"Yesterday's Tomorrows" - Cast & The Story So Far (Tabletop RPG)

[chomiji]

We've been playing this scenario for a couple of years, real time. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the whole thing (and I know I've forgotten some details), but here's the cast list and an introduction.

The Scenario

This is the future as depicted by the pulp SF of the 1930s through 1950s. Food often comes in pills, spacecraft are pointy rockets, Martians are big and green, computers are as large as small houses, Venus is a hothouse jungle world, and so on.

The Team

Now known as Trask Force Alpha, this motley crew was assembled by Mr. Trask, the head of the high-technology company Trask Industries, to solve serious Solar System-level problems while representing the ideal of multi-racial, multi-planetary harmony. All the team members have at least one Deep, Dark Secret, several of which have yet to be revealed.

• Mick Savage: Retired as an active-duty Marine, Earth human Mick saw extensive combat in the war with the Jovians. He is now turning himself, piece by piece, into a cyborg. He is great in combat and as subtle as a brick otherwise. His secret has yet to be revealed. Don't mess with Hoshi (below) if you want to stay on his good side (as a military man, he has a great respect for medics).
   
• BAL-E: This is the team's robot pilot/astrogator and more recently, after extensive retrofitting and reprogramming, diplomat. BAL-E (pronouced "Bailey") had extensive experience as a cargo mover on the Earth-Belt run. "Her" secret (the pronoun is appropriate at least on the surface, since the retrofit) has yet to be revealed. BAL-E is soft-spoken, polite, and very logical. Nowadays, she looks rather like Maria from Lang's Metropolis.
   
• Dotaj: A four-armed, very large green Martian, and an enthusiast for earth's pop culture, Dotaj turned out to be a prince, rather than the mere enthusiastic scholar of alien life we thought he was. Dotaj is very strong, very loyal, and very honor-bound.
   
• Kat Heterodyne: Another human, she is a demure and shy engineering and computer genius. She is also the team's artillery heavyweight because of the impressive custom-made collapsible gun that she always carries (when collapsed, it looks nothing like a weapon) and the custom targeting helmet that she built herself. Nicknamed "Sparks" by Mick, Kat is decent at picking locks and has saved the team with her bomb-disarming skills several times. It turns out that she is the scion of a Moon-based family involved with news and pop media.
   
• Flint: He is a teenager and a third-generation Belter, which is fairly unusual. He knows far too much about lock-picking and sneaking around, yet (presumably because of his young age) he is almost as subtle as Mick when it comes to interactions with other people. He is also a decent pilot and has an non-reciprocated crush on Kat (who is a couple of years older than he is). His secret is that his sister is involved with heavy Belt politics.
   
• John Smythe: Big-headed human mutant "Mr. Smythe" is ostensibly a mere stage magician but in fact is actually a psion whose special talents range from telekinesis to (most recently gained) short-range teleportation (as the classic D&D spell "Dimension Door"). His prized new possession is a "dog" that is actually a high-powered robot, and his secret turns out to be that he is part of a cabal of mutants who claim that their manipulations of the scientific and political scene are beneficent. Mick calls him "The Brain."
   
• Hoshi Canid Mendel: Hoshi is a member of an artificial race created to aid Earth's military during the war against the shape-shifting Jovians (the Canids can sniff out Jovians despite their altered forms). Originally trained as a paramedic, Hoshi has become a superb emergency medicine doctor. Her superior sense of smell also makes her really good at sensing motives and telling when people are lying. Hoshi is polite and determined and thinks human beings are the most wonderful thing in the universe. Many of the others call her "Doc" (Mick started it). Her secret is as yet unrevealed.

Hoshi is my character, Smythe is the Mr.'s, and Kat is the Young Lady's (yes, she is a fan of Girl Genius). Mick is played by the Mr.'s brother (i.e., my bro-in-law). The family that games together ... well, we don't kill each other very often!

(There used to be another team member, Mr. Harvainen, a tall and handsome diplomat. He was played by our friend Richard, who died about 15 months ago. Harvainen disappeared with our spaceship, apparently unwillingly.)

So far, the team has solved various crisis situations, including defeating pirates who had taken over a weather-control satellite, solving a mystery involving scientists and murder on an orbital research station, restoring the control of the mysterious Tech Knights' asteroid-based home to them after a very strange situation involving mental parasites and a powerful monk from Tibet, and most recently brokering peace between the native Lunarians and the Trask scientific team that was establishing water-generation facilities on the Moon.

Comments

[7veils]

This sounds very interesting so far.