Down in the Gutter: OOC, The Nuts and Bolts of Staying Alive Options

[WinterRat1]

All people not at the meet, feel free to go ahead and post...

[Lindt]

Ok, first Id like to give my apologies for not being here again. My new job is asking a TON of me as far as mental state.
Second, Id like to say Im taking a bit of a leave, as Im being transfered to Shanghi for 3 weeks starting next week.
Third, I have an arial image of what I was thinking that little oil change place might be. Its the dive with the blue doors. I hope to have something drawn up soon. Not though it may matter.
Little place

Id also like to thank WR for the writing, as the line regarding Grack made me laugh hard enough I caused injury.

[WinterRat1]

I went back and forth all night debating how Frosty and Tommie would respond, and this is too big of a moment. I had to go to the dice.

I have a request for a Charisma + Negotiation roll pending with Grendel now. Once I have it, I'll better be able to formulate a post.

One way or another, things are about to get very interesting at this negotiation...

Also, who is currently at the gang HQ? I know Nevada and Grack definitely are, but what are Ink, Fool, and Child doing? Did they head out when the others left, or are they still hanging around?

[Abbandon]

Well Fool was planning on helping Child salvage bikes, find a truck, find a shop. But that looks like it would be better left for later. Im pretty clueless as to what types of things I can do as a ganger. Do i go pick fights, do i mug people.

lol I'd like Fool to redecorate the HQ but we dont even know if we are staying there.

What kind of things do gang HQ's have? One of the only real things that would be of interest to Fool is just to go Check out the old SSR HQ and see it in the daylight and maybe salvage stuff for the new gang.

But for right now just assume Fool is at HQ ready to help the gang rebuild, move, fight off invaders, do whatever.

[adamu]

[WinterRat1]

Adamu - Go ahead and do your things, everyone is free to post, although the people at the meet are probably going to be waiting on Grendel.

Fool - You're free to do pretty much whatever you want. That's the upside of being in a gang. Don't worry, we'll get to the downsides soon enough...:ork:

[Vegas]

WinterRat - Question for you.

With the release of Arsenal, there's a section in the melee weapons for "improvised weapons." Should we be updating our initial list if there are now "cannon" damage codes for those weapons and let the others we've come up with stand as is?

EDIT It also carries rules for "home cooking" drugs which might come in handy for Doc and his crew responsible for those kinds of things.

[Vegas]

Stupid double post... nothing more to see here, move along :D

[WinterRat1]

[grendel]

Kinesics and mystic armor are down, it's daytime.

CHA + Negotiations (7): 6, 3, 5, 5, 2, 2, 6 (4 hits).

[WinterRat1]

This is why I could never run a gang campaign with an NPC leader. I couldn't begin to figure out how to have him act and respond in this situation, let alone determine the other gang leader's response. The gang leader must be a PC, for situations just like this one. Can't wait to find out what happens next!

[Fresno Bob]

And I can't wait until Aziz gets to slice off some faces!

[adamu]

@Winter - okay, Grack is in the sewers headed generally north toward the old Hammerpack turf.

Here's the thing - left to my own devices, I could literally fill days of game time with IC posts, Grack has so many things he wants to do.

The most important are:

1. Nap
2. Get through the sewers to his old sewer squat under Hammerpack turf.
3. Eat
4. Nap
5. Eat
6. Experiment more with his spirit friends and the Color World.
7. Nap
8. Eat
9. Nap
10. Shlep his stuff back to the new turf, find a good spot in the sewers to set up in.
11. Nap

So what I thought I would do was wait until I had some indication of how much time I have to work with, or what size time-bites I should take, before IC posting again.

Feel free to let me know how you'd like it to be, or I can just play it by ear.

[WinterRat1]

Adamu –Legion and the rest of the people at the meet won’t be back until at least 12:30:00 or so at the earliest, assuming the meeting ends nearly immediately and they head straight home. My interpretation of the gang relationships I’ve seen so far is Legion wouldn’t be all that surprised to find Grack gone and wouldn’t be overly perturbed if he did vanish for a little while. Legion and Grack are both notoriously nocturnal (this is common knowledge) so he probably would figure Grack went somewhere darker and wouldn’t expect Grack back and ready to take on new tasks until night fall. I’d assume Grack has until around sunset or so (about 16:51:00) before Legion would expect him back. Of course I’m just guessing Legion’s response, but those are some thoughts.

As far as concrete replies from a GM standpoint, I’d suggest having Grack back at the HQ by 17:00:00 or so if you want him to be a part of Legion’s next batch of orders since I’m guessing that’s when the October Ravens will start heading out to the streets in force. But that’s just a guess.

Actually, what I strongly recommend (assuming it’s in character for Grack to do so) is to leave Legion or Thumper a message via commlink if you want to be sure they have a mechanism to contact and bring Grack back to the gang’s activities. That’s only if you want to ensure Grack is a part of whatever the October Ravens are up to next, of course. That enough guidance for you?

Vegas and Meriss – You two are free to post, if you need anything let me know. If you go to Slippy’s, feel free to write a fluff post, since for now he’s happy with the arrangement. 3 chicks at once? He’s cool with that, even if Nevada isn’t one of them. At least for now…

Abbandon – I’m going to be NPCing Child while Lindt is away, so feel free to do something on your own, like going back and getting your stuff that you mentioned earlier. If you do go back to get your stuff, don’t write yourself past arriving at your old place.

Voorhees, Mister Juan, Rob – Feel free to write fluff posts if you like while you’re keeping watch outside. Just letting you know you can post if you like, but you don’t have to.

[Mister Juan]

Conjuring an Earth Elemental (Force 3)
Magic (3) + Summoning (2) = 5 dices
Rolls: 3,6,2,1,6 = 2 hits
Spirit Resist Roll: 3 dices
Rolls: 1,6,4 = 1 hit

Force 3 Earth Elemental (with Elemental Attack), 1 service

Resisting Drain (2S)
Willpower (5) + Logic (5) + Focused Concentration (1) = 11
Rolls: 1,2,2,4,3,4,5,6,3,5,4 = 3 hits
No Drain

Felix will also travel all the way with his sight set on the astral, instead of the physical world.

[adamu]

@Winter - thanks for the clear reply.

Grack will vaguely have it in his mind to return in the evening - vaguely.
No need to leave a message - he wouldn't, and Thumper and Legion both have his commcode anyway (assuming it works, depending on coverage).

So my next questions are all logistical.

How long does it take to just walk back to Hammerpack turf (not planning on doing so)?

How long does that make it going in the sewers?

Grack knows all the sewers under the old turf. Not so familiar with elsewhere (but many resources for finding his way if need be).

Basically, not sure if you want to have getting back to his squat be a big challenge, or just a handwave.
Not really even sure how difficult it would be - walk down a long tunnel easy vs. raging flash floods of human waste and hordes of devil rats hard.

So I can either post initial actions to get started, or we can just say I get there (need to know how long that takes).

[Abbandon]

Fool

Perception tests for my approach to the HQ
sight: perception 2 + intuition 4 + cyber 2 = 8 dice
4, 6, 5, 6, 2, 4, 4, 4 = 3 hits

sounds: perc 2 + int 4 + earbuds 3 = 9 dice
2, 1, 6, 5, 6, 2, 1, 2, 5 = 4 hits

Perception Tests for salvaging stuff:
sight: perc 2 + int 4 + cyber 2 + bonus for intimately knowing the place? = 8+ dice
1, 2, 1, 2, 6, 1, 4, 6 = 2 hits, glitch

sight: perc 2 + int 4 + cyber 2 + bonus? = 8+ dice
4, 5, 2, 5, 1, 2, 2, 5 = 3 hits

sight: 8+ dice
2, 2, 3, 6, 5, 6, 6, 4 = 4 hits

Im looking for anything that would be useful or valuable. Drugs, food, weapons, working bikes, ....cyber.. Thats assuming I even make it inside heh.

[WinterRat1]

Adamu – It’s about 1 mile from the 8 Balls Old HQ to the center of Hammerpack turf. So figure if you walked the streets, it would take about 10-15 minutes, more or less depending on how you played the whole stealth vs. speed balance.

In the sewers, assuming unfamiliar terrain, the fact that sewers don’t necessarily run in a straight line, and the relatively poor travel conditions down there, say between 1 and 2 hours. I really don’t care, to be honest with you, but that’s a reasonable guesstimate. If you go a little faster or slower in your IC post, it doesn’t really matter to me.

Just handwave yourself getting there if you take the sewers. Grack knows the sewers well and he’s one of the biggest predators down there. No one is going to bother him. At least not this time.

If you take the streets, that’s an entirely different story, and you should only post him getting started on his journey…

Abbandon – Thanks for all those rolls in advance, makes my job a lot easier.

All – I probably won’t be able to put up IC posts until tonight, so look for them at that time.

[Abbandon]

yeah just IC grack up to the part where he runs into a mob of angry sqautters. heh.

[WinterRat1]

Abbandon - Give me a stealth roll please.

EDIT: Question for you as well. I noticed in your takes you mentioned Beyonce works for the Heartbreakers.

Were you saying she's an actual member of the gang or she is simply one of their 'workers'?

[WinterRat1]

Arsenal and Karma Update

OK Everyone, there are two issues on the table I’m going to be discussing concurrently.

1. The Martial Arts and Advanced Combat Modifiers rules in Arsenal are significantly important to our game because of their potential added value. Probably more so in this game than most because of the emphasis DITG has on melee combat.

2. Karma awards.

I want to use Arsenal’s Martial Arts rules going forward with our new recruits, but I need to avoid the problem of the original players saying (and rightly so) ‘but I would have done this if I had known’.

That’s a fair point, but at the same time, I don’t want to completely overhaul or reinvent our characters just to accommodate a new rules set. While important, it’s not worth grinding the game to a halt over essentially an administrative matter.

So here’s what we’re going to do. I am awarding you all three separate categories of upgrades, and you have to be very careful and clear in tracking how you spend them.

The Rewards

Category A: 10 ‘All Purpose’ BP to be spent however you want, with the caveat you cannot do anything you could not have done at character creation (e.g. spend more BP on resources than allowed, raise skill level or skill + specialization dice above 4, etc).

This represents the universal bonus all new players will receive as well (meaning new recruits get 310 BP to make characters, not including any potential rewards earned), to account for the point costs of martial arts and their comparatively high value in our style of game. This award is solely to maintain the gap you rightly should have over new players, and as such is treated the same as the BP from character creation.

Category B: 5 ‘Bonus’ BP that are intended to be used for Martial Arts Styles and Maneuvers, but may be used for anything.

For purchasing purposes, they function under the same rules as the Category A All Purpose BP, but for conversion purposes (see below) they function slightly differently.

This bonus is only for currently active players who have been around since the beginning of the game, a little reward for those who've stayed the course so far.

Category C: 15 karma

This is your karma for the past seven months. I know it may seem small, but read on.

A hidden but no less significant aspect of the rewards is your ability to convert points between them, in order to maximize the value you receive. Thus the number of points in each category is not very large, but your ability to manipulate them to achieve your specific desires for your characters should result in much greater actual, practical, and most importantly, personalized advancement than if I just dumped a bucket of karma on you to try and achieve all of the above purposes.

The conversion ratios are as follows:

Category A: The ‘All Purpose’ BP may be converted to karma at a rate of 1 BP to 2 karma.

Category B: The ‘Bonus’ BP may be converted to karma at a rate of 1 BP to 1 Karma.

Category C: Karma may be converted to ‘All Purpose’ BP at a rate of 3 karma to 1 BP.

So you could end up with 20 BP, 40 karma, or a wide variety of combinations in between.

Some key points to keep in mind in allocating between BP and karma:

1. BP CANNOT take raise your character past the starting character limitations, karma can.

2. Karma requires training time, BP does not.

3. Raising anything beyond the starting character limitations still has to make sense, so most likely no one should be raising any skills to 5, since no one has had enough practice in anything since game play to be considered ‘Elite’. Raising something to 4 however may be acceptable, depending on the ability and character in question.

Arsenal Martial Arts Notes

There are no limitations on which styles or maneuvers you can purchase. There is no limit in how much BP you spend on styles or maneuvers. So for example you could get 20 BP and load up on Martial Arts and maneuvers, if you wanted.

I agree the realism of random gangers learning some of these martial arts is pretty minimal. In my mind though, the only real reason the distinction in martial arts exists is to allow possible stacking of the various advantages across multiple martial arts styles. Otherwise, each art is really just a package that says, 'you learned to fight in this way and so these are the potential advantages you can take'.

There's not much story or depth behind them, and I don't see the point in saying, 'well because you're not an elf you never could have learned Carromoleg so you can't get a +1 bonus to Receiving a Charge'. There are plenty of martial arts/fighting styles/ways to focus or learn that particular advantage outside of Carromoleg. So why is it limited to Carromoleg?

I'm viewing them less as actual martial arts with background and story behind them and more as a variety of fighting styles people could have picked up over time which all come with different advantages. The advantages are minimal and varied enough I'm not overly worried about game balance.

Alternatively, a plausible explanation would be people learning stuff from the War Pit, as that place is guaranteed to have all shapes, sizes, manner, and types of fighters. I'm perfectly fine with saying that place is basically guaranteed to have someone who can teach you anything you want to know for the right price, and leaving it nice and generic like that. So in this particular area, there is no need to worry about a rational explanation for why your troll knows Carromoleg. :rotfl:

If you do not have Arsenal, and you will not be getting Arsenal for a significant period of time, you will be at a competitive disadvantage relative to your fellow players, and especially with your rival gangers, who will be taking full use of the advanced melee rules to stomp you flat in newer and more varied ways. :ork

Consequently, here is my solution. If you want to use Arsenal’s rules, give me your phone number via PM and we will arrange a phone call (assuming you’re ok with it). Based on your character I will offer up suggestions and you can tell me what styles you want to purchase and then I’ll give you the statistical details. I also can give you the basic rundown on all the maneuvers and you can pick what you like.

Most likely people will buy 1-2 Advantages and maybe 2-4 maneuvers, so it’s not like we’d have a ton of stuff to go over. We could probably finish the phone call in like 1-2 hours.

For those who do not live in the United States, I am willing to arrange time to chat via Skype. Don’t ask me to do more than that (except maybe, MAYBE AIM), because I’m a technological moron and I don’t want to get too high tech.

If you’re interested in setting up your character for Arsenal’s Martial Arts via the phone, for planning purposes here’s some relevant info.

In a nutshell, you buy the Martial Arts Quality just like other Positive Qualities, and it costs 5, 10, 15, or 20BP.

Each 5 BP lets you buy 1 ‘advantage’ from a style, and each style offers its own suite of advantages. There are 4 advantages per style.

Advantages stack ACROSS styles but not WITHIN styles. So if both Style A and Style B offer you the same Bonus C, you could spend 5 BP on Style A to get advantage C and 5 BP on Style B to get Bonus C, effectively receiving Bonus C twice. But you couldn’t spend 10 BP on Style A to get Bonus C twice. Make sense?

Each advantage (costing 5 BP, noted above) allows you the option to purchase up to 2 maneuvers per advantage for 2 BP per maneuver. They are basically the same as maneuvers from SR 3’s Cannon Companion, although they're much better and more varied in my opinion. Then tend to focus on offering extra combat options, allowing extra variety but not necessarily a significant amount of extra power, although the versatility obviously makes you a more dangerous combatant.

Submitting your Upgrades to Me

Before anyone does anything to the wiki, I want you to submit your point spending to me so I can review it. Be very clear what you spent the points from each category on, and if you converted BP to karma or vice versa. From a glance at your sheet I should be able to track where each point in each category went to. If I can’t, I’m going to get annoyed. You don’t want me to get annoyed. So please, just be organized and we’ll all be happier that way. ;)

Keep in mind you will have to post IC examples of your character training (like Adamu’s post of Grack practicing his magical skills) and show me the record of your training hours to actually advance in karma. Note this is nowhere near as problematic as Living in the Shadows, as you should have significantly more time to yourselves in this game.

Let me know if there are any questions, otherwise congratulations on your rewards, have fun plotting and spending them, and I hope you enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of the sick, twisted, and generally scummy people you call characters. :)

[Abbandon]

Ok so we get the karma from all 3 catagories correct?

Im going to be one of the people getting screwed over by not having arsenal lol. Is all that martial arts stuff just for unarmed combat? Do they have anything for armed combat like knives or swords or axe's?

Beyonce' is just a worker.

Infiltration: Defaulting to Agility 4 - 1= 3 dice
6, 2, 3 = 1 hit

[Abbandon]

Wow I started number crunching to see how I would like to improve my guy and what I might want.. Are these really the numbers we want??

[ Spoiler ]

Fool changes...
Body 4 = 12 karma / 60 hours
Reaction 5(6) = 15 karma / 75 hours
Willpower 3= 9 karma / 45 hours

Blades 3(5) = 6 karma / 30 hours
Unarmed Combat 4 = 8 karma / 40 hours
Pistols 2 = 4 karma / 20 hours

Stealth group = 10 karma / 30 hours
Total = 300 hours

7days x8 hours(max) = 56 hours a week(56 extra karma)
would take 5 weeks + some days..

7days x4 hours(the norm) = 28 hours a week(no extra karma)
would take 10 weeks + days ....

I dont plan on taking all that stuff, i can afford to but those are scary numbers if i could.

[Abbandon]

Fool

I want to observe and listen in details...I want to try and see what those guys are packing, and I want to wait a few seconds to see if there are any more of them around...

You can use my perception checks from looking for salvage or would you like some new ones ?

[WinterRat1]

Abbandon (but everyone can/should read this for clarification) – I know you spoilered that info, but I assume it was for space, not secrecy. Thus I will reply in the open so all can benefit from the clarification.

First, yes, you get the rewards from all three categories. Remember, Categories A and B are BP, not karma. They have separate conversion ratios if you want to make them into karma, but they initially start as BP. Category C starts as karma, and if you want it to become BP it has its own conversion ratio.

Second, the martial arts rules are really for melee as a whole. They have benefits for any and all types of melee combat, and there’s even a ‘gun fu’ style that reduces the penalty for firing into melee. So Fool’s knife fighting can certainly benefit as a result.

I personally recommend you consider buying some martial arts advantages and maneuvers for Fool. If you’re going the ‘dangerous knife fighter behind a goofy façade’ route we discussed earlier, these new rules are very good for improving the ‘dangerous knife fighter’ part. If you do not have and will not be getting Arsenal, remember my offer to call and help you if you’re in the US (and even Skype you if you aren’t). So you’re only ‘screwed’ if you choose to be.

For those who don’t know what Skype is, it’s an online service allowing you to talk over the computer/internet via headset. Even I can use it (and I’m a technological idiot) so it shouldn’t be too hard for the rest of you. All you need is something to talk into and hear out of (e.g. a headset with a speaker piece), a download and installation of the program, and a working internet connection. Google the term and go to the site, and you’ll find it’s fairly simple.

I don’t see where you are getting your numbers from. You said ‘I dont plan on taking all that stuff, i can afford to but those are scary numbers if i could.’ I don’t see how you could even come close to affording all of that, since it would cost you 64 karma, or 24 karma more than you could possibly have.

The absolute most you could have is either 20 BP OR 40 karma, and that’s if you converted all your Category C karma to BP or your Category A and B BP into karma.

20 BP is nice, but that’s comes out to what, 2 attributes increased by 1 each, or 1 increased by 2? Or an attribute increased by 1 and a 2 skills raised by 1 each and a specialization? Or an attribute increase of 1, one martial arts advantage and two maneuvers? I think those are quite nice, especially given they’re instantaneous, but it’s hardly overwhelming.

On the flip side, for 40 karma, from your chart you could raise Fool’s stats by the following (for example):
Body to 4 – 12 karma, 60 hours
Reaction to 5 – 15 karma, 75 hours
Willpower to 3 – 9 karma, 45 hours
Pistols to 2 – 4 karma, 20 hours

Statistically speaking, you’re unlikely to roll 2 hits on the Improvement test for any of those increases. That means you’re looking at 200 hours of improvement. Considering you’d have no extra karma to buy additional training time, that’s 50 days, or 7.15 weeks! And that’s assuming you could actually find the time to train every day. Sure you raised a ton of stuff, much more than if you used BP, but the tradeoff is it will take you a lot longer to see those benefits.

I guess I don’t see where the problem is, since either you’ll receive some benefit immediately (always nice!) or more benefit down the road, or some balance between the two.

But no matter how you try to max out the system, the training time limiter and ‘no raising things above starting character limits with BP’ limiter prevent anyone from achieving ridiculous levels of improvement instantaneously. You will always have to trade off between lots of improvement in one area vs. smaller improvements in multiple areas and improving now vs. improving later, ensuring there is a balance across characters. Unless I totally missed something, of course. ;)

I thought for seven months of gameplay and a wiki that has to be one of the best in all of gaming (littered with contributions from all of you, I might add) this was a fair reward. It offers a huge amount of short, medium, and long term flexibility as well as the ability to improve pretty much anything you want about your characters, at least to some degree.

Still, if this is an argument I’ve been too generous with you all, I’m more than ready to scale back my rewards. This is a street level game, after all, so I’m perfectly willing to reduce the rewards to keep the power level down. After all, this is a much more complicated reward system than standard karma, so it is possible I’ve miscalculated, despite my best efforts.

Can I get some second thoughts on this? Are the rewards too high for our game’s power level and should I reduce them?