majoritymods: (Default)
Majority Rule Mods ([personal profile] majoritymods) wrote in [community profile] pollbooths2023-02-06 09:37 pm
Entry tags:

>> FEB. APP THIS PLEASE!

ATP
Welcome to Majority Rule's first App This Please! We are going to be doing Test Drives just a hair differently so these are going to be fairly important for our game. While players will always have the option to have their characters found and rescued in sleeping pods set adrift in space or on different planets we really wanted to build in some more dynamic "arrival" options for our game.

What does that mean? Well, every App This Please will feature at least one alternative option to being found/rescued in the traditional sleeping pod situation. The sleeping pod will always be an option in future application rounds, but the alternative options involve the characters in question having already been in game for a specific amount of time given in the options! For our first application round there are two options for how your character begins their time in game. Think of it as your very first Majority Rule poll.

What are the options? Glad you asked!

1
Majority Rule Navigator R33500 "Rhys".

As the Test Drive Meme opens your character will wake in a sleeping pod located on the Yggdrasil-class Battleship Lethe. The ship is located in a starship graveyard which comprises a large derelict and long abandoned space station with docking for ships and the scattered remnants of a huge space battle. The Lethe is in critical condition but currently faring better than the ship of the second Navigator. It is spaceworthy, but how comfortably spaceworthy it will be by the first game event depends on the actions of the players on the test drive meme.

R33500 will activate upon the posting of the test drive meme, brought online due to another Yggdrasil-class starship coming into the vicinity. As soon as he initializes characters will be notified that they are under the law of the Majority Rule Protocol. The rules for the polls run by this protocol can be found more in depth in the FAQ, but for a brief refresher (or introduction if you haven't touched our FAQ as of yet) character devices will all have the capability to send out polls to vote on to the rest of their crew.

Choosing R33500 as your starting Navigator essentially means you start the game from scratch. The other navigator enables your character to have a 3-month long backstory. Choosing R33500 means your character can start and vote on polls during the TDM; Alyce's crew members will not have access to the Majority Rule Protocol until the crews combine.

Additionally, Lethe crew members will be able to fight and cause harm to the enemy NPC pirates while the Caduceus crew is explicitly banned by their own Protocol from causing harm to anyone else and will be unable to do much more than run away from enemies and defend themselves without fighting back. The Lethe crew is essentially going to be the Caduceus' crew's saving grace as R33500 does not specifically prohibit violence beyond not using violence to get specific votes. If characters on the Lethe crew want to beat up some space pirates R33500 is cool with that.

2
Hippocratic Protocol Navigator A71355 "Alyce".

Alternately, you woke from a sleeping pod three months ago. When you woke you found yourself on the Yggdrasil-class Hospital Ship Caduceus. The ship was in hibernation power mode and many systems were offline. Characters had to work together in order to wake the systems and bring more than basic life support online.

They quickly woke the Navigational AI of the Caduceus, A71355, who indicated that to the crew that she was operating under the Hippocratic Protocol. First, do no harm. Second, treat harm where you find it. This Protocol prevents the crew of the Caduceus from attacking or injuring other people - if they try to do so they instead pass out. It also requires them to render aid if it is in their ability to do so, manifesting as an intense desire they can't shake. All crew of the Caduceus is bound by the Hippocratic Protocol and will be unable to break either of these laws until they become crew of the Lethe.

A71355 was unable to give the crew much information about how they found themselves on the Caduceus and no other lifeforms aside from the characters who woke there were anywhere to be found. The AI was initially shy and uncertain but was openly willing to answer any questions asked to the best of her abilities. Her memory was found to have been significantly damaged by a long hibernation and all the prior crew logs were deleted. The only information remaining were many medical logs, details on her Protocol, and the crew manifest. The manifest held the names of every character who awoke on the Caduceus along with some others.

The Caduceus has been traveling ever since. After some time on the journey A71355 requested that the crew refer to her as "Alyce". Recently they were in transit to a new world when they came under attack by Reapers, a loose collective of space pirate crews. The Caduceus has no offensive capabilities and they were forced to flee. In the one-sided battle of retreat the Caduceus was half-demolished. Alyce was able to keep life support online and to guide the ship into the starship graveyard where the TDM opens. With the ship dying and gutted Alyce's functions are limited and she is "dying" in every sense of the word that matters. Her fate depends on the actions of her crew and that of the Lethe.

Obviously a lot more than this happened in those three months. Characters visited two different worlds together and likely fell into learning how to work with one another and got to know Alyce as they sought answers together. Create as many noodle incidents as you'd like - this is just a basic outline to work with about what they'd have experienced and what they might have done. The two worlds that characters visited, in order and briefly, are:
Baatera, a large planet with two moons that is mostly comprised of huge tropical rainforests. The planet is near enough to the sun to be hotter than most are used to but not so hot that it can't be endured. Of the many species on Baatera there are two the characters would have had notable experiences with based on their landing site. The first are the Sashute, a small catlike folk known for being friendly and hospitable to strangers who live in elaborate treehouse villages. The second are the Vecialae, a large reptilian species known for their warmongering tendencies who live in underground caverns and tunnels they dig out. The Vecialae frequently attack the Sashute and anyone else who happens to exist in their vicinity.

Teclite, a smallish sized ice planet with no moons at the far edge of the star system Baatera is part of. Teclite is home only to the Tecra, a mammalian species with two legs and four arms who grow venomous spines over their body. Their "religion" is cybernetics and even their young children are made over into cyborgs. They are wary of anyone who doesn't have some form of cybernetic enhancement but allow certain visitors. They permitted the Caduceus to land after the hospital ship responded to a distress signal sent out by the Tecra due to an outbreak of illness in one of their smaller colonies.
If you have any questions or want clarification on anything please refer to our mod toplevel on this post! We also have a specific Caduceus toplevel where players can discuss "noodle incidents" for the ship or discuss crew relations. Upon the completion of our application round we will collect and edit a "Caduceus Ship Log" page for later reference.

TL;DR: Players who select Alyce as their character's default Navigator will be committing to playing characters who have been awake and operating on a different ship's crew for the past three months! Their characters will be unable to cause harm to others and will only be able to defend themselves in the case of attack. Which is going to be a bit inconvenient when the scene opens from an attack on the Caduceus.

Alyce will be an option in March as well where any players who select her as their character's navigator will have the option of having their characters have escaped the attack on jettisoned escape pods that landed on our first planet (March's event planet). Keep in mind that characters who begin as Alyce's crew will be unable to vote on or view the Majority Rule polls initially. By the end of the Test Drive the two crews will be combined and they will be able to vote on the polls and will no longer be subject to the Hippocratic Protocol, though the details of how that happens are largely up to player decisions.

I'm not sure which to pick...

That's fine. You just need to choose by the time you apply for the game! On the test drive players are welcome to write their character as being from either of the crews if they want to see which perspective and set up they enjoy writing from more. The crew they choose to apply as is the one whose interactions will be game canon, however! Our test drive will additionally feature toplevels where players can interact with the two navigators, although both are in varying stages of corruption at the moment. Their status and coherency will change as characters on the test drive take actions or make choices that help or harm them.

Okay, so when is the TDM you keep mentioning?

Oh, you want dates, huh? Lucky for you, we're happy to provide those. As a note we do not have a set posting time for our actual posts beyond "on this day". There's specific times for Applications and reserves expiring since we go by timestamps for that even if we don't manage to flip the status of something to open or closed at exactly the right time. This is to give the moderator team leeway in case one time of day is better for us one month and then bad another month!
06th. Our App This Please meme is posted. You're here now! Our reserves are also live.
10th. Test Drive Meme is posted.
15th. Applications open at 12:01AM EST. Reserves close.
20th. Reserves expire at 12:01AM EST. The moderator team begins processing applications.
28th. Applications close at 11:59PM EST.

Comment form.

Please fill out the below form and post it in a comment to this entry! Feel free to edit the code as needed or simply fill it out plain if you prefer. Replace PLAYERNAME and CHARACTERNAME with the required information.

PLAYERNAME
CONTACT: Plurk / Discord / PM.
TIMEZONE/AVAILABILITY: What is your timezone and what is your usual tagging availability?
CHARACTERNAME
CANON:
AGE:
ABOUT: A brief blurb about your character. Who they are, what they're like, what they can do. Just enough to let people know who they're plotting with.
NAV CHOICE: R33500 or Alyce? Refer to the above sections if you skipped down here and don't know what that means.
PLOTTING: Basic things you'd like to do if you picked R33500. This section can also be used for people choosing Alyce to discuss the past few months of their expedition.
OTHER: Comments, random quotes, memes, whatever you want goes here.
For those of you who don't know how to link a Plurk username off the top of your heads, use the following code:
NAV LOGS NET OOC MEMES
festianbargain: by <user name="bangparty"> (Default)

[personal profile] festianbargain 2023-02-07 09:46 am (UTC)(link)

Saga

CONTACT: PM me!
TIMEZONE/AVAILABILITY: PST, most available evenings, occasionally during the days

Cassian Andor
CANON: Star Wars

AGE: approx. 28

ABOUT: I'm playing him from close to the end of season 1 of Andor. He's currently incarcerated in an Imperial labor camp. He's occasionally been involved with various rebellious factions but has not fully committed yet. Grew up on a planet where the main industry is salvage, called Ferrix. He knows how to repair and/or pilot just about everything you can think of in the Star Wars galaxy. Was born on an isolated planet called Kenari, galactic standard is his second language. His people were hunter-gatherers, and later he spent some time as a child soldier. This also isn't his first time in prison. He's extremely skilled in aerial, ranged, and hand-to-hand combat. Will not hesitate to commit murder in cold blood. Is also a very good thief and spy.

He tends to be very quiet, and has a habit of matching the energy of whoever he's talking to, at least until he's a little more comfortable with them. He also is something of a flirt. As standoffish as he can be, once the switch is flipped from "stranger" to "friend" in his head he is utterly loyal and would die for that friend.

NAV CHOICE: Rhys. He'd be useless on the Alyce

PLOTTING: His first instinct will be to try to fix everything. The tech won't be the same, of course, but with enough time he'll be able to figure out the logic of the new systems. (note: "enough time" could mean "years" depending on how the plot works) He will not object to fighting pirates, and will join in if that's necessary. But only if it results in some kind of improvement in their circumstances. Otherwise he's going to be focused on repairs and trying to figure out how to fly the damned thing.

OTHER: Has never met a Jedi, or a Sith. Has never even heard of the Force. Would be extremely surprised by anybody displaying any kind of supernatural abilities.
introvertive: (pic#16241636)

[personal profile] introvertive 2023-02-07 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)
i love cassian and would adore seeing him! rogue one is one of my fave star wars films and i think he would be sooo fun and ridiculously useful in this setting. i also need a fellow quiet but insanely loyal dude around. if minato's headphones were to break could he fix them...
festianbargain: by <user name="inkonic"> (amused)

[personal profile] festianbargain 2023-02-08 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
Hell yeah! His canon point is from a few years before Rogue One so he's not quite the romantic hero that he is in Rogue One yet. But the parts that will eventually form into that are there. He's still stuck in the "I'm not dying for you idiots I'm looking out for me" era but the change is comin'. His mom says some stuff to him in the finale that kind of turns his survival instinct on its head lol.

He is. A total. Mama's boy it's incredible.

Anyway yes he can probably get the headphones to work again. It might take him a minute bc the power source is going to be really different from what he's used to, but they have speakers in Star Wars and I figure that part can't be so different. And he will appreciate another quiet loyal type, if nothing else it's nice to be around somebody who isn't constantly talking and/or expecting you to talk as well.
luck: (pic#16220481)

[personal profile] luck 2023-02-08 02:53 am (UTC)(link)
Well Alhaitham's supernaturalism is up in the air BUT if he gets the chance to use it would Cassian be interested in a Dendro Vision? it lets him to make plants and bright-green constructs. like mirrors and swords for him when he fights!

but I think even though Alhaitham's an introvert, he says what's on his mind to the point of being blunt, so he might get along well with Cassian. He matches the beat of the people he talks to, and more like-minded people would never hurt! Especially if he doesn't seem like an idiot because we need less of those, and more people that think!!!
festianbargain: by <user name="bangparty"> (Default)

[personal profile] festianbargain 2023-02-08 08:44 am (UTC)(link)
Cassian has no prejudice against supernatural abilities, for what it's worth. He'd just be extremely surprised to learn that it's real. Once he got over the shock he would definitely be interested in figuring out the best uses for it. Being able to just make your own weapons out of nothing would make him extremely jealous lol.

When Cassian has something to say, he'll say it and can be blunt as well. Especially when planning a mission. And he can be an idiot about girls but is very focused when the topic is "how do we do this and not die in the process". People who can keep focused on that objective are always appreciated.
luck: (Default)

[personal profile] luck 2023-02-08 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
CASSIAN, DON'T BE JEALOUS!! You can have a weapon too, until it disappears once Alhaitham's done using his vision! I think it's be interesting to find best uses aboard with different people's perspective since he only uses it when it's useful, and he doesn't make any effort to hide it, it's just a glowing jewel on his outfit. I also saw that Cassian is trying to search and repair things, and Alhaitham comes from a nation where it's very big on technology! So he could assist in that too, he actually made a mp3 and headphones on his own with a noise canceling setting. He's also hacked into a big network... etc and if you find any unknown language, Alhaitham can (will learn to) maybe translate that so if you find anything weird on some computers... points eyes at your eyes... never know when you'll find some unknown documents every now and again!!

Yes! Alhaitham too, he's very much a thinker, and while he can be a fighter, he'd rather worm his way into the source and get rid of it so he doesn't have to do anything at all! They could have asshole to asshole communication and I think they'd just understand without getting up in arms about it. I think this is how friendship is made!