Open BETA announcement

[Mark Essel (@victusfate)]

We're sharing the COTA core rules with all willing game masters,
players, and curious readers.

We’re seeking active sci-fi/fantasy roleplaying game masters, players
and fans to help play test our beta of Children of the Ark (COTA) -
http://www.victusgames.com/COTA-beta.pdf. It’s a game set in the far
future and has some interesting twists over other roleplaying game
systems and settings.

Related links:

* official site: http://www.victusgames.com/
* The url to COTA or Children of the Ark beta: http://www.victusgames.com/COTA-beta.pdf
* Beta announcement:
http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/01/09/children-of-the-ark-free-sci-fi-tabletop-roleplaying-game/

[Espatier]

Hey, it me again!

Place me on that list. I have it downloaded and looking over the
character generation now.

[rfta mastercon]

ya im willing to test out the system and future settings also.

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[Mark Essel (@victusfate)]

awesome! you're on the list.

[Yurie]

I've already downloaded the rules and introduced them to my University
gaming group. We're currently playing with it a little. Solely on the
Character Generation, we ran into a few things.

Life Creation is very abusable.

Life Creation is insanely abusable. Already one of my players has come
up with ways to break it, particularly in the ability to grant
creatures powers. So far, we have come up with what are called the
Horrible Hampsters.

The Relatavistic Kill Hampster - Give a creature enough durability to
survive re-entry, then accellerate it to a fraction of c. Instant city-
stomper.

The Hampster Tsunami - Make a hoarde of weak creatures with Body
Reconstruction 1. Dump them over a city. Let them burn up on reentry.
32 days later, HAMPSTERS EVERYWHERE.

The Von Neumann Hampster - Create a Hampster with Life creation. Order
the hampster to create more hampsters. Repeat ad nauseum.

so, yeah... Life Creation as it is is a little hax.

[Mark Essel (@victusfate)]

Epic Yuri.

You're going to discover all the powers are "abusable". To manage a
campaign I suggest offering the players motivation via council
enforcers (angels/agents), highly equipped mercenaries/militia or
xelomites.

Players can annhilate civilizations, but why, and for how long will
they enjoy pursuing such activities? Try and help build character
connections to mortal non player characters, as this is where some of
our best adventures spawned from. My brother's character attempted to
fire an AI (in a hardened masterly crafted android body) he had
running his porn empire by throwing him out of a 70 story window into
traffic. When the AI and android frame survived the impact and
returned to the office to discover why he had been relieved of duty,
my brother's character made a campaign long ally. He went out of his
way to help and protect the AI whenever possible. AIs can be much more
durable than human (or many alien) npcs.

[Mark Essel (@victusfate)]

never ended hamsters are quite the problem, terrible tribbles!

The ones that burn up on re-entry aren't much of a problem, futuristic hi-tech cities have had similar issues with rogue asteroids, terrorist fighter pilot jocks, etc. You can safely assume they have some type of early warning and defense. Lo-tech cities are at the whim of the tech and power of the assailants though.