Cat's Paw

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unanun

Child is born, with a heart of gold
Original poster
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Writing Levels
  1. Adaptable
Genres
I'm wary of magic with lots of rules.
Cat's Paw

"A person used by another as a dupe or tool."

Setting

You're an executive, controller, vice-president, ... of a megagroup, conglomerate, chaebol, keiretsu, or state-owned enterprise.

The time is Earth, 2222 A.D. The space elevator has made interplanetary travel surprisingly simple. There are shipping lanes between Mars and the Moon. Asteroids are regularly mined for materials. Fusion power is a thing. Governments have been replaced by self-governing conglomerates, megacorporations that control countries and their entire human capital.

What's left?

Your ambition.

There are three space elevators, all of which are anchored in neutral territory: the North and South poles, and the New Congo (formerly the Democratic Republic of Congo). The North and South pole elevators are guarded with lethal force, gigantic cloaked scorpion guns lying buried in the snow to obliterate any unauthorized approach.

Africa's coast is coated in gleaming metal skyscrapers and desalination plants, but the interior is still flush with automated mines where the carbon needed for the nanotube cables is drawn from the Earth. But New Congo, where the sky elevator tapers off into space, is undergoing politic upheaveal. It has an elected government with representatives from all major corporations.

Yesterday, a bomb snapped one of the intercontinental mooring cables that holds the elevator taut.

This is the story of a million corporations vying for control of the New Congo, playing a dangerous game through intrigue, subterfuge, brute force, and proxies.

This is Cat's Paw.

Mechanism

What would happen if we took the essence of poker, bluffing, and put it into an RP? RP has always been about soft power, trying to guess from posts -> levels -> IC power. The same spirit holds here.

You are yourself and your company. Every company begins with 1 billion requisition. Unlike traditional RPs, where your power tics up the more you do, requisition fluctuates as the Cat's Paw progresses.

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Rules
  • Win a contract and its dividends by bidding the most for it.
  • As a rule-of-thumb, the amount you can do with requisition is about the same as present day US dollar purchasing power.
  • You may increase your bid at any time.
  • You may not decrease your bid.
  • If you lose a contract, you recover 50% of your bid amount (number subject to balance).
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The freedom - and responsibility - in Cat's Paw comes from being able to do anything you want, as long as you keep it at the level of power dictated by your spent requisition. Thus, Cat's Paw is a game about fair writing, and reading in between the lines.

At the end of an Event, everyone reveals the amount of requisition spent. Whoever spends the most wins the event, and the right to more requisition. They also win the right to write a humiliating closing post about their opposition.

Cat's Paw is nail biting. When you invest the same amount, your actions should be roughly similar. This situation creates a game of chicken where you are forced to decide whether to back out, hold, or go all in. If someone else wants to win, it's obvious, and if they back out early, it's also obvious. Just like poker. Delicious.

Suggestions
This is the time of electromagnetic guns, of maglev trains, giant, interconnected cities that are nearly sentient. Limitless power is a thing, space flight is a common sight, the architecture relies heavily on living pol-alloy and concrete. AI adjutants are common. There is a neuro-machine interface on every human. This is cyberpunk.

Select a theme for your executive and company when you create the character sheet.

You are encouraged to hide from other players. Employ twists, employ backstabs and double-triple-quadruple crosses. Make it so that nothing is certain in the world.​

Code of Conduct

Exactly as outlined in Ilium. The karma system is used to enforce power gaming.
 
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Character sheet:

Name:

Corporation: [the name should reflect its modus operandi]

Personal quirks: [three sentences or bullet points]

Corporation specialty: [three sentences or bullet points]

Other: [employees, subsidiaries, IP or assets, shell companies through which your corporation conducts its business]

Starting requisition: 1 billion
 
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Name: Drell, Senior VP of Operations

Corporation: Albatross Guidance Systems (AGS)

Personal:
- Leverages company's strangehold on space navigation quite frequently
- Wishes to grow his company into controlling the entire spacing industry
- Is very law abiding ... at least to his company's internal policy

Corporation specialty: Originally specialized in military guidance systems for rockets, Albatross acquired Grumman munitions, eventually becoming a government military contractor conglomerate. However, its main business these days is building and maintaining stellar navigation, immensely complicated systems that are able to guide starships based upon the pattern of stars in space. Albatross has enormous financial property, and through their banking subsidiary Rothman Holdings nearly owns the entire manufacturing chain needed to build navigation systems.

Starting requisition: 1 billion
 
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Is this, uh, still open?

Name: Stephen Suveranitate

Corporation: UnityCorp

Personal:
-The corporation is based on the purchase and investment in smaller businesses and firms to bring capital to the unified body. Hence the name of UnityCorp.
-UnityCorp itself often works through its subsidiaries and shell companies, preferring to stay relatively unknown while still having an influence.
-The corporation is infamous for bribing or buying out news agencies to cover their tracks, as they often use questionable means such as sabotage or surveillance to outdo competition. Their deeds aren't unknown but their opponents lack the needed evidence to prove themselves.

Corporation specialty:
-Information technology
-Transportation
-Manufacturing & Retail

Other:
UnityCorp tries its best to maintain a "grey zone" position- not afraid to take risks but careful to avoid making allies or enemies that could spur legal conflict. Deeply paranoid of competition using the same tactics as them, data is stored digitally in large server banks disconnected from external networks with files available on LAN only. The company would like to push towards becoming an almighty mega-corporation, perhaps one capable of running entire nations, and hinges on the development of a theorised system called a 'cyberbrain' allowing one to connect the information in their brain directly with computerised devices and the internet. Suveranitate, the company's ambitious CEO, sees the space elevator as a prime source of funding for future goals and growth; however, this depends entirely on his ability to gain control over it.

PRIMARY SHELL COMPANIES:
-Union Networking Group (Information Technology)
-United Transportation Firm (Public Transit)

Starting requisition: 1 billion
 
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if this is open, I'll post a cs later
 
Oh shit, I did not see your app @ClockworkCarcinogenicity.

Maybe we can run a short little thing!

Sign ups always open until I assemble a small crew o_o
 
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No sweat, I've spent all this time geeking out over Heavy Rain.
 
I might run something if we can get 3-5 players. It'll take a bit of time to come up with some events worth fighting over, and posting will be a little on the slow side (once a week ish maybe) since I'm running ilium too.

@Shadicmaster
 
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Yeah, I imagine that'd take a lot out of ya.
 
I have enough interest in trying this out to run it, so let's say I'll start if I can get me + 3.
 
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Talk is cheap, make sheets o_o!
 
>.> This is looking more and more complicated each time i come back to look at it..... can someone talk stupid to me?
 
Oh shit .. I scared someone away.

The mechanic is wagering, but you do it in a soft way through writing.

Example: an event is to take control of a country. I wager 500 million (I don't tell you this), and my company does things like buy up the entire country's communications and run propaganda forever. You wager 1 million. Maybe you print some posters and spread them.

It's about being fair, with just a hint of numbers based bluffing thrown in. There is a large responsibility to write fairly with regards to how much you're wagering.
 
okay.... so basically you have your own end of the story that you dont write that is pretty much the cause, and all you write is the effect..? I dunno... sounds very DnD/Dice game to me
 
Not forcing your hand into any particular writing style. Rather, because you will be largely responsible for building your side of the plot, conjuring use-once-and-dispose NPCs, or making up things for convenience, perhaps will give you an understanding of different writing techniques.

The only thing you don't tell anyone is how much money you are spending, which can change at any time. The rest is an intertwining of actions between all of us.
 
*sigh* I like writing style experimentation, but this is a bit too much of a jump for me.... sorry for the inconvinience, though i like the general idea of the roleplay. I guess I'll just read
 
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In simpler terms, you have 20 power points available to you. For some particular quest, I choose to spend all 20 to get it. So my character, for that chapter, has a power level of 20. This is the only thing you don't tell people. You have to convey that through your actions.

If you are subtle, maybe you can make other players waste their own power points. If you're super obvious, I don't think it is worth my time fighting with you - I want to save my power points for the next quest. So I only spend 1 for this quest.
 
*sigh* I like writing style experimentation, but this is a bit too much of a jump for me.... sorry for the inconvinience, though i like the general idea of the roleplay. I guess I'll just read
Thanks for giving it a consideration anyhow. I know I am asking for something quite unorthodox.
 
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I'm still here, still interested.
 
;_;

Let me see if I can cajole some ilium people
 
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