Evergreen Initiative
The Evergreen Initiative is the Morrow Project codename for the northwest region of teams. The geographical area encompasses Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia. All characters who are part of Recon Team: RTH were frozen in Cryo-Stasis in 1996.
Contents
Prepocalypse
Before the fall, each recruit into the Morrow Project is subjected to a rigorous battery of physical and psychological tests to ensure survivability after the fall. Once accepted into the program an 18 month induction process begins, alternating three week theoretical and practical knowledge transfers with two week physical harship exercises. Cadets earn certifications during these schools which determine eligibility for missions, and eventually place them within teams. A character is considered certified by Morrow Project standards if they possess 5 points of relevant skills or abilities in the certification area. All project personnel are certified in at least one Morrow Project specialty.
Each team also has minimum certification requirements, determined by the team type. Each member contributes all of their certification into a training pool, ensuring that teams are self sufficient and well-prepared for potential hardship.
Recon Team: Romeo Tango Hotel
The players are either members of a 6 man recon team tasked with geographical survey and ensuring the safe revival of other local teams, or they are survivors who live in the surrounding area. Given that the premise of the game will be that the system did not work properly for whatever reason, the players should work together to develop a purpose for their team. Will they continue to try and rebuild society? Will they search for other Morrow survivors? Will they attempt to travel to and find the original Prime Base? Will they set up a new feudal society and elect Madison their Queen?
The team itself includes the following roles: Team Leader, Medic, Mechanic, Surveyor/Cartographer and Mission Specialist. Multiple roles may be filled by the same person, and PCs are not required to fill any or all roles (there are plenty of NPCs). Mission Specialists could be any discipline that could reasonably be needed, and the players are encouraged to be creative. The list of Specialty team types on the Morrow Project main page provides many potential specialties, but do not consider these to be all encompassing.
Characters
Put links to your character ideas here, then each of you can add your relevant memories to the bottom of the other players character page.
Charlotte St. Claire - Played by TheRuu
Pi Heinzen - Played by Madison
Character Discussion
Use this space to discuss questions about character roles and skills.
Charlotte St. Claire - Still working on a "super" power (leaning towards a telepath) but the main idea was a girl from a wealthy family who has some sort of paranormal ability. Both her parents' lives were consumed by their work so she wasn't very close to family. Kind of a prim-and-proper rich girl. Her father was approached by the creator of the Morrow Project and though he was never really around for her, he wanted to protect his only daughter and her gift so he agreed to finance the project so long as she got a spot on the participants list. Gymnastics and parkour background makes her agile and acrobatic.
For a specialization, I think a psychological specialist would make sense. Her ESP abilities are obviously secret, so she's just seemingly really good at reading people and being able to make people feel at ease because of knowing exactly what they're thinking.
Pi Heinzen - the Cartographer/Geologist/Geophysicist. Special power is she can do 'readings' using rocks - although she is thought to just be a very good cartographer. She is from St. George, Utah where she discovered her power with rocks and her fascination with Geology. After graduating high school she moved to Boise to attend Boise State. She Graduated with the highest honors with her Doctorate in Geophysics and Seismology in 1995.
She was recruited by the Morrow project after they read her thesis paper on the
System Notes
The following is an aside, then comes the notes on Hero. Maybe we spend the Friday session trying both.
Dumb Idea
Smell that? Yep, its another one of my dumb ideas. Since nobody has really said anything yet I reserve the right to potentially change my mind on all the stuff below in favor of the following Dumb Idea (TM).
Those of you who previously have read stupid shit I have written on here may remember Deadspace and Deadlands: Invasion. I love a lot of things about Deadlands, but in some cases it feels broken. Savage Worlds doesnt fix it, and just ends up being Deadlands for Dummies. I just potentially figured out how to correct one of the biggest problems in Deadlands, character generation.
When you draw cards in Deadlands, the deck has 54 cards in it. You will draw 12 of those 54 cards, and 1/4 of them will be spades, which give 4 of the appropriate die, while 6/54 will be aces or jokers, granting d12 for stats. When drawing that many cards, the chance of getting something pretty amazing is quite high. It ends up easy for someone to really get lucky.
As an aside, I have really had a desire to try and figure out a way to make random character generation workable. I would never want to make it fully arbitrary, but injecting the random aspect keeps characters from being concentrated around specific levels and maximums.
What is my idea? I have posted it on the Deadspace page. Please let me know what you think of this. I would also keep the movement rules discussed in Deadlands: Invasion.
Hero System Notes
We will use Hero System, 6th edition for this game. Characters will be constructed on a 175 point template, with 35 points in disadvantages. Each character will be required to have at least one memory or suitable connection with each other character.
All skills will be limited to 13- roll maximum.
Because they are not common knowledge in the world after the fall, each character which is a member of the Morrow team must take suitable knowledge and professional skills to represent their training. Each Morrow character will be required to have a minimum of 15 points in such skills. Some examples are KS: Modern Technology, Computer Programming, PS: Engineer etc. Morrow characters cannot take Area Knowledge (AK), because of how different and alien the world feels to them, but they may take KS: Geography or similar skills to simulate their ability to know about the world and its landmarks.
Characters which are not from the Morrow team do not have these restrictions, but will inherently not have a good understanding of technology. They will be allowed to take KS: Modern Technology, but at no higher than a familiarity (8-). They will be allowed to take AK as well as Cultural Knowledge. They also will be allowed to take a new skill, Scrounging, which allows searching through ruins to find stuff.
Survival and Scrounging will both be used on 2 hour time blocks. Normally I dont like using levels of success because it just rewards dice rolls, however I will use a table for these two skills. In general, a success with Survival can find one days worth of food for one person. Greater levels of success will achieve more. More will be posted about this as I think about it.
Equipment
I am devising a system for generating starting equipment for players. We will use the equipment wear and tear rules, but any Morrow equipment will be immune.
Madison asks - 4/26/12 -Why is Morrow equipment immune?
Special Traits
One thing I am considering is allowing special traits like limited ESP or psychic abilities. If I decide to do this, I hope to come up with a list of at least a few options that are esoteric rather than supernatural, one of which would be equipment. In other words, if a player chooses not to have any special traits they would get some bonus equipment. Any ideas for special traits that any of you have should be noted here for my consideration.
Fatigue and Hunger
In a harsh environment with limited resources, it is inevitible that fatigue and hunger could become a problem. Rather than attempting to overcomplicate the game with excessive bookkeeping, I will devise a system where both can be measured in levels from 1-5, with 5 being the most dire. Both hunger and fatigue adds their level to the END cost of any action performed by the character, in addition to any other penalties. For example, a character suffering both level 1 fatigue and level 1 hunger adds 2 END to each action.
Any day where a character does not sleep at least 2 time blocks they will gain level 1 fatigue. If a fatigued character goes 24 hours without sleeping, instead add 2 levels. Fatigue affects a characters ability to do mental tasks. Each level of fatigue adds 1 to the die roll for PER and other taxing mental tasks. Additionally, if the modified roll is 18+, and it is situation appropriate, the character falls asleep. The GM may require fatigued characters to make rolls for things where there is no chance of failure, just to test for falling asleep.
An uninterrupted sleep of 3 time blocks removes 1 level of fatigue. An uninterrupted sleep of 5 time blocks removes all fatigue.
Hunger level is increased 1 for each 3 days a character does not eat sufficient meals, or each day a character does not have sufficient water. Each level of hunger decreases the characters effective STR and CON by 1 point. Hungry characters may also be required to may EGO rolls to resist making hunger based decisions (such as stealing other peoples food or leaving camp to search for forage).
Eating or drinking a large meal or drink cures all hunger levels.
The Environs
I will use this space to flesh out the local area once I know a little more about the team.
