Whispers from the Deep - Biplanes & Bisexuality

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Character Sheets
  • Informational


    • Character Sheet
    Isabelle Morgenthau
    A Fisher

    Isa (right) and her boyfriend Arren (left)

    Hard Keen Calm Daring Wild
    +4 -2 +4 +1 -1
    Moves
    Creepy: When a comrade sees you perform a ritual, overhears your prayers, or sees signs of your alienness, they lose Trust in you. Once they learn one of your Moves, they are no longer affected, but they gain Creepy as well.
    Deep Ones: You can call on your patrons to Help you on a roll. On a 1, you Break after this mission.
    Blessing: When you dab fresh blood on a piece of working equipment, roll +Calm. On a 16+, take both. On an 11-15, choose 1.
    • Take +1 Ongoing with this item this Routine. (+1 Handling for a plane)
    • The item cannot break or be lost this Routine. (+1 Armour on 1 Section of the Plane.)
    On a miss, you need a bigger sacrifice. Don't disappoint.
    Ideomotor Response: Your plane effectively has a programmable autopilot. It does not have to be switched on and off; it "knows" when you are behind the controls.
    Soul-Bound: When you paint a rune in blood on an aircraft, you are linked. While in flight, you can take incoming Structure damage as Stress, 1-1. You can take a hit that would strike a Component as Injury, or give incoming Injury to your Engine.
    Bond: (Witch move learned from Wulf) When you hold an object of significance and make an emotional connection to it, take 1 Stress. The object becomes a magical Focus, and you learn it's Nature (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Iron, or Blood).
    Contemplation: When you draw a ritual circle and stay within it, roll +Calm. On a 16+, you come out of it about an hour later refreshed; strike 3 Stress or 2 Injury. On an 11-15, it takes the whole night, and you're unreachable in that time.

    Mastery
    The Bushwack
    Ambush Predator: When you strike an enemy who is unaware of your presence, roll with Advantage.
    Forced Evade: When you fire to scare an opponent off, spend 1 ammo and roll +Hard. On a hit, instead of dealing damage, choose one: Target dives 1, target climbs 1, target loses speed in a forced turn. On a 16+, roll attack dice on them anyway.
    Momentum: When you dive onto a target, add +1 AP.
    Scissors Snip: When you disengage, give an ally +3 towards dealing with your target.

    Familiar Vices
    - Drinking
    - Prayer
    - Dancing

    Vice Progress
    - Breaking Stuff: ☑☐☐
    - Cannabis: ☑☐☐

    Intimacy Move
    When you are intimate with another, choose one of you to get a hold. They can spend that hold to give the other a command: if followed, then forward to their next +Stat move, they will always score at least a partial hit, regardless of what the dice say.

    If you use this move in the air, there are two holds, and they can be distributed however you agree.

    The Company
    People
    • Isabelle (Fisher): The PC. She's out to find her way in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Arren (NPC- Confidant/Observer): Your cute fish boyfriend. Artist and recently trained observer. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Wulf (Witch): Former bandit leader. Actually half wolf. Hot as hell. Ex-Goth. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +3, Keen +3, Calm -2, Daring +0, Wild +3 (Avenger)
    • Minna Hammerl (Soldier): Inexperienced but highly trained soldier and passionate duelist. Speaks all formal-like. The most beautiful woman in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +4, Keen +1, Calm +2, Daring -2 (Professional)
    • Heinrich Engel (Student): Political science student working on his thesis-slash-manifesto.
    • Anny Meldgaard (NPC - Mechanic): A young half-Fischer, half-Himmilvolk woman from Piav, trained by the mechanics there. Looking for adventure and her origins. Blushes red?
    Aircraft
    • Isa & Arren's Plane: A Teicher Möwen seaplane. Steel frame, liquid-cooled engine. Deeply possessed. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Fang Howl: Wulf's helicopter. An experimental pre-war model. Liquid-cooled radial. Three wolf moon. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Pup: Wulf's Kreuzer Skorpion prototype retrieved from a sealed hanger. Gets a lot out of an underpowered engine.
    • Minna's Kobra: An inline-engine powered, wood framed fighter. All around an excellent machine. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Heinrich's Reconstruction: A canard plane with a 30mm cannon in the nose. Awkward and unstable but hits like a train. 1 thaller per Routine.
    ​
    Stress XP
    3 7
    ​
    Cash Expenses
    41 10.5
     
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  • Informational
    • 7734 said:
    The problem is, said gunner is also firing at a pretty violently manuvering target, and while we might be a comparatory brick we're still moving too- and that inspires issues. The film's pretty explanatory.
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    Gunners in this system can and do score hits on other planes somewhat reliably. Attacking from a direction a turret can fire is dangerous, though given out plane less dangerous than attacking head-on. From the looks of it, our rear gun definitely covers the arcs behind and above, and might also be able to fire into our port and starboard arcs.

    The gunner not shooting anyone down has more to do with them having a single LMG.
    open_sketchbook said:
    Also, your tail gunner is currently a 12 year old girl bleeding from a gutshot.
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    That is rather problematic, yes.
    Wang and HuHu said:
    I mean rolls to see if Elke's wounds gets worse from being tossed around during maneuvers or if bullets hitting our plane nails her instead of something mechanically important.
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    Not sure about the first one, but yes to the second one. Hit locations are randomly rolled, and sometimes it will be something important, like us, or our gunner, or the engine, or the fuel tanks, or the guns, or the control surfaces. Other times, we'll just get a bunch of holes torn in our wings and skin. Enough of those holes, even if the shots never hit metal or meat, will eventually lead us to crash as our wings become unable to generate sufficient lift to keep us airborne.
     
    [X] Into Combat
    Okay, somebody roll me 2d10 flat for the new Engage move, which is how combat starts now!!!!

    (As an important aside, your plane does have that second seat, but was designed as a trainer instead of in the gunnery configuration. So there's no gun back there; Arren has been training to fire his rifle at other planes instead. You might want to get a nice gun installed.)
     
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    Choose two.
    • Start with altitude advantage.
    • Spot the enemy first.
    • Catch the enemy spread out.
    • Come in behind your foe.
     
    [X] Start with an altitude advantage.
    [X] Come in behind your foe.

    Since we are an energy fighter, it would work best see the enemy first so we can plan our approach and a higher altitude so we can drop onto the enemy to build up speed for the attack.
     
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    [X] Start with altitude advantage.
    [X] Spot the enemy first.
    oh yeah, we dive fightin' now
     
    [X] Start with an altitude advantage.
    [X] Spot the enemy first.
     
    [X] Start with an altitude advantage.
    [X] Spot the enemy first.

    If you have altitude, everything else will come to you with patience and care.
     
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    [x] Start with an altitude advantage
    [x] Come in behind your foe

    Altitude, airspeed, ideas. We run out of all three, we crash. We run out of one, we can use the other two. And since we're an energy fighter, dives and zoom-climbs are our game. Altitude is speed, and speed is life.

    I'm going to break with spotting them first, and say we should be on their tails, which is the best place to attack.* Ideally we'd be flying close enough that if the propeller wasn't in the way, we could jump to the enemy plane across a narrow gap.

    Spotting the enemy first gives us maybe one shot, and we're not exactly the best at shooting things. Riding the tail makes all our shots easier.

    *Head-on attacks or "jousting" means shots are much more likely to hit us, the engine, or the radiator. Attacking someone moving across our guns is hard for the reasons 7734 keeps bringing up. Riding someone's tail gives us the best shots, even if they do have turrets.
     
    How are coming in behind the enemy and spotting them first different? As soon as they see you they'll start maneuvering for advantage, which generally means pointing the dangerous end in your direction or at least dancing.
     
    I don't really remember what we can do/are good at, our character sheet is rather obviously out of date, and it's too late at night for hunting down up to date information.
    But, I notice this Ambush Predator skill we have, which I presume benefits from first strikes. That makes me think we want to take Han Spot First.
    Since everyone seems to think altitude is king and I don't really disagree, that'd be my choice for other option
    [X] Spot the enemy first.
    [x] Start with an altitude advantage
     
    Holy hell it's been a while. Lemme update you.

    I totally revamped aircraft construction with the help of the Aircraft Design Quest, making aircraft feel much more real and solid. Here's what your aircraft looks like now; note how many more factors influence its construction, and how the numbers have a lot more range. Your heavy plane behaves like a heavy plane now; it stalls out easily but the big engine gives it a lot of oomph and it's tough as nails in a much more meaningful way.

    I've also rewritten a lot of air combat elements, making it much more streamlined and easy to use. Most notably, control is now a relative factor; you won't be hit by a huge penalty for a heavy plane unless you are fighting a really light opponent with excellent turning characteristics. The random hits on your machine-gun will be easier to follow and know what's a good hit or not (11+ hits canvas, 16+ hits metal, 20+ hits crew). Vices are more fun, economics makes more sense, and crashing in the magical wilderness will be a real treat now.

    I'll be updating a bunch over the course of today to get this test back on the road! I missed Isa. :p
     
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    4-4: The White Raiders
  • Threadmarks
    • [x] Start with an altitude advantage
    [x] Come in behind your foe

    As you cleared the edge of the vast mountain, coming around a white waterfall and feeling the spray against the aircraft, you saw your foes before you. They'd already spotted you as well, with turrets swiveling in your direction. Your foes were a pair of single engine planes, one monoplane and one biplane. The monoplane was a two-seater, while the biplane looked a little like it had three seats, a forward and rear turret. Both looked like they were originally chalk white, with a simplified black spade on the wings, but a long flight had stained them with dust and oil until they were a sort of grey smear.

    You weren't sure at first, glancing over at your wingman for confirmation, but Ewald looked dead serious, moreso than you'd seen him the entire mission. They were definitely treating you as hostile, with weapons locked and loaded. One of the rear turrets took a ranging shot at you, and you watched the little smokey trail pass between your planes with a sickening feeling. You hear Elke whimper into the intercomm.

    They were about a hundred meters below you and six hundred meters away now. You looked over your instruments; with your missing aileron you'd be sluggish, but you were still in the fight, and you had a powerful triplane on your side. The ground was only about 500 meters below you, but that was deceptive up here in the mountains; your altimeter read 1500 meters. You had a half a tank of fuel, a missing aileron, and a big hole in the frame behind the gunner's seat. Which had a dying 12 year old in it.

    [ ] What do you do?

    Alright, quick rundown.

    The game revolves almost entirely around the idea of "Gaining Advantage" now. It's subsumed all the other moves. When you gain advantage to go on the offensive, it's +Hard, when you do it to escape, it's +Keen, and when you do it to set up future stuff, it's +Calm. If you really push the limit you can stunt, which is more effective but also more dangerous.

    You can spend speed     after you roll to gain a bonus. The ratio is 1/10th of your speed (rounding down) for a +1, minimum cost 1. So the faster you go, the more speed you burn.

    When you do, you increase your     G-Force meter over there by that much (+1 for every 10 speed you spend, but you probably won't go that fast). That G-force number is applied to your next roll, and can stack and build larger if you keep using it. It also counts as 10 speed per G-Force for calculating if you are going too fast, so... go easy on the Gs if you don't want to rip your wings off. Especially right now, with your plane in shambles.

    The old climb chart bullshit is gone. It costs 5 speed to climb one altitude, you get 3 speed when you dive 1 altitude. Simple.

    You can Boost your engine for a burst of speed (equal to your Thrust). This will add 1 to your RPM gauge. Every time you do this, you roll as many dice as your RPM, hoping for 11+. Every failure does bad things (wearing the engine out) but you can't instantly explode or anything like that. Boost often; your big flat radiator gives you a +2 bonus to it.

    Pairs of guns now have their attacks combined, so when you attack you will roll 2d20. 11+ will hit canvas, 16+ will hit components of my choosing, 20+ will hit crew. Natural 1s will be jams. You can spend some time setting up an attack (+Calm) against targets you have a good chase on, which might cost you the shot or let you pick what you hit accurately.

    That's everything you need to know! Isn't that so much better?

    Specifically for this fight, you will count as being Handling -5 instead of -4, and because you are above 1000m altitude you will be stalling out at 12 speed instead of 11.    ​
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Ohhhhkay, strategy time. We're here, they know we're here, they're in a shit position and they know it, but they can also see that we're fairly ragged even if they aren't much better off.

    aaaand we've still got a dying kid in the backseat, which means we have different priorities.

    I'm saying...

    [X] Signal Ewald that you should double team the heavy gunnery plane to try and drive them off.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    The old climb chart bullshit is gone. It costs 5 speed to climb one altitude, you get 4 speed when you dive 1 altitude. Simple.
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    Awww, but I liked the climb chart. It made light planes interesting. Of course, it did start getting ridiculous with large wings...
    Every failure does bad things (wearing the engine out) but you can't instantly explode or anything like that
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    Well, we can, if we push the engines hard and have a lot of bad stuff happen, but it is now impossible to go from "All clear and on green" to "OHFUCKENGINEFIRE" in a single roll.
    Pairs of guns now have their attacks combined, so when you attack you will roll 2d20.
    Click to expand...
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    Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be four hits at 2 damage instead of two hits at four damage?

    I think maybe we have Ewald go in first, with us following and serving as overwatch. Yes, it means we yield some initiative, but it also means that we'll have a good set-up for our own attack run.
     
    #1 priority is still getting the girl to the doctor, so even just forcing them to scatter or evade might be enough for us to punch through use our speed advantage to get away. Hmm, hitting the biplane hard enough would put the other in a bad spot, but lining up an attack angle against the turret might be tricky.
     
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