Awake(working title) - The Sign-up Thread

[Overcast]

In the end it seemed Don't Rest Your Head got the most positive response from the two ideas presented. So here we get our start.

Note: There will be a small delay between the sign up closing and the start of the RP due to the fact that the plot line typically should be built around the characters and their problems rather than just set to one big problem(which may be there anyway) and forcing the characters along it.

Glossary of Terms

• Protagonist: The most important character in a Conflict and the primary dice roller, all other players helping will only chip in their Discipline Dice.
• Conflict: A situation that requires dice be rolled to resolve the situation.
• Awake: This is you. You've stayed up for God knows how long and have somehow broken the regular cycle of sleeping and waking. With this break from common human health you have developed a strange power and access to a strange land known as The Mad City. You are still human...to a degree. Until you lose your mind one couldn't really notice anything wrong at all. Though you are different. Very different. And as The Mad City begins to haunt you eventually you may end up losing it all.
• The Mad City: The new world that the Awake are given access to. A dangerous place between here and somewhere else where dreams and memories can be bought and sold, stories printed can immediately come true, where no door seems to ever lead the same way twice, and for some reason a place you will frequent often.
• Asleep: Normal people. They inhabit The City Slumbering. They are all the people you have to deal with when you aren't dealing with terrible clockwork officers trying to arrest you for not walking in step with the city. They don't know about The Mad City. They don't know anything about living as one of the Awake. But sometimes there are things you just can't solve by staying in that mad world, and since you are still human these people will still bother you, let it be taxes, ex girlfriends, or really anything. Regular people still exist.
• The City Slumbering: The real world as we see it. No matter how often you spend in The Mad City all the problems of reality will remain, and more often then not you will have to find some time to deal with them. It is a burden all must face, but your detachment may make it one worse.
• The 13th Hour: In The Mad City time goes just one hour past midnight, and if you are in The Mad City when that hour strikes expect to be stuck for a while. During The 13th Hour all exits from The Mad City to The City Slumbering are sealed until it is over, making it a great time for Nightmares to go hunting, in fact some of them even get stronger during this time. If you happen to be outside The Mad City when this occurs then you will notice nothing at all, so that when you re-enter it will be 1 am, just as it should be.
• Locals: The relatively neutral members of The Mad City these folks are typically those who almost became Awake but never pulled it off, the Awake who resigned themselves to this position, or Awake who signed up for this service with a Nightmare. They are a bit like average workers in The City Slumbering, only they never stop doing their job. The end result leaves them shallow of personality, anything that doesn't have to do with their work worn away till they are very two dimensional. They are useful but can be dangerous, as said before some are in service to powerful Nightmares and some may even be Nightmares in disguise, waiting for a chance to spring.
• Nightmare: Natural enemy of the Awake, these are creatures of The Mad City who were once Awake but lost themselves in the city. Now they follow whatever agenda their madness decides is most important which more often than not may need the creation of more Nightmares. Which can only happen one way...
• Discipline Dice: All characters start with three, but if they earn a bit of Permanent Madness due to a Snap they will lose a discipline dice and have it replaced by Madness. Lose all three and the character becomes an Nightmare. They are the safest dice to roll for when they Dominate a scene it stays in relative control and will allow you to earn back Responses or remove a dice of Exhaustion.
• Exhaustion Dice: You start with none but can add one every roll and may gain one if you lose a roll or if Exhaustion Dominates, which causes the Conflict to seriously tire your character out inching him closer to. As they increase your Exhaustion Talent becomes more powerful. You can only have up to six, accidentally pass six and you will Crash.
• Madness Dice: You have the ability to use six of these at once, but can use as many as you find necessary. The more of them you use the better your Madness Talent becomes, but if it Dominates you lose control of the situation and are forced to check off a Response. Run out of Responses and you Snap.
• Pain Dice: The GM dice, this represents the difficulty of the current Conflict. If it Dominates then something bad happens, even if the Protagonist wins he will find it bittersweet. This also grants the GM a Coin of Despair.
• Degree: Or degree of success, it is the amount of successes you had on your roll. A dice earns a degree by rolling 1,2,or 3. If the player earns more successes than the GM he wins the conflict. If the player loses he will either lose a Response(of the GM's choice) or gain a die of Exhaustion on top of failing the conflict.
• Domination: Domination is decided by which die type had the die with the highest number, if they tie they go to the next highest number die, if by some miracle all the dice rolled ended up the same number or there are multiple ties all the way down to the lowest number then Discipline beats Madness; Madness beats Exhaustion; Exhaustion beats Pain. No matter what the result of the conflict is the dominance will occur, allowing certain situations to be awesome(success and Discipline), neutral(failure and Discipline), bad (failure and Exhaustion or Madness) terrible(failure and Pain) or bittersweet(success and Pain).
• Responses: Activated when Madness dominates and a character loses control of a situation and begins to panic. Essentially they will stop acting rationally and respond in either a fight or flight manner. Each character will have three responses, when all three are used up and Madness Dominates again a character will Snap.
• Snapping: When a character runs out of Responses they will Snap, gaining permanent madness in the form of one of their Discipline die becoming a madness die. Also their personal character will now be slightly colored by their madness talent. Also their madness talent may slip a little bit into every day situations.
• Crashing: When a character goes above 6 Exhaustion die they will fall asleep. Their Exhaustion die will be reset, their Responses will be reset, and they will sleep at LEAST one day, but could be out a while. While asleep they will become a magnet for Nightmares and will be unable to defend themselves thus relying on their team mates to keep their catatonic form safe. When they wake they will have only one discipline die and no access to their Talents until they stay up as long as they were asleep.
• Coin of Despair: One of these little creeps is given to the GM when Pain Dominates a scene. This allows the GM to "cast a shadow" over any roll he desires. What this means is he can either remove a rolled six from play, or add one to an active dice type(save for Pain). This cannot cause Pain to Dominate. Once spent the coin will change to a Coin of Hope.
• Coin of Hope: Gained when a Coin of Despair is used this allows a character to get a little break when he is not actively involved in a situation too stressful to take one. After being spent the characters will be able to restore a Response or remove a die of Exhaustion. It can also be used to remove Permanent Madness, the cost being 5 - their remaining Discipline die. Finally one coin can be spent to add a degree of success to any roll.
• Exhaustion Talent: An Exhaustion Talent is something any human can do but an Awake can now do VERY well. They can be just about any act humanly possible from breaking things to sex to shooting things to talking. It can be applied in two ways Minor and Major. Minor applications allow the player to automatically get at least a degree of success equal to their current amount of Exhaustion die. Major applications increase the degree of success by their current amount of Exhaustion die but require that the character take another die of Exhaustion.
• Madness Talent:A Madness Talent is an Awake's super ability. Something that no person should be able to do rationally. This can be ANYTHING, from cutting things with your mind, summoning ninjas, being able to hail a cab no matter where you are, turning into a giant lobster, the possibilities are literally only limited by your own imagination. It requires at least one Madness die to work, but the addition of more makes it more potent, which may be necessary to even use it to a minimum efficiency. In the end the player will say what they want to do with their talent and the GM will say how much that is going to cost to do and what sort of Pain they will be facing to try to pull it off.

Skeleton

Biography
Name: Pretty self explanatory.
Occupation: Are you a failed rock musician, a cut throat lawyer, a reckless thug, we all were something before we woke up...and to a degree we still are these things.
Past: Nobody stays up as long as you have without something seriously messing with you. Here we get to ask what it is and what your life was before you changed.
Appearance: What you look like, common items you keep with you, and how people in the normal world might interpret that as.
Personality: Beyond your appearance what are you really like?
Goals: Often tied in with your inspiration for waking up, your goals are what you personally know must be done to fix yourself. Even if you would never admit it out loud.

Responses
Fight: React recklessly, offensively. Lash out, physically, mentally, emotionally. Lose track of your friend and foe lines. Fight, without proper thought of what kind of shit it is getting you into.
Flight: React defensively. Panic, lock the doors, run away, hide behind stupid phrases like "I know you are but what am I?" Faint. The key is to try to get away to somewhere safe. Even if it is just your own mind.

Talents
Exhaustion Talent: One human thing that you are exceptional at. Which you will become strangely even better than before, particularly as your exhaustion grows.
Madness Talent: This is your ability. It can be anything from being followed by a random clan of ninja or basic teleportation. There are no notable limits other than your imagination.

[phil_]

Hey, Overcast, what exactly causes a dice-type to dominate a scene? Number of successes? Total value? Should I just acquire a copy of the book?

[Overcast]

Ahh I knew I forgot something, but I did include it in my last explaination of the dice in the interest thread.

Domination is decided by which die type had the die with the highest number, if they tie they go to the next highest number die, if by some miracle all the dice rolled ended up the same number or there are multiple ties all the way down to the lowest number then Discipline beats Madness; Madness beats Exhaustion; Exhaustion beats Pain.

Feel free to ask more questions if necessary.

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Overcast

Feel free to ask more questions if necessary.

How hard are you going to stomp on the person whose Madness Talent is some version of Unblockable Spear/Unbreakable Shield/Speedforce?

[Overcast]

It will be relative. I may force them to take a sliding scale, or force them to use 6 madness dice whenever they use it so they constantly risk their character just to have it(and even then the spear can miss or the shield will need to be maintained for every strike against it). Even worse I could take a character with the speed force and have them deal with a primarily psychological problem that their quickness is absolutely useless against.

[Dauntasa]

Abilities are sort of supposed to be on a sliding scale for this. When you use an ability, the more successes you get, the more powerful the effect. So if you have shield as your ability, and get one or two successes, then you get a decent shield that will block a few things. If you roll a whole bunch of successes, then you get your totally impenetrable shield. And then probably go insane.

EDIT: Hey, Overcast, do you have the supplement, Don't Lose Your Mind?

[Overcast]

Yes I do, hence why most of my examples are stolen rather than made. Though I should probably put on that little add on there that you can use some of your madness abilities as metaphors, thus making them more versatile. Like they did with weight control, which became more than just gravity but also influence.

[phil_]

Right, so, I got the books, I read them last night, then read them again on the six hour trip home. I think I'm ready to introduce a character that totally doesn't appear to fit the setting and you'll just have to trust me.

Biography
Name: Wesley Becker
Occupation: Former auto-mechanic
Past: Nothing really bad ever happened to Wesley as a kid; he won't be bringing up any horrible childhood trauma. He was just a quiet, self-isolated kid who stayed out of trouble. He went through school with decent grades, graduated a little above the median of his high school class, and went to college to study electrical engineering, since he thought it would let him invent things. It was a bad choice on his part, and the larger workload, along with the isolation of moving away from home with no idea how to make friends, lead him to drop out from stress after a few semesters. He returned home and got a job in a garage through a friend of his father. He worked there for several years and into his thirties, renting an apartment in the city. However, management changed, and, for whatever reason, Wesley was fired a few months ago. His unemployment checks are about to stop coming, and his savings... well, he made some poor investments. With no current job prospects, things look bad.
Appearance: Wesley has short, dark hair and keeps his face smooth. His face is a little doughy, giving him a childish, unreliable appearance. He used to wear nothing but his work uniforms (a blue, button-up shirt with coarse material and black slacks), and continues to do so, since he rarely leaves his house and it's what he has in his closet. He tends to keep a small screwdriver and a pen in his shirt pocket, and a small keychain of a popular harvest god in his pocket.
Personality: Wesley is horribly shy. He's the type that will suffer an awkward silence rather than try to break it. This is largely due to an unwarranted self-loathing that he keeps bottled inside. Nothing he ever says could be interesting, no one would ever like him, etc. Of course, it's bottled up because no one would care, obviously. Until recently, every night was an endurance test; how long could he keep flinging hate at himself before sleep caught up with him? Since he lost his job, sleep hasn't caught up with him again. However, Wesley finds some solace: Japanese cartoons. He's a disgusting Japanophile, and his apartment is filled with figurines, model kits, posters, DVDs he never watches because he just bought them to support the industry; the whole nine-yards. He even has a kotatsu and sleeps on a futon. Only one corner of his apartment doesn't look like Comiket threw up on it, and that's his workbench. Taking apart watches, putting them back together, building small motors and useless gizmos; it's very engaging and takes his mind off of his endless fount of self-hate for a while.

As for why he hates himself, the best answer is because he hates people who hate themselves.
Goals: Wesley wants, above all things, to not hate himself. He wants to be a normal person, instead of an unemployed thirty-somthing who's never even hugged a girl besides his mom or made a single friend. But, to not hate himself, he feels like he needs to do something so amazing that he can forgive himself for the sin of wasting his life hating himself. It's a rather difficult circle to break.

Responses
One Fight Two Flight

Talents
Exhaustion Talent: Tinkering. Through his work as a mechanic, as well as his training as an electrical engineer, building RC planes and such, and general interest in mechanical things (a guy can have two hobbies), Wesley was familiar with a variety of mechanisms and gizmos. After becoming Awake, it's like he has schematics of almost anything he's ever built in his head. When he's really tired, sometimes the schematics of things he's never seen before also bubble up. He can fix just about anything with the proper tools and enough effort, and almost as often even without the proper tools.
Madness Talent: Sakura: It started shortly after he stopped sleeping. He would lay down, and in the middle of a soulful internal monologue about what a horrible person he was and how he should just kill himself in the morning, he'd almost hear something. Eventually, it was like someone was calling his name. Then, "I love you, Wesley."

Wesley's isolation from the world and obsession with 2D has become real in the form of an illusory "waifu" by the name of Sakura (His madness wasn't very creative in that department). She looks straight out of an anime, giant bug-eyes, pink hair, and all, which is pretty gross to most people. She's beautiful to Wesley, though. Did I mention she's also a robot? A robot made of madness? With MADNESS BEAMs and INSANITY DRILLs? She's not always there, but she's there when he thinks about it, and he "knows" that she's a figment of his imagination ("Figment of his imagination" as in "symptom of madness"). Wesley also knows that he's never going to become the man he wants to be with it around, but, when monsters are chasing you and an imaginary woman is fighting to protect you, it's hard not to slip just a bit into thinking, "Maybe being crazy isn't so bad."

In "What can this do?" terms, Wesley can summon a killer robot to crush his enemies with beams, drills, swords, flame throwers, horrifying bioweapons; all that jazz. The more he gives into madness, the stronger her love grows and the stronger her weapons and abilities become.

---

So, yeah, it's a little cutesy right now. It'll be all guts and blood and brains quickly enough, however. Like I said, trust me.

Also, should we be giving you a "What Just Happened to You?" It sorta fits into Past here, but I thought I'd check.

[Overcast]

Yeah basically every part of the skeleton is a part of the original character sheet so I wanted the count for Fight or Flight.

Meanwhile, I was debating with myself if I should have everyone hold onto the "What just happened to you?" until we get in game, for a flash back or first post depending on what you want to do. Since I'm unsure whether or not people will be able to put it down as dramatically here on the character sheet.

After all it is the first huge thing your character does as an Awake. So if I have any second opinions I'd like to hear it.

The character looks good though, it may seem cutesy right now but I can definitely see some dark potential as the madness takes over. If it takes over. Approved.

[phil_]

Hey, Overcast, are our dudes all from the same city in the real world, or are we from different places in The City Slumbering?