Stories of the Venture (Freeform Serenity)

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Lena leaves the ship as well, no rucksack this time. She decides to go into town with the others and steers clear of Sei Sun and the meditating man.

[MrEdwardNigma]

General Blackburn
"Sei Sun"

"The name's John Smith. What do you want with Sing? I don't even think that zipperhead is around anymore"

[King Tius]

"You misunderstand me, old man, and you will watch your tone when speaking of Mr. Sing. I am his associate and am here on his behalf to oversee his investment in this enterprise."

He gets to his feet and stands facing Blackburn.

"You may call me Yin." He extends a hand to the General.

Ms. Sinclare and those who wish to follow her take off, heading back towards the train station and catching a ride towards the Eavesdown docks.

[MrEdwardNigma]

General Blackburn
"Sei Sun"

Blackburn looks down at Yin's hand with disgust and spits on it, then kicking up some sand towards his face. He prepares to kick Yin, but then the others exit, heading off. The General stops and spits on the floor, a thick brown clod.
"You're lucky, but if you're going to be a brutal runt like that to me again, I'll knock you right into next week, boy. No-one calls me and old man, and they certainly don't give me no warnings if they know what's good for them. You'd better watch it, Yin"
The General walks off, following Ms. Sinclare.

[King Tius]

OOG: Never done Free-form combat before, this should be fun!

The General spits in Yin's hand and starts to speak. He gets halfway through the word "lucky" when Yin's hand, still open and covered in spit, darts forward and jabs him in the throat, gagging him. He takes a step backwards from the blow, walking straight into Yin whirling roundhouse kick. Yin's foot catches the General square in the temple and dropping him to the floor in an arc similar to the down swing of Yin's foot. The Asian man sees those watch him and bows respectfully in one fluid motion with his kick, his spit hand still held open.

"Greetings. I am Mr. Sing's associate. You may call me Yin." He wipes his hand on the General's shirt and stands up. "Where are we headed?"

[MrEdwardNigma]

Spoiler

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Using this thread for OOC considering no-one seems to be using the proper one.

Tius, I don't even get a chance to defend myself? This Yin fellow's sitting I'll remind you, the General got first strike and the General happens to be an extremely talented fighter. It's one of his principal skills. That and shooting, I'd say. I mean, he gets in barbrawls every day, several times, and he pretty much always wins. Him getting his ass ahnded to him like this is just ridiculous, especially because he's expecting it. He lures people into fights, if you hadn't noticed, because he likes to fight.

[King Tius]

I'm going to put the game on "pause" here because I would like everyone's input. This is why I don't like freeform!

My reasons for the General getting pwned:

A) "He gets to his feet and stands facing Blackburn."
-Yin is facing you

B) "He prepares to kick Yin, but then the others exit, heading off. The
General stops and spits on the floor, a thick brown clod."
- You do NOT have first strike, you were going to attack but stopped
and spoke.

C) This is where freeform really breaks down. The General loves to get in
fights and is a big buy (Jayne size, let's say). Yin is a highly trained
martial arts master, one of the top tier members of a karate oriented
institution (trying to not spoil stuff). He also catches the General off
guard and leads with a debilitating attack. The General may be stronger
but this guy is definitely faster.

D) I'm the GM.

E) Where we using character sheets, I would have built Yin superior to
the General mechanically. He's part of the story I have in mind.

F) Serenity combat is weird

If someone else would like to take over, I'd gladly just play the Doctor. If every time someone tries to shoot someone or fix something or do anything else skill based I rule differently then their character seems inclined for, this game will just become full of hurt feelings and bad Karma. I would suggest we spool up some character sheets or someone with a better hand at freeform take the helm.

[ubersquid]

I am mostly on King Tius' side with this.

First, the General so had it coming anyway. Pretty much everything he said by now was an insult to someone. I see nothing wrong with PCs who bother the others, allthough you might have overdone it a bit. As far as i have seen, there is no one who would put the General in his place by himself among the other PCs, but I would have imagined some kind of combined effort by everyone in the future.

I see freeform RPGs more like a way of collaborative story-telling than trying to get the own character to "win". Again there is nothing wrong with trying to get away with as much as possible, but the GM usually has a plan and his final say should be accepted.

The only thing that might have been missing in this fight was the chance for the General to react at all, even if it would have been futile and Tius would have written every punch he dealt into a parry and counterattack. On the other hand I can really imagine how this fight was over so fast, that there simply was no chance to react. These missunderstandings need to be talked out, but we are doing it right now, right?

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Yeah, no offense, but even disregarding the encounter with Yin, I considered Sei Sun to be a "toxic" character from the beginning. He's not a team player, which makes things difficult when the rest of the characters are trying to create a team. Not to say that he's not a cool concept, but I think he would be better as an NPC. I think Lena would rather go find another ship than continue interacting with Sei Sun. It seems the only options other than doing what Sei Sun wants all the time are avoiding him or open confrontation (which is what Sei Sun seems to want, to turn it into a fight). From the character descriptions, it seems like Sei Sun is more than a match for Lena in combat, so if my character was a little more unscrupulous she would be considering poisoning his oatmeal, but I don't think PC-on-PC violence is what we're looking for in this thread.

One potential solution: Sei Sun can become an NPC, and ENigma can create another PC?

[Headless_Ninja]

OOC: I did like the cinematic way that the fight went, but agree that ENigma should have had some chance to declare his intended actions, even if it was still inevitable that he would be unable to make them. As far as an NPC Sei Sun goes, I'm not sure about that; I was actually rather enjoying the squabbling and imbalance of power, so long as we could be sure that balance would eventually come about (doubtless in a poetic manner). Just my two cents...

[SilentNight]

Kenneth Selden
Out of work Black marketeer

Kenneth starts as Yin explodes at the general and the calms as he sees the man on his back. He nods at Mr. Yin and says, "Dong ma." He then bends and offers a hand to the general, "You want to get going?"

[Bonecrusher Doc]

"Greetings. I am Mr. Sing's associate. You may call me Yin." He wipes his hand on the General's shirt and stands up. "Where are we headed?"

Lena decides Yin would be a good person to have on her side.
Lena
"We're on our way to Eavesdown Docks to see about some parts for the ship and some sort of vehicle to haul them. Please, will you join us?"

[MrEdwardNigma]

Spoiler

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B) "He prepares to kick Yin, but then the others exit, heading off. The
General stops and spits on the floor, a thick brown clod."
- You do NOT have first strike, you were going to attack but stopped
and spoke.

The General would still be aware a fight was about to ensue, even though he wouldn't continue pushing it. He'd still be prepared for an attack, since he's been in this kind of situation countless times before.

C) This is where freeform really breaks down. The General loves to get in
fights and is a big buy (Jayne size, let's say). Yin is a highly trained
martial arts master, one of the top tier members of a karate oriented
institution (trying to not spoil stuff). He also catches the General off
guard and leads with a debilitating attack. The General may be stronger
but this guy is definitely faster.

So he'd be faster, harder to hit, not taking out a man the size of the General with two blows. Sending a man with that kind of weight flying is just really unlikely.

The thing I take most issue with is that there wasn't any actual combat. The General never had a chance and never got any way of responding. He just got his ass kicked in a humiliating way, and this for a character who specialises in hand to hand fights. If there's anything the General should have been able to do in this game, it's beating this guy, or at least have had a fighting chance.

As for the General being "toxic" and generally unlikable, well, yes. He's supposed to be unlikable by the rest of the crew. No-one liked Jayne, but they still kept him around. What's more, the General never actually tried to sell anyone out, nor would he ever. He just likes a brawl once in a while, but he'd be pretty protective of "his" crew. He works fairly well in a team once he grows a certain fondness of the rest of his crewmembers.

Oh, and he may have had it coming, being a bit of a jerk and all, but that shouldn't matter. People win fights being good fighters, not by being saints.

As for NPCing the General and making a new character, I won't do that. I'm quite fond of this character, and I believe he can work fairly well in a team, and certainly make things more interesting. A whole crew of goody-two-shoes is just dull after all. And if Lena would poison his food, that would just make her evil The General isn't a total bastard, he just likes to fight.

The General
The General takes Kenneth's hand.
"Thanks. He caught me off guard. He tries that again and he'll be hurting for weeks"
The General followed the rest of the crew, eyeing Yin angrily along the way. He couldn't remember the last time he lost a fight, but he seemed to recall the guy had been twice his size. Anyone who could afford to hire this kind of help probably wasn't to be trusted.

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Lena

What a motley crew we are, thinks Lena as they walk. I wonder what we'll see at the docks.

[King Tius]

OOG: If you'd like to continue discussing this, we can do so in the OOC section

Yin accompanies the rest of the group as you follow Ms. Sinclare to Eavesdown. Not the Docks, mind you, but the town proper. She leads you to the warehouse section of Eavesdown and brings you to a smaller warehouse located somewhere in the middle of all the other buildings. It is a squat, one story storage facility with no windows. Ms. Sinclare fiddles with a control pad at one end of the cargo door before it slowly begins to rise. Lights flick on and you can see that the place is full of various crates and boxes off all sizes. A hover mule is also parked inside. Ms. Sinclare looks around with a determined expression and starts pointing out boxes and crates.

"Grab that one and that one over there. This whole stack can go."

She walks off towards a small office located in the back corner of the building. Yin stands there, not moving.

[MrEdwardNigma]

Spoiler

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I was using the OOC all along, but no-one seems to read it Then again, maybe that's your point

The General
The General started hauling boxes into the mule.
"What's in these anyways?" he asked.

[SilentNight]

Kenneth Selden
Out of work blackmarketeer

Kenneth shrugs and begins moving crates as well.

[ubersquid]

Thomas Nikagi

Tommy estimates the weight of some of the boxes and then picks up the ones that seem lighter and carries them to the mule. After a few crates he seems to get distracted by the all the other crates around. He begins to wander around between them, wondering about their content.