Buncha questions, would like some answers Options

[bibliophile20]

Got a bunch of minor, one-off questions.

1. What's the DP modifier for drunkenness? Or do you simply do a toxin resistance test against an assigned power of the drink (i.e. a light beer has a power of two, and 190 proof vodka has a power of 10 or something like that) with stun damage? One of my potential players wants to play an adept with the conditional geas of only working when drunk and a severe addiction to booze.

2. How come the ork and elf poser qualities don't cost essence, but the procedures/cyberware/bioware in Aug (pgs 35, 60 & 90) that gives those qualities do cost essence?

3. Anyone got any maps of the Ork Underground?

4. A Wiccan following the Puck (trickster) totem; believable?

[Redspork]

1. Iunno

2. The qualities do not give those body mods off the bat. So just taking Elf Poser may result in a human that wears "Spock ears" and goes vegetarian. Conversly, taking the physical mods automatically mark a character as a poser.

3. Not I.

4. Sure, Wicca is a mishmash of old beliefs and modern psuedo-spriritualism, so you can pretty much cram anything non-violent into it and no one's much gonna say anything.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Well, I don't have any of my books handy, but....

1) I have no idea on this one. From my own personal experiences, drunkenness is not something quantifiable enough to come up with game mechanics before (of course I've never been breathalized). But also it seems like a vague geas. Can he work while tipsy? I don't entirely mean that as a joke, either. Seems to me you'll probably have to house rule drunkenness, because I don't think I've ever seen rules for it in an SR book. But discussing with the player exactly HOW drunk he needs to be might be a good starting point for attaching concrete penalty numbers to it.

2) I would imagine you'd have to take the qualities, and THEN spend essence on the operations to play it right. Just because my character starts as an elf poser doesn't mean he's already had the operations, I guess. Right now he's just sort of "in the closet," or else is going with stop-gap solutions like Spock ears that he picked up at a sci-fi convention. To truly roleplay it right, I'll have to get the operations should i have the opportunity, though.

3) I don't think I've ever seen a map of the ork underground, though I could be wrong. The 1st or 2nd ed. Seattle sourcebook might have entrances to it marked on the normal Seattle map (that's right, I said orks aren't normal). But my groups have always just played the OU as a "work in progress" that can't really be mapped, because the vast majority of it is, well, illegal. Nobody upside WANTS a bunch of orks knocking down walls and making tunnels beneath the foundations of their city; the orks just ARE, and they don't typically let outsider teams of cartographers poke around to document it.

4) I'd believe it. Because much like the existence of the internet has shown us that there's people that subscribe to absolutely EVERY kink out there, I imagine the Awakening will show us that there's someone out there for EVERY type of magical belief. Also, because I have the whimsical optimism of a child.

[Mercer]

1. Absent of a specific book ruling, I'd treat drunkeness as Stun Damage.

2. I guess you can act like an Ork or an Elf for free (make-up, plastic teeth, speaking in weird languages like present-day Klingons) but if you actually get the surgery, then that costs Essence.

3. Here's an interesting site on field trips in the Seattle Underground. But alas, no maps. The History Channel's Cities of the Underworld is a pretty good resource for places like the Seattle Underground, although I don't know if Seattle was ever covered. It sounds like the Seattle Underground was pretty similar to the one in Edinburgh in its method of construction, if that helps.

Scooped, I see. Well played, Redspork.

Edit: Scooped twice!

[eidolon]

2. I would rule that those with only the Quality are using prosthetics, much like Mercer suggests. A character getting "minor modification", which costs no essence, and taking the Quality looks more the part. This is stuff like getting your ears pointy-like, permanently capping or replacing teeth with fake tusks, and so forth. You could give a minor bonus against being "outed" to reflect that. Then, were a character to undergo any more invasive surgery to play the part, you could give them a higher numerical bonus against being "outed" as a poser. (Also, I suspect that it's this way because they knew that SR4 would be out before Aug.)

I don't really have anything useful for the other 3, sorry.

Edit: wow, popular topic. :)

[Zen Shooter01]

Strangely enough, no edition of SR has ever given rules for alcohol. It's a glaring omission.

My house rule is to treat one unit of alcohol - one shot, one glass of wine, one beer - as a toxin with Power 2, Vector: Ingestion, Speed: 15 minutes, Effect: Stun damage. With these stats, a Body 3 character will be, on the average, at a -1 modifier after three drinks, -2 after 6, and so on. The glitch chance goes up as the dice pool goes down, which results in drunken falls, car crashes, and disastrously worded sexual invitations.

[bibliophile20]

[Nikoli]

Or something more along the lines of electrical damage or the orgasm spells secondary effects.
Say when they drink an amount equal to unmodified body (+plus filtration if active) they make a Body+Wil (+ filtration) test (3), fail and you've not held it together well, glitch and you hoark, crit glitch and you're alchohol poisoned.

[tisoz]

[Kronk2]

[AngelisStorm]

[Ancient History]

[hyzmarca]

Catholic priests - called nuns - revere the saints. Nuns are traditionally, but not always, female

2: Characters with the ork poser quality don't actually have to be using prosthetics. Being a poser without any sort of surgery is sort of like being a white rapper.

[Dashifen]

[JBlades]

[deek]

For drunkenness, why not just apply a -2 DP for a GM determined inebriation state? I'd then scale it up to -4 and -6, at the worst.

I know you are probably looking for a hard and fast rule, but unless you want to really bog the game down with a bunch of dice rolls to figure out how drunk your PC is, I'd just use the above as a guideline. If the GM thinks the character is pretty buzzed, give the -2...if they continue drinking after that, give the -4 and if they are wanting to get blitzed, give the -6.

I'd also say that after 1 hour of not drinking, that the -6 drops to -4 and another hour, it drops to -2 and finally 1 more hour and they are back to normal.