Science Fiction Microscope: the RPG

Gus "Moonlight" Graham is thinking that there's no need for him to get on the David, since the cancer has been diagnosed as metastasising.

Next step we may have to wait 24 hours or so - family duties call, and there's some extra rules to playing stuff out that I need to try and summarise.

See, Microscope anticipates face-to-face RP'ing, so the author goes with some detail into concepts that most of us already get - for example, it takes the book about two pages to basically say "no autohitting against the main characters you play, but you are free to do anything you want to "secondary characters" -- i.e. NPCs that you create, even if they're not yours.

There's also the concept of "pushing", which is essentially voting a piece of someone else's post out in favour of a different proposal. I think we might skip that rule this time round for simplicity and also because I still have to think how we could work it in PbP settings without consuming bales of pages in single-line votes.

Either way this all looks ... intriguing, to say the least.

 

All right, we're almost ready to move on to the scene. Here's the pertinent rules about Scenes...

Other pertinent rules which don't need full description because we're partially familiar with them...

You can't change the facts as established or (if it specifies) the facts the Question itself establishes (for example, "Why didn't Perry's daughter make it off the planet before it disappeared" establishes that Gabrielle Perry doesn't leave ... but you can change our assumptions about why things happened that way.

If you want to describe something about the world outside your character during the Scene, just describe your character perceiving it. You can make up anything you want this way, so long as it obeys the usual rules for making history (don?t contradict what we already know, don?t use anything banned by the Palette). You can make new things happen or reveal facts about the environment or world.

When someone describes something they see, don?t ignore it. Work with it. Build on what other people add during the Scene. Another option is to intentionally introduce something incomplete and then pass the ball to another player and let them fill in the details.

Bear in mind that you may have to make a distinction between an actual fact and what a character believes to be fact, since they're not the same, and the results would be, shall we say, a little hilarious if you have someone building on a character's opinion which is contrary to what you actually want the fact to be.

If you can't explain how the character perceived what was described, you can't establish it as true; it is only an opinion. (So of course memories or "everybody knows" sort of stuff would probably cause something to be true.)

Revealing thoughts in character (i.e. via the good old italicised text to tell the audience I'm thinking about blowing up the ship is useful to flag to other players where you personally would like the scene to go. Remember, you can't collaborate, but you do build off one another.

You and you alone control the fate of the character you picked. (i.e. no autohitting against PCs.) NPCs (i.e. anyone else not banned during setup) can be created freely and controlled by you, but autohitting is permitted against any NPC.

Sometimes it's the other way round: you want another character to do something to your character. If no one is playing that character or it?s a secondary character you control, just describe perceiving it and it happens.[/li]

Like I s

 

Lens: Saintheart
Current Focus: Captain Abraham Perry
Historical Period: The colonies of Earth struggle to fend for themselves as Earth falls.
Event: Earth disappears from the solar system

Question: Why didn't Abraham Perry's daughter escape from Earth before it disappeared?

Setting: blasted, war-torn industrial zone in the Chicago area. It's a battleground -- one where Perry's men are desperately trying to hold the line with dwindling ammunition against advancing combat droids, the progeny of the artificial intelligence NOMAD. They are trying to hold the line long enough for Perry's ship, the David, to be fully fuelled and provisioned for a cold launch into orbit and for the long ride to the nearest human colony on the Moon. It's implied Perry makes it off Earth, but also implied that his daughter does not.
Required Characters: Abraham Perry, his daughter. None banned.

Characters present at start of scene: Captain Perry, M, Gus Graham

IC: Sgt. Gus "Moonlight" Graham

A pulse-round spanngged off his right shoulderplate. Had it been less than the six hundredth to do so, he might've flinched. As it was, his hands flew almost instinctively over the controls, and the Scorpion suit responded, twelve feet tall, bipedal titanium and steel alloys massing a good fifteen tons, the right arm raised and infrared tracking on the source. A volley of high-impact rocket-propelled grenades blasted from the weapon blister on that hand; the inertial compensators had been fried about fifteen minutes ago, so he was slammed painfully against the left cockpit wall as the recoil kicked in.

No matter: the source of the pulse-round was a blooming rose of yellow and red fire, collapsing a section of the building it had been coiled up against. Graham was already turning to the cockpit's HUD, scanning for another target. There wasn't, for five seconds at least. Time enough to think. Or at least for neurons to fire.

His eyes flickered across the other displays in the Scorpion's cockpit. Amazingly, he still had 12 transponder signals: nine men with small arms and a rapidly declining ammunition supply, "Cookout" Tong in the Simba suit, and "Snotty" McGruder in the other remaining Scorpion. The Simba had taken a grenade to its forward fuel line, and the big cat-shaped mech wouldn't be lasting much longer no matter how much Cookout tried to massage its ills away with the diagnostic AI.

For a second he allowed himself the briefest fantasy of a big Senator rig under his hands, twenty-eight feet tall, flight-capable and able (so the brochures said, which were always lies) to deploy fuel-air bombs at its feet and survive the resulting blast. But then he remembered that the last Senator had lasted maybe ten minutes against NOMAD flyers and anyway there were another six new contacts on the HUD, so he took the last few seconds to thumb his comm to Perry.
"Tallyho, tallyho, six new ones, cap. Hope you got some good ideas, sir, 'cause that formation looks like the forward element of a regiment-strength force movin' up."

TAG: LordT, ramza, Xan

 

IC: Captain Abraham Perry
Battlefield Chicago

Battlefield Chicago: War Hymn

Two Scorpions and a Simba that was as good as gone. They were bleeding out fast and the pumps were to slow in getting the fuel into the tank. "Faster. Push them as far as you can and then some." He hissed to the blue overalls around him, in which sweaty engineers and volunteers from the ship were busy controlling the maintaince and service pod that was refueld their ship. The oval floater was hoovering right next to it and Perry knew he would never see one of those again. Either because he was dead or he would soon leave earth forever. They worked only in earth´s gravity, he reminded himself. Like so many things. Humans for example.

"Tallyho, tallyho, six new ones, cap. Hope you got some good ideas, sir, 'cause that formation looks like the forward element of a regiment-strength force movin' up."

Of course they did. The last rebuke had taken them by surprise, so now they moved in for the kill. Maybe another four or six sneaked up in the flank in this very moment, Perry bet. He knew NOMAD. They had fought side by side often enough. In an open fire exchange they had no chance. Not another round. Perry cursed himself and looked at Gabrielle. His daughter was the reason he was still hanging on. He had surpassed his own limits, grown to a hight of bravery and dedication he had not known from himself before . . . only to get her off hte planet. "Sgt. Kaly, security joins Moonlight. Take your men and help him." Security were men in light armor with handguns. Flies to distract NOMAD, little more. He had just sacrificed another five lives, he knew. "Moonlight, fall back and take cover among the larger pieces of rabble. wait until they are nearby. They might get a hsot at the ship, but our shields are charging. We can take a shot or two. Then hit them with everything you got when they get close enough for direct hits, you hear me? We need another few minutes. Just another few minutes, no matter what the cost is." He hissed into his comm once more and then opened the channel to the ships bridge. "Calibrate the shields on emergency energy. We got incomings and htis time they´ll hit us!" He shouted and took out his own gun.

"FASTER, dammit!" He yelled a last time at the engineers and wondered again, who had given away their location. Kaly? She had a lower clearance of security than she should. Maybe someone had odwngraded her hwen suspision rised. "Gabrielle, you go to the ship and stay there. When they are ready, they´ll take off! Don´t wait for anybody. Not for ANYbody, you hear me?" He gave her daughter his sharpest look. She had to go away, before the event. Abe was ready to die to make sure she did. they were all dead anyway. No matter what the cost, he would make sure, she made it!

"Kaly, meet me at 5.66.7. I join your squad." He took out his handgun and checked it. 22 shots. Armor breaking. At least some damage he could deal to the metalheads.

He would give Commander Flaire command. And hten he would fight to the last bullet. For Gabrielle. For his dream of a still dreaming daughter in tomorrow´s world.

For some dreams you paid in blood.

Tag: Saint, Xany, Ramza

 

IC: Sgt. Gus "Moonlight" Graham
Battlefield, Chicago

"Aye, sir; Moonlight is foo-boo and hold." The Scorpion rumbled in response to his keytaps and pulling the control joysticks, wheeling back towards the launch facility. She'd been nicely disguised, he had to admit; the David propped upright like a finger pointing at the moon didn't actually look that much different from the shards of buildings left around here, not that it really helped now the AIs had their position and had probably figured out what the "ruined automotive factory" ou there actually contained.

He squinted at the tactical displays; six more green dots, transponder broadcasters, had been added to his displays, Kaly apparently the "squad" leader. Well, the old cow always did eat too many chicken wings to make the weight cutoff... In spite of himself, he grinned, thumbing for squadwide broadcast. "Cookout, Snotty -- the old man wants us back closer to the launch facility. White o' the eyes strategy, copy?"
"Receptors," Snotty corrected him in that deep baritone that sounded like an old sci-fi movie villain.
"Wiseass. Squads one, two," he said, addressing the four-and-five men hunkered down under an impromptu barricade of burned out cars and freight vans, "set remote-det charges in the barricades, ASAP, then fall back to," he tapped at the somewhat out-of-date map of the area, "here, corner of Dean and Lockhart street, 5.66.7. Reinforcements are inbound your position."
"Copy, Moonlight," came the scratchy voice of the kid on the far end of that line. And then they were moving. Tong said nothing, but it didn't take an idiot to see the Simba almost limping in a very anthropomorphic representation of what an injured lion would look like limping back, made of metal and about fifteen feet high at the shoulder.

How the hell did Perry think he was going to pull this off? Maybe the David's shields would hold for a shot or two, but the Simba's anti-missile turret was out and Moonlight didn't think both he and Snotty would be able to gun down any serious missiles that the NOMAD elements were sure to bring up. Somewhere, right now, a NOMAD AI was probably crosschecking the battle feeds from the last two elements they'd wiped out, evaluating at several million decision trees per second, looking for weaknesses in the position, in their attention, in the human's own minds...

He shook the thoughts away, choosing instead to focus on the dwindling distance between the green dots and those of the six red inbounds moving up Lockhart.

TAG: All

 

IC: Gabrielle Perry
Battlefield, Chicago

Gabrielle grimaced from her spot behind a singed wall.

Oh, her father's orders made sense. She was a 'noncombatant' - that was the main reason why she was back here with the engineers - but she hated it when her father tried to protect her like this. She wasn't a child, dammit; she was a researcher at the prestigious University of Chicago Artificial Intelligence lab ... not that that was something she'd advertise right now. "Artificial intelligence" was a bad word nowadays, what with the death robot army trying to kill everyone and all.

Death robot army. Gabrielle sighed. Ben was rubbing off on her.

Speaking of Ben -

"Come on, let's get on board," her friend urged, pulling her by the arm. "Your father -"

"We can still help!" Scowling, Gabrielle shook him off. Ben was another one who seemed to think she needed protecting, although in this case, he was probably equally motivated by self-preservation. He and Gabrielle were the only ones remaining from their lab. The robots had levelled the place, and only Gabrielle's quick thinking had gotten them out of there alive. They had eluded NOMAD's forces and made it to the David safely, but now ...

"We can still help," Gabrielle repeated, for Ben had made a disbelieving face. "They didn't hit our lab by accident. They wanted us out of the way. Well, we're not. Come on -"

And she led Ben around the corner, not to the boarding ramp, but to the makeshift command centre nestled at the base of the David.

TAG: All

 

IC: Sgt. Gus "Moonlight" Graham
Battlefield, Chicago

"Moonlight," called Cookout. The Simba was down in the half-cover of a ruined dealership, camoflaged surprisingly well given its size. "Something funny in the static. I'm getting a battle crypt, looks like a NOMAD signal. Can't break it yet."
"So triangulate on it. Can you pick which of the six contacts is broadcasting?"
"None of 'em. That's the thing. It's coming from behind us."
Graham's heart skipped a beat. "Where behind us?"
"Best I can tell ... from someone on the ground. In the troops, or maybe with Kaly's squad."

TAG: All

 

OOC: Hey guys, please don't wait up on my account, I'm ridiculously busy until late Wednesday or Thursday.

 

Captain Abraham Perry
Battlefield Chicago

"Do you read this signal?" Abraham yelled. he had run all the way down here and his bearded face was glowing from exhaustion. His gun in his hand he saw they still had a few seconds before meeting the enemy. And the traitor transmitted. Abraham closed his eyes, his heart was pumping so heavy, the sound of it seemed like thunder in his ears. Strange, how closed eyes made this sound so intense.

The eyes snapped open. Abraham looked around and hissed out. The traitor was probably nearby. Very close to him in this very second. And what had he transitted? The trap, obviously. He had transmitted the trap. That they were hiding. How would a computer react? He would attack faster and with more concentrated forces. He had no time to bypass them, the ship was almost ready. So he would charge, using the knowledge nobody was there to use their lack of cover, because they were all hiding.

So the enemy knew the plan and was left with superior knowledge and a devestating attack option and Abraham knew NOMAD and knew NOMAD knew. And that meant he knew it was very probable NOMAD would use this option. Which was a good thing, because Abraham knew NOMAD knew and NOMAD did not know ABRAHAM knew. Like a chessplayer suddenly realizing his last move had made his victory inevitable, he had to smile. The traitor might have saved them all.

"Graham, they´ll charge. Someone gave them our location, so they will charge, without cover, without stopping. So ingore my orders. We abandon the plan. ATTACK! ATTACK!" And he himself turned around and did not storm out of the cover. He looked at his infantry. The traitor had to tell the machines of the hcange of plans. He had to try. Because if they made it out, they would the equipment and get him anyway. "All units ATTACK!" He shouted and loaded his gun. Hopefully Gabrielle was out of here soon. All he needed was his daughter to survive this.

"ATTACK!" He yelled and his eyes turned to Kaly. Had she just retreated behind a stone hwen he had ordered attack? Loading problems? He doubted it. With angry steps he began to walk towards her position, ignoring everybody and everything, including shots and explosions around him. Unaimed explosions from surprised NOMAD slaves. "Only a machine, old friend! You are only a machine!" He shouted into the area, as he approached Kaly.

Tag: Saint, Xany, Ramza

 

IC: Gabrielle Perry
Battlefield, Chicago

None of the support staff batted an eye when Gabrielle and Ben commandeered a terminal. For one thing, everyone knew she was Old Abe's little girl; for another, they were just a little bit busy at the moment frantically coordinating the defensive efforts, the refuelling, and maintaining the uplink with Orbital to make sure they kept a launch corridor open to receive the David when (not if, Gabrielle told herself firmly) they finally launched.

"That's funny," Ben said, frowning at the screen. He had brought up a network map of comm traffic, the easiest and fastest way to show where NOMAD elements were. "Look here - it's showing an active node -"

"That can't be right."
"Map don't lie, Gabe."
"But that's where we are."

Ben looked up at her, his mouth set in a grim line, and Gabrielle knew her expression matched his. Active nodes, especially one broadcasting in NOMAD battle crypt (Gabrielle recognised the pattern it made on the airwaves), didn't just appear, and there certainly shouldn't be one right here in their ranks. If so ... well ... that could only mean one thing. They had a traitor.

"You know..." Ben said softly. "This is an opportunity."
It took Gabrielle a moment to register what he was saying. "You mean - the ice?"
Ben nodded.

The 'ice', as Ned (their lab-mate, two days dead) had charmingly nicknamed it, was a device designed to scramble, confuse, and generally wreak havoc on NOMAD signals across a wide radius. Theoretically, anyway. The device had never been tested; they had completed the only prototype not three days ago.

The other problem was it needed to piggyback on an active NOMAD node to work, and that was rather difficult to manage.

This was their best opportunity yet.

"Can you get a lock on it?" Gabrielle asked.
"Yes, but -" Ben hesitated. "You track; I'll take it there. I'm faster -"
"You know that will never work." Why were people always trying to protect her? "You're our networks expert; I don't know how to operate that damn map." She shucked her bag as she spoke, pulling a small fist-sized device out of it and tucking it into a jacket pocket.

"I don't think -"

"Ben. We're wasting time. Do it." She snagged a comm bud, plugged it into her ear, and grinned at him. "Besides, I invented it. I get to use it first."

TAG: All

 

IC: Sgt. Gus "Moonlight" Graham
Battlefield, Chicago

"Roger, Abe." He was surprised how calm that sounded. "Cookout, Snotty -- we're go."
"My suit won't take much more, Moonlight," said Cookout from the Simba.
Moonlight was already moving. "Triangulate that NOMAD battle crypt, then - get the signal to Abe. And hurry."

Then he was in the firefight again, rains of high-velo rounds coursing around him and rattling off the Scorpion's armour plating as the six AIs came in. Two cycle-looking ones -- Evels was the nickname his division had for them -- a couple of Skeeter flyer AIs, and on the ground two heavy Ivan tank drones. They'd be the priority -- and it looked like Perry had it right since they were showing the signs of AI hesitation and resetting decision trees that telltale'd unanticipated changes.

The Scorpion's 50-cal hip mounts ended the indecision of one Evel, shredding its tyres as it maneuvered, but even with that hesitation they were still damn fast. The other got a fusillade of grenades off that blew at least three men apart on the ground, though the Scorpion remained intact.

And then they started to reorient their fire, and that was when his Scorpion really started to shudder under the combined assault of RPGs and bullets.
The Ivans were still reconfiguring by the look of it, so that meant he was safe for roughly the next ten seconds or so.

TAG: All

 

[image=http://www.cyberroach.com/m/mhand.gif]

M
Battlefield, Chicago

They would think they had been betrayed. M would've smirked, but wasn't entirely sure if mouth motions could be controlled. Or if his/her/its actions were even a product of conscious decision.

What he/she/it did know was that there was a certain way events always had to unfold, and that there were rules to this sort of thing. The rule, of course, was that they always had to think it was them. Always. That was the one rule you couldn't break.

And armageddon was approaching.

A machine man fell from the sky, dead as the day before its nanoprocessors had been wired together by specialized chains of organic molecules. In the 1970s they were just beginning to discover the uses of silicon. Centuries later - or perhaps mere decades, or perhaps millennia, these details were of little import to M - the thought of using anything other than a modified benzene ring was tantamount to heresy. To say nothing of quantum data storage.

The machine man landed on a flesh man, and he too was struck dead. Perhaps he would be the one.

Fingers - if they were that - penetrated the surface of the solid access board. There was no contact - how could there be? - and the transmission was all that mattered. Yes. There. The eyes - if they were that - of M seemed to flash, or perhaps did flash, with an electric blue hue as the confirmation signal was received.

Angels of death rode metal wings. Metal beasts controlled by man laid waste to the streets.

And armageddon was approaching.

"It is done," M appeared to say, stepping away from the terminal, a careful electrical cord incision leaving its transmission set to automatic. The man and man machine were placed at the controls, to give them a they to focus their attentions on.

And armageddon was approaching.

TAG: LordT, Saint, Xan

OOC: Sorry for the delays, should be back to a much more regular schedule now.

 

There are not many baseline humans left - generations among the solar system have warped the majority of humanity into subspecies, such as the tall, thin, frail Martians and the squat dwarves of Europa.

 

ooc: Also I am afrtaid someone needs to speak to BobaMatt about our rules *coughs* it´s good he posted, because I totally missed so far we went on.

Captain Abraham Perry
Battlefield Chicago

He took cover, as debris and dust covered him form an impact. Cobalt-shells, ripping through the ages old concrete of whart remained of the building they were seeking cover in. Then the humming and squeaking noises came. Roaring sounds as predator-drones spread their tentacles on the far side of the field. Abraham did not take a shot. He did not wait for the battle to begin, or had it already? He looked at the display and waited for the location of his spy, his traitor among his men. The signal got stronger. Kaly was already out, as she was only one block of concrete away from him and the signal came from the other side of the fortification.

He looked at the transport and hissed out in frustration, as he saw the engines were just about to start. "Cold start, frek the engines, you can crash land on the moon if manus go out, they got low gravity there." His scream was answered by someone, but he wasn´t sure who. the sound of battle overlapped too much. It wasn´t his daughter though. "Is Gabrielle on board?" he yelled, but there was no answer, only the impact of a shellshocker. It landed only five meters away and exploded as it drilled into the ground. The thundering explosion did not hurt him, as the wall he was behind was thick enough to take the load . . . but his ears did not take it so well. There was only a beeping noise.

He collapsed, ripping his communicator from his ear. His display at his arm jumped alive and as he looked upon it, he realized, the data was arriving from the Simba. The most left positioned of Kaly´s soldiers transmitted to the enemy. Abe looked in the direction and then at the bleeding from his ear. He decided to not give up now. He decided he was dead, anyway. He needed to settle this score. Taking the communicator and knowing he would not hear any answers he gave a simple command. Gabrielle was on board, everything else did not matter. So his words were . . .

"Take off asap. Wait for nobody. Direct order. If anyone on board this ship does not follow it, execute him." He dropped the comm and loaded his gun through. As he stepped towards the young man´s position he felt how balance was not what it was used to be. He had to lean against the debris for a moment and then stumbled on towards the boy, raising his gun. "Bastard." He hissed, ubt it was impossible the young man heard him over the sound of battle.

Tag: You guys

 

OOC: Whoops! I think I only saw the first page.

 

Sgt. Gus "Moonlight" Graham
Battlefield, Chicago

Son of a bitch. Sounded like Old Abe was cracking up; that set of snarled orders had come over the comm sounded like a guy who was prepared to throw everything away in a suicide mission. As it was, even if the David's shields withstood a shell from the two Ivans, they'd never hold up against a fusillade from them. And the ship would make a gorgeous target outlined against the sky going for a cold launch. It also didn't help that Graham's HUD was now showing four other NOMAD signals he could quickly count, moving up behind the Ivans. Not heavy weapons platforms, but for mostly-unarmoured troops it hardly made a difference.

Which didn't really leave much in the way of options.

"Snotty; with me. We're going up the barrel. All fire on the Ivans, copy."
"Got it, boss." For a man agreeing to suicide, McGruder was calm. But then he'd lost his two sons over New Zealand three weeks ago.

The two Scorpions' servos whined as the two mechs whirled out of their cover and went bounding up the street with fifteen-ton impacts on the tarmac. Pulse fire rained around them. The right arm weapon blister blew clean off with a burst from one of the Skeeters, though he drove it off with an answering spray from the fifty-cal, giving himself a few more seconds. McGruder wheeled behind his sergeant as he'd been taught as his weapons recharged, then the big mech was out and drilling fire into the tanks a hundred metres distant.

Then the Ivans' decision trees finally resolved, and in the space of three seconds McGruder's mech became a wheel of flame and actinic light as her reactor went critical. Snotty got a scream of pain off before the comm cut out -- not that Graham listened since he had a fire resolution with the left blister, and, hammered as if he was inside a set of drums, Moonlight got a Ghoul away, and one of the Ivans simply exploded. Red telltales bloomed across Moonlight's threat boards; bullets had busted one of the right knee axials and the armor wouldn't take much more. He started to reverse, as the Ivan turned its guns towards him.

TAG: All