Looking to start an E-mail/IRC campaign

[DangerousThing]

I would love to join. Have you considered a pulp era monster hunters campaign? Or an SF adventure game? I like mixing and matching. :)

I tend to start games at 250-400 points, depending on the genre.

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

OK, so I'd like to do something where the players show up a day late and a dollar short to defeat whatever the antagonistic entity is (evil ruler, alien invasion, (my personal favorite) 1984esk world government) and see if the players can come back from it. It would be a long campaign, and I'd hope to introduce some strategic elements as well (such as troop movement on a large scale, maybe base operations, I dunno. Could be fun.).

So, would fictional examples of your theme be pulp serials like Flash Gordon (who arrives on Mongo to find Ming solidly in charge) or the original Buck Rogers (Buck wakes from sleep to find the Han in charge)? Or 50s cinematic horror like Pod People or Puppet Masters? Or modern television like Falling Skies (aliens invade the modern world, leaving only a rag-tag military resistance) or the better-known Walking Dead?

Would gaming examples include the d20 settings Midnight (essentially, Sauron won the War of the Ring) or the better-known Dark Sun (the world is a dying and desperate desert expanded by the profligate use of magic)? Or the Savage World settings Evernight (aliens invade a fantasy world, leaving only minor heroes who were absent on a mission to save the day) or 50 Fathoms (pirates from Earth sail into a fantasy realm where evil witches have flooded a continent) or Necessary Evil (aliens invade Earth and slaughter the superheroes who oppose them, leaving only the super-villains to save the day)?

That's lots of examples, only because I'm probing a bit to find what best matches your own thoughts.

Obviously, one could invent something out of whole cloth: a bunch of school-age teens are psionically awakened by the alien assault which enslaved everyone else, or the motley familiars and lab experiments of a wizard's tower survive its (and his) destruction, or a bunch or rabbits return from their vision quest to find a shopping mall atop the warren. This is GURPS, so the genres and particulars are manifold. :-)

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

OK, so I'd like to do something where the players show up a day late and a dollar short to defeat whatever the antagonistic entity is (evil ruler, alien invasion, (my personal favorite) 1984esk world government) and see if the players can come back from it. It would be a long campaign, and I'd hope to introduce some strategic elements as well (such as troop movement on a large scale, maybe base operations, I dunno. Could be fun.). Now that I think about it, I think keeping the power level in the normal range would be best. Don't know about y'all, but I like making games harder than normal. But we'd have to talk about it more.
I'm big on story as a GM, so I'd like description and lots of dialogue with the characters.

I would suggest not having troop movement and keeping the game centered on the characters. That is probably my prejudice.

I'll admit that I prefer to use Martial Arts when playing, though you can play a martial arts campaign without it just using Action and it might be easier on you with a PbP game.

I'll admit to liking the point counts from Monster Hunters and other newer books. However, you're the GM so you control things. I will warn you though, I like to play oddball characters.

I like odd background stories, both as a player and as a GM. One example: the players are just told to create whatever character they want, as long as it's not too powerful. The players do not know that the characters are actually NPCs that were created for beta versions of an online virtual reality game, and the computer wants them to do something that it can't do and can't tell them to do. They are only active when the OLVRG is at low activity. This eventually gave them enough clues, along with their slightly different versions of the past to figure out what they were, soft of. It took the players years to figure it out, even with slight and occasionally not-so-slight changes to the world that happened between games. Ah, the old days, that was fun!

I'm all for something like this, though I'd need some time to figure out how to use it, me never having done something like this before. But yeah, whatever we can use to get the most out of this is fine by me.

Cowboys and aliens. Or cowboy monster hunters. Or Steampunk action. There are very few genres I won't play in.

[Aagnathist]

Originally Posted by Proteus

So, would fictional examples of your theme be pulp serials like Flash Gordon (who arrives on Mongo to find Ming solidly in charge) or the original Buck Rogers (Buck wakes from sleep to find the Han in charge)? Or 50s cinematic horror like Pod People or Puppet Masters? Or modern television like Falling Skies (aliens invade the modern world, leaving only a rag-tag military resistance) or the better-known Walking Dead?

Would gaming examples include the d20 settings Midnight (essentially, Sauron won the War of the Ring) or the better-known Dark Sun (the world is a dying and desperate desert expanded by the profligate use of magic)? Or the Savage World settings Evernight (aliens invade a fantasy world, leaving only minor heroes who were absent on a mission to save the day) or 50 Fathoms (pirates from Earth sail into a fantasy realm where evil witches have flooded a continent) or Necessary Evil (aliens invade Earth and slaughter the superheroes who oppose them, leaving only the super-villains to save the day)?

You're hitting very close to home with the Buck Rogers and Evernight examples, though me, personally, I'd like to make it a darker, gritty near-future experience, along the lines of The Walking Dead, without the zombies (dealing with people is challenging and dangerous enough as it is).

OK, so we had one person wanting to focus mainly on the characters, no troop movements, but I would still like to add an additional element. What would y'all think of a survival element instead (along the lines of The Long Dark, if y'all are familiar with it)?

I apologize for my delayed response, they switched is back to day shift, so I had to deal with that.

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

You're hitting very close to home with the Buck Rogers and Evernight examples

In what way? Is it that both involve folks "out of action" who return to find oppressive invaders in place? The trick then lies in making it reasonable for the invaders to take over while the heroes are absent. In Buck Rogers, it's because suspended animation glosses over the time passed. In Evernight, it's because the invaders have (literally) unearthly power and overwhelming force.

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

I'd like to make it a darker, gritty near-future experience, along the lines of The Walking Dead, without the zombies (dealing with people is challenging and dangerous enough as it is).

I confess I enjoy a bit of an unnatural element (fey, aliens, magic, psionics, superpowers, whatever) just because A) it can help paper over any odd bits in the setting's history or status that might otherwise hamper suspension of disbelief, and B) it lets players take advantage of the extra flexibility GURPS provides, producing more variety and wonder. It can also help attract players who want to try out the unusual.

Would The Morrow Project RPG (see Wikipedia) be another marker for what you have in mind? To put it briefly, U.S. soldiers placed in cryogenic suspension to protect against a fall of government find themselves awaking decades rather than days after the disaster, with much of their expected infrastructure absent or decayed, and have to discover the new world and their place within it.

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

OK, so we had one person wanting to focus mainly on the characters, no troop movements, but I would still like to add an additional element. What would y'all think of a survival element instead (along the lines of The Long Dark, if y'all are familiar with it)?

Play-by-post is SLOOOOOOOOOW. The more elements you add, the greater the danger of having the game bog down to falter or fail. Remember that every die-roll exchange is going to take a day or so; even if you get players to pre-describe and/or pre-roll combat actions (tactics, attacks, damage, defense rolls), combat will go by at about a second per day at best, and a short conversation to make a plan of action among the PCs can take half a week, more if it requires interaction with the GM about rolls or setting details.

Particularly if you're trying this medium out for the first time, I'd recommend starting simple and adding complexity later on; perhaps, for example, supplies are more plentiful and easier to come across early on, but become more difficult to acquire later on, thus adding resource management as a game component.

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Aagnathist

Edit: If you're interested in something like this, go ahead and submit a couple ideas for what kind of game you would want to be run (style, power level, etc.). After enough attention had been garnered, I'll sort through them and steay compiling a more fleshed out game.

Ideas? That's the most fun part! :-)

• Awake Among The Sleepers
  
  Background: The PCs are among a select few unaffected (at least, not in the way intended) by the Great Obedience Ritual set off by the Secret Illuminated Masons as they finally moved openly to conquer the planet. The bulk of the human population are now thoroughly suggestible slaves (-10 to resist Fast Talk, or some such penalty), though a few have been "structured" by the Masons to serve as more focused enforcers and errand-boys.
  
  Power Level: 150-point normal characters, augmented by 75 points in psionic abilities (powers and talents, not skills).
  
  Style: Humor in hiding out among / dealing with the thoroughly brainwashed population (think Stepford Wives enthralled by continuous media at a 1950s drama / Saturday-cartoon level of subtlety) alternates with horror at the cavalier way the Masons treat their subject population, and desperation as heroes try to figure out how to use their amazing new abilities with which they nevertheless have no practical experience. Combat alternates with investigation to find a way to counteract the effects and bring parts of the population back to effectiveness.
  
  
• My Own Personal Ragnarok
  
  Background: The 17th Special Reserve Platoon were an experimental force, kept in cryogenic suspension in a bunker deep beneath Washington, DC, ready to awaken and offer immediate protection to the U.S. government and its officials. However, those officials had never contemplated that they might need protection against the Fimbulwinter. Somehow, when the mystical Norse cold descended upon the globe, it interacted with the cryogenic systems to change those soldiers it did not kill outright.
  
  Power Level: 250-point or higher special-operations soldiers, augmented with 100 points or more in cold-related superpowers.
  
  Style: Monster Hunters meets The Office and The Day After Tomorrow. Hugely powerful heroes being commanded about by petty bureaucrats; the inexorable fall of civilization as glaciers scour forwards from the poles; pitting yourself against horrors from myth and legend; what could go wrong?
  
  
• Paint-Ball Paladins
  
  Background: You could excuse the elfin princess Ellisandra for failing to make fine distinctions among the amazing weaponry she saw wielded by humans on the other side of the Veil Between Worlds. She was, after all, desperately fleeing from the legions of Zragganth, the lich who had finally overrun the last bastion of civilization in Faerie. But what she thought was an elite combat unit, transposed instantly from our world to hers, turned out to be the participants in the Turnertown Paintball Tournament, not actual soldiers at all. Can they help her win the world back anyway?
  
  Power Level: 150-point normal characters: all combat skills must be of the Art or Sport varieties. Magical / mystical abilities can be taken with earned experience.
  
  Style: Humor as small-town mall clerks and schoolteachers deal with a fantasy realm; grit as they discover by experience the capabilities of their mystical foes; cleverness as they attempt to reconstruct technology from their own world to aid in the defense of Ellisandra's.
  

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by Proteus

Ideas? That's the most fun part! :-)

[Perfectly good ideas.]

I'm finding that I tend to be a lot more mundane in my preferences recently, so these are a little "out there" for me—and I shy away from superhero-type characters/games in general, otherwise My Own Personal Ragnarok might be "pretty close."

I wish I could agree that ideas are the most fun part... unfortunately, for someone with my limited creativity, they tend to be the most frustrating.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of imaginative or bright ideas, but I can offer a few reference ideas that could serve as jumping-off points:

• GURPS X-COM — You know this drill. Alien invasion, and the heroes are soldiers in the dedicated multinational defense organization tasked with figuring out what the hell is going on and putting a stop to it. Depending on player/GM interest, could include some sort of base-management operation. Potentially could include psionic abilities down the road, but not at creation.
  
  
• GURPS Jagged Alliance — Megalomaniacal Dictator has staged a coup in Backwatersland. PCs are mercenaries hired by the "rightful" ousted ruler, local members of the resistance, or otherwise wrapped up in the overthrow of Meg. Dictator. Ample opportunities for things like Hirelings / Allies / Ally Groups, troop movement in the form of overarching militia actions, potentially other "extras"—but equally easy to hand-wave all of that.

Like I said, nothing original on my end—but that's a product of my lack of originality rather than any inherent aversion to original ideas.

The bullet-points for me, in terms of primary interest, are:

1. I want to shoot things, and I generally want things to shoot back. (Emergency PC melee is obviously fine, and some concepts may involve some melee enemies, e.g. Chryssalids.) Which is another way of saying, GURPS Tactical Shooting is highly desired.
   
   
2. No interest in superheroes, whatsoever. Limited supernatural abilities (e.g. psionics) is fine, as long as they aren't mandatory, aren't all-powerful, aren't game-defining, etc. I've got plenty of spell-slinging fantasy under my belt for now.
   
   
3. Generally not into "cinematic" stuff, especially over-the-top cinematic stuff. Can probably live with "low-cinema" if I had to.
   
   
4. Anywhere from TL 6 to TL 8 is fine by me. TL 9 is a maybe, depending on how "Sci-Fi"-heavy it is.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

1. I want to shoot things, and I generally want things to shoot back. (Emergency PC melee is obviously fine, and some concepts may involve some melee enemies, e.g. Chryssalids.) Which is another way of saying, GURPS Tactical Shooting is highly desired.
   
   
2. No interest in superheroes, whatsoever. Limited supernatural abilities (e.g. psionics) is fine, as long as they aren't mandatory, aren't all-powerful, aren't game-defining, etc. I've got plenty of spell-slinging fantasy under my belt for now.
   
   
3. Generally not into "cinematic" stuff, especially over-the-top cinematic stuff. Can probably live with "low-cinema" if I had to.
   
   
4. Anywhere from TL 6 to TL 8 is fine by me. TL 9 is a maybe, depending on how "Sci-Fi"-heavy it is.

Those would make a game I'd be interested in too.

[DangerousThing]

How about an alien invasion Apocolapse? The invaders came in and first destroyed all the military they could find (they did research and invaded out computer networks first). Sort of David Weber's _Out of the Night_ without the vampires, which were only in the last third of the book any way.

Only have the aliens expect a higher TL. In OOTN the aliens were expecting humanity to be using swords instead of machine guns. Not his best, but a fun read.

Lots of shooting both ways, though the aliens tended to retaliate by dropping kinetic strikers on the nearest city/town. Their first Attack took out all the world's capital cities and all known military bases and deployments. The only ones that were left were military who weren't where they were supposed to be, or were very small and in transit.

***

Or Apocolypse by elves. They've been looking over the dimensional barriers and want our world. They started WW I to weaken us, but it didn't work well. Same with WW II. Finally, it's somewhere about now and they're sick of waiting, so they made all of our nukes stop working and our computers crash (these are now permanent due to spells).

They used magic in overwhelming force to destroy the military and take over the civilians.

Only the few people immune or resistant to their mind control can help us now. Maybe some people learn a few spells or magical ability now that magic has come into our world spilling blood in an accidental necromntic ritual. Maybe add some demons into the mix.

Just some thoughts.

[PTTG]

I'm interested regardless. Here's my suggestion:

Awakening-of-magic apocalypse. An unexpected comet appears in the night sky, and as it grows brighter, earth's mana level rapidly climbs and long-sealed gateways open up throughout the world. It was subtle, secret... until 45 seconds ago, when a fire-breathing dragon started attacking New York...