Seeing as Sutch has petered out, and the Shivering Isles RP never really went anywhere, I figured I'd try a departure from the norm with a new RP idea. Pitch is below, let me know what you think.

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Las Vegas, 28th of November, 2099. As the city prepares itself for the biggest New Years party in history, one of the most powerful and importan men in Vegas is shot and killed on the street.

His name is Paulo Lazilli. For the past twenty years, he's held Vegas' underworld in an iron chokehold, undisputed king of its organised crime scene, a realm that, whilst bubbling with violence and corruption, has been contained and stabilised under his control. He controlled the casinos, the drugs, the hookers, the cybernetic smugglers, the cyberspace gangsters and Mob AIs. Now that he is dead, killed by an unknown assailant, his domain is threatening to unravel, and already there are flocks of vultures circling, ready to pick clean the corpse of this cancerous leviathan of criminality.

Vegas' other organised crime syndicates, sidelined for the past two decades, have scented opportunity and are muscling in; the Yakuza are on the move, surreptitiously shifting guns and men into Vegas with rumours abounding of one of their elite squads of cyber ronin visiting town, whilst the marginalised but vengeful Grove Street Gang have donned their green colours and are arming up for full scale war. The Mafia hunker down, preparing to weather a storm, but within their ranks Lazilli's most ambitious lieutenants are squaring up and plotting ways to take the throne. Outside of the gangs, corrupt corporate execs see this as a chance to help maximise profits, while the few good cops that remain see their chance to strike a major blow against organised crime. Vegas is a powder keg, ready to go nuclear at the slighest provocation.

Dancing on the fringes of this storm are the middlemen. Some are cybernetically-enhanced guns for hire, others hackers who can bust down firewalls and networks with a thought. Contract-thieves and assassins receive offers for work, getaway drivers are in constant demand and back-street doctors and augmen surgeons receive nightly visits. Of all the people in Vegas, some of them might just be what the gangs need to tip the scale in their favour.

It is the 1st December 2099 in Las Vegas, and as the city prepares for the biggest New Years party in history, somebody might just paint the town red.

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Okay, so the way this is going to work is that we're having a GM-run game (I am Game Master for this RP, for those of you unfamiliar with this, I will explain below). The setting is a futuristic Las Vegas with a dash of good old-fashioned Cyberpunk; cybernetic augmentions such as robotic arms or direct neural links to computers are relatively commonplace, organised criminals and powerful corporations all but run the place, there's a heavy Film-Noir aesthetic and the internet is god. If you're unfamiliar with the trapping of Cyberpunk, I recommend you read TVTropes' helpful outline article and then go and watch Blade Runner. Seriuosly, go watch Blade Runner, that film is amazing.

Anyway, quick note on my role as GM: I won't play a character, and instead I shall play the world, so to speak. I'll control NPCs and the setting as well as providing scenarios, obstacles and situations. As GM, I hold ultimate sway over the RP, but while I am an autocrat, I shall do all that is in my power to be a benevolent, fair autocrat, and my central concern is that everybody has fun, and will do my utmost to avoid the cardinal sin of GMing that is railroading. You are welcome to do your own thing, and I will reward intelligence, lateral thinking and solving problems through means beyond the simple employment of violence. However, if you are stupid, don't expect me to be merciful.

Character sheet is below. If people are interested, I'll put up a player's guide detailing the situation in Vegas in the next few days with information like major players and so forth.


Name:
Alias/nickname:
Gender:
Age:
Race:
Nationality:

Career:
Skills:
Gang affiliation (if any):

Equipment:
Cybernetics: [Note: for the sake of balance, due to biological complications the risk of random breakdowns of cybernetics increases the more of them a person has implanted in their body. With this in mind, yes, you can create a heavily augmented, bulletproof, car-throwing monster of a character, but that means that I'll be hitting you with one hell of a lot glitches, bugs, seizures, fits and attacks from hackers. Be sensible]
Weaponry:
Clothing:

History:

Misc info:

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At the start of the RP, your character recieves the following email:

Sent at: 04.53, 12/01/2099
From: frank.delorio@talknet.com
Subject: A proposition for our mutual benefit

Dear all

I'm messaging you now to make you an offer.

As you've no doubt heard, just a couple of days ago Paulo Lazilli got iced. The street's riled up and it's riled up bad, and as a former acquaintance of Mr Lazilli, I'm interested in seeing the status quo restored and for things to go back to the nice peaceful way they were. Now maybe you're thinking that you don't necessarily want things back the way they were, but before you delete this email let me tell you that we've noticed your skills and could use somebody of your talents, and we can offer a lot. Not just money, mind, though if you want cash we got cash, but we have favours and services we can offer, which nobody else in Vegas is going to be able to match. Name your price, and we'll pay it.

If you're interested, come to Mama Maria's Pizza Emporium on Radkovich Avenue for 12pm. Say you're here for lunch with Mr Delorio. Come alone, and only bring weapons if you want to piss me off. I'll give you more details if I see you there.

Frank

So, does anybody like this idea? Dislike it? Hate it so very much that they wish my parents had aborted me as a foetus and are now willing to finish the job with a bag of flaming doorknobs? Any interest whatsoever?

Is this a Fallout RP?

Nope, it's a non-IP piece, set in a cyberpunk Las Vegas setting. I'll post up the details of the setting if people are interested, but main features are: cybernetic enhancements and transhumanist technologies are commonplace, corrupt corporations and criminals now hold more power than governments, technology has advanced whilst society has regressed and everything is influenced strongly by the Film Noir genre.

This would be completely out of my element.

I'm in. I'll draft up a character sheet.

Atta girl!

Removed...

Still working on mine!!

Slacker... ...

I only finally decided to join in after I got in from work last night...

Worked on it while watching tele...

Though it's the first time I've not let anyone here know what I've been doing...I don't mind once I'm up and running, but while trying to work it out in the first place...Ayyyy...

"Daddy, what you doing?"

"SHAATAAAHP!!!"

"What?"

"SHATAAAHPGOAWAAYYY!!"

...

CANT STOP LAUGHING LOL

Drat, I'll give it a shot. Behold! A brain in a jar!



Name: George Mitters
Alias/nickname: The Jarman
Gender: male
Age: 52
Race: Ah, human? Spaniard ancestry?
Nationality: American (if the US still exists. He's local with the papers to prove it in any case.)

Career: Studied basic programming, never got to the hacking- or advanced courses. Currently he owns a hardware recycling shop with a scrapheap out the back that handles everything from old radios to daddies broken old hovercycle.

Skills: Basic mechanical and electrical engineering, simple DIY programming and neural implant use, can drive a ground-car or a boat (modified ones) but doesn't have a license for flight-vehicles.

Gang affiliation (if any): None, though he has occasionally done bussiness with the gangs. Cause hey, even the mob needs to have their water heater fixed sometimes.

Equipment: He's got a toolbox and your standard do-it-all minicomputerphone. An old van he modified to be driven by usb and neural link. Some old drones/rc-toys and of course his shop.
Cybernetics: Hoo boy. This will be something. Please look it over and tell me if it's a no-go because Cybernetics are the core of George's concept.


George is more man than machine (cliche, I now). He still has his skull, part of his digestive tract and his heart. That said, he is NOT a one-man anti-tank weapon. He is several boxes containing life-support and fleshy bits welded together and mounted on a set of wheels, along with a movable camera, two simple mechanical arms and an usb-port. Think your average NASA rover, not Arnie the Terminator.

The nature of his 'augmentations' are improvised and outdated to the extreme. George has to constantly decide between moving the camera, one of his arms or his wheels. The only good sides to it are being cheap and reliably robust. (due to being simple and not designed to punch through walls and outrun trains all the time.) Also, he's powered by standard car batteries with the option of pluggin into a wall socket and a backup consisting of solar cells painted on his frame.



Weaponry: He's got a tazer built into one of his arms for self-defence and keeps a selfmade pistol in a hidden compartment. Self-made because his hands aren't humanoid and he doesn't have time to fumble with the grip if he needs it.

Clothing: None usually, but if he goes out he tends to wear a raincoat and a hat on his frame. With a casual glance from a long distance in terrible weather, it makes him actually look human.


History: Born in the middle of the century, George Mitters was just your average Joe with dreams of hacking megacorporations and fooling the law. Or dreams of working for the megacorporations and hacking the hackers, he left his options open. In any case, George went to college to obtain the needed education but never got a chance to finish it.

You see, in his mid-twenties he had an accident when the gas-lines in his appartment exploded. There wasn't much left of him to save, but to his credit, a backalley quack was going to try. Now prosthetics had come a long way since the days of wooden peg legs and hook-hands. Emulating the human skeletal and musculature was standard, and direct neural control was becoming more popular and common. If you had the insurance and the money, that was, and George had neither.

What he got looked like it had come from the 20th century. Plastics and metal wedged together into an unflattering whole that didn't look human no matter from what angle one looked at it. Mechanical arms that looked like they belonged on an assembly-line instead of a person. Eye-glasses with built-in video-screens (available at any dollar-store), instead of direct brain-stimulation. Weels instead of legs. It was a monster, and not even the one that would look good on tv. The worst part? His 'augmentations' made upgrading to any proper prosthetics even more complicated and expensive than they had been already.


It broke him. Ostracized by society, George dropped out of college and into the ever growing slums of Vegas. There he punched himself back up to low middle-class and became the owner of a small repair and recycling shop. The George Mitters of today is a lonely bitter man, with few friends and most of his contacts are done through the net.

Misc info: Dunno. Ask me questions and I'll try to think of something.

Liking the characters so far, good work everyone.

Jack, seeing how George/Jarman is configured up, that should be fine; you kind of neatly step round the whole 'compatability issues' problem by having much less of a body for there to be compatability issues with. I like the idea and he looks like a well-balanced character, so I'll let it pass.

Aww!!...I love George!!!... ...

Looking forward to this more and more... ...

Grove Street?! If there's a Johnson at the helm, and he inherits a certain Carl's bad@ss aptitude, then I'm pretty sure the other organizations won't stand a chance.

Eee, someone gets it!

Nah, I don't think the boys in green are that much of a problem. If I remember right, they are poorly armed, completely unorganized, unable to follow anything resembling a plan etc. Really the only thing they've got going for them is an overgunned superhuman boss. But said boss doesn't get involved with the running of his own gang and is rather prone to random acts of destruction or skydiving or whatever catches his interest.


So the GTA threat is localized at best.

OK, part one of cliff notes is now out, with a timeline of events from the 21st Century. A fairly gappy one, it seems, as it turns out I'm slightly rubbish at making timelines for future events and finding enough stuff to fill it. It's in te spoiler box below to avoid hitting you all with a big wall of text. A precise description of Vegas' current political/street situation will be detailed once I've written that.

Epic!!!...

Fair dues, nice work...Loved it...

Didn't get the GTA reference... ...

That helps me a ton. Sweeeeet.

Thinking about it...That internet spontaneously creating life sounds suspiciously familiar...Hmm...I'll have to think about that one...Maybe something will Fall out in the middle of the night... ...

Oh, you mean the Memetics? To be honest I got the idea a few months ago whilst reading Neuromancer, and I like to think that B4st3t and her kin are something fairly unique in terms of cyberspace entities.

Oh, fair enough... ...Excellent name though...

I really hope I'm clever enough to keep up... ...



EDIT...I'm waiting on more story details before starting writing the character intro thing, is that alright or are we heading for day 1 hideously soon?... ...

McBadgere: The actual RP thing will go on a separate thread where I'll write an intro post, but that probably won't be for another week at least, seeing as I need to post up the details and we're still waiting for Liz and (presumably) Uleni to post up their characters.

Part 2 of the Player's Guide style piece is here. Part 3, detailing cyberspace, virtual reality, augmented reality and the nature of the entities known as Memetics, will be up in a few more days after that.

I am, I promise, just give me a few days.

Don't worry about it; I want to finish getting the Vegas Guide completed before I start up the RP, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Okay, good. The guides will help me set up my character profile.

Just out of interest, what sort of character are you planning? Or is that going to be a surprise for when they're done?

Heh...That's one mega excellent guide right there that is... ...

This bit about the cyber-ronin made me smile...



Which is...Me... ...

Excellent stuff Mein Colonel...


Oh, and the bit about the Paladin made me sigh and wince, for reasons which will become completely clear in due time... ...

But mine was done well before you did this!!...I swear!!... ...

Yep, but there's only one Gabriel and if he comes across any Cyber-Ronin in a bad mood, there'll be five of them.

Yes, and following the First Law of Story Convention™, Gabriel will acquit himself admirably (even if with temporarily dangerous wounds that will require a decent sit down and a cup of tea while the medichines do their thang) and there will be five less cyber-ronin at the end of the fight... ...

Hah.

Haha.

Ahahaha.

AHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!

Ahem.

*Smiles sweetly*...

*Raises eyebrow*...Uh-huh...



Aaaamywho...

Just edited in a toxin screening/removal implant...I figured you couldn't have yer basic hitman coughing his lungs up when confronted by dust or generally poisonous smog...

Makes sense, pollution is part of the aesthetic. But no sub-dermal armour? That's like basic Cyberpunk warrior stuff.


I'm starting to feel inadequate, like a Cyberpunk R2-D2. Or more like the red one that blew up right after the sand-dudes sold it. Ah well, at least I've got a vocalizing box. (not in character list but please let me have it. I don't want to talk by texting on the phone.)

Nah, I love George!!...So cool!!...

I did consider the sub-dermal armour, him being ex-military and all...But I was heading towards total tank/God-mode with him as it was...

So the armour is more like the New Vegas armoured coat/health-regen implant type of thing...

Not really a surprise, but a support character. I looked up a few stuff and she's classified as a "fixer," someone with inside connections to everything. No heavy tank-type stuff. She's good with close-ranged weapons, specializes in forgery, and it pretty low-tech except for a few things to keep her ego boosted (Pretty vain.) I may push a few things around, but basically, she gets info for the right amount of money.

Recently, I'm having a Metal Gear craze and I'm thinking of creating a character in tribute to a favorite character of mine; the magnificently bastardish Revolver Ocelot.

But I can't promise a regular presence on my side; school is omnipresent and look at what it did to the Expedition *sniffs sniffs*.

I'll let you have vocaliser thing, Jack. Forcing you to communicate via text just because you forgot to stick it in the entry would just be irritating for everyone...

I like the character idea, Liz, and she should fit in well with the group.

Uleni, you're welcome to join with your Revolver Ocelot type (will he get possessed by his arm in this?). Worst case scenario I can always stick the guy on a bus if you end up away for a while and bring him back later when you can play.

Yeah, probably. Maybe a hardwire glitch in his cybernetic arm reroutes his memories to a serial killer, maybe even a malevolent software 'entity', and he goes schizo. *shrugs*

...That'll make the party extremely interesting... ...

Yay! I get to talk and gripe about those youngsters and their fancy cybernetics!

So if I have things right, we currently have the tank, the mechanic, the smart one and the stylish one. Yup, sounds about right.

Well, considering that this is Cyberpunk, I think a hacker is kind of mandatory as well, though I think McBadgere's Gabriel character has an AI that can hack things so I guess that's covered.

Also, would there be any particularly loud objections to me sticking a GMPC up? Only I've got an idea for a getaway driver style character who I really like.

Well, I don't have a real problem. He could be a mystery cabbie/courier. "How come whenever I call a cab it is the same guy with his cryptic messages behind the wheel? I swear that ain't right."


I thought Elisabeth's fixer would do the hacking, but reading back I see she's supposed to be lowtech. And George never got his education and bloody well doesn't have a reason in his background for picking it up. So Gabriel's AI might be our best bet.

Hah, now I've got this mental image of one of London's black cabs pulling up on a rain-slicked, neon-lit Vegas street veiled in fog and some cockney in a flat cap winding down a window and calling over to the characters; "You bunch need a lift?"

On the other hand, my getaway driver idea for a character has kind of evolved into a hacker, more, but she'd be the type who's pretty useless in a situation which doesn't involve computers so she could work quite well on the sidelines. Might go with that, if there are no objections.

Whatever you want, dude.

I have to re-start my character profile since my computer decided to shut down and update and NOT save the file I had the CS on...

Removed...

Actually, after some thinking, I reckon I'll stick to pure GMing. It'll be easier for me, and RPing stuff when I know what's coming isn't actually all that fun.

I have, however, had an idea for a post order of sorts that I quite like, and I figure I'd run it by you guys. I'm basing this off the system of tabletop RPGs, and it's one that I'd apply in combat situations and any other scenarios where it might be necessary. In essence, it's a pseudo-turn-based system wherein each player posts up one action that their character does in combat (shoots at a bad guy, throws a flashbang grenade, tries to hack an automated gun turret).

Once all of the players have posted up their character's action (or a reasonable timeframe has passed and I don't want everyone to wait around) I post up the consequences of their actions (the goon gets grazed by the bullet and ducks down behind cover, the grenade detonates and blinds a room full of enemies, the turret's firewalls detect the intrusion and alarms start blaring) in my GM post, and then order resets once more; the players post their next actions, I post the consequences and reactions, and so and so forth until the situation is resolved. In keeping with the RPG tradition each 'turn' would occupy a timeframe of about six seconds, in order to keep things moving at a reasonable pace.

Your thoughts?

Alright, part 3 of the world guide is up. Hopefully that should mean all the key detail is covered, but if there's anything that you're still curious about feel free to ask me a question and I'll answer it the best I can.

*Thinks about what is possible in six seconds...*...

*Rubs hands with glee*... ...

Yeah, I like that idea...Plus, with it being turn-based, the chances of us tripping over each other during combat is gone...

...Good idea...


I can see what you mean about the character thing, but Uleni was part of the Sutch one with that Ylenno, wasn't he?...You can still hang out with us playas... ...



Loved the whole newest part of the world...Excellent stuff...

Absolutely loved the idea of the Cloud Cowboys...Means even Read (the A.I.) isn't safe... ...Oh, actually...*Worried *...

OOooh, that reminds me...Is the smartbyote mandatory? It's just I've got Gabriel's comm thing in roughly the area you have the -byote...I don't mind, I was just thinking that any web searching would be done by Read and sent to Gabriel's wrist thingy if it's important...One less distraction for the assassin about town and all that... ...

I'm intrigued to see how you use the memetics in the story... ...Another amazing idea...*Applauds*...

Tru dat, but as Uleni and I had shifts and so forth, it wasn't so difficult as generally we'd alternate between DMing and RPing.

A smartbyote isn't mandatory, but they're about as common in 2090s Vegas as mobile phones are in modern Vegas. Plus it's worth noting that the Smartbyote can be configured to switch between 'civvy' mode and 'tactical' mode, where things like ammunition readouts, IFF markers and miniature GPS maps can be displayed on his vision to help him out in combat, like the HUD you get in most FPS games.

As for the Memetics, well, that would be spoiling things.

I have no problems with the short round system. It should keep wonky timebending to a minimum. I've seen a few fight scenes that ended in epic duels, while everyone else was forced to go with "Well, Bob attacked Ted and they wrecked half the city, and Susie really wanted to stop them, but didn't get the chance. It was all over by the time she'd drawn her sword, somehow. All three hours of non-stop combat."


Oh, and I'm going to stick with my old-time phone. I can just say that George's malformed skull would mean he needed a custom fit for his byote and he's a tad touchy about opening up his coffin. I mean, he smells and is horrible to look at in ways simple storeclerks aren't trained to handle.