Interest Check: The Orpheus Protocol

Greetings all! I'm making my tentative and hopeful return to this site after god knows how many years. The system in question this time is The Orpheus Protocol, a little "intrigue and cosmos" crunchfest created by Rob Stith of Varcolac Press. I'm looking for 3-4 players ready for a long-term game, with some wiggle room for a few more short-termers who want to be part of something for a story arc or two. Details below.

The System: I own a copy of the rules, and no one playing needs to have them. I am expecting most or all of my players to have no experience with the system, so if you don't have the book I'm totally chill with that and prepared to help every step of the way. If you want a peek at whether this is for you, there are options. At the site linked below, there is a podcast currently in its fifth season, with a running narrative going back to the earliest days of the system's development. On that site, you will find links to the prototype rules. They are good for answering "Is this something I'd like", but I will be using the finished edition that is available on DriveThruRPG, which has some cohesion differences and additional content. I will make a series of posts in the actual game thread (when I create it), to brief you on the "need-to-know" and how I am adapting The Orpheus Protocol for pbp use.

Link: Click here to go to the Orpheus Protocol site.

My Commitment: I work a full-time job, but I do late hours and have a lot of free time on weekends. You can expect me to spend about 7 to 18 hours a week on GamersPlane once we've gotten started, typically in the ranges of 12:15 AM to 3:00 AM Eastern on weeknights, and 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday. This game will be run exclusively on GamersPlane, but if enough players are interested, I'd be open to a little group on Discord for chitchat and coordination outside of the narrative. Worth knowing, I will not be doing voice chat and that is not likely to change. As far as updates, I intend to advance one round of combat per day while combat is underway. When it isn't, the story will make a major move forward 1-2 times a week. These timings will be subject to change when I get a read of how invested the players are, plus how much time my players intend to spend on my game per day/week.

What I Expect: Not much. My hope is that for my more dedicated players, you'll either be active 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM Eastern, so I can glimpse your posts before work and have time to think about them, or that you'll be on when I am. Obviously for those of you in or near my time zone, I'm not demanding the latter; I don't want anyone foregoing sleep to catch me online unless that is your healthy lifestyle like it is mine. If you do really want to catch me online, you know when I'll be here (see above). My hope is that you'll be able to put a minimum of 20 minutes into this game per week (that's around 3 minutes a day), but my ideal would be 3 hours of your contributions per week (non-consecutive). Also, I thrive on communication and critique, so please talk to me about what went well, what could be improved or done differently, and just general chatter. I'll either have a chat thread, or possibly do that Discord thing.

Character Creation: I'll discuss the details of this if we can get enough of a crew together. I will be wanting to walk each person through the process, even if you are experienced with the system. This promotes cohesion and makes for the best story.

The Setting: See my next post.

THE SETTING

Here's the part where I open the storytelling up to you, the prospective gamer considering joining this campaign. I have some ideas I could flesh out, but I want to honor the "Interest Check" side of this and see what appeals to the most people.

Option 1 - What The Good Stith Intended
The system was meant to run in a modern setting, in the realm between 1960 and approximately 2040 (guessing on that late end). Fairly normal course of history on the service, with secret things happening underneath. So what I'd do for option 1 is much in that vein. You would all be operatives (or field assets) of ORPHEUS, a clandestine organization founded on the mission of seizing and controlling occult assets on a global scale. They want to prevent the apocalypse, and the best way to do that is to hold all the cards. You'd mostly be running in opposition to the Church's appointed emissaries (who do a similar thing from a religious angle), cults that seek the end of the world in some form, and criminal gangs or organizations stumbling into possession of things they don't understand. That, and a bevy of monsters lurking in the shadows and fetid corners of civilization. Those of you with official operative status are paid handsomely for your service and your silence, and the likelihood that each mission will be your last. Those more in the "asset" category...well, this was the alternative to taking your piece off the proverbial table. They might get you what you ask for, if you play nice, but don't be expecting a penthouse and stipend.

Option 2 - Welcome to Sunnydale
A similar setting to Option 1, but on the opposite end. You're not high-powered operatives, at least not yet, and you probably don't know ORPHEUS exists. Or how close to ending the world really is. You are high-schoolers, 9-to-5 wage slaves, or other "innocent" denizens of a not-so-quiet town. Your lives are mostly normal, with a couple of key exceptions, until one night everything goes tits up.

Option 3 - Transcending History and the World
A tale of souls and swords; this option aims to push this typically modern system as far back as it can realistically go. I'm picturing 16th century, to the tune of the Tales series, Soulcalibur, and similar properties, but if there's enough familiarity and interest, we could go even further back. The Dark Ages. The Roman Empire at its prime. Bronze Age Greece. Hell, even the Neolithic, if that's what you mad dogs want. This is an era before ORPHEUS was founded, so we'd be creating a centralized power that has ambitions on dominating the world through paranormal influence. You would either be working in service of that power, or you would all be acting to stop it; we'll figure out which.

Option 4 - What You Offerin', Choom?
There's some real material in this system hinting at a futuristic game. Cyborgs, advanced weapons, powers we could reflavor as advanced technology. If what the collective really wants is to see how this system does at an equivalent of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, etc., I'm down to play around with that. Such a setting is usually teeming with megacorporations on a comparable scale to ORPHEUS, which may either formally hire you or put contracts on the market for you to snap up.

Let me know which of the above options really appeals to you. If you're down for all of them, I will ask that you provide a ranking system with no more than one "Tied" set of results among them.


THE META

Here's some open declarations about where I stand as Director. This game is a safe place for real people among the LGBT, marginalized minorities, and those needing a friend. It is certainly NOT a place for minors, due to the 18+ content you can expect to find in the narrative. When I say "real people", I mean that some scary, disgusting, potentially offensive shit may happen in this story, which some kinds of people may find particularly alarming. I will be exercising use of safety tools and encouraging their use among players, for this very purpose. Understand that none of that content is meant to be targeted at the real people playing the game, and does not express any views I hold. Best way to do a horror game (which is definitely what this is) sometimes calls on some well-played offensive material. We'll be discussing in-depth where lines lie between "the fun kind of bad" and "unacceptable".

This game, and any game I run, is not a safe place for bullying, use of in-character actions to hurt real players, the posting of any disturbing content or materials sourced from outside our narrative, and the practice of bigotry against (or exploitation of) any variety of real people. Such activities are the fastest possible route out of my game.

This sounds interesting. I have the Orpheus protocol rulebook in PDF, but never expected a game to appear here on GPlane! Goes to show, never say never...

Setting-wise, I personally think Option 2 would be a lot of fun. Playing regular, untrained folks having to adjust to uncanny conditions, improvising with what little they have around them, appeals to me more than playing a well-equipped, trained agent...

It does pose the greatest opportunity to start from controlled conditions and expand at a reliable rate. Or in other words, story starts simple and grows nice and easy.

I have no experience with the system, but this seems as if it could be interesting...I think I'd favor either setting 1 or 2 (and agree that 2 might make the most sense for new players).

Would you two object to getting started on character creation soon, and continuing to recruit during the run of play until we've got a couple more people to round out the group?

No objections from my end, thanks.

I'm fine with that.

Alright, I'm about to go to work, but when I return I will get everything set up. In the meanwhile, be thinking about the answer to the following questions:

If you were an adult, ages 18-45, who lives in a small town in the American Pacific Northwest, what brought you there?
Maybe you were born there, and have picked up a job at a local business (maybe one run by family).
Maybe you moved there responding to a want ad, or you migrated there in search of a fresh start.
With that role in mind, would you find it most interesting for that character to: mentally unravel, experience horrific bodily changes, pursue a goal to their own detriment, or let the old wounds and traumas take over so they can use their old training to survive?

For my hero character, I feel like the answers here are--he's in the younger range (20-22), went to college near here and stuck around because he didn't want to move back towards his family, and he'll be pursuing a goal to his own detriment being young and idealistic.

Thinking of an 18 year old born in this small town. While still a student he worked as an intern at the local car bodywork repair garage, where they eventually offered him a junior position.

As far as his 'destiny', I think I'd prefer not to know anything about it, if possible! Although it would be vague at this stage, knowing the general direction of his story would feel like a spoiler 😅

Sorry, let me clarify. What I am obliquely referencing is the Humanity track in this game, which is different for each Archetype ("class" in the terminology of other games). As your character's Humanity approaches zero, you will hit different thresholds where your decay begins to show more aggressively. For some, it is anxiety and instability or the distortion of perspective. For others, mutation or monstrosity setting in even when you are not actively using your powers. Still other archetypes may become obsessed with something related to the archetype in question, and while two archetypes totally lack these visible changes, they will still meet full collapse when Humanity hits zero. So what I was asking is, do you have any leanings toward/against storytelling in any of those veins? It will be helpful in selecting a path.

I find myself somewhat drawn to this after reading the details page, but I'm not sure if I can commit to a long term game; would you be open to me joining for a few arcs and then considering whether I'd like to stick around? :)

Also, do you have any policy regarding the usage of generative AI? I am rather uninterested in joining a game where it is used, so I'd like to check in advance.

Also my timezone is 8 hours ahead, but hopefully that's fine since it's not a complete opposite. :D

Pretty much the only thing you said that I don't have a follow-up question to is the AI thing. I will not be using any AI in the creation of material used in this game. And if I get a whiff that someone's just feeding AI results into my game, they'll be out so fast. I'm here to play with human beings.

I'll PM you about the rest.

Thanks, this sounds fine to me! I shall be awaiting your message about the rest. :3

This seems incredibly interesting and seems like a system that could be enjoyable!

Personally option 2 would be my favorite closely followed by 1 just because I enjoy any chance to play and TTRPG in a modern setting!

Not sure how many players you're looking for, but I love these types of genres. I tend to prefer high-powered games in this type of setting more (whether they're a bunch of elite operatives or just the Scooby gang from Buffy), so I would prefer 1 and then 2 or 4 equally after that.

I noticed there was mention of a link that either I missed or is missing. Did you mean to have a link to content that demonstrates the vibe of the system? I really loved videogames like Alan Wake (1 and 2) and Control. If you have a clue about those and think it's a similar idea I'm interested!

Oh, and from the list I think 1 or 2 would be my preference with a lean towards 2 as then I can see how the character develops dealing with seeing beyond the "hole in the wall".

I am a tad iffy on slow posting rates, but I'm chatty if you like that and sounds like the rate might shift if people overall want to do more.

Sorry, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. I edited in the link. As for posting rates, what I have described is my best estimate. It will really largely depend on the players, but my intent is to make sure the players who stick around are ones who can keep pace with each other well.

@Ggjuggernaut, @Morphling: Still any interest in joining? We could do with a fourth and haven't started yet, but we're getting into Chapter 0.