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APHI-America

I'm the Hero!
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Alfred F Jones
Age 19
Police officer

Alfred grew up in a clanker family. Just outside of the capital of North Carolina. It was his mother who taught him the inner workings of machines, the language of gears and cotter pins that translates into anything your mind can imagine, if you learn it well enough. His father was off working nearly constantly to make ends meet, leaving Alfred, his brother and his mother alone most of the time. 

Alfred became well versed in the language of mechanics as he grew. He also had a lot of hope and pride as an American, a true patriot. So when the war came to a head and his country called, Alfred jumped at his chance. He made up a story for his parents about a training program and snuck out to enlist. He lied about his age, and signed up for the armed forces at 16 and a half years of age. Recruiters were hard pressed to find willing volunteers so they were quick to look the other way when kids like Al showed up, and Al was far from the only one.

But taking kids and throwing them into the meat grinder of war is a recipe for disaster. Alfred and kids like him full of pride quickly felt the weight of their decisions, as their lofty ideals of a just and fair world, were crushed against the randomness of death and destruction. They weren't ready, but who would have been ready to see your comrade bleeding out on the beach with no way to help them, or having to lead the charge against the enemy over the bodies of the fallen.  He kept himself sane with the fact he as putting down bullies who were denying others their right to live, but as the war dragged on he found that the suffering extended to both sides of this senseless war.

It all came to a head during a heated conflict for a key bridge in the middle of what looked to Alfred like hell on earth. He came across body of a Austrian soldier who hadn't managed to die yet, but it was clear that death was inevitable and the soldier knew it. He managed to lock eyes with Alfred as Alfred made his way past, Alfred felt the dead chill run through his body unable to look away.  Alfred picked his way over through the sounds of fire to check and and saw the wound on the man's chest. Without warning the man reached up and grabbed Alfred's arm and pressing something into Alfred's hand. He did not speak or rather he couldn't, his last bit of energy spent on a gamble as he just stared at Alfred, the desperate plea in the man's eyes was their only conversation. Alfred watched as the light faltered as life slipped away from him the body went limp Alfred wrenched himself free letting the man's arm drop to the dust. Without even a single word the man was gone like so many others before him, like so many more after him. Alfred looked at the thing in his hand it was a tiny mechanical bird, and eagle with an address in NY on it's wing. He pocketed the thing as he turned away, but before he could get very far the high pitched scream of bombs dropping wrought the air, there was no place to take cover as bombs started to land all over the battlefield. Alfred woke up 2 weeks later in an army hospital, missing his right arm and his will to fight anymore. But he didn't have to, the war was over.

Alfred came back a decorated war hero but civilian life proved to to be a struggle for him. The government set Alfred up with a job as a policemen. It was a good job, he didn't mind it, the problem came when he realized the war wasn't through with him yet. Plagued with guilt and prone to losing touch with reality during his flashbacks, Alfred struggled to keep the war that still haunted him at bay. After drawing his gun in the middle of a playground full of kids, he found himself shuffled from city to city. EAch time his flashbacks continued to cause trouble, and the government's only method of sweeping him under the carpet was to move him yet again to a new precinct so they didn't have to deal with him.  Still Alfred didn't mind being shuffled around, he got word that his last chance was going to be New York City. He hoped this would be his last move, he'd found only one method to cope with the nightmares that clung to him like a second skin, alcohol. He'd picked up a bit of a drinking problem in order to combat his sickness but it worked for him, or so he thought. It dulled the pain and guilt enough to forget for a little while at least. 

The new prohibition laws didn't help. But Alfred wasn't going to let them come between him and the only thing that's worked for him so fat. He'd fought for his country he laid down his life and his sanity, he was going to drink he didn't care what laws it broke. 

    1.       Where does your character come from? Are they born and bred city slickers? Did they come from the countryside? Did they immigrate from somewhere?

Born in North Carolina. He was given a job by the government as a police officer after his time in the war. He moved around a bit every time the flashbacks get to be too much, now working in New York city as a police officer.

1.a)If they did they try to settle in a neighborhood with many other people from their country, or did they try to assimilate? How much money did they have when they came over? What were their plans? 

Alfred makes just enough as a cop to be comfortable, it pays the bills and keeps a roof over his head for the most part. 

2. Are they magicians or clankers? Even most Americans can be divided. If they are Americans, which do they study? Do they prefer one to the other? If they prefer one, how much do they approve of the other? Do they hate it? Are they ambivalent? 

Alfred is a clanker through and through he doesn't understand magic and really doesn't believe in it, he feels that magic is more slight of hand and lies than a real thing. 


3. How well educated are they? Where and how did they study? 

He quit highschool when he entered the military, he was academy trained for a few months after the war before being put on a police beat. They shuffled him through as a favor to him for his service so while he is educated on paper, he lacks a lot of that education in reality. 

4. Do they have family? If so, where do they live? 

He has parents but they are angry with him for lying to them and joining the military, or so he thinks. He hasn't gone back to them after the war. 

5. Where in the city does your character live? Are they in expensive luxury apartments, or do they live in crowded poor housing? Do they own a shop that they live over? Do they rent from someone? Do they stay in a Dorm, as in are they in school? 

Al just moved to the city, he's not much for anything fancy so he lives in a little rent controlled place above a grocery store that's just enough for him. His apartment is a mess though, he barely takes care of himself never mind the old stray cat he found the other day. 


6. What are your character's goals? What do they want out of life, and how do they plan to get them? 

Al has stalled out in life, he's not sure where to go from here, he just hopes he doesn't screw this last chance up. He still suffers from flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. 


7. The game system we use will use the Allignment system. If you are not aware, this means that there are two dichotomies that are used to loosely describe the way the character works. These are: 
    --Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic, and 
    --Good/Neutral/Evil. 
This system can be a little misleading. Instead of trying to think about it in terms of those words, Think in terms of this instead:
 

Alfred holds a lot of demons he has yet to contend with. Sometimes that bright eyed child comes through on rare occasions but for the most part he tries to keep to himself. He's afraid to let anyone too close, because there's a very real chance he might hurt them during a flashback.  

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The basics 




Hi guys! As you're all (hopefully) aware, we are going to merge our group with :iconHTTS-Hetalia: and go hang out on their page and stuff. That means that our group page is going to be empty! BUT we have thought a lot about how we can make this group different form HTTS, so that you guys can have fun doing what we have been over there, and have something completely different over here, but still having to do with Hetalia. Well, we in the admin corner have been thinking, what if we make a permanent AU? OR--not only that, but what if we did a different style of role playing altogether?

Now I know what you're thinking. Admin, that's crazy! What other kind of roleplaying is there? What could be better? Well, I dunno about better, but we thought it would be fun to give Tabletop a try! What is tabletop, you ask?



Well, here's a list of some fun ones----> learntabletoprpgs.com/tabletop…
Tabletop Roleplaying is a style of roleplaying in which a Game Master (or GM) creates a world and scenarios for the players. Players can chose to act in certain ways, and roll dice to see how well they perform these actions. The difficulty of the rolls is determined by certain skills that the characters have. Characters typically team up to form a "party," and work towards a common goal in what is known as a "campaign." This is done in several sit-down sessions in which the GM poses scenarios that the characters must deal with. A "session" is the time period over which one sit-down happens, and an "episode" is a complete story within the campaign (think like an episode from a TV show).Though the overall story is lead by the GM, it is ultimately up to the players to decide how they want to act in a given scenario, by choosing what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. For our purposes, the campaign will be written in part by YOU, the players. Over the course of the next week or two we'll be getting input from all Y'all about what you want to see happen, and our GM will do their best to compile everything into a story. In addition, we'll have a few tutorial rounds where we work out how combat, skill checks, and all that fun stuff work, as well as cheat sheets and diagrams that simplify the rules and make gameplay much easier to understand than straight up reading the rule book. The plan is to get you guys familiarized with how the game works before we get too involved in the story, so that you can focus on the story when the time comes.

HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceDkeH… a super helpful video series of some pros playing Pathfinder (the engine we will use) and explaining what's going on as they go. By no means do you have to watch the series, but we suggest you watch an episode or two to get a feel for how things in a Tabletop RPG work.

The most well known and widely used system (or engine) used for tabletop roleplays is Dungeons and Dragons, but there are hundreds of engines that you can use. Some are better than others, some are super specialized, some can be adapted to anything. We will mostly be using Pathfinder*, which is free online (paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/co…) and we have found can be easily adapted with add-ons from Paizo, fans, and our own homebrew campaigns. I know it's set up to be in a magical high fantasy world, but we can turn it into whatever y'all decide you want. I promise. Want to cut out magic entirely? Sure. We can work around that. Want to play a science officer from a galaxy far far away studying some primitive life on an underdeveloped planet? Sure! We can work that in. We can do anything your hearts desire, and there's no limits to what we can do with these stories.



Now, you might be asking, "but admin! This all sounds fine, but how are we going to have a sit down game over the internet?"
Simply put, we dunno! There's a few websites we can use, that will let us do voice/video chats and allow the GM to control a virtual table, but we need to find one that works great for everyone. On top of that, we have a lot of people in a lot of different timezones. What are we gonna do about that? I dunno! But we'll figure something out. We may have to resort to having two different games, or to having a weird time for everyone, but we can make it work. And we will do our best to accommodate everyone who wants to participate, from those who don't have mics to those who don't want to go to a website other than deviantart. We'll do our best to make this as inclusive as possible for everyone.
This also means that, if we are going to have scheduled games, there's going to be a lot of time where we aren't roleplaying, especially during the week. What we hope to do, is set up the deviantart chats in such a way that you can discuss plans for the next session or have your characters interact  without the GM. We're not entirely sure how that will work yet, so we'll need your help to figure that out. We're going to need a lot of feedback and help from you guys, and we're going to need to make sure that everyone is keeping communication open, so be sure to check frequently for updates, new help sheets, new forums asking for input on an idea, et cetera. We're willing to make this work and really excited to see it get off the ground, and we hope y'all can join us in this. If it all flops, no worries, we'll find something else to do. But for now, let's give this a shot.


PLEASE ask all of your questions. We'll do our best to answer them with what knowledge we have now. Comment or note us if you have any ideas.


Image sources:
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*I do have other tabletop game engines (like Star Trek and Call of C'thulu)  we can use, if we end up wanting to do something different.
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Marmite Challenge



We have our first volunteer... er victim 




Okay, we're going to try something. I have a couple jars of the sludge ( still sealed for everyone's protection ) I would like to add that they are in date too ( so fresh ). If you want to try it for us you can note me your address. I will ship you a jar and you can either make a video of you trying it or do a group tinychat. Experiment with it, share your pain with your friends. 

Just for the love of all things holy, don't leave the lid off so it escapes into the wild. 




Alfred faces his fears Marmite! by HTTS-America



Jar one has been claimed by :iconaphi-england:
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Space AU for :iconaph-ipeseity:



Alfred F. Jones
Age 23
Occupation: Transporter



Alfred and his brother joined the Federation fresh out of school. Alfred did exceptionally in the military, moving up through the ranks to to what was to be a very good career as an officer. He'd seen quite a bit of action in his short career as well, earning him a few honors and a handful of shiny medals. 

But something happened, his brother Matthew was equally talented but his position got him access to information, information that changed Matt's view of the federation and what it stood for. Al got wind of all the noise Matt was making about what was wrong with the current protocol. Matt must have finally butted heads with the wrong person. It was a lucky break that Al caught wind of a plan to assassinate his brother, or maybe it was more than luck.

He and his brother fled the federation, taking everything they could and going AWOL. They spent some time bouncing around from planet to planet until Alfred found 'the ship' sure it was a beat up old hunk of leftover crud from a generation long since dead, but to Al it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on. This ship made everything they went though when they bailed on the federation worth it.

This ship...It took a little convincing and a whole lot of promised favors to convince Matt to sink their remaining money into a rusted hulk, but Matt caved and Alfred's been in command ever since. Sure it needs a crap ton of parts all the time, but it's fast and it holds a few secrets in its engine room.  

If you ask Al today if he misses being part of the military, he can now honestly tell you he couldn't be happier with the life he has now. Now if they can just stay one step ahead of the Federation, they'll all be okay. 



tumblr neb46pRHxy1sj3xt5o1 500 by APHI-America



Maxresdefault by APHI-America


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Space AU TIME!

2 min read




Ceres 150 by APHI-America



Space, some call it the final frontier, and it is unless there’s something beyond that. You’re going to be  all pioneers trying to carve a life and a name for yourselves out of the cold black void. A place fraught with all kinds of things, organized crime, pirates.. er “privateers”,  colonists trying to start new worlds and the Seraph a race of creatures who will jump at the chance to hunt you down, kill you, and make new things with you. ( and they are very good at what they do so watch out! )


You can be:


A colonist working with your friends looking to start your own world


A trader ‘privateer’ people looking to make a buck honestly or not you can have crew or ‘find’ crew ( oh look some colonists who are starving to death they’re not doing anything anyway. )  


You can work for the federation trying to make sure the law is upheld, federation law.

Or anything really… Have fun with it!


Make a journal so we know what’s going on, gather up some crew. Sure they might not have ASKED to come along but what were they doing that was so important anyway? Need something transported? Hire someone to take you or your beloved belongings someplace else.


(( Oh and the images used here are from NASA, they're offering them for free so go get some look up NASA travel posters))

Enceladus 150 by APHI-AmericaEuropa 150 by APHI-America

HETALIA: Space Travel by yasaka-unabara



SPACE GARDENER by nairchan





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