Dial0

Back in January 2013, some folks on /tg/ including myself bounced some ideas for a modern setting. It only lasted three threads, didn't get a whole lot of crunch in, and went into the pile of "/tg/ gets shit done but not really if you think about it" stuff. Regardless, the premise is still in my mind to this day, and I wonder if there's other anons who want to tackle this thing too.

If you've got time to read, here's the threads in question:

>Thread 1: http://archive.moe/tg/thread/22571179

>Thread 2: http://archive.moe/tg/thread/22683517

>Thread 3: http://archive.moe/tg/thread/22744323

If not, here's the gist:

>The number of payphones in your city are dwindling.

>The remaining payphones happen to be installed on leylines.

>You got a special calling card that lets you use these phones to commune with spirits.

>You're drawn into a brutal struggle for survival against other callers.

>All of this is orchestrated by the elusive Operator.

>You are most likely playing this game with Unknown Armies.

Fluff

Well the Why, How and Whats of the thing need to be fleshed to be honest - why are the PCs risking their shit to control payphones?

The best two I've come up with so far is that there's a sort of dragon ball style "you get enough of the right phone booths together, you get a wish" type of dealio, loose rules I've come up with so far for that is just that the wish is limited to the area encompassed by the geomagical leylines the phones are on, and you can't do time shit that goes further than the earliest time you controlled the last phone in that network prior to making the wish.

Another, or possibly tangential, reason for getting mixed up in it is that there are certain pay phones and masts with "bad connections" - basically acting like misery and depression sinks ala the witches from paella madoka magica, but also bubbling over with the vengeful and wrathful dead too boot.

So there's both a noble and selfish reason to get involved in the whole thing - to control the phones with bad connections you have to do some ghost busting, plus you have to fight various, probably more clued in and well prepared diallers.

Then there's the issue of How: Are PCs directly performing supernatural deeds by spending their phone credits, or are the phone credits actings as batteries for say captured or bound entities, like the ghosts or other telephonemantic entities, and then those entities are doing the shit at our command? Or both?

And then there's the What of what are the PCs doing to earn credits? is it as simple as "go to this place, at this time, and deliver this message to this particular person, then come back to this phone and dial 0" which can lead to shenanigans like "go to this mafiosa meet up and call the godfather of the mob a faget... and survive", but once you have to move items around you bring in other NPCs working for The Operator and the nature of The Operator requires fleshing out beyond "it's a voice on the phone that gives you credits"

Crunch

Modest suggestion: We use ORE a the system for 2 good reasons:

(1) it's a damn good system, I'll drop a Nemesis PDF into the first reply to this thread for everyone to looksy at. And (2) it's a d10 dice pool based system, which means you can roll phone numbers, and indeed because stats are generally between 1 and 10 you can even use phone numbers as stat lines.

Currently the two mechanisms I'm thinking of in reference to 2 are "code dice" where you succeed by getting a "code", like say 555 or 958, and that code adding something related to that code to the action the PC rolled to do. So in the case of 555, the general pre-fix for a fake phone number in hollywood and TV movies, you could add some illusionary thingie to your action, or in the case of the 958 (a test code for many payphones, often used for verifying repairs) you can find out information about a target or add a trump die to a healing rolls.

The other mechanism I'm thinking about involves building up phone numbers, say you make a "dial" roll and you take die from that roll that correspond to a declared number you're trying to dial and put them aside and can build up a "number" (basically some kind of spell or effect or a particular entity) that way over the course of several rolls as a way to mechanically handle more prolonged ritual rolls (though I'm fucked how that'd work IC - why does it take so long to dial a fucking number?) - maybe have that be a passive thing phone card weilders can do around payphones and geomagical cell towers, and even have the PCs be able to spend these "dial dice" as mastery dice while they're trying to dial the full number.

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