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[hermes]

Stalker – Community RPG Game

Thirteen years ago the Visitation occurred.  At six points along the 43rd parallel on the earth's surface something, or someone, caused the laws of nature to degenerate within discrete circles of land, radiating up into the cold of space.  These six Forbidden Zones, just “Zones” now, have redefined humanity most immediately by forcing political and technological change, but more deeply by insisting on collective philosophical and religious meditation.  Yet what each Zone contains has been only seen, thusfar, to be nothing short of monstrous.  Perversions of reason, order and physical law that mock humanity's curiosity and will to control.

You are a Stalker, an illegal scavenger both hunted by the Institute that would control the Zones, and hunter of Artefacts within the Zones.  What kind of person would risk life and sanity for inexplicable trinkets?  Or maybe the Artefacts are not what you are along for, maybe you seek some other resolution within the Zones.  Though science can find no answers, that does not mean there are none to be found.

The first mission shall take place in the Japan Zone.  The team shall start in the borderland city of Sapporo.  The circle demarcates the absolute perimeter of the Zone, 72km in diameter, but the border region effectively encompasses the whole of Hokkaido, which has become once again a dark uninhabited island, except for the Chitose Airport-Sapporo corridor which maintains a thriving underworld in a place where the light of law shines very weakly.



This is a diceless RPG game.  The team's performace, nay, survival, shall be determined by the quality of its answers, discussion and preparation.  Before character creation, please claim a slot.  Before you claim a slot, please bear in mind:

• You may die in the game.
• You may be injured, and it shall be scientifically graphic.
• The minimum time between updates shall be a week, this shall be a slow game.
• If you skip a turn or leave either another player may take, or I shall puppet, your character.
• No knowledge of the lore or book is necessary, anyone is welcome to play.

You can buy the PDF from here or a printed copy from here.  It won't be necessary for the players of the game, but it is recommended.  A great read!

Roll call:

ID	POSITION	NAME	AGE	NATIONALITY	STATUS
LordBucket	Mozg	Alexei Konovalov	28	Russian	FINE
hector13	Driver	Corban 'Wheels' Hodge	26	Scottish	FINE
USEC_OFFICER	Doc	Marcus Jekyll	52	Canadian	Broken tooth
Zako	Saru	Kasumi 'Lynx' Himashi	23	Japanese	FINE
The13thRonin	Muscle	Jack 'Apocalypse' Fitzpatrick	30	Australian	Unconscious
DaveTheGrave	Scout	Tyler Stye	19	Canadian	FINE

Stalker team positions:

ENGLISH	RUSSIAN	JAPANESE	DESCRIPTION
Monkey	Zmeja	Saru	Acrobat/athlete, may access hard to reach places.
Muscle	Robot	Nikuman	Gunman, bodyguard, heavy.
Doc	Kostolom	Sensei	Treats the injured.
Scout	Norka	Sukauto	Sneak survivalist, finds safe routes.
Prof	Otshkarik	Hakase	Provides Zone knowledge in the field.  Same service available in border area.
Driver	Vodila	Doraibaa	Driver, handyman, thief.
Chef	Grutzshik	Kokko-san	Quartermaster, mothers the team.
Boss	Mozg	Kantoku	Planner, tactician, negotiator.

Turn list...

TURN 00	The Stalkers arrive in Japan
TURN 01	The doctor arrives
TURN 02	The mission is accepted
TURN 03	The shopping trip begins

[hermes]

Spoiler: How challenges and contests work (click to show/hide)

An action against a situation is a challenge, against another agent is a contest.
Both challenges and contests are given a score by the GM which the players must equal or beat to be successful.
That score is not known to the players.
Failure is not just failure, there are degrees of failure, so it always pays to try hard, and to judge the difficulty of any action before you attempt it.

You are given a score by the GM for idea and roleplay.
I shall probably give you these scores so you know how you're doing.
The hardest challenges and contests cannot succeed by idea and roleplay alone, you must burn ability points to have a chance of succeeding.


A challenge - hacking a computer
GM sets the difficulty - it is a corporate computer (+) within a secure office with video surveillance (+) with firewalls and systems maintained by a security company (+).  Very difficult (20).

Player attempt A: "Turn it on and try to guess the password".  Idea 1 Roleplay 1.  Score 1.  Catastrophic failure, security company alerted, guards on the way, computer shuts down, doors auto-locked.

Player attempt B:  "Search the room for cameras & cover them (+) use background in programming to bypass login (+) have teammate keep doors open (+) etc.  Idea 4 Roleplay 5.  Score 20.  Success.


Contest - Mug old lady for handbag
GM sets the difficulty - lady very weak (-) bystanders might interfere (+).  Routine (5).

Player attempt A:  "Just take the bag off her."  Idea 1 Roleplay 2.  Score 2.  Botched failure.  Player takes the bag, old lady screams for help, mob of men tackle you, pin you to the ground and call the police.

Note, DO NOT MUG ANYONE IRL.
Player attempt B:  "Follow until reach quiet area, guide by arm as if relative to alley, teammate applies chloroform handkerchief, take bag and walk away calmly."  Idea 5 Roleplay 4.  Score 20.  Success.


Note that the player does not need to know anything about fighting, hacking or surgery or anything else to do that action in game.  Where your character has experience, just say so.  Equally though, that does not give you a free pass.  If you invoke experience alone, you will fail more often than succeed.

Basically, just use common sense.

Spoiler: Gameplay Tips (click to show/hide)

Gameplay

Stalker uses a “diceless” RPG system called Flow, that can use dice in some situations.  I shan't go into the details here, but essentially every Challenge has a numerical rating decided by the GM and players try to beat that rating to succeed at a challenge.  Players, the team, are/is scored on the quality of the idea, the plan, and the quality of their roleplay.

For example, a bad idea is one that is little thought through and ignores the facts of the environment, a good idea is just the opposite.  Bad roleplay ignores character history, talents, etc.  You get the picture.  For especially difficult Challenges OR for dangerous situations you can use (“burn”) an ability point in a relevant category to mitigate the bad effects of failure, or achieve an “impossible” task.

For example, say you try to disarm a bomb but fail, you might burn a point in fitness to dive around the corner before it goes off.  You would still receive some injury, perhaps major, but if you hadn't used that fitness point you would be dead.

I've decided to not show any values for anything, and we'll see how this works out.

tl;dr  Your performance is directly related to the quality of your ideas and roleplay.


Information flow shall hopefully play a big role in the game.  Each character shall encounter different pieces of information that they may or may not wish to share with one or more members of the group.  In a live RPG, this kind of thing usually requires players to keep personal and character knowledge separate.  But on the forums, Personal Messaging provides a nice way to keep secret talk really secret.

If you want to whisper or talk to an NPC in another room, PM me.
If you want to whisper or talk to a fellow PC in another room, PM them and CC me.
NPCs shall engage you likewise.

Players who speak languages other than English may either PM or Spoiler that text, or do nothing.  It's your call whether you want to keep a bit of info from everyone else.

I don't mean for this to be an exercise in endless layers of deception, the main thrust of Stalker is exploring and surviving the Zones and recovering crazy stuff.  But the context within which those missions take place is rife with games of deceit.  The NPCs are playing those games, you may try to uncover them or not, or play at the same game or not.

Spoiler: Character Creation (click to show/hide)

Character Creation

Some key points:

• Each Stalker's character sheet is only visible to himself and the GM - please do not post them to the thread.  When the mission starts it shall be the first time any of you have met.  You shall learn of each other's past and talents as the story progresses.
• There are ability numbers, but they shall be allocated and tracked by the GM.

Format:

• Name, nickname/aliases, role, gender, age, nationality, race, height, weight, basic appearance description.
• Background story - childhood, education, career, how they became a Stalker
• Abilities
• Drawbacks
• Languages
• Assets/Wealth

If you have the book, see above for links, please create your character and send it to me via PM.


Else, please follow these instructions:

1)   Pick an available job from the table in the OP.
2)   Pick your age.  Younger Stalkers have fewer Abilities but more luck, older Stalkers have more experience, thus more Abilities. 
3)   Next work out how many Abilities you may choose:

PERIOD	AGE	# of ABILITIES
Childhood	0-10	+3
Education	10-20	+3
Career	20+	+3
Hobby	-	+1

For example, a teenage pyromaniac Stalker might have 4-6 Abilities, whereas a wounded war veteran of 35 might have the full 10.  The average age of a Stalker is 25-35.

4)   Write a backstory encompassing all stages of your Stalker's life, concluding with how/why they became a Stalker.

5)  Now you have to choose abilities appropriate to each stage of life.  This is the hard part because I'm not going to provide a list of abilities from the game book - I want you to use your imagination.  Abilities are, for example, Agile - has quick reactions and good flexibility, perhaps learnt from taking gymnastics classes in school.  Lawyer - has a law degree, knows criminal law/contract law etc.  True Grit - has been tortured and did not give anything/anyone up.  Imagine you're making up your own perks in Fallout 3.  They can be physical, mental, historical, familial, etc. pretty much anything.  They just have to tie in with your backstory.  For example...

Hibiki Yamamoto is 33 years old and a washed up whaler.  He was born in Osaka, the son of a businessman and grew up in comfortable middle class affluence.  In elementary school he played baseball for the school team and won a regional competition - Throwing Arm - has an extremely accurate and hard right hand pitch.  In junior high school he got in with a bad crowd and things went downhill - Chameleon - Able to ingratiate himself in many social situations.  He ran away from home and found work in the fish markets - Self Reliant - Performs above normal when isolated from the party. yada yada...  He recovered from his shark bite and decided to become a Stalker.  Please don't actually use 'yada yada' in your story   

One of those Abilities is from the book, the others I just made up.  Go wild!  The age/ability correlation is flexible, but 3 in childhood, 3 in education and 3 from career would be balanced.

Now each Ability counts towards points in several categories; Fitness, Alertness, Intellect, Willpower, Charisma, Education, Technical and Zone.  You may specify which category each Ability should count towards, or I can make a reasonable choice.  It's up to you.

6)   Next you have to describe Drawbacks.  These are the flipside of some of the Abilities you have chosen.  e.g. Your character has True Grit, so he performs better under torture and injury doesn't affect him so much - you might give him a Drawback that says his cool attitude in the face of pain distances him from party members, or perhaps he is now only concerned about number one and would be the last man to leap in to help a teammate.  Not all Abilities need Drawbacks and Drawbacks do not have to be linked to Abilities.  Staying true to your backstory is the key here.  Perhaps Hibiki above doesn't want to see another shark in his life and will flip out if he does.  Maybe he owes money to loan sharks all over and his past might catch up with him one day.

Drawback descriptions, like Ability descriptions, should be short and clear, and referencing the backstory is necessary.

7) Wealth and equipment.  Stalkers might have a home, or several, or maybe none at all.  But they should have a safehouse that only they know about.  Please detail where homes/safehouses are (country, city).  Bank assets?  Property?  Investments?  Nada?  You choose.  The cash in your pocket you start with shall be calculated by myself based upon your Abiltiies.

The game will start with everyone arriving in Sapporo.  If a Stalker has had to arrive by airplane then their starting equipment shall be minimal.  Only in extremely rare cases shall a Stalker from outside Japan be allowed a weapon to begin with.

What do Stalkers carry?  Well, don't bother yourself with this too much yet.  Your characters will have a chance to tool up before entering the zone.  Just list the essentials your character would have on them at all times.  The Boss and the Robot should have some kind of weapon that is concealable.  Other party members do not really need weapons at this stage, but if you have a good reason to have one, it could be allowed.

Please list your clothes.  Your Stalker's clothes.

8 )   Done!  Please PM me the results.  I'll check it and maybe advise or change some things to do with points/equipment.  If you have any questions, please ask.

[FritzPL]

ptw

[LordBucket]

Before character creation, please claim a slot.

Claiming a slot

[CognitiveDissonance]

PTW. I'd play, but I have never played any of the STALKER games. I should...

[hector13]

I'd be quite interested in this, though I just got married and I'm going on my honeymoon for about 8 days or so on 13th July. Will that be a problem?

[Bdthemag]

Not super interested in a Japanese STALKER type, but what the hell. I'm kind of confused how this will play out though without dice or the usual RPG setup. Will this basically be we suggest what we want to do, and you interpret it and basically do what you want? Also, what are supposed to base characters off of since there's no real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. lore regarding Japan?

[hermes]

Claiming a slot

Roger!

PTW. I'd play, but I have never played any of the STALKER games. I should...

Neither have I, and I suspect nobody here has (played the book RPG), so don't worry.

I'd be quite interested in this, though I just got married and I'm going on my honeymoon for about 8 days or so on 13th July. Will that be a problem?

Congratulations!  It shouldn't be an issue.  It may take a week or two to setup, quite possibly.  Enjoy the honeymoon!

Not super interested in a Japanese STALKER type, but what the hell. I'm kind of confused how this will play out though without dice or the usual RPG setup. Will this basically be we suggest what we want to do, and you interpret it and basically do what you want? Also, what are supposed to base characters off of since there's no real S.T.A.L.K.E.R. lore regarding Japan?

I want to minimise the amount of playing I do, and maximise player-player interactions to solve obstacles in character.  The more the players discuss through their actions, the better their plan, the better the outcome.
Having the RPG book would help with character creation, PDF may be bought here or printed copy from here, but it is not necessary.  I shall post a couple of example characters and tell you how to allocate points.  It is not too hard, and pretty much anything is OK.  Your characters can come from any country and have any pre-stalker history you like.  You don't need to know anything about Japan or stalking or the Zones specifically as everyone shall, more or less, be a green stalker - though that doesn't mean you can't have experience/knowledge on the periphery of the business.

The character sheet is available here.  Don't worry about points yet, but you can begin to think about their past.  What is most important there is why your character has become a stalker

[Bdthemag]

Oh, you're using THAT S.T.A.L.K.E.R. system. I'm not a particular big fan of it, so I'm going to have to pass.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Posting to watch and definitively join.

[Zako]

Hell, I'll join. Just to see what it's like.

[The13thRonin]

I want in. Claiming a slot. This is my type of thing.

[Zako]

Ok, thanks for posting those character sets for us. Here's my character:

Kasumi Himashi, Saru, 23 years old, Japanese

[evilcherry]

Claim a slot but want to fix the Wapanese first.

Doctor I'd replace with Isha. Isha means expressly the medical doctor - Sensei means master which can be a lot of things.
Professor is more accurately Kyoujyu. Hakase means, not coincidentally, a Doctoral Degree Holder.

[hermes]

OK I've added Character creation info to the second post.  LordBucket has already sent me a complete character sheet, the deadline for submission we'll say is in one week, then it will start.

Claim a slot but want to fix the Wapanese first.

Doctor I'd replace with Isha. Isha means expressly the medical doctor - Sensei means master which can be a lot of things.
Professor is more accurately Kyoujyu. Hakase means, not coincidentally, a Doctoral Degree Holder.

My Japanese is not great at all... but I was going for natural names.  Kantoku is like a baseball team coach, Nikuman is a cheap joke based on Kinnikuman.  With Doctor, they are referred to, perhaps, in writing by Isha but almost exclusively when speaking to a doctor people will say Sensei.  With Professor, I'm not sure. I might change that one, so thanks for the tip