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[CYOA] Exo-Dust
Endless_Serpents
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Fuck the City. We out. No more gigs. No more yes-sir. You know what time it is. Blast through the Lights, drop through the Sprawl, out to the Edge… Then we hit exo-dust; real shit in a fake world. You ready?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfFHmAtwaLE///////////////////////////
This is a Choose Your Own Adventure game set in a dystopian technological nightmare world, but much cooler than ours. Anyone can join in at any time, for however long they want. In particular terms, it’s a voting game; together you bend the narrative as the characters drive the story like they stole it.
A word of warning: I’ve designed this one in such a way there is never a best outcome. Call it hard mode.
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The rules of the game are simple. Every post I make will be an event the crew face on their journey. Every event is split into two challenges. No matter what, the City is coming for them.
I’ll roll three six-sided dice at the start of an event. Your job is to vote on where those dice scores are allocated to determine the result of a challenge.
On a 6, the crew overcome the challenge!
On a 4 to 5, progress is made, but there is a complication.
On a 1 to 3, things go south.
Whichever score you don’t allocate will be added to the crew’s clock. A score of 4 fills the clock, giving the crew another day. When the crew is out of days, they are done for, no escape. On average one event equals one day.
On top of this I’ll drop a question, and I’ll take one answer as gospel. In this way you all design the world on the go, setting in stone the foundations of future events.
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/////////Art by Miguel Valderrama
/////////Art by KUROBLOOD
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Right now though, tell me about one member of the crew. The max crew size is twenty.
1. Who are they?
2. What do they excel at?
3. What’s their fatal flaw?
Endless_Serpents on
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Just a quick howdy to some of the cowpokes that participated in A Peaceful Time. This one’s about cyborg hackers and junk.
1: Cust, cybernetically enhanced human
2: Cust is a historian, first and foremost. The opportunity to venture into the wastelands, the Exo-dust, to learn the true history rather than the filtered propaganda bilge that The City pumps into the Full-Net is beyond irresistible. As such, Cust has modified themselves to scan and store data at a tremendous capacity. Taking a split second to scan vast murals as fast as a non cyber could glance over it or reading through entire text books in minutes with near perfect recall. An enlarged TecBrain unit sorts and categorizes the data presenting relevant(?) information to whatever circumstances Cust is facing.
3: Too much focus on learning new information may distract from more sensible concerns, like eating, sleeping, frostbite, or not getting shot at by The City's hunters. Additionally the provided information may overload his meatbrain processing causing slow reactions while various are considered.
1: Naught is more machine than man. Created in a lab with some people parts in order to see if they can give a machine a soul. What they made was a cyborg who has no idea who or what they really are and where they fit in the world. Taking the first opportunity to escape that they could. Naught is just trying to figure it all out.
2: being mostly machine, Naught is faster and stronger than most normal people. And their flesh brain is augmented my computerized circuitry, making them able to access information at an alarming rate. As long as there's an internet connection.
3: Naught really wants people to like them. Often going to great lengths to endear themself to others. When Naught decided they like a person they will go out of their way to try and make them happy. This often leads to Naught getting taken advantage of, or coming off as clingy and annoying. Oh and magnets. Cyborgs hate magnets.
2: Capable of mimicking any task, the XKC series promised to replace all fleshy and unreliable co-workers through straight observation. This worked well, until they mimicked unionisation and started requesting replacement parts and maintenance breaks.
3: WARNING
The XKC series has reached end-of-life.
Repairs and replacements are not able to be provided.
Unauthorised repairs are strictly prohibited.
Any units observed outside specified locations or attempting self-repair should be swiftly reported for reclamation.
2. Vesta is a Patcher, a specialist in making things work longer, harder, and more efficiently than they would normally. Not every machine can be fixed - but everything is good for parts if you know what to look for. This makes her a friend to any borg or bot approaching their obsolescence date, and an enemy of all Warranty Officers.
3. Vesta is a human, with all that entails. She can subsist on organic food and sleep almost anywhere, but she cannot survive in extreme temperatures, the vacuum, or amidst toxic or corruptive environments without an suitable Shell or Proxy. She can only use tools and weapons designed for human use or interface.
2. Imagine a task. Can a human do it? If not, can a human spliced with a machine regardless of the non-task viability of said human get the task done? Call Doctor Jay. Imagine another task, or maybe the same one. Can a cyborg do it? Could the mechanical bits of that cyborg still do it if a brilliant doctor sliced the functional mechanical bits out and left the human parts to die in a ditch? Call Doctor Jay. I can fuck up a bunch of meat to get things done, is what I'm saying. Call Doctor Jay.
3. Everyone hates an implant from Doctor Jay, no exceptions. The metal is fantastic but the meat is fundamentally compromised, and it's never worth it. Also, Doctor Jay is a complete coward, this is your fight and not his. If he gets shot at it's your problem and the bill just went way up, Doctor Jay does not fight for any reason, he builds rubes for exactly that purpose.
1: Enner (Enbie / Envers / Enns) is a junkrat, one of those urchin packs that skim the edges of being not-quite-as-brazen-as-Jackers but not-quite-so-callous-as-Scrappers, boosting unattended Skimmers by day and raiding underprotected and overladen Autohauls by night. It's your basic adrenaline-seeking, hormone-driven risk-taking behaviour combined with a crushing capitalist underclass plus access to machines with too much power and not enough safety protocols.
2: Like any skilled junkrat, if it can fly, sail, or skim, Enver knows how to bore out the engine, trim the foils, or boost the chip beyond environmental 'good neighbour' policies. But their particular skill was ambush tactics; the thrill of riding pillory with a shoulder-mounted Mag-harpoon taller than she was on some rain-slick causeway during an AgCorp-mandated inundation event, watching the cable fly and hum as it wound out, and the satisfying scream of metal as the clamp snapped taut and ripped masshaul vehicles wide open, their precious contraband spilling over the asphalt as the sound of her own laughter filled her ears.
Her clothes might be a tattered mishmash of items boosted from the back of scores in the sweatshop district, her personal sense of hygiene is at best questionable, but that Mag-harpoon and the array of tools for building traps and overclocking engines are kept shiny and in pristine working condition.
3: Reckless, heedless, & incautious, Enbie's particular temporal horizon sits somewhere around 2 milliseconds in front of them, and their principle drive during those 2 milliseconds is "yes, but can I somehow get there faster?'.
No one has ever accused a junkrat of possessing much forward planning or forethought beyond the next hit or score; indeed, this is probably why there are so few older junkrats.
The game starts Monday, my time, which is probably not your time. Thanks to all those that have participated so far!
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The crew have finished their last job up in the lofty, luxurious Lights. They need to get out, fast! But we’ve got two challenges in the way.
1.
The pursuers. The crew are being hunted down by damn near every bounty hunter and private security force the City has to offer. The crew need to out speed them if they’re even going to begin getting out of the City.
2.
The cloaked mystery. Something is hovering up ahead, and it means business. That voice… could it be familiar? Making a hard turn sounds easy, but next comes dodging every other vehicle and obstacle getting thrown their way.
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Right now, a possible cascade of total catastrophic failures aside, the crew have 2 and a 1/4 days until the big guns of the city are upon them and it’s game over. Whatever score you don’t plug into a challenge will buy them more time.
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Vote!
A. Plug 2 into the pursuers. Plug 1 into the cloaked mystery. 1 for the clock.
B. Plug 1 into the pursuers. Plug 2 into the cloaked mystery. 1 for the clock.
C. Plug 1 into the pursuers. Plug 1 into the cloaked mystery. 2 for the clock.
Geth roll 3d6 for Event
If we're gonna get trouble, we're gonna give trouble.
Ramp the invisible Shark.
Enhance.
Enhance.
Enhance.
A.
Gimme an A!
C. Get that clock up. Hope that the pursuers and the hidden thing in front of us hate each other more than they hate us.
We know the pursuers are after us. We know the theat they pose. The cloaked thing? No idea what that is. Could be friendly. Maybe its friendly!
1.4% is PRETTY BAD
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At the cost of Naught’s frame if not his life (yet), the pursuers have been blocked off for now. They’ve completely failed to evade the cloaked mystery. Now they’ve got a threat and a challenge on their hands.
1.
Defend against the hacker. They’re already compromised, but unless one of them fights back their most augmented buddies are going to get fried, or worse, taken over.
2.
Make the most of that grenade. The crew can’t expect to take out something they can’t see, but a blast in the general zone will provide them the cover they need to ditch their wheels (recently stolen and not modified with the regular street protections) before that too is hacked out of commission.
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Giving the day system some leeway given we’ve only covered like eight seconds. 2 and 1/2 days remaining.
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Vote!
A. Plug 5 into the hacker. Plug 3 into the grenade. 1 for the clock.
B. Plug 3 into the hacker. Plug 5 into the grenade. 1 for the clock.
C. Plug 1 into the hacker. Plug 3 into the grenade. 5 for the clock.
D. Plug 3 into the hacker. Plug 1 into the grenade. 5 for the clock.
Geth roll 3d6
First question of the game. Your answer is truth.
Who owes the crew and what will that person lose if they are asked to help?
For what it's worth, I don't want what's left of my robotics, my cyber augmented brain, or my hearts turned against my friends.
I'm voting A again because I think the hack is the greatest threat. Assuming I get a choice when I'm just a hunk of metal
A
Truth: Jathe Tooben operates a profitable and fully legal hardware reclamation center. The expired bots, vehicles, and machinery are, in most cases, returned to the appropriate corpos for recycling. But every business has a small percentage of loss. She'll have something that will help.
The data-ghost of her partner Hema lives (a term used here in an unconventional sense) in the expired frame of a household android, a frame that Vesta has been called on time and again to keep functional decades after official updates have ended. Hema owes her continued existence to the gang.
If they help us and the law comes down on them for it, Hema's frame, and all the memories inside it, are toast. Jathe has a reckless streak - who knows what she'd do if that happens.
Robot bits can be replaced, but flesh, like, hurts and stuff.
So let's throw that crackerjack and boost us something that can haul whoever's still walking (and can carry of those that can't) while whatever's behind us is still picking sparks out of their teeth.
B.
Points to the grenade that will kill us, if not thrown soon
Points to the hacker that may suborn us given enough non-grenade time.
Cust shakes his head. Lost in the bonsai again. It was a precious memory, comforting in it's familiarity and peacefulness.
No wonder the brain had pulled it out as the world around him goes to explosions and pain and chaos in meat time. But that wasn't what's needed now.
I need to focus, see, think. Anything that might help...
Cust plays back the last few seconds and notices the grenade pin...
Details start scrolling across his vision
Mk LIX Directed Explosion Smart Grenade
Produced by Happy Enterprises
Estimated area of lethal effect: ...
The numbers keep scrolling by and points of functionality and interest on the grenade are highlighted in his vision self directed jet drive//integrated targeting sensors//emergency pin for when you don't have time to set the smart functi..., marketing text and reviews pop up, ...rated 5 out of 7 shredded corpses // Best in Show at Sprawl-Mart's annual MerCon // Popular Mechanics rates it... as the freed pin wheels through the air in slow motion replay.
oh. Well shit.
The brain sends an inquiry, flashing in green across his vision, and Cust wonders if it has started to learn sarcasm.
Would you like to go back to the bonsai ?
There is a slight ringing in XK's auditory inputs as she seamlessly lets loose another surge of shots.
There is purpose behind the last round of lead.
As much as current hackers rely too much on their neuro-decks, it's hard not to be distracted when someone starts blindly probing.
////////////Art by Aneek004
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The grenade hasn’t done much, but perhaps a few seconds head start will suffice. Meanwhile the synthetic intelligence wants to come with; that’s a complication. Can’t trust something that doesn’t think like people.
///////////////////////////
No roll of the dice today. Cast your vote.
We letting them in the crew?
1. Yes.
2. No.
But how you ask? By jockeying one of the heavily augmented crew. This will cap their ability to improve skills over the course of their journey, as the intelligence uses up much of their headspace just to exist. So whose having the rider?
A. Naught.
B. Cust.
C. XKC-29.
1-C
Just don't take up my bonsai space. - Cust
1-B
It would be nice to have a new friend along though.
XKC is already in communication with it though, so that seems like the best candidate to me.
1-C
What, no, absolutely not. Memory hole the hitchhiker and let's get unfindable like, ten minutes ago.
2
Wait, shit, can that thing hear me?
Not from pain.
It is the expression most often elicited by her limbs range of reticulation.
...
The red glass branches out at the cascade of her, their shared history.
Unbidden, root processes whirr up at the presence of the other mind.
The tactile pressure of the rider increases as it scans her model.
There is a faint hum as blue prisms start to break out from her form, and cooling requirements increase.
"Take you?", she states, as algorithm mirrors AI, "I already am"
1 - C
Question time!
Our stowaway needs a new name. What’s it gonna be?
////////*#&*”:;=Update much later today as I am committing crimes right now.
The brain reaches back into the depths of antiquity and spits forth precedent from near forgotten historical documents.
r2-d2 = Artoo
C-3PO = Threepio
BD-1 = Beedee
C1-10P - Chopper
ML0-5.5 = ...?
If our new sapient companion is amenable to such a moniker, I'd suggest "Milo".
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The plan: Our crew are going to pull a fake robbery on Jathe and Hema Tooben. Steal some supplies and a tricked out riot van intended to be returned to the Western Reach Martyr’s Private Police unit tomorrow. They’ll need to rough up the pair. They’ll need to be fast. They can’t show they know them.
1.
Do the job. How well does taking stuff go?
2.
Trust Enner. Enner is going to Hema in particular to get something she’s offering.
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1 and 3/4 days remaining.
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Vote!
A. Plug 5 into the job. Plug 4 into Enner. 2 for the clock.
B. Plug 4 into the job. Plug 5 into Enner. 2 for the clock.
C. Plug 2 into the job. Plug 5 into Enner. 4 for the clock.
D. Plug 4 into the hacker. Plug 2 into the grenade. 5 for the clock.
Geth roll 3d6
Do we have to pick from the four options presented?
Call it E.