Babylon

Babylon is a play-by-post, diceless game (currently in development), set in a steampunk AU 1899, in the city of Bablyon, which floats above the Atlantic Ocean.

Plot
The game revolves around two clandestine organizations who have bases of operations in the Union of Babylon; the players originate from one, The Order, which has been struggling back and forth against The Society of the Illuminated for centuries. Both organizations have attempted to control the flow of international politics in a game of espionage, manipulation, and shadow puppetry for most of modern history.

Gameplay
The game will be played on a forum, with possible chat-events for scheduled plot missions and events; characters will be presented puzzles of varying sorts, and rewarded for solving them in one (or more) of the following ways: The major rule of gameplay, aside from the accepted rules of Roleplaying As We Know It, is that you shouldn't google any of the puzzles or riddles or codes when you get them, except when the Mods indicate that it's okay to do so.
 * Plot Progression/Information: Some puzzles need to be solved in order for relevant information to be released so that more pieces of the core mystery become accessible.
 * Hints: Individual characters or the group as a whole may be rewarded with hint tokens that can be traded in later on puzzles that leave everyone scratching their heads.
 * Potentials: While the game doesn't have a strict sheet system (see below), every character biography has a set number of potentials on it -- these are a freeform version of skills or merits in a more dice-based system. Having a Potential for a certain area or activity - whether it's Hieroglyphics or Acrobatics or Obsession with Ferrets - either dramatically increases or guarantees success in that field, and allows the player to seek outside research when the topic comes up in a puzzle. Upon solving certain puzzles (and at other points to-be-determined), players will have the ability to add another Potential to their list; it may sometimes be a Potential determined by the Mods (imagine your character found a Plasmid in Bioshock? Well, that's a predetermined MY HANDS SHOOT FIRE! Potential) and it may sometimes be a wildcard Potential that you're free to choose as you see fit.

Additionally, we have the Invention Rule: we want you guys to contribute to the game beyond the scope of your own characters. We want you to contribute to the world, and to the people who inhabit it. This isn't by any means required, and if you're more comfortable playing in the sandbox than making new castles (or breaking down a wall and letting the sand run free everywhere) that's fine, too. If you want to help us flesh out the world we're begun to define, please go ahead! Come up with people. Come up with businesses. Come up with new technology or ways that the world is subtly (or hugely) different. We only ask two things from you:


 * 1) Don't add stuff to the main plot, since we've got that taken care of.


 * 1) If it's something you think is sufficiently major or you're in any way unsure about it, just run it past Justin or Alice quickly before adding it! We can pretty easily vet things or explain how they might be changed to better fit in the world.

We don't expect players to have to run scenarios or events in the game themselves, but if you have strong interest in running something, pitch it to us and we'll talk!

Combat
Combat will happen, but it won't be systematized. The goal behind it is this: when there's a combat system, combat takes a very long time, and it becomes an OOC focus of the game, and sometimes even an IC one. We fully expect the characters to get into scrapes that can't be resolved except by a gun-fight, or fisticuffs, or maybe some serious airship-to-airship cannonfire, but these should be narrative experiences, not by-the-numbers dice extravanganzas. Can you have a Potential that contributes to combat? Yes, but keep it balanced, please.

Characters and Roles
In Babylon, characters will all be either members of or affiliated with the Order; some may join at the beginning of gameplay, but the intention is to have all the characters "in the know" for the first chat session or plot thread, which will be fairly early on, if not precisely at the Game On point. The Order's members don't necessarily do this professionally; they may and likely to have other lives and jobs, and this is something they do on the side, for the most part, although some may be "lifers". They can have joined or been recruited in a very large number of different ways, and they may have a wide variety of different skills, from zeppelin piloting to robotics to thievery to political manipulation. The Bureau, especially in as active a city as Babylon, needs all types.

Here's a very broad role list; please, feel free and encouraged to create new niches we haven't thought of, or specialize within the broad group roles.

Metatextually Speaking
The game's themes revolve around the balance and the tension between secrecy and trust, and, (secondarily), man challenging god/natural law. (Tower of Babel, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

Media influences for the game include, but are not limited to: Howl's Moving Castle, Babylon 5, Nikita (2010), the Assassin's Creed series, League of Extraordinary Gentleman (the comic, not the film), The Crying of Lot 49.