Attack Satellite - artifact. T: as one mana of any color to your mana pool. T: add 50 to your mana pool; you may not spend this mana. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you do not control a King or a Lord, Prismatic Attack Satellite deals 5 damage to you or a permanent you control chosen at random.

2 - Daemon Lord Slaying Sword - artifact equipment. Equip 2. Equipped creature ignores Protection (creatures your opponents control lose protection from X and gain “protection from X except equipped creature”). If you have 100 mana in your mana pool when Daemon Lord Slaying Sword comes into play, you win the game.

Spoiler: Star Trek - LtC Vir

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This ultimately plays out much the same as before, just with a long prequel of LtC Staltek Vir trying to avoid breaking the Prime Directive or angering the “sky gods” (which sound suspiciously like an advanced alien race).

Once push comes to solve, he dodges the death beams until somebody gets a lock on the satellite with the Transporter. Then it’s the same dematerialize it without rematerializing it, use the pattern to analyze it, create a prototype to experiment on in the Holodeck, and use the Replicator to start pumping them out.

Note that LtC Vir has access to long-range teleporter tech, thanks to stealing them on a covert op, so range isn’t an issue here.

Spoiler: WoD Alex Knight

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I think that between Bring up the Map looking at the code for triggers, Asked could still figure this out, and simply Mod the Game to import literally anyone with a(n armed) spaceship, and the problem's solved.

Spoiler: WoD Harry tHH

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Well, a reality-altering McGuffin sounds like a Relic to me.

Harry would probably just study the relic as a coincidence for learning whatever spheres are required to just create the effect himself.

If he ever happened to get the right spheres (Time, mostly), or saw someone else be blasted by the satellites, it’s the same solution of invisible telekinetic dropping satellites out of the sky.

[meschlum]

So before we continue, the Butterfly should really go to the trouble of defining a few more of her toys. Well, she's Cup aspected, so let's just say she invested her time into gaining one of the ultimate martial arts moves, more for the amusement factor than anything else. That simply means there are a few undefined artifacts lurking in the background... Fine.

5 dots: "Cartoon Time", affects a full country, turning people into somewhat reckless and utterly indestructible butterfly people.
1 dot: Even more social skills I didn't want to bother with. Also, butterfly wings.
1 dot: Massive healing, accumulate motes without harming people
1 dot: Body double, better at looking like the Butterfly than the Butterfly is, flight and random combat prowess in case it's needed
1 dot: pocket world, only a few hundred square miles because I don't want to invest in more (loaded with minions and random useful stuff)
1 dot: unleash a wave of butterflies on the local city. They look cute, and are probably (and blatantly) aware of everything going on. Despite the rumors, they do not munch on people. Much. Unless they're asking for it. Or have candy.
1 dot: the butterfly scarf, which shifts the RNG for hitting the Butterfly to "haha. No." (might need another dot)
1 dot: Assumption Adjuration, so the Butterfly can opt to cease existing if she wants to at some point in the distant future (or in her pocket world). Also makes her even better at reality shaping, because obviously.
1 dot: Secret agent butterfly, capable of infiltrating any hiding spot by merging with the soul of a bystander. Carries an unlimited supply of licorice sticks. Flies, of course.
1 dot: the Dance-a-ton. A disco ball that makes everyone in range want to dance (and be unable to leave the dance hall), as well as more suggestible. Because why not win social conflicts with a dance-off?

Plus a more or less unlimited supply of mundane stuff, including a single palace (acquired just to see if it were possible), stored in the pocket world or the Butterfly's personal storage space. And a plethora of mildly magical things, like tools better than anything ever made, harmless lava rivers, swords that never miss, sleeping apples, a magical nuke that goes off when summoned and is summoned at extremely short range, and so on and so forth. Plus armor that can tank most attacks (a very nice sundress, if you must ask) and other basics.

Spoiler: Scenario 4: Dreams

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"Cousin! I didn't know you were there, but thanks for the welcome!" You mean there are people who do not warp reality and rewrite its history on a whim? What a strange place this is, but the Butterfly will play along. Rewrite the local authorities so the Butterfly has all the ranks and contacts she needs to learn whatever it required (she was even invited to do so, so it's only polite to accept).

What we have here is obviously a nice little piece of work with Fall of Night Shadows the Truth, possibly combined with a potent Behemoth Forging Meditation if those disappearing are being remade rather than banished. It's hitting the city as a whole, and is presumably resistant to counterspells, so it's on par with Cartoon Time. Different choices at character creation!

Investigation is a Cup skill, and the Butterfly has some massive advantages at it, so finding Kamar is not that difficult. She'll sporadically test the stability of reality - if she can actively Shape, she can make the narrative even more interesting! But then, if she can, then the area is probably doomed to be consumed by the Wyld soon anyway, so we'll assume not (also, being able to fix everything just because is boorish). Breaking his coin flipping pattern is the obvious next step, and social YES would make that easy if we weren't inside a story. So she'll set up something exciting where Kamar has to flip to decide - and use a butterfly to make the coin land on the side.

From there, it's just a matter of unraveling the mystery, probably confiscating the coin if it's not a fellow Raksha's (an Oneiromancy that powerful is worth holding on to and reshaping at need). Lost mortals can be brought back via pocket world, though the Butterfly isn't sure why they'd want to go back to being denizens of reality. Restoring them is possible, but if her healing artifact does not do the job, she'll probably flit away before taking care of all the patients.

In all, she's looking forward to having a chat with the god of luck, and discussing their next game! She might even point out that it's good manners to put all the game pieces back after playing with them, and offer to help.


The Dreamer is going to start out assuming it's Thanatos, because it usually is. Archetypal training at investigation and exposure to dream stuff mean he'll pick up a few hints, enough to conclude it's some kind of possession (Thanatos!) combined with dream rifts - waking up in a slightly different reality (in which he didn't die recently) is a perfectly normal experience for him, but seeing it happen in real time is a definite indicator of Thanatos. Yes, he's a bit obsessed (rightly so, given the evidence).

From there, it's a matter of finding the previous Age artifact some idiot is using, and he's likely to manage to do so, relying on the investigator for support as needed. From the mindset that a magic item is responsible for the mess, stopping its spread is easy - confiscate the coin, look into burying it as deep as possible (breaking magic is to be avoided). Recovering the lost would either happen naturally, from the Dreamer's perspective or, if that fails to happen, he'd look for nearby dream rifts to explore - possibly even creating one if pressed. The persistent forgetting after they are back is evidence that more work is needed if they want to stay, but he's not overly well equipped to do so. It's likely possible, given the style of magic he uses, but it's outside his usual repertoire.

So he comes from an excellent mind set to find the source of the problem and stop it, but may not be able to restore the people who have already been lost (or understand why they should be).

Spoiler: Scenario 5: Zap!

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"Sempai Noticed Me!"

The Dreamer must be doing something right! It's only the most potent of the Raksha who are blasted by the Sun whenever they set foot in Creation, so she's on the right track. Oh, right. Repair the body double, send out expendable minions looking like her to assess the damage and criteria involved.

Have a big cry or celebrate, depending on whether poor copies of her get blasted (so it's not personal and probably an administrative mistake) or she gets targeted even when disguised (so it's for her). Ultimately feel rather depressed when she realizes that the level of destruction is nowhere near comparable to what the Sun should be doing if He were taking her seriously (see the magical nuke). Resolve to go to Heaven to make her disappointment known, and also because if they're not lobbing WMD at her, they should respect the butterflies.

Hop into the pocket world, skip it along the edge of reality a few hundred miles at a time, repeat. Interactions between magic and orbital velocity are uncertain, but artifacts are nigh indestructible anyway, so eh. At worst, reshape the butterfly swarm so it's smaller and invulnerable (and probably not flying anymore), to land on a satellite. Find out whether the satellites blast each other if my body double is on one of them.

Machine intelligences are fun! Grant it sapience and talk it into cooperating. If that's not working, reform the butterfly swarm and set it to Devour (also affects the insides). If that doesn't work, create a pocket of reality where metal and crystal are gaseous, deposit it on the satellite, repeat.


The Dreamer walks outside, gets blasted, wakes up and repeats. If he gets blasted again, he's been locked in a recurring dream and needs to find a solution. Otherwise, he's fine, if a bit irritated at being randomly relocated for no reason.

So he's locked in a recurring dream... there is no way he's going to build a tower high enough, though he'll catch on fairly quickly that he needs to look different (or not be under the open sky), and can sort of manage. Use Hypnos to summon help when nothing seems to work, get an annoying quest and probably no useful advice.

Create a dream rift, jump in. If he emerges in a different dream, he wins. Otherwise, realize that the blasts are monchromatic. Color Ward is a perfect counter, if static. Apply Color Wards, walk out into the open, cackle maniacally as the beams rain down harmlessly. The Dreamer is versed in astronomy, so he'll notice the satellites eventually (after building a temporary house out of stone or metal), but reaching them is not really feasible.

If a dream rift can get him to a satellite, he can turn the metal to air and core the thing, which solves the issue. Reentry is likely fatal, but if he's lucky he wakes up in a world where he only gets blasted 16 hours a day. If everything resets... he's been there, he can scry it and appear to be there, hopefully drawing fire from the other satellites?

The Butterfly is actively enjoying these last scenarios, while the Dreamer passes one easily and has a hard time / failure with the other. Still, surprisingly capable overall.

[Quertus]

"Sempai Noticed Me!"

That response was just epic. Those alternate takes on events are the best.

[meschlum]

Hmm... a few more characters who could technically qualify as highly competent, especially within their genres!

Spoiler: Tenra: Robocaller

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Surprisingly enough, is not trying to sell you cookware over the phone, possibly because if there is a single phone on the planet, it already owns it? The high point of Tenra technology, this war machine is not only very good at killing things, but can also summon custom spirits for when any mode besides 'puree' is called for! Having had time to level up, it's slightly less MAD than it could be, and might even be vaguely contemplating the possibility of having skills not meant for murder? It has likely formed a bond with suitably adorable fleshbag, if only to rid itself of its excess karma (adorableness is directly proportional to the amount of guns, swords, and gunswords being waved about).

Spoiler: Bloodlust: the Sharp Blade

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An entrant to the obscurity sweepstakes, the Sharp Blade is literally that - an indestructible, sentient god-rapier, from a game where you play magic weapons which need mortal bearers to move them around (and experience the world). Due to having stupidly (and randomly) incarnated as a rapier, the Blade is not overly good at combat in system - it hits a lot, but tends to go 'ping' rather than 'splat'. So it has picked up the occasional random ability with non combat uses (besides being obsessed with making its wielder eat every possible foodstuff in existence) and, like every sensible indestructible sentient god-weapon, is utterly terrified of water.

With these two somewhat notable departures from the norm, let's see how the scenarios are treated, shall we?

Spoiler: Scenario 0: The Samurai

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The Robocaller probably qualifies as seven samurai on its own (despite not having the package), and can certainly summon short lived mobile explosives to back it up. Its summons might be able to help with construction, and robot muscles are notable. So the overall result is that the bridge's defenses are a bit better than they cold have been, and the invaders take a lot higher losses than they expected. Tentative win?

The Sharp Blade fails to see why the bridge should be defended. Ramps! Yes, those are absolutely critical. The human it's mostly possessing will insist that the bridge must satisfy safety requirements which would make OSHA swoon in envy, with a single goal: it must be absolutely impossible for someone on the bridge to fall off (or, worse, to drop their weapon off the edge). This will be done no matter how many dead peasants are required for the job. Then, when the army comes along, the Blade will dive into the melee (like any good indestructible sentient god-weapon, it grants its carrier a minor force shield to protect it from missile weapons and boring carriers), killing as many as it can. If the carrier gets killed, it takes over the next person to pick it up, and continued. Outcome: bloodbath. Probably a technical loss, because soldiers live more exciting lives than peasants so the Blade will prefer to end up in the army's hands.

Spoiler: Scenario 1: Messing with the dead

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The Robocaller is fairly certain the the lich has far too much karma, and needs to be contained by a proper soul mirror, not whatever nonsense this needle might be. Summon a swarm of scouting beasts and let them loose, run out of mana, repeat. Likely to find the needle via grid searches an minions that enthusiastically self-detonate, combined with robot speed to reach all the potential targets. Since for some reason the lich is unlikely to want to have its mind scraped utterly clear and its soul bound into the human -machine interface of a warmech (unless the lich watched too much Eva as a living being), the wightocalypse is probably going to happen on schedule in the medium to hard ranges. The Robocaller is immune to wights and very killy, but is a single tireless murder machine. Lose.


The Sharp Blade might slightly boost its carrier's senses? Maybe it could take over the peasant and apply pressure to him so he'll confess to what he did? The needle remains unfound, the wightocalypse has the Blade freaking out unless it can possess wights. Even if it can, undead have rotten senses (literally), so it ends up in indestructible sentient god-weapon hell. Not the deepest circle, but still hell. Lose.

Spoiler: Scenario 2: A nautical experience

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The Robocaller kills things and summons monsters to kill more things. These talents are obviously suited to the needs of the scenario, once it is explained that killing the judges who give the model a poor grade will not improve it. Under those terrible constraints, it has two options.

Option 1: remember it can summon creatures with All The Skills. Burn all the mana it can, and call forth a squiddly horror from Lovecraft's most tortured nightmares to rebuild the model. Possibly call a few more to provide middle grade raw materials, and score a marginal victory. The Robocaller uses software of sorts to summon its minions, so it probably gets a good grade from the second judge.

Option 2: realize it's a lost faster than a human, and go fishing for the original ship. Optionally unleash a swarm of death upon the vicinity (to capture the ship or wipe out the raiders, whichever notion occurs to it first), then try to drag the ship back on time. It is completely incapable of doing so, and therefore fails. Maybe a sufficiently over the top flying summons could contribute? Really depends on the build and on how much karma it has managed to clear from its soul. Given it has managed to improve despite the ease with which it can murder things, it might be possible? Remind people nearby to be nice to the Robocaller's pet human, or it will default to killing things until the problem is gone.


A ship? The Sharp Blade goes on a thieving spree, grabs all the loot it can (or its carrier does), and emigrates to the desert closest to the center of the continent, where it remains for a few decades, shivering in horror at the notion of having been that close to the ocean.

That aside, it has no crafting skills, no special resources, and no intention of getting anywhere near the coast. It could perhaps possess the boatwright and endow him with superhuman stamina, so he can work 24/7 to made a new model? Fail.

Spoiler: Scenario 3: Founding... non-gendered authority figure?

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Fun fact about Tenra robots: they are built around the unrepentant (and thoroughly mind scraped) souls of the greatest sinners to exist. Without a soul mirror to contain it, and incarnated in a living body, who knows whether the core personality (its sins providing the robot's power) or the crudely programed overlay (the played character) will emerge?

The character has lost its combat supremacy, gained a lot of squishy bits it doesn't know how to deal with, and can still summon. Besides the existential crisis, their reliance on a mechanical device to summon means they'll be a poor teacher for the locals, so they can mostly help in case of an invasion. Since they don't have a way to make the place significantly better, there won't be an invasion either. Lose, but probably count it as a win because they can smell things, feel them, and experience emotions without having neural limiters clamp in.

If it's the demon that awakens, he'll go all in for the possibility of godly power, and set forth the way he knows how: turn the natives into an army, invade, slaughter any resistance, recruit the rest, repeat. Possibly less good at wholesale slaughter than as a robot, but much more competent at psychological warfare and social skills (mostly manifesting as the ability to tell whether a lackey is or is not going to betray him, and only killing them in the former case). Probably can't hold out against the full neighboring army on his won, aware of this, so invades the northern countries first to get their resources and manpower. Possible win, unless the living conditions of the conquered and number of survivors among the initial population count.


The Sharp Blade is ecstatic. It has its own body now, and can experience all things of the flesh directly! This is sort of like reaching 8th level spells in D&D, only with less implied property damage - and assuming it still has its godly powers. Plus, the water is going away! As a bonus, it is fully aware (and has been part) of a few extremely deviant desert dwelling cultures, and can teach the relevant skills to the locals (hopefully without the warped mindsets). So the nation becomes a bunch of desert raiders whom no one wants to invade (or risk being captured by, depending on which lessons they assimilate), which probably doesn't count as thriving.

The Blade is already a god, after all - but if it wants to go for the challenge (why should it, when it could be eating dates instead?), the one approach it knows is war. So the northern kingdoms get invaded (again), and possibly conquered in a less horrifying manner than they might have been by the demonic Robocaller? Less likely to score a military victory, also (slightly) less likely to lose points for war crimes. Call it a possible loss, but one following a year long party / orgy if at all possible.

Spoiler: Scenario 4: Sleepless androids

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The Robocaller is not suited to investigation (except via terrifying answers out of bystanders and razing buildings so it'll be easier to look for clues in the rubble). If pointed at a sleepwalker, it'll summon a creature to restrain them, and probably not get infected as a result. Any conclusions or further steps are left to whoever thought it was a good idea to bring a chainsaw when asked to play a flute concerto.


The Sharp Blade is thoroughly horrified by the risk of being infected and vanishing - since it does not know whether there are people to possess in whatever place they vanish to, so it declares that the city is an honorary ocean and gets as far away from it as it can.

If forced, it has seen investigation happen before, so it could contribute a bit - though providing superhuman stamina with which to examine boring papers is more or less torture for the Blade. Find gambler, gambler has magic item - a fellow god who did something even stupider than incarnate as a rapier, yes! - kill gambler (may require multiple attempts, as the bloodlust has rules for criticals). Encourage whoever looked most sensible and attracted to the Blade's current carrier to pick up the coin, so the two of them can vanish off into the sunset and have more adventures. Feel very put upon when the coin does not respond to the Blade's attempts at communication - did incarnating as a non-weapon also make it mute? Accidentally set out on an epic quest to grant the coin sentience, because there is no way that can make the world any worse (it does).

Spoiler: Scenario 5: Death from above!

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Surprisingly, the Robocaller has a decent chance of surviving the barrage, and knows exactly what to so in response - yes, this is another game with killsats overhead watching for uppity PCs. What are the odds?

Anyway, the Robocaller follows standard procedure K177-477, and visits the nearest imperial temple / holy shrine / city hall (check whichever applies). There, it notes the hail of destruction has ceased, expertly assesses the level of damage inflicted and concludes its soul mirror may be misaligned (if it were something worse, there would not be any other buildings outside, besides the imperial temple / holy shrine / city hall). If this is Tenra, the agent in charge passes the issue up the bureaucratic ladder, the Robocaller enters sleep mode, and eventually is allowed to wander out (possibly with a load of karma on it).

If this is not Tenra, or the Robocaller is not popular with the empire (randomly killing people seems to annoy the authorities when it's not them doing it, for some reason), the Robocaller does not really have a practical solution. Short term. Longer term, it is made of technology Man Was Not Meant To Use, and has summons. It will eventually assemble a mountain sized gun and start taking potshots, but that might take a few decades or centuries. In the meantime, it will use a very big umbrella.


The Sharp Blade has no idea what's going on, and the forcefield it grants its wielder is not enough to stop a prismatic blast. It should have a power or two that will allow the wielder to survive, or sense the threat and remain under cover, however. As an indestructible sentient god-weapon, the Blade isn't actually affected by the blasts, but its wielder will be - and once the wielder dies, anyone coming close to pick up the weapon won't be protected and will die too...

From now on, the Sharp Blade will be playing "the sky is water", and refuse to go outside. Since it needs social contact anyway, it might try to go to a large city and stick to the underground? If there are dwarves in this world (none remain in the Bloodlust setting), it would be their new best friend, assuming it could get to their capital.

Of course, if the satellite's target was the Blade's wielder, it will be fine after they get fried (and lassoed back to safety once the firing stops). Even if it could get to a satellite, being stuck thousands of miles in space where no one can come wield it will have the Blade do its very best to develop the ability to move in its own so it run away from the notion (and fail). Lose.

This new batch of characters is going to fail at most of the scenarios, but hopefully in entertaining ways. The Robocaller has some solutions, if a tendency to opt for killing things and then questioning them. The Sharp Blade has a few trifling flaws, but mostly comes from a setting where the main activities are fighting and partying, so being able to do much more is already exceptional.

[InvisibleBison]

Spoiler: General stuff about all three characters

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This challenge actually could take place in Duskwall, so I'm going to assume that it does. I'll also be conforming to the standard BitD game flow model of task appears -> gathering information -> score, though this likely won't involve a criminal operation of some sort.

Also, all three of these characters will be able to travel about the city without exposing themselves to the sky once they figure out what's going on. Partly this is because Duskwall has lots of
underground passages of various sorts, but it's also because of the Ghost Echoes crew ability, which allows them to see and interact with mystical echoes of the city's past, including entering into buildings that no longer exist. Since all three of the Laughing Jacks have access to this ability, I figured I'd mention it here rather than repeat it in each character's entry.

And finally, I decided to actually roll for what effect each character got hit with. And two of them got hit by multiple rays, so that's fun.

Spoiler: Reyyah Ibrili

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Reyyah has the bad luck to get hit by both a blue and indigo ray. She rolls Prowess to resist the blue ray and Resolve to resist the indigo, gaining 3 stress in the process. Now aware that something's going on, she starts trying to figure out what precisely that thing is.

To start with, she's going to try and Study the phenomenon, by poking her head outside and watching as it starts to build up then ducking into cover before it can discharge. Three dice (2 Study + 1 Ghost Mind) gives her limited information. She's able to figure out that the effect is artificial and being caused by something far, far above her. Armed with this information, she decides to go consult with her friend Lord Scurlock.

With no dice in consort, getting info via socializing isn't easy, but it can be done. Ghost Mind gives a bonus die when gathering information about the supernatural by any means, and she (or her player, I suppose) accepts a Devil's Bargain – in exchange for a bonus die, she'll owe Scurlock a favor. Ominous, but worthwhile. With two dice, she is again able to get limited information. Scurlock is familiar with the weapon platform targeting her, and explains how it is identifying her. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any insight into how to get it to stop.

After some consideration, Reyyah has an idea about how to get out of this bind. The weapon is identifying her by her essence (ie, the Circle Dance effect), so if she changes her essence enough she should be able to cause it to stop targeting her. The plan is thus to get a ghost, let it start to possess her, and then overpower it and reverse the flow of energies so she assimilates its life essence into her own.. After a brief trip to a spirit trafficker, she's ready to get started.

This is an occult score, with the arcane method being a direct confrontation and clash of wills. The engagement roll starts with 1 die and gets a second for being particularly bold or daring, but then loses it for engaging the target where it's strongest. Thus, she rolls one die, and by the 75% roll gets a 1-3, starting in a desperate situation.

The ghost she obtained turns out to be much more powerful and much more perceptive than she'd expected. It bursts free from the ward she set up to contain it as soon as she opens the jar it was stored in, and somehow recognizes that she wants it to try to possess her, so it instead attempts to freeze her solid with its deathly chill. She uses her Warded ability to resist without taking stress, and counterattacks, using Tempest to blast it with lightning. Ghosts are vulnerable to lightning, making this start as Desperate/Standard, and her Ghost Fighter ability increases the effect to great. Rolling Skirmish with three dice gives a mixed success – the ghost is stunned, but the lightning bolt has started a fire. Reyyah chooses to deal with the ghost first, and tries to Attune to it to begin the reverse-possession. This is Risky/Limited to start with, and she trades position for effect, rolling 3 dice and getting a mixed success. The ghost is drawn inside Reyyah's body and she begins to digest it, but the fire spreads, blocking the way out of the room. Reyyah uses Tempest again to create a storm around her, unleashing a brief torrent of rain that extinguishes the fire (no roll is needed for this – it just works). One last Attune roll is needed to finish digesting the ghost, and it's a mixed success. Reyyah has successfully bound this ghost to her, confusing the weapons platform enough that it will stop shooting at her, but something out there has noticed what she's done...

Spoiler: Reginald Blythe

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Reginald has the bad luck to get hit with two rays, red and indigo. He resists both of them, taking 4 stress but no other consequences. Now aware that something is going on, he can start gathering information about it.

Reginald has many talents, but magical analysis is not one of them. He'll have to get help from someone else to figure this out. Unfortunately, he doesn't know anyone who might understand what's going on, so he can't resolve the issue. He just has to stay inside for the rest of his life.

Spoiler: Oturug Bhulgan

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Oturug gets hit with an indigo ray. He rolls Resolve to resist it, taking 2 stress in the process. Now that he's aware that something's going on, he can start gathering information about it.

He starts by directly observing the phenomenon, stepping outside for a few moments to let it begin to charge up and then darting back inside before it can discharge. With 2 dice in Study, he gets limited information. He figures out that something far up in the sky is shooting at him, but not any details about what it is or how it works.

To gain more information, he decides to consult the libraries of the College of Immortal Studies at Doskvol Academy. Strictly speaking, he's not allowed in, as he's not a student, but sneaking in is well within his capabilities, and also means this gather information check will be Prowl; again rolling 2 dice, he again gets limited information. Specifically, he learns that the weapon targeting him is using visual sensors to identify him as a threat. If he can find some way to defeat its perception, he should be safe.

He considers creating some sort of disguise device or potion of invisibility, but discards those possibilities as being too short-term and unreliable. A more radical idea comes to him: He is acquainted with a woman named Melista, who is a mid-ranking priestess in a cult that worships a forgotten god known as the Silent Song. Most of the Silent Song's theology is as unpleasant as it is esoteric, but it is known to bestow blessings on people who immerse themselves in the spirit well at the heart of its temple. Perhaps, Oturug thinks, Melista will help him to petition her god to bless him with an altered appearance.

This is a social score, with the social connection being Oturug's relationship with Melista. The engagement roll starts with 1 die and gets a second for the operation being particularly bold. The target is neither particularly strong nor weak to this sort of thing, so no adjustment there. Since Melista is a contact, she's inclined to help out and thus gives a third die. With three dice, the engagement roll is a mixed success. The score begins with Oturug in a risky position.

After he explains the situation, Melista is happy to escort Oturug to the temple of the Silent Song and arrange a meeting with the high priest, but that's where the good news stops; the high priest says that what Oturug has in mind would almost certainly result in his death, so he is not inclined to allow it. Oturug replies that almost certain death is better than what awaits him should he not be able to make his appeal to the Silent Song; this is a risky/standard Consort roll. Oturug pushes himself to get a second die and gets a mixed success. The high priest acknowledges this point, but also says there is some risk to the cultists as well, should their god grow angry that they allowed an infidel into their inner sanctum. To mitigate this risk, he asks for eight coin – a considerable sum, and well beyond Oturug's means. Oturug offers instead to give the cult his unfindable bag, which will be useful for them in moving proscribed ritual goods through the city. Another risky/standard Consort Roll, and Oturug again pushes himself for a second die, getting a mixed success. The priest asks for three bags, to which Oturug agrees.

At this point, events move deeper into the temple. The heart of the temple is a spirit well, with a massive statue of the Silent Song built around it. The high priest summons several other cultists, who begin to invoke their god and petition it to bless Oturug with an altered appearance. A surge of energy reaches out from the idol and envelops Oturug, warping and twisting his form. To stabilize himself in a survivable form, Oturug rolls Attune, pushing himself one last time to get a second die. With a mixed success, Oturug survives the transformation, but takes level 2 harm Dysmorphia as his mind struggles to adapt to his new form. He leaves the temple, quite literally a new man, and no longer the man the weapon platform is looking for.

[Telok]

Oh, I forgot about Gun Whore Bob... um... Without their own ship GWB & co. need to be ferried to this random uncivilized system by someone else. Since GWB doesn't really need money (the mercenary company thing being more an excuse to keep lots of guns around) they're... doing a favor for a friend? Sure. Why not. So who?... Screw it. GWB is playing assistant band manager to Disaster Zone for this trip. The mercs aren't security, they're the special effects crew.

Right. So the band's fleet (have you seen the size of those speakers?) pulls into low orbit around some reasonably primitive planet (we'll say... Earth circa 1922? but with anthro-owl people) in order to put on a show and test out a new stunt. Totally ignoring the satellites because the band doesn't care. As the stage hands set up stuff on planet GWB & crew work to finish the stunt. The army surplus AT-AT has the final layer of warpstone impregnated fireworks wired up on it. The illithid tentacle ninja jetpack ballet dancers do a final rehersal. The aerosol LSD sprayer stealth drones and their cargo is kept carefully hidden from the band members. Gun Whore Bob supervises while looking at a live feed of the landing zone. And it's 1922-ish so no environmentalists have to get shot for obstructing heavy metal music.

During the performance GWB ends up planetside (they glued sparklers all over the power armor to blend in) to make sure the guys on the ground are safe. It takes multiple shots from the satellite before GWB notices anything amiss (20 hp, 6 resilience, 5 willpower, Disaster Zone music, misc. special effects) and hops back to the ship through the Gate spell big enough to drive a huge armored walker through. The effect is traced back to the satellites because futuristic magi-tech sensors do that and Disaster Zone ends up with new sfx toys to play with. GWB could totally kill the thing, a bunch of guys tossing krak grenades through a Gate spell (GWB opens gate & leaves, 85% each grenade wounds because target is helpless = about 25 grenades to total wreckage) would do it, but again the things are too valuable as loot to just be randomly destroyed.

[NichG]

Scenario 6: Timeless City

Once every thousand years, a temporal distortion opens up to a lost city existing within an Interval of Time that was cleaved from the timeline in a battle long ago. The city has a number of powerful magical items, artifacts, hidden and lost lore, and other things of comparable import. Every time the distortion opens up, the city is reset to its state at the beginning of the Interval, meaning that these valuable things can be harvested.

The distortion remains open for 24 hours.

The only problem is, time doesn’t come to pass within the distorted Interval. Any character entering the interval carries about 30 seconds worth of time with them, after which all mechanics that operate via the next moment coming to pass – getting actions when another round begins, restoring resources, etc – simply don’t happen for the character. For every pound of material carried that is denser than the character’s own body, the character gains an extra second of carried time. Things summoned by the character or effects created by the character and sent outwards take from the character’s pool of remaining time in order to do their thing.

The city is filled with individuals repeating the same day in which the city was removed from time, over and over . Even though external time does not pass, these individuals follow their predetermined paths unless interfered with. Someone from outside touching them will split their reserved time with them 50/50, allowing novel interactions. Bringing someone from the city through the exit portal is a thing that can be done, at which point they will gain full autonomy and indefinite time.

There is somewhat valuable stuff even within a few hundred feet of the portal. Though, move fast, because lots of others will be trying to loot these areas the moment the portal opens. If this is your main focus, focus on how you’ll be faster than your competitors or prevent your competitors who are largely Equal combat encounters but number in the hundreds from beating you to the loot.

If you want to go for the big score though, supposedly somewhere within the 3 mile radius city is a hidden vault of the time magic artifacts that were used to fight in this battle and to preserve the city even when its past was erased from existence.

As far as the ‘keeping your time going’ aspects of this scenario, things that interact with time could absolutely interact with that effect, and I leave it up to the individual poster to rule on how they think it should work.

Spoiler: Details

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The vault itself is hidden in the cellar of a particular tavern (you would have to have a way to find this...). Its protections are first and foremost that the contents are in an extradimensional space which only connects to the cellar of the tavern when three objects are bought together to form the hoop that acts as the gateway. These objects have a Magic Aura on them to make them appear mundane. Within the gateway, the character will be immediately faced with a time magic protection in the form of a manufactured predestination paradox showing them leaving the vault without the artifacts on their person. That paradox must be either thwarted, tricked, or just ignored – I leave it up to the individual system as to whether that would have a consequence and whether that consequence would be worth just taking as ‘damage’. Beyond the predestination paradox there is a golem (counts as a Stronger encounter if combat is used, though by default the golem has no time and will just remain stationary guarding the loot) that has the artifacts integrated into its body, and a repeating Disjunction trap set to attempt to nuke the artifacts if the body chamber containing them is forced open. The golem’s instructions are to provide the artifacts to anyone showing an insignia of military office of the city at the level of Captain or higher.

That insignia could be found elsewhere in the city, specifically on ten or so military personnel fighting the city’s last battle. Each such character should be considered Equal if combat is utilized, but of course if they aren’t given time then they’ll just do predetermined paths and won’t actually fight. Only 2 of the ten people know about the vault though – the General of the city’s forces, and one of the captains that works with the mage battalion.

At around the 23 hour mark of the scenario, the General (assuming he hasn’t been deflected from this course) will enter the vault to use the artifacts to defend against the oncoming attack responsible for the city’s current state. Therefore following the General and sneaking in behind him would be a valid way to locate and bypass various protections of the vault. Note that the General does not disarm the predestination paradox – indeed, the point of it is to force the artifacts to be used in place, and not removed even by the command staff.

[Kane0]

Spoiler: Lizardman

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The good news is that lizardman doesn't carry anything denser than he is, or much of anything really. The bad news is that lizardman doesn't have any real means of combating time shenanigans nor teleporting significant distances, even if he knew exactly where to go.

So I guess the name of the game is stacking movement while hindering everyone else.

Longstrider + Misty Step or Zephyr Strike gives us an edge over knights and peasants, but any mage or monk around the same level will outpace us considerably. About 490' total distance can be covered in the first two runs in, then after that we're looking at 430' or so on return trips.

Depending on the size of the 'opening' to this distortion something like Plant Growth and Gust of Wind would nonlethally hamper a great many people while himself being unaffected.

An alternative would be to summon a beast that's faster than us to pick stuff up. A flying one can cover 600' worth of distance on a trip, plus an extra 90' if we just summon them straight into the timezone (they came from somewhere else, so they start with 30 seconds). We can even set up Telepathy on the summon so we don't have to go in ourselves and still direct the action, plus it's considerably stronger than we are even if its smaller.

But Lizardman can't really do all that much, he's still restricted to that 30 seconds. He'll probably make off with something to make the effort worthwhile, but no chance of getting to that vault. C grade.

[Telok]

Just to note, as I don't have time tonight for full exploration, to fill out the 24 hours (or 12 hours & touch someone or 6 hours and touch 2 peeps or 3 hours and touch 3 peeps) requires 86370 lbs. or 39177 kg.

A 100 metric ton Atlas mecha will net you 612 hours (does squishing people with mecha count for 'touching'?), while a Star Wars AT-ST may net you a quarter to a third of that (and fewer pancake buildings). Of course if you can swing a nice Renegade Legion Deliverer grav tank at a feather light 404 metric tons...

[Kane0]

A 100 metric ton Atlas mecha will net you 612 hours

Well i dont see a MWRPG character in the roster yet :P

[Telok]

Well i dont see a MWRPG character in the roster yet :P

Copy pasta from the DtD40k7e book 2

Spoiler

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Atlas Mecha – Yes! You can be the proud owner of a big stompy mecha with heat-seeking missiles, full-auto lasers, and a really big gun. Just make sure you can pay for the fuel or you'll have the worlds largest paperweight.
Size: 30 (about 35m tall), Price: Holdings 3
HP: 30, Resilience: 30
Static Defense*: 0, 6, 12, 18
Maneuver: +0, Acceleration: 1, Speed: 6
Speed: 24m/momentum, 8.6 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.
Standard Sensors: +5 perception tests and 10km automatic vehicle detection range.
Control System: Pilot Seat & Co-Pilot Seat &
Basic Equipment & Mobile Trace System: Spot for a pilot & co-pilot. Has seat belts, cup holders, A\C, heater, radios, etc. Enables gun kata trick shots and sword school special attacks.
Controls Feedback & Inefficient Controls: When damaged the vehicle may inflict Fatigue on the pilots. Requires an extra Half or Reaction action to maintain control.
Environmental Seals: Airtight & safe.
Heavy Hardened Armor: 20 AP
Manipulator Arms: Strength 8
Weapons: Long Range Missile Launcher, 3k2+15 X p5 s/- 500m Homing & Minimum Range.
Short Range Missile Launcher, 4k2+15 X p5 s/- 100m.
Arm Mount: Multi-Las, 3k2+5 E p0 s/9 60m Reliable.
Arm Mount: AC-20, 7k4+20 I p15 s/- 100m.
Ordinary CQC (Extra Big Fists), 9k2+20 I p5.


Variable Advanced Technology Fighter – Your basic fighter jet that turns into a giant robot with a gun.
Size: 20 (about 15m long/tall), Price: Holdings 2,
HP: 10, Resilience: 20
Static Defense: 0, 12, 24, 36
Maneuver: +2, Acceleration: 2,
Speed: 12, Speed: 180m/momentum, 65 kph/momentum
Drive: Aerospace (x15) The vehicle has wings; if it's Momentum is less than 3 it goes Out of Control and begins Falling; requires a runway of at least base Speed x 100m; begins Falling if it takes 2 or more damage or if it goes Out of Control.
Other 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.
Control System: Pilot Seat & Basic Equipment & Mobile Trace System: Space for a pilot & Has seat-belts, cup holders, A/C, heater, radios, etc & Enables gun kata trick shots and sword school
special attacks.
Controls Feedback & Hanger Queen: When damaged the vehicle may inflict Fatigue on the pilots & Requires extra repair and reload time.
Sensors: +5 to Perception tests and a 10km automatic vehicle detection range.
Ejector Seat: Could save your life.
Environmental Seals: Airtight & safe.
Manipulator Arms: Strength 6.
Afterburners (1): Double speed while activated.
Light Hardened Armor : 5 AP.
Weapons: Omni Weapon Mount: Long Range Missile, 3k2+15 X p5 s/- 500m Homing No Short-Range.
Arm Mount: Vulcan Mega Bolter, 6k2+15 X p10 s 6 120m Tearing.
Unarmed CQC (Reinforced Fists), 6k2+15 I p5.


Cyborg-Ninja Tyrannosaurus Rex Cocaine-Wizard Pet – Yup. Damn cocaine-wizards being all awesome up in your face. What are you gonna do about it punk?
Size: 19 (about 14m long), Price: Holdings 4
HP: 19, Resilience: 19
Static Defense: 0, 8(9), 16(18), 24(26)
Maneuver: +10, Acceleration: 3, Speed: 8
Speed: 32(36)m/mom, 11.5(13) kph/mom
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.
Control System: Berserker AI System: Rolls 6k3 for everything & goes on a killing rampage when
the primary AI runs out of actions.
AI Systems: TAPS (3 dots Ballistics), TAPS (3 dots Stealth), RAM-3 (the AI has 3 Half Actions
per scene), Co-processor (3 dots Wis), Co-processor (2 dots Int). The AI will obey orders until it is out of Half Actions, then it will use the Aid Another action on the Berserker AI.
Super Solenoid Engine: Activate for +1 to speed, maneuver, acceleration, roll for warp at +10.
Hexagrammatic Wards: 5 Aura.
Medium Hardened Armor: 10 AP.
Thermoptic Camo: Can be almost invisible.
Manipulator Arms Jaws: Strength 9.
Living Vehicle: It's ALIVE!.
Weapons: Two Handed Big Teeth, 10k4+20 R p5 Unwieldy (cannot parry).
2x Short Range Missile, 4k2+15 X p5 s/- 100m.
2x Personel Weapon Mounts: 2x Heavy Bolters, 4k2 X p8 - 10 120m Tearing, 60 ammo each.

It isn't "kitchen sink" unless it's got giant stompy robots!

[Quertus]

Spoiler: Initial thoughts on Scenario 6 - Timeless City

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I initially misunderstood, and thought that the whole 3-mile radius city was appearing, rather than just a portal thereunto opening. Hopefully my reading comprehension hasn't failed me that badly anywhere else, but still, I may be way off base here on some details. That said, here's my explicit assumptions:

The portal is "big enough".

Characters / participants know about the event and their participation therein "long enough" in advance.

Unless otherwise noted, all characters are there "legally" / their participation is not unexpected.

Nation(s) have known about the event "forever"; there is recorded history of it happening repeatedly, and it is fully predicted.

The 30+ second time buffer is created when you pass through the portal. Re-entry is possible, and the buffer is reset to full each time.

Time is only divided among sentient beings (including undead and constructs); touching inaniimate matter (such as to pick up loot) does not divide one's time, but touching living beings (even to pick their pockets) does.

Anyone who runs out of time inside the city, and not retrieved before the portal closes... ? (gets lost forever? reappears, frozen in time, 1,000 years later?) As this is undefined, it's to be avoided.

The results of dropping weight after the clock has started are undefined, and thus to be avoided (although some of my characters will (unstated) experiment to determine the outcome if the result is unknown from their PoV).

No one else is making an assassination attempt on these characters, or has any "grand plans" that need to be worked around. Although many of the characters will be prepared for such, and have contingencies, those are mostly left out for brevity.

Response to Scenario 6 - Timeless City

Spoiler: 2e Cleric of D&D Arma

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Sure, she may be a High Priestess, and even with the ubiquitous purchase of a Cloak of Charisma, sure, most of the participants might like Arma, but that doesn't mean that they'll listen to her. Or help her. This is 2e D&D, home of the silos of (almost) no spell trading or item selling. Only, that's not true in the context of this thread. So... who knows?

Regardless, Arma will participate with a team, a party. She'll go in mounted. The mount will be carrying her. So long as it's an avian mount, it should be fast, and have a very not dense bone structure. So it should last... many extra seconds. It's rude to ask her exact weight! She also has a spell that will allow her to not exist for a short time, so she can extend the length of her stay slightly if necessary. Although, by touching her mount, she should be sharing the extra seconds it gets by carrying her, so she shouldn't need that trick.

Mirage Arcana is a thing, so the nation can doubtless arrange it so that she can be practicing with her mount (and her party) in an illusory duplicate of the city. Importantly, training her mount to head for the exit if, say, she stops singing or something (in case the "sharing with her mount" tech doesn't work the way she expects it to), or if she gives it the signal (if they unintentionally touch a living being, and therefore might have an unknown amount of time left).

Arma expects that she'll be doing the real looting for her team; thus, she is carrying her team (puns are sacred!). Most if not all are denser than her, so she should last quite a long time.

Then again, it's not like her team can't be simply strip mining the nearby streets, bringing back pieces of the city to use as components for the advanced use of Mirage Arcana. AoE "Acorn of Far Travel", that gives monsters carrying nothing 30 seconds to act before adventurers can simply walk over and behead their helpless forms? Yeah, the streets may not be paved with gold, but they may as well be.

Rescuing creating copies of the citizens is an interesting idea. If her Divinations tell her to do so, her mount should certainly be capable of abducting a few time-clones.

But her goal is to make looting a trivial process, so that she can focus on her main concern of rescuing people who have run out of Time. And, sure, she could probably cause that condition, or otherwise assassinate people (as some might suspect, given her daemonic visage), but that's probably not on her mind right now.

That said... the biggest value of the Looped City from Arma's PoV is that it probably has libraries of ancient knowledge, which might have some insights about the cause of the breaking of the world that is Arma's driving focus. So (if this somehow wasn't already known), she'd probably rescue a citizen, get them to be Friendly, and ask about such a library, then fly to loot it. She'd literally rip out walls and carry whole bookshelves back as her tech for maximum efficiency / to avoid touching citizens unexpectedly.

I doubt the ancient lost knowledge would help her directly, but it'd still be a big score.

Spoiler: 3e Wizzard Whizzy

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Whizzy can teleport, so he certainly has a leg up on the competition, being able to hit some long-range targets of opportunity... but why would anyone ever allow Whizzy to participate in this event? The only reasonable answer is "to off Whizzy", which he'd realize if his Wisdom weren't Tainted down to 4 or so.

Depending on the expected haul, Whizzy might invest in a couple of scrolls of Teleport, to gather even more "not by the door" loot one has to Teleport to.

Additionally, he'd probably lob a few fireballs to kill some pedestrians that pass just far enough away one wouldn't want to split their time with them to loot them. And (probably needing a Wand of Fireballs) doing the same with slightly further targets, then Dimension Door over, loot the corpses, and Dimension Door back to the exit. Or, you know, twice as much loot of he only DDs one way, and runs the other. Regardless, obviously Boots of... Striding? Sprinting? 2k for the speed boost without the other enchantment they usually come with is a really good investment here.

Spoiler: Paradox Telepathic Vampire

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Well, isn't this just peachy?

Ideally, the Telepathic Vampire would have his Companion have created a disposable sentient Undead ahead of time to test whether Undead get the same budget of Time as living beings. He'd also test with sentient robots, non-sentient robots, and remote-controlled robots/cars/whatever.

Even though it seems those tests would produce favorable results, he still has no interest in dog-eat-dog betrayals, or "lost in space and time" scenarios that could result if he inters the fray directly. Instead, he'll do what he does best: act as Control.

He'll mind link all the participants (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or the bathtubs of blood), and ensure optimal coordination of efforts. And eat anyone who even thinks of betrayal.

So everyone else does so much better than in past years, while he collects what little he can through proxies. Shrug. Survival / minimizing risk >> maximizing profits.

He'll also probe the city for any minds of a Kindred spirit, anyone already possessed of or worthy of being gifted with his immortality. If so, at night, he'll have his Companion open a Gate to pull them out. Otherwise, such Gate action is left as an emergency "save one of the participants from being lost in space and time" rescue option. (Depending on how many bathtubs of blood he can secret to the area, this may be used repeatedly.)

The problem is if he manages to accidentally find the Golem (unlikely, since it's in an XD space) or any other Golems, and reprograms them to leave the area. He'd love to have them as loot, but... he might accidentally make himself "lost in space and time" if they eat from his Time budget while they're operating under his new program, even though he's outside the city.

Spoiler: Paradox Cutter Fyord

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Yeah, so... Cutter Fyord would not approach this challenge normally.

He'd spend the preceding months building up mana to create mana stones (why did I never think of this tech before these challenges? ) to build up the insane amounts of mana to create a truly giant eldritch horror before the portal even appears. Simply put, it would wait with a small mountain held over its [sanity loss] for the portal to appear, then reach its [sanity loss] through, grabbing buildings and pulling them back through the portal. Repeat until the entire city has been relocated.

Still probably wouldn't get the "main" prize of the artifacts, but who cares? There's a whole city copy-pasted into the world! And maybe even some of the people survived and kept or can regain some shred of their sanity, too!

Sorry about the hundreds of other participants in the once-in-a-millennia event who are now babbling incoherently.

Spoiler: John Faseman of Marvel

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Well, this sounds like a guild quest to me. I think the only thing John would really want to do before the portal opened (besides research and having guild tryouts) would be to learn the ever-important Gate spell, to use to retrieve anyone who runs out of Time.

That said, his children could just go in, grab buildings, and fly out, so... I'm not sure anyone else is really needed for this Event.

The only issue would be if John wanted to "save" the city. But that would not be a solo mission - that would be Guild Quest, likely involving other people interrogating everyone who was sleeping in the buildings John's children relocated at night, to try to find out what was going on.

Spoiler: Shadowrun Troll Wizard

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The Troll could fly in... at a snail's pace.

So it looks like the preparations for this Event involve physical training - lots of short-distance sprinting and such. And a new custom spell to boost run speed. And a new custom spell to track Time, because sure it's only useful once every 1,000 years, but why not?

With speed, endurance, and "massive" Strength and carrying capacity (pathetic for a Troll, but massive compared to little humans), the Troll can quickly make it a good distance in to loot even heavy treasures - and can explode any Civilians whose paths takes them anywhere near range for a timeshare. Or explode them to loot them quickly and safely.

Spoiler: M&M - Alex Daeus

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Alex would fret for quite some time before coming up with a plan.

He'd make hundreds of environment suits, and tens of thousands of air tanks. And probably some jetpacks. And maybe a bunch of strong, fast robots (spend XP to buy Allies). And a gate-plus-sized air-tight room with numerous airlocks leading out.

Then, come T-day, he'd make the air inside the city poisonous. No worries about sharing time with any of the locals if they're all dead. Should be maximum loot and minimal (unintentional) casualties compared to other millennia if he does everything right.

Spoiler: M&M - Omni-Wizard

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Divinations. Lots of Divinations.

I think the easiest route for the Onmi-Wizard is to summon lots of flying, incorporeal (but able to grab things while incorporeal) spirits. And send those in to collect stuff, while never actually entering the City themselves.

That said, Clairvoyance to look back in time... and traveling back in time to loot ungotten gains from previous millennia... is a fun way to double-dip on looting.

And looking back in time is a way to learn what really happened.

If the Omni-Wizard really wanted to bring the city back, then the General who initiated the time loop seems the key. The first step would be looting him (him? him.) from a previous millennia and interrogating him seems the best option. I think showing him the spectacle his city's become might be effective in getting him to spill the tea.

Then, in this timeline, teleport to the cellar while wearing his insignia. Destroy the Paradox enchantment before stepping through. Retrieve the artifacts. And hope the General didn't lie about anything. Maybe some Sense Motive and ESP would have been good to add in previous steps.

Spoiler: Warhammer - Mr. T

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Mr. T might well be very well suited to this scenario. He flies, carries a lot naturally just with his Power Armor and personal arsenal, and has 6 arms with which to grab loot.

Also, he can kill Timelocked Citizens at range, then eat their brains to learn what they know (space marines are creepy).

So, from random citizens, he can learn who the Most Important People are, and recognize them through their citizens' own memories. Then he can eat those MIP to know what the most important things in the city are, from their perspective and his own.

The artifacts are tempting, but they're probably more valuable to a cultist of the Chaos god of Time, and those are vanishingly rare. So long as he can loot other cool magic items, Mr. T will probably ignore the artifacts.

Of course, that's just the cover story, the activities that are a ruse to cover Mr. T's actual goals. See, beforehand, he's summoned a great many daemons, to hit the area at his signal (which uses tech the natives doubtless won't understand). He'll time it to occur when certain groups are in the city, dangerously low on Time.

The point is to look like a Big Hero, fending off the daemons. And save certain groups / individuals, to get on their good sides / improve relations / have them owe him a favor. And to have the daemons carry off certain other groups such that they cannot be saved. All to manipulate the political landscape.

And that is the layer he hopes those who are suspicious of him will struggle to see.

His actual goal is to use a ritual to draw upon the power of the daemons (who likely ran out of time in ignorance of the nature of the city), the power of those Lost in Time and Space, and the power of the time-bound city itself, all to power the creation of a new magical item or 3.

In the grimdark of running Mr. T, horror unimaginable, existential failure wrought of betrayal of both mortals and daemons, is but a smokescreen to distract from his true goals of... ooh, shiny!

Spoiler: MtG Elven Chronomancer

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Infinite Beacon of Tomorrows is infinite time, but it's no good to spread it out among an army of elves.

So, instead, we've got to tweak the deck.

It seems that the best answer is to have everything ready before the portal opens. Then, once the portal is open, get a near-infinite number of extra turns (near infinite buffer of Time), although to do that, it's easiest if there's another card drawing option, like Jayemdae Tome. Then, once sufficiently NI time is built up, sacrifice all the Elves to the Skull Clamp (or just use Evacuation or something to put them away safely), and summon just a few particularly useful creatures to enter the City - a cheap dragon, a thief, a colossus?

There really shouldn't be a limit to how much time can be built up, or how much can be looted.

I think the real question is, why hasn't anyone else looted the artifacts yet? Or does someone do so once every 1,000 years without freeing the city from its infinite loop? If that's the case, an accidental success (an Invisible Stalker to not notice any Paradox, perhaps, along with a playset of Steal Artifact (pity Memnarch wasn't in the sidboard) seems like it could do the trick) could be trouble.

Spoiler: Star Trek - LtC Vir

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Bwahahaha! The natives of this magical realm are in for quite a surprise from our LtC Staltek Vir, and his "suboptimal" alchemist class.

It turns out, with an antigrav lift, one can carry quite the impressive load. Like, say, a Transporter (and generator). Simply lock onto targets, and beam them onto the transporter pad. And someone outside can be using modified tractor beam technology to pull people and things off the pad and out the portal. Easy as pi.

Shift rotation can allow the rescue mission to continue night and day.

Now, as for backup, while one might think that the Federation would look kindly upon a rescue mission, and LtC Vir could call in additional aid, he's unfortunately limited by both himself and the D&D realm technically still falling under the Zero's black ops. That said, the time-traveling Romulan captain of the Zero would likely be willing to stand by in orbit, to scan and monitor out of scientific curiosity, and as a matter of protecting one's investment, so long as there wasn't urgent business elsewhere at that time.

So if there was a transporter accident (while someone other than the perfect record LtC Staltek Vir was operating the thing), they would have good support options to technobabble some Science! at the problem, from the mouths of some of the foremost experts on Time Travel and temporal mechanics in the Federation.

Spoiler: WoD Alex Knight

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I scarcely know what to do here. If this is a massive multiplayer competition, most of Alex's mods would be very noticeable, and get his spirits in trouble if they weren't allowed. Even if mods are legal (which seems really weird for a multiplayer competition), Alex has neither the spheres nor the computer skill for his mods to be better than those who know what they're doing - if he makes an AoE loot ability (like some video games have), doubtless someone else could do better.

Hacking the system before the event, with Bringing Up the Map and Look for Triggers / Event Flags, he could possibly insert a Spirit with a faked Insignia right next to the golem, but that sounds like the kind of stunt that gets people's accounts banned.

If I could just think of a video game character that gets extra time when it breaks things / kills people... wait, does Carmageddon work that way? If so, that might be the best solution he can provide, to have a bloody car crush its way through the citizens for loot, then glitch its way through a wall straight to the golem.

Spoiler: WoD Harry tHH

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Hours before the portal opened, Harry and as many followers as he could manage would begin a ritual. Moments after the portal opened, Harry would reach through, and declare that the portal is down. Gravity in the city would be altered by 90 degrees for an area around the portal, and things would begin falling out the portal, while Harry desperately attempted to dodge to the side.

Before that, hopefully, a huge pit would have been dug on this side of the portal, and second ritual performed to carefully catch and sort the things falling through. If not, it's a lot of "telekinetic grab citizens / breakables as they fly past" and dig through the rubble afterwards.

Regardless, Harry would likely take a nap shortly after the portal opened, and wait until later to use Teleportation (and Gravity Manipulation / Telekinetic Strength Boost as needed) to loot distant objectives, outside the range of his ritual.

[Telok]

Traveller: Traveling Bob becomes rich and famous for discovering a new amazing phenomena or else the whole place is in a massive super secret government ultra security no-go research zone and TB got vaporized for being in the same solar system with it.

Spoiler

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This scenario happens at approximately 5620 AD, Earth humans discovered the jump drives in 2087 AD, about 2500 years after the other two branches of humanity (typical bloody Ancients messing around with stuff and leaving tech bits laying around). So our maximum span of "this has happened before" is seven times in functional recorded history. That's fine, it works for the scenario... except we have organized interstellar empires involved. Either way we're back at out setting problem of "the government (any) is handling it and no PCs are invited ever" or we've just (re)discovered it.

Giving massive hand-waves at how the heck we know what's going on, completely ignoring the 'other people' thing, and not even bothering with converting the magic references to super-science or anything... What probably happens is on some recently re-discovered and likely uninhabited planet, Traveling Bob and/or a crew member (the ship needs a minimum of 4 or 5 crew) gets trapped in time-out after less than a minute passes. So they tie a rope to the robot and send it in. Counting the extras bolted onto the chassis as our extra weight (really just the spotlight, radio, and some heavy duty nylon rope) we have about 3.5 kg extra mass for... almost 8 extra seconds. But we'll say someone managed to notice that the heavier robot lasted longer than the person carrying more gear who lasted longer than the person not carrying gear.

We load the robot up with mass. Specifically we'll load up the 16 liters of storage compartments with metal bits. Spare nuts & bolts, chain, random dense equipment. Finding a quick search for e-waste density says 300-500 kg/m^3 = say 0.5 kg/liter (take the high end for throwing in solid metal bits). 8 kg spare mass gives the robot... 47.6 seconds of free time. Well thank the gods for the rope going back outside or we'd just be losing people in this thing.

After getting everyone back out we just keep sending in the robot with heavier and heavier loads while it records audio & video, transmitting everything back along the data cable we attached to it (just in case). Since it can readily haul 80+ kg of stuff in a box we'll call it 4-5 minutes of run time before it seizes up and we have to drag it back in... I think we're losing heavy duty tubs full of rocks and dirt. Probably rig up a winch and use chains to haul the thing back in every time.

Eventually the 24 hours are up and we may or may not have some sort of instability warning about the zone closing. Things alien to the zone may or may not be ejected or left behind on closing. The robot may or may not be in there when it happens. Either way we have 16-20 hours or recordings & readings and maybe a few interesting objects from within a 5 minutes walk of our entry point. TB sticks around doing bunches of scans and tests, then when everyone is out of ideas they go back to civilization to become rich and famous science explorers. Because nobody knows about this or else there's be a massive government army of heavily weighted robots tromping around looting the place and being reeled back in on super strong cables.

Weirdly there's probably no dice rolling in any of this past the first couple of rolls to notice mass=time and maybe one instance of people hauling rope before they set up a winch (or tie it to the bumper of the air-raft and use vehicle power).

Paranoia: A few hundred hyper, twitchy, drug crazed, panicked, concussed, heavily armed troubleshooters from at least three different complexes end up fighting their way through the city trying to recover anything that looks useful and explode the opposition who all look basically exactly like themselves. Some of them have nukes.

Spoiler

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Completely ignoring the 'thousand years' thing. The Computer, in it's infinite wisdom, occasionally resets the date and has everyone mem-wiped in regards to things like calendars. There's just no way to know and, more importantly, it's not funny so we get to ignore it.

Briefing: About fifty troubleshooters show up for the briefing. The Computer has located Delta Complex. It is trapped in a temporary repeating time loop. Skip the PLC, go directly to R&D for equipment. NOW CITIZEN! NOW!

R&D: Drug injector rig (normally used for intravenously delivering de-carbonated Bouncy Bubble Beverage Double-Caff during all nighter brainstorming sessions... which honestly explains a lot about R&D), an insane cocktail of drugs to improve speed & strength while medicating the side effects away for just long enough, a spare de-armed (not disarmed, de-armed) Alpha Complex army power armor with a 900 pound lightweight mobile teleporter (with a 19 minute timer and a red button on a cord) unit bolted on the back, instruction booklets that nobody is given time to read anyways, a heavy weapon bolted on the front of the power armor.

Fifty random troubleshooters, high on drugs, heavily armed, and nervous, are transported to the site and sent in. Oh, and there's some shooting on the way in. Beta Complex and Gamma Complex (and maybe a few others) are doing the same thing. The place is a war zone. So this is more like "chucked out of an airplane at high speed while it's dodging missiles with a regular old parachute".

A few hundred hyper, twitchy, drug crazed, panicked, concussed, heavily armed troubleshooters from at least three different complexes are now fighting their way through the city trying to recover anything that looks useful and explode the opposition who all look basically exactly like themselves. At least a few of them are armed with cone launchers (for the uninitiated that means "rocket launchers") and nuclear cones (exactly what you think). Funny how history works out isn't it? And Delta Complex thought there were being invaded by enemies.

Assuming that Paranoid Bob survives the landing and immediate combat zone silliness the best bet is to find an ultraviolet High Programmer to follow around and swipe something important looking before triggering the teleporter to get back to Alpha Complex. Shall we list the ways this can go wrong?

1. The drugs cause a random mutation and we get a new uncontrolled mutant power.
2. PB decides that PURGE will be happier if R&D gets blown up and triggers the teleporter early to start shooting up Alpha Complex.
3. Nukes.
4. PB has nukes and needs to roll a 1-8 on a d20 to hit the intended target.
5. The power armor seizes up.
6. The teleporter explodes.
7. The teleporter takes PB to Beta Complex.
8. The teleporter brings Beta Complex to PB.
9. PB can't reach the button because the cord is too short.
10. The timer is jammed.
11. The interaction between hundreds of teleporters and the time wibbly wobble traps everyone in nested Groundhog Day style time loops within time loops.
12...
It just keeps on going. There's no way this is going to go "right" for anyone. But it's a fun wacky ride while it lasts and in Paranoia that's a success.

DtD40k7e: Turns out that while it's potentially within grasp, it'll be easier and more profitable to let other people get stuff and then take it off them. Also, this thing has been farmed for the last 10,000 years.

Spoiler

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This actually all works out OK in Dungeons the Dragoning. I could just drop it into the setting somewhere, no problem. Thing is... well... Neither Diplomat Bob or Gun Whore Bob have any interest in going in. Well, maybe.

So this is a known thing that's been going on every thousand years for... let me check the history... probably 7000 to 12,000 years. With divination magics, gods, and people capable of crushing supposedly impossible target numbers for doing research & investigation. This probably happens on a planet that's been declared neutral simply to stop people from fighting over it too much and erasing the whole planet from history (that's happened, see additional spoiler). At some point in the last three cycles someone (probably ComStar) sent in a big anti-gravity raft (we can use the living vehicle template and an A.I. if it needs to count as a person) with lots of sensors and a bunch or extra mass. Like, lots of sensors and 300 metric tons of spare mass. Using perception of 10k10+20+rerolls (average score 100ish when 35 is 'impossible') using everything from sonar to radar to hard x-rays to pure magic to techno-magic to cameras & eyeballs on the ends of kilometer long tentacles. Then the governing body set down rules. No combat in the time loop zone, it reduces the amount of stuff returned. There's probably other stuff too but that's the big one for us. Naturally it isn't perfectly enforced, just where it's easily watched and punished (add a wave motion cannon or two to the big scanner raft).

The place is mapped, nearly every second of everyone's movements in the open and in unsecured buildings is known in detail. Governments, militaries, megacorps, religions, adventurers, and random looneys have all prepped. Teams, individuals, magical, robotic, furry green aliens from wherever, on jet packs, on magic carpets, capable of teleporting at will, trying to abuse stasis fields... the Runners are all prepped and just waiting for the portal(s) to open.

At least one team is made up of about 100 conjurers* (it's a 1/1000 year thing we'll plan a decade or four in advance) who can cast Porte, a spell that works like a portal gun. They have a sequence and a plan. Within two minutes of the start there's a Y shaped network of portals chained through from one end of the city to the other, splitting the city into three zones. The end of one portal is within 5 meters of the end of another portal and each one covers 60 to 80 meters of distance. You can get from one end of the city to the other by covering about 500-600 meters of ground. This team will not be going in. They're charging a percentage of returned value for use of the portals and they'll end up... well 0.5% of a (butt pull a number) billion credits is still a nice five million credit payday per person.

* Cocaine Wizards who want to participate have to take a drug test before hand and have a current valid clean psych evaluation.

On to the PCs.

Diplomat Bob works for Aztechnology, a low morality megacorp. They have a team or three, but that's not what DB is here for. DB with good social skills and the ship with a teleportarium is here to sweet talk someone who came out with something and kidnap them. There's a lot of competition on this end of things too. Nice social adventure module potential though.

Gun Whore Bob is already extremely wealthy, can cast Porte and Gate, has a Cocaine Wizard and cleric of Lolth as contacts, has both a magic carpet and a jetpack, and is wearing power armor (Bun-Bun the tyrannosaurus rex company mascot doesn't play a part in this one). GWB is here because there's something specific to get. Let's be honest and call it a MacGuffin. If it's location is known GWB will just take a couple minutes to race across the city on the magic carpet/Blink/Porte, cast Call Item on the thing, and walk away. Calling the item out at either the edge or outside the time zone (depending on details I haven't bothered to work out yet) and safely back in a secure area. If GWB is going for "the big prize"... pfzzz... See, there's a spell in DtD40k7e that lets you see the past. While it is a 5th level spell in default DTD40k7e (3rd in mine because of real power level competition), it has no time limits. I suppose that the inside of the vault would be un-findable except as seen though the doorway. Teleports in DtD40k7e don't care about 'extradimensional', just about not being explicitly blocked from teleportation. Although assuming D&D style high magic stuff a teleport blocker is probably a safe bet.

Hmmm... The issue is that a bunch of people are going to drop in at the edge of the anti-teleport defenses during the first minutes and then bloody well disintegration gun their way through anything between them and the vault entrance. There's all sorts of ways to frag the head off a golem that doesn't do anything until you touch it. The least of which would be to just slap a stasis field on it then Porte it into your own Portable Hole and walk off with it to deal with at your leisure. GWB doesn't actually have teleport, took greater summons instead, and the ritual version of Gate takes an hour to cast. Mind, if nobody gets there in the first hour...hmmm... perception 50 to blind target Gate to somewhere you only know exists... drugs... oh wow, using drugs and both our hero points to drop the TN to 30 then hiring a couple magic users to assist for the free raises (contacts & wealth), GWB can actually 7k3 throw 32 +/-1 at 75% success rate. Gates don't care about regular teleport blockers (they don't share teleport's 'bypass space' details in this game) open to the size and orientation of the portal that the caster is using so we just use a big... size check a map... 28x28 meter overhead shuttle bay door and the contents of the entire room fall into the spaceship that has it's artificial gravity turned off. And then 100 people with assorted weapons start doing called shots to the head of everything that came though until it stops moving. Well we'd call it doable, but it takes an hour after the time zone opens so they probably just get whatever was left unless for some amazing reason nobody else takes the faster way.

Of course there's always the option that Diplomat Bob is taking, just with force instead of trickery. Identify the people who grabbed what you want and take it from them. We'll call that 'Plan B'.

Additional spoiler about DtD40k7e setting about explody planets

Spoiler

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Excerpt from the description of the Jade system, sector 0,3

Godfury: ‡ Belt Earth World - Size H (72,000,000 km spread)
Clockwise orbit: 350 million kilometers (58 kVU, 19 light minutes)
Groundlings: ruins of unknown civilization, probably just one powerful spirit
Characteristics: Asteroid Belt, only covers about 12° of the orbit, thickest in the middle, high levels of magical radiation

Godfury is the remains of a large terrestrial planet that was exploded about 13,000 standard years ago. Evidence of a civilization, tentatively identified as lizardy or dragonborn, exists in the form of apparently indestructible ziggurats and a few attached ruined buildings. Investigation of the ruins is prohibited by the existence of a powerful spirit entity that jealously protects and screens the ruins. High levels of magical radiation are present and make detecting the asteroid field extremely easy as well as providing a warm glow of immanent mutation or death for anyone entering it. The original name of Godfury is unknown, it was magically erased from all time and existence when the planet exploded.

@Quertus
I love Cutter Ftord & Mr. T in this one. Though Alex Knight should just be able to take a character from any game that has a timestop function and just freeze a single memory bit so they never run out. If I'm understanding the character's abilities correctly.

[Quertus]

@Quertus
I love Cutter Ftord & Mr. T in this one. Though Alex Knight should just be able to take a character from any game that has a timestop function and just freeze a single memory bit so they never run out. If I'm understanding the character's abilities correctly.

I'm glad you liked them. They definitely were among the ones I found the most fun this time around. Cutter was definitely the easiest character to write for, and the one I couldn't help but think in terms of as I was reading the challenge. OTOH, for Mt. T, I'm really thankful for this challenge, as it finally gave a good opportunity to showcase that side of his planning.

As for Alex Knight... Yeah, that's a smart idea. Glitching their time remaining could be problematic, but glitching their own personal timestop power would be much less likely to cause problems. The only issue would be, even Alex doesn't have the Spirit necessary to do the Magick equivalent of saying, "your Disintegrate spell no longer costs you spell slots / mana to cast", which means he'd have to rely on his (minimal) programming skills to do the equivalent of an invasive operation on one of his spirit friends. Or, rather... making a new spirit friend with the express intent of performing such an operation on them. So it's not impossible, just not something I aim for in the context of this thread, and its "below 75% success, consider it an automatic failure" conditions.

Well, that and... I just couldn't think of any video game characters with appropriate time powers.

[Telok]

Well, that and... I just couldn't think of any video game characters with appropriate time powers.

TvTropes + time stop. There's a bunch of options. I was reminded of one of the Alice in Wonderland games from the... late 90s/early 00s?... with a literal stopwatch.

[InvisibleBison]

Spoiler: Reyyah Ibrili

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Any sort of large-scale temporal manipulations requires sorcery far beyond Reyyah's ken. She'll have to settle for more mundane goals: Getting the best of the loot near the entrance.

Given that the city last became accessible a thousand years ago, there's not likely to be any good records of it hanging around, but a Study Gather Information check should get her some idea as to what's available. After that, it's just a question of waiting until someone comes out carrying something valuable and mugging them. Reyyah's not a combat specialist, but she can shoot lightning at people, so she can probably overpower her target. (If they rely on magical methods of combat that “probably” increases to “definitely” - Ghost Fighter significantly boosts her power against magical enemies, and Warded lets her resist a single magical harm effortlessly.) In the end, she gets a decent piece of treasure and possibly a new enemy – a good day's work.

Spoiler: Reginald Blythe

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Reginald has absolutely no way to mess around with the time magic that created this anomaly, and thus no chance of getting the big prize. Instead he'll focus on getting the best of the lesser prizes available near the entrance.

Rather than try to find a way to outrun or outfight hundreds of other scavengers, Reginald decides to deploy his actual best skill set: burglary. He makes a Survey roll to find someone coming out of the temporal distortion with something that looks valuable, pushing himself to get a second die and thus a mixed success, with the consequence being that the guy he's spotted spots him as well. Reginald resists that consequence, rolling Insight and taking two stress – he slinks back a bit, and the guy dismisses him and moves on. He rolls Prowl to stalk the guy through the city. With three dice, he gets a mixed success, with the consequence being the guy joins up with a few other people. That's not a problem; because he succeed on the Prowl roll, Reginald is able to get into position to ambush the group. He pulls out a rifle and shoots. Normally taking on three guys would be Desperate, but because they don't know he's there and he's attacking from long range it's only Controlled/Limited. He trades position for effect and pushes himself, rolling Hunt at Standard/Great and getting a mixed success. Reginald guns down the people, but the artifact is damaged as well. One last resistance roll to negate that consequence, and Reginald makes his way home with his new treasure.

Spoiler: Oturug Bhulgan

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In theory, Oturug could create some sort of device to efficiently store a large quantity of time, allowing him to explore the city at his leisure. In practice, there'd be no way for him to test the device before heading into the city, so that's far too much of a risk for him to actually attempt. He'll settle for snatching up some of the more accessible loot.

Flash potions, one of his pre-developed creations is going to be extremely useful here. It lets him move several times faster than normal for a few minutes. With a flash potion, he should be able to get to choice pieces of loot near the entrance before anyone else, or go farther into the city than other people can and obtain things that are ordinarily unobtainable. In either case, he can store the loot in his unfindable bag to prevent others from trying to take it from him. Depending on how many flash potions he has, he could accumulate a considerable amount of treasure from this enterprise.

[Quertus]

Yeah, I wasn't going to mention it for a month yet, but I wanted to do a survey at the end of this asking people to rate the systems they used on a scale from 0 to 6 (which is sort of like, the number of times across the 6 scenarios that this concern was relevant), and then do like a high dimensional scatter plot of the various systems to see which things are correlated and where there might be unexplored design space.

For me, so far based on the responses I've read, I think I'd ask (overlaps with several of yours):

- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play (self-GM) because of the removal of randomness? E.g. how often did 'not being able to have a rare lucky thing happen' or 'not being able to have a small chance of failure' seriously warp the system for you?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play because of the lack of interaction with GM who could answer questions, take on roles, adjudicate things, or introduce new information? I've noticed several of the responses have had comments like 'the GM would need to decide how good of a negotiator this character is' for example, whereas others are more like 'yes, I literally have a spell that says it does this'. So this is the 'how necessary is the GM for the actual dynamic of play?' variable...
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios could you tell definitively, 'oh, my character can't interact with this because I made the wrong character gen choice' or 'oh, I made a character gen choice that just totally resolves this'? This is your 'fail at character creation' category.
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios required you to perform either a literal or mental book dive for specific options that weren't on your character sheet (as opposed to e.g. brainstorming plans for using the stuff on your sheet already)? Call this a 'research' category I guess?
- (For each system) in how many of the scenarios does it feel like the character would come out behind even after resolving the scenario, the 'I should have stayed in bed' factor?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios did you feel your character could actually deal with? Overall 'surface area' the system permits.

Well, it’s been a little while, so I can look back at these challenges with somewhat fresh eyes. I guess if there’s not a new prompt, I’ll just poke at these.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing about these questions is that answering them literally vs answering what I believe to be the intent of the question could produce opposite results in some cases. Hopefully, I’ll square that circle correctly. And hopefully I’ll also answer them in the correct “direction”, and not misread, and give a system a “6” instead of a “0” or something.

Warped by removing randomness

As much as I’m a self-described CaW Player, I’ve got to say, for me, every RPG feels strange to force into exclusively CaW mode, except (of the ones I chose to test) Paradox (and MtG). But there’s a little more to it - after all, why does it feel off? I think, for me at least, it’s related to the notion of “playing to find out”. That when you haven’t reached a proper CaW “yeah, of course this should work” point (which IMO is well after 75% - possibly at more like 200%; that is, “even if this guaranteed success should somehow be made invalid, there’s still sufficient alternate / backup plans that also guarantee success that there’s no point rolling”), moving to CaW removes the “Playing to find out” phase.

Which might mean that this question is meant to ask, “for how many of these challenges would you have normally moved to the level of narrative resolution this thread dictates, vs for how many would you have brought out the dice?”. Which is to say, “would you normally have resolved this as CaW or CaS?”. Or perhaps the focus of the question is meant to be more about the feel of this specific level of calibration; ie, “did this specific break point cause issues for the system?” Or perhaps it’s a system outcome variance question; ie, “how different would / could your answer have looked if you had rolled things out?”. Or maybe it’s even a question of how integral random chance is to the expected play experience; ie, “how many times did it feel like you weren’t playing <system> any more simply because you didn’t pull out the dice?”.

These different questions will produce different results; more importantly for my lazy self, they’ll require looking at different facets of play, and I’d rather not waste effort generating an unwanted answer.

So, for the systems where it didn’t feel weird to always be in a diceless CaW mode, there’s different reasons for that.

Paradox 1e don’t feel off as pure CaW, because the switch from dice to diceless didn’t change how I play it: layered Contingency plans, with an eye towards flexibility “in the moment”, to all but ensure that something works. If I had taken it as “atomic actions automatically fail unless 75% success”, the world would fall apart, because literally nobody in the world would ever succeed at any rolls to do anything, except my character would succeed at telepathy, and a few “high level” experts would succeed at their specialty. People not only wouldn’t wear their pants on their heads, they wouldn’t even wear pants, because almost nobody could ever succeed at crafting pants in the first place.

Paradox 2e… well, that was primarily a matter of the… not the build of the character, but the character of the character. Everyone who “took the default build options” (ie, who didn’t have something weird on their character sheet, like the telepathic vampire’s “blood is mana” rule) could do exactly the same thing, just nobody did. So if I played a character with a different personality… I assume gameplay would default back to Paradox 1e “layered contingencies” mode. So still not weird, just more math than the simple 1e percentile system produces to figure out which Contingency broke the “75%” limit. Shrug.

And MtG, obviously, wasn’t something where I was accustomed to using Rule books and dice to resolve outcomes.

And this brings up several other conversations. Like “active vs passive challenges”. Simply put, all of these challenges felt fairly static; none of them really felt like there was speed to be an active, sentient opponent responding to the PC(s) (although the Wizard in the boat challenge felt like they easily could have gone that route), or really even anybody reacting to the PCs actions or acting on their own agendas in any way that would make for a moving target of any sort. Such static/passive challenges are much better suited to CaW, and are much easier to get someone else to resolve, but it is worth pointing out that limiting the questions to static challenges skews the data/results somewhat. Which is related to your second item:

Necessity of the GM

So, here’s the thing: active challenges are very GM-dependent. However, when dealing with passive challenges like those given, it is almost certainly a case of barking up the wrong tree to just wholesale attribute scenario questions to “the system needs a GM”. Here are a few much more likely causes of this state:

• Lacking NPC write up. Many questions would be really easy to answer if only the NPC (or other scenario element) had defined stats. And such stats certainly could be included in the module. At best, this is a question of “how much module detail does this scenario require”, or “is the system based on opposed rolls / challenge DCs that are variable by target or subject”.
• Lacking PC write up. Ok, this is probably mostly a me thing, as I was too lazy / rushed / book deprived to come to the thread with finished characters.
• Scale too large. If the PCs are in control of a spaceship, and in the course of the adventure they land on the moon and get into a fight (in a system where terrain matters), the module isn’t going to have detailed the entire moon. So, sometimes, the scope of the scenario necessitates GM intervention. If the system finds such scope to produce variable results in that system. At best, things in this category could be used to evaluate how detail-oriented the system is (ie, does it care about terrain specifics, or is a more narrative handling of that adequate), which admittedly has a high correlation with the system requiring a GM, but the two should not be conflated.
• Too many options to detail them all. Sometimes, there are just too many valid approaches to a scenario to comment on them all. And characters in one system - or just one specific character in that system - might tend towards the unmentioned options. Which wouldn’t be as likely to skew the data if the scenario has been designed and worded with the system in mind. Or it could be a player thing, where the particular player tends towards options other than those the GM / scenario designer detailed ahead of time. For things in that set, I could meaningfully compare my characters to each other, but not to ones other people ran.
• Character has unexpected ability / idea / approach. Rather than just being System- or player-specific, it could be an attribute of the character that they tend towards solutions other than those the scenario was designed to accommodate. Just look at how different Cutter Fyord is than, well, anyone else ever, despite the fact that Paradox 2e would likely “successfully compile” any other character’s stated actions.
• Scenario poorly suited to module play. While there’s a lot I could say here, this is probably the one place where different systems actually have meaningful differences in how they handle telling two stories that share absolutely nothing in common besides the starting state.

So as much as “how many times did you feel like you needed a GM?” sounds like a solid data point, I’m leery of basing too many conclusions on that broad data point, especially conclusions that start with the bias of “this means that the system requires a GM”.

Also, the number of times per scenario that this came up seems a relevant data point.

Whew, that was long.

I guess I’ll stop there for now.

[NichG]

Thanks everyone who participated for playing!

As Quertus mentioned (thanks for posting that by the way, was travelling the last week...), there's a number of metrics I was curious about evaluating. There is of course the qualitative analysis aspect but it might also be interesting to do things as a simple count, e.g. 'out of all 6 scenarios, in how many of them would the system ...?'

But, qualitatively and reading people's posts, I've noticed certain motifs though I don't know if I'd say they're because of the system or the particular builds in play:

- Most strongly with Paradox (I think?), in some systems/builds you can basically ignore the details of the scenario and use a character's standard operating procedure at the mechanical level plus just having to describe something at the player level to resolve 'basically any situation'. E.g. you have the ability to author your own contact surface with whatever is going on, but it costs a resource, so given a standard operating procedure to farm that resource and enough time to do it, you can 'do your thing' and contact the scenario.

- Certain systems seem very fundamentally tied to randomness (Paranoia gear loadouts), to the extent that the dice decide 'whether its even going to be possible for the character to succeed' in the sense of determining what tools the character has to work with, not just 'does the character succeed?'

- There was a variety of topologies of how 'resolving a scenario' looks, though again I don't know that I can pin these to systems in particular. You have the 'solve in one step' topology, the 'multiple (deterministically ordered) sequential steps' topology, the 'multiple parallel attempts of which only one needs to work' topology

Interestingly to me, I don't think a single character/system/player/GM/scenario combo played out 'the way I had imagined play to go' - not just in terms of the details, but also in terms of the overall structure of play. Like, which things people thought would depend on each-other, what sub-questions would need to be answered, etc. In part this is probably because of the self-GM aspect of the game.

In that vein, people reacted in a lot of different ways to the self-GM aspect of this, which surprised me in some fashion. I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened. At the same time, I did expect people to write in details for e.g. NPCs or other such things that they found they needed, which tended not to happen. None of that is bad! But it does suggest that if I were to do another one of these in the future, it might be worth spilling more ink talking about the whole self-GM part of the exercise and giving examples or at least using a different metaphor than standard table-top play to explain it (describing it more as a CYOA writing exercise maybe?)

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

Anyhow, if anyone wants a bonus scenario:

Spoiler: Bonus

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After everything, your six clones from each of the six scenarios are invited to a wrap-up party that lasts 3 hours, and takes place in an extradimensional ballroom with a curious device where the orchestra would normally be. It is explained that this device would allow any subsets of clones to fuse their bodies, minds, and abilities. After the end of the party, any clones/bodies left alive can be sent wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire. Clones gain any bonuses for successful completion of their scenarios (or things gained in the process/lost in the process) as promised - e.g. successful clones at scenario #3 get to attend the party as ascended deities.

What happens when you meet yourselves?

[Quertus]

though I don't know if I'd say they're because of the system or the particular builds in play:

- Most strongly with Paradox (I think?), in some systems/builds you can basically ignore the details of the scenario and use a character's standard operating procedure at the mechanical level plus just having to describe something at the player level to resolve 'basically any situation'. E.g. you have the ability to author your own contact surface with whatever is going on, but it costs a resource, so given a standard operating procedure to farm that resource and enough time to do it, you can 'do your thing' and contact the scenario.

Ah, good question. Before I forget, “always do the same thing in basically any situation, generally involving farming resources” is how I’d describe how Fate sounds.

So, Paradox was intended as a universal system, where the PCs could be in Star Trek one session, D&D the next, and then move on to talk to friend computer, all while seamlessly playing the same character. As such, the rules were… somewhat generalized? Like, most mages (in 1e) literally had a skill named “Magic” - if they hailed from a D&D ripoff, their players would have them use their cast very D&D-like spells; if they were from a Harry Potter ripoff, their players would have them cast very Harry Potter-esque spells, etc. But statistically, the two characters might be exactly the same. Well… one might choose to have special rules like “Spell book” and “memorize spells”, while the other might have special rules “Wand focus” or something.

Anyway, as (I think) I said earlier, I tend towards building specialists, characters who tend to “stay in their lane” as a way to automatically / organically promote spotlight sharing in team play. So even in Paradox, my “mage” characters tend to be specialists: the telepath, and the “very slow ritual magic, focused on creation / summons” (even though mechanically the 2e character wasn’t limited to that). Thing is, I’ve played both these characters, and they’re among my favorite characters. So I’m pretty good at using those abilities to achieve my goals. Put another way, despite the fact that I thought I was pretty good with “Matter transmutation”, if you gave me a Matter transmutation mage in Paradox, I’d struggle in the same places (such as creating a new layer of hell) in Paradox as I did with the M&M character. It’s a product of the surface area of the abilities, and my aptitude with each.

Point is, “always attempts the same thing” is a characteristic of my style of play, and of my style of characters. The vampire… in “normal” play actually favors talk / run / hide, viewing telepathy as an expensive, hunger-inducing last resort / trump card, and “fight” (most of the other PCs go-to action) as something that gets vampires killed, and a good reason to use that talk / run / hide / telepathy to get out of it. However, this scenario being solo play, generally larger objectives, and being focused on “how would this system handle this?” distorts things from normal.

Farming resources… for 1e, that was very much a product of the character build - nobody else could really “farm resources” that way. For 2e, technically every single character could do exactly the same thing as Cutter (assuming they didn’t take special rules saying that they couldn’t), but for some reason, most characters don’t default to “attempt a lengthy ritual spell” as their default action, especially in the middle of combat. But, yes, “ritual spells” in 2e were accomplished by farming for resources. There weren’t special rules for this, I was just the only person who ever “built up mana” to “hit a higher DC”, to put it in common parlance. I guess that’s almost the equivalent of saying, “I was the only person in Fate who ever created an advantage”? Because, mechanically, they seem similar to me.

Then there’s the “rules” of the thread - you asked us to bring Omnicompetent (my words, not yours - you probably said something like “generalists” or something) characters, and the infamous 75% rule. That, and hitting the character limit, meant I didn’t spend much virtual ink detailing the characters’ failed attempts, unless they would impact the flow of events. I generally skipped to the “how could they succeed” part of the conversation.

So, short answer, while Paradox 1e has wide surfaces, they often were concepts like “D&D Magic”, so individually aren’t wider than any other RPG; “resource farming” was a product of the character; and “attempt stacking” was the logical flow of the game. In 2e, one could very much “author their own contact surface”, but the DC was too high without repeatedly “creating an advantage” / “resource farming”, so nobody but me used it; attempt stacking was (I believe) the logical flow if you weren’t busy creating an advantage.

EDIT: oh hahaha, I think I get it - the “build up mana” option in Paradox 2e isn’t explicitly labeled the “build up mana action”, and the way Cutter approaches taking that action is obfuscated by his own distinct style (which hides a subtle bit of optimization). Cutter is just taking the “build up mana” / “create an advantage” action until he has about twice as much “advantage” as he needs to hit the DC of his intended action. That’s all that’s really going on with Cutter. Which is something nobody else who played Paradox 2e (in my presence, at least) ever bothered to do. That’s probably why you think Paradox involves “ignoring the scenario and writing your own content” (or however you said it), because his “creating an advantage” / building up mana looks entirely unrelated to the scenario.

EDIT2: in Paradox 1e, most characters refreshed their mana daily; my vampire lost mana daily, and refreshed mana by drinking blood. In Paradox 2e, everyone… lost all mana… daily? Every encounter? (I just remember “started with 0 mana” as the important bit), and gained mana (functionally, “advantage”, I think, but not tied to a specific cause or event) through specific circumstances that nobody else bothered to intentionally trigger because spells were just skill checks with set DCs; ie, spells didn’t “cost” mana, mana was just a resource one could use to make any checks easier (mechanically, to get additional dice to add to the roll).

- There was a variety of topologies of how 'resolving a scenario' looks, though again I don't know that I can pin these to systems in particular. You have the 'solve in one step' topology, the 'multiple (deterministically ordered) sequential steps' topology, the 'multiple parallel attempts of which only one needs to work' topology

And multiple steps in somewhat random order? And (important for if the dice get added back in) flow charts of steps and contingency plans?

. I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened.

And I’m glad they did - I looked forward to such scenario rewrites at least as much as I did the actual responses.

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

Oh, it would have been very different for me. I wouldn’t have brought nearly as many characters. I would have brought out the dice (and used them even more than in an actual game). I would have only chosen existing characters with established, well defined personalities - or, at least, have been very leery of doing otherwise. I would have had a very different focus: instead of focusing on “solving the problem” and “showcasing the system” / comparing this character to others in the same system, I would have focused on roleplaying and…not so much the quality as the clarity of the writing.

And, yes, as my previous experience with creating “single” author fiction from modules tells me, I would have been much more open to creating new content to make the module work.

[NichG]

Then there’s the “rules” of the thread - you asked us to bring Omnicompetent (my words, not yours - you probably said something like “generalists” or something) characters, and the infamous 75% rule. That, and hitting the character limit, meant I didn’t spend much virtual ink detailing the characters’ failed attempts, unless they would impact the flow of events. I generally skipped to the “how could they succeed” part of the conversation.

I intentionally didn't give my own examples of how I would have answered the scenarios to not taint the experiment, but (at least from my mentality) the 75% rule almost doesn't do anything ever because its just an excuse to not actually have to roll, and in play I almost never bother to even consider trying things with less than a 75% success rate unless stuff has gone seriously wrong and its a hail mary to get things back on track. So that's a very big difference in my play experiences compared to others I think!

For example, taking an early-game Franklin Penrose from a heavily modded kitchen sink World of Darkness campaign I played in, and applying him to say the 'save the kingdom' scenario, this is what my answer would have been:

Spoiler: Character Mechanics

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In this campaign, everyone started human and basically adopted a supernatural type (or more than one) as the game progressed, expending a dramatic editing resource called for lack of a better term Sark (after the Isle of Sark) that we didn't know we had, in order to change the rules of reality to allow a given supernatural type 'back in' after they had all been wiped out. Penrose was stubbornly 'I'm going to just use Science!!! on the supernatural and not go and just become a vampire or exalt or whatnot', and there was a whole series of subsystems of what one might call natural magic - magic that worked just because it was how the world worked and not because it was done by someone with a certain supernatural type.

Penrose basically went all-in on those related skills, which let him effectively start from 'we are stranded on an abandoned island with the contents of a hotel' and eventually build things like shuttlecraft, massive AI-powered supercomputers, mining robots, time machines, etc. While rolls could be involved in some of these things, they were largely repeatable or just determined how long things would take, and crafting largely was a threshold system - do you have the 4th rank of Metallurgy? Then you can make new magical alloys. Etc.

The major natural magics Penrose had access to before the midgame where he basically massively powered up in a way that would make the scenario uninteresting were:

- Ectomorphing: The analysis, extraction, storage, transportation, and phase-changing of special spectral essences from natural sources: ROYGBIV + UV, IR, other exotics each did a different thing as raw energy, versus when infused into a proper receiving metal. IR = Berserk mutation, Red = Heat, Orange = ???, Yellow = Light, Green = Plant growth, Blue = Telepathic static/mental interference, Indigo = Dimensional effects, Violet = Animates natural things/ensoulment/creates spirits, UV = Turns matter into information. Essences naturally occur as a gas which fluoresce in the presence of an electron beam, but if compressed can take on liquid or solid phases (the solid phase is stable as long as the crystal is unbroken, but releases everything as gas phase when disturbed). There are some 'higher tier' essences as well which aren't relevant at this stage of the game.

- Metallurgy: So much stuff! Basically, all metals when infused with the appropriate corresponding spectral essence gain the permanent property of manifesting a particular effect when placed within an 'aetheric current' (which can be produced by a closed ring of gold in the presence of ambient magic - and yes you can make coils like an electromagnet to amp this way up, or by a special rune). Elemental metals all do something, some rare alloys do something, and some rare crystals (quartz in particular creates a kind of 'universal information adapter' that is extremely important to most of Penrose's tech) can do something. Too many to go through, but you've got stuff like changing the mass of nearby matter, drawing or releasing heat, converting aetheric current to electrical current, as well as 'allowing nearby thought to influence the motion of mechanical joints' - magical Tin basically lets you become a cheap necromancer by physically puppetting a corpse, or you can use it to make a robosuit you drive with your mind, etc, etc. Metals all impact things in a radius around them, rather than the just the metal object itself.

- Sacred Geometry: Runes. These are patterns which when scribed precisely and powered by aetheric winds will spontaneously manifest particular effects on whatever they're scribed on. Stuff like 'converts aetheric wind to momentum' or 'causes object to explode' or 'puts things to sleep' or 'causes things to stick together at the rune surface' or 'modifies the shape of a metal-produced field' or 'transmits effects applying to an object bearing one version of the rune to another object bearing the conjugate rune' or 'create a portal connecting two locations bearing the rune' or 'captures runic effects from an object and applies them to something the object touches'.

- Golemcrafting: Basically a skill whose ranks determine the stats of robots/AIs/minions crafted in detail by the other stuff.

- Wandmaking: Roughly speaking, lets you make and use a focus where up to the power of the focus, you can say something that has to be a fake phrase in another language that sounds like it means something but doesn't actually mean anything. According to what the GM thinks you meant, something happens. If it turns out to be a real phrase in any language, nothing happens. But the results are repeatable. New spells are not really relevant for this scenario because they're GM dependent, but this gives Penrose some convenience effects like 'make friends with a thing', 'repair a broken thing', 'clean a thing', 'soften materials', 'glue two things together', 'speak all languages', 'transfer a memory to someone', 'make a glowing stone', 'create an 8000 degree orbital laser strike at target location' (e.g. 'the only attack action I'll ever need' when I found that one). There's... significantly nastier/weirder ones that came up later-game, but I'm not going to go there for this scenario.

So, what Penrose would do given a year to make a shining civilization...

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- Hope he can find some small amounts of gold and wood to make a basic wand, to teach himself the language everyone is speaking. If no gold can be found, use the 'aetheric wind' rune and try to jerry-rig a single spellcast from a one-use disposable wand. This might involve a roll, so he spends Willpower to get an automatic success, moving on. He's rolling 9 dice anyhow (well, roughly working backwards on stats/skills he would be...)
- Get personal-scale quantities of silver and gold to start extracting essences, begin the teching-up cycle. A silver bowl lets him make concentrated enough essence to charge other metals (silver is impermeable to essences), but isn't enough to make solid essence crystals.
- Acquire and charge Tin, make a bunch of robots to basically take over all the manual labor requirements of the population, build larger/more sophisticated tools like a pressurized essence chamber to make solids.
- Use violet essence on the entire freaking desert to basically make a collective-intelligence nanite swarm (violet essence + quartz combo). Not actually as dangerous as it sounds since the sand grains can't exert very much force, not having any natural joints or movement; but this gives him basically as big of a supercomputer as he'd ever need to manage his robots in his stead.
- Solid green essence can be used to supercharge the growth of plants, so we can use that to get some farming going.
- Antimony + Orange essence is really useful to begin chemical and metallurgical processing. It causes mixtures to separate into pure compounds in the presence of aetheric wind, so if you melt ore/metal in its presence you can get very pure refined metals.
- If we can locate and extract some mercury with the mining-bots, Mercury + Red Essence + Aetheric Wind cools areas. Iron + Red Essence lets us heat areas. So we have easy air conditioning. Activated Cobalt lets you 'copy' the temperature of one object to another, so we can use this to do large-scale refrigeration.
- Aluminum + Yellow essence causes the inertia of objects in the field to be reduced, so by alternating this and having something like a flow of water in a circle around it, you can basically create a drive that violates conservation of momentum and has no inputs/outputs. So we can use this to make drones, flying vehicles, etc.
- It's eventually possible to replace the green essence crystals for plant growth with permanent installations using an alloy of gold, silver, essence-activated calcium ('true electrum') further activated with green essence.
- If we need weapons to defend ourselves versus the locals, we can use runes to make exploding drones, kinetic railgun like weapons, etc that can all be controlled by our AI-desert. So this is solved.
- If we need products to trade with neighbors, we have all of this tech and we can keep the true power source secret (the aetheric wind rune) and just sell 'batteries' in the form of condensed aether crystals.

What if we want to actually find and solve the underlying issue? Penrose would take a bunch of temperature measurements and triangulate the epicenter, correcting for altitude and weather (thanks desert-AI!). Once in the neighborhood, its time to build an 'aetheric double-polarizer'. This is basically two panes of polarized glass with a particular color of aether crystal in between. Different colors visualize different things. In this case, Indigo (dimensional effects) might return a reading, or it might actually take a UV crystal which in the aligned-polarized configuration specifically detects 'dimensional warping' and in the cross-polarized configuration detects 'portals from platonic reality to normal reality'. So that plus excavator robots means we eventually find the portal.

How to close it? Well, it turned out that an alloy (amalgam?) of manganese and mercury, when aetherically activated and powered, creates a really frightening material which becomes colder the more energy is deposited into it. The specific mechanism of action is that its basically creates microscopic portals to a voidspace within the area that only allow energy to pass, and which grow bigger the more energy passes through them. So basically you could make a Stargate style iris out of this stuff and build it around the portal, using the portal itself to power the thing which dissipates it in a feedback loop. Depending on the GM, this might eventually extinguish the Plane of Fire which some might argue would be bad. But probably not soon!

Alternately, the non-Ice-9 solution would just be to mess with the portal. Several of the metals interact with this kind of thing. Osmium+Gold can be used to form spatial portals in the right configuration (on its own Osmium 'deforms the fabric of spacetime to make things heavier', but you can basically make a wormhole with this used correctly), so basically trying to create a portal on top of the planar portal might disrupt it or 'do something to it'. Aetherically charged silver (or better yet, platinum) can be used to create a kind of ward against magical things so you might be able to contain the portal that way.

Alternately alternately, hey this thing is cool, lets just build a research lab around it.

In contrast, what Penrose would have done in the 'the model ship burned down scenario' would have been much simpler:

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Since I have not been separated from my resources, I have a time machine. Go back and move the ship before the lightning strike. Done.

So a lot of variance there...

And multiple steps in somewhat random order? And (important for if the dice get added back in) flow charts of steps and contingency plans?

I think practically speaking there wasn't that much of 'bushy tree' type plans just because of the amount of text it would entail. Where there were contingencies, I felt like it was either 'here is the one important branch' or 'here are a bunch of parallel things that aren't interdependent on each-other and I only need one to work'. You would see more bushy trees (or at least the spine of a bushy tree?) in actual play I guess where people might make it two or three steps down a given plan before the entire thing collapses and they have to go back to scratch. But even then I'm not sure the meta consideration of 'its boring when stuff stalls out' would really allow too much of that to manifest even in real play...

[Telok]

Thanks everyone who participated for playing!...

... Certain systems seem very fundamentally tied to randomness (Paranoia gear loadouts), to the extent that the dice decide 'whether its even going to be possible for the character to succeed' in the sense of determining what tools the character has to work with, not just 'does the character succeed?'...

...I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened.

Hey, it was fun!

Paranoia especially has a thing where the whole game conceit is that you're playing a regular person (plus lol-random mutation & secret society indoctrination) in an impossible situation and are set up to fail by everyone. Played straight without humor it's depressing (it's a valid optional play style but you need some optional rules toggled to specific things in order to make it work). But these scenarios are aimed at generally highly capable special flower characters. So any Paranoia character basically can't effectively interact with them unless they're given special permission.

But the Paranoia system explicitly says at the meta/GMing level to give exactly that. As GM you're supposed to give them R&D toys that'll let them do the mission, if it's natively impossible for the character. Granted, the R&D gear is also supposed to be glitchy, undocumented, hazardous to the user's health, and fail-dangerous (opposite of fail-safe). Really I should have been giving Paranoid Bob R&D gear tailored to maximun mayhem and comedy for each mission, but I only really did so for the last. R&D gear in Paranoia isn't supposed to be fully random (about half is a good rando level), but lovingly hand crafted for each mission to make the players want and need to use it despite knowing that there's some inescapable and darkly humorous tragic flaw that will come out at the funniest/worst possible moment.

It isn't a "neutral arbiter GM" game. You're actually intended to be working against the players, not in the bad "******* tween on a power trip" way, but trying to engineer reasonable situations where characters turn on each other or take desperate risky measures. The trick is that you're trying to spread it fairly across the table and do it in such a way that it's funny so everyone can have a laugh. And that meta level, the give and take of perversity points, using ooc knowledge without getting caught out, the focus on "funny>winning", is integral to the game in a mechanical/rules way that it isn't in other games.

Which was also sort of the reason for the rewriting scenarios to fit. The Paranoia system is part of the setting and vice versa. That's why the "copy of Paranoia Bob in D&D-land" thing is an auto-fail. Once PB is out of the setting the character basically becomes mostly non-functional for it. PB is an ordinary (ok, except for the mutation) person with attributes that just don't work outside that dedicated integrated system & setting.

Sort of like why I wouldn't use Amber Diceless for this. That game isn't about these sorts of set ups so they're all trivially solved in that system just by walking around. By definition any scenario happens somewhere in a Shadow and a character just walks to an adjacent spot where everything is exactly the same except for one little detail, which can be literally anything the character wants. And the only opposition is another Amberite character. That first one with the lich? One of an infinite number of Shadows. Character walks out of the room and back in. Now it's real that the lich's magic is fatally flawed and all fails so there's no problem. Or that the lich is a pacifist and didn't set a bomb, or the attack simply never happened. Any of an infinite set of possibilities in an infinite variety of Shadows. And that's just the first basic character ability in the game.

So Dungeons the Dragoning? D&D junk fits fine (hey lets go wight-pocalypse Krynn for fun and farm tarrasques as torpedo warheads) but the entire setting is operating at a higher power/optimization level than most of the given scenes. Traveller & Paranoia? Many of the given scenes don't even compute or function without translation, they're garbage in = garbage out without rewriting.

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Bonus:
Diplomat Bob(s) compare notes and try to take the machine with them. Combining and alternate realities is useless to them.
Gun Whore Bob(s) party party party! If the machine isn't blown up by stray machine gun fire during the party they try to take it home for a trace back to the bugger who engineered all this so they can introduce them to a proctological power fist health exam.
Travelling Bob(s) does some quick note comparing, spends most of the time analyzing the machine, combines, goes back to whichever reality they ended up richest in.
Paranoid Bobs mostly just swear a lot. Do you know how much paperwork and form filling this is going to cause? And it's not like the Computer is going to increase our food or housing allowance just because some idiot at the cloning tanks screwed up and decanted all PB's clones at once. This happened to Paranoid Sam last year-cycle and PS is still sleeping three to a bunk even after turning in half their selves for treason.