Systems Malfunction: Difference between revisions

* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME.

* [[Combat Medic]]: Hacker, Adept, and Scientist base classes can be built with this in mind. The Combat Medic prestige class fits this trope perfectly.

** [[Psycho for Hire|Al the Killer]] ([[Legacy Character|both]] of them).

** [[Evilutionary Biologist|Doctor Cross]] ([[Truly Single Parent|all]] [[In the Blood|THREE]] of them).

* [[Cyberpunk]]: Very this.

* [[Cyberspace]]: Played straight with GalaxyNet and later Y.G.G.D.R.A.S.I.L.

* [[Devil but No God]]: Whether or not he's really the biblical devil, Lucifuge is a nigh-omniscient being of pure evil, but there's no sign of God anywhere. {{spoiler|It's eventually revealed that Armand Carter severed God's connection to the physical world.}}

* [[Everyone Is Armed]]: One of the reasons the Systems Malfunction universe is a World of Badass. Weapons are cheap and easy to come by, and in many cases can be easily concealed or built right into the owner's body. If someone is walking around apparently unarmed,then you're probably not noticing the 3-inch hand razors built into their fingers, the turbine blade installed in their forearm, or the cybercannon they have in place of a shoulder blade.

* [[The Gunslinger]]: One of the five original character classes.

* [[Guns Are Worthless]]: Strongly averted. Even in a world of [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|super-powered aliens]], [[Killer Robot|killer robots]], and [[Energy Being|energy beings]], guns are still just as effective as ever. [[Psychic Powers|Psionic badasses]]? [[Functional Magic|Master magicians]]? [[Cyborg|Chromed-out cybersoldiers]] with kevlar skin and titanium bones? A skilled enough [[The Gunslinger|gunslinger]] can take down any of them with a few well-placed shots.

* [[Heaven]]: Surprisingly averted in the first metaplot arc: Heaven has either been destroyed, lost, or made innacessable due to events that took place between [[Iron Gaia]] and the beginning of that plot arc.

* [[Karma Houdini]]: Malcolm [[De Salvo]]. Martin Lyesmith and Vivian/Lucian Delacroix come close, but they at least LOST something meaningful. (Lyesmith was forced to [[Temporal Paradox|go back in time]] and [[By His Bootstraps|rebuild his empire from scratch]], and Delacroix did suffer the indignity of [[Death Is Cheap|losing]] [[Cloning Blues|a clone duplicate]].) [[De Salvo]] got away with his many, many crimes scot free.

** Xeer came VERY close to fitting this trope, but doesn't quite make it: He never actually suffered ANY retribution for all the horrible, absolutely unforgivable things he did, including but not at all limited to [[Villainous Demotivator|constantly beating his only two allies]], [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|betraying and eventually murdering two of his former allies]], and [[Cold-Blooded Torture|torturing and killing]] [[Moral Event Horizon|a fifteen year old girl]] [[Nightmare Fuel|over and over again]]. Yet despite all the atrocities he got away with, he suffered through a lot of torment for completely unrelated reasons: [[All There in the Manual|His backstory reveals]] that [[Start of Darkness|he was the victim of years of cruel experiments]], and even after that, the few times he tried to do something good ended up going horrible wrong for him- he was once [[Police Brutality|beaten to the verge of death and imprisoned]] [[Unjust Justice|for trying to break up a fight between two other passengers on a starship]].

** Xeer really wasn't that bad, however--[[Ax Crazy|space geologist cum mass murderer William Flagg]] simply went into an extended period of rehab, and is doing much better now, thank you. The same cannot be said for his many, many victims.

* [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons]]: On exactly two occasions, actual reptilian fire-breathing dragons have appeared in game, [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere|randomly appearing on a planet and kicking ass before flying off]]. The game creator's ''only'' explanation as to why dragons even exist in the Systems Malfunction setting? [[Rule of Cool|"Because dragons are cool."]]

** Averted with the Aether Nightwyrms, as their existence in the setting actually has an in-game explanation. Though despite their draconic appearance, they're technically [[Our Spirits Are Different|spirits]], not actual dragons.

* [[Mini-Mecha]]: Jackhammers are 9-foot tall 2-ton powered armors, which can be specialized for nearly any combat role. [[Humongous Mecha]] are also present in-universe, it's just hard for these to be represented in a [[LARP]].

* [[Mix-and-Match Weapon]]: The abovementioned Chainsword is one. There's also a Sniper Rifle/Longsword combo, an Anti-Tank Rifle/Greatsword combo, and the Xel Force Cube which can function as a dagger and a psi-gun. A Scientist-class character could conceivably make one using the custom weapon creation rules.

* [[Our Demons Are Different]]: Pulsarians are [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] that found their way into our universe through the Origin Rift (which was at one point {{spoiler|Earth}} before {{spoiler|Carter destroyed God's only tether to the material world}} and screwed up [[The Multiverse]]).

** Partailly averted in the Qliphoth/Lucifuge, who are just Satans ([[Oh Crap|yes, plural]]).

* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: First of all, they're called Verkulaks, not vampires, of which there are several types:

** Prime Verkulaks are the most similar to the vampires of myth: They're essentially immortal and they do all that nosferatu-esque stuff like turning into bats, wolves, or fog, hypnotizing with a stare, burning when exposed to sunlight, and so on. The big difference between them and traditional vampires is that they're not undead humans, but rather an entirely separate species of humanity (albeit one infused with mystical power on a genetic level).

** Sub-Dominant Verkulaks are created when a Prime "sires" a human (or, more rarely, a Celestial) by infecting that person with his own vampiric blood. They are massively strong, they don't share their progenerator's weakness to sunlight, and they [[Mega Manning|get new abilities depending on who they feed on]].

** [[Dhampyr]] were also briefly playable. They had psychic sensitivity to other Verkulaks which made them the perfect vampire-hunters. Much like real-life hybrids between two species of the same genus, they were unable to reproduce. Strangely, clones of a Dhampyr were always human, retaining none of their vampiric traits. (For contrast, Primes and Sub-Doms could both be cloned normally, while Incubi and Succubi couldn't be cloned at all due to their unstable DNA.)

** Several other monstrous, non-playable sub-strains of Verkulak have shown up as [[Mook|Mooks]]/[[Boss|Bosses]]. [[Nightmare Fuel|Crawling masses of]] [[Body Horror|bloody toothed entrails]] and [[Giant Spider|giant]] [[Demonic Spiders|demonic bats]] are two that come to mind.

*** At a certain point in year three, one of the Nightfathers turned into a giant spider demon to fight a [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|shadow lamprey-dragon demon]]. [[Moment of Awesome|It was awesome]].

* [[Psychic Powers]]: The Psionicist base class is basically a [[Squishy Wizard]] with these.

* [[Science Fantasy]]: The setting is a plethora of Hard and Soft Sci-Fi elements combined with Aether, Magic, [[Our Angels Are Different|Angels]], [[Our Demons Are Different|Demons]], [[Our Vampires Are Different|Vampires]], [[Our Dragons Are Different|Dragons]], and [[Elemental Embodiment|Elementals]].

* [[Stupid Evil]]: [[Ax Crazy|Jack Phantom]], [[Sinister Minister|Reverend Langston]], [[Punch Clock Villain|Morton]], [[Vigilante Man|Martin]] [[Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant|Smith]] (NOT to be confused with [[Magnificent Bastard|Martin Lyesmith]], who's quite evil but definitely not stupid), [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|Vlad the Impaler]] (no relation to the historical figure or to Dracula legends, Vlad just [[Badass Nickname|called himself that]] [[Rule of Cool|because he thought it sounded intimidating]]), [[Nightmare Fetishist|Gustava the Gunman]], [[Fantastic Racism|Angel Slayer]], [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|Fearghal Ull Uidhir]], and probably many others. The vast majority of [[Gang-Bangers|Jersey Devils]] and [[Gang-Bangers|street thugs in general]] fit this trope, as do the GLF's [[The Berserker|Berserkirs]].

** The RIA's mass-produced Replicant agents, the Midnight Sons' Sub-Dominant slave guards, and the Collective Automata's exterminators are all [[Informed Flaw|supposedly unintelligent]] [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|according to their game stats]], but they almost never say or do anything stupid.

** One early character was a vampire who decided to drink the blood of a [[Physical God|GOD]] of ICE AND LIGHT. He immediately froze, shattered, and exploded.

** Several characters have died solely because of their inability to use or understand subtlety, for instance a bounty hunter who decided to announce "I'm here for the reward on your head" to his target, or a [[Informed Ability|stealth assassin]] who [[So Much for Stealth|loudly yelled]] [[Captain Obvious|"I'm a STEALTH ASSASSIN here to kill you all"]] [[What an Idiot!|to a room full of intended victims who outnumbered him by about seven-to-one]].

* [[World of Badass]]: The character creation system ensures that, even if a given character is not a robot, vampire, cyber-angel, cyborg, psionicist, or magician, they are at the very least a [[Badass Normal]].

** This applies in-universe as well, the Citizens of the Confederated Colonial Republics have to face so many different varieties of hardship/death that you basacally need to be a [[Badass]] just to survive.