Hitting Bottom, Master OoC page. Options

[adamu]

Okay, welcome all.
Although there will be multiple IC threads, this will be the single OoC thread.

1. Time

The campaign will start in early 2070. Game time will progress fairly rapidly in some cases, and the players' individual threads will coalesce in Autumn or so.

Because of the many mini-campaigns running on different timelines and gradually flowing into one another, Careful time/date stamping at the head of each post is essential! Long-term campaigns become meaningless when time is too flexible. If your dates are off, I will be asking you to edit them. Numerous free websites will generate an accurate 2070 calendar for you, if that helps.

2. Posting style

Very basic here, but we have some first-timers.
Italicize internal monologues/characters' thoughts.
Player character/key NPC names in Bold.
Time/date stamp at head of post in yellow.
"Regular quote marks around dialogue."

3. Confidentiality

I understand some of you will want to keep some aspects of your characters secret. Feel free to use spoilers and PMs as much as you like.
For my part, however, as a general rule of thumb, I trust players to compartmentalize what they know and what their characters know.
Some threads spoiler everything that not everyone else would know, and that works in most games. The way this will work, however, EVERYTHING would be spoilered until your characters get together a few months from now, and if we were gonna do that, we might as well just play the whole game by PM.
So, I will generally NOT be using spoilers myself. If there is some PARTICULAR POINT that you want kept hush-hush about your character, PM me and I will try to keep it as quiet as is practical.

4. Dice

Everyone will mostly make their own rolls on the honor system, with a few exceptions noted below.

As a general rule, if you think you need a die roll but aren't sure or don't know what to roll or exactly what modifiers to use, GO AHEAD AND MAKE/POST THE ROLL. Asking me what to roll and waiting for my reply and then rolling costs us a day of real time.

Make your best guess, explain what it is, and then post the numbers from left to right IN THE ORDER ROLLED. That way, if I assign additional modifiers, I can lop rolls off starting from the right, and if I assign a bonus, I can roll it myself and tack the results onto the right-hand end.

Example of shooting somebody -

Attribute + skill + specialization + smartlink - target running = 11 dice

3 5 6 3 6 1 1 4 4 3 6 = 4 successes

Notice I didn't say what the attribute and skill levels were - you don't need to - I have your sheets and that lets you keep a bit of privacy.

In this example, if I wanted to add a visibility modifier, I would just erase the last (X) numbers off the right.

And I will be making things like Perception roles whenever I feel like it secretly, although feel free to initiate your own.

5. Karma

Getting it

I will send PMs with karma once a week. The awards will be based on frequency, individual awards, and team awards.

Frequency: You get 2 points for the week if I have never had to wait over 24 hours for your reply to my post. If I wait over 24 hours once or twice, 1 point. More than that, 0 points in this category.

I totally understand that this is a game, not a job. And unless it is extreme, I have no problem with slow posting (at least in the initial stages). The goal here is to encourage frequent posting in a fair manner, not to point any sort of angry finger at those that don't post as frequently.

The criteria for this category will probably change once we are more into a team environment.

Individual awards: Awards for excellent role-playing, guts, drama, and the rest of the list in the book. This may often be zero unless someone really shows me something (but based on the quality of the submissions, I have high hopes that you will give me an excuse to make more generous awards).

Team awards: These are your points for achieving team goals - usually finishing a run, but it could be other accomplishments. These awards may be larger, but they will obviously not be coming up every week.
Note that you are all a team of one to start with, and that this category may continue to include awards for individual goal completions even after we get into a team environment.

Using it

All karma expenditures must be logical and in character. But I am flexible about how you demonstrate this. Some examples -
A) You can refer me to a number of times that you used your gun skill in combat, hence justifying raising it.
B) You can refer me to a number of in-character posts where you mentioned "closing the window on your physics text to answer the incoming call" or "going home to wash off the grime of the run and relaxing in the bath with your physics textbook" and so on, and then raising your physics skill. Thus, if you have some plan to raise something, all it takes is a little color text over a couple of weeks.
C) You can actually hire an intstuctor, use a chunk of game time practicing, and so forth.

So you see there are many ways to easily justify spending your karma. What I don't want is a karate skill just materializing out of nowhere.

All karma expeditures subject to GM approval.

6. Working together - you can lead a horse to water....

One very important thing we all need to remember is that we have the same real world goal - we need to get your character into a shadowrunner lifestyle. Deep enough into the runner lifestyle that they are a member of a team and go on runs regularly and generally all or a big part of their lives underground.

And no matter what I do with my GM omnipotence and the rules of fairness temporarily cast aside, I cannot MAKE that happen. Racked with guilt over past crimes? You could enter a monastery. Family all killed? You could start a community activist group. Wanted for heinous crime? You could turn yourself in and trust the legal system. Mafia wants you dead? You could enter the witness protection program.

The point is, no matter what I do, you can avoid the shadow lifestyle if you want to. But then why would you be playing Shadowrun? I will give you ample motivation and opportunity to select, from a world of life choices, the life of a shadowrunner. But you have to go the final distance through your roleplaying.

By all means fight desperately against the forces arrayed against you. As I said, by doing so you may earn karma and possibly alleviate the negative effects of your 'big event.' But you WILL eventually get hammered to one degree or another (I have to balance those free lifestyles and super generous contact awards, after all!).
And as I said, I will provide opportunity as well as motivation. With your assets frozen and Lone Star sirens fast approaching, you will not have to say "Hey, I guess I'll move to Seattle and become a shadowrunner." There will be opportunities for a more organic transition, provided we both work together toward Seattle and shadowrunning.

(Note - not ALL of you will necessarily have heinous and melodramatic beginnings, just most. I am trying to come up with as wide a variety of motivators as possible.)

7. Three waves

The waves are not a reflection of anything but which stories I think will require the most time in the game world (although my estimates could be wildly inaccurate).

Subject to change at any moment:

First wave

To start no later than July 26 -
Abbandon
pragma
MK Ultra
Ankle Biter

Second wave

To start no later than August 2 -
JDragon
Blue Rondo
Vegas
Mister Juan

Third wave

To start no later than August 9 -
Dire Radiant
BlackHat
Cedric Rolfsson
Konsaki

Apologies to third wavers. But like I said, actual starts will probably be much earlier. The dates above, however, you can bank on.

And sorry about the length of this post. I figured once I put it up it will always be there as an easy-to-find reference, and I can edit it as campaign ground rules evolve.

[adamu]

Well, I followed Blue Rondo's advice, and that worked perfectly. I also cleverly tried to give myself some advice, and you can see how that worked out - the little colon-ooc-colon thing at the beginning of the title.
So anyone that can get that unsightly thing off of there gets a free karma point!

[Vegas]

I don't think anyone but the admins can edit a thread title.. but I could be wrong. I've never actually *started* a thread on DSF yet ;)

[adamu]

I figured it would be hard. That's why it's worth a karma point!

[DireRadiant]

[Abbandon]

*rubs hands together*

[Cedric Rolfsson]

Okay, since we're now officially accepted and all I thought I toss this out and see if it fits anyone else's story line.

My character is going to be pretty active in cyberspace, VR gaming, AR gaming, all that kind of stuff. He's also a bachelor in his early twenties with the normal hormonal urges that flow therefrom and likes the night life. He's based in Seattle so if anyone's characters have similar backgrounds and are interested in seeing if we might know each other in some fashion pre-EVENT let me know.

[BlackHat]

[pragma]

Because I seem to have just missed the end of the recruitment thread I'm going to drop this here. My character is :

Gregory Blaine -- 31 -- Elf -- "Filing Clerk, boring as tar really."

[pragma]

It strikes me that it might be a good idea to get all of the ways our characters could have bumped into one another pre-game out in public. It could be a nice thing to post a short list of keywords about how others could know you. Mine would go:

Close association:
Hartford CT locals, Langley VA locals, foreign service, intelligence community

Distant Association:
Boston Law Community, Tir Tangaire high society, Ireland locals, Frequent Travellers

I could also be off my rocker. Let me know what you guys think.

[Abbandon]

Hey Adamu/anyone do most people in general use like real world geography of locations to come up with the names for places. Like does Seattle really have Pullyup or Redmond barrens? Or is that stuff part of supplemental material.

I know sooner or later i will have to pin down my characters actual locations like where he lives and where he hangs out.


Cerberus:

Close association: doc wagons or the hospital, mixed martial arts fighting or trainnig.

Loose association: my fictional club "rain" where my guy hangs out sometimes.

[Konsaki]

Caittie "Dreamer" Natome
Age - 16
Highschool student

She goes to Northwest Highschool, a public school in the Northwest district. The Northwest distric isnt part of any corperation but isnt a barren, its a middle to high income area.
She works with her father in thier electronic repair store, so if you have any gear that might have been broken, her's is somewhat known in her part of town.
She surfs the matrix, just exploring most of the time. Not getting into too much trouble. She does frequent hacker clubs and chat rooms though.
Sometimes she goes to a dance club called "DDR" with a couple of her friends. They might stand out since they are flagged under the drinking age but still in there under legit means.

[Cedric Rolfsson]

Abbandon,

Seattle actually has those locations although not in the SR format. I live in Washington State and have relatives that live in Bellevue just off I-90. I've driven the streets that the books talk about, most do exist.

Puyallup is mostly covered in trees and has some distance between the living areas. In 2055 the Great Ghost Dance dumped all sorts of sludge from Adams and St. Helens, and Rainer on the area and the Exodus from tribal lands filled up the living space.

Redmond is quasi-residental with lots of strip malls and restaurants etc. It too got hammered by the mountains and then a large suborbital hit it in SR world.

Blackhat, in 2XS the University of Washington is still turning out top notch computer programers. Its still owned by the "State" and specializes in computer programs. In today's work U-Dub has an outstanding computer science dept which feeds Microsoft, they often do their homework in the Gates library. My brother graduated from U-Dub awhile ago.

[Ankle Biter]

Electra Spiros
Elf Actress at london's west end.
From a family of Greek pirates.

[BlackHat]

[adamu]

Yeah, as for real world locations, as a general rule it's okay to reference them as long as you update them for 2070. Cedric's posts were pretty much on the money (except that the Ghost Dance that blew the Pacific NW volcanoes was well before 2055).
I spent two years at UW, so am fairly familiar with Seattle. In game terms, when I refer to mundane things like street names and day-to-day landmarks, it is probably based on my best recollection of real places. Most "interesting" places will probably be made up.
As the game progresses, we may use actual Internet map resources for reference. Or if you are doing your own research on a location, you can use that stuff as long as you run it by me first.

As for hammering out a lot of specific Seattle locations, I have been waiting until we can all get our mitts on the latest Seattle sourcebook, so that we all have a common reference point.

BlackHat - are you personally familiar with the UW campus? If I make references to places there, will you know what I'm talking about?

As for ALL good schools being corp controlled, a better word would be MOST. Despite corp dominance, the 6th world is an extremely diverse place. Yes, the majority of quality education will be corp, but the world's governments are still players, just not what they were in the 20th century "Age of the Nation-state." I mean, if the United States lost 70% or even 90% of its power, well, even just 10% of the real world US would still be a serious player on the world stage. I see the 2070 UCAS as about 20% of its real world strength. And even so, it is still only the national governments with assets like carrier battle groups, etc. It is just that they are limited in their ability to project power by the economic dominance of the corps.

I noticed there is a lot of trying to figure out if people already know each other. Hmmm. Well, I reckon there are a few billion people in the world, and out of these twelve, two have a very close connection and another pair shares a contact. Mostly, however, I would like you to be strangers to one another when I do finally have your paths cross.
If you REALLY REALLY want to have previous associations, please try to keep it at the passing acquaintance level.

[adamu]

Special round of applause goes out to ES Sparky and Adam (not me, THE Adam) for fixing the thread title I mutilated despite Blue Rondo's excellent advice.

[BlackHat]

[Ankle Biter]

About the not knowing each other, I was looking for a blag for my character to move to Seatlle, and I figured knowing somebody else who had a big event thing happen to them would help...

If you don't want us to know each other that's cool, though.

[BlueRondo]

Even though my part of the story won't be starting for a while, is there any particular information you still need about my character, Adamu?

[adamu]

Blue Rondo - I thought I just PMed you. Did you get it?

[BlueRondo]

Oh, you're right. Nevermind.

[adamu]

Hey, does anyone happen to have their Shadows of North America or SOTA 2064 (the spy chapter) handy and can tell me where the UCAS CIA(?) is based, since Langley is now in the CAS?

Let me know if you find it.

[Vegas]

I've got both here, according to SOTA:2064, the CIA is locaded at George H. W. Bush Center for Intelligence, Langley, North Virginia (UCAS)

Director: Robert Henninger

[JDragon]

Ok, I'm here and waiting paitently for my turn in the spotlight.

JDragon

I'll make sure to have those couple small things updated on my character sheet before we start.