Character Generation

Silverlion is fine tuning his character, and Naelick is apparently still working on theirs.

So first, a question: Do you want to begin each episode with a contract assigned by me, or do you want a choice before we start them?

Second some more lore.

There are several grades of contract.

Copper contracts are small potatoes. Guard a shipment or facility, escort cargo or VIP, act as a courier, anything you might need special handling and protection for. Often referred to as Babysitting or Milk Runs. Low value.

Silver contracts are more the bread and butter of real Lancer work. These are the mercenary police actions, major troubleshooting, and in general complicated, multi-step and extended period jobs.

Gold contracts are only offered to the most trusted Lances. These are the very wealthy, planetary governments, or huge multicorps, and can be almost anything, and never easy.

Platinum contracts are rare. A Lance has to be exemplary in reputation and results to be offered one, as they are offered by the Assembly itself for whatever reasons it has to outsource instead of using the Fleet.

Money: Before the Accords, interplanetary trade was done with Universal Credit Equity, called Credits by most. The Accord replaced this system with its own standardized Alliance Credit Exchange currency held by compublock chips. Devalued UCE is still legal, but officially rated at 100 to 1. (Real example: 1 dollar for a candy bar in the new currency would cost 100 dollars of the old.)

ACE is the official exchange used by everyone, is fully electronic, and based on the morphopgenic profile of the individual. However, the black market and other less than legal enterprises use it like Bitcoin is used today. In shady circles, DeUCE trades up to ACE at 5 to 1. Getting caught using it this way is not a crime.. but it will significantly affect the unofficial currency of the entire cluster: Reputation.

(I won't be hardcoding Rep into the game, it's a background element).

Any questions and/or comments on how you get offered contracts?

I think the first contract should be assigned by you, so it would work a little bit like a tutorial, so that players new to the system (me in particular) could get a bit of training and all of the players could get settled with how they want their characters to behaive and if it is working. After that, I think we will be more comfortable to pick our own contracts.

Agree with Fly, I also want to get my head around this unusual (for me) action resolution system

I'll wrap up the character for tonight

I am all for getting offered a contract by you ZivenOfNine. I too could use some help getting use to the system.

Being that people want a "tutorial" I think it ought to be a copper contract to start. Escorting a potentially troublesome VIP might be a good place to start

Excellent. We'll start with one I assign, then. :)

Candidate for the as-yet-unnamed ship belonging (as long as they keep up the payments) to this as-yet-unnamed Lance.

Questions about the as-yet-unnamed ship:
1. How big is it? Is it more of a transport/shuttle ship like in Firefly and Mandalorian or a bigger ship with a shuttle like in Mass Effect?
2. What are its defensive and offensive capabilities?

Questions about the as-yet-unnamed Lance:
1. How long our group had been together? Or is it our first job as a team?
2. What Lance teams are usually called? Something like Fire Lance, or the word Lance is not compulsory? Is there a theme for naming Lancers as well?

I think I prefer that the group has already been together and completed missions together, and we just take for granted that it works somehow, because it puts everyone in the right mindset to keep the game going. It's like the famous sneaky rogue/virtuous paladin problem. It can get to the point, if each is playing their roles without thinking of the party, that you start to think "why are these two people in a group together at all". But the more productive way to see it is to state the fact, then ask the question: "These two people with totally contradictory worldviews are somehow happily in the same party - why?". To do that, I think that you need to start from the position that these people know each other and have already established some kind of relationship. If they're just meeting at the start of a campaign, sure, they might go through something together that allows them to see past each other's differences, but they could just as easily not do that. And if they don't, well, likely one person will need to have their character leave and bring in a new character, and so on until a group is formed. But, we can skip all that by saying, hey, we have a group, and they might not agree on everything, but they hold to some common purpose, and that keeps them together.

There, there's my rant for the day :)

Well, technically, they are already part of an "organisation" and are bound by the contract, so they already have a reason to stick together regardless if they've been working together before or not.

I m fine with either options, however, the drawback of them already being a team for some time is that our characters would know the strenghts and weaknesses of each other as well as their quirks. Given that we've never played together before we don't know each other's playstyles, so it may cause some difficulties in party dynamics. We might get on the same wavelength from the get go but we might not and it would be weird to have characters who'd known each other for some time to try and figure out how to talk to each other.

The benefit of having our characters meet for the first time (or work for the first time together) is that it will allow us, the players, to get used to our own characters and figure out how our characters should interact with each other without too much OOC discussion. It will also provide us opportunities for character development moments.

Good questions MagnificentFly, I am curious about those facts too. I am happy with us being a newly put together group, or a longstanding team.

That's one cool looking ship. Maybe it could be called "AFV Fugue", "AFV Minuet" or "AFV Andante", to go with the musical convention?

Lancers team: would be fun to have a band-like name, something like "The Debuggers", "The Troubleshooters" :D

I see merit in both naelick's and Fly's views on how long the characters have been knowing each other. It's a pulp game, so I personally don't mind losing a bit of character depth to embrace high adventure.

It's up to the group how long the team has been together, and any names for the team and the ship.

EDIT: I see it as about the size of Serenity or Lucy.

Lancers are like bounty hunters. Only kind of part of any organization unless they are called into service in times of extreme emergency to the entire Alliance. (This has never happened.)

Team names are up to the team, anything from the exemplary and legendary Lorne's Losers to the less sterling semi-scoundrels The Hoppers.

Added lore: Lorne was always fair and extremely ethical, but notoriously once charged a Gold Contrator he disliked 2000 ACE to write a 10 word letter. On the converse, the Hoppers were shady and dealt in DeUCE a lot, but also notoriously fought off a pirate raid for a town with nothing but a sheltered valley (in mountains whose composition that happened to block scanners, sensors, and comms from the Fleet) to their over a 3-day siege (which earned their leader her signature scar) and accepted as payment the Most Bestest Hug from six year old Ellie May for all four members.

I like AFV Fugue as a name for the ship

I also like The Debuggers, or even The F Majors

I like "The Debuggers" as well

Sorry I've been behind, had to fight some serious RL pain (finally got in to see someone who cut and acid burned the source.) I like the Fugue as a name and The Debuggers as well.

One small change... AFV is big ships. You gouys would be an Alliance Chartered Vessel. ACV Fugue.

As soon as Silverlion finishes tweaking his sheet, I'll be starting the game. No later than Monday, likely sooner.

I like the ACV Fugue as well for the name of the ship, however, The Debuggers seem a little wierd to me, considering one of the crew is an insectoid. I think the name of the team should signify some aspect of the team, like Lorne's Losers are clearly under command of Lorne (why they are losers I am not sure but there probably a story about it) and The Hoppers, I think, move around a lot and don't stay in one place for too long or they don't have a ship (or didn't at the time the name stuck).

I also have a suggestion about the forming of the team:
Let's says that our characters worked on their own or had other teams before, maybe they interacted with one another on occasion but never worked as one team. All of them could've been saving money for their own ship to move around easier and it so happened that there was one available and if the four of them would pulled their resources together they could afford the downpayment. Thus, the team was formed. (Personally, I think it is the best of both worlds. We bypass possible initial distrust by knowing about each other and will still get to form the bonds through the game.)

Also, I have a request:
Considering that Lancer have to deal with the authorities on groung/stations and navy/army (not to mention that I made a character with military background), could we have a sort of Codex with terms and higherarchies of the Assembly?