In Neptune's Realm - OOC thread, Chatter on the high seas Options

[Penta]

You don't have to put them here. What I really don't want is for sheets and bios to be spread across the thread willy nilly.

Next post out of me (I'm just about done with it, need to format it) will be to this thread, a thing on the training phase. I gotta meet with the feds (not the FBI, social security, I suddenly realize I should clarify... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif) ) on some personal stuff today, so that'll take up a huge whack of time that would otherwise be spent writing the next plot post to the IC thread, dealing with the election of the CO, XO, and purser. That post will instead come tomorrow. After the training phase post coming in a few minutes, I can also answer questions about the elected positions and anything that the training phase post might raise.

[Penta]

Okay, so.

I'm thinking about the training. This next bit is written idiosyncratically, but is meant to set out the IC and OOC objectives of it.
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Situation: MY Quicksilver will be transiting from Miami to Cape May, New Jersey, UCAS, there to disembark its UCAS Navy and Marine Corps personnel contingent. This should take about one week. It may take longer due to delays (say, due to weather; 1 June marks the start of hurricane season, among other things), but just over 7 days is the planned time for the transit.

Along the way, advantage is taken of the time available to train the shadowrunners in matters relevant to naval affairs and their upcoming activities, accomplishing the objectives of: Keeping everybody busy, testing the shadowrunners' knowledge, skills, and abilities, and filling out their skillset as relates to what they'll be doing.

IC objectives of all training: As above. Also, this makes sure that if you don't have a skill, you're set on the road to learning it. If it bonds the shadowrunners together as a cohesive unit, all the better. Also, there's a "hidden curriculum" (which I'll just state here OOCly so nobody misses the point) of...not trying to make you all loyal to the UCAS, because they know there are those where that would provoke a hostile reaction, but of immersing you in UCAS Naval traditions and heritage, trying to get you to think with them and generally be supportive of the UCAS. Finally, yes, they're monitoring and observing you. Not intensively, and they're very subtle about it, but they are. It's more of a psychological/behavioral monitoring, not a "spying on you" monitoring.

OOC objectives: Have fun. Develop characters. Have fun. Allow the GM time to plan out the next steps. Have fun. Solve the conundrum of "How to get the folks that brought the boat to Miami out of Miami?" and basically let me take the time to combine what it seems like you guys want (namely the intro raid) into something that at least differs to a degree from what I used with the last group and is more polished than that was. Have fun. (I've sometimes been accused, occasionally justly, of being so wonky as to miss that. I don't, actually. Or at least, I try not to.)
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Put more prosaically, the training phase is meant to develop your characters before the first...run/adventure/mission/at-sea period (pick your favorite phrase). It helps that the time it takes to write this phase gives me time to assess the group we have on hand and plan the next steps.

This post from the Blood in the Water OOC thread shows some of how I handled training for them. I'm definitely going to modify it for this group, as it got somewhat poor reviews, though the basic structure is (I think) sound. One definite change is that everybody goes through a version of the intel collection and analysis course taught by Roberts. (I know I just said it worked poorly, but I'm borrowing what I wrote because I'd otherwise really be repeating myself in a lot of areas. There are not a great many ways to accomplish the objectives, especially the IC objectives, and they'd all look about the same in the end result. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but they all share similarities.)

The first day (1 June) I'll cover in a separate post, but.

Training principles (numbers are used to separate ideas distinctly, this otherwise is not organized in any way).

1. It's intended to be stressful. As you'll find out ICly, the food is real, and tasty, and they don't hold back there - you do, after all, burn the calories. Besides that, it's actually a fairly comfortable ship. But your sleep is limited, whether or not you have a sleep regulator - while you still can sleep for a good number of hours each night, it's not like you can sleep 10 hours. 8 is an utter maximum to the minute, and 6 may be the right mix of stress-inducing but not unsafe. If you have opinions/experience with the topic, PM or email me; if there's the desire I'll set out what the daily routine is like - because, for instance, there are set lights out and (no later than) wakeup times for you guys, and there's set meal times for everybody.

2. There's a lot of use of simsense, but there's a good bit of live content, as well. Depends on the course, the student, and the specific thing being covered. (Ignore what I said in the linked post about simsense being able to compress time, I found out later that it actually does not.)

3. Each training course is like drinking water through a fire-hose: Very difficult, to say the least. They have a week to train you, that's it, when it quickly becomes clear they wish they had more time. If there are delays in transit, the instructors say openly that they will attempt to take advantage of the time to conduct more training. They will move as fast as the slowest student in a section can handle it - for reference purposes, though I don't stat my NPCs for this phase, presume an instruction skill of 3-5. Roberts and Walker are probably 3s, everybody else (being subject-matter experts, and hence skilled trainers among other things) are 4s and 5s. I'm not sure there's a good RL comparison for it - grad school doesn't equate, military training as conventionally done doesn't equate. My brain model for all of this is, because I'm rereading the book, Battle School from "Ender's Game", filtered through my RP in that verse over the past few years, but even that doesn't equate. A terrorist training camp as run by the IRA (what I know of it; I studied the Provisional IRA in college for a history class paper) doesn't equate. Nothing does.

4. During training, you have very little privacy. You have your quarters, which I'll describe when introducing you to them - that's it. You might snatch free time if you get waived from common core training to an extent (for example, I'm not going to say Salt goes through the Basic Military Skills stuff unless he really wants to, as with intro to watchstanding; Cherry and Sharky probably just get a quick orientation session on the differences between their home militaries and the one they'll be working with rather than the full BMS stuff, Nik can skip Magic for Mundanes in exchange for "Thaumaturgical Officer" training, and so forth), but usually if they waive you from that stuff they just schedule more training of a different sort. And, you rapidly get the feeling even your free time is monitored to a degree, though that might be because there's so many people on board and it's hard to get time alone to yourself. Your quarters don't seem to be monitored, though. The more paranoid can search for bugs/cameras. They don't find any. Because there actually aren't any.

5. This may not ICly be fun, though it certainly could be. ICly, it's supposed to be hard - harder than just about any training your characters have previously undertaken. (it could be argued that Cherry and Sharky, offhand, have been through tougher, but I would argue that that may be only by a matter of degree.) OOCly, though, yes it should be fun. Absolutely it should be fun. Not as much fun as raiding ships, I know, but I endeavor to make this fun for everybody. Like I've said, though, the training phase is hard to say never happened - it'd make no sense, them spending all the money they did on you so far and not training you, testing you to see whether you meet specs, and so forth. It also neatly solves the question of what the heck you do on the trip from Miami to Cape May (which was picked in part because I know the area, in part because it was the nearest UCAS-territory inconspicuous spot for a ship like this to dock and disembark people and stuff without the ship looking out of place). It can, that said, be skimmed over OOCly with montages and so forth - so long as (for purposes of training time tracking) I know OOCly (whether you tell me on thread or otherwise) how many hours you're spending on each thing, and which training courses you're doing. (I'll explain why I'm tracking training time in another post, I realize I haven't covered it yet. Training time, how karma will be tracked and spent, and the difference between "work phases" and "Shore Leave phases".) That said, if you (individually or a group) want to do a scene, talk to me, it can be done.

6. Depending on the course, they teach it either one on one or in small groups. When it's one on one, it moves at your fastest pace - if that means they move faster than planned, okay. They can add on more content when needed, but each instructor emphasizes when asked that they've stripped what they're teaching down to bare minimums so it fits in a week. Even Basic Military Skills, which may seem like useless BS at first glance, has been stripped down and customized.

7. There's a rationale, ICly, behind every topic covered. I'll go over the rationales for each of the common core courses here - otherwise, ask and I'll put forth my rationale, ICly and OOCly, privately or on-thread as you desire and seems opportune. These can be the IC explanations by Roberts or Walker if need be, in summary form. They don't tell you the rationale (presuming it either to be obvious to you, or that you don't care) unless you ask.

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Basic Military Skills - Just in case events ever require you to work with UCAS military personnel that aren't cleared for the truth (shouldn't happen but they're not taking chances), this teaches enough for you to maintain a convincing cover as UCAS military (or at least UCAS or CAS), especially at a glance, but also in case it gets questioned/challenged to a limited degree.

Swim test: You're shadowrunners, they *presume* you might fib when asked a question like "Can you swim?", because it sounds so basic (with, hence, people not wanting to seem weak by answering 'no'). They (quite understandably) do not want an op screwing up because of something as basic as not being able to swim. If they find out you can't swim, yes, they'll teach you.

Psychological Wellbeing: They have an interest in keeping you all performing to your best. This should hopefully help that.

Intro to watchstanding: Some of you have experience with standing watches aboard ship - most of you do not.

Flags: Maritime law organizes a lot of the legalities by the flag a ship flies - and most relevantly, you're only allowed to attack ships flying flags not on a list of countries/corps not to attack. Yes, I mean physical flags.

Firearm care: Sea life imposes different issues in this regard than are present on land.

Magic for Mundanes: A lot of people have misconceptions (from the media, from rumor, and so forth) as to what magic can do, even hardened combatants. This course means to clear those up.

First Aid: You're far from even a street doc, you don't (as of this writing, OOCly) have a medical officer...It's needed. Even if you don't think anybody will get injured, this is knowledge that's better to have and not need than need and not have.

Intro to the Carib: Know thy enemy. Know thy contacts, too. It's that simple.

Damage Control: Everybody needs to pitch in if the ship gets damaged - there's simply not the crew available for dedicated DC teams, and drones can't do everything. Nobody is exempt because the course is specific to the Quicksilver, and goes over quirks not present in other ships/ship types.

Marksmanship: If you know how to shoot, as mentioned, you don't need to take it. If your skills aren't at the level mentioned, it behooves you to practice and train, even if you have other ways of fighting (like magic or drones) or even if you don't seem likely to be getting involved in combat, just in case.
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Spanish and Portugese weren't required courses for Blood in the Water; they are now, if you don't have the skills in unchipped form. If you do, you get asked (very nicely and politely) to help those who don't speak the language in question, to the best of your ability - otherwise, you're tasked to other training during that time. Rationale is simple: In the OPAREA. they speak those tongues in the major countries at hand. They only aim to get you up to the equivalent of skill level 1 (in speaking and understanding) those languages (basically, how to do the basics), but they'll teach more if you want to know more.

The Intel Analysis course (which included some collection stuff) goes from posting specific to "Everybody gets a skimmed version of this taking 4 hours (that doesn't go into details where it doesn't have to), because intel is everybody's job." The specific intel officers still get the course as described (yes, I otherwise cleaned up the writing a bit, go with the version below):

Intelligence Officer: A crushing course load. The intelligence officers are taught the basics of intelligence analysis - everything from how to analyze intelligence to presenting the final analysis in writing to briefing the analysis to the CO or higher headquarters. This is a 4-month course crushed into 7 days (5 days to cover analysis, 2 to cover collection techniques (team-taught with other instructors depending on whether cybernetic, matrix, or magical collection is taught, along with more general collection techniques)), and it's hard to strip down the content any more than they did. This will eat up a prodigious 6 to 8 hours -per day- (depending on pace), which will rather severely limit what other instructors you can take advantage of. (It's a course built with the assumption that anybody taking it can test/background out of parts of the common core stuff.)

The descriptions for the positional courses (XO, CO, purser) will obviously be different to account for the different characters, different skillsets, different backgrounds, and the extra 3 days of time (because where it says 4 days, I had screwed up my calculating the travel time). I still have to write those, but will do so by consulting privately (off-thread) with those who wind up in those positions. Basically, we'll negotiate the descriptions.

The posting courses (Navigation, etc) are pretty much the same, except there's also a gunnery course (Yes, I know the Quicksilver lacks ship-mounted weapons) you can take, not included in the original post because I was a dunce:

Gunnery Officer: Covering everything from basic ballistics to advanced quick-reaction gunnery drills, this simsense and lecture course teaches the basics of gunnery using ship-mounted weapons, and of indirect fire shooting using sensors. 4 hours.

I also need to modify the "Thaumaturgical Officer" course desc because Nik and the trainer are both Hermetic mages, so they can do more. Fazzamar, we'll probably handle that off-thread.

Like with the common core stuff, if you're assigned a course and clearly know the material (from your background, for instance), they can and will modify the course to teach you stuff you don't know but might need that's related. The electives also are available, as written. I could never figure out how to do the group stuff while in transit in ways that made sense, so ignore that (unless you have an idea for how to discreetly train those, in which case poke me off-thread). OOCly, of course, you guys get to pick the course schedules if you want.

I should note that not showing up for a course isn't possible on a ship like this with a training group this small: They can and will track you down personally. They'll track you down, give you a very disappointed look and comment, and then teach you anyway.

Your teachers are not normal teachers. This is not like being in a high school or college course, not really - you're explicitly told, in case it ever comes up somehow (it goes unstated otherwise), that you're being regarded as professionals, and evaluated accordingly. If you aren't pros? "Fake it til you make it" is the mantra - they know who isn't, and they take that into account, but you're expected to act professional anyway. The lectures are unlike academic settings to the best of the instructors' ability, more like focused professional training. There's a distinct avoidance of things like PowerPoint (or similar or equivalent) where at all possible - the instructors are a lot more dynamic. Plus, they're all military, they hate Death by PowerPoint too.

Finally: Yes, a lot of this would be boring as hell to RP directly. So, don't, if you don't want to. Montage it, post reactions, presume the classes happen off-camera, whatever.

Otherwise, rule 1 is have fun with this. Even the most boring stuff, there are ways to at least develop your characters. If all else fails, think of it like this: This Is Secret Squirrel School. On a boat. It's (modern, non-trid) Pirate School. I do not know how to make it more, well, badass.

[Dumori]

Right then a quick list of thing sharky will be intrested in. Alot of this will be fore him
refresher/just showing the guys what he can do already courses being an ex-marine/SBS:

Sabotage-Expect longer training on this as advanced stuff also likely covering leading such an op
Explosive Sabotage-The full course though maybe a bit faster has demo training and logicaly exprenece
In-Ship combat tactics-Same as Sabotage
Flura and Fauna
SCUBA diving*
Swim test*
First Aid*
Firearm Care*
Marksmanship*-not needed but he'll et soem range time/theory to get used to on sea combat and fireing manly focusing on heavy guns and marksman ship taking the waves into account.
Self Defense*-he has unarmed and balded at ok levels as well as dodge.
Basic Military Skills- more a recalibration exisise maybe him and Chery are grouped for this??
* I see these as hey look at what I can do/grading to any UCAS standard.
Things he'll want to pick up:
Leadership 101-Nevre really got this far in his millitary cereea but felt like he could have made the grade if h had the chance.
Instruction 101-Not on the list but I feel picking up the skills to teach others what he knows could help round him off.
Firearm Care+ -to cover more things for his role as the crews go to armorer.
+the necessary lessons and any thing else the employer can throw at him. IE penta if you think i'm missing somthing or you can round it off do so.

[Penta]

Okay, some miscellaneous stuff. These are basically being test run - we can modify training time, in particular, if we need to.

Karma

You'll gain it like standard SR4A - though I may give out karma for different things, as I have already.

You'll track it yourselves. This is essential; I track karma awards/expenditure, as I've mentioned, but I'm not always at the computer with the files (which is also, I should note, kinda on its last legs).

You can only spend it during "shore periods", which I'll explain below. When you spend it, you and I sit down with your sheet and the two karma logs (yours and mine, I have a clean file you can use if you'd like). We make sure the karma logs match. We then check training times. If you have trained or used the skill/attrib enough, you can raise it. Sounds complicated, but really not. All it is is me and you making sure we both have the same numbers, something that should take maybe 10 minutes at the most.

Training time

Per SR4A, a week per skill point of training is a good guideline. For our purposes, a week is 168 hours. Why so much?

Watchstanding. Standing watches on board a ship is important, so to encourage it I'm going to say that for every 30 minutes you spend on a watch, it counts as one hour of training time in the appropriate skill (so pilot watercraft for a helm watch, nautical mechanic for an engineering watch, etc. We can define the types of watches more if need be, but those are the big 2), for a watch of up to 8 hours at a stretch. (You don't always need someone standing watch, you can leave a watch unmanned for short periods of time and let the ship's autopilot run things, but that isn't recommended for long periods of time - or when sophisticated maneuvering is required.)

Shore periods and Sea periods

In a campaign like this, defining the difference between "down time" and "run time" is hard. Not impossible, but hard at first glance. So I'm making it simple - when you're in dock, on land, and resting (on shore leave in other words), it's a "Shore period". You can spend karma and do other sorts of downtime-y things - you have the time and breathing room to, for example, process what happened at sea. When you're at sea, whether at anchor or underway, or when you're not really resting on land (but instead, oh, breaking into places, maybe), it's a "Sea period". I can modify or explain this further if need be.

In summary

What this all breaks down to:

1. Your initial training phase on the boat is important. You can still do a lot afterwards, but you probably won't get the same "bang for the buck" in training as you will with this.

2. Watchstanding is important. Not only do you want people standing watch for IC reasons, but it trains people really well.

3. Shore leave is precious.

Those three things, IMHO, are as they should be for a sea (or at least amphibious) campaign.

[Faraday]

Roger has a few things he'll need to pick up, some things refreshed, and maybe a couple skills to polish up. Do note that he has a pretty high intuition as well as having the Sustenance power (means he not only sleeps 3 hours, but needs only 1 meal a day) and so can probably cram a little more in than some of the other characters.

-Medical Officer Training (as discussed, about 10 hours of one on one training/simsense)
-Intelligence Officer Training (Probably working with Cherry on the heavy class, might get interesting since they're pretty matched intellectually)
-Portugese (Could use a rank or 2)
-Marksmanship, specifically automatics. Pistols is already rank 3.
-Intro to the Carib
-Damage Control, already has some repair skill, won't hurt to get specific training.
-Firearm care
-Flags
-Intro to watchstanding
-Psychological Wellbeing, probably just a good idea
-Basic Military Skills, on this last one, he might need some explaining as to *why* they need those skills (he really doesn't know how the military operates too much).

[Minchandre]

Wait, are we supposed to make a list of training our characters are doing? I got the impression that everyone needed to do everything on that list, though possibly with emphases.

[Dumori]

not everything some of its optional.
the first part of the list here is necessary + the language ones
the rest here or link are optional

[Penta]

Dumori has it.

[Digital Heroin]

Seems to me like Salt's going to be spending time with the not so fundamentals... of the requisite training, the only two he hasn't spent most of his military career doing would be first aid and magic for mundanes, eh...

[Penta]

Yeah, he'll be able to skip a lot of it. He'll be going through the extraspecial Training From Hell reserved for the CO if he gets elected/picked as such, though. Talk to me privately and we'll negotiate it.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Minchandre]

So, I guess then here's Cherry's. She'll concentrate mostly on the geopolitical stuff. Will there also be someone trying to train Cherry in haxxoring?

Basic Military Skills: This should be fun, comparing and contrasting

Swim test: remember what I said about why I made Cherry an elf?

Psychological Wellbeing

Intro to watchstanding: Experience keeping watch? Yes. Well...communications and signals overwatch. That's the same thing, right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Flags

Firearm care: It's times like this I wonder if I should have put a point into Armorer

Magic for Mundanes: Cherry's worked already with Awakened in a military capacity. She probably doesn't need this course, though it might broaden her horizons a little - she's only familiar with Thaumaturgical, Kabalistic, and Chaos magic.

First Aid "What do you mean there's no armored MedEvac?

Intro to the Carib: the Caribbean - that's south of the CAS, right?

Damage Control

Marksmanship: Cherry's pretty good at Automatics already, but crap at everything else (she hasn't shot a pistol since she entered high school (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )

Spanish and Portuguese

Intel Analysis: Cherry probably already knows some SIGINT and ELINT stuff

Intel Officer: Comms and Intel probably overlap heavily

Gunnery Officer, if she has time

[Faraday]

So, I guess then here's Cherry's. She'll concentrate mostly on the geopolitical stuff. Will there also be someone trying to train Cherry in haxxoring?

Well if anyone, it'd probably be Roger unless we have an actual "hacking trainer" probably the comms officer. That'd be interesting to see someone trying to train him in that, seeing as he already has max rank (that includes augmented max)...

[Minchandre]

Well if anyone, it'd probably be Roger unless we have an actual "hacking trainer" probably the comms officer. That'd be interesting to see someone trying to train him in that, seeing as he already has max rank (that includes augmented max)...

It might be interesting to have Roger and Cherry crosstrain each other, with Roger teaching Cherry hacking proper, and Cherry teaching Roger some EW.

[Faraday]

It might be interesting to have Roger and Cherry crosstrain each other, with Roger teaching Cherry hacking proper, and Cherry teaching Roger some EW.

Indeed. Probably some cybercombat as well. Considering how intelligent she is, she'd also be a good candidate for first aid and maybe a little medicine training in case roger bites it or gets knocked out of commission for a while.

[Xahn Borealis]

Aquaman could do with a quick primer on hacking, but he does have Cybercombat 3 and Attack 6, so Matrix defence is alright.

[Penta]

In my initial outlines, I didn't include hacking techniques with the Comm Officer's course because so many hackers in SR seem self-taught.

It could be included, I guess.

So far as the IC post - I'm on draft 43 and counting. Nothing sounds right.

[Faraday]

In my initial outlines, I didn't include hacking techniques with the Comm Officer's course because so many hackers in SR seem self-taught.

It could be included, I guess.

So far as the IC post - I'm on draft 43 and counting. Nothing sounds right.

Probably just Roger piping up during comms training. I dunno how I'd run it.

Good luck with the agonizing over typing the right words.

[Minchandre]

In my initial outlines, I didn't include hacking techniques with the Comm Officer's course because so many hackers in SR seem self-taught.

It could be included, I guess.

Cherry learned in school! I'm not certain what I would do for it, though: an overview of hacking techniques seems redundant; perhaps a discussion of typical ships' networks? I bet most vessels are Rating 3 nodes at least. Something involving combat hacking might be good for Roger, too, and some work on subtlety for Cherry. Either or both for Aquaman.

[Penta]

I'll handle it off-camera. You may safely assume the topic is handled usefully, but precisely how that is accomplished I think we can leave unsaid.

Now at draft 65...

[Xahn Borealis]

What's the lowest wordcount in those drafts? Six? "You all get trained in stuff." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Penta]

Wrong post. This is the election post, where I rejected the idea of having Walker go "CO, XO, Purser. We need one for each. Step forward if you want it." and ending the post there.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I have no idea why the simple shit gives me writers block, but it is.

[Minchandre]

By the way, I'm stilling tossing Cherry's hat into the ring for XO. She has extensive command experience in a military environment, and the sort of meticulousness that's annoying in a CO but essential in an XO. I don't remember if the other XO candidate actually made it into the game, and I'm too lazy to check.

If she gets rank, she will make people refer to her by a title (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) . Probably not "Captain" (her rank) 'cause of the "one captain per ship" thing, but she may adopt "Lieutenant Commander" or just go with her Hebrew rank "Seren".

[Penta]

I did not foresee awarding anybody rank/title except the CO as Captain, but I think the Seren's rank would just be translated as Lieutenant. (Which, DH please check me, actually makes sense in most navies for the XO of a small ship.) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Anyhow, that leads me to ask - okay, we have a CO, DH. We have an XO, Minchandre (as the other guy did not reappear, correct). Would someone third like to volunteer for Purser? That would make writing the post lots easier.

[Dumori]

Sharky will take it gurdingly as it will mesh slightlywith his desired role of quartermaster however he'd prefer some one else will take it.

[Dumori]

3d6=6 gives me 300 to start with.