It is the far, far future. Humanity is part of an interstellar League of Races along with five other species. Living in relative harmony, it has been over two thousand years since the last great war that bought the League together. In the intervening years, there have been smaller skirmishes and battles against other forces, both domestic and foreign. But the League and it's military forces, Defence Command - or DefCom - have grown complacent, resting on their laurels.
But word from the frontier has been increasingly grim and bleak. Colonies have gone quiet, whole towns and settlements of people vanishing almost overnight. Starships found derelict and wrecked, with no sign of an enemy. Mysterious vessels, matching no known model glimpsed skirting the edges of star systems and vanishing before being identified.
No long able to ignore the evidence presented to them, the League deploys an expeditionary fleet to investigate the disturbances. At the head of this is the light battle-carrier Heart of Valour, and aboard it, the 122nd expeditionary aerospace combat squadron 'Wylde Fyre'.
Little do the men and women of Wylde Fyre squadron suspect that they will be instrumental in uncovering the scale of the threat arrayed against the League. An old enemy is stirring in the shadows, drawing forces towards itself and pulling strings of a web they have laid over years and decades. Their work may unravel the League at its' core, and to beat them, the Wylde Fyre squadron will have to come together and overcome both obstacles and enemies around them, and to embark on a journey of discovery and danger to find the key to beating an enemy that almost destroyed civilzation once.
Fighting in all manner of environments agains harsh odds, the squadron will find themselves tried, tested and harassed at every turn. Can they prevail against an enemy older than the League realizes, and one that has faded into myth and legend? And can they manage to uncover and unravel the truth before their enemy grows powerful enough to tear apart the League?
Shadows of Steel is a sci-fi roleplaying game based around the concept of aerospace fighter combat in a far future setting. It is not a hard-science setting, and hard realism is not a priority. The game and its' setting are inspired by a lot of well-known popular science fiction settings, including but not limited to works such as Halo, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Macross, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, and many, many more. The emphasis will be on space and atmospheric combat as part of a fighter squadron, though there will be ground operations too, much like the Rogue or Wraith squadrons from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While the game is inspired by these works, it is not part of any of them, and is a - hopefully - relatively unique setting, and does not follow any lore or storyline other than that I have devised for it.
The player group will take the role of a pilot/operative within Wylde Fyre squadron, on the front-line of activities and combat, as they become intertwined in the ongoing mysteries and conflicts with whatever mysterious force is spiriting people away, attacking ships, and slowly worming their way inward from the frontiers of League space toward the interior.
As well as the ongoing 'main' plot, it is my goal and aim to intertwine characters' personal plots, background and history into the ongoing narrative, making the characters as much a part of events as possible. As such, investing time in the game and having a long-term commitment will be rewarded by a character and player having a greater involvement in things around them.
The game is open for a (somewhat flexible) maximum of ten players, and a minimum of four.
All of the background for the game is provided in a series of Google Docs. Not all of them are required reading, but do provide a great deal of context to the setting as a whole.
DefCom Standard Equipment - Standard military equipment issued to DefCom forces, select your character's equipment from here.
Additionally, here is some information about the route to becoming a fighter pilot in DefCom, and the expected daily routine and organization of DefCom as it pertains to fighter pilots. There is also information on their duties, and their daily routine, how missions are carried out, and other such information.
The GM has control of the overall direction of the plot. Please run any ideas you have to change things, or introduce a new idea or concept, to the GM.
Equally, forget any pre-conceived notions or ideas from other games or fandoms. This setting stands alone from them, and has its' own rules, concepts and ideas.
Players may only play one of the races listed and created, no other races are permitted. Furthermore, players may only play one of the six League Races, not any of the hostile ones.
Furthermore, Players may only play as a pilot of the Wylde Fyre squadron, not as any ground or support personnel, ships' crew, or other roles, as the focus of the game is on fighter operations and action. Not anything else.
If you wish to drop out, then have the manners to let me know. If anyone goes without posting either IC or OOC for more than seven days, they will be considered to have left the game. Any drop outs or ditchers will not be permitted to return, unless it was for an unavoidable reason, or discussed in advance on the OOC or with the GM in a Personal Message.
If you have to take a break for any reason, then similarly to above, let me know. Unless, again, it is for unavoidable reasons.
If your posts are being held up by someone elses' tardiness in posting, it is better to get a post of your own up than to wait. Otherwise, you'll end up missing out, and the game will end up dragging on one scene, rather than moving on.
It is not my job to remind anyone to post. If you want to be involved in the game, then post. I will not have any sympathy for anyone who 'forgets to post' or is 'too lazy' to keep checking the thread for updates. If you're excited enough to join, then you must be excited enough to keep checking the thread.
While the game is one of drama, high-stakes adventure and a pervasive, deadly threat, it is important to keep things with a level of levity, excitement and escapism. I'm not looking for a grim, dark, gritty and brooding setting that is a constant grind. I run and play games for excitement, escapism and to lose myself in fun and adventure. If every post is a miserable (w)angst fest of ludicrously miserable proportions, I'll quickly lose interest. This game is about playing the part of daring, brave, and righteous heroes; live up to it and enjoy it. There will be drama, darkness and tense moments - but they are not the pervading themes.
While there are no real restrictions on what kind of character you may play, there's little fun in having a group of brooding, miserable anti-social losers loners that won't talk to each other. You might have the most moving and amazing back-story in the world... but if you never have anyone to talk to about it, it'll remain a secret and no-one will ever hear about it. Similarly, no-one likes a bragging, superior and self-obsessed idiot. Try and aim to have a character who is balanced with their personality and flaws, rather than being 100% either way.
Equally, if you play a character who spends all their time being mean, hateful and insulting to everyone? Don't be surprised when no-one wants to have anything to do with your character, and they spend all their time being shouted down and insulted back by everyone else.
And if you play a borderline psychopath/sociopath who's only real desire is to hurt everyone, destroy things, and generally cause as much mayhem and violence as possible, expect to find your character in a psychological evaluation or in prison.
I'm not impressed by how much real science you know, nor how many military acronyms, systems, and jargon you know. This is a science-fiction role-playing game. Realism is generally quite flexible, and there is a level of consistency that I'll be aiming for. However, this is by no means a hard-science game. It is a game of fun, and where the rules of dramatic licence and rule-of-cool are always the primary ones to be obeyed.
...Although, as an addendum to the above there is a certain level of realism expected to be adhered to; DefCom is a military organization and is very much close to a modern-day military. There are rules and regulations, expected ways of doing things and all of the reasons for those things exist in this setting. All characters would be expected to have enlisted in and passed through the DefCom Academy and subsequent flight school to get to their position and level of experience.
No encyclopedic knowledge of real-world aircraft operations is needed, but some familiarity or understanding of how a modern fighter squadron works would be a good basis, as it is what will be used as a reference point for the day-to-day lifestyle, organization and tactical operations of the squadron we are playing as a part of.
Please post any submitted characters into the Characters tab, rather than the OOC. Any edits needed can be done to the original post.
Please remove the notes after the headings when submitting your sheet, unless it is a WIP.
Character Name: Age: Minimum of 21 years (this is to avoid tedious 'anime wonder child' tropes, and to present a somewhat realistic portrait of someone who could have realistically learned to pilot a sophisticated aerospace craft and enlist and subsequently pass through military training.) Race: Any of the six League Races Homeworld: Come up with something. Maybe even collaborate with another player! Appearance: What the character looks like, a description or picture. Descriptions might be a lot easier for some of the alien races. Personal History: A short description of their life to the point they ended up in the squadron, (including a mention of their time in the academy and enlisting to join DefCom) Personality: A short description of their dominant character traits Gear and Equipment: The normal gear carried on their person while on a mission, chosen from the Equipment sheet. Fighter Customisations: Any personal flair and custom paint job done to their Sabre fighter
Optional: Character Theme: A piece of music associated with the character, something that gets across the 'vibe' of the character.
DefCom tactical Aerospace units use a rank system identical to the United States Marine Corps. This list shows the player, their current character, race, characters' gender and any specialization and rank of the character. All characters unless otherwise noted start at the rank of first or second lieutenant, promotions will be forthcoming during play.
RainDash - Nyx Miles - Female Terran - Engineering Specialist
Natsucooldude - Gurjan Wallon - Male Isorlai
HopelessIncubus - Nicholas “Shade” Cavernmaw - Male Isorlai
Mifuyne - Adam Mallory - Male Terran
The game is organized like a TV series, as that is the inspiration and the general 'feel' I am aiming for. Each mission represents an 'episode' of the show. Missions form 'story arcs' that feed into an overall 'season' with it's own story arc. The final mission would represent a multi-part episode as a finale. Each season will ideally consist of 3-6 episodes, depending on how things go. There will obviously be an end to the original storyline at some point after a certain amount of seasons, but there's no reason why, if the game goes on long enough and is popular enough, that there can't be a new antagonist and storyline that arises.
When we have enough missions and stories under out belt, this area will be for recording what's happened so far.
Might be interested, but I have a question for you - what sort of in-flight phsyics are we to expect? Are we following hard sci-fi of combat with orbits, or more like a standard flight system? Further, provided we are 'flying' instead of doing armed orbital passes, are we taking a more atmospheric approach (that is, Star Wars-style), or a more fluid system with radical point changes in speed and direction (closer to, say BSG or what Mass Effect suggests a smallcraft would be capable of)?
It doesn't make or break it for me, of course, but having the right understanding of your vision in terms of that stuff would be nice.
@boomlover@urukhai Well I guess we can just wait for the GM to get back and see what might be wrong. I can say that I am doing a sniper specialist and what planet might you all think to be from?
Might be interested, but I have a question for you - what sort of in-flight phsyics are we to expect? Are we following hard sci-fi of combat with orbits, or more like a standard flight system? Further, provided we are 'flying' instead of doing armed orbital passes, are we taking a more atmospheric approach (that is, Star Wars-style), or a more fluid system with radical point changes in speed and direction (closer to, say BSG or what Mass Effect suggests a smallcraft would be capable of)?
It doesn't make or break it for me, of course, but having the right understanding of your vision in terms of that stuff would be nice.
I'm in either way.
More like standard movie space physics, but with some realism thrown in. The closest thing I can think of that fits is probably the new Battlestar Galactica, which has consistent momentum and changes in direction, but still uses dogfight-like sequences for its' combat.
As it is, I believe we have a full group anyway, coming over from the Interest Check thread, but we'll see what happens.
starting work, will replace this post when done!
Please post your character straight into the characters tab, and then edit that original post if it needs changes, rather than posting characters in the OOC.
Is it just me that can't get a hold of the Races document? It opens game world info for me :S
Sorry, I must've pasted the wrong link in when I did the post! It should be okay now? Let me know if it doesn't work.
@boomlover@urukhai Well I guess we can just wait for the GM to get back and see what might be wrong. I can say that I am doing a sniper specialist and what planet might you all think to be from?
I wasn't really planning on having unit specializations, as if we have ten people, you run thin on things to specialize in xD However, you are welcome to play a character who is above average in their marksmanship, and uses an accurized rifle as a kind of squad marksman/sniper.
I will also be playing a character who will act as the squadron leader, she is a female Isorlai by the name of Erien.
@Silverwind Blade It works perfect now :) Well specialisation was maybe the wrong wording from me but I meant that my character will be prefering the integrated sniper system in the M54.
Character Name: James mcloyd Age: 26 Race: Human Homeworld: Silver rock Is an planet without an atmosphere and is incredibly hostile to any life. The surface is made out of giant pillars of silver that shoot out of the ground And giant salt beds. The temperature is always at a 100- Celsius And there are winds at speeds of 200 kilometers all around the year. The only reason why people even come near to this planet is because if the ridiculous amount of minerals. Most population lives in orbit in a giant station. Which is a ring around the whole planet. And there are hundreds of mining colonies down under the surface. Though the way they are constructed is very strange indeed. The way a mining colony is created is by bombing a salt bed creating a deep and enormous crater. Then countless Drop pods full robots lauch into the crater and start making everything ready for the miners. Making small tunnels which will be used as all sorts of things. And making landing platforms for the miners. Then the humans arrive in small tranport ships. These ships dive into the crater and land ( mostly crash land) onto the landing pads. Then the mining can begin. The miners will Start tunneling there way to one of the giant silver pillars and start mining. The ore is then transported back to the mining colony and stored until the gun is made. The gun is a giant piece of artillery that is made in the middle of the crater. The ore will then be loaded into giant shells and shot into space where they will then be picked up by robots and moved towards the station to be refined. The population is mostly made out miners.
Appearance:
Personal History: James was born on the ring of silver rock to a loving mother and father. Even when he was young he wanted to be a miner just as his father. He studied all kind of rocks and couldn't wait till he was 18 to go into his fathers footsteps. He was also a sucker for boxing wining a lot of trophies. And then when he finally turned 18 everything in his life went to crap.
His father decided to go an a year long expedition with his son to a newly build colony. However one of the engines on the descent had a malfunction exploded and they crash landed into the colony. Somehow James and his father survived however they both paid a huge price for it. James father had one of his eyes and a hand. But James had lost both his arms. His father blamed himself for the accident even though James told him it wasn't his fault.
Yet his father still felt like a piece of shit and spend a small fortune to give James Cybernetic arms. Almost bankrupting the entire family. but he always said that it was worth it. He himself however had to mine with one less a hand and a missing eye. However James became very depressed because he couldn't box anymore. Apparently having metal arms meant that he couldn't fight anymore. At least if he didn't wan't to kill anyone. His friends tried to cheer him up.
They did this by renting a space ship and go on a little joy ride. While flying One of James friends who was flying asked if he wanted to give it a shot. And after taking the wheel and flying for a few hours James found his new hobby. Apparently he was really good at flying And so he decided to become a pilot. He passed Piloting school with flying colors and started doing trading runs to support his family. However in one of these trading runs he was attacked by pirates. Which he took care of realizing that he loved doing it. And with tyhe trading becoming boring he decided to go join the military. Which he once again passed with flying colors. Personality: James is a real chatterbox and you can always find him in the mes shall talking to someone about whatever he is thinking of at the the moment. Some people call him a real pain in the ass because of this. He is also a little bit of an asshole when on a mission constantly making rude jokes and never shutting the fuck up.
Besides his problems he is a really nice guy all around who is always ready for a good ol fashioned bar fight. To his friends he is always nice but will always give his opinion. James is also very loyal to his friends and supports them when they are in need making annoying comment all the way.
Gear and Equipment: He mostly wears his pilot suit and has two m8 Kenaz combat pistols on both hips. As for any other fighting? Well lets just say that he lets his fists do the talking.
Fighter Customization: Both wings have a giant red white and blue middle finger on it.
Haha, no problems. He's mostly fine; I would request that you do a little bit of editing to the personal history to break up the text and make it a little bit easier to follow (put in a few paragraph breaks, and some punctuation). If you could also put the section headings on the sheet into bold text too, that would be great :) Otherwise he's pretty good. I'd say the planet he's from is probably on the extreme end of what I'd say fits into the universe, and the character is about as - and this isn't a negative, as I like the way he's shaping up - cartoonish and larger than life in his personality as I'd like things to get, but he's perfectly fine and I'm happy to accept him.
I'm still interested, just a lot of stuff happened while I was asleep, so I gotta catch up on that first. @.@
No worries! There's not really a rush of any kind. We won't be starting for another day or so, as I want to give people a chance to get their characters up and created, and I have to do boring adult things like work and sleep too, so I won't have time to get the IC up at least until tomorrow evening GMT. Although, that's not a guarantee, nor a time limit of any kind.
My character is also now up in the Characters tab, feel free to take a look.
I hope we get some more non-humans too - be a shame to have it as one non-human and a whole group of humans!
@Silverwind Blade Thanks will correct everything. And as for the planet truth or not its actually based of a real planet. Also what did you think of the music ?
