Awake(working title) - The Sign-up Thread - Page 2

Overcast · 03-19-2010, 07:09 PM

In the end it seemed Don't Rest Your Head got the most positive response from the two ideas presented. So here we get our start.

Note: There will be a small delay between the sign up closing and the start of the RP due to the fact that the plot line typically should be built around the characters and their problems rather than just set to one big problem(which may be there anyway) and forcing the characters along it.

Glossary of Terms

Protagonist: The most important character in a Conflict and the primary dice roller, all other players helping will only chip in their Discipline Dice.
Conflict: A situation that requires dice be rolled to resolve the situation.
Awake: This is you. You've stayed up for God knows how long and have somehow broken the regular cycle of sleeping and waking. With this break from common human health you have developed a strange power and access to a strange land known as The Mad City. You are still human...to a degree. Until you lose your mind one couldn't really notice anything wrong at all. Though you are different. Very different. And as The Mad City begins to haunt you eventually you may end up losing it all.
The Mad City: The new world that the Awake are given access to. A dangerous place between here and somewhere else where dreams and memories can be bought and sold, stories printed can immediately come true, where no door seems to ever lead the same way twice, and for some reason a place you will frequent often.
Asleep: Normal people. They inhabit The City Slumbering. They are all the people you have to deal with when you aren't dealing with terrible clockwork officers trying to arrest you for not walking in step with the city. They don't know about The Mad City. They don't know anything about living as one of the Awake. But sometimes there are things you just can't solve by staying in that mad world, and since you are still human these people will still bother you, let it be taxes, ex girlfriends, or really anything. Regular people still exist.
The City Slumbering: The real world as we see it. No matter how often you spend in The Mad City all the problems of reality will remain, and more often then not you will have to find some time to deal with them. It is a burden all must face, but your detachment may make it one worse.
The 13th Hour: In The Mad City time goes just one hour past midnight, and if you are in The Mad City when that hour strikes expect to be stuck for a while. During The 13th Hour all exits from The Mad City to The City Slumbering are sealed until it is over, making it a great time for Nightmares to go hunting, in fact some of them even get stronger during this time. If you happen to be outside The Mad City when this occurs then you will notice nothing at all, so that when you re-enter it will be 1 am, just as it should be.
Locals: The relatively neutral members of The Mad City these folks are typically those who almost became Awake but never pulled it off, the Awake who resigned themselves to this position, or Awake who signed up for this service with a Nightmare. They are a bit like average workers in The City Slumbering, only they never stop doing their job. The end result leaves them shallow of personality, anything that doesn't have to do with their work worn away till they are very two dimensional. They are useful but can be dangerous, as said before some are in service to powerful Nightmares and some may even be Nightmares in disguise, waiting for a chance to spring.
Nightmare: Natural enemy of the Awake, these are creatures of The Mad City who were once Awake but lost themselves in the city. Now they follow whatever agenda their madness decides is most important which more often than not may need the creation of more Nightmares. Which can only happen one way...
Discipline Dice: All characters start with three, but if they earn a bit of Permanent Madness due to a Snap they will lose a discipline dice and have it replaced by Madness. Lose all three and the character becomes an Nightmare. They are the safest dice to roll for when they Dominate a scene it stays in relative control and will allow you to earn back Responses or remove a dice of Exhaustion.
Exhaustion Dice: You start with none but can add one every roll and may gain one if you lose a roll or if Exhaustion Dominates, which causes the Conflict to seriously tire your character out inching him closer to. As they increase your Exhaustion Talent becomes more powerful. You can only have up to six, accidentally pass six and you will Crash.
Madness Dice: You have the ability to use six of these at once, but can use as many as you find necessary. The more of them you use the better your Madness Talent becomes, but if it Dominates you lose control of the situation and are forced to check off a Response. Run out of Responses and you Snap.
Pain Dice: The GM dice, this represents the difficulty of the current Conflict. If it Dominates then something bad happens, even if the Protagonist wins he will find it bittersweet. This also grants the GM a Coin of Despair.
Degree: Or degree of success, it is the amount of successes you had on your roll. A dice earns a degree by rolling 1,2,or 3. If the player earns more successes than the GM he wins the conflict. If the player loses he will either lose a Response(of the GM's choice) or gain a die of Exhaustion on top of failing the conflict.
Domination: Domination is decided by which die type had the die with the highest number, if they tie they go to the next highest number die, if by some miracle all the dice rolled ended up the same number or there are multiple ties all the way down to the lowest number then Discipline beats Madness; Madness beats Exhaustion; Exhaustion beats Pain. No matter what the result of the conflict is the dominance will occur, allowing certain situations to be awesome(success and Discipline), neutral(failure and Discipline), bad (failure and Exhaustion or Madness) terrible(failure and Pain) or bittersweet(success and Pain).
Responses: Activated when Madness dominates and a character loses control of a situation and begins to panic. Essentially they will stop acting rationally and respond in either a fight or flight manner. Each character will have three responses, when all three are used up and Madness Dominates again a character will Snap.
Snapping: When a character runs out of Responses they will Snap, gaining permanent madness in the form of one of their Discipline die becoming a madness die. Also their personal character will now be slightly colored by their madness talent. Also their madness talent may slip a little bit into every day situations.
Crashing: When a character goes above 6 Exhaustion die they will fall asleep. Their Exhaustion die will be reset, their Responses will be reset, and they will sleep at LEAST one day, but could be out a while. While asleep they will become a magnet for Nightmares and will be unable to defend themselves thus relying on their team mates to keep their catatonic form safe. When they wake they will have only one discipline die and no access to their Talents until they stay up as long as they were asleep.
Coin of Despair: One of these little creeps is given to the GM when Pain Dominates a scene. This allows the GM to "cast a shadow" over any roll he desires. What this means is he can either remove a rolled six from play, or add one to an active dice type(save for Pain). This cannot cause Pain to Dominate. Once spent the coin will change to a Coin of Hope.
Coin of Hope: Gained when a Coin of Despair is used this allows a character to get a little break when he is not actively involved in a situation too stressful to take one. After being spent the characters will be able to restore a Response or remove a die of Exhaustion. It can also be used to remove Permanent Madness, the cost being 5 - their remaining Discipline die. Finally one coin can be spent to add a degree of success to any roll.
Exhaustion Talent: An Exhaustion Talent is something any human can do but an Awake can now do VERY well. They can be just about any act humanly possible from breaking things to sex to shooting things to talking. It can be applied in two ways Minor and Major. Minor applications allow the player to automatically get at least a degree of success equal to their current amount of Exhaustion die. Major applications increase the degree of success by their current amount of Exhaustion die but require that the character take another die of Exhaustion.
Madness Talent:A Madness Talent is an Awake's super ability. Something that no person should be able to do rationally. This can be ANYTHING, from cutting things with your mind, summoning ninjas, being able to hail a cab no matter where you are, turning into a giant lobster, the possibilities are literally only limited by your own imagination. It requires at least one Madness die to work, but the addition of more makes it more potent, which may be necessary to even use it to a minimum efficiency. In the end the player will say what they want to do with their talent and the GM will say how much that is going to cost to do and what sort of Pain they will be facing to try to pull it off.

Skeleton

Biography
Name: Pretty self explanatory.
Occupation: Are you a failed rock musician, a cut throat lawyer, a reckless thug, we all were something before we woke up...and to a degree we still are these things.
Past: Nobody stays up as long as you have without something seriously messing with you. Here we get to ask what it is and what your life was before you changed.
Appearance: What you look like, common items you keep with you, and how people in the normal world might interpret that as.
Personality: Beyond your appearance what are you really like?
Goals: Often tied in with your inspiration for waking up, your goals are what you personally know must be done to fix yourself. Even if you would never admit it out loud.

Responses
Fight: React recklessly, offensively. Lash out, physically, mentally, emotionally. Lose track of your friend and foe lines. Fight, without proper thought of what kind of shit it is getting you into.
Flight: React defensively. Panic, lock the doors, run away, hide behind stupid phrases like "I know you are but what am I?" Faint. The key is to try to get away to somewhere safe. Even if it is just your own mind.

Talents
Exhaustion Talent: One human thing that you are exceptional at. Which you will become strangely even better than before, particularly as your exhaustion grows.
Madness Talent: This is your ability. It can be anything from being followed by a random clan of ninja or basic teleportation. There are no notable limits other than your imagination.

03-19-2010, 07:09 PM	#1
Overcast Cinderella Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Trespassing in the graveyard Posts: 3,076	Awake(working title) - The Sign-up Thread In the end it seemed Don't Rest Your Head got the most positive response from the two ideas presented. So here we get our start. Note: There will be a small delay between the sign up closing and the start of the RP due to the fact that the plot line typically should be built around the characters and their problems rather than just set to one big problem(which may be there anyway) and forcing the characters along it. Glossary of Terms Protagonist: The most important character in a Conflict and the primary dice roller, all other players helping will only chip in their Discipline Dice. Conflict: A situation that requires dice be rolled to resolve the situation. Awake: This is you. You've stayed up for God knows how long and have somehow broken the regular cycle of sleeping and waking. With this break from common human health you have developed a strange power and access to a strange land known as The Mad City. You are still human...to a degree. Until you lose your mind one couldn't really notice anything wrong at all. Though you are different. Very different. And as The Mad City begins to haunt you eventually you may end up losing it all. The Mad City: The new world that the Awake are given access to. A dangerous place between here and somewhere else where dreams and memories can be bought and sold, stories printed can immediately come true, where no door seems to ever lead the same way twice, and for some reason a place you will frequent often. Asleep: Normal people. They inhabit The City Slumbering. They are all the people you have to deal with when you aren't dealing with terrible clockwork officers trying to arrest you for not walking in step with the city. They don't know about The Mad City. They don't know anything about living as one of the Awake. But sometimes there are things you just can't solve by staying in that mad world, and since you are still human these people will still bother you, let it be taxes, ex girlfriends, or really anything. Regular people still exist. The City Slumbering: The real world as we see it. No matter how often you spend in The Mad City all the problems of reality will remain, and more often then not you will have to find some time to deal with them. It is a burden all must face, but your detachment may make it one worse. The 13th Hour: In The Mad City time goes just one hour past midnight, and if you are in The Mad City when that hour strikes expect to be stuck for a while. During The 13th Hour all exits from The Mad City to The City Slumbering are sealed until it is over, making it a great time for Nightmares to go hunting, in fact some of them even get stronger during this time. If you happen to be outside The Mad City when this occurs then you will notice nothing at all, so that when you re-enter it will be 1 am, just as it should be. Locals: The relatively neutral members of The Mad City these folks are typically those who almost became Awake but never pulled it off, the Awake who resigned themselves to this position, or Awake who signed up for this service with a Nightmare. They are a bit like average workers in The City Slumbering, only they never stop doing their job. The end result leaves them shallow of personality, anything that doesn't have to do with their work worn away till they are very two dimensional. They are useful but can be dangerous, as said before some are in service to powerful Nightmares and some may even be Nightmares in disguise, waiting for a chance to spring. Nightmare: Natural enemy of the Awake, these are creatures of The Mad City who were once Awake but lost themselves in the city. Now they follow whatever agenda their madness decides is most important which more often than not may need the creation of more Nightmares. Which can only happen one way... Discipline Dice: All characters start with three, but if they earn a bit of Permanent Madness due to a Snap they will lose a discipline dice and have it replaced by Madness. Lose all three and the character becomes an Nightmare. They are the safest dice to roll for when they Dominate a scene it stays in relative control and will allow you to earn back Responses or remove a dice of Exhaustion. Exhaustion Dice: You start with none but can add one every roll and may gain one if you lose a roll or if Exhaustion Dominates, which causes the Conflict to seriously tire your character out inching him closer to. As they increase your Exhaustion Talent becomes more powerful. You can only have up to six, accidentally pass six and you will Crash. Madness Dice: You have the ability to use six of these at once, but can use as many as you find necessary. The more of them you use the better your Madness Talent becomes, but if it Dominates you lose control of the situation and are forced to check off a Response. Run out of Responses and you Snap. Pain Dice: The GM dice, this represents the difficulty of the current Conflict. If it Dominates then something bad happens, even if the Protagonist wins he will find it bittersweet. This also grants the GM a Coin of Despair. Degree: Or degree of success, it is the amount of successes you had on your roll. A dice earns a degree by rolling 1,2,or 3. If the player earns more successes than the GM he wins the conflict. If the player loses he will either lose a Response(of the GM's choice) or gain a die of Exhaustion on top of failing the conflict. Domination: Domination is decided by which die type had the die with the highest number, if they tie they go to the next highest number die, if by some miracle all the dice rolled ended up the same number or there are multiple ties all the way down to the lowest number then Discipline beats Madness; Madness beats Exhaustion; Exhaustion beats Pain. No matter what the result of the conflict is the dominance will occur, allowing certain situations to be awesome(success and Discipline), neutral(failure and Discipline), bad (failure and Exhaustion or Madness) terrible(failure and Pain) or bittersweet(success and Pain). Responses: Activated when Madness dominates and a character loses control of a situation and begins to panic. Essentially they will stop acting rationally and respond in either a fight or flight manner. Each character will have three responses, when all three are used up and Madness Dominates again a character will Snap. Snapping: When a character runs out of Responses they will Snap, gaining permanent madness in the form of one of their Discipline die becoming a madness die. Also their personal character will now be slightly colored by their madness talent. Also their madness talent may slip a little bit into every day situations. Crashing: When a character goes above 6 Exhaustion die they will fall asleep. Their Exhaustion die will be reset, their Responses will be reset, and they will sleep at LEAST one day, but could be out a while. While asleep they will become a magnet for Nightmares and will be unable to defend themselves thus relying on their team mates to keep their catatonic form safe. When they wake they will have only one discipline die and no access to their Talents until they stay up as long as they were asleep. Coin of Despair: One of these little creeps is given to the GM when Pain Dominates a scene. This allows the GM to "cast a shadow" over any roll he desires. What this means is he can either remove a rolled six from play, or add one to an active dice type(save for Pain). This cannot cause Pain to Dominate. Once spent the coin will change to a Coin of Hope. Coin of Hope: Gained when a Coin of Despair is used this allows a character to get a little break when he is not actively involved in a situation too stressful to take one. After being spent the characters will be able to restore a Response or remove a die of Exhaustion. It can also be used to remove Permanent Madness, the cost being 5 - their remaining Discipline die. Finally one coin can be spent to add a degree of success to any roll. Exhaustion Talent: An Exhaustion Talent is something any human can do but an Awake can now do VERY well. They can be just about any act humanly possible from breaking things to sex to shooting things to talking. It can be applied in two ways Minor and Major. Minor applications allow the player to automatically get at least a degree of success equal to their current amount of Exhaustion die. Major applications increase the degree of success by their current amount of Exhaustion die but require that the character take another die of Exhaustion. Madness Talent:A Madness Talent is an Awake's super ability. Something that no person should be able to do rationally. This can be ANYTHING, from cutting things with your mind, summoning ninjas, being able to hail a cab no matter where you are, turning into a giant lobster, the possibilities are literally only limited by your own imagination. It requires at least one Madness die to work, but the addition of more makes it more potent, which may be necessary to even use it to a minimum efficiency. In the end the player will say what they want to do with their talent and the GM will say how much that is going to cost to do and what sort of Pain they will be facing to try to pull it off. Skeleton Biography Name: Pretty self explanatory. Occupation: Are you a failed rock musician, a cut throat lawyer, a reckless thug, we all were something before we woke up...and to a degree we still are these things. Past: Nobody stays up as long as you have without something seriously messing with you. Here we get to ask what it is and what your life was before you changed. Appearance: What you look like, common items you keep with you, and how people in the normal world might interpret that as. Personality: Beyond your appearance what are you really like? Goals: Often tied in with your inspiration for waking up, your goals are what you personally know must be done to fix yourself. Even if you would never admit it out loud. Responses Fight: React recklessly, offensively. Lash out, physically, mentally, emotionally. Lose track of your friend and foe lines. Fight, without proper thought of what kind of shit it is getting you into. Flight: React defensively. Panic, lock the doors, run away, hide behind stupid phrases like "I know you are but what am I?" Faint. The key is to try to get away to somewhere safe. Even if it is just your own mind. Talents Exhaustion Talent: One human thing that you are exceptional at. Which you will become strangely even better than before, particularly as your exhaustion grows. Madness Talent: This is your ability. It can be anything from being followed by a random clan of ninja or basic teleportation. There are no notable limits other than your imagination. __________________ Time to bust out the glow sticks! Last edited by Overcast; 03-31-2010 at 09:36 PM.