Campaign Prospectus - The NEMA Files (revised 1-2-2021)
Plot
As NEMA retreated to Chicago not every city emptied entirely. One that did not was Cincinnati. In Cincinnati cases that seem to involve the paranormal, arcane, or extra-dimensional are investigated by squads from FBI's special investigations section. If there is any chance for the civilians of the city to live normal lives it will be because of the hard work and special skills of these brave heros.
Themes
- Cities are dangerous and mysterious places.
- The new threats and the old ones may or may not be possible to tell apart.
- Magic is a mysterious, arcane thing where a few facts can be leveraged for great power.
Feel
- Threats can be dealt with many ways, characters are actively engaging in their cases and thus get to choose the terms of engagement much of the time
- this means that opponents will attempt to escape unless prevented, but they may or may not be able to depending on circumstances
- Episodes are self contained and the player characters start each episode at full strength
- There will be callbacks and references between episodes
- Equipment constraints are minimal, but so are upgrades since human technology is already cutting edge. Don't expect equipment upgrades.
- Treasure/rewards will consist mostly of information about current and future threats
- You will feel more like police officers in combat than military forces, that is to say you might win, but you should really be there.
Metagaming
- Player input in this campaign is primarily by retrospective discussions at session or episode end.
- Out of character planning is generally not a concern though timers may be used on occasion, for example to accelerate combat.
- In general if you would like something added to the campaign please discuss on discord between sessions, as campaign is episodic an episode request can be added.
- Again because this campaign is episodic we can swap characters in and out.
- The GM reserves the right to fudge dice rolls but in practice I rarely do so, philosophically I prefer to not roll if I'm not going to abide by the dice.
Scheduling
One player will monitor the discord scheduling channel and schedule episodes. Each episode will be scheduled as 3 Saturdays online from 1pm to 6pm.
Two sessions are expected to be plays sessions and the third is "social session." Social sessions might have a small amount of wrap up or scene setting but are generally just a chance to check-in as friends.
Players that need to do bookkeeping for their character should schedule extra time with the GM.
Characters
Characters will be investigators for the FBI Cincinnati. Replacement characters will be more of the same. Players must build the explanation for their character joining the FBI effort either officially or unofficially. Characters should not be built to be disruptive. As Characters are added role breakdown of the group in any given episode should remain:
Type | Minimum | Maximum |
Law Enforcement | 1 | |
Soldier | 1 | |
Paranormal Expert | 1 | |
Caster | 1 | |
Psychic | 1 |
Creative categorization is anticipated to allow some flexibility, also if all minimums are met and the party is at all maximums it may be possible to allow another character in excess of a maximum. Players may have multiple characters but should express clear preferences for how include or exclude their characters on a per episode basis. We will not allow two characters of the same class to play in the same episode.
While some characters may be killed and replaced between episodes it is also possible for others to simply recover between episodes if there is any possible way to do--details subject to hand waving.
Allowed Classes
- Any class from the Rifts Chaos Earth Main Book
- Chaos Earth classes from the Rifter, Rise of Magic, and Psychic Storm, limited to books owned by both player and GM
- NEMA classes with selected additional MOSs from Coalition Classes with approval limited to books owned by both player and GM
- Certain Military classes from Rifts books with approval limited to books owned by both player and GM
- Civilian classes from Modern Palladium Settings with approval limited to books owned by both player and GMAllowed Classes
Character Creation
Characters can be created in one of two ways:
- Partially Pregenerated Characters provided by the GM, see https://steelandchaos.postach.io/post/creating-pcs-from-pregens for details on this process.
- Use a provided set of rolls arranged to your liking, no further genetic engineering will be done on these. Available options are:
- A normal human: 16, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, and 6 (see https://anydice.com/program/1fa04)
- A balanced hero: 16, 13, 12, 11, 10, 10, 9, and 8
- An unbalanced hero: 18, 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, and 7
In general pregens will have much higher stats, but limited choices of class.
Campaign End
There are a number of plot arcs built into the episodes one or more of which may build into a season arc. After 8-12 episodes I'll try to build one into a season finale. Ideally we'll renew the campaign one season at a time.