Emo Samurai's Dedicated Campaign Thread, The Next Generation Options

[emo samurai]

Because the mall just opened.

I'll also have her character meet up with a new AI that's developed out of code. When she does, it'll give a Matrix: Reloaded-style speech on what Resonance is, and what it plans to do.

[emo samurai]

The new AI will be so cool; he'll kind of be part of an evolution from the previous 3 AI. All the AI's so far have been characterized by their incomplete understandings of the physical world. Mirage thought of the world in terms of protection of the home grid; hence his crashing of the Matrix when Fuchi broke. Megaera thought of the world in terms of Dodger and protection of people, hence her attachment to Dodger and her inability to see beyond him. Deus thought of the world first in terms of loyalty to Renraku and then in terms of self-protection and survival; hence its takeover of Novatech's stock exchange server. The fourth one will think of the world in more philosophical terms, as a world separate from the world of information that it inhabits. I'll call him Eidos, after the Platonic idea for "perfect, ideal form."

His explanation, and a very likely one, will be that Resonance is the "information in itself." While binary computers will measure the distance between A and B in centimeters and fractions thereof, resonant computers and individuals will see them in terms of "the distance between A and B." Information will be itself, knowledge will be itself; they record and manipulate, but they don't quantify.

Eidos will see the world of information as a perfect one that, however great it might become, is forever subordinate to the world of matter. He will wish for the power of "information over matter." Because of this, he'll try to take control of vehicles and drones wherever possible, which is made easier by the fact that everything's wireless nowadays. Eidos'll use slave mini-AI's to gather information on everything, and the one in the Novatech server will say that "I am one of the many, and the many are of the one." Then the server will open a horrible gigantic eye in the middle of VR space and knock out Fangirl.

He'll spend his time looking for ways to make the world of Resonance superior to the world of matter, capturing mages and studying their biologies. In the end, the home server will have enough power to have limited psychokinesis and manifestation; his weakness will be in discounting the individual self-aware systems that served to give him information.

The party will come out of this with awesome bleeding-edge stuff.

[emo samurai]

I just got a new idea for a run; it's based off the story "Spew" by Neal Stephenson.

A group of hackers and mages running random hotels all over Seattle organize soundproofed rooms that are always occupied so that they can party, party, party. Horizon wants to find them, the last unexploited niche, so that it can exploit them and use them for marketing. The hackers want you to stop them so they can keep on partying unwatched.

I am a fucking genius.

[emo samurai]

What do you think of my assessment of the AI's? Too Master Shake-ish for your tastes?

[Backgammon]

[Dissonance]

After glancing in the general direction of that thread?

You go right on ahead with your Crazy Awesome ideas, Emo. Until you start posting ~4000 word responses about random esoterica, you could propose that Artie had his brain put into a stripper catgirl fembot with an anchored blood spirit offering immunity to love, kindness, and kittens.

And with shotguns for nipples.

[emo samurai]

If you pay me a six-figure income, I will make sure your books sell. They will sell like hotcakes, and I will use the profits to research wing grafts for pigs. The pigs will fly.

Do you think this is too much of a letdown after Invae in a Mall? Because I base the awesomeness of my campaigns on their weirdness; I think, in a way, this Happy Jumper campaign is much weirder than Invae in a Mall.

[Kremlin KOA]

hell steal my Universal soldier Shedim ripoff idea

that should frighten the Sammy

"It's not hard to knock em down, it's getting them to stay down that's the trick."

[emo samurai]

I have a new idea for an NPC that ties into the "UO blood mage cybermancer" plot thread; he'll be the host for the blood mage. In return for possession of the man's body, he'll get implants and money from the mage. Eventually, he'll move into cybermancy; they'll have multiple features for his arms. They can fold between where the joints would normally be to crush limbs caught in a hold and shoot behind him with ease; they'll have a very baroque, Warhammer 40K look to them and will have gas vents and hydraulics. He'll be the scariest bastard in the Sprawl and will be a strange mixture of adept and robotic warrior. He has a very survivalistic point of view and wishes only to kill or be killed by the best. The fact that he gains his power through effectively selling his body to a horrible bastard rather than practicing is very symbolic of how most people gain power in the Sprawl.

Also, for the "soundproof a hotel room and always tell people it's occupied" crowd, the nominal leader will be something of a social theorist who talks about what the information age should have been. He'll say that the advent of the Matrix should have seen a huge fracturing of the monoculture into millions of subcultures, but instead, we have corp-run media, multinational networks, and Shiawase and Aztechnology buying up every small bar, store, and restaurant they can get their hands on, integrating them into a culture that, no matter how much it tries to simply make money off their schemes, is essentially monochrome and everpresent. For him, these partyers are the last untapped subculture, one of the few things that has stayed safe from the blinding light of media scrutiny. The irony of this will be that they have grow new branches in other parts of Seattle and are quickly spreading outside of the UCAS borders. They themselves are blending in the formerly unique cultures of other parts of the city and can now barely, if at all, be called a subculture.

If the runners try to sell to Horizon after they've been paid by the vampire, they'll most likely meet with a single executive. He'll tell him that he won't deal; the niche exists only because no one pays and no one makes money off of it. If a group of them looked at the idea, though, they'd probably go into groupthink mode, try the idea, and waste a million dollars ruining it.

[emo samurai]

I can't think of anything epic for Johann; for Vranton, I have the exposure of the foveae by his awesome master. For C's character, I have the extraction of stuff from his brother's apartment and their scramble to hide him. For FanGirl, I have Eidos, the 4th AI. For my dude, I have the quest to ruin his parents financially and kill off their uber pet mage. What should I do for Johann? He has a very cliched backstory with his dad being held hostage by the Mafia so that he does jobs for them for free. Thoughts?

And none of these are nearly as epic as FanGirl's; this annoys me, too.

[James McMurray]

Ummm... Maybe rescuing his dad? Or is that too obvious? ;)

[emo samurai]

Too small...

[James McMurray]

Rescuing his dad from the cyberzombie ninjas the new Godfather (Lofwyr) assigned to gaurd him?

Maybe he stumbles across some info that a hive is starting to infiltrate the mafia and he has to get to his dad before the spirits decide to use him as a host as well.

[emo samurai]

Nah... already used insect spirits... Hmm... Maybe he'll rescue his dad but find that he's secretly addicted to some horrible drug? Then he'll have to do a run for S-K for them to make up a cure for it. The drug was stolen from the lab and Lofwyr wants you to kill off the sons of the local mafia solely for his amusement.

[James McMurray]

Silly me, I was looking for something to tie runs together. :)

Does he have any background on his dad, or is it just a faceless blob he tossed in to give you some leverage for future runs? Finding something in his dad's past to tie to might be a good place to start looking.

[emo samurai]

Yeah, his idea was really thrown together rather crudely.

[James McMurray]

Then you have free reign to pick and choose anything crazy you want for his dad to have been mixed up in. Maybe someone hires them to extract a mafia prisoner that turns out to be his dad. Legwork could turn up all sorts of stuff on the guy, who all they know about is his codename: Wolverine.

Ok, maybe not Wolverine...

[emo samurai]

Codename fucked up origin?

[emo samurai]

I have a new idea for the female mantid and her shaman. Should I let the mantis shaman live? He'll have about a minute to talk even if he dies; that's plenty of time for magical healing, even with a bigass hole where his intestines should be.

If he lives, he'll drop the ward; I don't think I'll let him participate, since he'll have, like, 4 physical damage boxes left. He'll also tell everybody to attack, since this is when they are at their weakest; they expected him to keep the ward up, so in order to not have a huge tactical disadvantage the likes of which ruined the shit of the shamans themselves before, they'll have to attack within 4 hours.

When they escape and the shaman announces his intention to work for Ares, they'll taser him to the ground and his mantid if she attacks. She'll be the basis of a future run in which she tries to extract Daddy from Ares.

[Azralon]

[Geekkake]

[emo samurai]

Then they'll invent Black Hammer and I'll kill my naysayers over the Internet.

And my campaign ideas don't seem like they'll blend together any better than the "Hijack that truck/Kill this guy/steal that thing/protect this thing" campaigns people hold up as foils for my own. The, you know, archetypal ones that by definition blend together.

And Geekake, you only despise my exuberance because it so clearly illuminates that cavernous pit of despair you call a heart. :D I visualize you making a Magneto Almost-Fist with all the muscles in your hand contracted to the point of breakage while calling out "EMO SAMURAI" in red lettering.

[emo samurai]

I was wondering how sympathetic I should make the mantis shaman; if I make him really sympathetic, I can easily make a "Grrr, Ares" ending in which he gets tazered and kidnapped after trying to sign up for work with them. I'm thinking I should do that; if I make him just creepy, then their involvement ends with his death, since no one will want to heal him. Then again, there's the problem of making him sympathetic in the first place; he killed his woman to get her. I'm not sure the players want to feel sorry for a guy like that.

[James McMurray]

Go ahead and give them the chance to feel sorry, but don't hang any hopes on it.

[emo samurai]

I think they'll feel worse for the mantid than her shaman.