Deadline is here! We're finishing up the final reviews and will have the 8 players announced at some point today after we GMs stop having real life stuff to take care of. Stay tuned, and thanks to all of our applicants for your interest and hard work!
"Each and every one of us has our own reasons for volunteering to go, and those too are legion. Some of us feel a sense of duty. Some of us do indeed fear what the future has in store for the Milky way. We flee our past, we seek a future. We wish to begin anew. We crave the unexplored wonders that no doubt will reshape all that we know. All equally valid, in my estimation- but that’s not important here. What is important as we depart, what I want to be sure you all know is as you prepare to cross this ocean of time and space, is this… none of those reasons matter anymore. Not for us. What matters now, for you and me, is what we do when we arrive. Who we become, and how we carry ourselves in Andromeda.”
Jien Garson, Andromeda Initiative Founder and Benefactor, to the assembled crew of the Nexus the eve of departure of the Milky Way galaxy for Andromeda.
The year is 2819CE, 634 years after the Andromeda Initiative departed the Milky Way galaxy to be pioneers in a new age of space exploration. Years of preparation and dreaming had led the colonists of the Milky Way on the landmark voyage, making history in such a way that perhaps even the Protheans never accomplished; the Andromeda Initiative took the brave first leap as extra-galactic colonists, leaving behind everything they had ever known and loved to forge a new identity across the stars. Whatever the motivations, each colonist shared the dream of starting new and leaving behind all of the millennia of prejudice and animosity that had come to define galactic civilization. It was to be a clean slate, a new beginning to build a world of their own design.
That world and dream were shattered as soon as the Nexus arrived in the Heleus Cluster when the Nexus encountered the Scourge, the mysterious and unspeakably dangerous energy field that snaked across the entire cluster, rendering all of the impossibly perfect garden worlds that had been discovered prior to the voyage inhospitable, making the plight of the colonists a life or death situation. A significant portion of the Nexus population staged an uprising to remove the Nexus leadership when they had been ordered to go back into cryo sleep due to rationing, the orders coming from people nobody knew after the top leadership of the Nexus had been killed by the Scourge including founder Jien Garson, the single uniting figure of the Initiative. The uprising to force a change in leadership was brutally rushed when Jarun Tann, the new director of the Initiative according to the line of succession, had set the krogan population to end the uprising by force. The remaining mutineers were subsequently exiled, and when the krogan realized they had been lied to about gaining a council seat in exchange for their help in putting down the uprising chose to strike out from the Initative themselves to forge their own destiny, feeling that the dreams of equality between species and starting with clean slates died with Jien Garson. The Initiative was dangerously close to failure.
When the decision was made to attempt colonization on Eos, the radiation scorched wasteland, it truly was a last ditch effort to try and establish a new home in the face of insurmountable odds. Perhaps there would have been some measure of success, but it was at this time that first contact was made, and it was of the most feared scenarios; these aliens were the Kett, and they were hostile. Suffering attacks and raids by the Kett and missing the krogan warriors to secure the Nexus and the fledging settlements on Eos, the decision was made to wake the security forces that would form the Nexus militia. And so, the first of the APEX strike teams were assembled and begun preparations for war with the Kett as well as hostile Angaran factions and the Exiles if need be. Andromeda would never be home if they didn’t take the deeply unpleasant steps to defend it.
However, hope resides; Ark Hyperion with the human Pathfinder Sara Ryder had made contact with the Nexus and with her the discovery that whatever the ancient alien technology is that’s scattered across the Heleus Cluster can terraform worlds. Shortly after departing for Eos to try and salvage the colony prospects of the best shot for the Initiative to have a home, Ryder did the impossible and activated the Remnant Vault and the lethal radiation levels of Eos began to rapidly dissipate, and with it gave the Initiative its first hope in 14 months; the outpost of Padromos was established as a militia-oriented settlement with a small science contingent. It is here that a newly awoken APEX team is being formed for training for the fight ahead to make sure that Andromeda becomes the home they all dreamt of six centuries ago…
Welcome to Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier, a roleplay run by DearTrickster, Mortarion, and myself. Something of a spiritual successor to Mass Effect: Borealis, there may be a few returning characters and players, but fret not newcomers; prior knowledge or experience is not required or expected to participate, nor will it put you at a disadvantage past not having years of knowing some charming people.
The premise of this roleplay is simple; your character will be one of the APEX strike team operatives who have been awoken from cryo sleep after the Nexus Uprising and around the time Ark Hyperion reunited with the Nexus. Your character will begin duties as a part of a newly formed team of 10 operatives to begin their training on Eos, which in this continuity has established Padromos as a militia outpost rather than a scientific one. From there, the team will take part in events that run parallel to Ryder’s exploits, facing danger from all corners of the Heleus Cluster and working to establish working relationships with the angaran populace.
It goes without saying that your character should have a military or security background to work for this roleplay, or at least be a specialist that has received special training to be attached to an APEX unit. Initially, only Milky Way equipment will be available to the characters, but as they work with the angara and fight the Kett, there will be chances to pick up new gear as the story unfolds and different loadouts available to the team. For species selection, we are limiting it to: human, asari, salarian, turian, and if the sheets are exceptional and can justify their being there, krogan and batarian as individuals may be present still. We well also allow up to 2 angaran characters to act as warrior liaisons who are attached to the fireteam, although be advised that these sheets will go through the most scrutiny to ensure that they are lore appropriate and feel like they can be justified.
Posting standards are your typical Advanced fare and the emphasis with this game will be to keep a steady rate of in-character posting; while we won’t put strict posting timelines up, we do expect frequent OOC activity and reliable IC posting. If we feel that the game is slowing down unreasonably, we will say so OOC and state that a GM post is coming up, which is where all active players who haven’t posted should check in and squeak in a post ASAP or at the very least what they want their character to do in the situation. Failure to keep the GMs informed or unexplained absences may result in character injury or something similar if a player doesn’t respond in a timely manner, and we as GMs reserve the right to puppet characters or otherwise incapacitate them if we run into a situation where players are inactive without notification, and in extreme cases, remove a character entirely from the game. All we ask is a message or an OOC post stating if you have real life stuff coming up that’s keeping you from being active, and that’s totally fine! As long as everyone communicates and respects each other, nobody has anything to fear.
Past experience has shown us that there’s something of a fine balance between player freedom and GM dictation for plot, so this game will largely be set in guided set pieces and missions that the GM will dictate as both teams will be active in the same mission together, but completing separate objectives as outlined by GM roadmaps. Teams won’t be rigid, and expect roster shake ups from time to time according to character skills and sometimes just to give players a chance to write with other players rather than being locked in the same arbitrary group. Keeping in mind that we do expect the posting to be steady (e.g. try to have at least one person posting every day or two) and if it is discovered that somebody is inactive and holding up a group, the GMs will keep things moving on regardless, even if 3/5 players on any given team are actually active. This is where the GM puppeting clause comes into effect; if you’re holding things up, we may have to move your character around for you in the name of keeping the game from bogging down due to inactivity or player absence.
While the missions are largely contained set pieces that keep characters from wandering off and doing sandbox-style gameplay, between missions or sections (which will vary in length) we will have moments of “down time” where the characters will be free to do as they please as their leisure on the Nexus or at outposts, giving players an opportunity for character development and interaction and just generally change the pace up. This is a character driven story that focuses on descriptive and often collaborative writing, and we really want to know and fall in love with these characters who will with any luck become a band of brothers.
For the start, we are taking on 8 additional players/ characters other than the GMs and we may adjust it as the game goes on, depending on if we have drop outs or feel we need more or less for an ideal game. Character sheets will be done via application process where we will select sheets based on quality, player history (e.g. if you are the kind of person to join and drop roleplays repeatedly or cause problems, we will find out), and knowledge of the lore of the series and the species you are applying to be. Players who don’t get picked in the first round, don’t fret! We will maintain a reserve roster to fill in dropped player position and this gives you a chance to refine your sheet after critiques and give you priority over someone else who applies after the game’s started. The roster will be in order of applications, so if you were the first to apply to the game, you’ll be the first on the roster to be notified of a spot opening up if you are interested. This, we feel, is a fair compromise where sheets are picked on merit for the first selections verses taking every sheet that applies (Last game had 17 applicants; imagine trying to play with that many characters and players) or doing a first come, first serve basis which penalizes players who are taking their time to do their sheets or may have not have noticed the roleplay before 8 other people. With the roster we will do a sort of first come, first serve situation since it keeps things as fair as possible for notifying players that a spot opened up and eliminates potential drama or arguments.
Don’t godmod. This includes puppeting other people’s characters, major NPCs, your character knowing things they can’t possibly know, tearing through enemies effortlessly, etc. Remember we’re writing a story, not playing a video game. Nobody finds characters that anime physics hordes of enemies to death while having the personality of an edgelord appealing, honest.
Mary and Gary Sues will be shot out of the airlock towards the nearest star to contemplate how awful they are. This includes characters who are irritatingly perfect, loved by everyone, have had personal contact and relationships with canon characters (e.g. dated them, were friends, served directly under or with, had a rivalry, et cetera) always have the answers to all the problems, have no flaws, and painfully generic back stories that is like sandpaper for the eyes.
Approved races only. The game is limited to humans, asari, turians, salarians, krogan, angara, and in very limited cases, batarians. We’re sticking with what we saw in the game (including the limited multiplayer mode), and we’re not going to bend the lore to the point that we’re seeing quarians, drell, etc running around on the Nexus since the whole reason the last ark was delayed was due to the difficulties of trying to accommodate a bunch of different species, including one that can die if you sneeze at them too hard.
Technology is limited to what we see show up in ME: Andromeda, which also puts everything on a time limit of 2185CE, leaving Mass Effect 3 specials out the window. Also specifically excluded are Geth and Collector stuff. Just for the sake of simplicity, if you found it as Ryder, you can use it as APEX.
Original characters only, thanks. Obvious rip offs of established characters will also not be tolerated. Failing to do this will force your character into the next issue of Fornax with a krogan and hanar tag team.
If your character is biotic, take into consideration restrictions and social issues coming from having it relative to their cultures. If a race cannot have biotics or it’s an extreme rarity, don’t pretend they’re like an asari. Read the wiki pages for more information.
If you want to make up an organization or company or whatever for your back story, that’s allowed as long as it doesn’t mess around with canon or contradict the timeline.
Character deaths are a possibility, but unlikely. It will be context sensitive and likely will not happen unless a character drops out, plans it out with the GM, or generally puts themselves in an impossible situation to escape from. Expect injuries and wounds to happen, though. If your character is caught in a heavy battle without the upper hand, please treat it realistically. We don’t want to see somebody take on 20 mercs and walk out like nothing happened. We will inform players if a situation can turn out potentially lethal.
Pre-made characters are permitted, provided you update them to fit this RP and take the time to make them fit. Please no copy/paste jobs without taking into consideration CS formats and the rules.
If you’re going to go away or feel like dropping out, please let us know if possible. It’s a courtesy thing and annoying as hell when people vanish without saying anything. It has this nasty habit of hanging up RPs while they wait for somebody to return. That said, real life comes first so if things come up, your character will be treated as an NPC until you return. Don’t feel pressured to post if you have real life stuff to worry about! That said, by applying, you’re agreeing that you have enough time to manage this roleplay with your schedule.
Romances are allowed in the RP, but it will not be the focus of this RP. If you feel the need to be a smut monster, please take that shit to PMs. Likewise, if you’re making a character with the sole intention of scoring, I will hook them up with a volus after a long night of intoxication and they be mocked ruthlessly for all eternity. The outfit’s a bunch of mercs, not a Casting Couch audition. If there’s a conflict of interest between the team’s goals and somebody’s sex drive, don’t expect them to be remaining on the team if it becomes an issue.
Scary section over, CS-ta time!
[center][h3]Name[/h3][/center] [indent][B]Race:[/B] [B]Sex:[/B] [[B]Age:[/B] [B]Profile:[/B] [B]DOB:[/B] [B]Homeworld:[/B] [/indent] [B]Appearance:[/B] [B]Background:[/B] [B]Personality:[/B] [B]Reason for being awoken from Cryo (Specific jobs, skills, and Initiative Application):[/b] [B]Equipment:[/B] [indent][/indent] [B]Powers:[/B] [list=*][/list] [B]Font Colour:[/B]
Name: Your character’s name and any nicknames or aliases they may have.
Species: Your character’s race. Human, asari, salarian, and turian. If you are really awesome at understanding the lore and can make it work convincingly, we will let a krogan or batarian application in, and we will accept up to 2 angarans with similar stipulations.
Sex: Male, female, mono-gendered (hi, asari!), you know the drill.
Age: Make this race appropriate. For ease of reference, assume most races have comparable life spans, except for salarians (40 year life expectancy), asari (1,000 year life expectancy), and krogan (1,400-1,600 year life expectancy). Since this is a combat-oriented roleplay, the high-end for a character’s age should be around middle-aged.
Profile: Soldier, Adept, Engineer, Vanguard, Infiltrator, Sentinel, or Explorer. You may pick powers according to specialization, and weapons carried at a time varies;
Soldier: Only combat powers, 3 weapons Adept: Only biotic powers, 2 weapons Engineer: Only tech powers, 2 weapons Vanguard: Biotic and combat powers, 2 weapons Infiltrator: Tech and combat powers, 2 weapons Sentinel: Tech and biotic powers, 2 weapons Explorer: Tech, biotic, and combat powers, 1 weapon.
Appearance: A detailed description and optionally a picture of your character. Please, no anime pictures. If you do use an image you don’t know, please credit the artist/ model.
Background: A detailed and accurate history and upbringing of your character from childhood to now, with consideration of timeline events and what’s stated for lore. We’re trying to keep this accurate, and this section helps me determine your writing ability and dedication to wanting to be in this RP. As well, the more information you provide, the better you understand your character and play them better. If your character had a particular role or were special forces or something notable, please describe their time in that service and how they got in/ out of it. I don’t want to see something like ‘And Johnny was a Spectre’ tacked on as an afterthought. If you write a two short paragraph bio, it tells me you didn’t put any thought into it. A simple rule of thumb; if something sounds ridiculous or far-fetched, it probably is. That said, don’t be afraid to be creative and take risks! If there’s something you want to keep secret about the character from the general populace to leave a surprise, that’s cool! Just run it by the GMs first. We need to know about everything.
Personality: For stuff that doesn't fit in the background field, such as hobbies, aspirations, quirks, interests, and so on.
Reason for being awoken from Cryo (Specific jobs, skills, and Initiative Application): The Nexus was hit by the Scourge when it reached Andromeda and most of the life support systems were either failing or in critical condition. Most people weren't taken out of cryo sleep unless their skills were essential for bringing the station back online, including life support, hydroponics, and power. Krogan were woken up for manual labour, extravehicular activity (spacewalks, more or less), clearing new passageways etc. Most of the security personnel only were brought out to deal with increasing theft and unrest under direction on Sloan Kelly, who was the security director prior to joining the mutineers after Director Tann unleashed the krogan warriors on the unprepared mutineers, who were mostly technicians and just generally frustrated people, not soldiers. If you aren't sure when someone would have been taken out of cryo, feel free to ask me, I'll sort you out.
Equipment: Weapons, armour, and other important bits like Omni-tools and biotic amps and things that aren’t necessarily featured in games but your character takes with them, as well as grenades. Check the wiki page for more information. You will be limited to the Milky Way gear that shows up in the game (sans Exile-made to start), but as the game goes on your character will be able to pick new gear up from different factions, be it shopping or battlefield loot. For the start, only pick the same number of weapons as your class permits for the sake of simplicity.
Powers: Up to five or six different powers your character will use. I normally wouldn’t put a restriction on this but I just know I’m going to have one or two people who just throw everything on a list onto their CS and call it a day (fun fact: I ran an Elder Scrolls game where somebody applied with a mage that knew over 56 spells). Keep in mind that if your character is a biotic, some techniques are a lot more demanding and that it takes time and practice to master abilities. Likewise for tech abilities, it takes a certain degree of technical know how to use many of the techniques. So pick what makes sense for your character and you can see yourself using often enough.
These optional posts are inspired by the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC from Mass Effect 2 where players have the option of filling out backstory or having correspondence with other characters via things like Extranet activity and e-mails that we as players all see, but the other characters won’t be aware are going on. This allows for things like your character keeping in contact with NPCs, having a private conversation with another character, and they can be as serious or silly as you’d like. Ultimately, it’s up to you if you wish to do these posts, but in my experience they end up being some of the best bits of my Mass Effect RP that ends up being a little bit of a metagame onto itself without tying up the main plot.
By the way, Google Chrome says that Titanpad isn't private and safe and I can't get on it. Should I be worried? And are you guys planning on using Discord?
Well, I'll be a bit forthcoming and say I think this RP is a bit over my head. I RP'd for a number of years but am only recently getting back into it, hence the low number of posts on this account. That combined with the fact there's a bit of competition for the CS approval process I think it would be best if I retract my previous interest in this RP. I'd love to do a Mass Effect RP, but perhaps it would be better if I got my feet a little more wet before joining something like this.
By the way, Google Chrome says that Titanpad isn't private and safe and I can't get on it. Should I be worried? And are you guys planning on using Discord?
So, those were pad links we had before titanpad died. We'll get them updated with new links.
Edit; we do have a discord server setup for the RP. Links will be provided for after we accept the new players.
Well, I'll be a bit forthcoming and say I think this RP is a bit over my head. I RP'd for a number of years but am only recently getting back into it, hence the low number of posts on this account. That combined with the fact there's a bit of competition for the CS approval process I think it would be best if I retract my previous interest in this RP. I'd love to do a Mass Effect RP, but perhaps it would be better if I got my feet a little more wet before joining something like this.
We'll be here if you change your mind, a high possibility if we have a lot of interest we will open recruitment back up in the future. Thank you for showing interest :).
May I assume I don't need extensive knowledge about the later stages of the story of the video game? I never even came close to finishing the Andromeda game (didn't like it), but I've played the main series and like the world to the extent that I've participated in fandom RP's before. That being said, if I do need to know that stuff I'm willing to read up on it.
I'd also like to ask about the powers; how will they work IC? How gamey are they compared to the actual games? Especially the soldier and tech abilities like concussive blast or barricade.
Well, I'll be a bit forthcoming and say I think this RP is a bit over my head. I RP'd for a number of years but am only recently getting back into it, hence the low number of posts on this account. That combined with the fact there's a bit of competition for the CS approval process I think it would be best if I retract my previous interest in this RP. I'd love to do a Mass Effect RP, but perhaps it would be better if I got my feet a little more wet before joining something like this.
It's a lot of info-dump, I can appreciate that. We also have this habit of getting really involved with our characters, so I can appreciate how daunting I might be to someone who's not really used to roleplaying with any of us, but I can appreciate knowing your limits and not wanting to stress yourself! I certainly have had times where I just couldn't for the life of me think of a character idea even though I really wanted to a join a game, so don't fret and certainly no hard feelings! Keep your eye out, there's usually a few ME roleplays that pop up every once in a while on the site. One thing I might recommend is if you have someone you like writing with in the games you're in now, see if they'd be interested in doing something like a 1x1! I know looking at that section seems like it's like 99% romance games, but that certainly isn't mandatory. Sometimes it's just good to write a story where you don't have to worry about group dynamics; it's good practice!
Either way, thank you so much for the interest and maybe I'll see you around!
May I assume I don't need extensive knowledge about the later stages of the story of the video game? I never even came close to finishing the Andromeda game (didn't like it), but I've played the main series and like the world to the extent that I've participated in fandom RP's before. That being said, if I do need to know that stuff I'm willing to read up on it.
I'd also like to ask about the powers; how will they work IC? How gamey are they compared to the actual games? Especially the soldier and tech abilities like concussive blast or barricade.
It's hard to say, but it is recommended that you are quite familiar with the setting itself, including the locations, major NPCs, the whole secret with the Kett, etc. This game will likely be spoiler-tastic by nature and because it's an Andromeda game, it has a bit of a different tone/ set up than you might expect in a Milky Way set ME RP, namely that this game may go long stretches before returning to "civilization" and there's only a few locations we can feasibly go to as a group, instead of the countless cities, planets, and stations present in the original trilogy, as well as limiting the dynamics to a few species. As long as you're actually interested in the setting and the story, I don't see a problem!
Powers and what not aren't going to work exactly like in game for practical reasons, we kind of go off of "realism-lite" rules for how we approach combat situations and equipment, powers, whatever. Concussive shots will work a lot like in game, for instance, since it's a power that works kind of like super-charging your weapon/ using the second barrel to fire a high impact knock-down round, which probably translates to the guns shaving off a larger metal fragment and firing at a slower, non-penetrating velocity based on computer calculations the firearm system makes.
Barricade would probably work something like the energy bubble in Halo 3 where it's a machine that's planted and produces the protective energy field, and it would probably be based on personal shielding principles. We see that the Kett have similar energy shields, and I imagine the ones you use in game are run off of a battery and have a limited life, not unlike you see in the game.
It's pretty much figuring out plausible mechanics for how things work in the game and wondering how they'd work in real life. You won't be shooting an unshielded or unarmoured Kett in the head six times to drop them with a pistol, an stuff like flamethrowers would ignite materials in the environment, overheat armour, cook flesh, y'know, the good stuff.
