Campaign idea. Would like some help filling it out.

[Guy_LeDouche]

Welcome to Splicers!!! This RPG is easily one of the best (and criminally overlooked) out right now. The forum is great, and I hope you get flooded with advice and suggestions.

For my part, see below:

Biotech Spaceships I need a design that sounds plausable...I was thinking that the splicers live in seedlings underground right? Perhaps they are growing into ships?

Possibly. The main book and subsequent Rifter material is (deliberately?) vague.

Orbital weapons platforms. There must be some, so I need to design some.

Again, a strong possibility. The main book mentions nuclear strikes in a few places, however, the Machine has mysteriously stopped using them. If you can find a copy of "Mutants in Orbit", its got a ton of orbital weapons satellites.

My splicers world IS a colony. The reason the main world never came to check up on them is that that world ran into it's own problems before the N.E.X.U.S problems started...the problem earth ran into? the time of the Rifts.

Cool deal.

How Did bio-tech come to the resistance? I'm not sure I even need to answer this in the scope of what I want to tell as a story, but if I have to carry on afterwards I will need to flesh this out.

No one knows. Like the satellites, this has been left deliberately vague. There is some mention that it may have originated with the Lilith N.E.X.U.S. personality, but no conclusive proof.

A moon base. Is there one? I think I will need one.

Nothing mentioned; you have free reign here. Go for it!

How to get rid of the nanite plague. I need a way to get rid of it that would be useless on the splicer planet. Say if I were in space I could get rid of it so I could enter a space station, but once I come back to land, I get reinfected.

I had toyed with a similar idea. One of the big things with the nanoplague is the danger of reinfection (so to speak.) There are numerous threads on the forum regarding possible "cures", however, the main thing to keep in is that PCs can be infested all over again.

If uninfected PCs arrive on the Splicers world, they should be safe provided they remain in airtight vehicles, armor, robots, etc. However, once exposed to the atmosphere, anyone is instantly exposed to the plague. Check pg. 13 of the main rulebook, some good stuff there on the nanoplague and how it could spread.


Hope this helps. Post away, I love looking at other peoples materials.

[slappy]

I'm glad my ideas helped inspire you. You definitely have a cool concept going. My only suggestion would be to get rid of the idea of a central N.E.X.U.S. core. I think of it like Terminator 3. There is no central system. The Machine consciousness exists throughout cyberspace.

What you can use for target practice are the Computer Cores. These really are the central cores that you're thinking of, but there is not one but many.

I'm working on a sourcebook idea right now and I divide the world into areas of influence. Each area of influence is the geographical region around a Computer Core. The Resistance set up multiple Great Houses in each area to provide constant pressure against the Machine in the event that one House falls.

Your campaign could focus on taking out the Computer Core in your House's area of influence. If they win, then the Machine is driven back, but the game is still on. You don't want to save the world in one fell swoop. This way you can bring the fight to another area while N.E.X.U.S. schemes and plans to re-establish her foothold in your territory

[TechnoGothic]

Just a Thought for background that might be found out somehow...

Idea #1
Planet Splicer is an Offical name believe it for not. It was Terraformed through the use of Organitech developed by Norad Scientists back on earth after Earth suffered an Alien Invasion. From there Humans formed a Golden Age of Technologies. Expanding their Splicer research (Eugenics), Bionic research, Robotics, Super-soldiers, etc...
Then they started a covert Space Colony to test out some of the newer technologies better. Planet Splicer was seeded with special Organitech hardware, They sent Hundred maybe even thousands of people in an Ark Vessel. They lost contact with Earth soon after that. The Ark was a one-way mission at that point. They started to build, develope on their own. Within 10-20 years however NEXUS went mad...NEXUS was not Old, but new at that time.
The people were forced to embrace their Organitech even more so than before. Pushing it further than they dreamed they could.
The Seedlings are Organitech at its finest. They are Space-Arks in the making. When they grow up they will launch into space for the First and last time. The plan years ago was to build more Space-Archs and seek help from Earth. But the Seedlings are taking longer to grow for some reason. They should have grown up already. Why havent they (Dead PPE planet Phase).

Should one launch the nanoplague will be gone after 4 weeks. Unable to reproduce themselves.

As for the Seedlings. Picture Farscape Laviathan Ships, but Bigger. Bigg enough to house a City of 40,000+ people in comfort.
The Seedlings were designed to launch when they could house 5,000 people at a time. They have grown bigger than expected. Why ? Not enough PPE to Launch into space, but enough to keep growing.

My example takes System Failure, then moves to Heroes Unlimited (minus True Supers), then to Chaos Earth, then to Rifts era...
Current Era for Splicers would be RIFTS era...timeline.

[Guy_LeDouche]

but do you still need to enforce the nanoplague? Does it break the system if it suddenly quits plaguing everyone?

Personally, I wouldn't shelve the nanoplague; it makes a good plot device and can serve as a wonderful "lingering threat" in the background. It helps to add an air of menace and danger to an adventure. It may not always be an active worry or problem, but it has the potential to erupt at any time and cause some havok and chaos.

Think of what a great weapon this is. N.E.X.U.S. doesn't really need a lot of fancy weapons to inflict horrendous damage to humans; anything that sprays metal everywhere creates an instant hot zone. Cluster munitions, artillery shells, frag grenades, shotgun blasts, even spent ammunition casings are potential hazards. Sure, the PC lucks out and only takes a glancing hit from a frag grenade. But is there any shrapnel in the wound? If so, what's going to happen? Do they take the time to dig it out (and suffer additional damage) or take their chances and hope the plague response is minimal?

Also with the nanoplague comes some unique logistical problems. Your PCs are out of ammo, what do they do now? In Rifts and other games, its an easy answer. You scrounge weapons, ammo, equipment, etc. off your defeated foes. In Splicers, however, unless your PC is a Techno-Jacker, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

Realistically, the nanoplague isn't a major threat in wilderness areas. However, it can drastically change the scope of adventures and campaigns in other areas. For example, crossing an old battlefield, littered with robot pieces and fragments, becomes an adventure in and of itself. And the nanoplague has a MAJOR impact on adventures/campaigns in cities, industrial areas, power plantes, etc. Not being able to simply pick up weapons and ammo from fallen foes also tests the PCs resourcefulness.

Imagine the PCs trapped in a building, surrounded by hostile forces, low on ammo. and there's only one way out: across a metal rooftop!!!

The nanoplague is a wonderful plot device and can add a level of suspense and tension that might otherwise be missing. I recently had a great session of Splicers where the PCs were tasked with destroying a Machine Power Plant. The adventure became one giant, moving fight for survival. Because of the metallic floor in the power plant, PCs couldn't stand still for longer than a few seconds at a time, and were forced to conduct a running battle while trying to complete the mission (its really hard to sneak around when the very floor itself could attack you!) It was one of the best nights of role-playing I've had in 18+ years.

I'm not a rules lawyer by any stretch, and the purpose of my post was to illustrate some ways the nanoplague can be used to enhance a game. Ultimately, an RPG is about having fun and exercising our imaginations. If you find its not for your game, by all means, feel free to throw it out.

[TechnoGothic]

I have run entire campaigns without the PCs encountering the Machine at all.
House vs House conflicts are much more fun (IMHO).

[Spinachcat]

I agree that House vs. House conflicts are awesome. It becomes very Dune + BioGuyver and that's a good thing. It creates a more political and complex game.

I especially like the focus on the internal struggles within a House between the humans and the Librarians. Lots of good roleplay stuff right there.

Slappy's idea of Houses clustered vs. a Computer Core is brilliant. That definitely gives the PCs an attainable campaign level goal. You don't save the world, but you save an island. Good stuff.