We're forming a  "Dodged-the-Bullet" club of former soon-to-be political wives!   I think that might be as ggood as any to justify a friendship.

I have it such that Anjali chose this life, she upped on purpose.  If you like the idea, perhaps she and Damia go way back and Anjali facilitaetd her recruitment.  I"m not married to it.  You tell me if it works for your chaacter.

Taking a page from Killjoys, I'm getting the impression of a stratified society, even if only loosely and on a galactic scale.

Damia actually got married, it was her wedding night that triggered her changes and made her flee. She definitely has complicated feelings about the whole thing. But, yeah, that would definitely be a reason to bond. And being brought in by her makes a lot of sense.


I'm starting a table of basics. Please let me know if this is or isn't helpful and if it is let me know what edits to make for your characters.

In reply to Damia (msg # 10):

Looks like you got Galath right for the most part.

I'm picturing the Jayne song.

Only waiting to hear from LadyMer, I will send a Pm.

Informational: The GM gets her first COVID vaccine shot tonight. If I have a reaction, might be a quiet couple days.

Glad to hear you're getting the vaccine, and I hope it doesn't hit you too hard (if at all!).

Update:

I had a reaction. Instant flush, sweated soaked through my clothes, blind from brilliant blue and white marbled patterns, dizzy, nauseous, unable to remain awake.
2 Naproxen and 4 hour nap, all better.

That's good that it was a quick recovery. The J&J one put me out for 3 days of flu like symptoms. Still happy to have gotten it.

Damn.

I'm still several weeks away from the possibility of vaccination, since they're rolling it out for seniors first...

I have an autoimmune disease so I got on the list regardless of age.

As for the game, I saw one character made. Are others making their stats and everything else? I've been thinking about it.

Anjali, maybe we can work on something semi shared, or at least that play off each other.

I've put some ideas down on paper - a potential allocation of Approaches and a lot of off the cuff ideas for Aspects - but nothing too solid.

I'm actually giving my character a bit of a rethink at the moment. The concept I applied with was a modified version of a character from another game and I actually expected it would get turned down, so I've been pushing about some thoughts about whether or how I need to make adjustments for a couple of days now. Feels like I'm getting somewhere tonight.

I'm not talking about any particularly radical changes, but I do think it'd be better to take things in a slightly different direction here.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:29, Thu 01 Apr 2021.

I've been dithering between approaches. I have a couple ideas for aspects, one business connections and one psychic. The third may be something with our doc.

I like the soldier idea, fits well with sort of darker space opera.

Put simply: this character was originally from LANCER and there are some elements of her backstory (not all of which made it across to this game or have been stated openly) which don't really feel as appropriate when the character is a boots-on-the-ground soldier rather than someone literally made to pilot mechs. I'm not saying things can't work as they are, but part of me feels as though my ideas need to be a little bit more grounded - relatively speaking - this time around.

---

What I'm currently considering is reframing her as a "Burner" - legal (on some worlds) if extremely morally dubious government shock troops, produced on-demand to be thrown at crises and the deadliest theaters of conflict. The working justification at play is that they're technically not people, and thus they present a means of stopping threats with a minimal loss of lives that actually matter. Between the risk factor of their work and a physiology skewed towards short-term returns, they're made to be used up and discarded without remorse.

She's a survivor who was sold on off-the-books and has had her own little formative adventures before ending up with this crew ... however that happened.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:35, Thu 01 Apr 2021.

Mostly, I'm waiting for some directorial input from the GM.  I don't want to go off and build a character to Accelerated standards if the GM has something differnet in mind.

I'd really like to know how long we'ev been together as a crew? And--perhaps--if we have any shared experiences together (that might allow us to start establishing interpersonal ties... who likes who and who really pisses each other off... that kind of thing).

I am here to provide a setting that uses what you come up with, and builds and expands on it. The sample character I gave is all that is needed mechanics wise.

Backgrounds are all you, if you need something from me, ask. I am not creating more than the other 57 worlds you don't come from and the overarcing nature of the Accord, Fleet, and Partrol.

Note that there will be darkness.. there will also be brightness, silliness, and the like. One of our inspirations is this world:

Adventures Of The Galaxy Rangers

And maybe a little tiny bit of this.

Bravestar

So... How long do you envision that we've been a working functional unit?

Do you want us to create the characters with ties to each other or should we play it as if we're on day-one of our new posting?

I would think it depends on the story we want to focus on at the beginning. I'm in a (now dying) Lady Blackbird game that's in the Firefly universe. Since you get dropped into some action at beginning but it's still fairly recent for some people on the ship and others have long term relationships it offers a bit of both types of dynamics.

That would allos there to be some deeper relationships, maybe a few characters who've been a team for a while, and others getting to know people and getting their footing as a new team. Anstics as a burner could be brand new. Maybe the Doc and Damia are nearly that new or relatively new.

I'm just tossing out some possibilities.

Creating with ties to the others is a very FATElike thing to do... I will put it to the group. I personally think the best idea is a team of those who came together to charter a new Lance. Some of you can be new recruits, but given my way, there would be a single incident to cause you to gel as a team.

I would be more than happy to set that up as a "prequel" mission to start the game, or tell you what happened and let you work it into your backgrounds. I will check to see what everyone says tonight.

So I did a lot of thinking (and not enough sleeping) last night and came to the decision that I'm not going to be changing up this character. Even though I had five different-ish ideas for how I might want to approach her, I found that this original concept was the only one where I definitely knew what I wanted to do and had a clear idea of how she went from her origin to being a Lancer. So despite what I said earlier: no change in plans.

---

To add my little bit to the current conversation:

As part of the team in this game, Anstice is currently reneging on her parole. A less-than-savory practice means that the latter portion of her sentence is actually being enforced by a (somewhat eccentric) private citizen of no small means, and while she's been permitted some scope to work as “rehabilitative occupational therapy,” the game finds her having decided to slip the leash and go her own way. She's tasted freedom and doesn't want to go back.

Needless to say this means her owner wants her back in custody ... but without the embarrassment of their slip-up ending up on any official channels.

With that in mind I think it would make more sense for her to be a more recent hire/acquaintance, but it wouldn't be any problem for me if we're looking to make this group be better established than that. There's no reason that her Trouble can't be a recurring annoyance or the result of her only just being tracked down after some time rather than a fairly immediate consequence.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:47, Thu 01 Apr 2021.

I'm not familiar with the Lancer's universe at all, so don't have those signposts and tropes to work from.  I guess I'll just sit back and follow everyone else's lead...

I feel like that's a bit of an easy point of confusion.

(As I understand it) this game has nothing to do with LANCER the mech RPG beyond being set in a sci-fi universe. My character is based on an older one I made for LANCER but isn't drawing on anything unique to that universe.

This game's universe is entirely its own - tropes or cliches we add aside.

*I'm not actually sure why I've internalised always using caps for LANCER but ... it's a thing I guess.

Also I'm really sorry if I completely misunderstood you there. I'm really bad at doing that sort of thing.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:02, Thu 01 Apr 2021.

I'm trying to figure out where Hoz would fit in backstory wise with everybody. For interpersonal interactions he would get along much better with empaths or psychics due to the telepathic communication nature of his species. I think there's a chance he's been on the wrong side of the law in the past but nothing that he would see as bad thing himself.

Well, Damia is definitely psychic. So perhaps they could have met when she was in her fleeing her old life phase.

As for the universe, I kind of got the Killjoys feel more than anything for the lancers. With a little more merc vibe.

I suggest that you give us the bare-bones of what happened and let us embellish our personal parts in it to show off how cool we are in our respective ways, develop ties and plant potential drama-seeds.  That would be lovely!

I had never even heard of the LANCER Mech RPG the first time I ran this setting, I just knew i wanted "Space Pinkertons", and the name came naturally from Freelancer.

The vibe is very "What if Mal and the crew actually had some nebulous legal authority" much like the original Pinkertons. "OK, that worked, good job." is one outcome... When you screw it up, the US Marshals Partol come to splain it to ya.