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Phoenix42 · 05-20-2010, 09:01 AM

I'm with Kelly - the use of the immortality thingies (as you put it :) ) allows for the same characters to reappear at different points in time. Of course, these characters will become exceedingly powerful, the quintessence of the AC "Talents". These guys/gals will have lifespans that are the same as the faction leaders... And you don't even have to freeze them up...

The main problem I see is that after a certain time, the characters will be so powerful (just imagine what you can do with 100 years of learning and study - I worked it out once, it's sickening.) and/or high in the social strata that they won't actually be fit for adventuring anymore.

Example from my round: It started in 2060 with the Unity voyage. The characters were two security officials (one marine colonel and a strategical officer) and a xeno-biologist. During the Unity disaster, they all decided to stay with the UN (later Peacekeeping) faction. It is now MY 2110, and due to their adventures they have advanced so far up the social ladder that they are, for the moment, virtually unplayable. Not only because their point total averages at around 300 pts, but also because the Strategic officer has become the Councillor for Security Affairs (read minister of defense), the Colonel is now leader of the armed forces (all 25 of them, at this stage, but nevertheless), and the biologist has become the leading figure in UN science after extracting planetpearls from mindworms and using them for the rejuvenation process, and is now the head of the newly-founded UN university. All of them are eligible for juvee-treatment, but they are highly unlikely to be going adventuring in the classic sense. The last campaign I have planned for them is one where they oversee the first Peacekeeping Colony outside UN Headquarters, and get inadvertently entangled in the odd adventure, of course, but that is it (stumbling into adventures only goes so far).
This does not mean that the characters die out, however: In the future campaigns they will resurface; in the Cloudbase Academy campaign, the Councillor will reappear as the one making the large-scale strategic decisions (and the player will have a say in UN vendetta strategy). The Colonel will probably become something of a heroic contact or patron for foot soldiers, or maybe even an adversary for other factions. And the Professor will always be around whenever xenobiology or new research is around, or will have to be interviewed when some new psi technology goes missing.

In short, characters resurface in other campaigns, depending on their personal inclination. (I have this vision of the characters of a Nautilus/swashbuckling campaign being saved from a Hive Submarine by a last-minute airstrike by the players' own characters from the Cloudbase Academy ("Captain, looks like we arrived just in time - we have a message for you from Councillor Lindström..."). So basically you have the possibility for the characters to take part in major events as main characters or guest stars, depending on the type of events.

05-20-2010, 09:01 AM	#45
Phoenix42 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Mainz, Germany	Re: GURPS Alpha Centauri I'm with Kelly - the use of the immortality thingies (as you put it :) ) allows for the same characters to reappear at different points in time. Of course, these characters will become exceedingly powerful, the quintessence of the AC "Talents". These guys/gals will have lifespans that are the same as the faction leaders... And you don't even have to freeze them up... The main problem I see is that after a certain time, the characters will be so powerful (just imagine what you can do with 100 years of learning and study - I worked it out once, it's sickening.) and/or high in the social strata that they won't actually be fit for adventuring anymore. Example from my round: It started in 2060 with the Unity voyage. The characters were two security officials (one marine colonel and a strategical officer) and a xeno-biologist. During the Unity disaster, they all decided to stay with the UN (later Peacekeeping) faction. It is now MY 2110, and due to their adventures they have advanced so far up the social ladder that they are, for the moment, virtually unplayable. Not only because their point total averages at around 300 pts, but also because the Strategic officer has become the Councillor for Security Affairs (read minister of defense), the Colonel is now leader of the armed forces (all 25 of them, at this stage, but nevertheless), and the biologist has become the leading figure in UN science after extracting planetpearls from mindworms and using them for the rejuvenation process, and is now the head of the newly-founded UN university. All of them are eligible for juvee-treatment, but they are highly unlikely to be going adventuring in the classic sense. The last campaign I have planned for them is one where they oversee the first Peacekeeping Colony outside UN Headquarters, and get inadvertently entangled in the odd adventure, of course, but that is it (stumbling into adventures only goes so far). This does not mean that the characters die out, however: In the future campaigns they will resurface; in the Cloudbase Academy campaign, the Councillor will reappear as the one making the large-scale strategic decisions (and the player will have a say in UN vendetta strategy). The Colonel will probably become something of a heroic contact or patron for foot soldiers, or maybe even an adversary for other factions. And the Professor will always be around whenever xenobiology or new research is around, or will have to be interviewed when some new psi technology goes missing. In short, characters resurface in other campaigns, depending on their personal inclination. (I have this vision of the characters of a Nautilus/swashbuckling campaign being saved from a Hive Submarine by a last-minute airstrike by the players' own characters from the Cloudbase Academy ("Captain, looks like we arrived just in time - we have a message for you from Councillor Lindström..."). So basically you have the possibility for the characters to take part in major events as main characters or guest stars, depending on the type of events.