Character Primer
Things fall apart...
No one knows how the nano-plague got started, not really. Rogue AI? Some experiment that escaped a lab someplace? Any of that is likely. What we do know is that suddenly, stuff started breaking, from the ball popping out of you ballpoint pen to planes with perfect maintenance records falling out of the sky - and that's just the mechanical things. There were other problems too... mutations, monsters, call it what you will, but people changed. Not mentally.. or, not only mentally, but physically too. It seems to have started in central Asia and spread outwards from there. Efforts were made to contain it but the world is too interconnected, borders too porous, for that to do anything other than slow things down.
Eventually, the powers that be decided that the situation was untenable and the world could not be saved. A plan was set in motion to put all those gadgets that DARPA money had paid for to use and send multiple teams of volunteers - soldiers, scientists, technicians - forward through time to help rebuild. The target time is 3 years from the departure date.
You are part of one of those teams.
You said goodbye to the life you had known, boarded a C-17 cargo plane, climbed into the sky, and flew through a Quantum Singularity Tachyon (QST) Gate - essentially, a "time portal". It is a one way trip, and you knew that when you signed up.
How you fit into all this
You are a human from the present day who went through the QST gate.
Class
In game terms, you are one of the following character classes:
- Combat Engineer
- Combat Medic
- Scout
- Special Agent
- Sniper
- State Liaison
- Technician
- Trooper
- Psionic
- Yeah, we have those. You just weren't cleared to know that until this very moment.
Occupation
In addition to the above class, you had a life before this - even a student who enlisted would be a "student" who became a "trooper".
- Academic
- Adventurer
- Athlete
- Blue Collar
- Celebrity
- Creative
- Criminal
- Doctor
- Investigator
- Law Enforcement
- Military
- Religious
- Rural
- Student
- Technician
- White Collar
Advanced Skills Training (ASTs)
I'm taking the GM perogative and breaking the rules here.
In addition to the normal class-based character advancement, this setting, as written, features Advanced Skills Training (ASTs). These are additional training which your character has taken. The thing is... they happen at level intervals. So, suddenly, at level 6, you realize that you had taken Firefighter training and just hadn't mentioned it until now. Yeah, I don't buy it.
You get 7 AST picks at levels 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 16, and 20. So, what I'm going to have you do is pick 2 at character creation, and skip the picks on levels 2 and 3. By then, hopefully, you will have adjusted to being in The Ruin and there will be some sort of continuing education where you pick up skills along the way (and getting that instruction may be an adventure in itself).
The AST list is as follows:
- Airborne
- Air Assault
- Competition shooter
- Diver/SCUBA
- Driver
- Advanced Diver/SCUBA
- Advanced Driver
- Drown Proofing
- Drone Operator, “Small”
- Firefighter
- Paramedic
- FISTers/Forward Observer
- Mountaineering
- Hacker/Information technology
- Leadership School
- Inspiring Leader
- Linguist
- Locksmith
- Advanced Languages
- Martial Artist
- Marksman
- Weapon Proficiency
- Armor Proficiency
- Parkour
- K9 Handler
- Operator
- Radio Operator
- SERE, “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape”
- TACP/JTAC, “Tactical Air Control Party/Joint Terminal Attack Controller”
Getting ruined
This is a big, fat warning for the players.
Guess what? That nano-plague? Yeah, it's not gone, and the longer you stay in this world, the more likely that it is going to change you into something else. The game calls this "the Ruin reveals". There are a few different options, but the one I'm going to go with is the random one. Periodically, I will roll for all the characters and will let you know how your character is changing. It also means that other members of the expedition will change too.
The reason I'm explicitly mentioning this is because I don't want players to be caught completely unaware that things like this can happen. You will retain control of your character and no changes will be made that make your character unplayable - your character will just be different.
