Lab Rat's Diary: Deuxième Partie, Emo's campaign begins! Options

[Valentinew]

Emo, you are an evil little man...

btw, My character's icon is a badger from that site in a backwards baseball cap.

I just had to laugh out loud....

[emo samurai]

Do all hostile attack programs manifest as snakes when you run a reality filter?

And everybody, you can post on my character's bl0g if you want. Even FanGirl. :.(..... (Tears of loneliness)

[Dranem]

I posted a comment to your new IC discussion.. just to give some depth.

Wyrm probably won't touch on the subject of AI's, seeing as she's still leary of them since her encounters with Deus and his Otaku minions. Though - if she can remember - she had met Morgan and found her quite endearing.... BronzeWyrm's view on Resonance is that it lurks in the in-between hidden places of the Matrix, and cause she loves drugs, she'll probably think you're high when you talk about Resonance servers.

Wyrm would probably be a good source of Matrix sub-culture (which shouldn't affect your game too much, to apease Emo) Unlike FanGirl, Wyrm's from a ganger campaign I play and is pretty much low grade as TM's go. (Thanks to the GM's gimped rule system) If you don't want me to comment any further FanGirl, say so and I'll take leave... I'll try not to rain too much on Emo's parade, the Matrix is filled with all kinds of views and opinions and - though NetSpeak filled - her views are pretty open. (probalby more open than mine as a player. ;) )

[edit]
Don't worry Emo, I'll leave blog alone...

[emo samurai]

Dude, post IC if you want. He's supposed to generate hostile responses with his post.

[FanGirl]

May 14, 2006

Yesterday was our third session, and although K is all better now (apparently he had thought he had bruised his tailbone last week, though it actually turned out to be a sprained muscle near his tailbone) his girlfriend was ill and he felt obligated to keep her company on the phone, meaning that he still couldn’t come this time.

In this latest session...
(WARNING: LONG FRICKIN' STORY AHEAD)

[ Spoiler ]

the group met Mr. Johnson at a bar known as the Happy Jumper, which is located next to Scarborough Bridge—Seattle’s notorious “suicide bridge.” Every night, one lucky patron is selected to have an Armor spell cast on him and jump off the bridge, crashing through the roof of the bar. Johnson happened to be the bar owner, who was being strong-armed by a corporate brat into selling his establishment. He was hiring the group to assassinate the lad: he would pay them :nuyen: 20,000 each for a standard offing, but promised to triple his price should they manage to ensure that Corp Kid doesn’t survive his jump off the bridge. FanGirl balked at the idea of participating in wetwork, and offered Johnson what she considered to be a reasonable alternative—“Why murder, when blackmail will work just as well?” she asked. Johnson persisted, saying that he would only pay :nuyen: 15,000 for a successful blackmailing: he believed that the public spectacle of CK’s death would attract business in a way that private threats could not.

Although the other group members were fine with killing CK (“Way to ruin the party, FanGirl!” Vranton spat), Johnson decided to give the group a week in which to do legwork and espionage; hopefully FanGirl would be able to make up her mind based on this information. So far, everything that Emo has shown us of him has served to drive home two basic points: CK is a Very Unpleasant Person, and his security mage and constant companion only offers his friendship and protection to CK out of a sense of obligation, rather than any true fondness for him. The session ran long, and we broke it off just before FanGirl was about to attend a big party where CK and the security mage would be found (thanks to some string-pulling by her corp princess contact): she hopes to work out some kind of a deal with Security Mage.

Later that day, I got a brilliant idea, and I told Emo all about it that very evening. If Johnson wanted a spectacle, why not set up an elaborate farce that would end up exposing all the skeletons in CK’s closet to the public? Here’s how I would intend it to go down:

1. Johnson pretends to concede to CK’s offer to buy the Happy Jumper.
2. Security Mage convinces CK to let him set up a media blitz, ensuring that the bar will be chock full of journalists and cameramen on the night of the official “purchase.”
3. Meanwhile, FanGirl approaches CK under an assumed identity and encourages him to sneak off before his jump and meet with her alone in the back alley.
4. When CK and FanGirl meet, she proceeds to insult CK, driving him into a rage and causing him to attack her.
5. This is the signal for the other group members to raise the hue and cry, causing all the cameramen to run outside and catch him in the act.
6. Either Vranton or Johann (the two scariest group members) comes on the scene, yelling “Get away from my niece!” He grabs the weeping FanGirl and steer her into a waiting car, all the while ranting loudly about how he told her not to Get Mixed Up With The Wrong Crowd and how they are both Moving Away From This Awful Place Immediately. While the crowd is distracted by this, the other two group members makes their own exits.

If things go right, the entire evocative tableau will pluck at Joe and Jane 2070’s heartstrings, and it won’t be long at all before the public demands the CK be hung, drawn, and quartered. Since the virginal girl and her uncle will be nowhere to be found—remember, they “moved away”—there will be no real evidence to suggest that CK is anything other than a scumbag and that the girl that is anything other a saint, no matter how much spin Daddy’s lawyers try to put on it. Lone Star is sure to investigate CK in order to satisfy the people’s bloodlust, and all his various and sundry sins are sure to come to light—including the threats made against the owner of the Happy Jumper. The public sympathy will then shift from the mystery girl onto the Happy Jumper; this, to my mind, would make for far better (and more socially acceptable) publicity than a live snuff show.

Yet, according to Emo, Johnson wouldn’t be willing to pay the maximum price for the media circus. Only when CK falls off the bridge and hits the ground dead will Johnson be truly satisfied, and only when he is truly satisfied will he pay the group the full fee. This leaves me with a huge dilemma: even though staging the media circus would probably be more fun than pushing a guy off a bridge, I doubt that the rest of the group values the guy’s life over the filthy lucre. If FanGirl sticks to her guns, insisting that the group let CK live and take the reduced fee, the others will probably feel cheated. Reporting Johnson for conspiracy to commit murder is also an option, but it’s a gross violation of the unofficial Code of the Shadows to turn in one’s Johnson and one’s team in one fell swoop.

When it comes down to it, I only see two viable options for FanGirl. She could convince the group to fake CK’s death, spirit him away, and help him forge a new identity for himself, but there are so many things that could go wrong with that it probably wouldn’t be worth it to try. She’ll most likely take her other option: beg Johnson, just one more time, to have mercy on CK, and then walk away when he says “no.” She wouldn’t try to hinder the group in their wetwork attempt, but she wouldn’t help them either. She'll come out of the experience without any extra cash (or much extra karma, for that matter), and CK will still have to die, but at least FanGirl won’t have to sacrifice her principles.

So that's the story.

Oh yeah, and I used cash-for-karma to buy 1 skill point in Con, then bought two new Rating 2 SINs: “Velma Kelly” and “Roxanna Hart.” Give yourself a cookie if you know what the names are a reference to. :D

So . . .any thoughts?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I also got a pocket laser in case I need to burn things, and I registered a bunch of sprites because they're just so useful. :D
EDIT2: Spoiler'd the part about the run, so you don't have slog through it if you don't want to.

[Dranem]

My bodyguard character Bronze had a no-kill policy. (he's a bodyguard after all, payed to preserve life, not to end it) I've been known to walk away from games where the GM - even after having been warned of my characters values - still wanted him to do wetwork.

Of course these were online IRC games, where it is easy to walk away from the game, so I can see your delema... it's different for a live group.

I do wonder about the following:
Being a rich corp kid, wouldn't he have a Doc Waggon contract?
Could you approach the mage bodyguard and have the death faked?
Being the Matrix guru FanGirl is, can you dig up blackmail material anyway, forcing the kid to go with option 2 or be exposed. Even after the 'fake death' is done the kid would still be forced to go into hiding cause you still have blackmail material on him.

So this way the J can have his cake and you keep your morality clear of dirty deeds...

[emo samurai]

And remember that the entire reason for the founding of the bar was that someone crashed through the roof of the house and survived; if they go with the idea to kill him, they'll have to think of a way to make the fall a little harder than usual.

And I'll make sure you want to kill him. Hehehehehehhhh...

And the reason the media spectacle won't be nearly as lucrative if you do what you want to do is that the focus won't be on his bar; if he crashes and gets killed by something that shouldn't be there, the media's centered on the footage of his fall through the smiley face. If he gets caught attempting rape in an alley, the attention is fixed on a crying girl being walked to a car by her "uncle."

And damn right you won't get much karma if you do this! :grr:

[Dranem]

Well, his bodyguard is a mage... counterspelling the 'magic safeties' of the whole event would result in a very unpleasant landing....

[emo samurai]

I know, and I said "harder than usual." And if you remember the history of the bar, it originally was a normal house. The reason there's a smiley face on its roof is because someone crashed through the roof and survived and the owner wanted to dissuade anyone jumping with the smiley face. This became the gimmick that made this bar the big hit that it is. I started out the campaign with someone jumping without magical protections after the first guy and surviving; even if the kid was really weak, he'd have a 50/50 chance of survival. No splat, no :nuyen: .

And do you know the RL name of the bridge so I can awkwardly retcon it into the campaign?

[FanGirl]

[emo samurai]

What about the inherent digninty of HIS human life?

[DireRadiant]

Be hard to accomplish, but get the target to pay for faking his own death. Then you don't need to kill anyone, though you would need to get your hands on a dead body. Probably some laying around somewhere.

Johnsons pays for a spectacular death, target pays you to live, team gets more money for more effort (Which should motivate them, "We get more money if we don't actually kill anyone").

If you need to, blackmail the target into faking his own death.

[TwitchtheOrk]

Wetwork really should be optional... opportunities should be there of course so that players can go through the whole moral dilemma of doing it or no so it adds to character development and good roleplaying moments.

Someone that starts off very opposed to killing people may over the course of time realise that sometimes it's the lesser of two evils and vice versa.

The team I run with we pretty much sat down and asked what we thought of wetwork and most of us had no problem with it. Hell we nearly offed a random bod because he looked enough like our mark that we could still get the reward for it.

Either way if someone doesn't want to do it it's only fair to give them a chance to find a way of doing the job in a more pacifist way instead of forcing players into a situation where they would have to act OOC.

[FanGirl]

[emo samurai]

Most people don't rape women when they're drunk.

Think of this as inherent human dignity versus inherent human dignity. He views his as arbitrarily more than that of others and seeks to degrade that of others. Are you to say that he is worth more than those he victimizes? :proof:

[James McMurray]

That's the dilemma of belief in human life. Some human lives make it really hard to follow up on. But there are always answers besides just killing them.

Of course, I'm a huge fan of the death penalty. I have to be, or they'd revoke my license to be a Texan, and when I read (in today's paper) about two girls (14 and 16) getting gang raped and slowly strangled to death by six guys I wanna be the guy that squeezes the syringe. I can defintely see the other side though, and it would be much better to try and fix someone's psychological issues that result in that behavior.

[emo samurai]

That works if you have time, money, and a big fucking building to put them in. The runners don't have anything resembling that option.

[James McMurray]

There are options available besides incarceration. Brainwashing takes a while. A cortex bomb designed to go off if he rapes somebody works pretty well, and takes away the murder aspect, replacing it with suicide. a personafix chip would totally change his outlook on life.

As a GM I'm used to having characters kill left and right, but I've always found the most interesting campaigns to be the ones where killing wasn't an option, either because of morality or practicality.

[Shrike30]

[Butterblume]

Damn, I like that troll. He is awesome ;).

[FanGirl]

[emo samurai]

At that point, Gollum was harmless; CK is not. This is his only really foolproof way of protecting his business, and morally, it makes no difference whether he has him killed in a back alley or in midair over a house. Since he is the original victim and this is the only way to end it, he is in the right.

This does not refute a maiar, since the situations are very different.

[James McMurray]

I don't know the back story, but is death really the only way to end it? If it is, then I hope FanGirl walks away from the run in disgust and never works for that Johnson again, after having a long talk with her fixer about what sort of jobs she'll take.

But situations where death is the only recourse are rare, especially when you dremove self defense from the equeation, as this is obviously not a case of imminent deadly danger.

[emo samurai]

Hmmm.... maybe I'll find a way to put it back in.

[pragma]