Okay.  I'll sey it up.   I recall your initial system creation, know how much you like it.  I just worry about generating too much that doesn't get used...  But, hey, if it keeps folks happy, I'm all for happy...

Oh, neat.  a lot of suggestions I'm not familiar with!  Here's a handful more...

Killjoys & Earth-2
I loved their portrayals of truly alien alien species... And for Killjoys, some mmusic-video-quality stylish videography on occasion.

Dollhouse & Orphan Black
For the question of what constitutes identity, also the foundation for some of the idea behind cortical stacks

Sense-8 & Falling Water
For explorations of the inter-connectedness of people...

Humans & Better Than Us
for the ideas of androids gaining sentience/sapience and what that might mean and look like

And recently, I've read a couple of really neat books on sentient microbial colonies...  which I find just fascinating... (ties in with CSX's colony thing).
Brain Plague by Joan Slonczewski
Blood Music by Greg Bear

Since you mention Sense-8, which is superb, might I also suggest Travelers. I also point people at Terra Nova, which very much deserved another series.

I hadn't wanted to open it up to 'worlds' for a reason. Too many good ones. Though i damn well need to read the Foundation series.

I forget about Dollhouse as I always lumped it with Angel/Buffy universe. Perhaps it is more the Firefly universe? Joss Whedon was good at stuff for a bit there.

If we are not doing set worlds, Black Mirror and Love, Death, and Robots are also great collection. Sew series for LDR just came out and I want to watch it bad.

Glad to see no qualms about the exclusion of Star Wars and Interstellar. Suppose I could include The Martian though. Nice way to make science, mostly, the star!

I could never get into classic Who and though I have watched most the modern run up to  certain point it's more a passing fancy when it strikes me. I never liked it really.

Never got around to Sense-8. Seemed iffy when I watched the promos. Suppose I should include Raised by Wolves then? It was alright but I lost interest six episodes in or so despite loving one of the actors. Uh, the guy from Vikings. Forget his name.

Ahhh, Alien Nation was the one I was trying to remember instead of Earth: FC. Travelers was a real fun ride! Jerry O'Connel, yeah? I think I watched some of Terra Nova. Wasn't impressed at all. Seemed like a low budget rehash of Avatar.

Oh, oh, Does the Escape from ___ Series count!? Lovely shows! All these memories coming out of the woodwork now!

Terra Nova really was nothing like Avatar in concept. Are you thinking of the same show? Terra Nova was where a bunch of humans were sent back to the time of the dinosaurs to found a colony. Not really like Avatar there, unless I am misremembering Avatar. It's been over a decade, and I wasn't remotely bothered with it. Mostly, it bored me stiff. :P

This is a thorny question.  On the one hand, I don't want to put huge restrictions on things, but on the other, I don't want your character learning everything about themselves and thus having their entire back-story, complete with emotional justifications and motivations.  Actually, I also really don't want to put in a huge effort of writing reams of background text of questionable relevance.

So, ultimately, it's up to you folks to lay out what you find out.  But, keep in mind that Zenda-Meier will have had a basic profile only.  It's more than a Wanted Poster, but less than a full psyche-profile.  You were in cryo-stasis.  You were cargo.  Who you were--really--didn't matter to Ptolomen Station.

I sugget, as a bare minimum:

• Name, DOB, Soverign State (what I"m using to mean "star-empire"), planet & nation of origin
• Reason for transfer to ZM penal colony
• A brief history of criminal activity and prior arrests
• Personal notes and observations
• Possibly some news articles associated with criminal activites.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these may well be curated biographies.  Others may have padded the criminal charges to justify your being moved out of -sovereignity.  Others may have carefully left certain charges otu to avoid having you executed.

This is also a perfect place to plant names of contacts (in the form of "suspected to associated with The Black Rose Killer who operated on Phyrrus-4"), introduce factions and planets, systems, etc.

Once again, though, I'd prefer not to have a whole novel of back-story detail in this profile.  The more you write up now, the more your close off potential options down the road.  I like story-details, but I don't want us to be trapped in them yet.

Does that answer your question?  I think it does.

It does, and perfectly, thank you!

Out of curiosity; I assume the AI listed off names and ranks/positions so Baylee would know who to give/deny permissions to, but did it also include pictures?

In reply to Bek Haruhana (msg # 41):

Let me answer that :)
Some of us may not be previous crews of the Orishi (I find this to be too much a coincidence - we are in this jail for weeks/months, but the ship captured 3 days ago happened to be ours) ;) so the AI might not know us at all.

The ZM penal colony files that Rayfe the hacker downloaded, however have all our details, including our pics and DNA samples. :)

- Control, How and where do we transmit the information requested (DOB, rap sheet, etc)?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:37, Mon 17 May 2021.

In reply to Maissa Haukea (msg # 42):

It was established that the ship can differentiate between registered entities (ie, former crew/passengers) and unregistered ones, but the permissions Baylee handed out weren't divided along those lines; she specifically mentioned Viper and Gilina as new recruits, and I think she was in the control room when Gilina's name was introduced. That implies to me that the ship has at least some info about everyone on board, even if it's only names and ranks for the unregistered ones. Which could easily come from the ID implants, or from the station database; it probably isn't important which.

What I'm getting at is, at the moment Rayfe definitely has that info (among other things) and has offered to share it with Baylee. But does she also have some of that independent from his, that could be potentially used to corroborate or invalidate what he stole?

Some of this issue is due to my just wanting to move things along.  So, sure, Baylee wouldn't have known Viper as Viper, though she would have known Gilina as Gilina, because that's what the name says on her ident tag on her tech-jumper.    But maybe this is how Viper got the nickname viper in this identity...  Or maybe there was soem sort of psychic seepage as she starts getting bits and pieces of her memory back.  hand-waving.  That's what I'm doing.

I'd envisioned the AI as able to identify others only in very general sense unless biometrics have been registered--which they haven't, yet.  From private messages, I'm getting that Bek was a part of the crew before, so he's biometrically registered, as is Baylee.  Baylee (and Bek) would have direct access to registered ships crew compliment.

I'm going to take an easy way out, though, and say that the AI made provisional identification of folks based on uniforms.  So... ZM-tech (Techs), Zm-Command (Amin), ZM-crew (Marines), Prisoners.  But I don't think it has enough info to differentiate individuals yet.  Unless we can use this to springboard into the revelation about the ident-chip in your arms... oh.  I like that.  I'm gonna go with that.

So, what I draw from this is the need for a formal scene to do the reveal (which'll be Rayfe's thing, I imagine, since he has the chip), and that would be a good time to discuss captaincy...
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:28, Mon 17 May 2021.

I've changed the title of the Session 02 thread to reflect that it's for open-play...  Session-two is going to set a lot of the narrative groundwork for everything else, so I figure discrete scenes can be done in discrete threads.

What I'd like to accomplish in 02.01 is the following:

• Reveal who the PCs are - up to you how much info you get
• Determine captaincy
• Determine social dynamics
  And by this I mean... Zenda-Meier employees aren't just going to blindly trust a bunch of criminals!  'Cause that's how they see you.  What are you gonna do about it?

Amin is currently unconscious, but I've taken narrative license and said that he, the tech-guy, and the amputated marine are all sedated and currently stabilized.  Unfortunately, that means that Amin can't reveal anything useful he might have or make any commands of the others... not yet.  I kinda wanna see where you guys take this.  Nothing is off-the-table, really.

My RL schedule has been pretty squeezy the past several days, but I am still alive.

Thanks for nudging CSX's actions along with some extremely suitable narrative license.  :)

Here is an interesting thought...

Suppose that CSX actually was part of the Orishi crew?  :)

Perhaps he was originally cargo, himself being smuggled away from whatever forces wanted him imprisoned in the first place, and then made himself useful enough with his extraordinary abilities to earn himself a place aboard.

Perhaps he was even extremely useful, such as healing Baylee from serious injury, and extremely valued.  That would make an interesting contrast to the contempt she currently has for him, if and when such memories are rediscovered... ;)

Any objections?  Speak now, or forever hold your peace...

I'm reminded vaguely of Stark on Farscape.

The capacity for healing doesn't preclude the capacity for violence, mind you.

CSX:
He tried to rise, and was pleasantly surprised to find the pain level of his shoulder to be significantly decreased.

What's happening here?

Are you kicking off healing of the Moderate Consequence Intense Psychosomatic Soulder Pain?  The narrative justification being... what?  that he'd rested?

Or are you spending a fate-point to make it a Minor Consequence (with recovery initiated)... I suppose just "Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain"?

Yes, both the rest and the meditation/prayer were in part intended to provide the needed narrative reference.

However, I don't know if you had some longer interval in mind...?  O_o

I don't know if what I wrote fits what you had in mind.

If not, and since I wrote it into the canon already, feel free to take a fate point if you are so inclined...

I just wanted to know--mechanically--what's going on.  I'm still unclear.  Which was it?

1. Starting recovery of the Moderate Consequence
   
2. Downgrading and starting recovery of a Minor Consequence (for a fate-point).

I guess I'm confused (which isn't surprising, given my game mechanics cluelessness)...

From the quoted passage, I thought that providing the narrative justification was already enough to trigger the downgrade, without any mention of a fate point being required.  So that was how I wrote my IC post.

However, if you as GM think that a fate point is appropriate for that, then I think you are a much better judge of such things than I.  :)

As the GM, I feel that the decision to spend or not spend a fate-point must be the players.  I'll only take that option in exceptional circumstances.

Recovering From a Consequence (Fate Core, page 164) says there are a couple of things that need to happen to regain the use of a Consequence slot:

• Succeeding at an action that allows you to justify recovery  (that means rolling, 'cause we're talking mechanics here)
• Waiting an appropriate amount of game-time for that recovery to take place.

Waiting without rolling to recover doesn't kick off recovery  (it took dice & decisions to get you the consequence; it'll take dice & decisions to get rid of them). Succeeding at a roll-to-recover does not clear the slot.  It just starts recovery.  You still need to wait.

However, you have a Stunt which applies here:


So... Your options are:

• Spend a fate-point to use Rapid Regeneration, to change Intense Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain(+4) to Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain(+2) and initiate recovery
• Roll Will to Overcome Intense Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain(+4) to initiate recovery
• Do nothing and continue with Intense Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain(+4)

Also note:  If you're trying to perform recovery on yourself, the target difficulty is increased by +2 (FC 164).  So an unassisted recovery roll for a Moderate(+4) Consequence will be versus +6.

As an extension of the fate system, you could also opt to say that resting was in preparation for the meditative effort that would help heal, and roll to create-an-advantage.  That Advantage Aspect could, in turn, be invoked on a roll-to-recover if needed.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:34, Wed 19 May 2021.

This may be a stupid question (or maybe not, given that we are play-by-post instead of face-to-face)...

For our game here on RPoL, what exactly is a "session"?  O_o

EDIT: Given the thread names, I suspect that our exit from the station was the end of the first session, and that we are now beginning the second session?

If so, is it possible for me to spend my fate point when I collapse, before the ship actually leaves the station, and have it count as being spent in Session #1 rather than being spent in Session #2?  O_o
This message was last edited by the player at 00:09, Wed 19 May 2021.

Yes, we are at the start of session 2.    Session one ended when you boarded the Orishi. Please see message 2: in the Mechanics & House-Rules thread for definitions of scene, session and scenario.

It doesn't make sense to me to have CSX resting in session 01, before he'd boarded the Orishi.  I'd rather not go back and revise the already-closed scene to have you spend the fate-point and write the narrative action required in that scene.  We're done with that session.

I assume that your concern is about not being able to use Rapid Regeneration again in this session.  So, I'll allow you to use it twice in this session, as you're learning the system.   But this is a one-time thing.

If you choose to spend the fate-point for Rapid Regeneration, we will downgrade to Psychosomatic Shoulder Pain(+2) and that Consequence will be cleared at the end of the next formal scene. "Open play" threads don't count.  There has to be an appreciable passing of linear time.

Also note:
If you're trying to perform the Overcome action to do recovery on yourself, the target difficulty is increased by +2 (FC 164).  So an unassisted recovery roll for a Moderate(+4) Consequence will be versus +6.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:39, Wed 19 May 2021.

OK.  Yes, I'll go ahead and spend the fate point to downgrade via Rapid Regeneration.  Many thanks.  :)

Noted and adjusted.