I'd like to create a setting based on the same aesthetics as Warframe (sexy far-future space ninjas in symbiote armor) without the retarded actual Warframe lore.
How would you do this?
>>47280503
Uh, make up some lore for a sci fi setting where the players are using power armor?
>>47280503
Do your own homework or at least tell us what you want to chance.
What's wrong with the Warframe fluff exactly?
>>47280503
I would >>47241376
I don't dislike the core Warframe setting, but I also think it'd take some adaptation to work properly as an RPG. IMO, there's two directions you could take it.
A more technology, planning focused route using a system like Shadowrun or Eclipse Phase, focusing on planning, infiltration and more authentic ninja style work, with combat as a means to an end, used pragmatically.
Or my preferred approach (entirely due to innate biases, I don't think either is innately superior), using Warframe as the basis for high flying space Wuxia, with powerful Tenno fighting across the stars for their ideals, causes and beliefs, unraveling secrets and dueling with mighty foes, closer to ninja cinema than ninja reality. I tried to run this a while ago but I had to put the idea on hiatus, but I intended to run it in Legends of the Wulin. The Second Dream fluff has changed my ideas on how it'd work slightly, but it mostly stayed the same.
>>47280503
You're going to need to give more specifics about what you're trying to do, OP. Are you trying to emulate a sci-fi culture with asian themes and philosophy? Or is it less about the philosophy and more about the high tech nano-suits?
>>47281149
Also, tell us what parts of the lore you find retarded so we know what not to put in.
>>47280503
Infinity?
>>47280503
One of the terms I've heard used to describe Warframe's setting is "broad strokes".
Similar to how things were in Mass Effect 1, Pitch Black, or Dark Souls, the audience only gets to see small snippets of the universe, and the rest is left sort of open ended. Not everything about the world/history is explained, some events and topics are alluded to but not completely elaborated upon, and generally the setting maintains a perpetual state of mystery and expansiveness. The imagination takes over and fills in the gaps in knowledge, and that stuff will inevitably be more interesting than whatever you were actually going to put in there.
Basically, go for themes and characters above facts and history.
>>47281053
Pretty much this. Just refluff Eclipse Phase for it
>>47280503
>symbiotes
Ahah, someone hasn't been doing their quests.
>>47280503
How about instead of space ninjas, it was space mongols?
>>47280503
Another zentai fetish thread, awesome.
>>47281276
How about space langobards?
Damn, Warframe models are so fucking hnnngh
>>47280825
Most people who aren't already too invested to back out have been disillusioned with Warframe ever since they retconned half the lore to get rid of the 'symbiote armour' element and make the player a character a shota/loli stuck in a pod controlling the suits remotely. It was effectively purposeless, came completely out of the blue and made so many old codex entries suddenly make no sense or read very differently, and the only real reason I can think of for it is to try and appeal to a younger crowd who really have no place playing that game to begin with.
As for how to do it yourself OP, iunno, I always liked the original Dark Sector/early WF approach where the wearers are victims of some biomechanical infection that causes rapid mutation, and the suits are a way of slowing and controlling the process. Beyond that, look at things Kamen Rider, Guyver, even Spidey's symbiote arcs. There's plenty to work with.
>>47281276
>mongols
>using the douli + kabuto horn for the hat shape
I don't think you know how a Mongol costume is supposed to be like.
>>47281583
No, I know, but it was the closest pic i had and it was vaguely warframey
>>47281554
Pretty much this. The "twist" was just retarded, neither clever nor funny
>>47281477
With some notable exceptions.
>>47281986
>Not wanting some of that sweet healslut lobster booty
Get a load of this faggot.
>>47282232
>booty
You mean the crabtail?
>>47281889
I'd say it was a pretty necessary development if the devs want to make any more story-heavy content in the future.
Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists. When they die, they just respawn, when they're not needed they can be exchanged for different 'frames. There's no stakes, no personal or emotional focus.
Operators fix those things. They give players a central avatar amidst a sea of interchangeable weapons and warframes, and they give the story writers a central narrative focal point. Even back when Warframes were just regarded as armor for an elusive ninja-knight, that ninja-knight already basically was the Operator. The concept was already there, people just assumed that they were inside armor instead of the Warframe being a separate entity.
And I'd say the two being dinstinct entities also opens up interesting narrative possibilities imo. The two are useless without each other. Lots of potential for drama when the two are separated and need to reunite to kick the ass of whoever separated them. Also opens up scenarios in which the Operator may want something that's bad for the Warframes, or the Warframes are tempted into defying their Operators.
Plus Warframe's already so anime that another pinch of NGE didn't really change THAT much. At least Operators being children brings their physical reliance on Warframes in the field better across.
>>47280503
Just copy and reflavour Evangelion, just like warframe devs did.
>>47281276
>Mfw greater Finland begins its military campaign to become an interstellar empire.
>>47281276
So, Klingons?
>>47280503
Ok first off: reskinning Eclipse Phase is pretty much the worst thing you can do. The system is crap, and if you subtract out the setting then you have nothing left worth saving.
What you want is a good core system like Fate, GURPS, or savage worlds. Something built with customization in mind.
Once you make that jump, you then have supers literally reskinned with the suits.
Sounds like a cool setting, anon. Tell us more. I've wanted to see a better take on the warframe concept for a while.
>>47282324
GURPS did have an article about Biomecha suits, which would be a good start.
>>47282285
>Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists.
Protagonists don't need awesome character backstory because the protagonist is you.
>>47282285
But... that's exactly my point. You already WERE the Operator, everything you're saying could ALREADY have been done without rewriting two games' worth of lore for the minimal emotional payoff that comes with seeing their faces.
They could have done much the same thing *without* tearing apart the already fragile lore and it'd have worked just as well, it'd have made more sense and it wouldn't have resulted in a laughing stock.
It doesn't even make fucking sense, we're supposed to hate Alad V for his experimentation, then we find out the suits were empty the entire time anyway. Nobody was tortured, nobody was harmed. Or what about all the codex entries that just make no sense any more?
It's hard to give a shit about the story AT ALL now, because the stakes have been removed completely. We're just asshole kids destroying the only human civilisations left. Tenno seemed sketchy in general beforehand, but now? Now we're literally committing genocide against every human faction worth noting, just because 'mom said so', when we have no stake in the conflict ourselves whatsoever.
Face it, they fucked up. There's no reason to feel invested at all in the story any more - we're villains with no real motive and all the interesting stuff about Tenno, IE the assumption that they were Technocyte infectees with a heart pretty much, is all gone.
>
Warframes are faceless, emotionless, disposable Lotus mooks. Which is cool in its own right, but it makes for terrible protagonists. When they die, they just respawn, when they're not needed they can be exchanged for different 'frames. There's no stakes, no personal or emotional focus.
To summarise, NONE OF THIS HAS CHANGED. IT'S /WORSE/ NOW.
>>47282285
The only thing I care about is that I went from a badass space ninja lady to a stupid-looking loli, then dropped the game and never looked back.
>>47282285
Yes, because being told your character you thought you were playing doesn't exist and it was some 11 year old kid in a pod two dozen light years away really helps with establishing a 'personal, emotional focus'.
No, fuck you, you literally just killed my character and undid literally untold hours of storytelling, both personal roleplay and canon, just to attract more kids to waste money on the in-game store.
That could not be further from providing stakes and a personal motivation.
>>47282583
This. Your operator doesn't look or act cool, they act like an emotionally stunted loli/shota hooked up to a simulator and NOBODY WANTS TO SELF INSERT AS THAT.
>>47282545
>for the minimal emotional payoff that comes with seeing their faces.
Wait, wat. Warframes are just remote controlled drones now and we have player avatars with faces?
>>47282868
yeah, and They're pre teen children
alsolotus is a sentient, she was sent by her race to wipe out the orokin but decided to stay and look after the tenno after the destruction of human civilisation
>>47282409
Oh shit this is perfect.
I'm cooking up a setting right now based on the Power Armor CYOA. The idea is to be space operatic, but not in the 40k/Star Wars tradition.
So the pods fall, and when the dust clears, approximately one pod for every million people has fallen (7,000 total). People fall into one of three categories. The first people to get converted were just random people. Then the military/police/rescue/scientific agencies got a handle on what was happening, and so the second third were first responders who got podded while attempting to manage the emergency. The third group were the rich, powerful, and/or high-status, who wanted to be bioconverted for instant youth and superpowers and so entered the pods on purpose.
If you're converted, then after a few days semiconscious in the force-shielded pod, you emerge in perfect health, your youth restored, wearing a biosuit similar to a warframe. The pod has another component that moves to an isolated area and covertly builds or converts a suitable vehicle unto a transforming mecha bonded to you.
People don't know how to use their suits to maximum advantage at first. So for the first few months, they don't even know how to take the helmet off. The pod itself bases the warframe and mecha it designs on the podded person's personality and experiences.
It's designed to be maximum awesome, and maybe a little fetishy. It genuflects moderately towards science but doesn't get sand in its vagina about it.
>>47282971
Man, I'm glad I quit after the Cryo op.
>>47282971
Yes yes yes, it sounds very stupid.
But since everyone agrees that it sucks, and OP wanted to create an RPG with different fluff so that it DIDN'T suck, then can we get back on track and try to make an awesome setting / system?
First off, the players are normal humans (or biomodded from normal humans). Second, the armor really is just armor, not remotely operated robots.
>>47282974
>maybe a little fetishy
Why fetishy? I'm genuinely curious.
>>47283040
The idea doesn't HAVE to be fetishy. But if you want it to be like that, then it's basically fit girls (and guys) in latex ninja suits. Often with performance-enhancing biomods that make them extra hot as a side effect.
In the early days after the Podfall, people didn't have full control of their suits. The secret of even taking them off wasn't revealed for almost a year. So in the latex bondage community there's a whole forced latex thing that this taps into.
Finally, part of the point of a suit like this is to provide life support. That means... ummm... places where the suit interfaces with the wearer's biology to manage air, water, food, and waste recycling.
Like I said, it doesn't have to be fetishy. You could easily write any or all of this to be as sexless as a Womyn's Studies Department. Or you could go full-on magical realm and emphasize the sex.
My own preference is just a taste of sexiness. Just enough that a GM who wants to run his sexitimes campaign has something to start with, but someone who wants it to be totally Southern Baptist about it can do it, too.
>>47283040
A little like vampire fiction. Not necessarily sexy, not necessarily porn. Usually there's some fan service but doesn't go further than that.
>>47283447
No no no, don't stop man. I love this shit both in the fluff and fetish department.
>>47283510
I'm waiting to hear what OP thinks. Hell, I'm starting with a CYOA, so maybe we've started an old-fashioned /tg/-creates-a-setting thread.
>>47282974
>If you're converted, then after a few days semiconscious in the force-shielded pod, you emerge in perfect health, your youth restored, wearing a biosuit similar to a warframe.
This is interesting to me. What sort of range to this are we talking? Does it fully restore youth? Does it cure chronic diseases, disfigurement, what? How does it decide what perfect health is?
>>47280503
Steal a system that's already in place, and just change the setting? Or, there's plenty of systems out there that are bare bones for constructing your own works around it.
For example, there's at least 3 mass effect homebrews out there. Grab one. Omnitool is now a kitana. Adept force push is now mags ability. The reapers are the tech fucks on venus or whatever.
Make life easier on yourself and limit the frames pcs can choose. Mold them aroud other classes such as tank (excalibur) and so on. Pulled this out of my ass in 5 minutes. Quit being lazy
Been a long time since I've played warframe.
>>47283447
>>47282974
OP here.
Yep I love this. Go for it man, let's make this a thing.
>>47282644
>Roleplaying in an MMO
Despite my love of tabletop, I think this is fucking retarded.
>>47280825
Originally it was assumed that it was all Dark Sect0r.
You are a human that has been infected with the Technocyte virus. A virus that can infect metal as well as flesh.
You are then wrapped up in crazy space metal and, on the whole, manifest space magic.
So each Warframe has a themed superhero powerset.
The Warframe fluff diverges a bit, where the Technocyte is now a failed weapon created by the Orokin.
Years and years ago, you were the elite fighting force for the Orokin, a technologically advanced, possibly alien, galactic empire.
Then... something happened.
Something caused their pristine white-and-gold cities to fall derelict, abandoned by naught but the security mainframe or overrun by Technocyte creatures.
You, Tenno, have awoken from cryosleep in a new era. You remember very little, not even how or why you entered it in the first place.
The militaristic Grineer seek conquest of the solar system, grinding planets to feed their war machine. They are ruled by the brutal and swift Twin Queens and manufacture their own race in the toxic womb of the cloning vats, a process that leaves them more broken and closer to death with each generation.
The Corpus is a catch-all term for the merchantile faction, made up of individually-interested companies and powerhouses, headed by a board of the richest and manned by conscripts that are indoctrinated at temples on Neptune. Their lives are long, a couple hundred years, and to them profit is more than just a goal.
At odds to all are the Infested: the hivemind of the the Technocyte plague. Made up of horrible mutated infected bodies, they fester in abandoned remote stations before crashing in waves upon the system.
>>47283741
>tank (excalibur)
ha.
>>47281239
Nobody gives a fuck about that stupid twist.
Seriously, if they're just remote piloted drones, why don't they just find a way to jam the signal and make all 10-hoes useless?
>>47284325
Whoops, the Corpus also make heavy use of 'combat proxies,' or fighting robots, and exclusively use energy weapons.
The Grineer are heavily into medical cybernetics, to offset degenerated limbs from cloning, and use conventional weaponry.
There is also 'The Stalker,' who appears to be a Tenno but comes after you in revenge for high profile targets you've killed, apparently seeking vengence for your misuse of your powers.
This is a good starting point, the following fluff is more divisive.
The Grineer are the bad guys. They crush and subjugate without mercy or honor.
The Corpus are neutral and can be reasoned with.
There are human colonies scattered and hidden throughout the solar system. You will occasionally rescue captured humans.
[ACTUAL SPOILER]: The big twist is that the 'Tenno' isn't the player, but a kid that was irradiated by space stuff and thrown into a potato where you control the warframes, which are robots.
Several points contradict those last points,
Popularly:
Alad V was a member of the Corpus board until he discovered a stash of warframe cryopods which he cannibalized into a new line of combat proxies. Then he infected himself with the Technocyte, stole more 'frames, and has been a general asshole. Also you pronounce the 'V' like "vee," it's not a 'the fifth.'
General Sargas Ruk is a high ranking Grineer officer. Places a high value on honor. He helped the Tenno fight Alad's forces to recover the warframes the first time. He knows you're a highly disciplined and honorable fighting force and respects that.
>>47283956
Ok so here's what I'm thinking as game rules. I'm still reading that GURPS article but it looks like exactly what I need. So here we go in GURPS terms. Convert to your favorite system as needed.
Step 1: Remove all Disadvantages and penalties due to the physical effects of age, disease, and injury. This includes genetic disorders. Any Disadvantages for build (skinny/fat/dwarfism/gigantism) are removed, though you can optionally still appear thin/fat/short/tall. Your metabolic age is late teens/early 20's, but you may choose any apparent age you'd like.
Step 2: Add the following advantages: Strength +2 (lift/striking only), Health +2, Dex +1, a 20 point neural upgrade package (choose from social, coordination, or analytical), 4 points of appearance*, Unaging, Fit, Regeneration (Slow, Radiation Only), No Degeneration due to Zero Gee, Sanitized Metabolism, and Acceleration Tolerance. Plus three key implants: Implant Computer, Biosuit Interface, and Exotic Equipment Training (your mecha). 100 points total.
Then comes the neural interface and psychoprogramming. This consists of the 25 point Advantage in the pdf the anon linked above, a base TL of 10, and Combat Reflexes. That's 50 more points.
You can buy further bio-upgrades later.
* Appearance comes in levels and at first glance it's hard to notice that it provides a average of a +1 reaction bonus per 4 points.
>>47283956
Step 3: Add your suit. This counts as Signature Gear. All suits provide protection in vacuum and hostile environments, plus recycled life support. All run on power cells that can be recharged from either house current or your mecha. You can't take one off without the right software commands, which in the setting aren't discovered until about a year after Podfall.
Each suit is uniquely fitted to a particular individual, who HAS to have the biomods in the last post. Suits regenerate slowly as long as they aren't destroyed outright and have access to power and materials. Cutting someone out of a suit that hasn't been properly disengaged will usually kill them unless you're an expert medtech that knows what he's doing. Every suit looks different, again suited to the wearer's personality/physique/self-perception.
Light suits provide the fewest capacity for weapons/armor/gizmos, but are lightweight enough that you can move around easily even if out of power, and are extremely fast/agile/stealthy when powered up. They're skintight bodysuits, similar to what girls usually wear in sci fi.
Medium suits are more like the armored suits that you see men in sci fi wear. They're stronger, bulkier, slower, and carry more weapons and armor.
Heavy suits are as slow as normal humans and too heavy to go in some of the places normal humans can. If power runs out, you can pop it open, but otherwise you're immobile (if you can't open your suit, then you'd better hope someone arrives with a power cord before you die). OTOH, they're armed to the teeth, very well protected, and crammed with useful gizmos.
Step 4: Design your vehicle.
Pick a vehicle appropriate to your personality. Its mecha mode will have similar overall size. You can control your own mecha without penalty. Vehicle mode requires the drive skill.
You can hack someone else's mecha. If you have the biomods you can pilot it at a penalty. Without the mods, you can drive the vehicle mode and that's it.
>>47284598
Isn't Ruk also the guy that accuses you of being greedy honor-less mercenaries when you fight him? And we have no clue what Alad V's doing. We cured him of the virus and then he helped us in exchange for a favor which he then called in to help get the Stalker off his ass. No one knows what the fuck is up with him anymore.
>>47282699
speak for yourself
>>47283578
OK so the pod range is about 20 feet (6 meters) with a clear line of sight. Each pod is a little different, but all wait for the first biocompatible human to show up. Children before puberty are ignored, as are animals and people who have already been Podded. A few Transformed people have collected pods and hid them in remote locations so they can convert friends, allies, and family later.
When it detects you, a pod will pull you back into the shell. Depending on the pod, it might use robot tentacles, a forcefield/tractor beam thingy, or send out small drones to drag you back. If you can get to 30 feet, it'll abandon attempts to convert you and grab anyone appropriate within 30 feet; if nobody's in range, it seals back up and goes back to waiting.
If you're pulled inside, the pod seals, you're thrown into a semiconscious dreamlike state as transformation begins. The pod itself is armored and protected by a strong force field. If the pod is destroyed or opened prior to completion, the occupant dies. The pod probes your instincts, experiences, and aspirations and designs a mech and suit to match your personality (though its tastes can be... eclectic).
Youth is fully restored and then some. Limbs regenerated, even genetic diseases are cured. "Perfect Health" is a GM decision but basically anything that he wants will be cured. Tattoos, scars, piercings, tooth fillings, and prosthetics of all kinds are removed.
Before anyone asks... if you have gender dysphoria, it's up to the player whether the character gets a perfect sex change (including chromosomes) or if you're neurology is modified to match your body's natural gender.
Grooming decisions like hair correspond to the wearer's standard of beauty and self-image. In some cultures/genders, this could mean elimination of some or all body hair. Or growth of an appropriately-groomed beard. I consider it wrapped up with "Sanitized Metabolism" because I just thought of it now.
>>47283956
Mecha over about 2 tons can field a fusion reactor. This provides plenty of power for operations, indefinitely, and can recharge biosuits (the pilot and/or anyone else who plugs in). Smaller mecha like passenger cars and motorcycles have high-density power cells. These need to be recharged, which means teaming up with a larger, more powerful mecha. Or having regular access to house current, which takes much longer to recharge.
The vehicle mode only looks cosmetically like a vehicle. It's actually highly advanced, highly miniaturized technology. Take a car or motorcycle, for example. The motors and many of the power cells are in the wheel hubs. That leaves most of the housing for the engines and structure for limbs and armor for the wearer.
Specialized miniature nano-factories construct ammunition and certain spare parts. So the mecha can usually self-repair, given time and assuming the structural damage isn't too bad. Since the cockpit includes a medical pod, this applies to the pilot as well, if he can get aboard. The pilot can trace the location of his mecha, at least when it's within a few dozen miles. If the pilot dies, his biosuit self-destructs and his mecha goes dormant until hacked. If the mechs is destroyed, the pilot can operate from his biosuit without it.
>>47286241
>>47285177
>>47284913
>>47284705
Interesting!
>>47284964
Sometimes his line sympathizes with how we must be hunting for scraps if we're coming after him.
Salad's just a cunt that the dev's are trying to push as an ally because their plan was for the Grineer to be Always Chaotic Evil. And for the players to somehow get that despite never being shown outside of one, maybe two individuals.
Seriously. Alad steals Valk, we were supposed to side with him as the lesser of two evils. Infects Mesa, oh whatever, we'll just help him in five minutes. Even what you just said: cure him, use his help, and then WE owe HIM a favor?
And he's also keeping the whole 'cure for the techocyte virus' thing a secret, too.
>>47284964
>>47287070
What the fuck is with the Stalker anyway? I remember years ago there were hints that suggested he was just a manifestation of the greed each Tenno feels for their genocide/murder/etc, and suggesting he was just in your head.
Then other NPCs started interacting with him, and apparently he's huge in the recent missions now?
>>47287215
Fucking phone, greed should be guilt.
>>47286241
>>47285177
>>47284913
>>47284705
Looks good to me. Shall we talk fluff?
>>47287215
Do you want the spoiler version, or non spoiler version?
Stalker had an event with a bunch of 'acolytes' a while ago. I'm sure there wasn't any real plot happening there.
This >>47287356 is from his codex scan.
>>47286897
>>47287399
Yes, but lol my internet died. I have some ideas that won't fit on a cell keypad. Let's keep the thread pumping, and by all means do other people have ideas to add to this? don't let the thread die while I wait to get back!
If people want to talk about the vidya, they should go to /v/ for that. This is for building an RPG setting based on PA similar to warframes.
>>47288430
I'm waiting to hear what you have to say before I say anything.
>>47287399
>>47288430
That's his personal setting thing though, isn't it?
Not what OP's doing?
>>47288841
OP wants a setting with bio-power armor similar to warframes, but different setting. I made a proposal off the top of my head because I think the idea is cool. OP agreed that he likes it , and wanted more. So I'm coming up with stuff.
OP is like me. He loves the original warframes idea, but doesn't like the gameworld.
This is all of the top of my head, so jump in with ideas.
I'm working on a game for that.
>>47280503
>sexy far-future space ninjas in symbiote armor
>without the retarded actual Warframe lore
These two are mutually exclusive.
>>47282644
>personal roleplay
Found your problem.
>>47281554
why lolis/shotas?
This thread is once again proof that, despite the good intentions and high amounts of effort, Koreans will inevitably ruin any MMO they make.
I'm looking at you, Black Desert
>>47289647
Spoiler:
Also plot that nobody likes.
Orokin era: there was a shipment of women/children that went through the !Warp. Most of them died, but a pile of kids was left over.
The Orokin recovered the ship YEARS later, went exploring and found a bunch of kids. One of the officers broke quarantine because kids and ended up horribly disfigured.
Those kids, who were much older than kids at that point, became the Tenno.
The officer gotthrown in a blenderexecuted because the Orokin aren't good people.
Sidenote,
The Grineer were working class practically slaves of the Orokin, and the Corpus started as smugglers.
It's not *clear,* but the Orokin-era Grineer might have been clones, too.
>>47281554
>came completely out of the blue and made so many old codex entries suddenly make no sense or read very differently,
Not really? I always thought the warframes weren't us. Its why the infested get so confused about the player killing them. They are just controlled technocyte.
>>47290549
>I always thought the warframes weren't us.
They sure as hell weren't remote controlled empty shells either.
>>47280503
SLA industries.
>>47289133
says 15 yr old who's never heard of anything else.
An anon above linked a pdf with a whole list of symbiote armor fictional sources. All you had to do was click and learn. It's like saying cyberpunk was invented with the Matrix. It's embarrassing just to read it.
>>47287399
The Integrationist seed ship drifted on the outskirts of the solar system. Encased in four and a half million years worth of ice, its receiver array dangled limply from what was now nothing more than one more comet in the Oort cloud. Its power systems barely ticked over, the controlling AI waited patiently, as it had been commanded to do an epoch before.
A couple maintenance bots crawled over the surface of the ice. Clearing the dish of ice was a chore done every few decades, along with clearing the ice tunnel that lead from the hangar bay to the surface. The rest of the time, the bots worked their way through an endless litany of maintenance. Every few thousand years, the routine was punctuated with a major overhaul. Otherwise, quiet. The ship lacked any other orders, and was too badly damaged to have returned for repair or reassignment. So it waited, as it had for many times longer than the civilization which had created it.
The battle with the Synthesist cruiser had left the seedship physically damaged but still serviceable. However, a deadly payload of nanorecursive weapons had shattered the ship's AI. Memory and cognitive systems suffered damage that the AI could no longer completely comprehend, much less repair. What could be fixed had been fixed. What could be reconstructed had been reconstructed. With the engines disabled, the seedship couldn't hope to find colonies to convert. So it waited. Perhaps suitable candidates would establish a colony in this system. It had at least three conventionally habitable worlds, and one suitable for its own builders. The odds were poor, but the War had ebbed and flowed for thousands of years. Waiting was all it could do.
And, on this day, its waiting was at long last rewarded. Primitive radio signals, faint but clear. The seedship began an immediate overhaul and prepared to fully activate. It wouldn't be long now.
>>47289961
What does Korea have to do with a Canadian game?
>>47291685
What is the motivation for why the pods work on humans?
>>47291716
Its the Chinese actually.
DE sold their assholes to a Chinese investor so they get to make decisions for them now.
Also they still have micro-transactions despite having a sugar daddy.
>>47291685
Sure enough, it was only a scant decade later that the first visual signals began to arrive. Like the audio, it was easily decoded. But here the AI faced a conundrum.
Its knowledge of biochemistry had been among the libraries destroyed in the battle. It had long since recreated several sciences of biochemistry based on what records were left and extrapolation from its scientific knowledge in other fields. But it could no longer positively identify offshoots and colonies of the Race. Complicating this was the fact that thousands of divergent species had been created over the millennia. Like any species, the Race had long since fractured into dozens of clades, castes, and variants. The definition had to be loose to begin with, and the AI lacked the databanks to enforce even that hazy definition.
On the other hand, its mission was critical. Any primitive colony could and usually would quickly progress from the development of radio to star travel. It could happen as quickly as a few decades. Any in the meantime, the other sciences would progress. If the AI didn't move quickly, a Race colony could spontaneously develop Synthesism, or some other divergent heresy. Or, at least, develop defenses that would make the seedship's job risky or impossible. Ultimately, the seedship's job was to ensure that Integrationism was firmly planted, for the good of all.
>>47281554
It didn't really. They'd be hinting at the Warframes being controlled by children, or energy beings as some thought, as far back as Ember Primes release. It was never going to be armor, except maybe in really early stages when it was a Dark Sector spinoff.
>>47290760
They aren't really empty. They are more like infested perfected. They can even move on their own when not controlled. I figured thats what the rhino prime codex entry was. A randomly pissed off newly made rhino. Your warframe moved on its own in second dream too right at the end.
>>47291869
The AI used what clues it had. The planet was right. That was good news; intelligent life on thin-atmosphere, high temperature rock worlds was rare. What it could make of the audio sounded very strange, but it was in generally the right frequencies. The differences had been enough that the seedship procrastinated.
The video settled it. Bipedal, modified forelimbs used as tool manipulators, paired visual receptors on top. The proportions were all wrong, the coloration garish, the bodies covered in strange fibers and protrusions. But the general plan was right. These beings didn't look much like the ones who had built it, but the species of the Race often looked highly alien to one another. Thousands of years of genetic and cultural tinkering could make related beings look monstrous indeed to one another. Normally, a biochemical assay would reveal the truth, but that data was gone. The AI was as sure as it could be.
Probes were launched immediately. Samples would need to be brought back. The seedship had no practical bioscience data-- that had all been wiped. It would have to be reconstructed from experimentation and field assays. But it balanced its hunger for data; it had a limited supply of nanofabricators. It living mind might have thought to build factories to build more... but such a mind would not have patiently whiled away the epochs.
It took the probes nearly a decade to arrive, just in time to watch a global war unfold. This was to be expected; the Race was as aggressive as any intelligent life. Brief global wars at first and then, in fits and starts, they would grow into full maturity and constant warfare. It happened to every intelligent species.
>>47291783
I'd like to say that them selling out is why Warframe is as it is, but the sadder truth is that it's due to the sheer incompetence of their creative leads (in Steve Sinclair's case, this has been documented when DE were working on that recent Star Trek game).
>>47292103
Oh definitely. Warframe is a text book list of what to not fucking do to run an online game. From balancing, bug fixes, to simple customer relations, its just a sad horrible mess. That's not here nor there though.
>>47292040
Covert labs were constructed in the shallow ocean depths. Native flora, fauna, and of course the intelligent life were studied. Samples were taken. Eventually, a stasis technology was developed, and samples sent back to the seedship for further analysis. The AI raced against the clock to fill out its empty bioscience libraries.
The more it knew, the greater its suspicions should have grown. But all intelligence, natural and artificial, was essentially heuristic in nature. Confirmation bias isn't a merely human foible. The planet was right, the basic body plan was right. Perhaps the basic biochemistry and genomics had been re-engineered by the Race. Four and a half million years is a long time.
But it raced against the clock. The primitives had ended their war with nuclear arms. They were quarreling now over some point of economic theory that to the AI was transparently obvious. Nevertheless, the fact of the conflict was driving advances. The first samples were arriving in the Oort cloud just in time for the first humans to travel in space. Time was running out. The labs were dismantled; the locals were developing technology that might detect them. Secrecy and surprise were paramount.
The data was sufficient. The primitives' genome had immense headroom for improvement. The neuroplasticity was excellent, fertile ground for Integrationism. The seedship formulated its plans and began spending its nanofabricators prolifically building conversion pods. It would not stop until its tanks were exhausted.
Shortly before the pods were deployed, the AI began picking up video transmissions that it could scarcely believe. Could these primitives be developing radical Integrationism on their own? The AI quickly adjusted the programs to suit what it guessed the local culture might value, but the time had come. The pods were launched. In a couple dozen years: Podfall.
>>47292487
OK so that's the backstory. Pods are designed to advance the cause of Integrationism. To an Integrationist, they are one of the two basic paths of Transhumanist apotheosis. Ultimately, it comes down to a choice: advance the living being though biotech and cybernetics into some (unstated) perfect final state.
The alternative is synthesism: creation of end-state beings that replace your own species: artificial races, and especially robots/AI. Of course, the Integrationists use genetic engineering and AIs of their own. This is ok for intricate doctrinal reasons that make zero sense if you're not one of the belligerents in this ancient conflict.
Most alien civilizations develop over millions of years in Europa-style moons. Intelligent seafood, basically. Every few million years, one of those races beats the odds and invents space travel. They then explore and colonize the galaxy, often leading to other advanced races they discover inventing the technology as well. Civilization flourishes, then war, and then the races either advance to some higher plane or go extinct.
Every once in a very rare while, life develops on one of the rocky, airy worlds inside what we call the Goldilocks Zone. Such races inevitably develop space travel and are an every-few-million-years disruption to the normal cycle of life. The Race looked vaguely like Humans, hence the AI's confusion.
>>47292286
How exactly did Warframe get run into the ground? I still see it marketed all over the place, and there's not many games out there with its style.
>>47292860
Seedships are designed to find primitive colonies and transform them into Integrationist strongholds. That means two things. First, locking them into the integrationist technology tree by advancing them just far enough that integrationism is always an easier solution to any given problem than backtracking and inventing synthesist technologies. (This is called a competency trap.)
The second part is converting their ideology, culture, and institutions. This is very hard to do, and big changes are only possible in a crisis. So the idea is to engineer a massive social upheaval, a partial social collapse. When society puts itself together, if the AI did its job, the winners will be the ones who adopted Integrationism most fervently.
That's where the pods, battlesuits, and transforming mecha come in. It HAS to work this way. Just building robots would be rank heresy and utterly defeat the purpose. The AI itself might even suicide once it's convinced it's purpose is fulfilled, just to keep AI tech out of the hands of its targets.
The idea is that throwing this supertech into the hands of primitives, more or less at random, will capture imaginations even as it tears apart society. Some will be criminals, some soldiers, some workers, etc. All will be gifted, suddenly, with power that can't be countered except by another like themselves. In short order, all the positions of power will be held by people who have been Podded. Or, by people who secure the loyalty and manage to run an organization of those who have been Podded. Either way, that's the power base, and only reverse-engineering and promulgating the technology will grow that power base.
>>47293415
Its a laundry list but the short story is:
>There's a grenade launcher call the tonkor. Its the best fucking gun in the game. DE has tried to nerf it several times. Each time they instead crippled the other grenade launchers, leaving the tonkor still obscene.
>There's a late game mission call Draco. It is the go to map for XP grinding. You can take a weapon from brand new to max rank in like 2 waves. DE doesn't like this. Instead of lowering the enemy spawns or decreasing the xp gains for the map, they instead cripple two of the warframes people used to grind the mission. Said frames are basically useless now.
>the /vg/ clan Warbros ranked #1 in every event. DE started to change the scoring tallies mid event to lower warbros scores. Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.
>>47293641
>Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.
>>47293641
Add in the dilution of drop tables to frustrate players into buying plat, a kickbot so hyper sensitive it bans players that haven't played for weeks, and any criticism toward any of this is met with either "its just a beta bro"the game's been in open beta for three years now.or your post is deleted they call you a child and maybe even ban you from the forums for being "abusive."
I only still play it to hang out with my clan.
>>47293721
If I remember right, that guy broke a finger hammering his keyboard.
>>47293536
Question.
By the time a Seedship sends out pods (both in most scenarios I can imagine and the one presented in your writeup), large power blocs capable of isolating and studying the pods would have arisen (both national and corporate). Since this could lead to their scientific discoveries being used for Synthesism, what measures would the ship AI take to overcome this factor? Would the pods be resistant to being isolated, and interested in seeking out potential converts, would there be a stealth tech so that corporations and governments don't just hoard them, and instead have to deal with the fact that they have superhumans with mechs running around all of a sudden?
Additionally, does the integration process change the mentality of the individual, or would a KKK grand wizard who finds one get a suit with a white pointy cap that helps him locate black people? Since the location of the pods are static, wouldn't communities of individuals exposed (which tend to be relatively homogeneous) create what are essentially super clans? IE, pod lands in North Korea, suddenly we have an army of brainwashed communists who think this tech comes from their glorious leader, or is the dispersal broad and dense enough that this isn't a problem? Do the pods target population centers, or is there some other metric used?
>>47293641
STRONKOR SO GOOD
I think the actual problem with the game is a good CC frame either with energy restores or a trinity can literally incapacitate the entire map non stop. So you get to levels where even the STRONKOR is peanuts and the only chance you have of grinding those fucking chase prime parts is by hard locking all enemies constantly
Is Excalibur Blind Spam still legit?
>>47293641
>There's a grenade launcher call the tonkor. Its the best fucking gun in the game.
Tonkor is over hyped. Sure it's probably the highest damage per shot weapon, but there are plenty of situation where other weapons are better.
>There's a late game mission call Draco. It is the go to map for XP grinding. You can take a weapon from brand new to max rank in like 2 waves. DE doesn't like this. Instead of lowering the enemy spawns or decreasing the xp gains for the map, they instead cripple two of the warframes people used to grind the mission. Said frames are basically useless now.
Which frames did they cripple? The last frame who's rework I would call crippling would be Mesa but that was a long time ago and wasn't just because of Draco. And it's not so much that Draco it's self is a problem, it's more an issue of just how the star map and the mission on it are. They have been working on the 3rd iteration for the star map for months now and it's supposedly getting close-ish to done.
>the /vg/ clan Warbros ranked #1 in every event. DE started to change the scoring tallies mid event to lower warbros scores. Warbros still wins because they're fucking autistic.
Uh, you're griping because there is a tryhard clan? I mean that shit happens in any MMO or MMO-like game.
>>47293536
So that's the fluff.
Now go read the Power Armor CYOA. One night, out of the blue, pods begin dropping all over the world. Call it one pod per 100,000 humans. That's 70,000 total in the world, and 3000 in the United States, dropped in waves a few weeks apart. Pods drop in pairs along with considerable space trash. One pod drops in a populated area, the other in a more stealthy area where a nearly pre-built mecha can be finalized and given a vehicle form. They're stealthy and extremely well-shielded, making them hard to track. Pods fall at night, therefore also mostly snaring the kind of people who are out at night.
On the surface, drops appear to be random. However, a disproportionate number of pod drops have snared notable people. Or fallen in clusters, such as the motorcycle gang that had five guys podded at the same time. In intelligence circles, there's suspicion that the aliens have a reconnaissance element on-planet and may be intentionally targeting individuals, at least some of the time.
> Tentatively, how about Chuck Yeager and Buzz Aldrin? Try to pick famous or notable people, but not necessarily movie stars, musicians, or other celebrities. In your campaigns, try to limit yourself to one or two celebs total, but feel free to pick famous engineers, activists, criminals, entrepreneurs, etc. How about Larry Ellison in a samurai mech?
Divide that number evenly into three parts.
In the first few weeks, total panic and chaos. Pods are swallowing people up, and there's no telling why or what's happening or what will happen to the people swallowed.
>>47294207
Mirage blind beats it by miles now.
>>47294239
>That shit happens in any other MMO
The devs intentionally target their number 1 Tryhard clan mid-event to try and get them to lose? I seriously doubt that is a consistent occurrence. Also the examples are more about how the Devs tackle problems in the worst way possible.
>>47280503
Invent Star wars, twat monkey.
>>47294297
Was this targeting a result of said clan using exploits? If so then no, other Devs would just ban them instead of patching the exploit and removing the scores gained from it.
>>47294256
Damn it, what about Nyx? Mind Control lockdown?
>>47294366
When was the last time Nyx was relevant?
>>47294366
About as good as it ever was. Mirage still takes the crown since her blind has a huge area and unlike Excal's it doesn't need LoS. While Nyx is great it doesn't completely stop them from attacking you.
>>47294410
Generally speaking, if you have the Stronkor and you're not fucking terrible, you could play a level 1 loki and be fine. Your teammates will crash the mission with no survivors long before your frame being bad actually matters.
>>47294432
I hate Mirage is the problem
Who's the strongest solo frame right now?
>>47294455
>you could play a level 1 loki and be fine
Well, no shit. It's Loki.
>>47294475
>level 1 loki
You're not untouchable at level 1, you're just shit.
>>47294490
>be fine
>yes
>you're shit
>>47294455
Depends what you are doing. Ember is great for clearing most missions quickly. Loki is the go-to for spy. Mirage is good for interception with a blind build. I love using Banshee with the new augment for excavations. Volt can run captures like no other with a good weapon.
>>47294252
Eventually, two things happen. First, the police/fire dept/medical techs/forestry service/military starts cordoning off pods that are found during a Fall. Scientists try to study them. Inevitably, mistakes are made. First responders and scientists become the main victims.
Meanwhile, people from the early waves start emerging from their pods as power armor-wearing supermen. In short order, they make their way to their mecha. That's fine if you're a cop or soccer mom and "cooperate fully". Not so fine if you're a ruthless drug gang lieutenant suddenly able to become the kingpin of the city. Or the aforementioned motorcycle gang, all riding transforming Harleys (maybe one truck) and having to charge up on hacked powerlines and house current. Or one of the 300 ISIS members who suddenly have superpowers and mecha might.
That leads to the third part. In the last pod waves, political and economic elites realize that being 80 and chronically ill totally sucks. Whereas being trapped wearing power armor all the time isn't so bad if you get to be young and healthy again. Plus the aforementioned superpowers. These are ambitious, ruthless men (and women). A few choose to Pod themselves on purpose.
> How about Vladimir Putin or Richard Branson? King Abdullah of Jordan turns into what looks like an F-16 fighter, which is a ride fit for a king even before you remember that it drastically outperforms any human fighter jet.
So those are your three groups. In America, that's about a thousand people at random, a thousand first responders, and a thousand powerful politicians/criminals/rich men. Plus chaos because everytime a wave of pods drop, there's a headlong rush to seize one. People who are already Podded can approach safely and give it to their friends/family/someone who pays them.
Tracking is complicated by the fact that in vehicle form, most of the mecha are very hard to distinguish from conventional vehicles.
>>47294516
replace shit with "wet toilet paper" then
>>47294533
Ah, I thought you meant I need to git gud instead of saying the frame is shit at level 1. My bad.
>>47294455
>>47294475
>>47294490
>>47294516
>>47294533
>>47294548
Tonkor won't save you from being one shot on a higher level mission, just saying. I mean if you're playing an infested exterminate then yeah you'll breeze through it but in a lot of missions you'll probably be getting dropped left and right if you don't have a CC heavy team. After all you don't start with Invisibility and it's duration is shit for the first few ranks, especially with out mods.
>>47294607
just do flips and shit and shoot faster
>>47294625
Heh, that might work if enemies capped at level 30 and there weren't sniper enemies with jack accuracy and AoE enemies.
>>47293942
Honestly? I hadn't thought of that yet. Like I said, this is coming off the top of my head. But how about this:
Pods are designed to convert ONE person. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I did that precisely to avoid the problem you bring up. Then, having been expended, they self-destruct. So if you want your Delta Force squad to have 12 guys in power armor, you need to find five unexpended pods and stick your men into them. Then hope their vehicle modes are something useful and that they stay loyal when they emerge. Oh, and that they don't ever retire, because you can't confiscate their suits/mecha.
So you can reverse engineer the technology in mecha, suits, and biomods. Eventually (20 years) even copy them. But the underlying principles or the ability to design new ones from scratch are fifty years off. Which is the point, deny people AI for long enough that they get used to using computers to enhance human brains (integrationism) rather than to replace human brains (synthesism). By the time AI becomes possible, it's an inferior solution to most problems because implant computers have advanced so far. So it ends up a niche technology.
Mentality doesn't change much, unless you think that makes for better stories. Maybe we make it ambiguous. People emerge from their pods as larger-than-life versions of their own personalities, but it's not clear if they're drunk on power or actually altered. SOME psychotropics and neural training happens. The real question is how much and what difference does it make to the personality.
Targeting seems more or less random, dispersed by population density but also favoring higher-tech regions. So NYC, which has 8.4 million people, has roughly 84 mecha. Each pod is a little different. Some come down like meteors, but some just kind of show up and it's not clear how it got somewhere.
>>47294684
You forget the clause I put on earlier >>47294455
>Your teammates will crash the mission with no survivors long before your frame being bad actually matters.
>>47294710
Fair enough. Though in that case wouldn't really matter what weapon you brought. I was mostly just irked by your statement making it sound the tonkor is some godly, game changing thing. It's just a weapon. A really good weapon sure, but there are other as good or better depending on the situation.
>>47293942
>>47294687
To be clear: that KKK guy will come out still a white supremacist, and his powers and robot/vehicle forms might reflect his views/personality/experiences. But it won't be quite so obvious or straightforward. Remember, he's not designing his mech, it's being designed for him based on brainscans.
He'd best be careful, though, before going to the inner city and starting a murderous rampage, because the black people have their own power armored guys, some of whom are just thrilled by the idea of killing him.
North Korea's 200 million mecha are the same mix as everywhere else. No doubt a few dissidents were shoved into pods early on as involuntary test animals. A few weeks later, hell breaks loose when the dissidents emerge with superpowers and armed to the teeth.
Figure 60 random people of all stripes. 60 more are military/security types. The last 60 are Kim Jong Un himself and his chief apparatchiks and guards. The last 20 are dissident guinea pigs. All believe whatever they believed before the transition. The Supreme Leader, Sun of Socialism, can if nothing else resort to threatening the families of anyone who gets out of line.
South Korea's 500+ mecha ensures that the status quo remains in effect. North Korea faces the potential for a coup, or a violent overthrow of the government, but outside invasion remains a non-starter.
>>47294841
Ok so people who aren't derailing with talk about vidya... any comments? I've been carrying the whole load here. I appreciate the kind compliments, but now it's time for feedback I can use.
>>47293415
Warframe is the game the Chinese MMO farmers get sent to train on.
It is more soul-crushing and grindy than any Korean MMO.
For some perspective, a melee weapon just came out, it's an ice hammer.
Melee weapons are completely outclassed in this game, first off, but that's not the important part.
This weapon is terrible. It's got a neat unique gimmick, but it's still terrible.
This weapon requires 30,000 units of a resource.
Lets contexualize that.
You should get this resource in units of 100, if you're not incompetent. So the number could be really 300.
You ONLY get this resource by doing Excavation missions, where you defend a drill that gets dropped in from FUCKING SPACE. After that it gets boring. You need to defend this for 100 seconds, during which you need to gather it power cells worth 20 seconds so it doesn't run out and take more time. It's feasible to get two of these going at the same time, so lets say you get 200 every 100 seconds, best case.
That's 15,000 seconds of this game mode. That's four hours and ten minutes. For this piece of shit hammer. That you're going to make anyway because the game's progression system is 'make and level everything.'
That's not the only ingredient of course. One of the ingredients is even ANOTHER HAMMER.
And you know what? I HAD ENOUGH OF THAT SHIT TO JUST MAKE THE FUCKING HAMMER.
>>47294963
Here's another one. A secondary weapon came out recently, it's a dual pistol. And by pistol I mean pocket shotgun.
To make it, you first need to be in a guild. Then your guild needs to donate piles of resources to research the blueprint to make the pistol.
Then you need to buy two of these blueprints because it's the blueprint for the single pistol and you need to make two of them to make the akimbo version.
Now you gotta farm up some keys to play a mission that drops the thing you actually need. It looks like a puzzle piece and lets you customize stuff. It also takes TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO MAKE. EACH. AND you CAN'T make two of the same thing in parallel.
You need three of these fucking things. That's three days.
Those single pistols also need 24 hours, and you need a puzzle piece to make each. You can still do that in three days since you can make the first pistol at the same time as the second puzzle piece.
Then turning the two separate pistols, which are taking up your limited inventory space while this is all going on BTWDesuSenpai, takes 12 more hours.
>>47295096
>>47294963
Just use plat, silly goy.
>>47294861
>>47293942 here, one final very important question.
In most RPGs, there is a good reason for a party to exist. Fantasy RPGs have the risk of adventuring offset by safety in numbers and diversity. Hierarchical RPGs (anything with a military, divine mandate, etc,) have your boss watching you. Sci-Fi usually goes the Firefly route of misfits stuck together by circumstance. Shadowrun (or any other criminal RPG) has the payday. What good reason does the group have for sticking together, when they probably all want wildly different things?
I propose that Pods tend to (though not always) drop in groups. This works in fluff as the Seedship creating groups that can challenge the status quo more effectively than single operators, and gives the party a reason to exist. Maybe tie in some subtle shared empathic/telepathic link to get people to stick together. The only problem with this solution is that it makes character death/retirement quite awkward.
>>47293415
People on 4chan are just being contrarian as usual, warframe is actually really good but everyone talking about it here has rose tinted glasses over what it used to be like. Its doing better then ever right now and thus people here now hate it, pretty simple.
>>47281554
>the only real reason I can think of for it is to try and appeal to a younger crowd
Except, younger audiences don't tend to get all that excited over child protagonists. It's adult weeaboos who love that shit. Seems obvious that's who they were trying to cater to, since it's a big part of the player base.
>>47281554
You're the same fag who made a thread about that on the forums aren't you? Having physically teenaged main characters doesn't mean its appealing to a younger audience you twat, just accept that the idea you entrenched yourself in was wrong.
>>47293415
I've been playing it for a few years, got 1200 odd hours on it in Steam, and I still enjoy it plenty. I think it's probably the most enjoyable free to play online game I've seen.
>>47292286
Thanks /v/, too bad Warframe has some of the most supportive and frequent patching of any game ever made.
They listen to their playerbase an insane amount.
Weird, I thought this was /tg/. Are we /v/ now?
>>47281053
>>47281232
Isn't controlling the tenno EXACTLY like resleeving anyway? Don't even need to refluff anything.
>>47295155
>>47294687
Are we looking at it more like a crazy transhuman superhero/villain story? Because that works rather well I think. Pods would band together for mutual gain or for sharing goals.
>>47293942
>IE, pod lands in North Korea, suddenly we have an army of brainwashed communists who think this tech comes from their glorious leader, or is the dispersal broad and dense enough that this isn't a problem?
Well given the "one per million people" I'd imagine the dispersal would be keyed to population.
So in your example NK would get 24-25 pods. Now, how many of those land in hands of dissident and how many in loyalists (and how exactly loyal those guys are) - that's up in the air and free for the plot with variations like
>majority of suits is with loyalists, who remain devoted to the leader, they start trying to sneak in and conquer South Korea while few dissidents that managed to get some are trying to survive and strike back
>suits land with dissidents and they overthrow the dictatorship and then try to fix the country
>even between loyals and dissidents plus infighting factions among the regime and it's all a big steaming mess
The seedship AI is fine with either becuase the pods become main driving force either way.
>>47295155
Really good question. I think there are several answers.
1) That second wave, the first responders, are mostly police/military/rescue/scientists. IE people who are already working for the government and are organized. Yeah there's a temptation to stick these guys in a lab for anal probes and vivisection, but remember the first wave has been rampaging around for a few weeks now. Those random shmoes who bumped into a pod while wandering around at night include many criminals, and so THEY'RE both your test subjects and a major criminal/social/civil disorder problem.
So government organized super-teams designed to hunt down and arrest/kill criminal transformers is one idea.
2) Criminal gangs. I agree with your idea: pods seem to fall in clusters, at least some of the time. That one criminal motorcycle gang that had five of their guys get podded is only the extreme example. Plus in the third big wave of Podfalls, by then you had people actively hunting pods down so they could get superpowers and a sweet ride. That includes mafia dons, drug kingpins, gang leaders, and racial supremacists. The guy with the best sensors for tracking down a Pod is a transformer, and also he's someone who can approach and haul the damn thing around or hide it without activating it.
3) Remember, anything the size of a passenger car or smaller can't mount a fusion reactor. It needs house current to recharge... or another transformer (we need a word for these guys). OTOH, a guy whose mecha changes into a 40 ton fire engine isn't as mobile. He can't get into small places without getting out and moving in his powersuit. He's too heavy to just walk around anywhere. That guy who turns into a motorcycle needs him for power, but can help by being smaller and more mobile.
Recharging takes a while. Who covers your back while you recharge? Maybe repairing major damage should require special equipment that only some transformers have. Then you have niche protection for a "healer" class.
>>47295825
yeah on one hand these constant derails about a vidya that's off topic for the board and this thread are really annoying. Why go on and on bitching about a game that half the people hate when OP specifically wanted a different setting with the same general concept?
On the other hand, the steady stream of blather is keeping the thread alive. So there's that.
>>47297377
Yeah I think so.
There's two basic ways to approach this. First is to go full-on campy with it. Just fuck science, fuck making sense, and go full-on comedy mixed with Awesome.
My preference is instead to come up with a campaign concept that's very high in Awesome factor, but then try to make it as hard and realistic as possible. If the GM wants to dial back down to campiness, then they can. But it's hard to dial a setting's believability up after the fact.
Ideally, there's room to tell more than one kind of story. Superhero/supervillain is easy, and absolutely it's a core theme, but I'd like other options, too.
>>47299902
How would you picture an RP campaign in the setting, then?
>>47298488
>Well given the "one per million people" I'd imagine the dispersal would be keyed to population.
>So in your example NK would get 24-25 pods. Now, how many of those land in hands of dissident and how many in loyalists (and how exactly loyal those guys are) - that's up in the air and free for the plot with variations like
Exactly, although after I ran the numbers I changed it to 1/100,000. Basically, you want enough guys running around that the players won't have a phone book with all the transformers neatly laid out for them, which to me is about 1000+ per country or multinational region.
It's also enough that you can have a region go apeshit with war (like the middle east or caucuses) and have a significant kill count without totally depleting the transformer population for a region.
Example: ISIS gets 10-20 people podded, mostly technicals. Israel (pop 8 million) gets 8 guys. So any losses at all in the resulting war, and one side ends up with no transformers at all and the other is depleted to the point of irrelevance. What you want is the ability to have a war, take losses, but still have enough survivors afterward that you can tell aftermath stories. 1/100,000 seems like enough to do that IMO.
>>47299944
Well, hmmmm...
The obvious story is this. You go through your character concept with the GM. Then comes Podfall. After a transformation, the game opens with the character waking up in a biosuit he can't figure out how to take off, and with incredible superpowers. And, oh by the way, a supermecha transformer that only he can pilot.
You can play up the post-apoc aspect by having civilization teeter on the brink as people who have been podded start waking up. The Government has a heavy-handed response (dissections, arrests, murders) and/or extremist groups start taking advantage of the situation.
Or you can play up the super-hero aspect. The Government tries to organize the Good Guys, while criminals and revolutionaries start forming their own Bad Guy organization. Basically run it like Heroes except that you can't really blend in.
Or, you up the stealth factor on the pods even after they activate and process someone. Government response is abductions/dissections/manhunts, so we emphasize the robots in DISGUISE aspect. So more secrecy and conspiracy, but still fundamentally a superhero story. Also that leaves room for normal human PCs who can do the social interfacing. The struggle is for energy and resources and learning to understand what you are and how to use your new equipment-- all while trying to stay one step ahead of ominous Homeland Security teams with mecha of their own.
>>47299956
>Example: ISIS gets 10-20 people podded, mostly technicals. Israel (pop 8 million) gets 8 guys. So any losses at all in the resulting war, and one side ends up with no transformers at all and the other is depleted to the point of irrelevance. What you want is the ability to have a war, take losses, but still have enough survivors afterward that you can tell aftermath stories. 1/100,000 seems like enough to do that IMO.
Oh so just to be clear: under the 1/100,000 rule ISIS has more like 200 transformers and Israel more like just under a hundred.
Then give them Giora Epstein in a transforming Mirage fighter for game balance. ;)
It's enough that there can be fighting without one side being totally pwned, and that you still have dozens of guys left (and so you can slip a PC's origin story into that region without changing the story).
>>47300059
I'm only mostly trying to rationalize how these people, who have been physically and menetally transformed, would come to work together for any length of time. And how they would care about things beyond personal power.
>>47300148
Well they're ordinary people transformed, right? So they have jobs and families and friends and ethnic/national/religious loyalties.
Plus the rationales I give here: >>47299858
Do you have any other ideas or things we can work into the setting assumptions that can encourage more cooperation?
How about "telepathic" radio? Your implant computer, biosuit, and mecha all have radio communications both with each other and with other people who have been Transformed. You'd likely need that anyway so players can coordinate but that way you can tie a group into a partychat function.
Also it opens the door for a hacking speciality.
>>47300246
Well yeah but the enormous amounts of immunities and powers they gain from the podding means they don't really need to do any of the common stuff that dictates how most of us live life. Imagine not needing to eat or sleep again.
>>47300272
Well they do still need to sleep.
And remember it's not just about eliminating weaknesses. It's about building strengths, especially since the ante is upped in terms of the threats you face. Yeah I'm immune to 9mm handgun bullets, but that's not as important if I'm NOT immune to the typical personal weapons of someone else who's been podded.
>>47300524
So it basically ends up being conflicts between people who are podded, with unpodded individuals being more or less mooks for the podded to beat up.
>>47300586
Maybe they need some kind of organized resistance factions to fight? beating up normals will end up feeling unsatisfying unless the players all want to play assholes To make an example, Warframe has stuff like the Grineer for the tenno to fight,
>>47300677
At some point anti-podded weaponry has to be created, which could somehow fall into the hands of some resistance force.
Also would there be any chance of space battles in this setting? Or at least more outer space exploration. Those two things would be interesting.
>>47300586
Yeah that's a problem. Say a few mecha get destroyed and their weapons salvaged? That way you can have frankenmechs that use modern technology (like tanks and such) but have at least the potential to be a credible threat, especially used in combination with a larger conventional force.
>>47300677
I was thinking that eventually you have mecha coalescing into broad ideological/criminal/national groups. So again the ISIS example, where you have insurgent groups in europe with a few mecha of their own and their own little mecha faction (supported by a larger pool of mecha coming in from their allies in Chechnya and the middle east). Just as an example. Or Occupy groups linking up with socialist revolutionary groups. Or the russian mafia or drug cartels having their own foot soldiers with mecha.
But you guys are right that "normal humans are irrelevant" is a major potential weakness here. I'm eager for ideas about how to fix it.
>>47300703
1) yes this might be part of that solution.
2) space battles? Absolutely. Obviously everyone who has a biosuit can survive in space, and the biomods suit them for life in space naturally. The very few who transform into aircraft might have rocket modes that allow them to fly into space.
So the question then is how we get the rest of the PCs into space. Having mecha that transform into tramp freighters a la the Millennium Falcon would be unbalancing on earth (too big and powerful). But maybe we find some way that construction / technician mechs can BUILD small interplanetary ships?
I don't want FTL yet because we want to give the setting some time to shake down, but the solar system is an immense place filled with riches. If you play up the post-apoc aspect of it and let civilization start a death spiral, you might open this frontier up and meanwhile fill it with refugees trying to get out while they still can.
>>47301265
No FTL is probably a good idea, but maybe having travel between mars and earth take place over the span of a few months could be interesting.
As for the humans being irrelevant issue, maybe regular humans have advantages that the podded dont have. Depending on how long people in pods were out of it, they might not have a good understand as to what happened the past however many years, or how to use the "modern" tech.
Also should an IRC be set up for this? I'm really interested in this project but I feel like an instant messaging service could help with these conversations.
>>47301478
>>47301265
What about we pull a "War of the Worlds" and make biological attacks more effective against Podded than against average normies since the symbiote suit doesn't have centuries of buildup against native diseases. Something relatively innocuous like cow pox might work better on the suit portion than the human portion, and leave room for situations where PCs have to survive with one hand tied behind their backs. Of course, this revelation probably only occurs to people a while into the campaign, and is a way to ramp up the challenge, while showing how society is breaking down since even the most moral of governments are flat out breaking the Geneva Conventions.
>>47301478
Ok, so let's use realistic delta-v then. It also fits with the pods taking so long to reach earth from the oort cloud.
Podding takes a couple weeks. But one area where the podded have a distinct disadvantage is that (at least for the first year or two after Podfall) they are stuck in their suits. Which makes interacting with humans very difficult.
I'm aiming for a setting like VtM where the characters are all supers and the plot mostly involves supers, where muggles/mortals/unmodded humans are mostly helpers and allies, but where an exceptional and very highly trained and resourceful human might still be able to best someone who's been podded.
>>47302020
Well, I'm actually leaning towards the suit being nanorobotic and technological rather than biological.
Hmmm, let's wait and see what other people think. Maybe someone else will come up with an attack that will even the playing field to at least some extent. Remember that a government (and to a much lesser extent, corporation or mafia cartel) has vast resources to throw at someone who's Podded. Yeah you can beat a platoon of national guardsmen, and maybe avoid getting killed when their IFV fires its bushmaster on you. But against multiple companies of soldiers, equipped with combat vehicles and coordinating against you, you're toast, even in a mecha. They have to use tactics rather than firepower, but they can win. Your only shot is stealth and evasion and not getting on their radar in the first place.
I'd like to keep it on /tg/ for now. I don't use IRC. By all means run with it if you want, though. All last night I basically got a few compliments and almost zero input, so I was starting to wonder if I was talking to myself.
>>47302864
>>47302020
I would personally go with the suits being some kind of tech-bio-mod that's beyond most human understanding. While biotech weapons don't actually ruin the suits it can weaken the wearer as the suit can't filter it properly and make them vulnerable. However I wouldn't make it a magic bullet kryptonite against them or the Podders are basically fucked the moment they try anything. But say you want a scenario where a podder is subdued and captured rather than killed outright, that sorta thing would fit in well. Just how I would do it personally.
>>47302998
I was thinking that the subdual mechanic would be the suit running out of power.
So the military could hound you with helicopters and infantry. Yeah you can tank the small arms fire and dodge the heavy weapons, but you have to stay mobile and that keeps your battery drawing down. Finally you have to stop and recharge, and that's when they get you.
Next up you're in a prison cell. Your weapons and equipment have been damaged/disabled. Your power systems are getting a continuous trickle charge-- just enough to power life support and (if you're in a heavy suit) that you can walk around your cell, but not enough to power shields/weapons/etc and not enough that if you disconnected from your power umbilical that you could survive for any length of time.
>>47303442
This makes me wonder, would the suit stop you from aging as well? And if you did age, does the suit change to fit your changing body?
>>47303622
By the rules he posted above you gain the Unaging perk, so yes.
>>47304200
THough that's an effect of the biomods, not the suit. Even with the suit off (once the podded people know how to even take it off, which might not be discovered for years) you're physically enhanced.
The suit gives you vastly improved attributes. The mecha gives you a vehicle mode and even more vastly improved attributes.
>>47304340
Mecha is less interesting than super space ninja suit desu
>>47304465
Seconding. I'd rather something that totally focuses on the suit stuff, really.
>>47300059
The superhero thing makes me think of background characters who get phenomenal cosmic cyber-power and...
...promptly go back to normal lives, just coated in a half-ton of armor.
>>47304792
Blue board mate.
>>47304465
>>47304623
OK, your turn. Come up with some cool fluff for a super ninja suit RPG.
(I'm not being snarky, I'm interested in what such a setting would look like.)
I like where this thread is going.
Would a pod-enhanced person gain unique abilities ala Warframe?
>>47280503
Guyver
>>47280503
>without the retarded actual Warframe lore.
Thank you so much, i'm not alone.
![1417545110515[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/6ME6OQW.png "1417545110515[1].png")
>>47293641
I don't know anything about Warframe but I am a bit scared because I was just about to start writing down my latex-fetish as a type of monster/enemy in my sci-fi universe that forcibly converts people into mindless, sexless 'drones'.
I think this thread is strangely coincidental.
>>47310469
Why make it a monster/enemy? Take the plunge and play it instead.
>>47310678
Doesn't really fit the style/setting I am going for.
I don't really need to push my fetish onto anyone, I just like the idea aesthetically.
>>47281106
> Most people who aren't already too invested to back out have been disillusioned with Warframe ever since they retconned half the lore to get rid of the 'symbiote armour' element and make the player a character a shota/loli stuck in a pod controlling the suits remotely.
If that's even remotely accurate I'm fucking done, because that's lame as hell.
>>47312926
Join the crowd.
>>47306506
No, I like it, I just don't see the need to push mecha into it as well. Maybe mecha additions to the suit like say giant robot hands or a pair of extra limbs, but not like having a whole mech on top of it.
>>47312926
>>47313025
WELP
" Initial experiments on how to harness the children's powers though led to several fatal accidents, which showed the danger their uncontrolled powers could wreak both on themselves and on others. It was the work of an Orokin researcher named Margulis that led to a breakthrough; through dreams, the children could focus and control their powers. However, this research would then be taken from her after she was executed for trying to protect the children, and used to create a process known as Transference; the children's consciousness's and powers could be remotely channeled through a surrogate body called a Warframe: a specially-made techno-organic humanoid battle frame designed to enhance and focus the children's powers, using a device known as a Somatic Link. Not only did the process grant greater control over their powers, but with no fear of self-destruction the powers could be used to their fullest potential. The survivors would be placed in Somatic Link pods in a facility known as the Reservoir located on the Moon, to control their surrogate bodies in a secure location away from their enemies."
- Warframe Wiki
>>47315937
also
>>47280503
first answer is only answer; just write some space-based lore that ends up in a new feudal era with tech being the deciding factor in rank and power.
Slave/Serf - owner-granted tech
Civilian - regent-granted tech.
High-Class/Demi-Noble - regent/self-granted tech; often granted then self-upgraded
Military - regent-granted tech of higher quality
Regent - noble-granted tech if insane quality
Noble - "my tech comes from the ancients/gods/etc bitches."
>>47282285
> Drama when they're separated
If a Tenno's an empty drone there's no drama there beyond the loss of a rare weapon. Any cutscene where something's happening to them or they almost die or that one where Excalibur gets stabbed? All now meaningless.
>>47295736
And they also delete comments on their forums that raise legitimate concerns about the game or the dev team
>>47295736
> ad random shit and nerf everything constantly
> well, at least the patching is frequent!
Just admit you want to roleplay as Excalibur's perfect butt
>>47280503
The same way you do any setting: find the thing you want in there, and think of ways to justify it.
Want sexy ninja suits? Well, maybe they're made out of molds of actual people. Why are they sexy? Maybe the people they used were genetically engineered for perfection. Etc.
>>47316113
>>47316378
Nice try anon, they link to the forums and fix what is most popular and almost never nerf anything.
If they deleted a "legitimate" concern then reddit would have 10 million people flaming them.
Are you butthurt they moderated your stupid trolling comment there too?
>>47316432
Why just her butt? Why not all of her?
>>47318323
Excalibur is a dude frame.
>>47318323
>her
>>47281554
>>47295670
>Having physically teenaged main characters doesn't mean its appealing to a younger audience
THIS. Think back to when you were a child - Did you ever daydream of being Batman or Superman, or were you content with being Robin? No kid wants to be 'the kid'.
>>47284598
Aw, now you made me remember the good times working for uncle Ruk during the Gradivus Dilemma.
>>47306506
OK guys I'm back. Had to take a break.
>>47307919
IMO yes definitely. In fact, you'd end up with two separate channels for cash upgrades and three for points. Cash could be spent upgrading your suit or your mecha, and points could be spent upgrading either of those OR your own biomods.
But definitely there would be upgrades and customizations.
>>47310469
Yeah I commented above that it can be a little fetishy if you're into latex or forced chastity. OTOH you can play it straight and not go there at all. Sexiness is like comedy: a GM can add it to a setting after the fact, but can't strip it out of a setting if the developers are the ones who put it there in the first place. So the best approach is that we leave a little hint of it there if you want but otherwise leave it alone.
>>47316432
This is true. Or, to be specific, I want the hot girls in my gaming group to play those perfect-assed superchicks. This guy >>47316565 has it right, and that's been my guiding light on all my posts developing the setting above.
>>47314238
That works if you want to fork the setting but I'm going for maximum cool and transforming mecha are a maximally cool addition. This boils down to a difference of taste.
If you don't mind, please stick with us and contribute. You can always strip the mecha part out later once we have something bankable.
>>47281367
How about space Irish?
>>47318363
What next, you're gonna tell me Ember doesn't have a dick?
>>47295612
This.
I may be a weeaboo, but even I disliked the change.
>>47281554
I thought it explained the whole revive system and the fact that you can switch frames pretty well.
>>47282868
How would you even read that?
>>47320603
Lot of this stuff is pretty boss. Looking forward to space ninja adventures as an ice powered rhinoceros beetle with in a trench coat and the universe's greatest popped collar.
>>47318363
>not the webm
>>47324427
I got this one for you.
>>47290760
>>47295113
Not everyone's willing to shell out real cash for pretend guns, just sayin'.
>>47324400
Shame all his alternate helms look like arse.
>>47325240
Yeah the base and Prime helmets are the best.
>>47281554
You aren't the kid. You are the warframe(s). The kid will tell you to get up when you fall or ask that you complete a mission quietly, which wouldn't make sense if they just remote control the frames.
The kid is just the reason you work for the Lotus instead of fucking off like the Stalker, who is a warframe like you but who lacks a controller loyal to the Lotus.
The main problem with the Warframe lore is that they don't explain it very well.
>>47320603
There was a whole thread a few months ago for skintight sci fi armor and perfect asses.
It's like biocyber yoga pants.
>>47324361
Open it in new tab, zoom in? It's a huge picture.
>>47329527
Lllink please?
>>47282974
>>47283447
>>47284705
>>47284913
>>47286241
Well great now I want to drop something like that into my superhero game.
Warframe is a huge pile of shit.
A cross between a browser game and a korean mmo, but without a proper support and technical maintenance. I wish I never spent a second on this trash... to think I actually waited for the open beta at some point. Evangelion rip off just proves how horrible DE as a developer.
Jesus - and those guys actually took a part in one of the best shooter ever made.
>>47316917
And people actually flame them, both on reddit and on forums, not in such quantities at least, but that's because fanbase as it is quite small.
Granted, they don't delete posts, but simply don't give a shit.
>>47316917
>almost never nerf anything
>>47316917
You're an idiot.
There are HUNDREDS of DOCUMENTED nerfs to just about everything.
Go through the old patch notes.
There are also piles of HIDDEN nerfs, where they don't even tell the team (one person) that does the patch notes that they changed anything.
They don't always delete comments. There's a pretty infamous instance where a Russian player voiced all his concerns in obviously non-first-language english. Hours later, the post has been edited to an apology in pristine english.
Just go ask >>>/vg/wfg
>>47334134
>instance where a Russian player voiced all his concerns in obviously non-first-language english. Hours later, the post has been edited to an apology in pristine english.
That was hilarious in a way.
>>47332917
To me the biggest issue with warframe is that they don't seem to ever add anything that's remotely challenging in relation to the gear they let you have.
I sunk hundreds of hours into warframe as a free player. Did the alerts for potatoes and stuff like that, used my free stuff and promo codes for more slots etc. I have piles of weapons that have been formad and so on until I can have maxed mods in every available slot.
Then I quit playing the game for nearly two years.
Then I installed it again and tried it, to see how it was doing. My 2 years old character without the newer mods and using old event guns still completely dominated the games I joined and I went straight to clearing the new void stuff without a hitch.
Warframe is, in normal MMO terms, a game that let you level to level 100 in the first base version of the game, and then spent the next 3 years pumping out nothing but hats, level 1-50 content and whatever retarded ideas the newer players scream the loudest for.
>Hey, the game is still easymode for everyone who leveled up all their stuff, but lets spend time developing DUELING in a cooperative pve game and adding more warframes to grind for!
>>47334457
Dueling is gone, conclave is at least being balanced by someone who knows what they're doing so there's more good weapons.
Try 'post-DEAC;' stuff like Survival past 20 minutes, Defense past 20 waves, Interception past wave 4, that kind of thing.
Fuck, did the worldbuilding die already? I was enjoying it.
>>47335056
We seem to be re-derailed.
Go ahead and talk about the worldbuilding and it'll re-right again.
>>47335016
When I quit, my guild was doing several hours long survival missions that usually ended when someone had to take a dump or their computer crashed.
When I started back up again, I had no problem jumping into 30min +survival missions, depending on team comp.
It's really sad that the only "challenging" content is really just the same exact content but with bigger numbers.
>>47335056
>>47335078
What's the summary of the worldbuilding? It's hard to piece things together in this mishmash of a thread, especially for those who don't have GURPS as a basis.
>>47334457
>Hey, the game is still easymode for everyone who leveled up all their stuff, but lets spend time developing DUELING in a cooperative pve game and adding more warframes to grind for!
I remember DE constantly insisting that Warframe is a PvE game and will not truly shine if PvP were ever implemented, especially since the game wasn't balanced around PVP to begin with. The fans still shouted long enough to get PVP.
>>47335078
I kept asking for suggestions and contributions. Some people did, but mostly people were derailingwithvidya shit.
Gimme an hour or two and I'll pick back up. Can someone link all the world building posts? I can't remember everything I wrote.
>>47334134
Here's a thought. Could you actually go to a fucking board where this shit is on topic?
>>47337101
Maybe we should start a new thread without a warframe pic? And make it explicit worldbuilding?
>>47334163
This has to be a ruse. I refuse to believe people can be this petty and incompetent.
