I am looking for a few players for a short game of The Strange, a Cypher System RPG by Monte Cook Games.
The system and setting will be used to support a quick-paced and free moving game. In the Cypher System, players roll all the dice, so the applicant should be willing to share in the creation of the story to an extent unusual in PBPs.
For example, a character is in immanent danger of being discovered removing an embedded card from an interbabbage sub-brain in an office of the New Amsterdam Imperial Bureau of Investigation. The GM writes:
'As the door opens, you see a male figure backlit by the fluorescent orbs in the hallway. Light haloes through thin white hair. The man has coveralls, and a cart of cleaning products. He used the cart to push open the door, which grants him some cover. He is level 2. Level 3 versus ranged attacks, because of the polycarbonate cart. He has not noticed you, as he reaches for the light switch, but he will in about three seconds.
The player chooses an action, applies edge or effort, rolls the d20, in an out of character post, then narrates their action, AND THE RESULT, in world.
Sasha drops her cloak on the opened mechanism, and puts on the sunglasses she stole from the drawers. She turns to the old man, fixing her gaze slightly to the right of him, then says "Hello? Who is there?" The old man is confused for a moment, to find a blind woman in the dark office, but part of his job is to know when not to ask questions, and Sasha is dressed like an agent of the NAB.
She presses. "You aren't supposed to clean until we finish. I have thinking to do. Come back after the third bell."
Mumbling his apologies, the old janitor pulls the cart back out the door, considerately switching off the light as he does so.
The idea is to remove the bottlenecks that cause the friction and dead time in a PBP. By allowing the players some say, the adventure becomes surprising to me.
This is not simply a free-form experiment, however. There will be a plot, but there will still be a lot of space within that plot for player driven narrative.
Expect two or more posts a day.
The game will wrap up in about two months from the start, as this is not intended to be an epic, and is instead more of a short story.
Player characters are quickened, and may thus be from ANY genre or story. In my tabletop version of this game, one of the characters is Fremen, and the other is a malfunctioning Agent from the Matrix animation.
Expect horror and danger. Choose characters that will get up, bloody but unbroken and do the things that must be done.
The first week of the game will be prequels.
Tier one. No additional XP.
Three spaces. One Vector, One Spinner, One Paradox.
Build for your home recursion, but calculate your translation for Earth, Standard Physics.
Wealth and assets up to you.
Apply with character concept. Selection cut=off on June 1st.
No interest in The Strange. Duly noted.