Character planning and intro-ing thread

[jewelfox]

As of right now, we have four players: redsixwing, sablin27, blackswanseer, and kaesa!

EDIT: We also have a provisional fifth player, adad64!

This is the thread where you all can introduce yourselves to each other. >_>b We would like it if you would each say a little about yourselves maybe, along with the following:

• Your preferred pronouns

• Your character concept so far

You are encouraged to comment on each other's concepts, and brainstorm ways that your characters might know each other or that their stories might fit together.

Speaking of stories, here is the plot: A group of people from the past end up in the sci-fi transhumanist future. The ways that someone can do so include, but are not limited to, cryogenic stasis and reconstruction from a thanogram. You can also play as someone from a Korean generation ship isolated society, if you like, one which may be socially and technologically regressive.

Finally, you can play as someone who's from the future and has to help the newcomers adjust ... or who wants them to play a role in their plans!

So yeah, please do the brainstorming thing in this thread. >_>b Don't forget that you can subscribe to individual comment threads, here on Dreamwidth.

More answers to questions will be forthcoming, if we can deal with our IRL stresses enough to do so. ^^;

Comments

[blackswanseer]

Hello!

Pronouns: she/her

Character concept (some recap from a prior thread, sorry): Ilaria Viteri is a Peruvian-Italian woman from a future period on earth, sufficiently future that there's a complex virtual reality world-wide network (a la the Matrix of Neuromancer and similar things), AIs, etc. She herself works in the field of computational archaeology, focusing on pre- and ancient

history. She makes use of drones in her work for surveying, discovery, etc. Ilaria has great skill with computers and analysis, distilling what is discovered in the meatworld into fodder for her algorithms, models, and simulations. It is both a forward and backward approach. Data about a site or civilization can be modeled to 'fill in the gaps' so to speak and guide a search for the missing pieces. Or, collect enough information about enough iterations and extrapolate backwards to possible origins, then look for evidence of those precursors until you
can narrow in on which is the strongest candidate to be correct.

She works in that interstice between mainstream archaeology and the fringe, the latter consisting of the areas often dubbed 'alternative' or 'pseudo' archaeology. She doesn't believe aliens or magicians rendered ancient, advanced civilizations out of a breath and a wink. But she is in the camp that conventional archaeology has frequently failed to take a hard and thorough enough look at artifacts and other evidence that do not cleave well enough to established theories. Ancient technology and writing systems of ambiguous origin, anatomically-modern footprints discovered in circumstances that defy well-rooted thought on chronology, vast and complex structures that are often dismissed as tombs without sufficient evidence or rigor: there are the things that pique her interest and drive her to find better explanations. Find enough missing links and they will form a chain back to the truth - that is what Ilaria believes and what she intends to find.

She is a veeeeery driven person, which has not been without its negative consequences in her life.

I need to dig around in FATE rules and figure out what might be the equivalent to GURPS Intuitive Mathematician (can do math without a calculation, algorithms, engineering designs, etc.)

There's a notion I'm kicking around I'll put up here when I'm done trying to articulate it well enough, about a proposed phenotype/neurotype mismatch of a particular sort and see what folks think. (Or rather than being outright inborn, it could be the result of the post-cryo messing about.)

Why in a capsule? Well, there were some things she got up to in her original incarnation that could have been impetus for someone to want to get her out of the picture. This is already pretty long, so I'll finish typing up that in a bit. Suggestions are also very welcome!

If advanced alien life is a known thing in the current time of the gameworld, it would work far better if her time of origin (i.e., when the capsule came into things) predates that, otherwise that doesn't work so well for her core motivations.

And now, a question for everyone. What does "magic" mean in this world? Is there actual magic or are the things *Ascension, etc. can do in fact taking a page from Arthur C. Clarke and are they really manifestations of advanced technology? If it's real magic and not tech, has it always been around or was it a more recent discovery? (For instance, if you've played Shadowrun, something like the Awakening to the Sixth World.)

[jewelfox]

We're probably going with a "sci-fi psionics" kind of magic. >_>b There's a page about it on the wiki for SotS: The Pit. I don't think we have to port their system directly, but it might serve as inspiration. Either way, I imagine it being seen as just another kind of technology at this point.

Fate (it doesn't have to be capitalized) has the Crafts and Lore skills, to cover your science and engineering needs. And if needed we could always create another skill, or a stunt! A player in my in-person campaign actually has the Mad Science skill. ~_^

An intuitive understanding of mathematics, I would say would be part of an Aspect. Aspects aren't like "3-point advantages" that 90's-style games like World of Darkness and apparently GURPS have; they're more like the tropes that define your character. Think of the coolest possible way to describe her to someone else; that's your Aspect right there, whether it's her neurotype or an additional one.

The way it would work in play is, it informs the way you narrate her actions (you could say if she uses the Drive or Shoot skills that she's calculating trajectories in her head, if she's that kind of calculator), and if you don't roll well enough you can spend a Fate Point to invoke that Aspect, for a +2 bonus or a reroll. It just needs to be one where you can reasonably say "Because I am _____, I should be able to ______."

Of course, a good Aspect is one that I can also compel to give you more Fate Points ...

EDIT: Oh, if you want something more like a Trait / Feat / Merit / Advantage, you could always make her ability a stunt. Those do things like, let you do something else with a skill, or get a bonus to a particular use of a skill, or other things.

EDIT 2: Or a reroll. Not a +2 bonus on a reroll. -_-