Bay 12 Games Forum

You're trapped in a dungeon with no way out—except through each other!

The four of you got caught in a horrible, eldritch dungeon while on a quest, and the evil forces within have snared you in their grasp! There's only one way out, and ONLY ONE of you can escape—by leaving everyone else behind! But the ones who are left can regain their precious humanity by murdering the last human, taking their body and continuing on! Who will be the Ghost with the Most? Will you tear your way through the slavering hordes and escape, or be lost forever?

Running this as a test for a combat & game system I plan to use in another game later. This is a dry run, so I really don't care much if you guys go absolutely bonkers with actions and powers. In fact, I encourage it. The only objective here is to ESCAPE AS THE HUMAN. If you are NOT the human, you are a Ghost, and your job is to MURDER the human to BECOME the human and ESCAPE.

Yes, and yes. Petrichor for the colony, and Greengate-1122 for the tunnel we found to the wooded space beneath us. I plan to use similar designations for other interesting terrain features.

I feel like Phryne might have her hands full. She's just going to continue keeping an eye on operations, assisting with anyone who wants to visit the forest tunnel—by the way, I'm going to tentatively name that loosely according to the Galactic Star Charts standard for classifying celestial bodies. Greengate-1122. The format normally goes... Size:Temperature:Atmosphere:Water. Here it's Greengate for notable feature, i.e. gateway to the forest, then... Size 1(human-passable):Length 1 (crossable in less than a day):Hazard 2 (at least marginal human presence but neither actively secured nor fully explored):Water 2 (no obvious sources, groundwater only).

While I'm generally being helpful and protective, Phryne is also going to use her free time to make something... impractical, for a change. She will assemble... a rock collection.

Well, okay, not 100% that. But, like, I'm imagining a circular bowl-shaped depression carved out of the shale around base, filled with a thin layer of sand, and then a nice zen garden of various stones. I want to collect some quartz and ruby if I can, not much, just pocket it to add to this collection. I'll use any nicely-shaped shale, sandstone, or even erosion-carved creekstones I can find. I'll have little cairns of rocks with pointy shards of quartz sticking out of the points where they meet.

I reiterate my earlier call to prospect for farmland. We have mushrooms, but we could really use more. We should establish some infrastructure near the base for now that can experimentally grow a few different plants in at least semi-controlled conditions. I want to see how Earth plants like beans and tomatoes do here, and also, break ground for any other promising specimens we find in the environment. It's not necessarily my specialty to do this, but Phryne doesn't mind heavy labor at all.

Develop farming infrastructure: (1) - Xvareon

I just want to say, GM, I'm kinda awed and inspired you're putting in so much effort with all these charts, maps, pics and whatnot. It makes this stand out from other forum games, that's for sure. Just putting my two cents out there.

Now then, exploration. We know the... "Pteroleons" can be friendly, even enough to bring us food to eat. I have to wonder if they would've eaten that big turnip themselves, or if they had an inkling we could from observing us and were just being nice. Our water situation is semi-stable, and we have some shelter, though our food supply is yet weak. I have some ideas to fix the latter, but that'll probably have to wait until the Exploitation phase. One thing I definitely want to do is make a water cistern, basically a well dug into the shale so we have secure supplies if for some reason the line to the creek is interrupted. But that's all for later.

I'd like to start looking for ways to make the local environment work for us. If we're in these badlands for a while, there's no reason we can't tweak things a bit. Search for spots where water collects. Soil-and-sediment hollows that don't get swept by wind and are closer to groundwater. Points where we might be able to divert a bit of the creek and use it to irrigate soil. We should have several samples of hardy Earth plants in our gene bank—kernsa (a grain that thrives in hot climates), cacti, agave, tomatoes, etc. I want to look into any good spots for tillage nearby.

Search for farming spots nearby: (1) - Xvareon

Changing my vote, then. Defense-related, I still want to look into sound emitter devices powered by our lamp posts that could be used to try and communicate with or scare away these creatures, and others that rely on sound. Research that if possible. It should just be as simple as amplifier circuits, a speaker, and remote radio control.

Oh, there's also one thing I want to point out for when we access the wetlands, since that might give us a new source of iron if my guess is right. One that humans have used for millennia.

Bog iron

Keep the light posts on: (2) - Xvareon, mightymushroom
Turn the lights off to stop attracting bugs: (0)

Harvest trees & research wood: (0)
Passive study pteroleons: (2) - mm, Xvareon
    ancillary: design sound emitters for communication & deterrent: (1) - Xvareon
Prototype helper robots: (0)

I think the most important thing to look into research-wise now is construction materials, actually. We're definitely going to run out of things we can reasonably improvise off the ship. Let's try to come up with something for making both temporary and permanent structures—enclosures for plants and wildlife, panic bunkers we can run into in case of weather or wildlife attacks, fences, and so on.

In review, wood and stone seem most common. We can potentially make concrete, but making a production line for it at reasonable scale would break us at this stage. Metal is out until we find ore veins. So, let's start with trees. We can use the Quad to haul wood on a travois, which is a sled attached to the back, and we have training ropes we can use to tie it with. Let's go out and cut a decent quantity of it and start figuring out what we're dealing with.

How strong is the wood? What are its properties? Does it behave like Earth trees or somehow differently? I basically just want to cut trees (Phryne's exoekeleton will help A LOT here, she's practically made for this stuff). I want to test (varieties if possible) to see if the wood's good for construction. Wood can make buildings, but also sharpened stakes for defense, storage crates & pallets for other things we find, and so on.

EDIT: I would also add to bring a laser gun, and to be ready to abort mission and drive off quickly if our activities disturb those giant creatures somehow. We can't afford to lose the Quad to some stomping elephant-ape.

Keep the light posts on: (2) - Xvareon, mightymushroom
Turn the lights off to stop attracting bugs: (0)

Harvest trees & research wood: (1) - Xvareon