ROB is at it again. This time he copied your mind and put it into a collective consciousness and has given you the task of guiding and protecting a race as they expand into a hostile universe. It’s time for SpaceBattles.com to lead the Tau.
Railguns and Pulse Rifles is a Council game on the SpaceBattles forum wherein a group of forum members get to direct the Tau race of Warhammer 40,000 infamy, starting from a pre-WW2 tech level. The game ran through four threads and ended on August 22, 2019 with the players’ defeat.
The first thread can be found here
. The subsequent threads can be found here, here, and here.
Provides examples of:
- Badass Normal: This is what a Paragon essentially represents: ordinary Tau citizens who have set themselves apart from the average community by way of their great accomplishments. Paragons can give a small bonus to any project they are attached to.
- BFG: The Nova Emplacement, a super-railgun earned by a critical success on one of the research projects. Nova Emplacements are too big to be mounted on ANY ship.
- Fantastic Racism: The Council are playing the "Good Guys" of the 40K universe, moreso even than the OTL Tau were ever intended to be, but their legal system has been written in such a way that Orks can never be recognized as a sapient race.
- Greek Chorus: A very active one. Officially referred to as the "Peanut Gallery" by themselves, the players, and the GM. They contribute enough ideas that it's easy to forget who has a voting Council position and who doesn't.
- Humans Advance Swiftly: Well, Tau, but they're fulfilling the role humanity generally fills in fiction. They managed to get from computers being a new invention to laptops within 20 years.
- No Fourth Wall: Inq 101 stated in his very first post that the players are "You controlling the Tau," and as such they are allowed access to any and all real-world knowledge, including knowledge of the other races from Warhammer 40,000. Convincing their society to act on this knowledge can prove... challenging.
- This has once or twice proven to be a valuable form of espionage, such as when Ginger Maniac had a meeting with an Imperium Rogue Trader who he was able to pick apart with meta knowledge, but whom couldn't have imagined Ginger was seeing through all of his bluffs because of it.
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Squick: Ginger Maniac's response to the community suggesting a slash fiction between him and an unnamed space marine - Techno Babble: Ostensibly what makes plasma reactors work.
