Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Terraforming Mars: The RPG

While we're just getting our traditional Sunday RPG session converted to online play, the Monday night 5e game on Roll20 is going swell.  My elf barbarian, Falgor, has reached 2nd level, and is ready to cleave into a new character this past Monday night, after we wasted the last session in PvP mode.

But that session never materialized.  Jeff, our GM, gave us notice that he was bailing a little more than an hour before start, so Nate, Steve, and myself completed the second half of my Terraforming Mars RPG, using Risus.

Setting:  Mars 2048
Early Colonizers have only partial successes in terraforming Mars.  With fertilizer, soil has produced bumper yields, water has been extracted from beneath the surface, but protective greenhouse tenting is still required to protect the plants from radiation and the sudden high winds.

Excavation of a new agriculture plot has netted a strange discovery: a piece of curved steel with what appears to be hundreds of tiny rivets.  A team of geologists are dispatched to clear that corner of the site while your team continues the mission.


Over four hours of online play, botantist Beth Bowers, techs Newman Ramirez and "Burps" Ramirez (no relation), and "Project Liaison" Rick Vogel investigated the strange site, drove the colony manager insane, and infiltrated a plot about "Red Power."   In the end, a mysterious source of oxygen was rapidly filling the atmosphere, and only Liaison Vogel was saved to tell the tale.

Not a bad playtest of a scenario given that a) Steve and Nate can undermine the best ideas (including attempting to seduce a hostile in the middle of combat) and b) the scenario idea started with the phrase "Nazi-infused Martian DNA."   Probably a random statement from Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff that caught my interest, but time has buried that memory.

Still, with some touch-ups, I have a decent convention event.  

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