Recruitment: Down in the Gutter, Life in Redmond's Newest Street Gang Options

[WinterRat1]

Welcome to the Recruitment Thread for Down in the Gutter (DITG), a long term gang campaign using SR 4 rules, set in 2070.

DITG will chronicle the establishment, rise, and quite possibly fall of one of the countless third-tier gangs that come and go in the Redmond Barrens. The game will open one hour after the conclusion of a spectacular gang war that rocked the Kingsgate Area of the Redmond Barrens and drastically altered the balance of power.

You will play one of the survivors of this gang warfare, now in need of a new gang to call home in order to survive to see tomorrow. You will participate in the formation of the new PC gang, solidify it as a presence in the Kingsgate Area, and be a part of its attempt to carve out a place to call home in one of the worst slums in Seattle.

The game will focus on life in a Barrens street gang, and everything that entails. Simple survival is a daunting task, let alone climbing up the shadow food chain. This is not a street level runner campaign. This is a story of living hand-to-mouth, trying to get by each day by taking what you need from others to survive and trying to stop them from doing the same to you.

More details can be found at:

Down in the Gutter Wiki

Specific Sections of Interest Include:

About Down in the Gutter
Character Generation Houserules
Posting Guidelines

Our current roster of players includes 3 GMs on staff and approximately 15 PCs.

Since our current roster already has two adepts we will not be accepting adept submissions. Our current roster technically has two magicians, but since one of them is extremely new (i.e. he Awakened one hour before game start), I will consider accepting another magician character or mystic adept if the concept is sufficiently impressive.

I will note there are plenty of mundane character concepts available that have not been taken yet; additionally, I want to emphasize that as a gang, character creation should be less about finding a ‘niche’ that has not been taken and more about building a person that will be fun and interesting to play in a gang environment.

If you are interested, post your character concept only here. Once I have given you the ‘ok’, apply for membership to the wiki and post your character in the Character Generation section for review.

If you are not wiki-proficient, you can ask one of our talented wiki GMs, ES Sparky or Vegas, if they would kindly do so for you.

Since there is plenty of information available on the wiki and in the Down in the Gutter Planning Thread, I will not be recapping it all here, but if you have any questions, please post them here and we will be happy to answer them for you. We hope to see you in the game with us!

The Down in the Gutter Crew

[HeySparky]

Sweet. Recruitment!

As WR said, Vegas and I are - respectively Wikisarus Rex and Wikitron Rex. PM or post questions here if you have wiki questions.

[Konsaki]

'Well met!' to all you brave bastards who feel you can survive the hell that is called the Redmond Barrens.

Name's Konsaki and I'm going to let you know what I'm about in this game. Listen up and you might actually live long enough to eat your next meal.

My job of Player GM involves discribing the world as it tries to slowly whittle your character away until there's nothing left but dispair and that naggin craving for your next fix. But fear not, there will be many things in this world you can derive pleasure from, though most are just as likely to kill you as sustain your need for escapism and excitement. This leads me into my next title very nicely...

Opposition GM
Yes, that's right, all you chip heads and druggies who call yourself gangers. There are things out there that don't like to get shot at and fully plan on shooting back at you, if not slinging some crazy mojo instead.
One on one fights in a back alley, you and your buddy getting ambushed by a pack of ghouls because you stayed outside way to late or squads of gangmembers shooting it out over a street corner. Fights are mean, bloody and ruthless, fitting for the wastelands they take place in.
At the epitome of these battles, you might get to see full gangs duking it out for pleasure, food, money, turf or just to see your ugly mug smeared all over the pavement. That is, if you survive long enough...


I'd say good luck to you poor sods, but if you had any luck at all, you wouldn't be in the Barrens at all. Instead, I'll just say 'Have fun while it lasts, cause there are no guarentees in this world except that everything dies in the end... everything.'

Oh, one last thing, I'm the nice GM.

[Shadow]

Name: Ghost
Race: Ork
Age: Late Teens
Previous Gang Affiliation: Bleeding Edge

Ghost is a street orphan, born in the slums and raised in hell. His mother never even held him, just passed him off to the clinic for her fix. He was raised by the Redmond Orphan Fund, a nice way of saying he got a meal once a week. By the time he was 6 he was on the street, shadowing other people, trying to steal enough food for him and his pet cat. When he was 10 he stumbled into the wrong territory and got the snot beat out of him. Luckilly for him he didn't die. A street friend helped him to a street doc who patched him up. Then he goblinized. No more scrawny ten year old, hello big ork.

The way things changed was night and day. People started listening when he spoke, and doing what he told them. The weight of this never really struck him till he was with the Edge. When decisions he made sent friends to their grave. He left them and went to be a soldier for a bottom feeding all ork gang. Anything he could do to get away from making decisions. Now they are gone to, and others are in need of a home. He doesn't want the role, but if he can help, he will.

Game Info,
I am thinking he will have a little bit of cyber, maybe an arm (lost from an infection) and he uses a stun buton as his primary weapon. He is all to familiar with what happens when a rival ganger ends up dead.

For Winter

[ Spoiler ]

Read the wiki, "I need to commit petty crime X so I can put gas in my bike, have enough to eat today, and if I’m really lucky, go out and get trashed with my homies tonight". Grendel so said that didn't he!

[WinterRat1]

Shadow - Concept approved, request membership on the wiki and put up your character for approval when you're ready.

Are you still on Active Status in LITS, I haven't seen Ivan running around lately. What's going on with him?

Regarding your spoiler -

[ Spoiler ]

Ha, you're absolutely correct! How did you know? I'm guessing it's a line he's used more than once.

He was the one who I talked with to bounce ideas off of and determine how I was going to set up and run this game, as well as the theme/mood I was going for. So expect to see some heavy Grendel influence in this game.

Oh, and did I mention I managed to persuade him to take the role of the PC Gang Leader? :)

[Shadow]

Sweet! Yay. Working on him now will get him up ASAP.

I am still in with Ivan, Gren and I are working out the details of his triumphant return.

[ Spoiler ]

I can't belive you got him to want to play in a game, AWESOME! It has been forever since I have been in a game with him. Should rock for sure. I don't think he has said that before, but it sounded like something he would say. If you have met him, you know what I mean :D

[WinterRat1]

Shadow (we can probably do without the spoilers, but just to keep the thread on track...) -

[ Spoiler ]

I met him at GenCon last year and I absolutely know what you mean. It's amazing, but somehow his real life self manages to completely live up to his online persona.

I don't know what I was expecting prior to meeting him in the flesh, but when I did meet him, I saw him and said, 'that must be Grendel'. Sure enough, it was, and he absolutely did not disappoint.

Heh, it took a bit of persuasion to get him to play. I like to think his experience in LITS and his confidence in my ability to put together and run a quality game (or at least I like to think they're quality :D) swayed him to join up. Plus, the concept and theme of the game are definitely right up his alley, and we all know that the best GMs rarely get to play, so he probably was drawn by that.

Let me add that being able to toss his name around as the PC Gang Leader has been a phenomenal recruiting tool. I would suggest that at least part of the reason there's such a high quality group of players and help is due in no small part to his involvement in a pivotal position. Heck, I'm excited to run this game just to see what he comes up with.

[Vegas]

@Shadow

You've been added to the wiki. you can find your pages starting at Ghost

If you need help getting a sheet up on it let Sparky or I know :)

[Unarmed]

Hey Guys!

I didn't post at all on the other DitG thread, because I wasn't really sure if it was invite-only, but I thought I'd throw out a character concept here and if it gets accepted, then all the better. This would be my third messageboard game, so I don't have a tremendous amount of experience, and if I'm not the kind of player you guys are looking for then just let me know and I will not be offended.


Concept:
Name: Doc
Race: Human
Age: 27
Previous Gang Affiliation: 8-Balls

Doc grew up in tacoma, an area far better than most of his present-day peers. His father was poor, but he managed to send doc to school. His mother had left the boy and the father a long time ago. The main problem was that the boy was loathsome. His personality grated on everyone he met. He was lecherous, even when he was a kid. He leered at teachers and got into scuffles in the playgrounds, but he was never really a big kid and so he had to resort to cheap tactics to stay in the fights. He was a bright kid but not at all motivated by anything but causing trouble.

When he got older the only job that he could get was the janitor in a pharmacy in a shitty part of tacoma. This suited him well because he used to just steal prescription drugs right off the shelf. He used to try and pick the brains of the pharmacists, attempting to get them to tell him how to make harder stuff, but they all hated him and wouldn't give him the time of day. He had enough money to afford a crappy comlink and dug up enough information on the matrix to allow him to start making bliss out of his run-down, peice-of-drek doss. He started trying to sell it, but not many people were buying. He couldn't find clients in Tacoma, and when he moved out to redmond the locals would just beat him up and take the stuff, leaving him credless.

He decided he needed help to sell his stuff. He approached a local gang, the 8-Balls, out of the blue. They were highly skeptical at first, but he spun them a tale of being a down on his luck ex-pharmacist who just wanted to sell some drugs. They locked him up in a warehouse with his things and told him they'd be back in 5 days. Either he'd have made enough bliss in that time to make them 500 nuyen or he'd be dead. He made the deadline, and earned the trust of the 8-balls.

Doc was burning the midnight oil the night of the explosion. He had worked his way into a position of confidence in the 8-balls: he was responsible for a large portion of their drug production, and had managed to keep up the charade of being a former pharmacist. He had left the warehouse that night to get some food and a bit of long haul from his doss, and he was just putting his hand on the door when it happened. He survived - barely - but his face was horribly scarred and he lost part of one arm. He managed to afford a new cyberhand from a chop doc he knew, but there was nothing that could be done about his face. Horrible personality, horrible appearance to match.

Game Info:
Doc will have pretty high mental attributes (aside from charisma) and a bevy of knowledge skills related to drug production. He would lose a fight to any of the other gang members, and his personality has likely irked them all by this time, but he is tolerated because he genuinely does know what he is doing.

[Vegas]

Hey Unarmed! Welcome to the threads!

I'm actually pretty excited about where you could go with Doc, perhaps only because I'm biased and my character's coming out ot the 8-Balls and I dig seeing someone else run with what I started ;)

There are others in the game who are veterans of the DSF boards and some that are nice and green. I think if you're willing to commit to the time and the dedication that this game is going to be asking for we'd be hard pressed to turn you away.

Granted I'm not a GM, but I'd say go ahead and start working up a CS to post here in the thread for WinterRat1 and Konsaki to look over and if they give you the go ahead we'll get you ported over to the wiki. Every member is gonna have their own personality quirks to bring to the table in this game which is what's going to make it so damn interesting. Functioning as a unit with all the "disfunctional family members" :P

If you need any help or want to "flesh out" 8-Balls background feel free to drop me a PM :)

Looking forward to see what you come up with!

[Abbandon]

I was hoping somebody would make a drug cooker.

[Meriss]

Yeah means we can start competing with the other gangs from the get go

[WinterRat1]

Unarmed - Concept approved, apply for wiki membership and start posting your character sheet there for review. Welcome to the threads, and don't worry about your experience. Everyone here was a noob once upon a time, so we all know what it's like. As Vegas said, if you're willing to commit the time and effort, we're willing to help you go through the paces. :)

Two quick comments on your character.

The drug production skills would be Active, not Knowledge, although you'd most likely have both Active and Knowledge skills relating to drug production. The key distinguisher is that Doc would be Active(ly) using his skill to create the drugs and have practice doing so, as opposed to a mere theoretical understanding of the process. Hence, an Active skill. I still suggest having Knowledge skills to support/supplement this Active Skill however.

27 is a pretty old ganger. If that's what you want it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But he will be significantly older than most of the other gangers, in case you care.

[WinterRat1]

Meriss - You gotta survive the get go first. :vegm:

[Unarmed]

[rob]

[yoippari]

Aww, and my first character idea was a chemist. Drugs, toxins and demolitions but with the focus on drugs. I'm concepting out a dwarf right now though I keep getting too verbose. I know that we aren't supposed to be going for a niche but I have a feeling two chemists would start stepping on toes sooner or later.

[adamu]

Hey all - don't let him deceive you - Unarmed is not THAT much of a noob. He did a great job in the once-promising, now dead Painted Samurai game.
Glad to see you joined, Unarmed.

[Konsaki]

[WinterRat1]

Hmm...good trick Unarmed, set the bar low, then wow us with your skills, raking in the karma and praise. But it won't work now, because we're on to you! :grr:

(You can thank Adamu for that. :))

[yoippari]

Name: Trojan
Meta: Dwarf
Age: 24
Ex-Brickhouse Boys

I'm a simple dwarf, unassuming, unambitious, hard working, your steriotypical dwarf in fact. But that's something people don't get, steriotypes are based on truth. They don't get that I really don't want to do anything other than what I'm doing. A little more ventilation would be nice though. Oh ya, don't trip in here, it might be dangerous.

I'm Trojan. They started calling me that when I was able to walk into another gangs territory and come back out with a box of chemicals without being noticed. Take the symbolism however you want. I'm not that good with a knife, and I can do little more than pull the trigger on a gun, but if you need to gas a building or even collapse one I can probably figure out a way to do it. I have a hard time working with most gangs since I'm not the best fighter and usually they want *every* member to fight. But when my old gang went off and got killed leaving me with some equipment and a leftover pepper-punch grenade I started studying up and now I can crank out a decent amount of coke when I need to.

Now I'm with the Brickhouse Boys. Cooking up whatever they need for parties or keeping the pimps in line. Not a bad gig actually. A party whenever I'm in the mood and I get to keep the good stuff for my own personal use. They use to come over and grab some product on their own, but that stopped when they *ahem* mistook some Gamma-Scopolamine for Novacoke. That was a boring night, at least for an hour or so, after that things perked up a little. That might have been an expensive "mistake" but it was definitely worth it.

Mechanics: Will take the Blandness quality and probably a couple points of shadowing and/or disguise. Given his "profession" he'll probably keep a super squirt (his one over rating 6 item?) with some pepper punch or something around. That is unless he needs a shop for making chems.

[WinterRat1]

Yoippari - Concept approved, apply for wiki membership and start posting your character sheet there for review. Stealth ganger and drug dealer eh? Should have a lot of opportunities available to him.

[yoippari]

Applied for membership. I'm wiki-illeterate but I'm computer literate and will just figure it out as I go along. I'm also not very experienced at... role playing. I've done some table top RPG-that-shall-not-be-named, and I'm in two SR games currently going on but very slowly. I'm also doing a maptools RPGTSNBN combat heavy game and a openrpg RPGTSNBN role play heavy game.

It sounds like a lot but it's just two sessions a week I've been doing for 3 weeks and making a couple of SR characters that haven't really done anything yet.

I'm afraid that to make him a capable stealthy guy and a chemist (not sure about being the dealer) and giving him any combat ability might be stretching him a bit thin.

[Unarmed]

I'm sure any gang worth it's salt in drug dealing would probably have more than chemist, so I'm not really worried about it. ;) I'm liking the rule change suggestion too, it makes things a little more interesting.

And Adamu, I told you not to tell them about that! I was going to split the karma with you.... somehow.

[yoippari]

Should I post questions about the game over in the planning thread or here? Either way...

I just checked the skill suggestion. I'm picturing him to be a actual chemist who also makes drugs. So besides drugs he would make pepper punch, explosives, perhaps gunpowder, and be able to whip up some decent alcohol from whatever he could get cheap (potatoes?). Might make some "molokov cocktails" with said alcohol or even one of the gaseous toxins. So high chemistry skill without spec would be the most suitable with a point in various support skills like armorer and demolitions.