ich will multiglands
 sonja

sooper trooper!
 daniel


Blue Planet

in the middle of nowhere



Well Blue Planet. We are not playing yet but hopefully we will soon. Gerhard will be the GM. He bought the book as a result of me whining that we should play rpgs more often and frequently and so Gerhard, Patrick, Alex and I went to the gamestore (Jabbas Palace here in KA) to choose something we would all like; it was just after an exam and so we were all in a very good mood. I guess the storeowner must think now that we are kind of strange - but at least we bought something: after discussing the purchase for an hour before making a decision. The other candidates were: StarTrek (a big nono for certain players), Paranoia(not really?), Mage: the Ascension (I will buy that anyway one day), Cyberpunk (Gerhard played that before).

So what kind of game is Blue Planet?

The setting sounds quite interesting: mankind has discovered its first wormhole which led to a planet they named Poseidon. Poseidon because most of this planet is covered by water. There was an early colonization projekt called the Athena Projekt which brought genetically modified humans(divers and squids), dolphins and orcas (yes you can play dolphins and orcas: even though gerhard will not allow that just yet) to Poseidon. While the colonization of Poseidon was well on its way, on Earth some kind of virus spread and killed nearly half of mankind. Poseidon was forgotten. Oh and there are people living on the moon and on mars and the asteroids, too, now.

Well, but after the Blight, Poseidon is remembered by the GEO (descendant organization of the UN, which governs Earth) and a starship is sent there. In the meantime the first colonists have had to abandon the remains of their advanced technology (there had been no supplies for nearly a hundred years or so?) and turned "native". These natives resent the big Corporations that are now coming to Poseidon to mine Long John, an ore discovered there, which promises immortality to those who can afford it.

The natives see the big corporations as a threat to the environment to which they have adapted themselves. The corporations only see how much money they can make out of mining Long John. They have founded several corporate states on Poseidon. The GEO is in between all this trying to be "Law and Order". Conflicts on Poseidon have not yet escalated but they surely will. Last but not least there are the enigmatic "Aborigines" living somewhere in the Oceans of Poseidon, the true natives of the Planet with which there has not yet been established any relevant contact; about them nearly nothing is known - well at least not outside the "Acces Denied" Sections of the Core Rulebook.

The Book is a good read and it looks like it is a fun game to play, though I hope that Gerhard will adapt some kind of modified combat rules because they look rather complicated AND take a look at the damage tables: I just hope my character survives her first fight. I have already made a character whose biography is posted below.

Character creation looks a bit complicated on the first glance but actually all one needs to do is determine a couple of things and then the rest works out quite nicely. One needs to choose Origin (Earth, Poseidon, Luna, Mars, Belt), Species (Human, Dolphin, Orca), Background (several choices like: poor, dangerous, religious, wealthy, independent etc.), Education (choose something that fits the rest), Goal (Justice, Revenge, Fun, Adventure ...), Motivation (Honor is mine f.e.), Attitude, Quirks and Profession. This last one is quite important as it determines nearly all your skill points that you will get with character creation. There are a lot of templates for Professions: for Natives, GEO Officials, Soldiers, Criminals like Ecoterrorists, Scholars, Artists and anyone who would want to go to Poseidon to make a fortune there. Attributes are determined as Species base-values and you get certain boni and mali according to your background and origin.

In this character creation system there are very few maybe even no checks and balances to keep players from minmaxing as anyone may choose as many biomods as the storyteller allows and backgrounds and professions maybe modified as much as the player wants to and the storyteller allows. But as is true for many and most games: there is only one rule: that there are no rules.




Cast of Characters
  • Jane Croft (Sonja), an EcoTerrorist uhm wanted to say Tourist Guide, a native of Poseidon who wants to destroy all the great Incorporations except maybe Atlas and Hydrospan but only maybe. (other members of her cell)

    Uuuuarrgh, there is something dangerous here, let's get going! Now will you just follow me?

  • Pitiable Patti (Daniel), an Ex-GEO Magistrate turned trader on Poseidon; now she's just learning how to sail her boat and how to survive on Poseidon.

    I am sure this Wobbel is just another reject pilot to old to fly his jet.

  • Major Wobbel (Patrick), an Ex-Pilot from Mars who wants to revenge himself on Hanover Industries for killing his parents. His most priced possession is a computer program: a Survival Guide for Poseidon because the Major does not know much about Poseidon.

    I shoot a three round burst at IT. (it is pitchblack dark)

  • Urs Uppe (Alex), a mad scientist from Luna who is interested in the Biochemistry of Poseidon and is trying not to drown himself and his cybernetic arm.

    I hide behind the others, I will take a look at it when it's dead. Interesting specimen and no I cannot swim.



    they must have attack penalties
    they are under heavy fire
     Wobbel

    jane's diary

    SPOILER AHEAD: I guess people who still want to play the scenario natural instincts which Gerhard took from the Biohazard Homepage should NOT read the first section of this, which is all there is right now.

    another trip to paradise

    Patti and I, Jane, have met when Patti stranded on Paradise in her very first attempt to sail her boat somewhere else than in the harbor of Kingston. I had just been visiting my family when Patti was "washed ashore". The people of the village helped to repair the boat as best as they could and I guess I agreed to sail back to Kingston with Patti. I felt pity for her, she seemed quite helpless here on Poseidon and I wonder why she ever left Earth?

    Back in Kingston I visited Jeremy and the others at our "base" wanted to say office near the harbor; I hear that Dread met some strange guy: an ex-pilot. This guy seemed to be out there for some kind of revenge on Hanover Industries. Dread tells me that he said he would find a guide for this strange man because this Major Wobbel wanted to become acquainted with Poseidon before carrying out his plans concerning Hanover. "Seems like you have a job, Jane!" Jane is quite uhm "enthusiastic", especially when she hears that the flight is already booked and that she is supposed to go to Paradise with this Major and take at least one more person as escort. Jeremy seems to be hoping that she could recruit this guy?

    I decided to take Patti along, why need an escort to go to Paradise? Mom will be happy to see me again after only three weeks. We are supposed to be leaving in the same afternoon and we'll meet the Major at the big Plaza of Kingston. Patti and I decide to do some last minute shopping. In my favorite survival shop the "Kingston Eventualities and Gear", I hear talk about a strange incident on Paradise: even though the weather is beautiful apparantly for no reason some small plain crashed, no survivors. Returning to the base, I ask Jeremy if he knows anything about this but he has not yet heard about the incident and thinks that it is probably of no importance to the trip.

    Then we meet up with the Major on the Plaza. Patti bought some weird device she claims will help her navigate the boat. "Patti we are gonna use a jumpcraft. We are not sailing this time." The Major is easy to recognize, tall muscular fellow (oh oh Patrick :O ) looking like he wants to shoot somebody. Not such a sympathetic person but I guess I knew that beforehand. So we all go to the airport.

    There another nightmare awaits us: Vibrations Air and its one and only best pilot Vibe, geez as if he did not look like someone who would crash the plane within seconds. I keep wondering why Dread and Jeremy keep doing these things to me. Vibe is probably some kind of "friend" of Dread's. There are several other passengers including one guy who looks like he is gonna puke the second we take off: Patti and I take care not to sit too close to him and have the Major sit next to this guy.

    Vibe indeed manages to take off, the green weirdo starts eating pills, probably hoping they will help against sickness, and then we are already well on our way to Paradise. I was just starting to hope that we might make it there when Vibe entered the passenger cabin to offer the green guy, whose name was Urs Uppe, some of his Marihuana to calm him down. The next thing I knew was that we were rapidly loosing height and that the craft was crashing into the sea (hopefully).

    Some time later I woke up, I opened my eyes and saw the smoking remains of the craft out in what I recognized as a small bay. I was lying on a white beach. I checked if I had any bones broken or any other injuries, but to my huge surprise I felt quite well. I took a look around to see that there were several other bodies lying on the beach and that the Major was already up and walking around merrily. Patti was lying next to me still breathing, then coughing some saltwater and waking up. Even this strange scientist guy Urs made it, though I am really surprised how he got here with his cyberarm? Vibe is nowhere to be seen, probably drowned: pilots are notoriously bad swimmers.

    There is one other man who is still alive. Wobbel and I try to help him and look for injuries. The mans starts yelling something about a storm coming up and then runs off into the jungle that starts just 10 meters from the beach. All we hear are his screams when he obviously ran straight into a carniflora.

    Once I made sure that there were no other survivors besides us that needed any help or first aid, I tried to call help via the uplink but all I got was some strange line noise, which I later identified as the pattern of an ECM jammer. This already scared my to a certain degree because Poseidon is only half as dangerous if you know that help is on its way. I am just not quite so brave when I have no backup. Then we noticed that we had lost nearly all of our gear, mostly weapons, food and first aid material were gone and all we could find out about this island that it was probably just to the North of the Patchwork Reef and that it was only a number on any of the maps in the comps. Luckily I still had my bodycomp but the GPS wasn't working either.

    So Patti and I decided to inspect the island for any means to get away from here dragging the Major and Urs behind us. A few hundred meters ahead of us the beach turned around a sharp corner and all we could see was that there was probably a more sheltered place to rest overnight, it was already getting dark quite fast now. So we walked along the beach always looking for something weird and when we turned around the corner indeed there was something not quite fitting here: a military jumpcraft was sitting there right on the beach.

    Closing up on it we saw that lying around the craft there were bodies of dead soldiers who looked like they had been elite troops but they had no signs and insignia and nothing on them to identify them as belonging to any organization or corporation, of course I am quite sure that they are, uh were corporates.

    On inspecting the bodies we found that these soldier were killed by some kind of "Monster" that just ripped open and threw around the soldiers. The "Monster" also had destroyed the electronics panel of the craft and taken every single weapon which greatly pissed off the Major who kept looking for something useful to defend himself with. In the meantime Urs was crouching over some of the bodies taking notes of what they looked like and how what killed them must look like.

    ---snip---

    Wobbel: "Bomb 1a will you please return into your slot?"

    ---snip---

    Urs:    "This land lizard won't hurt us, it's vegetarian!"
Patti:  "Famous last words?"
Wobbel: "I shoot full autofire into the dark!"
Urs:    "We come in pieces!"
Jane:   "Can it climb? If not I climb up into a tree if there is one?"
Urs:    "I hide behind the others."
Patti:  "I shoot at it, too."
Voice:  "The lizard is scared now and has decided to attack."
Patti:  "Hey, I thought it would run off into the jungle?"
Voice:  "It was just sniffing to find out if you are edible."
Wobbel: "It must have attack penalties it is under heavy fire!"
Wobbel: "I shoot again."
Voice:  "You miss!"
Wobbel: "Turn the lights on, Urs and Jane!"
Jane:   "What lights?"
Patti:  "The flashlights we found in the shed!"
Jane:   "I never took one!"
    ---snip---

    Patti: "You mean, Wobbel, now you will shoot of one of his fingers after another?"

    ---snip---

    The second craft has just taken off with Junior and now we are alone, hopefully on this island except for land lizards, carnifloras and the likes.


    In the mean time we have played 2 more blue planet stories in which only I - Jane - have taken part of these characters. I think they play in the past and I will not put them here because they are Daniel's stories and I hope he will put them on his homepage.