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Comet running

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Sat, 2012-05-19 18:08

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Comet running

I got very inspired by one of the adventure vignettes, so I wrote up a bigger write-up of comet running: http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/comet%20run.pdf Not sure about the playability of the game system. Happy to hear your comments.

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Sun, 2012-05-20 05:39

Smokeskin

Re: Comet running

It reminds me a bit of that vector racing game you'd play on squared paper as a kid - you drew the outline of a track and each turn you could change the x and y component of your car's vector. Would it be more fun to play it that way, except you don't have a track but areas with different hazard risks? Are the hazard rolls based on time or distance travelled? Logically it seems it should be distance. Damage scales strongly with speed (or velocity towards the comet?), but of course getting there faster wins you the race. What does different speed strategies look like statistically? It should be fairly simple to set up a model of a few different strategies and then tweak the rule parameters so you get the win/lose/splat distribution you want.

Sun, 2012-05-20 05:47

Smokeskin

Re: Comet running

Nice idea for a transhuman extreme sport btw!

Sun, 2012-05-20 05:54

Anarhista

Re: Comet running

I like the adrenaline rush from this adventure idea so I definitively intend to rip of your idea and incorporate into my EP campaign. Since saving humanity from extinction every day is pretty tedious I intend to use this as a filler: perhaps one of PC has friends in this community or their proxy wanted to leave this assignment for him/her self but is swamped with work and don't want/can't fork itself (if PC incidentally enjoy themselves it is reward for all the hard work they did). Since making PC comet runners is (for me) pretty dubious I intend to bring them to ship as party goers working as a investigators/security/subversion... At the ship add some PC-NPC interaction Shishir Nagarja secret, Sergei Kuniavsky pursuing female morphed players... then add large number of asyncs whose close proximity for extended period of time combined with life threatening situations may have triggered mutation on Watts-MacLeod strain of exsurgent virus... And finale by outracing the pro runners to the comet because it is: dormant TITANs war machine, lost and unstable cache of prefall WMS, forgotten Firewall backup facility that contains sensible info and really need to stay hidden... Since I don't use EP game mechanics, no help on this but it seems OK.

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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Sun, 2012-05-20 05:57

Decivre

Re: Comet running

Arenamontanus wrote:
I got very inspired by one of the adventure vignettes, so I wrote up a bigger write-up of comet running: http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/comet%20run.pdf Not sure about the playability of the game system. Happy to hear your comments.

Awesome concept. I can definitely see this becoming a major sport. It's like a sick combination of F-Zero, Russian roulette and skydiving. I imagine that the "bikes" have a reversible saddle system or the thruster on a vector-controlled structure, so that the exhaust can be rapidly pivoted 180 degrees and face toward or away from the comet. I also bet that competitors bring ice picks along for the ride, so that they can break off a trophy for the trip home. A comet runner's crash pad probably has some awesome refrigeration, so that they can safely store their treasures. How common and acceptable is dirty fighting during the races?

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sun, 2012-05-20 06:32

Marek Krysiak Marek Krysiak's picture

Re: Comet running

Very nice write-up. Here's some inspirations for the 'bikes': http://imgur.com/a/vHLoH#0

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Sun, 2012-05-20 07:25

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Comet running

Thanks everyone! Smokeskin: yes, I was also thinking of the vector race game. It might work better than just running abstract numbers like I did in the text. I can imagine using a big graph paper with squares marked with risk levels, the players rolling for evading the stuff they pass through. Hmm, maybe one could make a PHP script that generates suitable maps... I will likely do some simulations and see how the system needs to be tweaked. The hazard rolls should depend on the distance travelled (properly speaking, they are the integral of debris density along the trajectory) rather than time, but it might be tricky to do. Anarhista: sounds like you have a good adventure seed there! Decivre: Good ideas for the bikes. As for dirty fighting, I suspect it is formally forbidden but in practice something that is secretly encouraged if it makes the game better - a bit like hockey, I would imagine.

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Sun, 2012-05-20 09:23

Anarhista

Re: Comet running

LOL, look at the time stamps! People had synchronized the replies.

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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Sun, 2012-06-17 01:22

Marek Krysiak Marek Krysiak's picture

Re: Comet running

I've just found a picture 'Into the comet's tail' by m0zch0ps. It shows exactly what the title says. http://m0zch0ps.deviantart.com/art/Into-the-comets-tail-293910533 It's a nice reference.

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Thu, 2012-06-21 19:48

#10

beej

Re: Comet running

This looks awesome. I'm planning on introducing EP to my group soon and I think I might run this as an opener.