Forum    Search    FAQ

Board index » RPG Forums » Freestyle RPG




Post new topic  Reply to topic  [ 153 posts ] 
 
Author Message
 Post Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2016 9:45 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"Hm. Well, that's pretty recent, at least." David heads up the ladder and into the ship (Roger is forced to put down Piper in order to navigate the ladder again. but she follows him up and is happy to be carried again afterwards) and leads Roger to the main bridge. He points Roger to one of the computer terminals, then moves to another one whose screen is not visible from where Roger is sitting and starts doing something himself.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 12:47 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger gets down to work. He does what he can to improve the translator, adding search functionality in both Elene and English. He also begins implementing simple tutorials. He's tempted to do a little snooping but with David so near he decides against it. For now...

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:57 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Roger: Science: +5 Roll: +0 Total: +5

The application, as it is, is a fairly barebones list of words with translations. (There's a lot of words, though. It looks like someone took a good few months just entering the vocabulary. For all that, the structure around the vocabulary list looks like it was whipped together in a day or two. Basic, and it works, but if they had a couple of months you'd think they could do better... there's absolutely no attempt to translate the grammar at all. Anyone talking through this system would be lucky to sound like Yoda.)

Search functionality is easy to add. Language tutorials, a little more complex.

Piper gets bored and leaves after a few minutes. David seems to get more and more frustrated at whatever he's doing, eventually ending with an angry glare at Roger and marching out of the room.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 12:32 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger does what he can for the tutorials which are very very basic. He also spends some time implementing a virtual Elene keyboard should the orthography warrant it. (After all, Roger hopes that some Elene speakers may make use of this eventually...)

Roger continues working on the program even after David leaves. But eventually succumbs to temptation to poke around to see what he can find about the ship's landing. He's not going to edit any files or anything, just look around.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 3:01 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
Roger: Science: +5 Roll: +2 Scientific Genius speciality: +2 Total: +9

Roger's account doesn't technically have read access to the log files he wants to look at.

This slows him down for almost half a minute.

It's not hard to find the moment in the log files that the first cryochamber opened. Before that moment, every single cryochamber was still sealed, all but a very few were still recording signs of life. (At some point, someone's probably going to have to open those other chambers and bury the remains...)

And it's very easy to tell why the chambers opened. Someone logged in - with an administrative password - told the ship to land at a certain location (bypassing the automated scan and mapping stage, which would have taken more energy) and then told the computer to open three cryopods shortly after landing.

The oddest thing about this transaction being that, at the time - and Roger double-checks this three times - every single human on-board was still in cryostasis.

Some hours later (after several other people had been woken up) someone (username 'david') changed the administrative password. Roger guesses that this was after someone went through the same logs he's just been through.

It's also not hard to find the command that woke up Roger. It was entered - using a different console and the same administrative account as before (so the changed password didn't stop whoever was doing this) about two hours before Roger woke up.

Someone (username 'david') recently (within the last half an hour) checked these self-same logs. And - oooh, that's interesting - logging in to that particular administrative account will now automatically turn on the nearest security camera for the next ten minutes. (Again, username 'david' seems to have set that up, shortly after checking the most recent logs).

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 12:13 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Curiosity satisfied for the moment, Roger returns to working on the translation program. Deciding that vocabulary is pretty much taken care of he focuses on the grammar because that seems to need the most help. At some point he will check to see if there is any evidence of his snooping, and if there is he will try to determine how difficult it will be to change it.

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 2:26 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
With his high Science roll, there is next to no evidence of Roger's snooping. Someone would need to have a pretty high Science skill in turn to even have a chance of tracing Roger's actions.

Given the number of people in cryopods, Roger estimates that there might be approximately three people on the ship who have anything like a reasonable chance of picking up on his snooping, and the odds are all three are still in cryostasis.

So he spends his time working on grammar, instead.

Science: +5 Roll: +1 Total: +6

Untangling the word order is the first and most difficult task. Roger has just about managed to get an approximation in place (depending on the location of the verbs, and occasionally getting things hilariously wrong) when he's interrupted by an elderly man with a ready smile.

"I take it you're Roger?" he says, extending a hand to shake. "I'm Captain Argent. Welcome to the new world."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:16 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger stands quickly, a bit surprised. "Yes, that's me." Roger shakes the man's hand. "Ah. Captain. It's nice to meet you."

"David asked me to have a look at the translation program. It's coming along pretty nicely I think."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 11:53 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"Excellent, excellent. Tell me, how badly did he freak out when he met you?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:44 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger snorts. "It probably would have been worse if Dr. Vanderbilt hadn't been there to talk him down a bit. I shudder to think what would have happened had he been the one to find me."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 1:39 pm 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"He would have ranted at you while getting you something to eat, I imagine. Allow me to apologise on his behalf, please - his heart's in the right place, he just gets a bit, hmm, prickly when things don't go according to schedule."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 9:53 pm 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
Roger nods. "I've met a few...prickly people in my time. The apology is appreciated and accepted."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:50 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"Excellent, excellent, excellent." The Captain nods. "Aside from David, how are you finding the new world so far?"

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 11:53 am 
Member of the Fraternal Order of the Emergency Pants
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2003 12:00 am
Posts: 3411
AOL: Dodger724
Location: Relative Obscurity
"From what I've seen, which admittedly isn't much, the place is gorgeous. I was telling Dr. Vanderbilt that we're quite lucky that the place is so hospitable."

Top 
   
 Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:35 am 
User avatar
Offline
Joined: Wed May 15, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 11381
"The planet's a bit like my stepmother," says Captain Argent. "Beautiful, yes, but deadly. You didn't see the monster that provided most of our meat supplies. Size of a lion, but add wings and a giant poisonous tail..." He shudders. "We can make it here. We can live here. But this is untamed wilderness, lad. Real untamed wilderness. I know we can make it here, just don't go out alone at night."

Top 
   
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
 
Post new topic  Reply to topic  [ 153 posts ] 

Board index » RPG Forums » Freestyle RPG


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

 
 

 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: