World on Fire: After Dark[OOC]

[Psion]

This is the Out of Character (OOC) thread for the Spycraft: World on Fire PbP. At this time, the participating players (and their character concepts) are:

Glimmerrat: EXCALIBUR, Sleek Commando Pointman 3
Ixthith: FACELESS, Witty Grifter Faceman 3
Lorelei: LORELEI, Brainy Spy Intruder 3
Phoenyx: MUNIN, Gifted Prodigy Hacker 1 / Soldier 2
Quicklift: SWARM, Orphaned Student Scientist 3
spinningdice: VIENNA, Privledged Thrill-Seeker Hacker 2 / Wheelman 1
nfactor13: WEBWORM, Charismatic Collector Lawman 3

This thread is for out-of-character discussion; I'll be opening a new thread for in-character discussion soon. The next post in this thread will detail house rules and posting conventions.

[Psion]

Special Rules and Conventions for Online Play:

*UNDER CONSTRUCTION*

I'm adapting this from an old PbP, so let me know if anything looks wrong.

Posting Conventions

• Posting Frequency: Plan on posting at least 3 days a week. During combats, pay special attention to ensure we aren't waiting on you or leave sufficient instructions to continue in your absence if you will be gone a few days.
  
• Planned progress: I would like to do a scene a week; keep this in mind.
  
• Posting Style: My preference is present tense, third person. 'Marlowe raises his gun to shoot the thug on the left', not 'I shot the thug on the left'.
  
• Use of "spoiler" tags: Enclose mechanical text and other short out of character notes in spoiler blocks, including (if appropriate), a mechanics translation of what you just did. Character actions are appropriate in the IC thread in spoiler tags. Extended discussion or questions are for the OOC thread.
  
• Anticipatory actions: Where appropriate, post your immediate intentions for your character before you are done posting for the day, ESPECIALLY if you expect to be gone for a few days. Use if/then statements where appropriate. This can also be as simple as stating you will accompany a particular character. This allows the GC to move things along if it becomes necessary.
  

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Rules Related Conventions and Adjustments

• Random rolls: All players are required to use invisible castle for "active" random rolls. Whenever a roll is called for, link the roll results in the sblock where you describe the outcome.
  
• (more invisible castle guidance): When filling out the invisible castle roll dice form, fill the name in with SPY: codename, where codename is your character's codename. Also make sure to fill in the note section with a short description of what the roll is.
  
• Active/Secret/Passive checks: Read page 89 of the Spycraft book regarding Active, Passive, and Secret checks. Players are expected to resolve all active rolls themselves. The GC (me) will resolve all passive and secret checks and I won't necessarily disclose the roll or make the name predictable. If you post an action that would require an active check, but don't post the invisible castle roll in the same post, I will resolve the roll for you. Gotta keep the game moving.
  
• Action dice: The Spycraft 2.0 book recommends that the GM award 1 action dice every 20-30 minutes of play. This timescale isn't too meaningful with PbP game. The guideline I intend to follow is 1 action dice per day in which there are posts. Logically, these action dice will go to one of the players who has posted. So let this be an encouragement to contribute as much as you can.
  
• Initiative and Combat Timing: This is the most extreme rules modification, but I consider it essential in speeding online play. After initiative is rolled, players may announce and resolve their actions in any order as long as they act before the next enemy acts. After the first round is resolved, this generally means that all players will be resolved, then the single enemy group, then repeat ad infinitum, but some conditions like initiative actions and abilities can affect this.
  
• Combat posting style: When in combat and posting for your action, post your attempted actions on different lines. Post the game mechanic breakdown of the action on separate lines, along with rolls. Use spoiler tags, as described above. Prefix each action with the "[H1]" or "[H2]" for the first and second half action, "[F]" for a full round action, and "[fr]" for a free action. Feel free to precede the mechanical text with a short bit of descriptive text outside the sblock.
  

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Additional Player Requirements:

• Find an image for your character to be used to identify your character in posts, and as a counter when I generate maps. We would like to use real photographs for this game. I can provide some pictures, or you can fish around flickr, stock.xchg, imdb, GIS, what have you. Please don't use famous/instatly recognizable celebrities, etc., as character pictures.
  

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Chargen Guidelines

• House Rules: Note the house rule list below when making characers, especially for chargen and reputation.
  
• Classes: Classes listed for espionage and conspiracy campaign (advocate, fixer, faceman, hacker, intruder, pointman, scientist, sleuth, snoop) are recommended. Fixer from World on Fire is a good option too. Please limit levels in the Soldier or Martial Artist class to 1/2 your total starting level (round up). I don't want a straight combat team. Even if your character has a military background, they likely would have some special ops training; class levels of soldier should be balanced with scout, intruder, or pointman to best represent the covert nature of the team.
  
• Sources: Spycraft 2.0 core book and World on Fire are the main sources. I will also consider options from Practice Makes Perfect or the Agent X series.
  

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House Rules

• Luck be a lady - (Semi-random stats) As an option, players may use card based attribute generation instead of the standard point buy system. See the Organic Characters quality below.
  
• No (vitality) dice - Use the lspy rules for vitality, i.e., half dice max, rounded up, max at first. (This is really N/A since we are using Fragile anyways.)
  
• The synergy rules is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules - The skill synergy table is basically just a suggestion. The GC may assign synergy skills to a given check depending on the situation; these may or may not match up with the synergy tables. This does not include special synergies granted by feats; these always apply.
  
• Skill caps, too - I keep the 0 rank skill cap in mind as well as skill caps from Cultures ranks, but otherwise hand-wave skill caps unless I know it's going to be an issue.
  
• No cunning linguists - Instead of letting characters that share cultures foci automatically communicate, for each cultures focus or forte, the character gets one language from that area that don't require rolls, and then can make rolls to communicate as normal with other characters from the focus region. Characters that share cultures focuses don't apply the regional penalty to their cultures roll as listed in the SC 2.0 book.
  
• The boys back at HQ - Characters use analysis skill in the place of search skill checks for reconnaissance picks.
  
• Try before you buy - (Request checks) I consider the cost for request checks to be pretty steep. Players only define the general nature of what they want and use a reserve gear pick before they roll. If the roll fails, the action dice cost is not paid. If the nature of their request exists in different calibers, then they can decide whether to spend the action dice and how many are spent after the roll. (e.g., if the players ask for a cover identity, they spend the reserve pick and roll a "23". The characters may then spend 0, 1, or 2 action points to receive no cover identity, Cal I (PR1), or Cal II (PR2) respectively.)
  
• Guns don't kill people... oh wait, yes they do. - The attack penalty for shooting into or out of melee is halved, but add an additional one to the error range for each in this situation.
  
• That geeky little thing you do - At the GC's discretion, a knowledge check may be defined to be "specialized knowledge" related to a given interest or focus. In this case, if the character lacks the given focus or interest, it is treated as a skill check without the appropriate focus (i.e., half your levels when making the knowledge check.)
  

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Campaign Qualities
The campaign will be run using the campaign qualities Allegiance(WoF), Faction, Fast Growth, and Fragile qualities, as well as new qualities Organic Characters, Professional Esteem, and a modified version of Modular quality. These are just the "Seasons Only" qualities that apply and affect chargen; there will be other qualities that apply to given missions.

See below for a rules summary of the new and modified qualities:

(click to show/hide)

We will be using these Campaign Qualities that affect character generation:

• Allegiance- As described in World on Fire, all characters have an Allegiance. For this game, that Allegiance may be IPS, Banshee Net, Shadow Patriot, and Neutral.
  
• Faction-All PCs are part of the Institute for Policy Studies Faction.
  
• Organic Characters (Optional)(+0xp, Seasons Only): Players may use card based stat gen to create characters. See card based stat gen, below.
• Modular (Modified) -During character creation, a player may gain 1 additional feat by subtracting 1 point from 2 odd attributes. Alternately, the player may give 1 feat choices to gain 1 point in each of 2 odd attributes. This is a modification of the Modular quality in the book.
  Professional Esteem (+0xp, seasons only): The Agents' reputation in their background carries weight in the world of the Great Game. Each agent's starting reputation is equal to their ranks in the profession skill plus twice their number of profession focuses/fortes.

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(click to show/hide)

Organic Characters

If you opt to use “card based stat gen”, this is how it is done. Note that in the online situation, I'll simply make excel deal the cards and give you the numbers.

Note that using this method, some players may get more odd attributes than others; the modified Modular quality lets you make use of those points.

1) Take 2 of each of the following cards out of a deck of cards: 4,5,6,7,8,9. Use these to create a mini deck of 12 cards.
2) Shuffle and deal the cards out in pairs. Add the numbers together to create a stat number.
3) Arrange these stats from highest to lowest; add +1 to the 2nd, 4th, and 6th highest stats.
4) Assign these stats to the 6 ability scores in any order you desire.

[Psion]

Alright, looks okay re-reading it.

Everyone, please note I decided to go with the Fragile quality. PbPs are invariably slow, and this might help speed it up a bit.

Please use this thread for out of character discussion from here on out.

Please note that during the week (unless it's a us holiday), my access to the forums is limited during the workday US EDT.

I've got to take a bit of a break. I'll give you folks a bit to digest this, and I'll hopefull post the IC threat with the first intel phase post tonight. Let me know if you have unresolved background questions.

IPS background note:
As discussed in the agency background section, IPS maintains a public face as a think-tank. It seems to me that of the given character concepts, MUNIN and SWARM might have originally been part of the think tank and got pulled into the secret "espionage" arm of IPS as they learned more or distinguished themselves. The remaining characters were probably recruited explicitly for espionage work.

[Psion]

Quicklift... can you finish up your character's personal details... real name, age, appearance, etc.

[Pheonyx]

Would these be too "famous" for pictures of Munin?





Just add some yellow John Lennon style sunglasses and Lauren Lee Smith from the original CSI would be a perfect Munin.

Ashes to ashes,
Pheonyx

[Psion]

I'm probably not going to get the IC thread tonight, folks. Please keep those last character details coming.

Would these be too "famous" for pictures of Munin?

That's probably safe. At least it doesn't trigger continuous triggers for me (like my last PbP which had Ron White and Angelina Jolie as agents.)

[glimmerrat]

For some reason I read Ron White and Ron Jeremy popped into my head... i'll search for a picture of my character, but I seem to be surrounded by the beautiful people at the moment. Spys? We look like a group of rockstars!

[Quicklift]

Quicklift... can you finish up your character's personal details... real name, age, appearance, etc.

I updated my char thread, sorry I hadnt seen this thread start and was waiting for a pm or something on the other thread.

Real Name:  Christopher Simons
CodeName: Swarm
Real Age:  23
Desc:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/42020192@N08/4184353504

Subplot if we are using them I would choose Nemesis.

I took down a base that someone else was creating, so it has become a game of Jenga of sorts, we each attempt to build the unbreakeable structure. 

[Psion]

I updated my char thread, sorry I hadnt seen this thread start and was waiting for a pm or something on the other thread.

No problem. I echoed the message (and put up a notice) on the other thread because I figured some folks would be monitoring by email.

[glimmerrat]

Here you go. This is Excalibur:

[Lorelei]

Bah, I'm so picky about pictures!  I've had a time finding one I like for Lorelei. >.<

Is this one ok?



It's not really what I want for her, but I guess it'll have to do... all the images I found that I really liked were either cartoons or 3d renders.

[Psion]

Bah, I'm so picky about pictures!  I've had a time finding one I like for Lorelei. >.<

Is this one ok?

(pic)

It's not really what I want for her, but I guess it'll have to do... all the images I found that I really liked were either cartoons or 3d renders.

That one is actually fairly nice for a counter, so will do nicely to start with.

Take you time finding a more general one that might convey facial features and style better. A 3d render or detailed illustration should be fine.

[Lorelei]

I'm assuming that the picture I'm using for my avatar (a larger version of it) wouldn't count as a detailed illustration?  If it will work, that's the picture I'd like to use; if not, I found a few others I liked that would work.  I'll have to look for them again, though.

[Pheonyx]

Speaking of 3D renderings, this was what I was going to use for a picture of Munin until I saw about looking for a picture of a real person (plus it gives you an idea about her glasses since I have the Photoshop skills of a gnat >.< ), courtesy of the City of Heroes/Villains character creator:



Oh, if you guys want, just call me Pheo for short... all of my City of Heroes/Villains and Cape Radio friends do already

Ashes to ashes,
Pheonyx

[spinningdice]

How I hate trying to find character portraits. After far too long searching I'm still not satisfied but it'll do.


Unless it's too recognisable?