In Neptune's Realm - Chargen and Recruitment, Cyberpirates: create characters here! Options

[Minchandre]

So, is no response a tentative, "Okay,"?

[Penta]

Hmmm, slip my mind that Ireland is a Tir Nation, was thinking of Irish descent with some military trianing going through an unexpected SURGE back during the '60's and left to fend on her own after wards. Training did spec her in diving and information collecting, with some breaking and entering skills added to the mix. Consider a freak by most, now works with groups where she can put her skills and genetic abilities to good use. Rather boarding other boats on the sly or putting bombs on their hauls to wreck them. She's quite fiesty.

Any character with SURGE is going to have a high bar to pass. I will state now that your employer places a high priority on discretion - and to a point that includes not sticking out. From an OOC perspective, a lot of SURGE is...well, really cheesy, IMHO. I'm not implacably opposed to it showing up in my games, but I will admit that the prospect of a SURGE'd shadowrunner seems unlikely.

[Penta]

I have been waiting for quite a while to encounter a campaign where I actually had call for a military-grade Electronic Warfare specialist!

I realize that my first ever post being to join a game doesn't necessarily create lots of confidence, but I've been lurking here for a while, and this sounds pretty cool.

Obviously, I would want Comms Officer. Hardcore Electronic Warfare, but also an okay hacker and drone rigger, and won't shoot herself in a fight. Expect her to refer to the satlink as "her baby". Certainly ex-Military - I was thinking Israeli, though UCAS is also possible, of course. Yea or nay?

This looks intriguing, as a concept. The EW rules in SR4(A), though, are really more of a sideline to rigging or hacking. (This is in comparison to EW with Rigger 3 or R3R, where they became a team role in and of themselves almost.)
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I should note I'm not going to reply to every post. Simply ain't time. If I see problems, or a need to comment, I will - otherwise, I'll likely focus on more general stuff in my posts.

[Dumori]

I really think as a team we could do with some air support. A Nimrod or two would cover it nicely and add to our tactical capability in combat. Long range spotter plus it can carry AV missiles and an other heavy weapon.

[Grinder]

Would it make sense to add, as a knowledge skill probably, the skill of Intelligence Analysis? Specializations would be by intelligence discipline (HUMINT, IMINT, etc.; I want to say that one of the SOTA books had a list of disciplines as used in the Sixth World, though could be wrong...My books are all in boxes at the moment), or you could keep the skill unspecialized, representing training in all-source intelligence analysis.

It'd be used like any other knowledge skill - it'd represent the tasks of assessing the credibility and reliability of intelligence, determining what it all says, and so forth. Actually presenting your finished analysis may depend on other skills. If I had to link the skill to an attribute, I'm waffling between either Intuition or Logic.

Seems fine. I'd link it to Logic.

[Penta]

I really think as a team we could do with some air support. A Nimrod or two would cover it nicely and add to our tactical capability in combat. Long range spotter plus it can carry AV missiles and an other heavy weapon.

Where's the Nimrod listed? Can't find it in SR4A or Arsenal.

[Dumori]

Arsenal security drones IIRC

[Minchandre]

This looks intriguing, as a concept. The EW rules in SR4(A), though, are really more of a sideline to rigging or hacking. (This is in comparison to EW with Rigger 3 or R3R, where they became a team role in and of themselves almost.)
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I should note I'm not going to reply to every post. Simply ain't time. If I see problems, or a need to comment, I will - otherwise, I'll likely focus on more general stuff in my posts.

I'm trying to think how else the position of Comms Officer could be filled, though: perhaps more of a dedicated hacker? On the other hand, the open seas makes EW far more important, because if your network gets compromised, you're pretty screwed, unlike in an urban environment where there's always the ambient Matrix.

If not, our crew is going to be large enough to support one jack-of-all-trades, master-of-one, I think.

Incidentally: drones and weapons. Are they going to be personal property, or ship's property? I can see justifications either way, and while I anticipate that the response will be always-pleasing "some of both", it's still an interesting question.

For that matter, all "run relevant" equipment has a reasonably strong case for being owned by the ship. I guess most of that question is how militarized the crew actually is. A highly military and professional crew will probably be okay with most of the "big guns" being owned on a collective basis, while people who lack that background will probably be all antsy about "right to property" and stupid things like that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Penta]

Okay, at Body 4 the Nimrod is probably too big to launch from anything besides a carrier, so far as ships go. I know that when the last group used a H&W Classique III as their yacht, I ruled that it lacked the open space on the deck for anything bigger than body 2 drones, in terms of launch/recovery. And we played the Classique III probably too big for its size, then. (Body gives no hint of a vehicle's true size, especially for ships, we found. We played it as something like 60m, a megayacht, when it might well actually have been intended as much smaller. Ships, you really need to know the thing's overall length, or have some hint of it.)

[Xahn Borealis]

Incidentally: drones and weapons. Are they going to be personal property, or ship's property? I can see justifications either way, and while I anticipate that the response will be always-pleasing "some of both", it's still an interesting question.

I second this question, I want to bring my Colorado Sylph and AmphOp Upgraded Steel Lynx!

[Penta]

I'm trying to think how else the position of Comms Officer could be filled, though: perhaps more of a dedicated hacker? On the other hand, the open seas makes EW far more important, because if your network gets compromised, you're pretty screwed, unlike in an urban environment where there's always the ambient Matrix.

If not, our crew is going to be large enough to support one jack-of-all-trades, master-of-one, I think.

Incidentally: drones and weapons. Are they going to be personal property, or ship's property? I can see justifications either way, and while I anticipate that the response will be always-pleasing "some of both", it's still an interesting question.

For that matter, all "run relevant" equipment has a reasonably strong case for being owned by the ship. I guess most of that question is how militarized the crew actually is. A highly military and professional crew will probably be okay with most of the "big guns" being owned on a collective basis, while people who lack that background will probably be all antsy about "right to property" and stupid things like that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

You basically got it right re who "owns" what. It Depends. The biggest thing I as GM see as "common property" is the ship, and anything else bought with that loan.

Re Comms officer: I leave it up to you guys, I just laid down vague descriptions so people knew why the position was included. Last camapign, it was played as the team's hacker, yes.

People can fill multiple posts, or if the crew gets big enough that you want to divide some posts, that's doable too.

One thing as I ponder all that: You guys should know OOCly that your employer is basically the UCAS Navy. I explain how this makes sense militarily and bureaucratically eventually, or at least I intend to. Keep that in mind when you're designing characters - they're not going to scrape the bottom of the barrel so far as personality types go, for instance. They'll pick from the shadowrunners on the market, naturally, but they can afford to be picky. They don't need to be ex-mil or UCAS citizens. They can be experienced or newbiie as shadowrunners.

They really should be over...Okay, metatype differences make this odd, but for sanity's sake they should be at least 17 or 18.

They should really be amenable to being in at least a quasi-military environment. They don't need to like it, but it would have been laid out at the meet that the mission will be at sea and in a military environment. I mean, hey, consider whom your employer is.

(ICly, of course, you don't know who your employer is. I don't keep it a secret from the characters for very long at all - they don't try to keep it a secret once you've all signed on and stuff, but you don't know at the time of campaign start when you meet the Johnson.)

[Penta]

I second this question, I want to bring my Colorado Sylph and AmphOp Upgraded Steel Lynx!

Um, yeah. Storage. How would you store a Sylph?

[fazzamar]

Okay, at Body 4 the Nimrod is probably too big to launch from anything besides a carrier, so far as ships go. I know that when the last group used a H&W Classique III as their yacht, I ruled that it lacked the open space on the deck for anything bigger than body 2 drones, in terms of launch/recovery. And we played the Classique III probably too big for its size, then. (Body gives no hint of a vehicle's true size, especially for ships, we found. We played it as something like 60m, a megayacht, when it might well actually have been intended as much smaller. Ships, you really need to know the thing's overall length, or have some hint of it.)

After looking at drone sizes and drone rack rules.. if we have a boat as big as the Classique III it can fit a large drone rack to hold the Nimrod. It would probably take up space on the boat that might be better used for something else though. So if you do allow the Nimrod/Large Drone Rack to fit on the ship we'll probably want to vote as a team on whether we want one or not... and it would fall under the ship's gear rule too, would probably be purchased with the loan that the employer gives us for the ship even. Just my 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[Penta]

I second this question, I want to bring my Colorado Sylph and AmphOp Upgraded Steel Lynx!

I should probably answer the actual question.

From my point of view as a GM: It depends. If you buy it with the 500k loan, it's group property, unambiguously.

If you show up with it, yeah, it can go either way. Small arms are probably unambiguously personal property.

Drones could be either, I'll let you guys decide that.

Bigger weapons? Again, it could depend.

[Xahn Borealis]

Um, yeah. Storage. How would you store a Sylph?

How big is it? Body 8, maybe the size of a car? I've seen water scooters on the back of yachts, so maybe a bigger one might fit? If not, I'll swap it for a Bolt, reluctantly. Tbh, I was afraid of how this would come up. I like the idea of having a mini-fleet instead of just one ship. While I'm on the subject, how many minitorpedoes fit inside a small torpedo launcher?

[Penta]

My instinct says 1 torp per launcher.

FWIW, my view on the "sole ship vs mini-fleet issue":

I'm not going to hold you guys back, but I'm a fan of one ship. The way I see it, in a campaign like this, the ship should almost be a character of its own, sort of, with a history and everything. That's much easier to do with one ship with maybe a few boats than a bunch of ships.

[Xahn Borealis]

Okay, some chargen guidelines for this campaign.
...
I'll allow advanced contacts - advanced lifestyles, though, are not applicable to this campaign.

Well, can my lifestyle be at sea? Basically my own mini-arkoblock.

[Xahn Borealis]

My instinct says 1 torp per launcher.

FWIW, my view on the "sole ship vs mini-fleet issue":

I'm not going to hold you guys back, but I'm a fan of one ship. The way I see it, in a campaign like this, the ship should almost be a character of its own, sort of, with a history and everything. That's much easier to do with one ship with maybe a few boats than a bunch of ships.

How would you say I reload the launcher? Complex Action or a number of Turns? I just wanna bring one little boat along as an interceptor anyway. Also, what's FWIW?

[Dumori]

Okay, at Body 4 the Nimrod is probably too big to launch from anything besides a carrier, so far as ships go. I know that when the last group used a H&W Classique III as their yacht, I ruled that it lacked the open space on the deck for anything bigger than body 2 drones, in terms of launch/recovery. And we played the Classique III probably too big for its size, then. (Body gives no hint of a vehicle's true size, especially for ships, we found. We played it as something like 60m, a megayacht, when it might well actually have been intended as much smaller. Ships, you really need to know the thing's overall length, or have some hint of it.)

It's VTOL and launch-able from a LAV in flight by RAW though a large drone rack might be needed to launch and retrieve it.

[fazzamar]

Also, what's FWIW?

Netspeak for "For what it's worth"

[Grinder]

Any chance we might get some Karma points? I mean, the guys are supposed to be no noobs and have certainly seen a bit of business prior to joining the Navy.

[Penta]

Xahn, re lifestyle: Nope. On Land. You can, alternately, skip buying a lifestyle and just live on the ship, in which case you roll whatever Low lifestyle rolls for starting nuyen.

Xahn, re launcher: I....have no idea. My gut says it takes way longer than a 3-sec combat turn.

Grinder: Mmmm. Thinking on this. My instinct is to say "No karma", because characters very well could be noobs. Note that the 20 points "slack space" I gave for BP also applies to karmagen, equivalently in value.

And for what it's worth, you aren't joining the Navy. You're, um...contractors.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Xahn Borealis]

Xahn, re lifestyle: Nope. On Land. You can, alternately, skip buying a lifestyle and just live on the ship, in which case you roll whatever Low lifestyle rolls for starting nuyen.

Xahn, re launcher: I....have no idea. My gut says it takes way longer than a 3-sec combat turn.

Fair. The lifestyle was a long shot. I can have the sheet done tonight, where do you want it?

[Minchandre]

Alright; I have some more specific char related questions, now. Sadly, I can't PM yet, and my plan of spamming the boards to get to 10 quickly was one I quickly reconsidered. Should I ask the questions here, or do you want to drop me an email line? I think my email should be in the profile. Otherwise, PM me yours and we can get going.

By the way, all 4e books are allowed, right? (Specifically, Companion, Arsenal, and Unwired. Maybe Augmentation.)

[Grinder]

Grinder: Mmmm. Thinking on this. My instinct is to say "No karma", because characters very well could be noobs. Note that the 20 points "slack space" I gave for BP also applies to karmagen, equivalently in value.

And for what it's worth, you aren't joining the Navy. You're, um...contractors.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

20 BP is not that much Karma. I was thinking of 50 Karma Points. Makes sense for the Navy to hire a bunch of competent guys, I guess. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)