Generally, ISRP rooms aren't run as D&D ones. There's no DM, just a setting and characters wander around doing what their players want, within the CoC that is.
There could be half a dozen stories going on in the room at once because they only concern a couple of players each. Or there could be a group of characters who know each other and are mostly involved in the same situation. Things done by one character for one story may accidentally affect another, or something may happen which causes some of the group to break away on a totally different task to the rest.
Most ISRP gaming takes place without the need for stats purely because the players accept character strengths and weaknesses. It opperates on theories and logic of "in this case, my character fails because he didn't see that trap until too late" and "mine would see the glint of armor because of her fireball - so much for your ambush".
It's amazing what kind of stories can happen just because players coopperate.
Because of this, character descriptions on the chat don't need to have stats, personality or background story in them, just what others would see obviously. Stats can be given privately between players when needed, and background and personality is most fun if played out, eg discovered through how a character acts.
Some players do keep stats though, just for when they're up against enemies or situations where they don't know which way it should turn out and aren't willing to leave it to logic through coopperation.
Otherwise, combat may be entirely free form. It's up to the players involved.
No, it doesn't work out 100% of the time but players who play without some fairness tend to get included less often by others. Or end up playing with people willing to put up with that.
TMP is D20 Modern in that it's made so that D20 Modern can fit there, if the players wish to go that way. Just like the CRT is DnD because its setting is Greyhawk/Oerth, a DnD world. CRT's IC laws are that of the DnD setting, eg. assuming that drow are evil. This works because the Greyhawk world has been around for a long time. TMP's laws are that of the real world because D20 is too new to have a stock world, other than the "real" one. Even though most of the players probably haven't been to New York (it's an international site, after all) most of us can relate to it, understand it.
JudeSedai said:
In my experience, the tech stuff isn't too bad considering MOST of the extremely high-tech stuff will never be allowed off-base unless you're headed off-world anyway.
I wondered about that. I loved the movie and earlier series of Stargate but haven't encountered the RPG personally.
Most extremely high tech should be treated the same way. High-end armor probably wouldn't be let roaming the streets because that would give the opposition more chance to discover it and study how to get past it. Aliens may be capable of introducing weapons far advanced from human's, but if it were discovered then they would probably have breached all sorts of treaties and be causing themselves no end of public-relations problems.
- Pounamu
One sleep to go... and then I can sleep properly...
I had suddenly realised that TMP has been advertised in the D20 Modern forums, and that the section who made our room thought that's exactly (seemingly only) what it is for. I rambled until I thought I had most sides covered. 
