Character/Story-Driven RP: Defective

[Endless Sea]

[QUOTE AND EXPLANATION OMITTED AS ACCORDING TO CHATROOM ADVICE]

Right, to business. All of the player characters in this RP are Myrmidons, which are essentially two-meter-tall (on average) biomechanical mages created via a combination of unique magitech and applied phelbotinum. Their creator, titled the Boss, is a similar being (albeit with a tiny plastic body instead of the usual towering android) that deserted his own creator, Togariku, and learned how to use magic and build what he needed for producing Myrmidons. It didn’t entirely as planned; a team of relatively free-willed prototypes eventually defected, joined forces with Togariku, and began launching numerous raids on Myrmidon-connected facilities.

As of late, one of the Boss’s human collaborators, Phillip von Flugelhorn, has taken advantage of his client’s recent setbacks and secretly repurposed his robotics factory for his own use, building legions of war mechs and drones. The Boss and his right-hand man, acting even more secretive than usual, have commissioned a joint team of elite Myrmidon Agents and his own private Hunters to investigate; the rebellion, meanwhile, has also located Flugelhorn’s facility and sent their own team to destroy it...

(By the way, I saved all of the old stuff on this Google document. It's not required reading, but if you're interested in the lore and don't mind huge walls of text, feel free to look!)

List of factions:

Myrmidon Forces: Evil-aligned PC faction primarily consisting of Myrmidon Agents, with reserve force of NPC Myrmidon Hunters; NPC commanders are Dark Hunter, Sacria, and (sorta) Arcturus. Dark Hunter's MO is pretty much "find traitors and kill them, especially Forged", but Sacria and Arcturus are a bit less antagonistic towards their former allies. These guys should give you the most freedom in terms of character alignment and development.

Forged: Good-aligned PC faction of Myrmidon Agents; NPC commanders are Alaki and Togariku. Everyone's here mostly just to level the enemy base with proper use of explosives, with both team leaders hoping to minimize casualties, and Alaki in particular hoping to recruit any enemy Agents he comes across. This team tends to stick on the "good" side of the alignment spectrum, although your methods and personal agendas and so on are, naturally, still yours to decide.

Outer Mechanics Incorporated (OMI): NPC faction composed of human infantry, battle droids, and human-piloted war machines; led by Phillip von Flugelhorn. They're pretty much just trying to keep the facility and its tech as intact as possible, which just so happens to include killing all Myrmidons on sight, loyal to the Boss or not.

Myrmidon biology: All right, I'll try to make this as succinct as possible. Still gonna be a couple paragraphs of wall'o'text, though. :P

Myrmidons are humanoids (except for the Hunters, which have much more varied designs) that look like they're dressed head-to-toe in various degrees of colored, futuristic platemail (except for the lower section of one's face, which itself is made of the same metal the armor is). That armor is actually their skin and is highly resistant to physical damage and magic attacks alike, and beneath it is a complex amalgam of mechanical parts and decentralized, flesh-based organ systems. Their circulatory systems don't pump oxygen-carrying blood, but energy converted from raw magic absorbed passively from their surroundings. When Myrmidons are wounded, they bleed gaseous magic; upon death, their bodies dissolve into it entirely. Breathing, eating, sleeping, and so on helps with gathering energy, as does actively focusing on increasing the absorption rate, but it isn't necessary for survival.

The energy a Myrmidon gathers is also how that Myrmidon fuels his or her elemental and basic powers (as seen in the character sheet outline); they stockpile energy and attack by drawing on their reserves, meaning that while they refuel themselves constantly, if they use too much power too quickly, they run out of available power to use and need to recharge, becoming physically weaker in the process. Also, while basic powers are fairly straightforward and static in strength and versatility, elemental powers can be used for far more complex operations, but require a melee weapon to direct them; otherwise, you'd be reduced to just shooting a blast from your hand or mouth or something, and even then, you'd want to use a launcher or blaster of some sort, which, depending on what it was made to do, generally amplifies the blast's power by a quite a bit.

Playable classes:

Agents: Prototype Myrmidons with varied and unique powersets and personalities. They’re the only Myrmidons that aren’t programmed with absolute loyalty to their master, and are generally used for missions that require small teams of highly-trained, independently-thinking warriors rather than armies of cannon fodder (which aren’t yet combat-ready). The Forged are solely composed of former Agents.

Hunters (NOW EXCLUSIVE TO QUIRKY MINIBOSS SQUAD OF NPCS): Similar to Agents, but possess non-humanoid bodies and a different variety of powersets. Due to being programmed with complete loyalty to the Boss and his right-hand man, they serve as their creator’s personal envoys and bodyguards.

Notable background characters:

The Boss: Creator of the Myrmidons and, uh, their boss. Yeah. He’s got a penchant for mind control and science-y stuff in general, but he’s also a bit of a control freak, suffers from huge amounts of vanity and ego, and either doesn’t know how to actually deal with people or just doesn’t bother to.

Lehu: Leader of the Forged. Defected with five of his fellow Agents when he found out about his creator’s disregard for his soldiers’ lives, and has been recruiting actively ever since.

"August Lord": An ancient demonic power that the Boss stumbled upon during his journey of self-discovery. Sealed in his starship deep within the planet’s crust, his existence is currently unknown to pretty much everyone but the Boss, whom he commands and provides with information and various other forms of support.

NPC character sheets: Right here! Keep in mind, though, that this isn't a complete list of everyone important that's going to show up; as more characters get introduced, I'll make a note in the discussion thread that his/her/its data's been added to the sheet (or updated, in a few cases).

Mission prompts: Here for the Myrmidons, and here for the Forged. Audio versions will be coming eventually, but I'm thinking of waiting until the RP's underway first.

Character rubric: (I'm only allowing six PCs total, with at least two for each faction, so keep that in mind! Also, the actual sheets go here.)

Name: (needs no explanation)
Faction: (Myrmidon or Forged?)
Appearance: (also fairly self-explanatory)
Role (optional): (in case you want your Agent to be specialized, this is where you elaborate on that)
Elemental powers: (pretty much what you'd expect from the trope page; all Agents required to have one to three)
Basic powers (optional): (miscellaneous specific abilities; optionally allowed one or two)
Weapons: (used to direct or amplify powers, depending on if ranged or melee; summoned to hand)
Other equipment: (any non-weapon gadgets and stuff your Agent is carrying)
Personality: (yeah, I don’t think I need to explain this one either)
History: (…see the above)
Notes (optional): (anything that doesn’t fit into the above categories)

Aaaaaand there we go! Now, one last thing before the post ends- yeah, von Flugelhorn's got his base and mechas and stuff, but that's mostly just to get both sides in the same place and provide some mooks to smack around. The way I see it, Power Play is mostly focused on character agendas- what everyone's trying to do, how they plan to accomplish those goals, and especially how they'd react if players from different sides stumble into each other. Yeah, there's some limitations in character and setting variety, but I personally believe that the amount of directions you can take them in outweighs the cost. Then again, I'm just one guy, so a bit of feedback in that respect would be much appreciated! ^^

[Endless Sea]

Alright, updated with two fairly weighty paragraphs detailing Myrmidon biology (although not nearly as horribly dense to read through as before), as well as the Google document listing some of the NPCs that will be appearing in the RP. Please post some feedback when you look through; I haven't gotten much of an idea of what people thing of everything yet. ^^

[agoraoptera]

Questions time!

I can't play as OMI? I think that would be quite interesting. Just saying.

Myrmidon.. Decentralised systems, so how much damage must be inflicted to kill them? Also, they get raw magic from surroundings, so how common are human mages? Is magic a very common aspect of this world?

Are you restricting elemental powers to more traditional elements, or can I have gravity?

Oh oh oh and if a Myrmidon dies and becomes a cloud of magic, can another Myrmidon absorb that and power up epically for a time? (would make awesome noble sacrifice scene)

[Endless Sea]

Questions time!

I can't play as OMI? I think that would be quite interesting. Just saying.

Myrmidon.. Decentralised systems, so how much damage must be inflicted to kill them? Also, they get raw magic from surroundings, so how common are human mages? Is magic a very common aspect of this world?

Are you restricting elemental powers to more traditional elements, or can I have gravity?

Oh oh oh and if a Myrmidon dies and becomes a cloud of magic, can another Myrmidon absorb that and power up epically for a time? :D (would make awesome noble sacrifice scene)

In order of questions asked:

1. I actually considered OMI being playable at one point, but I decided that since the only thing you'd probably be doing is guarding the base, there wouldn't really be that much point to it. :/

2. Long story short: a lot. I haven't thought too much about the specifics, but you can think of them as walking tanks; certain types of attack and basic killing stuff like neck-snapping and basic gunfire won't do crap, but aiming for the seams and large applications of force (grenades, getting rammed by a car) can cause a good amount of harm, and a missile to the face or something would probably rip you open and leave you dead in seconds. Footsoldiers with assault rifles shouldn't be too much of an issue (the wounds, if any, are small and usually don't do much), but the exoskeletons and grenadiers are a bit more trouble, as are the lightning guns and heat laser artillery, and you definitely don't want to mess with shells from von Flugelhorn's super-tanks.

3. Every millennium for the past six thousand years, there's been a grand total of one human born with the power to do magic; no more, no less. That's what makes Togariku the Chosen One; he's the only one of his kind given that power, and he's got a heck of a lot of potential for it, to be used for a few very specific purposes. Magitech is a way around that, and humanity will have access to that in time, but for now, Togariku, the government agency that just recruited him, and some of the Boss's suppliers are the only humans who even know it exists.

4. Traditional elements... no, not really. Plasma is an element, as are psionics and sound, and earth and stone are separate from each other... Believe it or not, Alton himself had gravity as a secondary elemental power, so feel free to claim it yourself if you join. ^^

5. Theoretically, yes, magic that a Myrmidon bleeds can be used by that Myrmidon or another, and stuff like that. In terms of epic sacrifices, though, you'd probably want to go with sustaining a mortal wound that doesn't kill you right away, then self-destructing by converting your body into a huge burst of whatever element or power you want (and you get to control who and what it hurts or not, despite dying when it goes off!).

[Scarab]

This strikes me as msotly Sci Fi, I'm liking the ideas, and there's a defintie goal laid out (basically, stop crazy evil guy) while allowing people to play as whichever faction they prefer.

It looks ineretsing, not really to my taste, but it follows a simialr line to other RPs that have been created here, and which work well. If the goal has been defined, then everyone has places to go. The only downside is you seem to only have a choice of playing a good guy or a bad guy.

[Endless Sea]

It's a bit less clear-cut than good or bad. The Forged are always actively recruiting from their fellow agents, and while Dark Hunter is a bit overzealous in his drive to kill every traitor he gets his hands on, his allies might be a bit more forgiving. The way I see things, the main point of interest in this RP is how the two sides interact with each other; von Flugelhorn and OMI are just a means to an end, that end being getting everyone in the same place. Well, that and having hordes of mooks and mechas and other war thingamajigs to fight. :P

[Endless Sea]

All right, the mission prompts have been updated! Also, I included a bit about some of the stuff I had in mind when drafting the RP, although that stuff got added about a week ago or something.

So, the topic's finally complete, barring maybe a few audio links or descriptions of various rooms of import in the OMI facility. Just wondering- do you guys think I should start working on a topic for character sheets now, or wait for more activity?

[Endless Sea]

And thus the name-change and character sheet are up! ^^