One day, the stars changed.
Not the closest one, of course; Sol still keeps us warm. Our moon Luna is here too. But the planets are all gone. The Sol-Terra-Luna system sits alone.
And the constellations are all different. It's as if Earth is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere new.
These new stars in the sky - their spectra are unfamiliar. As if some medium between us is straining the light.
And that's exactly it. Scientists soon announce that Earth's new home is suffused with a luminiferous ether - some delicate 'fluid' mediating light and the rest of the EM spectrum.
It takes Earth some time to realize that this fluid has some sort of inertia, and that as it mediates light we too can manipulate it. Despite the great setbacks to modern technologies that depended on the former properties of electromagnetic waves, humanity builds great engines to traverse where our fellow planets once danced. The structure of our celestial neighborhood is defined no longer by orbits and Lagrange points, but by invisible currents and maelstroms - and a great eddy bounding the edge of our System.
No one has passed that violent current and seen where the new stars hold sway - but you and your companions are going to try to be the first.
What is this?
This is an RTD game. Players post actions and I determine their results according to the RTD scale (roll a d6 and assign 1 = critical fail, 2 = fail, 3 = partial success, 4 = success, 5 = perfect, 6 = overshoot.)
It is an exploration game. You are all crewmembers aboard the same vessel. Your collective goal is to reach the edge of the eddy around the Solar System and what lies beyond it.
It is not minimalist; this just means no rolling to instantly win or stuff like that.
Please keep in mind that this is pretty much the first game I've run (that has hope of getting anywhere.) That's why there are only 4 players. I am open to advice.
Character creation
For your character I need:
Name: your character's name.
Crew role: one of Navigator, Engineer, Gunner, or Scientist. You get advantage (use higher of two rolls) on actions relevant to your role!
- Navigators maneuver the craft, directing its course.
- Engineers manage the etheric engine and conduct repairs.
- Gunners man the craft's weaponry.
- Scientists archive observations on the journey, and draw from humanity's current research into the ether.
Multiple players can have the same role. Any unfilled role will have 1 NPC crewmember.
Also, feel free to provide and vote on suggestions for the craft's name!
Players:
Engineer
Before the stars changed and everything went mad, Miles was a mechanic at a used car lot not far from Kennedy Space Center. As it turns out, being skilled at getting old clunkers up and running no matter what it takes is a useful skill in this day and age. Not afraid to get his hands dirty fixing what's broken. Percussive maintenance specialist. Friendly to a fault, and with a can-do attitude, this mechanic's never seen a problem he couldn't solve with a crescent wrench, two cans of WD-40, and whatever sciency doohickeys he's got in his toolbox.
Scientist
Mia isn't her last name, and she is only a 'doctor' in the loosest sense. She also happens to be the upper half of a human head grafted onto a six legged spider robot. Dr. Mia seeks to test the reaches of human discovery and possibility, and evidently is willing to go to some lengths in the pursuit.
Scientist
A tall and lanky man in his late forties, unremarkable in appearance but notable for his excessively energetic nature, friendliness, and boundless optimism. He's often described as being akin to a genius puppy. When reasobable, he's usually seen wearing a labcoat with an impractical number of pockets, most stuffed with various tools and items of interest.
The Quintessence hangs silent in empty space, suspended a few meters from a mile-long spindle by magnetic clamps. This elegant spindle, orbiting Earth 24/7, is one of many spokes of the Terra Propulsion Complex, one of the earliest etheric spaceports. A lean snowflake of steel, its delicate spokes hold hundreds of etheric craft, all carefully balanced 'below' a corresponding spoke by an intricate magnetic equilibrium. Until it's time to launch. Cryptic confirmations arrive from Traffic Control, the signals caught by an arc of nigh-invisible wire that reaches all the way from the nose to stern of the Quintessence. Efficient antenna are hard to design these days.
The massive coils of the engine start to hum. The ether's effect on different wavelengths of the EM spectrum vary, and Morgan adjusts the coils to emit just the right smattering of frequencies to coax the ambient ether backwards through the coils and coast forward. The humming is simply a side effect as the coils heat and cool, stressing the metal. The magnetic clamps keep the ship in line with the spindle - an error of ten meters, and the vessel could careen into it, wrecking that spoke and its own hull. But this little launch procedure is rote by now, and the vessel eases beside the spindle safely.
You all feel the force pushing you aft as the engine pulls more confidently at the ether and settles into a nice forward motion, but you stay 'standing' by dint of your magnetic boots. As for seeing, you're each manning a periscope at your respective stations, but all there is to see right now is the spindle rushing past, blocking out the strange stars glimmering who knows how far away.
The minutes rush past as the spindle does too and then, finally - you're away! The engine murmurs again as it cools down, radiating fins working overtime to dispense with waste heat. The Quintessence is coasting away from Terra, cast adrift on the invisible sea, bathed in ether and stilted starlight. Star observations mark that your position is in one of the large (very large, your vessel is not even a pinprick compared to it) charted currents near Terra. Gently spiraling outward for a while, this current engenders many invisible eddies, home to a few colonies eking out a living in, well, literally the middle of nowhere.
If carried by the current, those colonies are a few days out. Coasting on this current will eventually bring you to them, as well as a little further out from Earth. They may have rumors about newly-found currents, or the latest tales of pirate encounters. Speeding up the process with the engine will get the craft there sooner, though it risks running into 'whirlpools' along the way. Of course, the engine can also simply accelerate perpendicular to this stream, taking the shorter path towards the Rim and leaving this current.
Sonia Potmend, the navigator, lays out these options to Morgan, Belekaran, Dr. Mia and Dr. Vellan, all gathered at the bridge. The crude flight computer whirrs and clicks as you confer. If some alternate option is picked, it'll be what Sonia uses to chart a new solution.
Players:
Engineer
Before the stars changed and everything went mad, Miles was a mechanic at a used car lot not far from Kennedy Space Center. As it turns out, being skilled at getting old clunkers up and running no matter what it takes is a useful skill in this day and age. Not afraid to get his hands dirty fixing what's broken. Percussive maintenance specialist. Friendly to a fault, and with a can-do attitude, this mechanic's never seen a problem he couldn't solve with a crescent wrench, two cans of WD-40, and whatever sciency doohickeys he's got in his toolbox.
Scientist
Mia isn't her last name, and she is only a 'doctor' in the loosest sense. She also happens to be the upper half of a human head grafted onto a six legged spider robot. Dr. Mia seeks to test the reaches of human discovery and possibility, and evidently is willing to go to some lengths in the pursuit.
Scientist
A tall and lanky man in his late forties, unremarkable in appearance but notable for his excessively energetic nature, friendliness, and boundless optimism. He's often described as being akin to a genius puppy. When reasonable, he's usually seen wearing a labcoat with an impractical number of pockets, most stuffed with various tools and items of interest.
Vessel Status: the Quintessence is idling, producing no thrust but maintaining an EM field so it drifts along the ether.
Accelerate into the current.
Gun the engine into the current. We've many miles to tread yet, best to make as good of time as we can.
[3] Having made it back to engineering station, Morgan throws the switches to fire up the engine. The rooms near the aft of the Quintessence warm over several minutes as the coils heat, cloaked in static that sucks ether greedily through them. The Quintessence rotates gently in space to stay aligned with the current and shoots forward. All is well for about an hour, then there's a loud crackling and the coils slow down.
The sensory appendages mounted on the outside of the ship relay a report to the scientists' station, but the printout is garbled and can't be understood directly. Dr. Vellan unfurls the still-warm printout and tries to interpret it, [6] discovering that the instruments indicate some unexpected curl in ether somewhere within the engine. If something physical got in there somehow, it's not something anyone picked up on the periscopes. The report doesn't match up with running into a whirlpool either.
The engines are still on, but the crackling noises become louder as they fail to compensate. If they're interacting with the ether in an unexpected way, the vessel certainly won't be traveling on its expected course.
Players:
Engineer
Before the stars changed and everything went mad, Miles was a mechanic at a used car lot not far from Kennedy Space Center. As it turns out, being skilled at getting old clunkers up and running no matter what it takes is a useful skill in this day and age. Not afraid to get his hands dirty fixing what's broken. Percussive maintenance specialist. Friendly to a fault, and with a can-do attitude, this mechanic's never seen a problem he couldn't solve with a crescent wrench, two cans of WD-40, and whatever sciency doohickeys he's got in his toolbox.
Scientist
Mia isn't her last name, and she is only a 'doctor' in the loosest sense. She also happens to be the upper half of a human head grafted onto a six legged spider robot. Dr. Mia seeks to test the reaches of human discovery and possibility, and evidently is willing to go to some lengths in the pursuit.
Scientist
A tall and lanky man in his late forties, unremarkable in appearance but notable for his excessively energetic nature, friendliness, and boundless optimism. He's often described as being akin to a genius puppy. When reasonable, he's usually seen wearing a labcoat with an impractical number of pockets, most stuffed with various tools and items of interest.
Vessel Status: the Quintessence's engines are nominally at full power, but are behaving erratically in practice.
Miles feels the shuddering of the engines, and gives the part of the mechanism that is making the loudest noise a swift kick.
"Shaddup, you hunk of scrap. Don't have time to argue with you, we're in a bit of a time crunch. Just get back to doing what you're told."
Morgan decides to confront the problem at its root: the engine coil! Hurrying towards the engine core, he worms through a darkened emergency access port to the "monitoring bay": a long crawlspace barely lit by amber incandescents, ringing the length of the ship between the engine coils and livable space. There isn't much observation to be had - the only view of the actual coils is through long narrow 'ports' of very reinforced glass piercing the thick wall between the bay and the vacuum that the coils live in.
Still, through the glare put off by the struggling coils, he discerns the closest point in the bay to where the coils mount to the ship. Muttering, "shaddup, you hunk of scrap, just get back to doing what you're told," he squeezes around to that area. Winding up in the cramped crawlspace, he delivers a mighty kick to that panel and - by some mechanical miracle, the crackling stops! There's still some worrying noise from the coil area, but the glare from the coils resolves to a healthier tint.
Something floats past him in the crawlspace - "up", out radially from the engine core towards the inhabited area of the craft. There's nothing to touch, but he's sure he saw a... flutter? a flicker? It's gone now. So is the noise.
Cobble together a magnetic chamber to contain the hypothesized 'curl'! This phenomena must be studied!
Dr. Mia nimbly disassembles a probably-nonessential equipment panel and looks over the components. A few coils, some wiry mesh, vacuum tube, reactive etherometer - yeah, she can work with this. She fashions an etheric tokamak, suitable for confining electromagnetic or etheric phenomena! Unfortunately, it doesn't look like she can manufacture another one without cannibalizing something actually important.
Dr. Mia can hear a faint crackling from nearby. Sounds familiar. Hoisting the tokamak in her mechanical chelicerae, she clatters off towards the mystery, nay, the opportunity!
Review sensor logs prior to the engine failure. Try to find hints of what might have caused this; was the ether outside abnormal in any way? Or perhaps something more subtle went wrong first, and it only caused a large enough effect to draw our attention after it grew?
Dr. Vellan worries at the cooling printouts as his colleague glides out of the room. Sadly, he can't puzzle out much more from them. It seems like the information from the sensors on the front of the ship started noticing the curl first. Odd.
Players:
Engineer
Before the stars changed and everything went mad, Miles was a mechanic at a used car lot not far from Kennedy Space Center. As it turns out, being skilled at getting old clunkers up and running no matter what it takes is a useful skill in this day and age. Not afraid to get his hands dirty fixing what's broken. Percussive maintenance specialist. Friendly to a fault, and with a can-do attitude, this mechanic's never seen a problem he couldn't solve with a crescent wrench, two cans of WD-40, and whatever sciency doohickeys he's got in his toolbox.
Scientist
Mia isn't her last name, and she is only a 'doctor' in the loosest sense. She also happens to be the upper half of a human head grafted onto a six legged spider robot. Dr. Mia seeks to test the reaches of human discovery and possibility, and evidently is willing to go to some lengths in the pursuit.
Got: etheric tokamak
Scientist
A tall and lanky man in his late forties, unremarkable in appearance but notable for his excessively energetic nature, friendliness, and boundless optimism. He's often described as being akin to a genius puppy. When reasonable, he's usually seen wearing a labcoat with an impractical number of pockets, most stuffed with various tools and items of interest.
Vessel Status: Engine's back to normal!