What’s on your mind?

What are the character creation parameters, Friend GM?  :)

In reply to OakMaster (msg # 2):

For the moment, I’d like to limit characters to being either human or robot. We haven’t found any other intelligent life out there.

We’ll all begin at Tier 1.

I’m relatively new to Cypher, so I would rather see the creative ideas others come up with, than impose any limits at this stage. If something turns out to be a problem down the line, we’ll deal with it then.

Basically, come up with a character you really want to play. As long as he fits organically into the setting, it’ll be fine.

Everyone starts as having applied for their job, and gotten hired by Nova Galactic.

The ship, NGS Adventurous, launches tomorrow morning (in game time).

First, thank you to everyone who joined. Welcome!

We now have 4 players, but the character breakdown is a little problematic.

We have 2 robots... and 2 psions.

I would like to give everyone a chance to shine, without making the game feel like a competition between players. Thus, I’m opening this thread to allow everyone to describe what they have in mind, character-wise. If, after reading this, anyone wants to make changes to their character, now would be the perfect time to do so.

I’m not going to force anyone to change anything, and if you guys are okay with overlap, we can proceed as-is. My goal is to provide a fun game for everyone.

That said, please go ahead and post your concepts as an introduction to the group. This is the opposite of my tabletop group, where half of my players are willing to play “whatever the party needs.”

Welcome to Nova Galactic!

Iason is an Empathic Adept who Works Miracles, serving as the Medic aboard the ship.

Abilities will include some subset of four of the following five: Far Step, Onslaught, Scan, Mental Link, and Premonition.  I need to see what the tech is like in this universe to firm that up.

If you take some mix of Shepherd Book (Firefly), Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars IV), and The Empath (ST:TOS), you might get an idea of the personality.  :)

Hmmm...  I was thinking of playing the ship's Psi Officer, a specialist in telepathy and communications and theoretical xenology.  Someone whose job is to be ready to communicate with any hypothetical alien life the crew might someday encounter, but in the absence of that happening, usually on a day-to-day basis has a post in one of the ship's science departments.

So, some mix of, say, a Psi Corps officer from Babylon 5 and Hoshi Sato from Star Trek Enterprise.

Ah, yes: technology.

We have artificial gravity, artificial intelligence, cybernetic augmentation, faster-than-light travel, genetic engineering, cloning, uplifting, energy weapons, and just about every sci-fi trope from the 1980s. Space habitats are a thing, but terraforming is still beyond our ability. Artificial lifeforms and uplifted animals walk among us, but we have yet to encounter an alien intelligence.

While technically a "Guarded Adept that Fuses Mind and Machine" Dorothy is a human form android provided by Nova Galactic as a user interface aid between the ship and the crew.

Rather than the magical style of the typical Adept I will be using the Flavor Sublclass: Technology powers.

I realize I forgot to specify the mechanics I'm contemplating: I'd be a Calm Speaker who Commands Mental Powers.

I'm going to be a Paranoid Adept who Resides in Silicon, and I'll be using technology flavors, so I'd be an repair/engineering bot!

I'm going to be a small floating sentient mechanical orb about the size of a grapefruit, with hard light extensions.  I was once part of The Conclave, a roving silicon nation of sentient robots.  They worked together in a ship-like configuration, each group taking on the roles of a system.  P-7435 was part of the "immune system", specializing in identification and repair.  During a surprise attack The Conclave was badly hurt and P-7435 and many others were lost in a wash of jump-drive engines, scattering them over many light years.

P-7435 fell out of orbit onto one of Nova Galactics stations, where she was picked up and used as a drone for a period of time, as she was too much in shock to think.  (This might be a fun connection with one of my fellow players.)  Eventually P-7435 got over her shock, found her voice, and latched on to her new "Conclave" with a very fierce desire to never let them down again.  She's taken on the name "Pansca Setfortrive", as that's more conversational version of her name with her new Conclave.

Iason, if you were to spin that set of abilities you listed more towards the physical stuff rather than the mental, I don't see that we'd be overlapping each other even a little bit, yeah?  I'm looking at going with a pure telepath, with maybe a bit of sciencing thrown in.

The Mental Link and Premonition are actually the most set in stone of the abilities in my character concept, going along with the Empathic theme...  :o

However, perhaps this could be a feature rather than a bug.  Suppose that the crew was chosen precisely because we could, directly or indirectly, maintain telepathic contact with each other when needed.  We can link with one another, and Dorothy can link with Pansca.  I wonder if we can link with them?  O_o

Pansca, even if she isn't human or made by humans, is bound and determined to never let her new family down, so she will happily embrace any way to communicate with them.

Also, Dorothy, I'll let you know as soon as I do what abilities I'm thinking of so we don't end up duplicating each other's adapt/technology powers!  :)

The closest thing in the cypher system to communicating between organic and mechanical minds is the focus I have.  But it is clearly intended to be used by organics to contact machines, if I can reverse that effect is unclear.

In reply to Iason (msg # 13):

Nope, definitely bug!  :D

I'll give some thought to whether there's some other character concept that interests me.

Well, there's always the Pilots Starcraft focus...  :D  Or Negotiates Matters of Life and Death?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:23, Fri 11 Oct 2019.

Hi folks,  haven’t picked my complete descriptor, but I will be an explorer and likely our polymath navigator...  Just trying to figure out the best way to make that happen.

Oh and I’m just a plain old human type.

Is there a preferred format of character sheet, either from the GM, or a player who has a good one so we can all be set up about the same rather than making the GM read half a dozen different versions?

Everyone, my tech-flavored adept ended up picking Scan, Shatter, Tech Skills (repairing and machines), and Distortion.

Sounds good, I didn't use any of those skills, Dorothy will be going in a more software and human interface direction.

Ok, so I’m leaning towards a graceful explorer who calculates the impossible.

Born on a low gravity world he is tall and willowy though seems well adapted to standard gravity likely due to major nano treatments and possibly some genetic engineering.  He is a capable if boring pilot though he excels at navigation and astrogation.

I may take a tech focus due to some weirdness in the explorer skill advances in order to get him to be appropriately skilled.

I'm leaning towards sticking with my telepath concept.  Iason, do you have an idea of what sort of plan you had for future advancement?  Are we going to be just overlapping a bit at first tier?

Yay, it is a feature after all!  ;)

OK, so Iason is an Empathic Healing type [Adept/Magic Psi Flavor]... yet we are attempting to minimize overlap with one PC who Commands Mental Powers and with another PC who is also an Adept.  Hmmmm...  :o

No set-in-stone promises, but here are some preliminary thoughts on Iason's future advancement shortlist, with the current front-runners indicated (*):

1/4. Far Step*, Onslaught*, Scan, Mental Link*, Premonition*
2/1. Adaptation, Hover*, Mind Reading, Retrieve Memories, Reveal, Statis
3/2. Countermeasures*, Sensor, Distance Viewing*, Force at Distance
4/1. Exile, Invisibility, Mind Control, Projection, Reshape, Wormhole*
5/2. Create(*?), Knowing the Unknown(*?), Teleportation*, True Senses
6/1. Traverse the Worlds*

Therefore... yeah, it looks to me like such a minimize-overlap attempt is feasible.  :D

EDIT: Subsequent revisions that don't increase overlap.  :)
This message was last edited by the player at 16:56, Sat 12 Oct 2019.

Nice!  I'll be specializing in the mind-reading stuff, so if you lean even vaguely in the directions you've got **ed, possibly the only places we'll even touch will be at Mental Link and Onslaught.  Which is fine with me.  :)

Trying to not overlap on Onslaught is like trying to not overlap in guns. Its a bit of a big and vague category.

Agreed, very not a big deal.

So I think I've pretty much got all my character decisions decided.

Did we determine if there was some certain character sheet format we should be using?

Just wanted to let everyone know my online time is limited this weekend, but I’ll be back into it on Tuesday. Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canucks!

Dream Sequence - when I get home in the morning I have a blank Cypher System sheet I use for games on here I can share if you like.

I don't especially care about it just for myself, but if there's a format the GM would prefer to see from us I'm glad to use it.

Also GM - you can change my name to my character's name if you like!  I'll be Lt. Stephanie Bowen.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:23, Tue 15 Oct 2019.

Soooo....  how we doing here?  :)

Not certain.  The DM hasn't been on a few days, so maybe they got caught up in something.

If anyone would like a character sheet format, at least until we get a ruling, here is one I use for my own games.  Just quote me to see the formatting and all:

----

NAME - a DESCRIPTOR TYPE who FOCUS

Tier: 1
Effort: 1
XP: 0

Pools and Edge
Might: 0 (Edge 0)
Speed: 0 (Edge 0)
Intellect: 0 (Edge 0)

Skills

Inabilities

Type Features –

Type Abilities

Descriptor Features –

Focus Name

Focus Features –
Minor Effect Suggestions:
Major Effect Suggestions:

Tier 1 Focus Abilities



Weapons and damage

Armor and value:

Equipment

Money

Cyphers  Cypher Limt:

Artifacts

Description:

Link(s) to the Party:

Background:

... is it overly cynical of me to suggest that I'm starting to feel a little skeptical here?

I just sent the GM an rMail.  I'm hoping they just got caught up in work/school or something.  Or their dog ate their laptop.

... no answer, I'm assuming?

Nope, nothing.  :(