As I mentioned earlier, I am quite interested in this idea. If you want any help developing either lore or rules just send me a PM and I'll contribute what I can. I can also send back Skype info if that would help. (Note: my timezone is GMT+8)
A few points have come to mind while I've been thinking this over:
One. Marauder ship captains should probably be RP'd with decent intelligence and communication skills in addition to the ability to control their crew. Perhaps a ship second or something as well. The rest of the crew can be cast as bloodthirsty and near mindless, but this more intelligent captain allows for communication, making demands and will give an RP reason as to why the crew is actually restrained if a victim does succeed to the demands. Now, the captain can still be a cannibalistic, homicidal maniac, just capable of communicating and controlling his crew. This allows for variety of demands as well: if the dice dictate an attack action, the captain can freely choose to demand the trader let them board, or that the trader sends over 20% of their crew, or the trader offers up one of their bridge officers for the captain's personal use, or whatever other Marauderish demand the captain can think of.
The other points are mainly practical and OORP:
The load-out of an effective pirate transport is often very different from those of transporting vessels. You may want to consider giving incoming members a grace-period to setting-up their ship for marauding (not going to need the mining turret etc.) And really, if the transport isn't set up for pirating, most traders will just laugh and run. Oh, and no IFFing an existing character can be really difficult/costly.
Bloodlust - to clarify, does this mean the Marauders can ONLY attack if beserk, or if beserk MUST attempt to board?
Boarding - I really like the idea, but this is going to be the biggest difficulty. Dice rolls are a good idea, but pretty hard to have any semblance of accuracy without dizzying complexity. For instance a [Convoy] ship (merchant navy) might have marines on board as opposed to civilians with guns. Liners have huge crews, trains small ones. Your first post mentions modifiers, but where to set them?
The best thing that comes to mind for me in boarding a trader willing to RP is to use the dice as a rough guideline and try to jointly narrate the boarding. No power-gaming that way, and should add some interest. This will probably work only rarely.
Last point, the berserk roll should maybe be modified for slavers. OORP, it's a very rare ID and to not alienate them all you wouldn't want to attack them very often. In RP, if the slaver doesn't feel safe why would he bother helping even if the pay was good?
Just a bunch of thoughts all at once. Feel free to use or discard them.
Ever heard of Smeagle? I was about to kill him off. Like. Right now. But i think I've changed my mind. Look at the link in my sig, go to that then check out the second link on the list.
Regardless of that, I kinda want in. But the whole /diceroll thing confuses me. Is it in-rp or are you just trying to use an uncommon command?
' Wrote:As I mentioned earlier, I am quite interested in this idea. If you want any help developing either lore or rules just send me a PM and I'll contribute what I can. I can also send back Skype info if that would help. (Note: my timezone is GMT+8)
Alright, we can do, PM me your info. I'm not native english speaker, so all extra help on writing some good and working lore would be awesome.
Quote:One. Marauder ship captains should probably be RP'd with decent intelligence and communication skills in addition to the ability to control their crew. Perhaps a ship second or something as well. The rest of the crew can be cast as bloodthirsty and near mindless, but this more intelligent captain allows for communication, making demands and will give an RP reason as to why the crew is actually restrained if a victim does succeed to the demands. Now, the captain can still be a cannibalistic, homicidal maniac, just capable of communicating and controlling his crew.
I think a lot of that could be left to personal player choice with their own characters and crew temperament, but I definately agree that it should stay comprehensive to keep the RP as fluid as possible. However, I certainly wouldn't have anything close to JL.Picard voiceovers. Some form of psychotic voice distortion would be a must for all Marauders. I suppose it'd be cool for each captain to prepare his own dialect.
Quote:This allows for variety of demands as well: if the dice dictate an attack action, the captain can freely choose to demand the trader let them board, or that the trader sends over 20% of their crew, or the trader offers up one of their bridge officers for the captain's personal use, or whatever other Marauderish demand the captain can think of.
Such variety would depend a lot on the Marauder captain and his crew, as well as their prey's behaviour, but again all demands must be used with moderation, just like demanding credits from a cargo worth 400k, you wouldn't bill it for 3mil.
Quote:The other points are mainly practical and OORP:
The load-out of an effective pirate transport is often very different from those of transporting vessels. You may want to consider giving incoming members a grace-period to setting-up their ship for marauding (not going to need the mining turret etc.) And really, if the transport isn't set up for pirating, most traders will just laugh and run. Oh, and no IFFing an existing character can be really difficult/costly.
Yea, transports as well as gunboats are allowed, transports with gunboats team would be the best combo and maybe some smaller craft like fighters or bombers for extra protection. For IFF, I'd recommend all players to start from a new character and grace periods are fairdues of course.
Quote:Bloodlust - to clarify, does this mean the Marauders can ONLY attack if beserk, or if beserk MUST attempt to board?
Im not sure, this still needs a lot of testing I suppose but I'd expect a diceroll for each encounter where potential prey doesn't first engage in any RP against incoming Marauders. However, if provoked, Marauders can attack without diceroll if they want to. That video shows it well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcAvVRcJ35g
Quote:Boarding - I really like the idea, but this is going to be the biggest difficulty. Dice rolls are a good idea, but pretty hard to have any semblance of accuracy without dizzying complexity. For instance a [Convoy] ship (merchant navy) might have marines on board as opposed to civilians with guns. Liners have huge crews, trains small ones. Your first post mentions modifiers, but where to set them??
I know this will be somewhat hard. We can either go all out on complexity and make a dicechart with modifiers for each transports (which would greatly hinder on RP flow ingame, and I frankly couldn't be ****ed having to learn all this), or we keep it simple depending on cargo size difference only, or...
Remember none of this matters and boarding is automatic when the ship being preyed on doesnt RP having any marines or security onboard.
Quote:The best thing that comes to mind for me in boarding a trader willing to RP is to use the dice as a rough guideline and try to jointly narrate the boarding. No power-gaming that way, and should add some interest. This will probably work only rarely.
Rough guideline?
Could you give an example scenario to be more specific?
Quote:Last point, the berserk roll should maybe be modified for slavers. OORP, it's a very rare ID and to not alienate them all you wouldn't want to attack them very often. In RP, if the slaver doesn't feel safe why would he bother helping even if the pay was good?
True, but there are ways for Slavers and Marauders to fix a drop-in place for goods in space without coming in any risky close contact. It's nonetheless a risk Salvers must take for garanteed quality slaves, as Marauders have some of the most efficient and unique brainwashing techniques available.
' Wrote:Ever heard of Smeagle? I was about to kill him off. Like. Right now. But i think I've changed my mind. Look at the link in my sig, go to that then check out the second link on the list.
Regardless of that, I kinda want in. But the whole /diceroll thing confuses me. Is it in-rp or are you just trying to use an uncommon command?
Peace.
Theres a command ingame, just type /dice and voila!
Nice RP you got goin on there with Smeagle, don't kill him off yet!
That having been said I'm looking forward to seeing you people in game, not every day a new faction pops up that has potential.
Pretty much what Justin said. Its a good looking faction, as well. Guess it will all depend on in game actions if the forum side of you guys keeps going like this.
Agreed on Marauder captains not making diatribes. Just need to be sure that other players understand what is going on is all. If someone wanted a really insane captain by Marauder standards, they could always RP a stolen robot translating or something like that.
The video of Reavers not attacking: I forgot about that one. Leaves room for silent flyovers (or not so silent) just to freak people out.
I'll give some thought to Bloodlust. My thoughts for now are leaning towards it being a roll as to whether the Marauders can attack or not. However, that might be extremely frustrating when the server isn't very full.
Boarding: Definitely not looking to make things hugely complex either. If you really want the modifiers it could go something like: (Small Transports and Trains, Large Transports, Liners, Gunboats and Caps)
As for what I was thinking if you find a trader willing to RP would be something along the lines of:
Sordid: Raaaagh! We're boarding to consume, consume, consuuuume!
*Roll off, Sordid beats trader*
Sordid: *Grappling devices hit the ship, the doors are ripped opens and Marauders swarm the entry*
Trader: *Defence forces open fire, but are overwhelmed and take heavy losse*
Trader: Captain: Fall back to defense point bravo!
Sordid: *The marauders push forward close behind the defenders*
Sordid: Fleeesh! FLeesh! Aaaaargh!
*Roll off, Trader beats Sordid*
Trader: *Defence forces group behind a pre-made position, opening up with vicious fire on the Marauders*
Sordid: *A few of the most insane make it to the defenders, inflicting some damage before being killed*
Sordid: *The rest wither at the onslaught of fire, skulking back to pick from the bodies of the already dead*
Now, a few things here to be resolved. a) The trader will need to be aware of and agree to how that works. And the time required might be problematic in areas where BHG, Navy, Police might show
b) In the scenario above, the trader has RPed but not accepted demands (he resisted the boarding), so shooting him as he runs away is still possible. Though at this point that might not be in the best interest of RP.
c) Really, unless the trader agrees, the Marauders will always "lose" the boarding scenarios. That is, we can't go off wiping out people's entire crews and in-RP killing off their ship (powergaming/very few will agree to it), even if they don't have defenses.
' Wrote:Agreed on Marauder captains not making diatribes. Just need to be sure that other players understand what is going on is all. If someone wanted a really insane captain by Marauder standards, they could always RP a stolen robot translating or something like that.
The video of Reavers not attacking: I forgot about that one. Leaves room for silent flyovers (or not so silent) just to freak people out.
I'll give some thought to Bloodlust. My thoughts for now are leaning towards it being a roll as to whether the Marauders can attack or not. However, that might be extremely frustrating when the server isn't very full.
Boarding: Definitely not looking to make things hugely complex either. If you really want the modifiers it could go something like: (Small Transports and Trains, Large Transports, Liners, Gunboats and Caps)
As for what I was thinking if you find a trader willing to RP would be something along the lines of:
Sordid: Raaaagh! We're boarding to consume, consume, consuuuume!
*Roll off, Sordid beats trader*
Sordid: *Grappling devices hit the ship, the doors are ripped opens and Marauders swarm the entry*
Trader: *Defence forces open fire, but are overwhelmed and take heavy losse*
Trader: Captain: Fall back to defense point bravo!
Sordid: *The marauders push forward close behind the defenders*
Sordid: Fleeesh! FLeesh! Aaaaargh!
*Roll off, Trader beats Sordid*
Trader: *Defence forces group behind a pre-made position, opening up with vicious fire on the Marauders*
Sordid: *A few of the most insane make it to the defenders, inflicting some damage before being killed*
Sordid: *The rest wither at the onslaught of fire, skulking back to pick from the bodies of the already dead*
Now, a few things here to be resolved. a) The trader will need to be aware of and agree to how that works. And the time required might be problematic in areas where BHG, Navy, Police might show
b) In the scenario above, the trader has RPed but not accepted demands (he resisted the boarding), so shooting him as he runs away is still possible. Though at this point that might not be in the best interest of RP.
c) Really, unless the trader agrees, the Marauders will always "lose" the boarding scenarios. That is, we can't go off wiping out people's entire crews and in-RP killing off their ship (powergaming/very few will agree to it), even if they don't have defenses.
Sounds good, and I think we could keep the wiping out of people's enitre crews to special scenarios or unique events later on and once Marauders get a bit more notoriety on the server, maybe.
However, for it to work well right now, it has to be on-demand routine like any other pirate group and if boarding isn't always succesful, due to unwilling prey to RP boarding actions with us, well, there's not much we can do. We can't and we wont force people to RP with us.
We need to find a way to make people realise this boarding mechanic is a good tradeoff as:
A. It's a pure gamble. They only loseout on RPed fictional entities (crew, captain...) whilst keeping a cargo they would otherwise lose if they tried to flee. The latter turning out to be an even more waste of their time (and ours, since no-one's here to cause grief).
B. It's fun.
C. It's an RP server!
So we should keep boarding RP as short and direct as possible, and for that we need plenty of practice.
See you ingame! Im on skype most the time also.
Peace
I just ran into you on my IND. When I first got a look, I was a bit skeptical, a weird assortment of transports talking all weird, but I have to say, I really enjoyed the encounter. The rp was quite good, and just as much as I played with what you gave me, you played with what I gave you.
One the whole, thumbs up from me on this encounter.
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