The central characters of Portal Complex are "The Team"! The Team is a group of resource poachers who have discovered an alien installation deep in the wilderness. With criminal pasts and no way of profiting from alerting the authorities of their world-shattering find, they will be delving into the portal complex, looking for alien artifacts to sell.
Our Explorers and their assistants will be built using Action 4. The
base package costs 100 points, of which 75 points are stats, another
15 points of which is luck, and a final 40 points of which are advantages. When building characters costing 100 points
or less, some of these 135 points should be dropped to make room for
packages. Points towards advantages and disadvantages may be set aside as "unspent" until that character receives a bit more focus time... but advantage points may not be spend until the corresponding disadvantage points are spent! Characters will not be finely polished, but rather thrown into the complex to see how they do!
The group of explorers may be as large as desired...
but they have to pay everyone well, to ensure loyalty! All explorers
and camp staff must be paid their monthly wage. Hands built on 50 points
cost $2500 a month. 100 point hands cost $5000 a month, 150 point
hands, $7,500 a month, and 200 point delvers are $10,000 a month. This
is slightly less that the monthly job pay for TL8, but much rounder. This price will also include the cost of living out in the wilderness, and all of those trips back and forth to town.
The delve site is a permanent camp, but gear will have to be brought in. Its a three hour trip for the most basic supplies, Six hours for the needs of a real town, and anything else has to be ordered and then shipped in over multiple days... which will include weapons. Speaking of weapons, the team has black-market contacts that will purchase alien artifacts and sell LC2 gear. Going beyond that requires additional skill and attribute checks to be played out.
In addition to the explorers, the camp will start with four people who keep supplies moving, cook food, stand watch, and generally keep the camp together: each of them draw $2,500 a month. The man who fences goods on the black market and has criminal contacts lives in town, and draws $10,000 a month from the operation. More people can be hired, of course.
The base "budget" of the camp is $100,000. Most of this should be trucks, camping gear, resource extraction gear, and weapons.
I anticipate needing at least the following roles on the team:
- The Shooter: A combat man for if (when) they run into trouble, and who provides moral leadership
- The Tech: A Wiz who views dangerous areas remotely with drones and tinkers with alien circuitry
- The Engineer: An expert at drilling open doors, knocking down walls, shoring up ceilings, moving heavy equipment, and blowing up enemies
A terrain expert may also be needed, at least back at base camp, and someone with some first aid to take care of injuries.. A doctor would be ideal, but I don't think they can justify that... yet.
Character points will be awarded based on the number of obstacles overcome. Characters will count how many times they overcome a specific type of obstacle. They receive a point after overcoming 1, 3, 6, 9, 12,15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, or 70 obstacles of that type, and every multiple of 10 afterwards. Obstacle categories are very specific: Each type of enemy is a separate category.
The location of the team will be determined randomly at the start of play, from among:
- Siberia
- Amazon
- Sahara
- Rocky Mountains
- Outback
- Southeast Pacific
- Somewhere Else
I look forward to statting out our team, and seeing them in play!
