A use for Adrenalins Pump 3 Options

[Stahlseele]

You Scored as Weekend Warrior

The Weekend Warrior is in the game to kick down doors and kill monsters. After a long day in the office or classroom, he wants his character to wade into the action—too much time spent on diplomacy, story arc, planning, or even character-building tends to bore him. He tends to prefer combat-ready, simple-to-create, simple-to-run characters, leaning toward fighter types or blaster magic-users. Optimizing the rules for an ideal character is secondary, so long as he gets to hit things. To the Weekend Warrior, the greatest reward in roleplaying is the exciting, action-packed battle. With apologies to Robin Laws.

Weekend Warrior 75%
Storyteller 75%
Tactician 70%
Character Player 60%
Casual Gamer 60%
Specialist 55%
Power Gamer 55%

wait, that does not sound right O.o
i actually had a tie breaker between weekend warrior and story teller o.O
And why the hell is Storyteller way up there?
And Character Player? That should be Casual Gamer and Specialist!
And why is Power Gamer way down there? I get accused of being just that about every single gaming session . . and usually, i am proud of that too!

[LurkerOutThere]

That oft cited Stormwind Fallacy once again shows up(paraphrased): Just because you play a well rounded or optimized character doesn't mean your not roleplaying. Just because your roleplaying doesn't mean you need to play a gimp.

[Yerameyahu]

You *can* trigger it at will. You just have to worry about it triggering by accident, as well, and there's no way to turn it off in the standard rules (borrow the MAO rules from SR3?).

[Dumori]

That oft cited Stormwind Fallacy once again shows up(paraphrased): Just because you play a well rounded or optimized character doesn't mean your not roleplaying. Just because your roleplaying doesn't mean you need to play a gimp.

One day I will play a GIMP! B&E and escape artist spec'd adept. Leather "jacket" and full FFBA and a hobby of tieing up incapacitated opposition. Just was that joke needs that pun.

Starts stating.

[Jaid]

That oft cited Stormwind Fallacy once again shows up(paraphrased): Just because you play a well rounded or optimized character doesn't mean your not roleplaying. Just because your roleplaying doesn't mean you need to play a gimp.

wait, i thought the stormwind fallacy was essentially that if you have to fix something, it was clearly broken in the first place and therefore the argument that it can be fixed is not a valid argument to show that something is not broken.

am i getting my roleplaying fallacies crossed?

[hobgoblin]

A significant portion of DS posters are *very* numbers focused. Characters with weaknesses or ones that are not fully optimized are looked down upon and I've seen a number of posters refer to people who like playing those kind of characters with various negative remarks.

It's kind of upsetting, and it results in a lot of cookie-cutter builds here. You post X character idea, and 5 people point out the lack of optimization, and without fail you end up looking almost exactly like every other similar character idea from the past.

*looks around*
Crap, where did this soapbox come from?

i call it the MMORPG curse, as the mentality seems to be all over the place there. Each time there is a game change, there is a uproar about nerf vs their ultra-optimized build that makes use of every little corner case they could find to maximize damage output. Heck, some will tell you to wipe and restart a character if you put a single point in a "useless" skill.

[Whipstitch]

MMO curse is a misnomer, I think. MMOs do have that sort of mindset at times, but this sort of thing has existed well before even MUDs were popular. I think the issue is a bit more fundamental: "Welcome to the Shadows," and other PBP games aside, we're not playing the game here, but rather we're discussing the metagame, and since we're all disparate posters, we're discussing a metagame that's highly, highly based on the RAW (and thus numbers) since that's really the only thing on which we can quickly develop a consensus.

Naturally, this tends to skew the conversation somewhat, especially when someone rolls in asking for build advice. For example, I couldn't possibly give someone here advice about what kind of character will fit in from a roleplaying perspective at their table without a helluva lot more information than I'm likely to get from your standard "Help me build X post." Their table is a local metagame that I do not have access to. I can't really tell them whether Shiva Arms is the sort of thing that'll enrich their game experience-- I don't know them well enough to make that judgement. It may very well give them less roleplaying fun than spending an equivalent amount of BP on NERPS oriented Knowledge skills. But I can tell them that Shiva Arms aren't really good for much of anything as far as dice pools are concerned and be reasonably sure that it's an accurate statement. And lo, the conversation turns to "power gaming," for lack of anything better to do.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I don't understand all of the adrenaline pump hate. Sure, numbers-wise it doesn't always make sense, but does everybody build their character based on that? How fun is it to play a character with no weaknesses, where all bases are covered, where nothing can go sideways?

I think it's an awesome piece of gear that could make for some dynamic combat and roleplaying.

Yeah, there's a downside. Sometimes even a big one. So?

Conceptually it is awesome. The negatives are so massive in the level 2 and 3 versions that it does not help roleplaying it hinders it unless falling over dead basically at random is good roelplaying.

[Saint Sithney]

I just don't think that it enhances the "reality" of a character to have him make horrible equipment choices..

But I'm not one to rag on someone for wanting to play a wacky concept, like a character with a random number generator attached to a cranial bomb that will detonate if it ever hits 18. Oh wait, we were talking about the Rating 3 Adrenal Pump, weren't we. My bad.

Anyway, have you ever sat in the same room with someone while they play a video game that you know and love, and they're just terrible at it? Like, they keep making the same mistakes over and over, getting frustrated, and you can't even talk to them anymore about it? They may even be having a great time slamming into that wall, over and over again, but to you, it feels like being slowly suffocated in a river of tar. You don't want to feel this way. It's unpleasant to feel this way, but you do. You can't help it. It's like their casual approach is an insult to the time and effort you've put in to becoming good at something.

I'm not saying that's you - that you don't know what you're doing if you make character-driven choices. Not at all. It's just that same feeling which drives me toward making a sleek character. I feel that way inside every time I'm making a character and I start getting frivolous (Wild Technomancer? Why wouldn't I want to spend my first 300 karma making this concept viable? Who needs cyber anyway?) or leaving bits out (well, I could go for used cyber since it has no effect on limb capacity, but getting just as much for half the price se- ...I can't even finish that thought. It's repulsive to me. Every time I try, I say to myself "You can do better than this!" "Why are you pissing around? Get the damn shinguards! I don't care why a mage would be wearing shinguards! Maybe he's afraid of rogue Leprechauns?! Buy it already!" and I just feel that slow crush until I end up with soccermage the magnificent, because, fuck it. I want the Impact armor. I NEED IT.

If you don't understand that compulsion, you should feel blessed by the Tao. I... I'm not there. I still can't reach roleplay zen.

[MikeKozar]

...or leaving bits out (well, I could go for used cyber since it has no effect on limb capacity, but getting just as much for half the price se- ...I can't even finish that thought. It's repulsive to me.

Okay, since that's my current character concept:

Daniel Soaring-Eagle was a fairly competent Big Game Hunter from the Cascade Ork tribe. He had done a number of contract jobs for clients from Seattle, either vermin control or paracritter recovery, and was pretty good at it. Although not a shaman, he still follows the Wolf Totem, and is very much a pack hunter - his family is very important to him.

He was working a contract to take down a big, valuable and rare paracritter, and had enlisted many of his family and friends to help bring it down. Just as they were ready to bag it, a Corp black-ops team comes in to recover it. The Cascades protest, and the Corp team opens fire without hesitation. Daniel catches a rocket blast, and takes enough damage to put him out of the fight. The Corp team leaves them for dead. His employer's DocWagon beacon gets the two of them rescued, and when Daniel awakens, a local charity with ties to the Neo-Anarchists has paid to have him reconstructed - with buggy, 20-year old Russian military surplus cyberlimbs. His arm and leg are chrome now, but they react slowly, the nerve connections are spotty, and they are huge and awkward. He hates them. His eye is worse - it actually glows red, like a bad movie villain, and whirrs and clicks when it tries to focus on something.

Daniel is *pissed*. He lost most of his family and friends, as well as most of his Essence, because some Corp bio-research team got lazy. He's got a vendetta against the corps, which is going to be a huge struggle considering he still hasn't identified *which* corp was running that black op. Until he has the resources to find out, he's going to try and find a way to make the money he needs by waging war on the Megacorps. He's driven by his anger, and is suffering from survivor's guilt - he's too screwed up to consider 'making the best of a bad situation' by getting better cyberware, or cloned limbs. He's going to take his huge, over-armored steel foot and kick some ass. If the cyberware was an upgrade, he wouldn't have as much of a reason for his barely-restrained fury, but every awkward sound and jerky glitch reminds him that there's somebody out there he owes a bullet to. ...and Daniel pays his debts.

Daniel is sub-optimal in a lot of ways. I don't think his story would work as well if he was a perfect Cyber Samurai. His flaws make him interesting to me.

[Jhaiisiin]

I could see Daniel getting into a tussel with some people and losing, and that being the catalyst for him realizing that with all the buggy ware he has, sure it reminds him of his goal, but it's now holding him back from it as well. Start with the arm, then the leg, then if it's really an issue, the eye, but that might be able to stay. Mount the old ware on a wall in his home so every time he comes home, he sees and is reminded of why he's doing this. Better yet, when you go to the new arm and leg, make them modular at the shoulder/hip and get the old ware modded to be modular as well. Then when The Day comes that you're about to beat the tar out of the one responsible, you can swap back to the old ware to complete the circle

[Mongoose]

Storyteller 75%
Character Player 75%
Tactician 65%
Weekend Warrior 55%
Specialist 45%
Casual Gamer 40%
Power Gamer 40%

Interesting. I think most people would peg me as a power gamer, and its true that I go for the combat bad ass types. Reason being that they are typically the ones needed to move the story forwards. To me, there's nothing more annoying that a plot point you can't get past because you got your ass kicked (unless that in itself IS the plot point). That's not to say encounters should be easy- rather, that people should play characters that let them deal with conflicts decently, because otherwise the story hits roadblocks. (Yeah, I know, opposition scales to party capability. Its a catch 22, ain't it?)

[Whipstitch]

Character Player
75%
Storyteller
65%
Specialist
55%
Tactician
55%
Casual Gamer
45%
Weekend Warrior
40%
Power Gamer
40%


I find this a li'l funny since I know how capable I am of blowing the doors off many campaigns via Magicians. Then again, I kinda weaned myself off of playing mages precisely because of that, so in a way the results make sense.

[Mongoose]

wait, that does not sound right O.o
i actually had a tie breaker between weekend warrior and story teller o.O
And why the hell is Storyteller way up there?
And Character Player? That should be Casual Gamer and Specialist!
And why is Power Gamer way down there? I get accused of being just that about every single gaming session . . and usually, i am proud of that too!

Because the survey assesses what you value, not how you achieve it. I had high ranks in storyteller and character (tiebreaker between the two) but like you, would typically be called a power gamer. That's because I typically want my character to live long enough and be powerful enough to see an actual story progress. Weaker characters don't accomplish as much story wise / character wise, unless you tailor the game to them.
There's probably also a large element of bias; people lie on surveys, and surveys are often poorly written, or have to few questions to make a meaningful assessment.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, there's times where you're really just using your min-maxing powers to take an oddball build from being mostly good as a doorstop to being being pretty playable. For example, neither drakes or the SURGE qualities Setae and Dynamic skin coloration are very good, but a SURGE'd Eastern Drake Infiltrator/Subdual Adept with those qualities can be quite playable without being anything you'd really consider a GM's nightmare. Besides, some color-changing dragon looking thingy suddenly flying from out of nowhere and constricting someone unconscious is just plain freaky.

[Dumori]

I have a use for Adrenalin pump 3 mysterious ware on that PC you hate...

[Yerameyahu]

I dunno, Whipstitch. You'd have to be naked, after all. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Caelwyn]

Because the survey assesses what you value, not how you achieve it. I had high ranks in storyteller and character (tiebreaker between the two) but like you, would typically be called a power gamer. That's because I typically want my character to live long enough and be powerful enough to see an actual story progress. Weaker characters don't accomplish as much story wise / character wise, unless you tailor the game to them.
There's probably also a large element of bias; people lie on surveys, and surveys are often poorly written, or have to few questions to make a meaningful assessment.

Yeah, I was going to say...I don't think this survey weights power-gaming responses very high, or just doesn't have as many questions geared towards power-gaming. Its a pity we don't have the Wizards of the Coast survey.

[MikeKozar]

An interesting point made in the original article was that even people who scored low on strategy in their poll were still much more strategic then the general population; it was only within the RPG community that they seemed unstrategic. Shades of blue, I think the term was.

[Yerameyahu]

Hooloovoo!

[Whipstitch]

I dunno, Whipstitch. You'd have to be naked, after all. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, but either way you're intimidating. You're either a big, naked troll grappler or a mini-dragon.

[Yerameyahu]

Snrk. Okay, yeah. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) At the very least, people don't want to be near you; hopefully they don't have guns, though.

[Saint Sithney]

Daniel is sub-optimal in a lot of ways. I don't think his story would work as well if he was a perfect Cyber Samurai. His flaws make him interesting to me.

Yeah, having used cyber can be a nasty choice, but I was specifically thinking about limb capacity items being used cyber, since you get the same effect from them for half the cost. There aren't many good reasons to get a new Orentation system or a new Nanohive when you can just get one used and drop it in a limb for no extra essence cost.

It's always been a case of "why pay retail?" for me. It may seem unfair to pay half as much as book for something you drop in a limb, but it's not unreasonable. Especially for an Augmentation Addict. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

hunh..

[ Spoiler ]

Character Player 100%
Storyteller 70%
Specialist 70%
Weekend Warrior 65%
Tactician 55%
Power Gamer 55%
Casual Gamer 20%

here I thought I was giving everything 110%..

[last_of_the_grea...]

You know, I have found that everyone forgets that an adrenaline pump boosts your will, too. There's times when that is just priceless.

Oh yeah...

You Scored as Weekend Warrior
The Weekend Warrior is in the game to kick down doors and kill monsters. After a long day in the office or classroom, he wants his character to wade into the action—too much time spent on diplomacy, story arc, planning, or even character-building tends to bore him. He tends to prefer combat-ready, simple-to-create, simple-to-run characters, leaning toward fighter types or blaster magic-users. Optimizing the rules for an ideal character is secondary, so long as he gets to hit things. To the Weekend Warrior, the greatest reward in roleplaying is the exciting, action-packed battle. With apologies to Robin Laws.



Weekend Warrior
75%
Power Gamer
65%
Specialist
60%
Character Player
55%
Tactician
40%
Casual Gamer
35%
Storyteller
30%

You can see that for me it's all about the butt-kicking! Seriously, don't ever try and make me the face. It will never end well.

[Kohake]

I belive myself to be a "thinker". I love to make plans for maximized efficiency. But I prefer doing that ingame. Sure, I like trying to come up with overpowered characters as well, but what can I do after that? Die so I can make another overpowered character? Not likely. Instead, I make and average or even underpowered character and then I optimize the strategy instead of the character. It's so much more fun that way.(For me at least)

Anyways, back on-topic. Why is the Adrenaline Pump such a bad choice? I know it's not sustainable and the damage is uncomfortable to say the least, but it does have advantages in essence/nuyen cost, doesn't it? (Muscle Toner + Muscle Argumentation = half nuyen cost and more than half essence cost, and gives half the stats but doesn't keep you conscious when you reach your maximum stun damage)