Alright guys, I want to get this started. I know Brio, Fancy Feast, and Profxmas are all playing, but I can accommodate a couple more if anyone else decides they want to join along the way.

Here are the general rules of a RtD type game: wrote:

The GM (Game Master) posts a situation the players are in. The players then post their actions, according to the conditions GM sets. The GM then rolls for the actions' results, and writes them out in his post. Then the players post actions again, ad infinitum.

The action results are defined by a six-sided die roll:
[1]: Epic Fail. Your efforts only worsened your situation.
[2]: Fail. Your skills or luck were insufficient.
[3]: Meager success: The situation didn't improve by as much as you have intended.
[4]: Success: Your efforts were sufficient to achieve your goal.
[5]: Epic Success: Your skills and luck have combined to ensure your success.
[6]: Overshot: Your efforts were more than required for the goal's completion, and your luck is such that unfortunate side-effects are inevitable.

Any time something threatens the safety of a player, the GM will make a roll for them to dodge.

This one will be set in the urban sprawl of gritty Neo-Noir city, in the year 2054. Megacorporations control most of the planet's resources and have their own independent militaries. Blah, blah, blah, you guys all know the setting.

I need you all to give me a character name, and a brief background (i.e. are they a hacker, merc, former-merc, bounty hunter, detective, junkie, heiress, etc.). There is still room if anyone else would like to join.

Players will be given 12 hours from the time each turn has been posted in which to post their orders for the next turn. If they fail to do so, and at least two of the other players have posted orders, their character will continue doing whatever they were previously doing.

Intro
Gerard Skylark is driving a taxi whilst trying to overhear the conversation of his occupants. He always tried to listen in on his occupants, in case he heard anything that could lead to potential monetary game for the disgraced veteran. The undercity wasn't the nicest place to live, or to perfect the illicit stims he vended, but he was happy to have acquired this temporary gig carting people from one end of the sprawl to the next. He guessed they'd pretty much hire anyone as a cabby in this neighborhood.
The taxi moves at a leisurely pace down dark, rain-slicked roads with steam issuing forth from grates in the sidewalk. The road may as well be the bottom of a dark canyon, with cliff-walls on either side forged in grey metal. Bright neon and LED displays advertise products overhead, and laud the latest innovations in Deck-technology, the IntroDyne-CybroSystems Cybrodyne4000, a Deck which (if the adverts are to be believed) offers its user superior speed in surfing the net while giving him freedom to still perceive the world around him. Who believes an advert like that anyway though? It'd be impossible to perceive both the matrix of cyberspace and the real world at the same time.
Other adverts displayed bright, psychedelic geishas consuming the tastiest softdrinks, famous murderball players commanding you to use their brand of deodorant, and new netapps and plugins. Apparently there was a new subscription fantasy netgame that was gaining popularity among the youth. Gerard never understood the appeal of those secondlifers--his tastes leaned toward a more visceral fantasy.
Various vendors sell all manner of tech products, microchips, used decks, fried meat of questionable origin, and cybernetic implants from street carts as the taxi passes through the underclass merchant district of Neo-Noir City.
In the back of the taxi-hovercab sits Ty Lavreil, wearing a slick black suit and mirrored sunglasses, with a barely visible tattoo under the cuff of his right sleeve, possibly indicating affiliation with the Yakuza--or perhaps with a more deviant organization. He has just picked up his mark, a young man named Alan Maher--a name who no one would even think twice about--but who has reached a certain level of infamy on the net by his handle "Artemis." Alan is a very reclusive young man. He has lived on the streets most of his life, making his residence here and there, his most permanent dwelling being an "apartment" in the shantytown that has overtaken the out-of-commission Oldtown bridge. He came to the black market cyberneticist's attention when he tried to hack into the security database of IntroDyne-CybroSystems just for fun, and made it past every piece of ICE but one.
ID-CS has something that Ty desires, and he thinks he can use Maher to attain it, so he is attempting to make him a deal. He is armed with a hidden dart gun in his sleeve, as well as numerous more integrated systems. Alan is unarmed, but for a vibro-switchblade in his sock, and his wits.

Turn Index
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Turn 1
Turn 2
Turn 3
Turn 4
Turn 5
Turn 6
Turn 7
Turn 8
Turn 9
Turn 10

Ty Lavreil, cyberneticist, black marketeer in illicit cybernetics and weaponry, member of a gnostico-transhumanist cult. If there's anything there that doesn't fit with your concept of this particular future, let me know and I'll adjust.

That all works for me. As I mentioned to Jordan, you don't need a super intense backstory or even any real motivation laid out at the beginning of a game like this. This isn't d&d, and tends to be much more free-form and adaptive, and easier to realize more fully who your character is as you play.
Do you always play male characters Brio? You're like the antithesis to the stereotypical male who constantly plays MMORPGS as large-titted, bootylicious ladies.

Don't hate, I'm going to play a male character too. Trying to absorb as much cyber punk multimedia as possible in preparation for this.
Alan Maher, teenage runaway/hacker prodigy

I have a huge cast of characters that live in my head, each with their own individual personalities and traits. Some are male, some are female. I grab one that seems to best fit the circumstances.

Brio has been my main ever since he ascended to demonhood in Warhammer 40K. I guess demons occupy a larger space in the brain-pan. His gender is incidental.

I do have some pretty hot female alts waiting in the wings of ESO. A Redguard and a Nord. Just need to find the time to play them.

Part of me wanted to make a fat Redguard woman modeled after Oprah to have her own book club.... I do have an Imperial named Nick of Cage though....
During beta, I only played female characters--a dunmer named Dunmer can be lusty too, who went everywhere in her underwear and only donned armor if she really needed to, and a fat calico Khajiit modeled and named after my Shanaynay.

Gerard Skylark is a 30ish year old war veteran and a well known alchemist. He acquired a taste for the lavish lifestyle only to have it all taken away from him, his rank included. Who would have thought that a practical joke could turn sour so fast? All he did was add a little liquid fun to his commanding officers water, nobody expected him beat his wife to the ground and proceed to tap dance on her unconscious body.. to death. Some people have strange reactions to the alchemy, dancing was supposed to be the only side effect.
 With all his valuable possessions taken away from him he resorted to making drugs and selling them on the street. The sewers were his home now.

(Listening to Spotify radio based on Lazerhawk is a good choice right now.)

Gerard Skylark is driving a taxi whilst trying to overhear the conversation of his occupants. He always tried to listen in on his occupants, in case he heard anything that could lead to potential monetary game for the disgraced veteran. The undercity wasn't the nicest place to live, or to perfect the illicit stims he vended, but he was happy to have acquired this temporary gig carting people from one end of the sprawl to the next. He guessed they'd pretty much hire anyone as a cabby in this neighborhood.
The taxi moves at a leisurely pace down dark, rain-slicked roads with steam issuing forth from grates in the sidewalk. The road may as well be the bottom of a dark canyon, with cliff-walls on either side forged in grey metal. Bright neon and LED displays advertise products overhead, and laud the latest innovations in Deck-technology, the IntroDyne-CybroSystems Cybrodyne4000, a Deck which (if the adverts are to be believed) offers its user superior speed in surfing the net while giving him freedom to still perceive the world around him. Who believes an advert like that anyway though? It'd be impossible to perceive both the matrix of cyberspace and the real world at the same time.
Other adverts displayed bright, psychedelic geishas consuming the tastiest softdrinks, famous murderball players commanding you to use their brand of deodorant, and new netapps and plugins. Apparently there was a new subscription fantasy netgame that was gaining popularity among the youth. Gerard never understood the appeal of those secondlifers--his tastes leaned toward a more visceral fantasy.
Various vendors sell all manner of tech products, microchips, used decks, fried meat of questionable origin, and cybernetic implants from street carts as the taxi passes through the underclass merchant district of Neo-Noir City.
In the back of the taxi-hovercab sits Ty Lavreil, wearing a slick black suit and mirrored sunglasses, with a barely visible tattoo under the cuff of his right sleeve, possibly indicating affiliation with the Yakuza--or perhaps with a more deviant organization. He has just picked up his mark, a young man named Alan Maher--a name who no one would even think twice about--but who has reached a certain level of infamy on the net by his handle "Artemis." Alan is a very reclusive young man. He has lived on the streets most of his life, making his residence here and there, his most permanent dwelling being an "apartment" in the shantytown that has overtaken the out-of-commission Oldtown bridge. He came to the black market cyberneticist's attention when he tried to hack into the security database of IntroDyne-CybroSystems just for fun, and made it past every piece of ICE but one.
ID-CS has something that Ty desires, and he thinks he can use Maher to attain it, so he is attempting to make him a deal. He is armed with a hidden dart gun in his sleeve, as well as numerous more integrated systems. Alan is unarmed, but for a vibro-switchblade in his sock, and his wits.

(Alright, give me your orders for your characters. Anyone else who decides they want to join can be integrated into the story at that time.)

So wait, does this means everyone is in the cab? If so, how'd I get Alan in the cab? I wouldn't get in a cab with me.

Yes you are. How you got him in with you is inconsequential. You probably contacted him through the net with some sort of offer he couldn't refuse and told him to meet you at a certain place at a certain time. He was probably fairly hesitant, but you brought up some piece of information that made him more ready to trust you, whether it was a lie or not. But that's all in the past now. These sort of things get made up as we go. Everything (or at least most things) that happens from here is up to you guys now.

Alright I think I understand the rules here. If not feel free to tell me how awful I am. Not really sure what actions you can just do and which ones Justin, My Lord and Pagemaster Forever Amen, My Lord and Pagemaster Forever Amen has to roll for though.
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Alan sat in the back of the dimly lit taxi. His left leg jittered anxiously, restless eyes shifting around to to look at everything but the man beside him. He absolutely loathed meeting with clients face-to-face, especially shady assholes like this.

Tugging his hood forward to ensure it still mostly covered his face, he reluctantly shot a look at the other man. "So. Where are we going exactly?"

Ty glances in the rear view mirror at himself. Lookin' good. He punches an address into the keypad on the back of the driver's seat, then swipes one of his several bank implants, this one under an assumed name. He lifts his briefcase to his lap and opens it. A holographic readout springs to life, displaying a rather large monetary sum. He turns the offer toward his guest. Just as he does, a tone sounds and the holographic display suddenly shows a live feed of an elderly woman. A cat is in front of her, and seems to be swatting at something just out of view. The woman looks to be tapping on glass and is saying in a loud voice, "You're not Tyssander. Where's my grandson?"

Ty quickly turned the display back toward himself and says to the elderly lady, "I'm in a meeting, I'll call you back, gramma"

Alan laughed and peered curiously at the briefcase. He could definitely use the money Tyssander was offering. Some of the other kids, who he liked to mentally refer to as his minions, had managed to destroy most of his equipment in an electric fire. He supposed that's what he got for trying to teach gutter punks basic computer networking.

While you guys are very creative and have some very well-thought-out "actions," this is a game, and not collaborative fiction. You can do one thing and only one thing in your action. Certain things like gesturing or making a simple statement are free, but anything else you try to do must be rolled for (sometimes with hilarious results). If you attempt more than one thing in the turn, you get a cumulative -1 to each successive roll. Try to keep your actions as brief as possible, but feel free to add some creative flair or wit as you will.
I won't post the results of your actions until all 3 players have submitted their actions. Reactions to actions in the current turn will be ignored until next turn, as the results of the actions that they're reacting to could be vastly different from the intended action, based on the roll.
An example:
Ty glancing in the mirror is free, and he can definitely tell that he's looking good. However, him punching in the address would be a rolled action. If I roll a 4 for this, it happens exactly as intended. However, a 3 would mean that he punches the address correctly, but accidentally swipes the wrong card, using one with his real name. A 2 would cause him to completely fumble with the keypad, his fingers seemingly too large for the buttons, looking like a fool in front of Alan, on top of not inputting the correct address. A 1 would have him mistyping a single digit of the address, but one which will inevitably lead them to the hideout of one of the many vile hoverbike gangs who own the streets, on top of using the wrong card, and possibly accidentally flinging the card as he swiped it so that it ricochets off the interior of the car and hits himself right in the wiener. On the other end of the spectrum, a 5 would cause a bank error to render his ride free, in addition to granting him an additional 300 credits as he swiped his card, and a 6 would mean that the bank error grants him over 1000 credits, but also raises a flag with hit banking corporation and their security teams.

Does that kind of make sense? I apologize if the rules weren't very clear originally. Expect things to go way off the hinges of where you intend them to though in a game like this--these things tend to get much more ridiculous than your standard RPG or collaborative fiction.

Well you really can't expect us not to embellish. We're writers.And it isn't really an rpg if we leave out the RP part. it's just a G.   

So we can't whip out pictures of our cats to show each other while we wait for John to post?

Fancy Feast wrote:

So we can't whip out pictures of our cats to show each other while we wait for John to post?

hardly seems fair

Briolase wrote:

Well you really can't expect us not to embellish. We're writers.And it isn't really an rpg if we leave out the RP part. it's just a G.   

Haha, true, that's why I always say this is a "sort of rpg type casual game" and not actually an rpg. If you guys want to play an actual forum rpg, I can come up with a rules set probably though....
Give this a chance though and see how you like it. They're pretty fun.
Embellishment is totally fine.... Just no long vignettes of chained actions--unless you want lots and lots of -1 modifiers. :p

I get +2 for cybernetics

Briolase wrote:

I get +2 for cybernetics

Hahahaha. Honestly though, based on your characters, I have a secret list of types of actions that you guys will get either +1 or -1 modifiers on. Nothing super intense or anything--just logical.

Now I'm actually thinking of rules for a real rpg... Maybe set in a different universe.... I have a lot of universes queued up in my mind at any given moment....

Hippopoctopus wrote:

Briolase wrote:

Well you really can't expect us not to embellish. We're writers.And it isn't really an rpg if we leave out the RP part. it's just a G.   

Haha, true, that's why I always say this is a "sort of rpg type casual game" and not actually an rpg. If you guys want to play an actual forum rpg, I can come up with a rules set probably though....
Give this a chance though and see how you like it. They're pretty fun.
Embellishment is totally fine.... Just no long vignettes of chained actions--unless you want lots and lots of -1 modifiers. :p

I really do like the concept, I just think it would work better if everybody posted at the same pace.
By which I mean John stop being responsible at work and start posting on your phone or something.

So this is a game that Justin, My Lord and Pagemaster Forever Amen is playing alone, where we're meant to abandon our creativity and post on a regular schedule? Okay I can do that.

Fancy Feast wrote:

Hippopoctopus wrote:

Briolase wrote:

Well you really can't expect us not to embellish. We're writers.And it isn't really an rpg if we leave out the RP part. it's just a G.   

Haha, true, that's why I always say this is a "sort of rpg type casual game" and not actually an rpg. If you guys want to play an actual forum rpg, I can come up with a rules set probably though....
Give this a chance though and see how you like it. They're pretty fun.
Embellishment is totally fine.... Just no long vignettes of chained actions--unless you want lots and lots of -1 modifiers. :p

I really do like the concept, I just think it would work better if everybody posted at the same pace.
By which I mean John stop being responsible at work and start posting on your phone or something.

DAMNIT JOHN, WHY ARE YOU SO RESPONSIBLE? I suppose I could impose a time limit, and anyone who doesn't post withing say 12 hours or something simply continues doing what they were last doing.

Hippopoctopus wrote:

and anyone who doesn't post withing say 12 hours or something simply continues doing what they were last doing.

"Ty stares in the mirror for 14 hours"

Briolase wrote:

Hippopoctopus wrote:

and anyone who doesn't post withing say 12 hours or something simply continues doing what they were last doing.

"Ty stares in the mirror for 14 hours"

It could happen....

If you want to see an example of this, google "roll to dodge cyperpunk" and click the first link. I actually recycled the intro from that game for this game, because that one didn't get nearly as far as I would have liked, and because, based on what you guys choose to do, this one can go in a wildly different direction from where that one was headed.

edit: Go to page one to actually see the orders people gave and how they resulted in the turns.