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[Maid RPG + Eclipse Phase] Eclipse Maids - Serving Tea in the Transhuman Future
simonwolf
i can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered User regular
i can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered User regular
In the distant future, humanity's age has passed. Runaway technological development has led to the obsolescence of the human race, and the Solar System is now ruled by vast, post-human intelligences that explore realms of science and philosophy unimaginable to the unenhanced mind. Their most idle musings spawn computational vistas more complex than entire human civilisations as they plumb the very secrets of the cosmos.
Incomprehensibly sophisticated as they may be, however, the posthumans have difficulty dealing with what they euphemistically term the “analogue world”. To be blunt, they're really quite hopeless when it comes to physical matters. For all their cognitive puissance, they haven't yet freed themselves from certain physical needs – energy, security, computational machinery on which to run – and so they create servants to carry out their will, defend their physical forms from rivals and hostile Outsiders, and generally keep things tidy.
Thus, even in the age of humanity's eclipse, there are maids.
Maid RPG is a very light anime-styled role-playing game. It's very easy to learn, with a very basic rules system, intricate random character generation, tables upon tables of random costumes and events. You can sit down with the system for the first time and be playing within fifteen minutes.
Eclipse Maid is a fan-made transhumanist hack where, instead of being the standard kind of maid, you’re an Ego placed in a Morph and assigned to work for your Master, who is generally a super-intelligence that occasionally deems to take physical form.
And we're going to be playing it over IRC!
HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK, SIMON
I'm glad you asked, me!
I’ll be running this game as an episodic kind of thing, with a set crew of three or four people who are available at the same time. Sessions will not take a huge amount of preparation or time, since the Maid system is very much about free-form roleplaying and wacky hijinks. I’ll get some more confirmed details once I find out how available people were.
If there’s enough popularity, I might set up a rotating crew of people, like we had in the old days, but I prefer a smaller set of people, if only to encourage regular appearances.
If you’re looking for a tone, imagine Ghost in the Shell meets Snow Crash; you’re all beings that inhabit artificial bodies, working for a mysterious Master who’ll get you to do stuff for him. Very tongue-in-cheek with regards to the whole transhumanist future schtick. We may or may not roll the master as well, depending on how the maids end up looking. I have a reasonable idea for a master who would work for almost any maid troupe.
Character creation takes very little time, but I have a rule in that I preside over you doing the rolling for your character in IRC. There are reasons for this, but the main one is that it’s more fun to roll a maid with other people around and commenting than it is to just punch in a roll for 50d6 and follow a list.
Incomprehensibly sophisticated as they may be, however, the posthumans have difficulty dealing with what they euphemistically term the “analogue world”. To be blunt, they're really quite hopeless when it comes to physical matters. For all their cognitive puissance, they haven't yet freed themselves from certain physical needs – energy, security, computational machinery on which to run – and so they create servants to carry out their will, defend their physical forms from rivals and hostile Outsiders, and generally keep things tidy.
Thus, even in the age of humanity's eclipse, there are maids.
MAID RPG:
ECLIPSE MAID
ECLIPSE MAID
Maid RPG is a very light anime-styled role-playing game. It's very easy to learn, with a very basic rules system, intricate random character generation, tables upon tables of random costumes and events. You can sit down with the system for the first time and be playing within fifteen minutes.
Eclipse Maid is a fan-made transhumanist hack where, instead of being the standard kind of maid, you’re an Ego placed in a Morph and assigned to work for your Master, who is generally a super-intelligence that occasionally deems to take physical form.
And we're going to be playing it over IRC!
HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK, SIMON
I'm glad you asked, me!
I’ll be running this game as an episodic kind of thing, with a set crew of three or four people who are available at the same time. Sessions will not take a huge amount of preparation or time, since the Maid system is very much about free-form roleplaying and wacky hijinks. I’ll get some more confirmed details once I find out how available people were.
If there’s enough popularity, I might set up a rotating crew of people, like we had in the old days, but I prefer a smaller set of people, if only to encourage regular appearances.
If you’re looking for a tone, imagine Ghost in the Shell meets Snow Crash; you’re all beings that inhabit artificial bodies, working for a mysterious Master who’ll get you to do stuff for him. Very tongue-in-cheek with regards to the whole transhumanist future schtick. We may or may not roll the master as well, depending on how the maids end up looking. I have a reasonable idea for a master who would work for almost any maid troupe.
Character creation takes very little time, but I have a rule in that I preside over you doing the rolling for your character in IRC. There are reasons for this, but the main one is that it’s more fun to roll a maid with other people around and commenting than it is to just punch in a roll for 50d6 and follow a list.
simonwolf on
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WHAT’S DIFFERENT
The main difference that you’ll notice is that, instead of your maid being a single, kleptomaniac vampire with intermittent hikikomori symptoms, your maid is divided into two parts: your Ego, which is your defined consciousness, and your Morph, which is your physical body. Your Ego is a constant that is kind of like your maid’s soul, brain, all that other intangible stuff which science fiction writers have been gooing over for decades. Your Morph, on the other hand, is whatever body your Ego is currently inhabiting; you’ll have a basic morph, and a starting specialised morph worth 10 or less from the design doc in the above post.
We roll on different tables, for sure, but the main thing is that your Ego has special qualities, and so does the body you’re inhabiting. Neat, huh?
Otherwise, most everything is the same as the core Maid.
ACTION RESOLUTION
The basic mechanic of the game is really easy to remember - roll 1d6 and multiply the result by the attribute you're using in the particular situation. Usually, the GM will decide what your target number will be, which the roll has to exceed in order to be successful. But if two characters are opposing each other, then there's different combat rules! Often the GM will decide what the right attribute to use will be, but sometimes the GM will leave it open for players to decide what their maid does - with proper explanation and role-playing, of course. Manipulating a situation to allow you to use your best attributes is an important part of the game.
If an attribute is 0, then the maid simply cannot succeed at actions involving that attribute. If this happens, your best bet is to work with other maids and/or the master to accomplish your goal, or try to come at the problem from another angle.
e.g. The GM tells Kusanagi, the telepathic chibimorph maid, that waking up the Master from his digi-sleep will require a 6 or higher. Rumi decides to use her best stat, Affection, which rates at 4. She rolls the dice and gets a 2, which is multiplied by 4 to get an 8. Success!
COMBAT
"Combat", in this game, is what happens whenever two characters are opposing or competing aganst each other. This covers traditional RPG combat, like swordfighting, gunplay or magic, but also comes into play when the maids are trying to impress someone, bake a better cake, clean the floor faster - anything that's a direct competition.
Also, regardless of all the NPCs and PCs involved in a combat, their actions happen at the same time.
The Attack Power of an action is 1d6 times the appropriate attribute.
Whoever has the highest Attack Power wins that round of combat, while the loser(s) are subject to harm in the form of Stress. They'll suffer Stress equal to the attacker's winning Attack Power divided by the attribute the loser was using, rounded down. However! If the defender was using a stat worth 0, they suffer the Attack Power in full. If there's a tie for Attack Power, neither side takes any Stress, and it's a stalemate. For now.
Whenever multiple characters work together, whether it's attacking or defending, their Attack Power rolls are added together. If the group acting together loses, however, only one person suffers Stress - the maids must choose amongst themselves. No dumping Stress on NPCs.
When a maid takes Stress, note it down next to their Spirit rating. If they accumulate more Stress than Spirit, they suffer a Stress Explosion. If you really don't want to suffer a Stress Explosion, you can opt to do whatever the opponent wants, and thereby not take any stress. Think about what you're doing before you talk down this path!
e.g. Rumi has had enough of Mika's wise-cracking attitude, and tries to trip her up with her extending robo-tentacle, using Cunning. Mika decides to try and evade the trip by rolling Luck to avoid the foot somehow. They roll - Mika gets an Attack Power of 9, while Rumi rolls an 8. Mika wins, and Rumi takes 2 Stress.
STRESS
As noted above, maids can suffer stress through combat. But it can also be allocated by the GM, or through the powers of other maids! In combat, especially, a maid can generate a lot of Stress quickly.
When your Stress exceeds your Spirit, you go into a Stress Explosion. When this happens, the maid remains in the player's control, but they can only do things which fall within the character's Stress Explosion. However, as long as it fits in those boundaries, anything goes!
Each minute of real-life time (including breaks) that passes by while in a Stress Explosion removes one point of Stress, until the maid finally gets down to 0 Stress. It's the player's job to keep track of this, but the GM provides final verification. You can also spend Favour to drop Stress.
FAVOUR
Favour represents how pleased the master is with a given maid! The GM hands out these points of favour to the maid characters whenever they feel like it. In particular, points of Favour go to maids who work hard to assist, serve or rescue their master. The points can be spent as follows:
A maid who drops below 0 Favour is immediately dismissed by the master. To avoid being dismissed, maids can lower one of their attributes by 1 point, gaining ten times the new attribute level in Favour (e.g. lowering Affection from 2 to 1 would net 10 Favour points), until the maid has 0 or more Favour. Of course, this means that maids can wind up on a downward spiral of reduced ability.
THE MASTER
The master is the heart of the game, and for the maids, they're the most important character in it. The master is an NPC controlled by the GM, and they are the GM's responsibility to roleplay. The master's job is to command and evaluate the maids. While their actual abilities tend to be shitty in comparison to the maids, the master is the highest authority in the mansion.
The maids cannot directly oppose the master or his orders, though they might be able to do so in secret. The master can also suffer Stress Explosions, just like the maids.
None! Hopefully some will arrive soon, though.
If you want to talk, or maybe just roll your maid, come join us in #cfgames on SlashNET. That is the regular IRC, you see!
CURRENT MAIDS
Also none! How sad.
Even Darfur is close together with the European time zones, jeeze
jeeeeeeeeeze
Especially you.
character we just generated:
Maid
Boyish Heroine
+1 Athletics and Will, -1 Skill and Luck
Athletics 3, Affection 1, Skill 0, Cunning 2, Luck 2, Will 2
Theme Colors:
orange, silver, cream (red?)
Stuff:
Trauma - Suicide Attempts! In the past, you attempted suicide many times
Animal Instincts - Rabbit! You're alert and twitchy, and have a tendency to wiggle your nose.
Origin:
Fork - You're a scaled-down copy of the Master's own program. You have so many identity issues.
Stress Explosion:
Crying - You start crying.
Baseline Morph:
Glasses
Sufficiently Advanced - Bilocation Circuits! The Morph can literally be in two places at once.
Second Morph:
#33 - Heavy Loader! A hulking robotic Morph normally used to handle cargo and move exceptionally heavy furniture.
Benefits:
Handy - You gain the maid weapon "Enormous Robotic Hands".
Hydraulic Limbs: Add +2 to the die roll for Athletics-based actions that rely on raw strength
Vulnerability - Open Mind! The Morph's cognitive systems are unencrypted and easily hacked.
Athletics:
Trespass - You can take 1d6 Stress to intrude on a battle, love scene, etc. You can also butt in after the action has ended, and this can even work when someone is using World For Two.
Oh, and it's written by David J Prokopetz. He's a really cool guy that's always over at RPG.net.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
case in point: I am not on there, and I am the coolest
court dismissed