Warlock's wildcard.....

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Gelrir

A couple more points:

• What happened to "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Mission"?
• It would take a bold referee/PD indeed to role-play a group of people who are all far more intelligent and skilled than any player-character; AND require the player-characters to try and convince these Wise Ones of anything.*

--
Michael B.

* Without it sounding like, "Okay, you rolled well, so you talk to Mr. Hawking for a few hours, and convince him of the virtue and correctness of the Morrow Project concept."

Waking up 150 years after the apocalypse, I would hope they are smart enough to see the options.

Besides I have met some really smart people that come to work in mismatched shoes.

[Gelrir]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Waking up 150 years after the apocalypse, I would hope they are smart enough to see the options.

What if those are options that don't align with the teams'?

I can see, of course, LOTS of opportunity for drama and role-playing; but what's the Project's stated goal for Operation Paperclip? "We'll need to make sure the elite survive for the five or so years after the Atomic War."

Remember, a team won't have Bruce Morrow's "proof that the War is inevitable and inescapable" (whatever that is). You wake up a bunch of constitutional scholars, nuclear engineers, brain surgeons, Nobel laureates in biology, etc. five years after the Atomic War and tell them: "We kidnapped you a few weeks before an atomic war was predicted to occur without warning, and froze you in secret cryogenic bunkers. No, you can't go looking for your family, you have to do what we say -- the Project isn't a democracy. Your task is to assist us in rebuilding American civilization after the War."

Of course, the team will have a fusion-powered armored car, which is proof they aren't just escaped lunatics.

--
Michael B.

[Gelrir]

Stashing a bunch of kidnapped elites in a big, not-Recon-Team bunker gets more interesting when you consider that's also the kind of bunker the Project puts non-deployable personnel in: people who got injured during training, people who couldn't pass training, people who failed the psych/political evaluations too far into training, snoopy reporters and government investigators, the entire staff at the Morrow Industries reactor factory, the folk who kidnap the elites, etc.

--
Michael B.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Gelrir

Stashing a bunch of kidnapped elites in a big, not-Recon-Team bunker gets more interesting when you consider that's also the kind of bunker the Project puts non-deployable personnel in: people who got injured during training, people who couldn't pass training, people who failed the psych/political evaluations too far into training, snoopy reporters and government investigators, the entire staff at the Morrow Industries reactor factory, the folk who kidnap the elites, etc.

--
Michael B.

So I take it you have agreed to disagree then?

[Gelrir]

Well, I think it'd be very dramatic -- the elites are a group of people who are probably smarter than the player-characters. A referee who can hold up "their side" of a conversation with a dozen articulate, smart, annoyed people is quite a good thing. Especially since some of those people will be talking among themselves.

I'm interested in establishing "what the Project told the team about the Paperclip project":

• the team's part in all this
• why we kidnapped these people
• their choices after awakening
• what they are expected to do 5 years after an Atomic War
• what can the team tell them ... and not tell them
• where are the elites going to end up, and why there?
• do they get coveralls, machine guns, and armored cars like the non-doctorate-level team?

The Project's reasons for Operation Paperclip should sound well-thought-out and benevolent. Actions like kidnapping have to be presented as "better than any non-violent alternative".

--
Michael B.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Gelrir

Well, I think it'd be very dramatic -- the elites are a group of people who are probably smarter than the player-characters. A referee who can hold up "their side" of a conversation with a dozen articulate, smart, annoyed people is quite a good thing. Especially since some of those people will be talking among themselves.

I'm interested in establishing "what the Project told the team about the Paperclip project":

• the team's part in all this
• why we kidnapped these people
• their choices after awakening
• what they are expected to do 5 years after an Atomic War
• what can the team tell them ... and not tell them
• where are the elites going to end up, and why there?
• do they get coveralls, machine guns, and armored cars like the non-doctorate-level team?

The Project's reasons for Operation Paperclip should sound well-thought-out and benevolent. Actions like kidnapping have to be presented as "better than any non-violent alternative".

--
Michael B.

Still remains in the vein of the established modules. Team wakes thinking they are going to have a relatively simple mission (exception B&B ofcourse) and find themselves alone and in a much larger, more complex situation than anticipated. The loss of the project support is just the icing.

[Gelrir]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

So I take it you have agreed to disagree then?

Oh, every campaign is different; every campaign has something going on that another referee/PD wouldn't use. Variant game mechanics, ideas on what the Atlantis Project is up to, concepts of what's up with the rest of the world, giant nuclear badgers, etc.

And the players -- and the referee/PD -- are around the table to have fun. A bunker full of overage, overweight, unhealthy, highly-educated, super-intelligent people, that your team has been told are vital to the reconstruction of the United States five years after the Atomic War ... all sorts of opportunities for conflict about goals, unexpected qualities, heroism and romance, tragic mistakes, and so forth.

I'm not sure how I'd justify it as a "plan of the Morrow Project", but the main reason I wouldn't use it would be that our current campaign is meant to be "low Morrow exposure" so far -- teams aren't popping up left and right, and the current team is gonna be the only player-character team for a while.

--
Michael B.