Summary
You are a crustacean-like creature resident on an alien planet. You live underwater, as crustaceans are prone to do. More surprisingly, you live in a large, hemispherical dome, which is also filled with water. Within the Dome there is a variety of coral, flora and other crustacean-like creatures like yourself. You have always lived within the Dome. Your forebears, for as long as there is ancestral memory, have always lived within the Dome. You eat the food (cooked on blue-green fire or raw) produced within the Dome, whether that is in the form of livestock or plants. You sleep within the Dome, whether that is in the equivalent of houses or out in the open with everyone else. You die within the Dome and the other crustaceans within the Dome deal with your body as they see fit. They see fit to, in some way or another, give it over to the Deity.
As long as is remembered, you and all your fellow dome-residents have heard the voice of the Deity in your head. It whispers to you, urging you to join it. When you are weak, its call grows stronger, but in times of glory, it becomes nothing more than a whisper of doubt haunting your mind. Sometimes those who have lived long lives willingly give themselves up to the Deity, whereas some people choose to give in to its call because they see no other way to be happy. All this is just a part of life in the Dome which you and those around you know to have always been normal.
Then you blacked-out.
You awoke in a coral complex that glowed faintly of its own accord. With no obvious way out, you resorted to remaining inside it. Maybe you spent your time exploring tunnels that lead out of the chamber you initially found yourself in. Perhaps there were no tunnels and you spent each waking hour pacing around the circular floor of your chamber again and again and again. Or maybe you used your time to find ingredients to make food and potions. Or perhaps you crafted items to try to get yourself out of the coral complex, but to no avail.
An indeterminate amount of time passes; perhaps it was a day, maybe it was tens of years.
Then the coral was broken. An opening appeared in the side of your chamber and a person wielding a strange, metal tool beckoned you out of your coral complex.
You found yourself in a dome. It is similar to your own in every sense, but it is not your dome.
And you are not the only one who has been brought to this strange, new dome.
Rules
Health
In Dome, there are two health systems: hits and resilience. Hits are a quantitative scale with a conscious bleed-out timer, representing your physical condition. Resilience is a qualitative scale, representing your mental resilience to the call of the Deity.
Hits
Your maximum hits will be included on your character sheet. You can never be healed past this condition unless specifically told otherwise by a ref.
Character death occurs when a character’s hits reach zero. Upon reaching zero hits, the conscious bleed-out timer becomes active. Within the next 1 minute, you may call for help and roleplay extreme injury accordingly. If at any point during this time someone else roleplays applying pressure to your wounds, the bleed-out timer is paused. If after this time has elapsed you have not been healed, you take a SLAY call.
Resilience
Resilience is a qualitative scale as follows:
EXCELLENT
GOOD
AVERAGE
POOR
AWFUL
NULL
Your base resilience level will be included on your character sheet, but this is not a maximum or minimum limit to your resilience.
Character death occurs when a character’s resilience becomes NULL. Upon reaching NULL resilience, you have no shred of resistance to the call of the Deity and so give yourself up to it. Within the next 1 minute, you may roleplay accordingly. At any point within this 1 minute you may choose to fall unconscious. If, after the 1 minute has elapsed, nothing has been done to restore your resilience you take a SLAY call.
Hits can influence your resilience. Upon your hits being reduced to 2 or below, you take RESILIENCE LOSS ONE. If your hits are restored to your maximum hits, you take RESILIENCE GAIN ONE, unless the resulting resilience would be in excess of your base resilience.
Crafting
During both uptime and downtime, you will be able to craft items of various kinds using items in your possession. During uptime, these requests should be given to the ref desk for approval. Items which your character would be unable to create in the time frame of the session will not be able to be created. In these instances, it is advised that you create them in downtime prior to the session in which you will want to use them, subject to ref discretion.
Familiarity
Characters will have certain areas with which they are familiar. These can be narrative skills, such as tracking, or crafting skills with mechanical effects. Given enough downtime research, you will be able to increase the number of fields with which you are familiar and/or the extent of your familiarity with them. When performing actions where your chance of success could be influenced by any familiarities you have, you should inform a ref.
Narrative
If you have a narrative familiarity with a topic and you think it would allow you to take a specific action in a certain situation, you should ask a ref. For example, a player with a ‘tracking’ familiarity may be able to follow a creature’s trail if there is one in the near vicinity.
Crafting
Crafting familiarities will give you mechanical bonuses in how your crafting efforts go. For example, if you have a familiarity in alchemy, then your potions will be less likely to have the wrong effects and will be more likely to have stronger, desired effects.
Every crustacean has different crafting needs. Luckily, fate would have it that all these needs are catered for! There are four areas you can craft in, each with a different specialisation. (All are OC represented by the ref desk.)
Of course you’ll need the materials to make whatever it is you want to make. You can gather these in the world outside the Dome whilst exploring or inside the Dome from flora and fauna currently being farmed. You could even bring back resources to add to those being farmed and have easy access from the safety of the Dome!
The Forge
At the Forge you can do anything from smelt a new alloy of this newfangled ‘metal’ to make a suit of armour! (Provided you have the time and the skill to do so, or else things could get hot…)
The Alchemy Lab
Potions and chemicals can be made in the Alchemy Lab. Will they heal those you favour or harm those you hate? Who knows when you’re using unknown ingredients!
The Firepit
Everyone loves some good food! Make dishes to feed yourself and your friends! Though they mightn’t want to sample your cooking if you have a track record of burning it or making it too salty!
The Workshop
Want to make things with materials beside metal? Does (for example) weaving cloth sound like your thing? Then the Workshop is for you! Any (other) job, anytime!
Google Drive
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8iaC35Ftm4wc0N2VWpLSUJrZnM – the game’s public documents