All along the Watchtower (OOC/Sign ups)

[Yours Truly]

All along the Watchtower (OOC/Sign ups)

(Theme Song)

Far far away from the outskirts of the town of Astrakane, there lies an ancient stone watchtower that overlooks the vast Tiberian expanse. It is one of the hundreds that have been bought, built, and repaired by the Kingdom of Arcton, your homeland, to protect our many border towns from the despicable actions of the barbaric Breganites. These, as you know, are the very same barbarians whose near constant raids of our border towns have stifled our settlement efforts around the calraine point, and who have caused an unprecedented growth in power of the necrocults that reside in the area.

 

Each and every single one of you have heard that your predecessors were fine men and women, who had spent years of their lives to secure this area from the dreaded Breganite raiders!^†, and the skeletal armies of the forgotten dread emperor!^‡, before they promptly applied for a reassignment the day after the town of Ashar was taken and their watchtower suddenly became the first line of defense.

 

Leaving the five of you here, in an old watchtower that has seemingly lasted for long enough to see the rise and fall of civilizations, and yet which still remains standing desp- aaand there goes the roof….

 

This is going to be a long assignment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Essentially this RP would be centered around good old Watchtower #1013, where a group of wet behind the ears watchmen (I believe a more appropriate term for this day and age would be watch officer) have been assigned to patrol and watch over the entire damned area despite the fact that you are quite frankly nowhere near prepared for the task. Especially when you have been assigned in such a hectic time, with rumors of a bandit king rising up in the east, strange winds and foul omens indicating that something unnatural is occuring in the southern ruins. That and the fact that part of the roof had just collapsed on what was apparently a room full of mirrors lamp oil isn’t doing anyone any favors.

 

Then there is the fact that the world itself is fantastical in nature, thus causing the five of you to have to deal with magic and supernatural happenings on top of occasional barbarian raids, investigating merchants and other travellers, and fixing the damned roof before the rest of it collapses.

 

Under the hood (System)

 

Because I am secretly a lazy bastard there will only be four stats that conveniently also serves as HP bar equivalents, they are:

Dexterity: An abstraction of how much grace and precision your character can put into their movements. This stat is taken into consideration whenever you need to do something is physical and mostly focused on dexterity and precision. Damage dealt to this stat will usually involve some form head trauma, the damaging of limbs, or just plain old exhaustion.

Awareness: An abstraction of how aware you are of your surroundings and how grounded you are in reality. This stat is taken into consideration whenever you enter into a new situation, inspect an object or your surrounding area, or when you need to gather up the mental fortitude necessary to fight off magical effects. Damage dealt to this stat will usually involve some form of head trauma, poisons, drinking too much liquor, being affected by certain types of magic, or being near some particularly annoying people for an extended period of time. 

Strength: An abstraction of your physical strength and endurance. This stat is taken into consideration whenever you need to lift heavy objects, perform feats of athleticism for an extended period of time, not have a heart attack from running for an hour straight because why, or when you just need to clock someone on the face. Damage dealt to this stat will generally involve the same things as Dexterity.

Intelligence: Literally just a measure of how intelligent your character is and their memory retention. This stat is taken into consideration whenever you need to uh, study the proper way to salute just before the inspectors come by, remember something you’ve heard of a while ago, design a new roof, figure out what the hell that was and why did it breathe fire, identify poisons and plant life, identify poisonous plant life, or gain hints on how to talk to someone to try and convince them to see your side on things. Damage dealt to this stat will generally involve the same things as Awareness.

Running out of a stat isn’t always an instant death sentence, as there is always the chance that one of your party members might strike the killing blow and drag you the fuck out of there before it is much too late, but chances are you are still going to be heavily damaged in some shape or form by the event, and recovering out here in the borderlands will be a pain in the ass.

For the most part you will recover stats by being an actual human person and recognizing the need to just… stop from time to time to bind your wounds, stop your stomach from grumbling, slake that thirst of yours, or just getting some sleep. Although of course while there are some magical items that could help with stat recovery, none of you currently have any.

Then of course there is the matter of skills, which can best be described as things noted on your sheet as things you can actually do that grant relevant knowledge based on the subject in character, and be taken into consideration whenever an action involving it is performed (be it through the occasional roll or just a standard assessment of the situation), and your level of proficiency in a skill is marked from novice to mastery, with various in between levels that I have definitely marked out in advance already.

There is also the matter of Magical artifacts actually, but I'll talk about them once you actually get one.

Character Sheet

 

Name: (I swear just because this is a fantasy world you do not get to name your character Rothgar the Death Eater)
Race:
Age: (Young adult to I’m getting too old for this ship, basically 16+, but we will have words if you try to play the 100 year old human, or goblin, or anything really)

Background: (Your characters are all citizens of the kingdom of Arcton, and chances are you’re not going to have any prior criminal convictions unless you want absolutely everyone to distrust you if they find out, but other than that there shouldn’t be much problems. P.S. None of you are former adventurers who took an arrow to the knee, that meme died a long time ago)

Appearance: (How your character appears to other people, remember that you will be inside of a hauberk and gambeson for the most part)

Stats: (You start with 10 in each stat, and 3 points to distribute freely between them, if you want to be a filthy powergamer you can substract points from a stat and add it to another, but you can’t have any stats below 8 at the start of the game)
Dexterity:
Awareness:
Strength:
Intelligence:

Skills: (Talk to me about these, I’ll try to keep everyone on the same level as each other skillwise, but minor 1 to 2 skill level differences will occur)
Equipment: (Smoothbore Musket with ammunition, gunpowder that doesn’t really work well in this weather and plug bayonet, saber, club, knife, rubber boots, hard leather helmet, and a metal breastplate that rusts all too easily in this weather and 10 silver coins in a sack are all standard issue. We can discuss any additional equipment or replacements while working on your background)

 

 

Credits

 

Stormlord, Whisperling, and Neri for helping me with the system
Intsys and Whisperling for helping me out with making the setting
Strider and Whisperling for helping me out with grammar mistakes
Neri for basically letting me Original system do not steal a part of their voidreach system (The bit about skills)
Neri and Whisperling for helping me with figuring out how to resolve actions without/with as little dice rolls as possible
Cinder for being a bun.
Empiricist for telling me how to add footnotes in Reborn’s editor, because Jesus Christ that is a small miracle in itself.

 

The game will be played on Discord in the following server, click there to find out more.

All Along the Watchtower (https://discord.gg/Jcudzpu)

 

^†(Who back then were a bunch of disorganized tribes that were known to enter into battle wielding nothing but a sharpened fruit)

^‡(Who was just a depressed teenager loitering in the nearby crypt with a borrowed necromancy 101 book)

[StormLord]

Big, dumb, and really pissed off:

 

Name: Gruk-lug 
Race: Half-Orc
Age: 19

Background: After a childhood of being constantly taunted and teased for his Orcish nature Gruk signed up for the military as early as they would let him.  Sadly however this didn't change much, but his hulking size and skill with a weapon was something that was at least mostly useful.  Still didn't keep him from getting all the shit jobs.

Appearance: Tall, broad shouldered, greenish skin tone, and a flat nose.  Your standard Half-Orc.

Stats:
Dexterity: 11
Awareness: 10
Strength: 14
Intelligence: 8

Skills: Swordsmanship, Tactics, and Toughness.
Equipment: Smoothbore Musket with ammunition, gunpowder that doesn’t really work well in this weather and plug bayonet, saber, club, knife, rubber boots, hard leather helmet, and a metal breastplate that rusts all too easily in this weather and 10 silver coins in a sack are all standard issue.
Add a Saber and Hatchet to that.

[Yours Truly]

You already have a saber tho, also I thought you were taking military rank as one of your skills.