Red Dwarf: The RPG by Forums Terrorist

Introduction

posted by Forums Terrorist Original SA post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEp7I_2FjhQ

It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere...

Red Dwarf was a BBC comedy written by Robert Grant and Doug Naylor which ran from 1987 to 1993, 1997 to 1999 and is currently on its ninth tenth season. The basica premise of the show is thus: Dave Lister is the lowest ranking person aboard the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf when Captain Hollister catches him hiding his cat in the ship's cargo hold. Lister refuses to give her up and consequently gets to spend 18 months in stasis as punishment. Shortly after he goes on ice, his bunkmate, Arnold J. Rimmer, the second lowest ranking person on the ship, is taking the engineer's exam (for the eleventh time) and mis-repairs a drive plate, causing a radiation leak that kills all 1,169 crew members (except of course Lister, who is safely protected by the stasis field).

Holly, the ship's computer (with an IQ of 6000), lets him out when the radiation have reached a safe level...three million years later. In that time, Holly's gone senile, his pet cat has spawned a race of humanoid catpeople, and the Red Dwarf is out in the middle of deep space at near light speed thanks to three million years' worth of straight line acceleration. Even worse, in order to keep him company Hol has taken the liberty of creating a hologram of the person he shared the most words with in life: Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer.



Which brings us to the meat of this post, Red Dwarf: The RPG . This was printed in 2003 by Deep7, who before this made a few other RPGs. From what I gather they had some assistance from Naylor, and generally the writing is fairly true to the series (even if the short crimson one was getting fairly bad by series 8). So, with that in mind, let's dive into the basics of the system.

The system used in RD:TRPG is a fairly standard 2d6 based system where you add a relevant skill (a *very* broad definition in this setting; the example given is using Dancing for dodging bazookoid fire), an attribute and any situational modifiers together and try to roll under on 2d6. Snakes always passes, boxcars always fails (and as you can imagine these can have effects of their own, which I'll get into later).

Character creation works as thus: you pick a race first.

Evolved pet (Cat, Dog, Iguana, Rabbit and Rat/Mouse)
Human
Hologram
Mechanoid (in Series 4000 (think Kryten) or Hudzen 10 variants (think Judge Dredd meets a french maid with the world's strongest penis) )
GELF (Genetically Engineered Life Form, the closest the setting has to aliens; the playable ones are Kinitawowi who are basically wookies but uglier)
Simulants (kill-crazy mechanoids built for a war that never happened, having one of these as a PC usually involves amusing tales of DIY mech reprogramming)
Wax Droids (wax statues, but robots; they're based on famous people and yes, the example is Hitler)

Then you assign 20 points to stats and 30 points to skills, choose assets (perks), liabilities (disadvantages) and behavioural tags (roleplaying quirks). Finally, you fill out the backstory and generally flesh out your character.

I could knock up a sample character or stat up a member of the cast or something, but I'm going to do the amusing thing and let goons vote to come up with a character concept. The deadline will be either tomorrow or sooner if there's a clear winner; if no one can decide I'll pick the funniest.

Character, Created

posted by Forums Terrorist Original SA post

I was going to let the vote run a good bit longer but everyone got caught in other stuff and honestly this was the best vote. So! Character creation. First we pick our race; in this case, a Hudzen 10 Series mechanoid. The advantages are that as Diva Droid International's latest and greatest model we get above average strength and intelligence, as well as free points in Culinary Arts and Self-Defense . Out of the box we're equally adept at whipping up a breakfast of French toast, eggs Benedict and finest Assam tea for the rest of the crew as we are at whipping up a breakfast of bazookoid fire, stabbing and tastefully placed explosives for any errant intruders.

The downsides are that we have subpar Perception and Willpower, and we embody a particular quirk of the Hudzen 10 line; shoddy sanity chips. You see, for the Hudzens Diva Droid decided to outsource the design of several parts to cheap contractors. Unfortunately this means that when the AI (RD:TRPG's term for game master; I'll explain more about this later) feels like it she can call for us to make a Cool check. If we fail, we go bonkers and get to roll on the Space Madness table, which I will also cover later.

Anyway, meet Nonix :



First, we assign points to his stats. We get 20, and the six stats are Agility , Dexterity , Strength , Perception , Intelligence and Willpower . Agility is gross motor coordination, like the ability to slink about or get down (whether for protection or on the dance floor). Dexterity is fine motor coordination, like the ability to throw darts or play an instrument. Strength is a straight measure of how swole you are. Perception is both your ability to observe your environment and your ability to interact with others, while Intelligence is your raw mental capacity and Willpower is your drive, determination and guts.

Most races have a cap of 6 in any one stat, but Hudzens have 8 in Strength, 4 in Perception, 7 in Intelligence and 5 in Willpower. I don't like the cap system since it's not *too* relevant most of the time; in a real game I'd make it modifiers to starting stats instead. Let's assign our stats!

AGI: 2
DEX: 3
STR: 4
PER: 4
INT: 4
WIL: 3

His strengths are above average Perception and Intelligence, reflecting his two major competences of watching anime and playing video games, and Strength, because Hudzens are swole as hell. Unfortunately sitting in a gooncave for 3 million years learning Japanese from fansubs, polishing his robot maid figurines and sucking at Dark Souls 2^12 means that our man Nonix has the grace of a sack of obese bricks.

Next is skills. There's a lot of fun to be had here since a lot of the skills let you specialise in anything imaginable. On that note, let me explain how specialisations work; you gain an effective point when making a check related to your area of expertise, but take a penalty when doing stuff outside it. So, for example, let's say Nonix takes the Playstation 3000 specialisation for the Passive Games skill (which deals with games that don't involve physical activity, like gambling and board games). If he had the skill at 4, he'd make rolls related to playing vidya games on the PS3k as if his skill was 5, but he'd make rolls to, say, play Risk with Rimmer as if he had a skill of 3. I actually like this because it discourages Shadowrun-style specialisation munchkining.

We have 30 points to spend here.

AGI

• Self Defense 2 [Hanzo Steel 4]

DEX

• Craft (Miniatures) 3
• Repair 3 [Manga Books 5]
• Firearms 4

STR

• Strength Feat 2 [Groinal Socket 4]

PER

• Aesthetics (Art) 3 [Manga 5]
• Aesthetics (Fashion) 3 [Cosplay 5]
• Social 3 [Onii-chan 5]
• Passive Games 0 [Playstation 3000 2]

INT

• Culinary Arts 1 [Bot Pockets 3]
• Language (Japanese) 1
• Trivia (Anime) 3 [Robot Maids 5]

WIL

• Resist 2
• Cool 2

So... he can fight (sort of), he can make miniature anime figurines, he can keep his anime collection from falling apart, he's an anime nerd par excellance , and he can shoot. Oh, and he can crack bricks with his lang.

Finally, we have Assets, Liabilities, and Behavioural Tags. Assets and Liabilities are your standard advantages and disadvantages; you spend points you earn on the latter on the the former or on more skills. Behavioural Tags are slightly different; they all give you one point, but they're not really disadvantages, and generally you're encouraged to act them out as much as possible. They're like the distinguishing features in GRUNT, basically.

Assets:

• Material Wealth 1 (literal warehouse full of anime, manga and assorted Japarnaphalia)
• Unusual Talent 2 (Cosplay Flawless Robot Maid)

Liabilities:

• Addiction 2 (Anime)
• Delusion 2 (Believes robot maid manga is a manual for human-robot interaction)

Behavioural Tags:

• Nervous Tic (starts adding Japanese honorifics to names)

Alright; Nonix has enough anime crap that it possibly has some actual monetary value, and he can play a robot maid very well. Given that this is Red Dwarf, that might actually come in handy one day, so it counts as a 2 point asset. On the downside anime's his crack, and his misinterpretation of all that robot maid manga means that he's gonna have a hard time making friends (delusion can be from 1-3 points strong, with 3 being "character's delusion is almost certainly get him killed" level, hence my pricing it at 2). Finally, for flavor I gave him a tic. The math here gives us two spare points, which I shall put into Resist for those all-night marathons, man.

And with that, we have the frame of a character. Up next, I throw Nonix, along with Kryten and an evolved Iguana into a typical Red Dwarf situation; there's a squigy thing in Cargo Bay F and Holly's fucked if she knows what it is.