Nervous DM

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I'm thinking of having the gay ship be split apart in orbit over a planet to create two "camps" out of the crash sites. From there, sessions can devolve into episodic jank if I don't feel like writing anything hyper-ambitious one week or another. Whichever of the lovers the party winds up with will probably still be alive, but shellshocked from feeling the partner hit "in the drift" and if the party ever finds said partner dead in the enemy camp, the one still alive could make perfect cuckoolander/crazy fuel. Does this sound like an interesting hook, or am I probably over thinking a game with dice about cartoon toy robots?

what

>>49662473
I'm running a transformers game, and I'm looking for help finalizing some plot points and character stuff for first session. Also, I'd maybe like some general feedback on the crash and the separated lovers as a campaign hook.

>>49662490
gay

>>49662572
Potentially too outright gay to be a driving plot device? When there's romance in something like Transformers it's usually off to the side as a character tidbit, but the fusing spaceship couple sounded like a good enough idea.

>>49662490
What rules are you using? I didn't know there was a Transformers rpg!

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>>49662335
What the fuck kind of weapons-grade autism is this???

>>49662335
This honestly sounds fine but make sure to tone it down if your players aren't as autistic about transformers as you are. they might just want to be big cool robots blowing shit up

>>49662961
>Big
One of them ran with some cringelord human/alien sized organic disguise for his alt, and I let him.

Granted, the other guy is some kind of monstertruck swordsman.

>>49662828
Some guy named Louis Hoefer cooked this system up right before the Michael Bay movies started coming out. Some of the point costs and weapon stats are a fucking mess, but it's a really interesting ruleset.

You're over thinking it. I don't think you need to try to affect change in representation in this kind of game. Simple would work really well here. Our go with the gay robots, but don't make it a goal point. If you can't do something without being weird about it, don't do it.

>>49663027
So a pretender?

>>49663259
From a flavor perspective sure, but it's not an outer shell that separates...it's closer to the organic bits on a maximal/predicon.

It's going to be hard to get myself on the same autism level that this is operating at to help you.

Uh...

Alright, so it sounds like you are thinking a VERY large ship between these two combiners. More Fortress Maximus than Astrotrain, and honestly larger than Fortress Maximus even. So like, each individual half being a Fort. Max sized transformer given that you say "camps" for the crash sites.

If you have the self-awareness to realise this is a magical realm issue, just don't focus heavily on their relationship. Have it be more subtextual. Hell don't even fucking mention it initially because

a) Your PCs do not know these people at all
b) Its a crisis situation, the station is exploding and everyone is getting eaten by Sharkticons, and these two have the ability to just escape whenever because they are a spaceship, they are just choosing to pick up passengers first because they aren't sociopaths. This is not the time for giant robot lesbians to have a makeout session.

I mean, its probably going to be obvious enough to the players given that they're a two person combiner team.

I don't know how you plan to have them split up in orbit though. It's pretty hard to peel a regular combiner apart, let alone one where they are conjoined enough to contain a breathable atmosphere between each other. And given what you've outlined, these two REALLY don't want to split up.

>>49663276
I'm writing Devcon as a violent sociopath who can't deal with the war being over. The fighting between him and the remaining Decepticons on board might be what does it. Although, I'll probably have the party black out and reveal the sequence of events that lead to the ship's guts exploding in half over multiple sessions. I don't plan on having the one near the party's crash site exactly being OKAY, and both halves of the combiner will probably be missing bits and have parts of eachother still stuck on.

>>49663332
Honestly I feel like you never even need to be explicit. Just have them react as a human would if they fell from space and arrived with gaping wounds over most of their body and no trace of their best friend / lover apart from chunks of their flesh burnt onto you.

If your players are shipperfags enough to care, or consider this a good addition to their play experience they will pick up on this shit immediately without it ever being stated directly.

If they are not shipperfags enough to care, then making this relationship explicit will at absolute best give you some collective shrugs all round.

I'm going to be honest your core scenario actually sounds pretty good, stranded on a shitty planet with an injured and incredibly traumatised giant transformer, as well as a few other autobots who various levels of asshole, while Devcon riles them up to re-enact the events of Beast Wars for no good reason other than his own self-esteem.

>>49662335
If you're so worried about how players will react, just make the combiners Brothers.

For reference see Animated Jetfire and Jetstorm.

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I mean, at most, I was only maybe planning on including the two of them together as a thing that one of the players can spot-check walking into the bar...like "By the way, there's two giants holding hands outside." But I wouldn't be against cutting something like that entirely.

As far as keeping it ambiguous as to what they are to eachother moving forward, crashed giant will probably only ever refer to the other by name (I'm thinking Bulkwind and Nightlight) unless prodded about it.

>>49663471
>Beast Wars

G1 actually started as a crash too, for the most part Beast Wars doing it was a nod to G1 while seeming like a "fresh start" to the conflict.

>>49663495
>Brothers
Pic related

>>49662468
And honestly, yes, you're way over thinking it.

As others have pointed out the core set up of stuck on a planet, suddenly fighting, sounds OK.

But are your players expecting daft G1 hijinks while you're busy writing "combiner bores: I has a sad"?

>>49663332
So Devcon basically explodes some huge bombs inside the ship when shit isn't going his way, ripping it in half?

>>49663535
No mate, seriously.

Having them as the G1 equivalent of Animated Jetfire and Jetstorm, with different names obviously, works. It doesn't force sexuality at the table or risk your players calling Steven Universe or whatever and is actually a (semi) recent part of the franchise your players may even be aware of.

If brother isn't a stromg enough bond, say they have resonant sparks or something. Brothers also makes sense as to why they have a singular alt mode.

But at this point, if your players call Magical Realm I think they may be right. You seem determined for it to be a pair of 69ing lovers.

>>49663547
I honestly haven't really gauged that expectation thusfar. Things'll probably get goofy with these guys (They made "being bad at your job" a running joke whenever people died in a Black Crusade game), but they also sounded really interested in digging through wikis for lore and stuff. Prior to character creation, one of them actually started reading the IDW comics and yaoi-squeeing about Chromedome x Rewind.

>>49663535
Well I mean like, G1 was a crash followed by thousands of years prior to reactivation. Also, on a planet with massive amounts of alien resource infrastructure such that diplomacy with the natives was a MAJOR part of the war effort.

Beast wars though they get shat out on this planet and immediately come to blows, and the tragedy of it is constantly that if they even fucking once worked together, leaving the planet (Which they desperately wanted to do because they fucking hated it) would have been trivial, but instead they just constantly pettily sabotaged each other.

>>49663578
>I haven't talked to players about what they want from the game
Oh boy.

>>49663578
>one of them actually started reading the IDW comics and yaoi-squeeing about Chromedome x Rewind.
Oh that makes it easy.
Don't drop ANY hints to their relationship. Just that they're a combiner, and they're bros (I mean to others)
The yaoi-squee will happen and then you can shrug "why not" on it if they want to pick on it.

>>49663579
There's also the matter of scale.

In Beast Wars, it started out like what, 4 v 4? 5v5?

In G1 there were about as many troops as you would expect from a ship the size of the Ark suffering serious damage on impact. Battles between the two factions were less two a few people brawling with each other over energon and more two rival mafias getting in a massive gunfight.

>>49663576
Him, or the pirates, or a time-traveling predacon with a retarded name and a lisp. Maybe someone has some kind of energy sword or techno-wand that fucks with their T-cogs or casts a giant wall of force....it's a work in progress.

>>49663579
>>49663603
True enough

>>49663577
>Resonant Sparks
Or Quantum Entangled.

>>49663577
I mean, platonic combiners have never been OUT of the question. Even in IDW (the really gay one) you get non-awkward constructicons and another combiner where one tried to make it a romantic thing and got friendzoned.

>>49663631
Then if its the ideal solution, why not use it?

That said, your OP expressed doubt how players would accept it. Now suddenly there's a player getting mneedlessly excited over gay transformers.

I'm really not sure I believe this scenario.

>>49663631
The more I hear about IDW the more I feel like I dodged a fucking bullet.

>>49663645
I guess I'm kind of more worried about other shipfag making it weird for the third guy after shipfag pulls an "I see what you did there" or an "owo what's this" from across the table.

>>49663673
What's the deal with the third guy?
Why in your mind would he especially dislike it?

>>49663594
This makes sense with regard to this issue.>>49663673
DM gets his magical realm soap opera.
Shipfag gets to ship the ships.
Third guy whatever his issue, can just pretend they are friends.
But honestly I feel this >>49663616
>Quantum Entangled Sparks
Is an infinitely more interesting idea than anything else so far.

>>49663688
Less that he'd explicitely dislike it, but maybe that it wouldn't fit his expectations of the game or paint me as having other motives. Third guy generally seems pretty chill, but I don't know him as well as other shipfag. I mean...I'm probably worrying about nothing...third guy usually plays the barbarian/crazy-tank and roleplays his gung-ho flaws as causing the party more trouble. I had a 5e game with him where my preachily-good Chaotic Good folk hero type started treating his mentally challenged dwarf like an adopted son.

>>49663730
Based on your apparent determination that they must be lovers and they must be gay, I'm kinda thinking player 3 has you pegged.

Be honest, what do you lose thematically if the combiners aren't Rocket 69?

>>49663751
The idea of "relatives" has always sat way weirder with me in these robot/construct-type societies than something not predetermined like love...but it could work.

I really pictured the one hanging around the party getting crazy in the background overtime, and I just felt like that'd be way more compelling if I played up the closeness to the other one. Even if neither of them die, this isn't going to turn out well. They'll be changed by the experience and probably be too broken to even function together socially...unless shipfag's tiny chosen-one-bait starts spouting about love and rolling crits convincingly hard....and even then I'm pretty set on Nightlight probably dying.

>JFC I played myself....

>>49663836
Do it man. Relax and don't worry.

>>49663729
>Magical Realm
It's certainly on the cusp of mine. Lesbian vore rp with your girlfriend has a tendency to make you some kind of meta-gay over time.

>>49663836
I can honestly say that the idea of brothers working together toward a common goal is pretty normal.

The only reason you see brothers combining as weird is because you have this odd fixation that combining is the equivalent of sex. I'm sorry, but that's just not supported by the mainline canon. Devastator isn't a bloody orgy even if Bayformers Devastator is a clusterfuck.

And before you say "but muh IDW", STOP, I get it. There was some published fan fiction you read. I really don't see how you can see fan fiction as more "correct" an interpretation when in every single iteration of the franchise EXCEPT IDW there has never been this connection of combiners being sexual, lovers or even necessarily based on friendship.

>>49663894
It's less seeing brothers combining as incest or anything...and more like relatives even being a thing feels less believable than quasi-immortal space robots coming to terms with friendship or romance. "Aunt Arcee" was weird, even for Rattrap, and Sunstreaker and Sideswipe being brothers is always weird unless they previously establish split/twin sparks or whatever. Jetfire and Jetstorm honestly work a little better because we're given both an explanation and shown the significance of them having been created together.

>>49663956
If you accept love exists between Cybertronians, then it stands to reason it exists for a purpose.

If two lovers can combine the essence of their sparks to form a new protoform, its offspring. If the same pair do it again, the two protoforms are related.

You could argue being built together makes you related, being made of similar enough parts makes you related even if you were built much later by a different machine etc etc.

You're viewing the idea of related too much from a fleshling perspective of shared genetics.

>>49663995
If you take the Beast Machines notion of "The Well of all Sparks" and the G1 "prayer" of "til all are one" in tandem, it could be argued that all Transformers are literally related on a deeper spiritual level. All fragments of Primus if you want.

>>49663995
TF has always been fuzzy on reproduction, but romance or attraction has existed in pretty much every continuity.

Elita-1 (Prime's wife or whatever) was a thing in G1...a cartoon where Wheeljack literally built the dinobots out of scraps in a cave, Megatron built the Constructicons, and the Constructicons built Megatron. AirRazor and BlackArachnia were practically fucking in BeastWars when they did that Futurama mindmeld. People draw Chromedome and Rewind doing gay physical looking stuff, but we only really see them in canon star-gazing and worrying about eachother. They're just two individuals who found eachother in a really dark place.

I feel like living as long as these robots do in eachother's company, things like friendship and enfatuation occur (albeit rarely in the case of the later, seeing as any given couple is usually the "token" couple) over time through experience and emotional bonding.

Plenty of these "relationships" are probably romantic but aesexual (in both the physicality and reproductive senses).

>>49664099
Elita 1 having been created by Alpha Trion was also like Primes Sister.

And honestly, it may be fuzzy, but it's not as though it doesn't happen.

I agree that the relationships can and probably should bloom. Where I disagree is that they would never result in reproduction. Which we know exists in various forms. From building, to shared sparks to shared parts.

Just because there isn't just ONE WAY reproduction happens, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

>>49664164
Also fair. My general rule on worldbuilding is that stuff becomes canon if my players feel like pulling it in or refferencing it in a character (the system encourages making multiple/backup characters as you level up) we're not full IDW because Sharkticons existing will already tip them off about the quints etc

>>49664172
Well, I guess good luck to you then.

I hope you sneak the universal greeting in too.

>>49662335
Literally just make them gender neutral. They're robots anyway so who da fuck cares.

>>49664207
Because Cybertronians aren't gender neutral.

>>49664207
The lovers, or Transformers in general? Recent continuities tend to handle "gender" designation as having disappeared over time on Cybertron itself and the "female" cybertronians being from colonies and stuff.

It seems like a decent way to stack cultural differences on top of your foreign/off-world characters, so I assume that's why our IDW and Dreamwave types did it.

Part of it might've been based on Shockwave cracking that "I thought female autobots were EXTINCT" line in the 80's. Or the debacle that was feminist protest Arcee in the Marvel comics.

>>49664223
Sometimes on Cybertron itself they are, or they're established as having started gender neuteral and discovering or "creating" gender in the case of some of the weirder Arcees.

That being said, we're still given shorthand gendered pronouns even if all of them are "he/him"

>>49664238
I forget how bonkers TF continuity can be.

>>49664280
TF Animated had a "human" child discover that she was cybertronian the entire time, and that her Protoform "scanned" her "father" as an alt mode like how Teletran did it in G1. They made their human-disguised robot closer to a Maximal than a Pretender by retconning that she's the chosen one or something.

Shipfag actually based his human/alien disguise character more closely off of the Sari thing, and didn't even know what Pretenders were. I was super not-okay with this until he started drumming up a really wacky weapon loadout and doing the math on size categories and travel times.

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There's also this (apparently canon to Japanese G1) audio drama where a little girl spills icecream on Prime's gear shift and tries to lick it off. He literally sounds like he's getting teased and blown.

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>>49664280
you should read Transformers vs GI Joe sometime and have your mind ripped asunder;

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/228qiat3ny7uo/Transformers_vs_G.I._Joe

>>49664297
I always kinda liked the Sari idea. In wish had more seasons to see how it played out.
>>49664315
Penis tongued megatron clones, Batman.
Kiss Players can fuck right off.

>>49664339
Yeah, I know the one.
Autistic Bronies on /qa/ were trying to use a plot point in this to argue GR15 should extend to Transformers.

>>49664347
>Penis Megatron
Honestly, the human cast does a lot worse in KP.

There's some scientist trying to bring back her daughter through evil science, so she's literally feeding lolis in testubes to clonned Megatron heads. All of this occurs in a place she calls her GENITAL SYSTEM and the autobots need to fly through THE SPIRAL VAGINA to access it.

>>49664363
...
Holy Shit, I need to read this right now.

>>49664363
Damn son, I didn't know it was THAT crazy.
I'm intrigued

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>>49662468
Are those TFs gettin' it on?!?