##Quick Start Guide:
- You’re a void scavenger on board a deep salvage vessel. Your character is represented by the stats and equipment installed on your exosuit.
- If your HP reaches zero or below while on mission, you are dead.
- If your Juice ever falls below zero at any time, you are dead. Juice of exactly zero is acceptable pending the outcome of the current mission. Spend away, but come back in one piece.
- Since negative Juice is fatal, safeguards are in place to prevent you from spending yourself to death.
You should be able to find more detailed answers to all of your questions below. If I’ve missed anything, ask away and I’ll be happy to fill you in.
###There Are Many Exosuits Like It, But This One Is Mine
Odds are there isn’t a single exosuit in the galaxy remotely like yours. If you’re lucky, the suit has some degree of structural integrity, causes painful chafing, and smells as bad as a dead sandfish. Here’s hoping you have a lucky suit!
###Exosuit statistics:
Hull Points (HP): Represents the structural integrity of your exosuit. Your final moments will be most unpleasant should your hull points be reduced to zero outside of a controlled environment.
Power (POW): The quality of the myomer musculature and servomotors as well as the power of onboard beam cutter and ballistic systems. Useful in tests of raw strength or firepower.
Defense (DEF): Resistance of the exosuit to radiation, toxins, debris impact, and other environmental hazards. Also determines how resistant the suit is to deterioration and damage.
Evasion (EVA): Suit maneuverability, raw thrust, manipulator agility, and overall responsiveness of all exosuit systems. Exosuits with higher evasion are more able to avoid potential threats.
Sensors (SEN): Not only represents the range, precision, and resolution of the detection systems aboard the exosuit but also the ability to also interpret them correctly.
Science (SCI): The analytic and computational capacity of onboard systems. Higher SCI scores allow a scavenger to detect and recover more valuable salvage as well as to avoid potentially dangerous or hostile items…
###Pilot statistics:
Glory (GLO): Earned by taking risky missions, facing down impossible odds, and otherwise establishing a reputation. Scavengers that manage to earn a measure of Glory and still survive will almost certainly attract the attention of more powerful interests…
Juice (Ʉ): The local scrip used onboard salvage ships as a unit of currency. Juice is convertible into any number of necessary resources: food, a breathable mix of gases, water, energy cells, and so on. Hence the common greeting among scavengers of: “Brother, can you spare some juice?”
##Notable changes from last time
Automation! Order processing and turn execution will be handled by @Kassandra for faster turnaround, which means orders must be submitted in a very specific format - head on over to Kassandra’s Complex for more details.
Stat items! Stat bonuses are are now tied to items. Items can be found in your inventory. Items can be traded and the stats will travel with the item. Certain items, particularly +HP and +MaxHP items, are permanent additions and not treated as inventory.
Salvage! As void scavengers, you’ll be risking life and limb to recover strange and valuable wonders. Instead of a fixed reward, you’ll get a number of rolls against a loot table specific to that mission. The better the roll, the more likely you are to recover more valuable items. The worse the roll, the more likely you are to find worthless or even dangerous items.
###Round Timeline
Submit Orders: Each week by Sunday at 2300 UTC
Turn Execution & GM Review: Sun 2300 UTC - Mon 2300 UTC
New Round Posted: Each week by Mon 2300 UTC
If a round needs to be delayed for some reason, new deadlines will be updated for the given round.
###Fine Print: Kassandra’s Caveat
@Kassandra is a bot inspired by conversations had after the last BBS door game in early '15. With the help of a trial run, every effort has been made to eliminate unexpected bugs. I would not be surprised if we encounter a few more along the way ourselves. On the bright side, @Kassandra keeps absurdly detailed logs. Please feel free to raise any concerns with the automated processing - I will review all requests to let you know what I find. Any mistakes that are my own will be corrected. Unfavorable results due to the entropy of a cold and uncaring universe will stand.‡
‡There’s still a whole lot more fine print. Gods this stuff is tedious.
##Goals:
A wise observer once noted: “The heart is collaborative storytelling, so the rules of improv are the best rules.”
Summary
##Tina Fey’s Rules of Improvisation That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat*
The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we’re improvising and I say, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger. You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun.
Now, obviously in real life you’re not always going to agree with everything everyone says. But the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.
As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?
The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND. You are supposed to agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you just say, “Yeah…” we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “What did you expect? We’re in hell.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “Yes, this can’t be good for the wax figures.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into this dog’s mouth,” now we’re getting somewhere.
To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.
The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positive way of saying “Don’t ask questions all the time.” If we’re in a scene and I say, “Who are you? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s in that box?” I’m putting pressure on you to come up with all the answers.
In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. We’ve all worked with that person. That person is a drag. It’s usually the same person around the office who says things like “There’s no calories in it if you eat it standing up!” and “I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice.”
MAKE STATEMENTS also applies to us women: Speak in statements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.
Instead of saying “Where are we?” make a statement like “Here we are in Spain, Dracula.” Okay, “Here we are in Spain, Dracula” may seem like a terrible start to a scene, but this leads us to the best rule:
THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities. If I start a scene as what I think is very clearly a cop riding a bicycle, but you think I am a hamster in a hamster wheel, guess what? Now I’m a hamster in a hamster wheel. I’m not going to stop everything to explain that it was really supposed to be a bike. Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up being a police hamster who’s been put on “hamster wheel” duty because I’m “too much of a loose cannon” in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident. I mean, look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.
*Improv will not reduce belly fat
-From Bossypants
Expectations
Once a week, I’ll create a new topic to post the results from the last round, add some plot, and present new mission options. Your mission is to stop by at least once a week and make a few decisions based on that. Everything beyond that is magic. Feel free to PM me directly with confidential questions, questions about results, or other subterfuge and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Post away below with incisive questions, witty comments, or clever observations about Rules and Gameplay. Charybdis is a work in progress - mechanics may be refined, added, or removed as we forge ahead.
