Author Topic: BaseRaiders  (Read 320111 times)

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #180 on: June 14, 2015, 02:48:56 PM »
ugh i need to publish the errata

FHRegulus

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #181 on: August 10, 2015, 06:25:01 PM »
So we ran Base Raiders last night and the group had a lot of fun with the whole idea. We played a very light game (something fairly unusual for us) where the players were powerless high school seniors in a small American town four months after Ragnarok. Our group artist ended up sketching these completely normal kids and adding things as they found more powers.



Claude Spencer: Resident rich pretty boy, Claude loves the finer things (including flying and boating) and made sure to buy a gross amount of random, hi-tech doodads that might help the group in the base.

Carmine "Big Time" Azzarello: The loveable Carmine runs a fairly large supers dedicated blog. Due to his love of superheroes and the internet he heard about "base raiding" well before most people did. Equipped with some rations, a baseball bat, a headset camera, and a replica domino mask Carmine wants nothing more than to "accidentally" become a superhuman.

Uisce "Fish" Beatha (Pronounced Ish-kay): Carmine and Claude don't know what Uisce is. Despite knowing this person for their entire lives no one has ever asked if Uisce is a he or a she. Growing up in a large, criminally-oriented Irish family taught Uisce a lot about lockpicking, sneaking around, and shooting. Uisce pocketed his/her father's .38 revolver before heading out to meet at the base.

The group originally found the base while on a camping trip in the mountains. During a lightning storm a stray bolt struck something in the ground close to their tent. The next morning they found a hatch made of a strange metal that led below ground. The lightning bolt fried the electronic lock, which caused the dormant hatch to open. The kids decided cover the hatch and come back next weekend to properly investigate.

Overall we had a LOT of fun playing. I decided to roll random powers on the Superpower Wiki and put them in the game in some way. I wanted a healthy mix of power sources and ended up with:
1.   Liquid Transformation: Can turn liquids from one thing to another (like Water to Wine). Came in the form of a clear fluid cocktail made from diluted alien blood. No one chose to take this power because you had to inject it. Everyone was REALLY squeamish when it came to needles.

2.   Speed Cancellation: The ability to negate movement (including super speed, though this strains the device). Came in the form of a modified Ideal Stun Cannon used by a powerful human soldier who worked with the Ideal (Cpt. Winter). He was right on the cusp of "Is he or isn't he a superhero?" and no one has seen him since Ragnarok. Attaches at the wrist and folds out into a Megaman-esque armcannon. Seen on Carmine in the picture but later given to Fish after gaining...

3.   Copper Mimicry: A solid orb of copper was held in a stasis bubble in a repair bay. Fish thought it would be a good idea to undo the stasis and touch the orb because she had yet to get a superpower that didn't involved injecting a needle into herself. The orb fell apart like sand. Turns out it was actually a nanoswarm that burrowed into her bones, muscles, and skin. His new shiny copper body scared him at first. She attempted to return her skin to normal but could only make his face return to flesh. When the Speed Cancellation ISC was attached to Fish's body they melded with the cannon as well, allowing Fish to fire copper flechette and turning it a interesting silvery/copper color.
 
4.   Weapon Hands: A symbiotic purple parasite that can absorb mundane weapons and tools. The user can then transform their hands into a chitinous nightmare version of one of these held weapons. Found on a skeleton in a hardlight jail cell. Only the fleshy tendrils of the symbiote remained on the bones. Carmine tripped and fell on to the skeleton and the alien creature quickly attached itself to him.

5.   Elemental Blade (Lightning): A blue crystal from another plane of existence that can be grasped to create a crackling blade. Used by Carmine and then given to Claude.

6.   Psychic Bomb Generation: By entering a machine that performs a brain modification (read: automated open brain surgery and drugs) Carmine gained the ability to create small psychic grenades and other explosives. Unfortunately, this power came with the side-effect of intense headaches and pain in the finger joints unless bombs were generated and released (read: you must explode things).

7.   Strength Manipulation: A needle labeled “Strength Giver.” Not super-strength as the kids originally thought. When injected with this failed super-soldier serum the subject would gain the ability to instill great strength in others with a simple touch. Because it was a needle the players thought I was doing something evil and didn't use it.

8.   Electroreception/Electric Speed: I rolled Electroreception and then rolled Electric Speed one after the other so I decided to combine them. By reading passages of this grimoire you bind an extraplanar entity of electricity to your nervous system. The plus side is that you can now sense things around you as if they were part of your nervous system AND your legs tingle with electricity which, when released, grants to bursts of great speed. The downside is, you bound an extraplanar entity to your nervous system and it's going to make some suggestions on what it thinks you should do in the future. Claude, resident idiot, decided to read the book because he was bored.

In addition they found some mundane things. Fish can be seen wearing a mesh undersuit that they believed might have been the base layer worn under a suit of power armor, some tranq guns, and a bulletproof vest. As for the flashlight... face... thing, Carmine's player loves superheroes and is great at improv. It was a piece of officially licensed memorabilia for Starlight Siren. Also it could scream if you pressed a button. Similarly, the fish head/mask was a replica of the mask used by Manfried Manfish from '98 to '03. The weird crotch thing is a censor blur to conceal Fish's gender in the skintight undersuit. We all got a kick out of the joke.


The base itself was an Ideal facility known as "The Vault." The general idea was that the base was autonomous and staffed almost entirely by robotic personnel. Unknown materials of all manner were sent to the Vault for preliminary testing. The one superhero in the Vault would then decide if things should be stored, destroyed, or sent to another facility. So when Ragnarok came around quite a few things were left unsorted.

Most importantly was the system that ran the Vault. A skilled technopath whose body was broken in a battle with a supervillain volunteered to have his brain installed in a supercomputer which ran the vast majority of the robots and store vital information. In the event of his death or disappearance much of the data would go with him. The technopath got along quite well with the other hero stationed at the base but both vanished during Rangarok. The players found it very strange that the supervillain in the jail cell with the Weapon Hand Symbiote would remain while the brain in the jar was taken. In true Base Raiders fashion I just shrugged at them and went "Who knows?"


tl;dr: High school kids livestreamed their adventures fighting robots, gaining superpowers, performing sweet power combination attacks, and discovering secrets in Base Raiders. We're totally playing again soon.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2015, 06:34:59 PM by FHRegulus »

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #182 on: August 11, 2015, 01:55:23 AM »
That's awesome! I will try to post this to the Base Raiders site so all fans can read it. BTW is Carmine's flashlight a repurposed fleshlight?

FHRegulus

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #183 on: August 11, 2015, 02:10:24 PM »
Haha, sadly it was not. Carmine was very pure-hearted about his love for superheroes. At some point I plan to put together the layout of the base and it the events in it into a .pdf file if you want that too?

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #184 on: August 11, 2015, 05:04:39 PM »
Haha, sadly it was not. Carmine was very pure-hearted about his love for superheroes. At some point I plan to put together the layout of the base and it the events in it into a .pdf file if you want that too?

Yes. Also, why does the flashlight have a face on it?

FHRegulus

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #185 on: August 11, 2015, 05:57:08 PM »
The player's reason was that since Starlight Siren (someone he came up with on the spot) could apparently shoot moonbeams from her mouth and eyes that the memorabilia should do the same thing. Then of course once he sketched the flashlight we all started laughing about how it could also scream if you pressed a button on it. Superhero merch in a superhero filled world is truly terrifying.

Mr. Chips

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #186 on: August 11, 2015, 11:28:26 PM »
my players and i are wondering when we make a superpower and it has a skill point cost do we deduct that from the skill point pool and then deduct it from the pool again when we take it as a skill (average +1, fair +2, etc)? im a little confused

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #187 on: August 11, 2015, 11:34:53 PM »
my players and i are wondering when we make a superpower and it has a skill point cost do we deduct that from the skill point pool and then deduct it from the pool again when we take it as a skill (average +1, fair +2, etc)? im a little confused

Yes.

For example, if you have a skill with Resist Damage, Stress Capacity [Health] and Snag [Minor], it should end up costing 4 skill points. That gives you a +0 bonus on it. If you want it at average (+1) it would take a total of 5 skill points to do that.

BTW this is a quick to calculate skill point costs: http://apopheniaevolved.com/content/kerberos_club_custom_skill_generator - it sometimes makes errors but it is very quick.

Mr. Chips

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #188 on: August 12, 2015, 02:09:11 PM »
thank you. my other question is tier benefits. how do i find what goes in this section. i cant find it in the book?

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #189 on: August 12, 2015, 04:07:56 PM »
thank you. my other question is tier benefits. how do i find what goes in this section. i cant find it in the book?

Trapping descriptions begin on page 116. Look up the trapping you have and it will tell you the benefits at certain tiers. Some trappings do not gain tier benefits.

Teapot

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #190 on: September 11, 2015, 01:24:08 PM »
The ones with +'s do.

So loot question. You get it, you sell it, you divide by 10? So if I get 50 loot, sell it at a 5:1 ratio I get 10 profit and that makes 1 skill point?

clockworkjoe

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #191 on: September 12, 2015, 03:31:14 PM »
The ones with +'s do.

So loot question. You get it, you sell it, you divide by 10? So if I get 50 loot, sell it at a 5:1 ratio I get 10 profit and that makes 1 skill point?

You are correct but that skill point can only be used for burn, goals, or raising the resources skill. Finding a good buyer is very important for a dedicated base raider.

Twibbit

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #192 on: September 18, 2015, 12:08:15 PM »
my one time trying to get people into playing this game fell apart because character creation is hard to explain without the book to people. So for my next attempt, I am going to try two things, one is using the Origin rules to cut out strange skills entirely from character creation, The second is putting up the Origin story character creation rules into a Sway for easy digestion https://sway.com/1L8aiRlCiXDYZGRW

Ignore the last part of it as that will be referring to the recruitment thread when I finally make it.

Claive

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #193 on: January 05, 2016, 02:06:07 PM »
Alias: Mr. Lucky
Name: Mark Walker

Mark has a doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry, but in this economy he was lucky to just get a job as a pharmacist at Omnicorp’s Corperate office.  After the ideal disappeared the economy’s downward slope became a cliff.  Mark had to find a way to make extra cash just to pay the bills, he stole some supplies from work and found all the information he could find on the Pangloss formula he could download off the internet to start making small batches to sell on the black market… of course he tinkered with the formula… and started taking some himself to get an edge on the cops or on clients who though it would be easier to steal his product rather than pay for it was just… good business sense.

Omnitech discovered the missing lab equipment and Mark has turned to base raiding to find more.

He goes to great lengths not to obscure the actual nature of his powers.
 
Mark has no idea that his wife (who has a doctorate in Genetic Engineering) is in a different base raiding group.

Aspects
Super Soldier: Breaking Bad with the Pangloss Formula.
Background: Even a Doctorate in Pharmaceutical Chemistry can’t get you a good job in this economy.
Conviction: My children will have every advantage.
Aspect: Inconspicuousness is second nature to me.
Aspect: It slipped it into my pocket when no one was looking.
Aspect: My clients know when I am going to call them before I do...
Complication [Major]: Time is an illusion.
Complication [Minor]: V. 536-B21 is addictive as hell

Skills: (25/25)

Great (+4):  Science
Good (+3): Academics
Fair (+2): Stop the Clock (A)
Average (+1): Bureaucracy, Resolve


Unique and Strange Skills:

Stop the Clock (14)
Power Tier: Ascendant (-4 Refresh)
Dodge + Unusual: Stop the Clock + Zone (2-0-3))
Initiative [Physical] + Unusual: Stop the Clock, Initiative [Mental] + Unusual: Stop the Clock (4-2-2)
Complication [Major]: Time is an illusion.
Complication [Minor]: V. 536-B21 is addictive as hell
Snag [Minor]: Need regular injections of the formula for the power to work.
Cost: 14 skill points (8 trappings, 5 connections, 5 extras, -4 drawback)
Description: Multiple applications of version 536-B21 of the Pangloss Formula have given you the ability to freeze time.  This allows you to pause a fight and rearrange your friends, ever so slightly, so that they don’t get hit by enemy attacks. 

This particular version of the formula is very addictive, giving the user a euphoric sense of timelessness.  Taking the drug long enough to gain this power confuses the users sense of time.  The ability to use this power slowly fades if you stop taking the drug.

« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 02:21:02 PM by Claive »
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Claive

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Re: BaseRaiders
« Reply #194 on: January 05, 2016, 02:31:20 PM »
How would you create a power that allowed you to create a ectoplasic duplicate of yourself when you slept?  It could interact with the physical world and  do anything you could do when you were awake.  If it died you would wake up with the memories of what happened to it.

I was thinking of just going Stress Capacity {health} with range, psychic and unusual... but that doesn't cover seeing at a distance, acting at a distance, etc.
"No labyrinth is inescapable" -Gantz