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tower:worlds:titanrome:start

Titan Rome

The characters are all assigned to work at the Titan ROME station (Remote Observation Military Expedition) established by the United States in 2165. Objectives of the mission include searching for evidence of methane-based life, close observation of Saturn and Titan, and exploration of Titan itself. Conditions on Titan are incredibly cold even with intense terraforming efforts to increase greenhouse effects, and temperatures remain at about -60 degrees Celsius year-round.

Characters

All characters for Titan Rome must be Adult Mortals in terms of skill and attributes, with no attribute below 2 before modifiers for training packages. Good Luck cannot be higher than 3, and Drama Points start at 10 instead of 20 - so use them wisely! No supernatural traits are available.

Campaign

The campaign is intended to be a long-term science-fiction / horror campaign with a focus on teamwork and survival. It will be possible - though not necessarily easy - to survive with and fully develop your initial character, and to keep alive some of your fellow crew if you're careful. That said, if this campaign scares the heck out of you, then I've done it right.

Example Character Types

ADA Soldier: 5 points

You are a proud member of the US Aerospace Defense Agency, ready to defend the lives of your fellow men and women against everything from rival governments to terrorist agents to things man was not meant to know. You expect the unexpected, and while the eggheads may want to talk with or capture specimens, you aren't above responding with lethal force. You're not necessarily 'dumb muscle', but you're a fighter first and foremost.

Due to your ADA training, you gain +1 to any two physical Attributes, to a maximum level of six (the bonuses cannot be stacked on a single Attribute); a +1 to any two of Doctor, Gun Fu, Kung Fu, Mr. Fix It, or a suitable military Wild Card - these bonuses can be stacked; two levels of Hard to Kill (an additional three levels can be acquired by spending points during character creation); and a 1-point Obligation to protect the lives of fellow crewmembers and American citizens. They are required to take at least one point of Gun Fu to reflect basic training, and may wish to take Skill Specialties, Cross-Specialties, or Wild Cards to further reflect their military focus, or Military Rank prevent brawls between lesser troops over service dates.

ADA Civilian Worker: 4 points

While you work for the US Aerospace Defense Agency, your job isn't to fight; your job is to man the commissary, or manage the radio, or staff the restaurant, or count the beans (figuratively or literally), or teach the children, or handle the various other bureaucratic logistics of operating a military/scientific research outpost in far-off space. You also have a zero-point Obligation to perform the requirements of your job; your duty as a civilian is generally not expected to be risky.

You receive a +1 to Dexterity or Intelligence, a +1 to Willpower or Strength, a +1 to Mr. Fixit or Computers, and a Skill Specialty related to your job title (which grants you a +2 to actions related to that skill specialty). For example, if your skill specialty is 'Teacher', a GM might give you a +2 in situations where your role as an instructor comes into play, whether it's passing on an important skill or convincing your students to pay attention when the hydrogen hits the flame.

Civil Science Initiative Technician: 4 Points

You are travelling to Titan to practice SCIENCE! Well, maybe you're just technically minded. At any rate, your job to work the machines and discover new scientific discoveries. Who knows, maybe you'll discover the next miracle cure or scientific breakthrough and get your name on something important!

You receive a +1 to Intelligence, +1 to Science, and two bonus levels to divide among the following skills: Doctor, Computers, or Science (stacking is allowed). Whether this puts you in the position of doctor, engineer, analytical expert, or jack-of-all-trades, of course, depends entirely on you. Again, Skill Specialties, Cross Specialties, and Wild Cards are useful if you want to advance your degree in resonance cascades.

Civil Engineering Technician: 4 points

People might derisively refer to you as a space janitor, but that's far underselling the value of your skills. You know how to fix things when they break, and you know all the ways in or out of your vocational area, and which ones make a good place to hide in for a break. More importantly, as you are required to repair or clean up after anything that goes wrong due to accident or disaster, you often have more general access while on duty than others.

You receive a +1 to any two of Dexterity, Intelligence, or Willpower (these may not stack); +1 to any three of Mr. Fixit, Computers, Crime, and Influence (these can stack, though it's recommended to be a jack of all trades), and a 1-point Obligation to handle cleanup and repairs for the station (which can regularly put them in harm's way.)

Data Center Technician: 4 points

Even the distant void of space needs IT specialists. You know your way around a data center, and while you aren't necessarily interested in scientific pursuits, the fact that you have access to some of the most powerful computing tech in the solar system takes some of the sting out of being assigned to a remote outpost in the middle of nowhere.

You receive a +1 to Intelligence; +2 to Computers; +1 to Mr. Fix-It; and you are expected to take responsiility for computer failures on the station (but this is generally not considered 'risky', so it counts as a zero-point Obligation.)

Vehicular Specialist: 4 points

If someone else can name it, you can pilot it. Whether it's got wheels, treads, jets, or rockets, you've either been certified on it, run a simulator of it, or could pick it up if you had a few minutes. Forklifts, pallet stackers, cars, busses, trains, jets, shuttles – you name it, and you can operate it.

You receive a +1 to Dexterity; +2 to Driving; and +2 to Wild Card (Piloting). You also have an Obligation (1 point, as this can put you at personal risk) to operate vehicles as needed in a competent and safe manner as ordered for the station, including delivering your fellow crew to the station if you happen to want to be the shuttle pilot.

How Hard Is The Science In Your Fiction, Mr. Cushing?

Antimatter Power Plants: They exist, but they are typically fairly large - or more precisely, the containment surrounding them and the number of safeguards built around them is very large, so as to prevent any idiot with a tiny amount of antimatter from annihilating a city out of forgetfulness, boredom, or whathaveyou. Typically, antimatter power plants are set so that even in the event of complete systems failure, there are multiple redundant failsafes meant to protect containment, including two emergency battery backups and a last-chance one-minute power capacitor built into the core of the device. The emergency system beeps very loudly when triggered and actively transmits a loud warning on public radio frequencies to alert anyone in the area of the disaster that's about to unfold and advises of the timeframe remaining so that if it can be averted someone can get to doing that. In short, letting an uncontrolled antimatter reaction occur is a very, very, VERY bad idea, as anything in the blast radius effectively suffers total protonic reversal.

Antimatter Weapons: Naturally, it took military science all of five minutes to decide to make weaponry out of this technology, and it is estimated that there is enough weaponry to utterly annihilate the planet Earth on an atomic scale 400 times over if all nations decided to launch their weapons at appropriate targets simultaneously. The fact that humanity has managed to establish colonies on various moons and planets in the solar system has only pushed the fear of planetary annihilation closer, as the end of the world is no longer the end of mankind…

Laser Weaponry: Lasers exist in pistol, carbine, rifle, and vehicular format, but all fire a coherent beam of light that causes tight-beamed burning damage on the unfortunate target. The frequency of the laser controls the range at which it travels through a specific atmosphere; most militaries issue 'Earth-atmo' weapons for people who need to patrol in breathable atmosphere, and 'space-ready' weapons for other conditions, although some - particularly the 'beam sniper' variants - allow for tuning specific frequencies and power levels in for optimum performance in the field.

Electrolaser Weaponry: These weapons use a low-powered laser blast to ionize the air followed by a powerful electrical jolt that can stun or at high amperages even cause cardiac arrest and death. While there are still fierce arguments regarding these weapons in a civilian context, corporate and military security enjoy using them as 'less lethal' solutions to crowd control and detainment, as well as to rapid disablement of electronic devices. Notably, these weapons vary highly in performance based on the atmosphere they're used in, and as such aren't very useful in vacuum.

Projectile Weaponry: While 'slugthrowers' still exist, the technology behind them has changed significantly. 'Kinetic kill' projectiles use one of three technologies: liquid-fuel propellant (which one can vary before firing, allowing the shooter to choose between high-powered, normal, and subsonic rounds easily, and can take less-lethal ammunition types), electromagnetic rail-launched (which is ideal for rapid termination of targets, but uses a lot of power and doesn't offer 'less lethal' alternatives), and gyrostabilized rocket-propelled (which can also take a variety of exotic ammunition types, fires rapidly, and even have some limited auto-guidance capability, but usually has a minimum safe range). The use of projectile weaponry in vacuum is officially frowned upon; after all, a miss will keep going until it hits something, even if that something is on the other end of the solar system.

Fusion Technology: Fusion reactors are common sights in civilian towns, and small enough that they can be installed in a large corporation's headquarters (and even some branch offices) as part of the HVAC system. They're still rather expensive, but if you've got seven digits to plunk down and you don't want to be fussed with paying for outages, you can certainly get your own. They're also surprisingly safe. Likewise, a number of other power solutions are available on the market for less affluent (or more redundancy-minded) customers, and the older technologies are available for those who want a bargain or just bought an old site that they've had to refurbish. Solar paneling is still commonly used for outposts closer to the sun, although Titan ROME is far too far away to take any real advantage of it.

Superconductors: Mankind has successfully developed a nanofilament alloy that can conduct electricity without significant loss while remaining at room temperature, allowing for theoretical concepts like superconductive magnetic energy storage loops for long-term storage of massive amounts of energy to be functional and reasonably practical, and allowing energy cells to store much greater amounts of power than in previous centuries. As a byproduct, however, discharging an energy cell all at once into a highly conductive medium is generally a Bad Idea, especially if you have overridden safety protocols to do so.

Capacitance Gel: The nanofilament material used to sandwich energy cell superconductor plating is a blue-green substance commonly called 'capacitance gel' (the name stuck after someone referenced an old Sylvester Stallone movie), although the actual market name of the original product is 'Treyvich Electron Accretion Resin', or 'TEAR.' Capacitance gel contains microscopic nanocapacitors that charge and discharge automatically upon demand, and is more of a gritty paste than a gel, for those interested in semantics. (It also tastes like silicate, for those dumb enough to try to eat it.) It can be charged through induction current - simply leaving the paste in a charged environment will recharge it, as will applying an electrical wire to it. Attempting to overcharge raw capacitance gel without a controlling medium is also a Bad Idea, as nanocapacitors typically do not have regulatory controls and may overload if pushed too far too fast. (Treyvich's original design does have these control failsafes and therefore does not contain this flaw, as their marketing department frequently likes to point out to distinguish them from imitators, but many submarket versions do.)

Communications: People use a device known as an Uplink to communicate with others - it is a small device (resembling a 21st century Bluetooth earpiece or similar item) that uplinks (hence the name) with the terrestrial network they are currently connected to, or to the spaceship or station they are working with in the absence of a terrestrial network or satellite broadcaster.

Computers: Tablet-sized computer systems have computing power sufficient to perform most heavy-duty tasks without difficulty, and voice recognition has managed to progress to the point where oral commands work reliably. A tablet-sized unit can also 'project' a holographic interface upon command, or be rigged to connect to augmented-reality systems in a helmet or glasses, or interface with larger systems or other devices such as an Uplink within a short distance.

Universal Data Transfer: Standardization has enforced three basic cable terminals for data transmission - the UDT terminal, which has a port about 1 cm x 0.2 cm wide at the end; the mini-UDT terminal, which has a port about 0.5 cm by 0.5 cm square at the end; and the micro-UDT terminal, which has a port about 0.5 cm x 0.1 cm wide at the end. Most computers have standard UDT ports; large peripheral devices like printers or lab equipment often have mini-UDT ports; tiny electronic devices like Uplinks and personal music players generally use micro-UDT ports. This is almost certainly irrelevant to the game itself, unless your idea of horror is discovering you can't download music to your tablet because the local wireless system is offline. Questions about transfer speed and file storage capacity will be addressed if it really matters to the plot, or if people want to know.

tower/worlds/titanrome/start.txt · Last modified: 2017/09/08 23:57 by 127.0.0.1

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