DISTANT WORLDS- Aballon Rising's page

That's pretty much how I'd envisioned it. While they all have "human-like" personalies, some are so deeply in the thrall of other machines or factions that they don't have much freedom to exercise their differences--a bit like cubicleville. The ones with more autonomy get to shun their factory designations and stretch their ambulators a bit more. That said life is also a fair bit more dangeous for them too--they rise or fall on their own merits in a fairly brutal anarchistic society ruled by those few bots with the power to protect what's theirs.

One of the things that always awed me in the Matrix Online was when you got to meet those sentinels that had uploaded themselves into the Matrix. They looked and acted like special forces people. They talked to you, had emotions, and seemed genuinely passionate about what they do. It's something I really want in this game. Peel away the robot lobster and there really is a person in there.

Dude! Your NPC list is freakin' amazing! Thanks for that. All these guys seem like they'll be a blast to play. Cool stuff!

Yeah, I'm really excited about this game.

Seems like with FAMAS' departure we have our three players--it's been several days and there's been no other character submissions, so I think we can say the characters are locked in. We should be ready to start as soon as the finishing touches are put on everyone's characters.

In the meantime: one final question. Could everyone give me a writeup about the goals and agendas you see for your characters when the game starts. Who do they hate? What do they care about? What kind of jobs are they doing/looking for? Who are their friends and enemies? The more backround context I have for your characters, the more they'll feel like them. The first post is always hardest in a lot of ways because as DM you're sort of having to throw characters in where you'd imagine they'd be without the kind of direction you get from players on their characters' actions after that point. The better I know what your bots are doing and what they want, the better I can jump them into the story in a way that feels natural. Hopefully...

No I really like that. Anything you can repurpose like that will work great.

A word regarding the "leadership" of Quotient. The de facto leader of the city is a powerful and wealthy brain bot known as Azimuth. His messenger (spy) bots are everywhere in the city and keep him appraised of every detail of information they scour from it's passages as well as forming a web of communication between him and his army of agents whose value has become inextricably linked to his own. It is to this machine faction that R-64Y probably belonged.

The Lyracist, while a renouned designer with tremendous social position and power has little talent or interest in executive authority--Tim Burton has a tremendous effect on society, his opinions carry weight and his aesthetic continues to leave a mark on society, but nobody wants him to be President, least of all him.

As far as the battery overload condition, often in Aballon the pervasive metallic content has become a powerful lure to hateful electicity elementals from the Plane of Air, who are pulled in from across the planes as though by a lighting rod. Once here they invariably become trapped in the planet's extensive network of power cables--designed to trap and harness their electrical energies. Their rage at capture often manifests as power surges and system irregularities. What if R-64Y became inhabited by one of these creatures in the discharge he suffered? Its fury at its imprisonment within his systems the source of his new powers and a flood of inexplicable feelings of rage?

1) I'd assumed people would roll their hit points when we level up, since we're just playing here and it isn't a society game where folks could be accused of making stuff up (the main rationale behind removing randomization from Society rules). That said I'd be fine with someone opting to take median HP each level if they didn't want to risk the roll.

2) Yes, one feat. I think picking two Traits as well would be fun, but I wasn't sure how many of the Traits were too Golarion centric. If you can find ones that work though, then awesome!

3) They seem to be saying that you get no bonus regardless of any other bonuses or penalties, so I'd say no bonuses from class or powers would apply...but I could be convinced. That said, I've always wondered why constructs are never concidered to be tougher than other constructs. You take a bulldozer and a color copier for instance (in a magical world where you have walking copiers). It would seem that the bulldozer would be significantly tougher, right? But they are the same. That's always struck me as odd.

I don't see a problem. The limitation of Con means a barbarian bot only gets 4 rounds of rage a day. That should offset their ability to rage without having to wait out their fatigue cooldown.

Class HP + Construct HP.

So right under the wire we've got three folks pretty much locked for the last spot in the game. My thought is to give AlgaeNymph, Wolfman1911 and ianbl a chance to all submit fully statted out characters and I'll pick our last party member from those.

So now: Q&A!

Construct traits: Yes, we're using them all. That means Con is locked in at 10 (well technically they're locked at --) but as you point out this helps a barbarian bot more than it hurts him with all the immunities that come with and the huge gob of bonus hit points.

The Aballonian Writeup: I'm hoping to simplify things by taking the PC aballonians back to formula a bit (heck, there's a whole planet full of aballonians of every shape and description--including ones that are reskinned versions of all the creatures in the Bestiaries, right? Well the one's we're playing are reskinned PC races!) The alternative would be to start everyone at 7th level as characters who can level up at will by buying equipment--which would make for a really weird game. I'm handling the upgrade mechanic as new gear: armor as a reinforced frame, weapons as various built in upgrades (ie. cutting torch for a dagger, spark emmitter for a sling, hydraulic shear for a battleaxe, etc.)

Base movement is being handled according to size. Starting out you can be small or medium (like pretty much any standard PC race). Small aballonians move 20', medium aballonians move 30'. A feature like fast movement could be taken to assume an upgraded form of locomotion or just better coodination and footwork. Climb speeds, swim speeds and the like will be more or less how they'd be for a standard PC.

I'll field any other questions as they come up. Thanks for your interest, folks! We'll give it a few days for everyone to get their sheets done up (or prove they've fallen off the planet and aren't just lurking) and then I'll pick our final player and we'll get started.

Grimcleaver, I saw your reply to my reskinning question and your promotional post. Consider tentatively interested in this campaign.

I'm not sure what character class to choose, though, nor do I have a backstory thought up.

Hey! Good to see you. Found your question whilst skimming the forums for additional reveals on Aballon culture. Figured since I'd been pondering the same things for this game I'd give it a shot.

We'd love to have you in the game. So far we have:

IPA-42 (Machinesmith): A rogue propaganda street prophet model once affiliated with a cult whose belief is that the First Ones are set to return but machine imperfections and irregularities (including free will) must first be sacrificed. Freed from that doctrine, but also disconnected from the flow of constant upgrades that comes with it, she is exploring the world for the first time--free to make up her own mind.

Amalgus (Summoner): Once a wholly different bot, he was assaulted and salvaged by a gang of cannibal outmods and left for dead. He was able to shortwave a number of smaller bots and make an arrangement with them. Together they would combine into a stronger more versitile form, a larger robotic endoskeleton covered in smaller bots that help it move and interact with the world, and which it can shed to operate independantly. They merged their consciousnesses and became a single being named Amalgus. The local Those Who Become design bot in Quotient, named the Lyracist, loved the idea when he heard it and as is his way, offered to remake Amalgus' body to elevate his revolutionary ideas and showcase him. He's since taken to performing freelance jobs in order to publicise and prove himself.

We've had a couple of other folks take interest but no other actual pitches as of yet. So far we've got two magic using types, one that's more a healer type and one that's more like a beastmaster. Any classes except cleric and druid are available (aballonians can't use divine magic--they have no souls). That said, this really isn't set to be a "dungeon crawl" sorta' game so you don't have to worry about filling any particular role. I'd suggest starting with your character's philosophy (Those Who Wait, Those Who Become, or something else?) and social position (High society? Outmod ganger? Researcher? Heavy laborer? Reclaimer? Pilgrim?) and then pick your class and abilities to further your goals and storyline. But whatever works for you.

Sure. I think your gunslinger idea could be a fun way to go. Type up a pitch and I'll take a look at it. You might be our third player which means we could get this game going soon.

Hey James!

I know you're busy but I wanted to drop you a link to the play by post we're doing on here--set on Aballon!

Anyway
drop by if you get a chance and tell us what you think.

DISTANT WORLDS CAMPAIGN: ABALLON RISING

I really like this idea of a group that pursues perfection at such a cost that they are willing to sacrifice all distinctiveness--down to their very sentience in their desire to please the First Ones, and wonder the streets of the Exodus preaching their doctrine, like a cadre of perfect unblemished machines, beautiful and symetrical. Like an army of supermodels sent to convert people into getting plastic surgery and liposuction because the way they look is "wrong". That's very creepy and fun and has a cool THX-1138 vibe to it.

Very cool.

Whew. Glad you like the concept. I was kind of afraid it was too out there conceptually. Combined with the fact that Summoners are a class that not everyone is a fan of, I was thinking the combination might be risky.

This looks like the game for me. :)

Looking forward to the rest of the submissions.

Seeing as your character is a Lyracist design, it got me wondering who he used to be before his redesign. I sort of like the idea that he was a bot who'd been attacked by cannibals and salvaged and parted out, his undercarrage picked clean and left for dead--but while he sat helpless in a pile of scrap he was able to contact a number of much smaller bots and forge an alliance with them, to use him as an armature, a skeleton for a bigger, more powerful form--to pool their resources and join together to become...Amalgus.

At some point then the Lyracist became infatuated with the idea and offered you a redesign, to make your collective seamless and more functional, to give your various members greater symbiosis with one another, and to raise you up as an example of machine evolution.

Her_Lotho here.

Started writing some background (see profile), might need a bit more work. Feel free to let me know you like it or not.

Still have to do the crunch as well, hoping to do that tomorrow.

So far I like it. Two things though. First off there isn't any glitch required for aballonians to rise above their code and become self aware--the entire race are AIs by default, from the teeniest nanoform to the most gargantuan mining bot they are born free and choose their philosophies and politics for themselves. That said, there's a possibility of secret black factories that make preprogramed drones that can't think for themselves as tools to further their agendas, but it'd be a practice akin to slavery and wholely abominable to ordinary machines regardless of faction.

Second, a little background on the Lyracist. He's a banner carrying member of Those Who Become and spends most of his creative process rubbing axles with the cult of malfunctioning outmods that flock to him for salvation. He is fascinated by their deformities and often uses them as a jumping off point for revolutionary and popular designs. An outmod thus upgraded becomes the new apex of the Becomer design aesthetic and is saved from certain doom at the claws of the reclaimers. He's the last bot in the world who would scrap a design for being old or broken--that's where his passions lie. He like the Tim Burton of the machine design world, creepy and old fashioned is like gold to him.

This is not to say that your series weren't created by a rival designer affiliated with Those Who Wait, spreading a doctrine of uniformity and the purging of imperfection as the ideals that will call back the First Ones. That's actually a fun ideology and creates a nice antagonist for the pro-Lyracists. Not to mention it's wonderfully in keeping with the atmosphere of destructive factionalism and ideological fanatacism that runs rampant in Quotient.

So it's your call whether you'd like to keep your character a Lyracist design in light of this new information or if you'd like to come up with your own designer as part of your storyline that I'll weave into the story. Either way should be a lot of fun.

Will design and pitch a character this evening as soon as i get home from home.

You didn't answer my previous question, would you allow the machinesmith class? Been meaning to try it out for a while but so far it has never really fit in any game i played in, but sounds fitting here.

If not, no worries, I'll find something else to pitch ^^.

Sorry I hadn't caught your question. I took a look over the class and it seems like a fun fit for the campaign, yeah. I'll be interested to take a look at your pitch. Thanks for your interest!

Really digging Amalgus. Making a summoner whose "summoned" creatures are modular bots that he's composed of Voltron-style is freakin' amazing man. Congrats, you're player #1. I'm hoping to keep this group to a cozy three player game (four...maybe if my mind is blown by a must-have character pitch). I'll be really interested to see who else we get! This is gonna' be a good one.