[DnD] GW URBX: 20! EVERYONE IS EXPLODE

After MIT's Cosmology Lab Project #8490 (Codename: Dog Exploder) went badly haywire, all possible divergent timelines collapsed, reducing a multiverse of infinite complexity into a single universe that was, let's be fair, still pretty goddamn ridiculous. Things got pretty crazy for a while as people got used to living alongside martians, elves, machine intelligences, and the occasional hungry shoggoth. Hell, even the basic rules of life started getting a little fuzzy: magic is an actual thing now instead of a trick for children's birthdays, and the various deities worshipped by the various populations of the new Earth* were quick to make evident their very real and direct interest in mortal affairs.

But things settled down in due time. People can get used to anything, given a century or four. Eventually many of the old nations reassembled themselves in a rough facsimile of their original shapes, based more on a sort of general reckoning than any particular reliance on the old maps. Some cultures grabbed a little more territory than others. Case in point: the Merkins, whose government claims authority over nearly half the land in the western hemisphere, a sprawling land they call "Usa" (Oo-sah).

Usa's sheer breadth is one of the keys to its continued survival: the wild variety of climates and the utter vastness of the empty places has done more than any military to fend off foreign invasion. Indeed, over 50,000 Qinshi golem shock troops are thought to be lost inside the midwestern desert to this day, their geolocators hopelessly clogged by sand and dust.

But there are downsides to holding this much territory. You need a lot of hands to secure it. There are still thousands of places in Usa, particularly in the old metropolises, where "civilized" Merkins fear to tread. Labyrinthine complexes of steel and stone, hardened underground bunkers, all the sprawling constructions of cultures that had more money than sense. The worst creatures of the former multiverse took up residence in these dangerous lairs, defying an overstretched military to force them out and reclaim technological treasures and secrets of the old worlds.

That's where you come in.



It was only in your grandparent's generation that the eggheads figured out how the omnipresent screenboxes worked, and the nature of television programming progressed much as it did in the old days. In Lost Angles they've recently hit on the incredible new idea of "reality" programming: real people humiliating themselves on camera, with more than a little selective editing. What better to capitalize on than the suicidal new "extreme sport" so popular with the 14-30 demo, something the kids called "Urban Exploration": bust into a ruined old world construction, take some pictures, and then get the hell out before the resident ork clan or sapient slime mold caught wind of the intrusion.

The idea of a professional Urbexer is more than a little absurd, but if such a thing exists, you're it. A collusion between government and the entertainment industry has plucked dozens of the most promising young talents off the streets and into tailored jumpsuits festooned with corporate logos. Officially, you and your squad are the sword's point that will vanquish the darkness and reclaim Usa's past glories. Unofficially, an URBX squad is lucky to last a full season, and that with casualties. Very few will openly admit they tune in to watch the gory deaths of the brave and stupid, but the discs emblazoned with the cheery TOTAL WIPEOUT! slogan sell the best by far.

URBX sites were first referred to as "dungeons" by all-dwarf squad Bearded Fury in Season 5, and the terminology was adapted swiftly by the fans and then, grudgingly, by the producers. The "Ruin Ref", a C-list celebrity who (officially) does nothing more than observe squads, direct camera drones, and provide color commentary, became a much more sought-after position after being retitled "DJ": Dungeon Judge.

(The widening pool of aspiring Dungeon Judges is also attributable to the increasing acceptability of DJs tampering with the pre-existing site environment. Of course, they all deny it.)

This is URBX, the biggest sport of the 2530s. You and your squad have proven yourselves in the not-for-broadcast Brass League, where the swords are foam, the dragons are papier-mâché, and the rewards are sometimes as impressive as a comped meal for two at Das Burgermeister. But it's a good place to network: all the biggest URBX sponsors keep an eye on Brass events, looking for the next face to put on the side of a cereal box.

Next week you and your squad jump into the lethal Copper League. Copper is mostly small-scale ruins, sometimes just a mansion, and location scouts have done their best to... well, location scouts return from Copper sites, which is a pretty good sign. You haven't been briefed on your exact destination yet, but you've heard you'll be in the loving hands of freshman DJ High Noon. New DJs often sport a lower body count, but haven't adopted an iconic style yet (for example, anyone facing DJ Cold Fusion knows to pack their parka).

Pow-wow with your squad, pack whatever you need to pack, and catch the vertibird. Oh, and remember to say your goodbyes, finalize your will, all the standard disclaimers. You did read the release form, right?

*See also: Terra, Dirt, Mudball, Life's Egg, Our Place, Greenhome, Factory Prime


What Have I Become?

You're a resident of Post-8490 Earth, which means your genetic relationship to Pre-8490 humanity (or elfkind, or orcbrood) is tenuous at best.

First, you have a Race, your species, whatever turned up after Ma & Pa got real friendly. Maybe you're the scion of a long bloodline of dwarves, or maybe you're some reptilian thing that fell into some industrial waste and started getting ambitious.

Second, you have a Class, your particular set of skills and talents that make you more likely than Joe Average to survive an URBXpedition. Maybe you were the star quarterback in high school, and you still hit like a truck. Maybe you're a conniving little jerk who specializes in lying to those few people you aren't about to shank. Maybe you've got a direct line to Nucleon, God Of Excessively Large Explosions (and he always picks up).

Third, you have a Mutation, a weird genetic quirk that's yours and yours alone. Maybe you can outrun a vertibird. Maybe you're on fire all the time. Maybe you're just really, really big.

You pick your own race and class. I'll roll for mutations. Because that's funny.

Then you Reskin to your own satisfaction or just to have things make a little sense. For example, a Halfling with the "Giant" mutation is just big for a halfling, albeit possessed of a disproportionate amount of muscle mass.

Then you need a Name. This includes your character's real name, and also their stage name. URBX fans don't care about "Mark Miller", but "Mark 'The Mauler' Miller" sells t-shirts.

After that, decide on your Team Captain, your Team Name, and your Team Sponsors, 3-5 fictional corporate entities who have invested in your team's theoretical survival and success. Mark "The Mauler" Miller (Giant Human Barbarian) is sponsored by an energy drink, a pharmaceutical company, and a fleet of rental trucks. Your sponsors will provide you with some gear for your URBXpeditions, with the understanding that you pimp their goods for the camera a bit.

"Those gnolls went down easy... but not as easy as smooth, refreshing Dark Tower Ale."

On the slim chance you came into this thread without knowing the class and race options for D&D 4E, just tell me what sort of thing (and any sort of thing will do) your URBXplorer is and what he or she used to do for a living before deciding organized suicide was more profitable, and I'll slap a suitable race and class on them. Easy-peasy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Hawk, if you want to be a pistolero then Swordmage might not be your best choice. Swordmages are overwhelmingly melee-driven as I remember. Maybe something like a Warlock, Sorcerer, Ranger?

Originally Posted by Axelrod :gauntletcheck: Axelrod

Sponsors: Says team, but you have individual sponsors in your example. Did you want those as well?

I guess everybody can just provide their own sponsors and then they can all collectively be the team sponsors. Wear more logos than NASCAR, drink your potions with the labels facing out.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

LET'S ROLLING MUTATIONS

Rychord, in addition to being a vampire blood wizard you are also... an Empath. Not sure if being a really empathetic vampire is super creepy or just hilarious. (Is Blood Mage even a thing? Gotta update my CBLoader, fuck)

Edit: Blood Mage does not appear to be a thing, what am I missing

Skills, your cyborg dinosaur is also some kind of Feline. Good luck sorting THAT out.

Shin's demon terrorist has eight Octopoid arms, the better to smite infidels with.

Hawkeye's elf not only has some kind of skin disorder but also an unfortunate case of chronic Magnetism.

Diss' Goliath Barbarian is a Plant. That's easy enough I guess. Nothing wrong with the classics.

So uh reskin as necessary and convene on your team name & etc.

Skills had some questions about the system last night so I figured I'd clarify some shit. We're using 4E race/class but this is still a Gamma World game with all the unfair random bullshit that implies. Gamma World gives you a guaranteed 18/16 in your primary/secondary origin's ability score, so in this case we'll treat your class as your primary origin. Some classes are a little fuzzy on what their primary is but in most cases it's clear. Then add your race bonuses on top of that, so you might start with a 20 in something possibly? GW also has a shorter skill list than 4E core, which means some of your racial skill bonuses might not make sense anymore. Probably gonna mash the skills lists together since Mechanics is a neat thing to have but making knowledge checks go under "Conspiracy" is sort of goofy. I'll sort it one way or another.

Some classes (like Warlords or Clerics) aren't quite as useful in a ruleset where everyone isn't sitting on 20 healing surges, I'll compensate for that somehow if it comes up.

Generally don't sperg out too much about mechanical details! Okay!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by i am good at jokes

I could have picked Vampire as my class but I think that may just be a bit retarded considering that a Vryloka is basically a vampire already.

You could go ex-vryloka revenant, and just be a vampire that used to be a vampire instead of a vampire vampire.

Edit: the new issue of Dragon will let you be the vampire ghost of a zombie that used to be a vampire

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You can still say they're magic bullets. If you want your ranger powers flagged as Arcane, I am down.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Y'all gonna be the Pink Pony Platoon in a minute here.

Got two sheets done: "The Debt Collector" "Happy Flower"

Will get to work on the rest after I kick SAUS into gear. Just wanted to reassure that I'm getting shit ready.

(Still laughin' at Skills and his carefully-assembled hybrid mess that I promptly threw down three flights of houseruled stairs)

How ya doing, buddy?

GFF | Esperansita "The Suck Queen" Mamara | Obsidian Portal

GFF | Rufus "Overwatch" Thorolfsson | Obsidian Portal

GFF | Ayatollah "Fuck The Infidels" Murderson | Obsidian Portal

Pretty sure Rufus may literally be the Flash

FELIPE NO

TEAM NAME. If nothing sensible appears by tomorrow, you're all going to be...

(rolls)

Prettiest Devil Avalanche.

...that might work actually.

Originally Posted by Fluffykitten McSnugglepuss

Quick question, do you have to be adjacent to your enemy for oath of enmity to work or just be doing a melee attack, i.e. do I get the two rolls with the tentacle attack?

Yeah, it wants the enemy to be adjacent to you. I too am disappointed.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Fluffykitten McSnugglepuss

The Melancholy of Perfection

This sounds like exactly the sort of pretentious nonsense an elf, a demon, and a double vampire would come up with while the bruisers are too busy at the gym to come to meetings. Excellent.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Anybody who wants to swap in elemental ammo can reload with a minor action. Pun-based corporate whoring will be rewarded in much the same way as other forms of corporate whoring, that is to say, fiscally.

And just to be clear, you always have ammo, I'm not going to be tracking it and GW's standard rules for ammo are sort of silly in a setting where society has mostly recovered.

Let's see, what else needs immediate explaining. The skills were fucked around with severely.

----

Education: This used to be History or Conspiracy. Just general command of mundane facts.

Esoterica: This used to be Arcana, Religion, or Science. Knowledge of, in short, weird shit. How to read Enochian, which brand of sunglasses the Men In Black wear, generally distinguishing between magic and sufficiently advanced technology.

Fitness: Was Acrobatics and Athletics. Walking tightropes, climbing mountains, jumping away from explosions, going up ladders without using your hands.

Intimidate: Okay this one stayed the same.

Mechanics: Mostly the same as it is in core GW. Fixing a rifle or hotwiring a truck is Mechanics. Fixing a Martian plasma cannon or hijacking a teleportation nexus is Esoterica.

Perception: Unchanged.

Skulduggery: Was Stealth and Thievery. How good you are at generally being an underhanded little shit without getting caught at it.

Social: Was Bluff, Diplomacy, Interaction, Insight, Streetwise. Are you a people person? Manipulate rubes, know when you're getting manipulated, generally make people dance like the hormone-driven puppets they are.

Survival: Was Endurance, Heal, Nature. Your general ability to not get your shit completely wrecked when the odds have conspired to wreck your shit.

URBX: Was Dungeoneering. General knowledge and competence regarding things that crop up pretty often in URBX sites, like false walls, dangerous species, and the general sort of dirty tricks that DJs get up to.

----

Daily powers are now, effectively, one-off. The HoverCam isn't going to let you take a nap, and you cannot destroy the HoverCam. Literally. Experimental alloys. Even if you could, it would just result in your team being blacklisted. Oh, sure, you could do the underground circuit if you wanted to go back to delving for pizza coupons.

On the upside, this is GW-style healing, so you either survive a fight or you don't, and you do, hey, fresh as a daisy.

Action points! You know how they work, but they don't typically belong in GW so they're worth pointing out.

Luck! Luck is how lucky you are. Some people are luckier than others. This doesn't do anything. Why are you asking about it?

Tech overcharge: You can overcharge your Omega tech as well as your Alpha mutations. Along with the attendant risks of an overcharge backfire, cranking it up to 11 makes Omega tech twice as likely to break down after use.

----

I'm a consumer whore! And how.

Like most television, URBX is supported almost entirely by corporate advertising (though URBX does get a small chunk of the government budget in return for the occasional militarily useful bit of salvage). Consequently, a healthily positive attitude toward your corporate masters is good for your URBX career, and walking the line between being an utter shill and still maintaining some kind of street cred can be very rewarding.

Of course, some entities are in competition with each other. If you want that endorsement from Nuka-Cola, you'd better make damn sure nobody sees you drinking Slurm. Other entities may simply cut ties with you on practical or philosophical grounds: Lunar Zenith might not want to be associated with Sven if he slaughters a colony of vegepygmies.

Additional Spam:
Oh, and the game's live now, might mention that since it already slipped underneath SAUS posts.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Anything you put down in front of Korgar is probably some kind of clever trap, and will not be picked up without a thorough crushing prior. Korgar has fallen for the ol' donut box full of vengeful nixies too many times. Never again.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Hahahaha, when you said you'd "pass by the log" I actually thought you meant in the sense of ignoring and dismissing it. Welp.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Whaaaaaat, initiative, why would you assume combat is gonna break out just because of a dozen individually-labeled raaaaaaahahahaha okay

I was speaking idiomatically.

THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY

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Letting the party do most of the work of wrecking themselves is like, 90% of the point of switching to Gamma World. Giving Shin a box of dynamite is more efficient than any number of dragons.

FELIPE NO

It seems like a lot for the first fight, admittedly, but, again, because of Gamma World's lack of... shall we say long-term wound tracking, it just makes sense for every fight to be a slobberknocker. Win and live. Lose and die. Rule of URBX. No change rule.

And it is not as if you guys don't have options. Well, I mean. Less now that Shin blew up 60% of them. But. In principle.


edit: I always forget to show defenses in the first fight of a new thread, edited in now

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Fun fact: due to the silly way in which Shin's explosion power works, the originating square of the explosion doesn't take any damage in the first place, and all of Diss' research was unnecessary.

GOOD TIMES

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Ok, moved the damage on Sven over to Murderson so now Murderson's, uh, meaty bits are also mortally wounded from being hit by the blast wave of... the same meaty bits, which... um..

So yeah, Shin, save separately for each of your unfortunate conditions I suppose.

PS Diss your retcon means you're not unconscious and we're waiting on your turn, the teleport would have put you in... K12.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Same initiative order, not dyin' doesn't make you any faster, oddly enough

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Very well, henceforth Shin's characters all get a +2 to attempts to kill themselves

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Ok, I noticed Rychord and Diss adding an extra 8 to their attack rolls for no obvious reason. Is that your weapon basic attack bonus? Because don't do that. That's just there if you want to make a basic attack for some godawful reason. There's no need to add it to anything. Rychord still hit anyway and Diss' half-damage miss was still enough to kill the badger so it worked out fine but in future please don't arbitrarily double your attack bonus because what the hell.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Did take some time to put the sheets together but now I've got the template it's fairly painless. Some of y'all are being awful melodramatic about a fight that, as it stands, pits three DPS types against one credible threat. Yeah, Murderson's probably fucked, but that's some step-on-a-rake shit.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Huh. I was gonna be a joykill here and say that you need him to reconstitute first, but being exploded only seems to impede his actions. So, rules-lawyerly, the, I guess, essential essence of Murderson is still in the space where he ended his last move: K12.

How ya doing, buddy?

Rychord, those rats need a 14 to hit you, no worries. Rats B and F are quite dead if that's at all relevant to Sven's turn. Probably ought to just give you the enemy HP outright in future so you'll know when your kill/bloody triggers can go off.

Originally Posted by Axelrod :grundlecheck: Axelrod

Hey Pang, since it appears you missed this can you drop me some knowledge re: the preceding?

Oh, right, sorry. Stone's Endurance worked fine, you took a bunch of damage anyway but soaking 10 is certainly worthwhile.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Rules specifically call out that somebody else can do it for you "if you're unable to take actions", so you're in the clear there.

Jam it back in, in the dark.