FATE of the Liberation Union Strike Team

[WritesNaughtyStories]

1 hour ago, Icarian Dreams said:

Also, I did not quite communicate this clearly — I am not imagining my character's BioFrame as being operational after the initial scene, or in any way significantly threatening to Emily.

I have no position on what BioFrame your scion ends up with beyond the one you like. If that's the lonely one back at the Firebase, groovy. If that's trucking off behind Scyllia in one you had all along, great. If one gets delivered tomorrow morning, also cool. If there's one that gets shot out from under you and you take something else, that's just as good.

Scyllia is tiny, less than half the size of most other BioFrames. There is no stand-up fight that is safe for her. You will end up with a BioFrame, just not one that fights Scyllia.

Here's a thought: what if a quantum Kaiju shows up while Emily and Magda are sneaking up the river? Lots of things can happen and we'll see where the fiction leads.

Edited yesterday at 03:06 AM by WritesNaughtyStories

[Icarian Dreams]

3 minutes ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

Scyllia is tiny, less than half the size of most other BioFrames. There is no stand-up fight that is safe for her. You will end up with a BioFrame, just not one that fights Scyllia

At no point did I want to fight Scyllia.

I don't have a strong idea on what BioFrame I'll end up with yet either. Wanted to get the main character idea down first and then figure out what works both narratively and thematically. The one back at the base seems as the obvious choice, I suppose. 

6 minutes ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

Here's a thought: what if a quantum Kaiju shows up while Emily and Magda are sneaking up the river? Lots of things can happen and we'll see where the fiction leads.

Can you say a more? Does that involve me anyhow?

[WritesNaughtyStories]

It's a GM "trick" that no matter what the players do, some predetermined thing happens. The classic is in a dungeon there's an ogre. Doesn't matter what door you go through, the ogre is behind that door.

In this case, as Emily pilots Scyllia up the river a Kaiju heads out of the ocean towards your outpost. What happens next is up to you and @WickedCadrach. Magda will begin to fade into the background because with a second player she's less useful. Though I love the character and her relationship with Emily, I hate the meta of the GM having a player character.

If you are interested in playing the scion, may I suggest Fallen Hive Elite as your high concept?

[Icarian Dreams]

Ahh, the quantum ogre. I didn't make the connection. With a high-tech setting like this, my mind went to the literal

Agreed with the high concept; it's a good starting point. I should probably start thinking what her Trouble should be. Hrmm.

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Getting into the story is the big thing. Get a name and a description and jump in with a post at the outpost. We've been adding Aspects and stunts as they evolve in the fiction and I think that has worked very well.

I expect this young woman has had soft sheets, new clothes, eaten regularly (as do even the poorest citizens) and air that's warmed in winter and cooled in summer. There are comforts and safety that are part of the Hive that are not available to the Union.

For your Trouble, I would suggest things to point at being a sheltered young woman who finds herself in a very different world. Stuck between worlds is close, but doesn't quite get to the discomfort of a hardscrabble existence of living in shipping containers with people who yell, cry and fuck for all kinds of reasons. Kuzko from Emperor's New Groove comes to mind. Or a proper French lady who finds herself in a Viet Minh village in Vietnam.

How's this for why you didn't fight the Kaiju two days ago: you were with the reaction force that showed up to deal with LUST DF and were ordered to stay, "protect the outpost from Kaiju and Union rebels".

One BioFrame isn't really enough to do that job though, is it?

Edited 12 hours ago by WritesNaughtyStories
A new, reorganized and expanded edition.

[WickedCadrach]

@Icarian Dreams I'm just going to drop the GoogleDrive link for Emily's character sheet in case you want to make a copy for sorting out your fallen scion (or just to get a more mechanical grip on what Emily's already bringing to the table). 

Depending on how aggressively we want to push the Hive trying to discreetly 'execute' the scion, we could tease a villain NPC and have a Trouble like Director Tanaka Wants My Head or Lt. Faraday's Promotion Will Be Signed in My Blood. Something more general might be The Hive Has a Grave Picked Out for Me. These are a touch wordy, but you get the idea. The Stuck Between Worlds trouble is definitely something that could be tapped often, though. 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

The Price of Freedom is Treason?

[Icarian Dreams]

12 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

For your Trouble, I would suggest things to point at being a sheltered young woman who finds herself in a very different world. Stuck between worlds is close, but doesn't quite get to the discomfort of a hardscrabble existence of living in shipping containers with people who yell, cry and fuck for all kinds of reasons. Kuzko from Emperor's New Groove comes to mind. Or a proper French lady who finds herself in a Viet Minh village in Vietnam.

I have been already thinking along the lines of A fish out of water — I'm not happy with this phrasing yet either, but I think it goes in the direction of what you have in mind. (Admittedly, these sort of troubles have also some overlap with the high concept, which could arguably be invoked in similar circumstances. I think — you'd definitely know better than me whether that's the case, though)

Something like Born with a silver spoon/Raised in luxury could carry the implication just as well (and are probably even closer to the high concept), just by the virtue of being put in the circumstances you described in the game itself. At the same time — and mostly on a bit of a sidenote — I'm not sure I want to make her too sheltered; to better explain what I mean: I imagine that there is quite a bit of overlap in how people behave, with both sides being essentially two opposing extremes. Yelling, crying, and fucking for all kinds of reasons would be probably something she'd have been exposed to, not among the rabble — but among the elites she had lived between all her life. Of course that doesn't account for the sudden lack of silken sheets and brainwashed personal servants, but I think there's something to be explored with the similarities and differences of the pretend freedom that the nobility showcases in private and the rough, but arguably sincere liberty that life with the Union brings. I think the parallels are just as interesting here as the contrasts. But I'm going off on a tangent.

@WickedCadrach I do quite like your idea of bringing a face to a threat as well, at the risk of such a Trouble being harder to reliably invoke — especially with the group being already quite adversarial towards the Hive (and vice-versa) which might make the conflict a little too close to what's already, you could say, the team's trouble. I think there's something to be found here if we were to focus on more specific aspects rather than the general ones — something like Hive's chief bio-engineer wants my head in a box or something else which would similarly focus on a specific subpart of the Hive's threat. Give the antagonist a slightly more unique spin and also suggest potential areas that my character could have knowledge off by the virtue of having to defend herself from these people.

Also, here's a couple aspect ideas that just randomly came to my mind, mostly unrelated to the prior conversation. Maybe something will spark interest:

• "I used to hunt these people for sport"
• "My execution will be televised"
• "Power is the only language I know"

7 hours ago, WickedCadrach said:

I'm just going to drop the GoogleDrive link for Emily's character sheet in case you want to make a copy for sorting out your fallen scion (or just to get a more mechanical grip on what Emily's already bringing to the table). 

By the way, thank you so much for this sheet. I freaking love excel character sheets, and I'm definitely making a copy of this one to keep track of shiz. :D

13 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

How's this for why you didn't fight the Kaiju two days ago: you were with the reaction force that showed up to deal with LUST DF and were ordered to stay, "protect the outpost from Kaiju and Union rebels".

One BioFrame isn't really enough to do that job though, is it?

I don't mind this, though I'm still keen on the idea of being sent to the place under a false pretense to get rid of by the orders of someone in the Hive. I know this runs into the issues of going back on the Union's intel that the settlement is undefended, but I think there's way to work alongside that, from the intel simply not being complete, through the operation being clandestine and not really officially supposed to happen, to the character being sent to the outpost for non-military purposes and ending up trapped there (I imagine high Kaiju and Union activity would make traveling out without a larger escort difficult).

I like the idea of politics happening in the background, I like the idea of my character being unfortunately tangled in these politics by the virtue of whom she's related to (we could make that a trouble if we can word it well :p). I think the fact that me being in the outpost is unexpected is just a ripe opportunity to set up some hooks for some deeper storytelling in this direction.

22 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

If you are interested in playing the scion, may I suggest Fallen Hive Elite as your high concept?

On a side-note, how about changing the High Concept to something like Hive General's Daughter (or maybe even Hive General's Firstborn Daughter?) or Heiress to a Tech/Food/Chem-Baron? I feel like the "fallen" aspect is already implied by the virtue of the story and the circumstances she will end up in, and this could be a good opportunity to expand on what her and her family's background actually is.