2072 [+4 Months], Multiple Players / GMs - Recruitment Always Open Options

[Seth]

@JxJxA
I am afraid that you are only going to get to shoot at him next round (which isn't a long time coming). When Xarin and Aria have posted I'll kick the next round off. Given the current hectic posting rate (which is fun) I'll try and start the next round Monday morning at the latest.
The fire spirit isn't that dangerous, at least the FAB got rid of the rest of the them.

@JxJxA/AppliedCheese
Sniper on sniper action can be very brutal...

[JxJxA]

@ Seth:

Ah, ok. I was thinking next IP and not round (still getting used to all the Shadowrun lingo). Totally cool, Demon has the thrill-seeker negative quality, so this felt like I was indulging it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[LostProxy]

Who should I be asking about my question? Aria or Seth?

[Seth]

@LostProxy
Aria is the GM of the thread that I am playing in who asked Fat Tony for help. I'm happy to have a go answering stuff, but Aria is the GM. Zarathan knows more than I do about the electronic firing though.

[Aria]

I did link you, look a couple of posts up.

Argh...sorry, trying to keep up honest (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) I've added your character to the beginning of the OoC thread...

I've also not seen the question you're referring to but I gather it's something to do with electronic firing? It might have been answered by now but if you want to ask again I'll give a ruling if needed. Essentially unlike other pbp threads we are all potential GMs here so unless there's massive disagreement you can probably go with a ruling by one of the players too!

@Zaranthan: We can certainly work with the undead in these threads (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I did start an alternate story line a while back for Digital Heroin but as he's not resurfaced since you could do that one if you want...it will probably swing round and link in with the other one I'm running for Galen, Seth et al.

Concealing your nature will be important though...you might be able to squeeze an initiation grade out of the initial 10 karma and grab masking to avoid astral perceiving?!? I personally follow the old way that it's extremely difficult to break masking unless you are also an initiate...

Now I just have to hunt for your sheet (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) EDIT: Can't find it...can someone link it? Sorry about this everyone, manic work schedule and a swiss cheese brain aren't helping but I should be on top of things soon!

[Seth]

I'm not a fan of pvp, but if Jotamon or Doza find out, we will kill a Nosferatu or die trying...just saying.

[AppliedCheese]

In eager anticipation for round 3:

Initiative = 20, 3 IP

Init = 13 + (13d6 - 1d6 stun = 12d6)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3173924/

7 hits.

Guess we're going to find out how many of beta we can drop...hopefully before they try to light up demon...

[Seth]

Guess we're going to find out how many of beta we can drop...hopefully before they try to light up demon...

There are only 5 of them. Easy Peasy.
Mind you they are pissed

It's pretty obvious to everyone by now that the corporate goons are drugged to the eyeballs, probably Kamikaze.

[AppliedCheese]

Just a point of rules lawyering I feel is important to get straihgt in my head before trying to whump on beta:

The typical "dodge" for ranged in plain reaction, with no other modifiers, correct? The only way to add dodge/gymnastics to that dodge is by going full defense, either sacrificing your current IP (if lower init) or pre-preemptively sacrificing your next IP (if you already went this IP), but only within the same round, correct?

[JxJxA]

I'm kind of with Seth on the Nosferatu stuff with regard to Demon. If he can conceal it the entire run, fair dues. However, if Demon finds out that there is a literal man-eater in his midst that has potentially (and chronically) exposed him to a human-targeting HMHVV strand that might turn him into that very same monster, then there is going to be an IC problem to say the least. :-/

It's not anything personal, it's an RP-block for me. I had the same issue in an Exalted game when I played a Solar and someone had an Abyssal character (I'm still kind of flabbergasted that the rest of the group didn't understand why this would be a problem (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) ), in Star Wars Saga when someone wanted to play Jensaari or a Dark Sider while I was a Jedi, and in every DnD-derivative game when I'm playing a goodie and there's an big-bad-evil disciple in the party. x_x

[Seth]

Just a point of rules lawyering I feel is important to get straihgt in my head before trying to whump on beta:

The typical "dodge" for ranged in plain reaction, with no other modifiers, correct? The only way to add dodge/gymnastics to that dodge is by going full defense, either sacrificing your current IP (if lower init) or pre-preemptively sacrificing your next IP (if you already went this IP), but only within the same round, correct?

Nearly. You use up your "next action", so you can steal next round action if you are preemptively trying to dodge, and you are out of actions.

Also remember that the bad guys are using automatic weapons, and if you are hard to hit, they will just switch to wide bursts or grenades.

[Xarin]

I'm still getting caught-up on the posts but to keep it moving along, here's Pixel's actions for the round:

Round 2 intitiative: Reaction 6 + Intuition 4 = (10d6.hits(5)=3)
Initiative 13, 3 IPs

IP1:
Fly for cover out of sight of the roof. Perhaps behind the pile of junk I was just on if it's nice and big.
Hide from Sniper: Agility 4 + Urban Infiltration 3 + tacnet 2 = (9d6.hits(5)=4)
Unload Sniffer ap
command entire slaved network to issue restricted alert against the same ID as my commlink (I never turned the alert off, and it takes "a few minutes" to spoof a fresh one so unless he switched links, emm386 is likely still using the same ID. If not, well still worth a shot)

IP2:
Continue hiding from sniper.
Load Medic program

IP3:
Hiding is a healthy passtime
Begin matrix repairs
Repair persona: Computer 6 + Medic 3 = (9d6.hits(5)=3) 5 more to go on extended test.

With no orders to do otherwise, the vans stops moving and sits quietly where it was snuck to last round.

When do I start getting the feed from Pepe on Molly's room?

[AppliedCheese]

Oh, I wasn't interested in MY dodging...I want to make sure my wide bursts kill THEM. Or at least make it impossible for them to shoot back.

[JxJxA]

That would be much appreciated, and would probably earn Dealer a Marseillaise glass of wine courtesy of Demon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Seth]

@Xarin
Lets say that you are near a lorry: one of those Ares Roadmasters, and the easiest thing is to go under it, or behind it. I think that is the toughest thing around.
Noted that Emm386's accessId is "locked out"

Sniper goes on Initiative 15

IP2
The sniper shoots you through the lorry. It counts as 16 points of armour, and you have full concealment.
Base die: 17 (skill 5, Attribute 7, specialisation 2, smart gun 2, personalised grip...etc) By the way she is a Prime Runner not a goon.
full cover -4
visibility modifiers -6 (blind fire...she's not actually blind as she has radar and ultrasound, but this sounds fairly reasonable given you are under a lorry)
Aimed one action +1
I'll let you have a full dodge as you see she is about to shoot you through the tacnet
Well that was a pretty rubbish shot: 2 successes
Good thing you moved (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)
Damage 8P -7 armour. (Although you get +16 for the lorry)

IP3 the sniper shoots again through the truck
Grr: 1 success


@General
I'm not kicking off round three just yet, but for planning purposes:
Dealer goes on 20
Hansai / Fire Elemental go on 18
Sniper goes on 15
Demon goes on 13
Goons go on 11

For planning purposes:
The sniper is concealed at rating 6, is in funky hiding gear, and is using silencers, so a perception roll at -8 is needed to act against her. You only need 1 success. Don't forget the -2 penalty unless you take a simple action and +3 for active looking, and the fact that the general visibility is poor (treat as smoke). There is a strong ultrasound/radar source, so if you can sense that you could aim at that.

Just checking the general position:
Pixel is under a lorry being shot at by the sniper
Dealer has dived out the window, but is still on the ground, and not in a position to return sniper fire
Demon has climbed on top of a van, and is a position to return fire
Copperhead is inside the cafe, and is drugged up now
Ember: You can be anywhere you want
Beta squad will be acting against seen threats: probably Dealer / Demon on their go. There are 5 of them, and they have assault rifles.
The three remaining Alpha squad members are hurting, but given they are high on kamikaze will be coming through those windows next round...

[onlyghostdancesw...]

o/ greetings earthlings! Any chance I could toss a character or 3 into the mix? Still not sure what Id like to play but I have a few very nice concepts running around depending on whats needed. If anyone could give me the general gist of plotlines thus far and team dynamics Id appreciate it greatly.

[Xarin]

@Seth
Alright, here's the dodge rolls:
Dodge incoming fire: Reaction 6 (6d6.hits(5)=3, 6d6.hits(5)=1)
Wheh! Just enough to get missed both times.

By the way, Tacnet is probably reccommending chucking a grenade up in the sniper's vicinity if visibility is too poor to line up a shot.

Also, don't forget that Beanie is still around, and vehicles come with Radar sensors as standard. And yes, he's on the tacnet (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) If that helps any with spotting the sniper.

[JxJxA]

@ Seth

Here's Demon's new initiative roll:
Reaction(5) + Intuition(3) = 8d6 for 5 hits. To roll edge now for potentially three more hits...nah. Keep hiding there, Pixel, and I'll hopefully give the roof a new coat of shiny red paint in a few moments. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Round 3:
Init: 13
IP: 2

[Seth]

@Ghost
Hi!
There are two threads happening at the moment. I am GMing one called (by them) the suicidekings, the other is by Aria, and we haven't given ourselves good name yet. My thread is full at the moment, but Aria is actively recruiting

@General
Not a bad time for a recap on the game so far. I think I have included most relevant things, and am at least 50% accurate. Please feel free to correct/enhance the presentation

In the SuicideKing's thread:

• Ember's wife (a Fixer) was badly injured in a car crash
• Ember while grief striken was met by a "Jonathan" (now suspected to be Jonathan Teague, corporate ne'er do well) and sold a pack of lies to get him to visit a Dwarf called
  Mr Allanby. Mr Allanby is the manger for the drek hot band the concrete spectres, and used to be the manager for Jet Black: yes "that" Jet Black.
• Ember hires some muscle (Copperhead the troll shaman, and Demon a gun man), and goes to visit Mr Allanby
• While the team go in the building, the cop who is watching the building is killed by one of Teague's goons
• When they meet Mr Allanby (a very nasty man) they are filmed, and their palpable dislike radiates from them. The live video is going straight to Knight Errant, so restrained by this the group don't knee cap him, and head away.
• As they leave, Mr Allanby is killed and the video footage really looks like they killed him.
• The group head for a Notel-Motel (the Jucy Lucy) to examine some clues given them by Allanby
• Mr Teague pulls beaurocratic strings, and has Knight Errant launch a FireWatch team against the group as they are obviously cop killers, simulataneously he launches an attack against the hospital that Ember's wife is in.

Up to this point it was all going so well for the bad guys, unfortunately about now the cunning plan (which seems to be to get Ember his wife, and the cop that hired Ember's wife all killed) was derailed

The Firewatch attack:

• Because Copperhead detected the FireWatch team, they decided to attack before they were fully ready
• In the hotel lobby was a meeting between Gamma the Toxic Terrorist (as famous as Osama Bin Laden is to us) and a fertiliser salesman.
• The FireWatch team was planning on taking down three cop killers, not the Toxic Terrorist and his "Terrorist Supplies R Us" colleague. THe ensuing carnage was horrible and made the news on 5 continents. Those three now have the free advantage "global fame".

The attack on the hospital

• It turns out the Ember's wife was recruited on a regular basic by two Knight Errant cops who investigate high level fraud: Edgar Wallace and Hansai Jones. She mostly reported to Edgar.
• Hansai had seen the video footage (everyone in the world had seen the footage) and recognised Ember, so he went to see if there were any clues
• When the attack occured, Hansai killed/knocked out the attackers with the help of the Street Doc
• Embar astrally projected to the street doc, and Hansai and he agreed to meet at a place called the Drunken Drone

The meeting at the Drunken Drone

• Hansai explains that Ember's wife worked for him
• Hansai and the dead cop Edgar were investigating Jonathan Teague.
• Hansai is now on compulsory compassionate leave for 2 weeks as his partner was murdered
• Hansai doesn't think the player group killed his partner (he is a bureaucratic adept, and good at reading people)
• Hansai hired a decker called Pixel to hack Allanby's files, and she discovered that Allanby used an old fashioned Quantum Cryptographic link to make off site backups of his recording. Those recording are in a warehouse.
• Hansai proposed that the runners go get the warehouse, while he visits the Allanby crime scene and allows Pixel to hack into Allanby's computer which is physically isolated from the Matrix, and totally wireless
• Molly, the propriator of the Drunken Drone, seems to like Hansai and the dead cop, and recruited Dealer to keep Hansai alive.
• The group go shopping (Molly is a fixer / smuggler / rigger type)

The current issue

• After the shopping, Pixel on a near routine sweep of the area with one of her drones
• She spots a sniper lying on the roof
• Pixel also spots a hacker in her commlink
• Molly hits the panic button, and some powerful but sadly inadequate prepared defences go off: airborne weapons platforms, FAB, very powerful jamming that only affects the bad guys, a few drones.
• The attackers had moved two truck loads of people in the area before the attack (it is a transport cafe, and there were another 50 or so just in the carpack) and started with 4 large fire elementals and 2 squads of about 15 troops.
• The cafe's defenses take down 3 of the elementals, and about 2/3 of the corporates
• The players have the option of running, but they have had enough of running, so attack back

Participants in the fight

• Alpha squad (started with 8 ) attacking the cafe
• Beta squad (started with 7 IIRC) attacking a smuggler group that are fleeing the cafe
• One fire elemental attached to Beta Squad
• One free roaming sniper

Round 0:

• Molly and Pixel reestablish the group's tacnet
• Alpha squad fire in an airburst grenade and prepare to charge
• Hansai deflects it back to them using cool adept powers, but goes down (injured not dead) in a hail of assault rifle fire

Round 1

• The half of alpha squad that are attacking through the door are gunned down brutally
• A short period of cybercombat between Pixel and a malefic decker named Emm386.

Round 2

• Molly screams on the commlink
• Alpha squad decide to use grenades, unfortunately those come back out the windows right at them
• Demon exits the building to return fire on a sniper that is lining up on the Decker Pixel
• Dealer is wounded by exploding grenades, but has also exited out of the cafe to help deal with the sniper / beta squad
• Beta Squad have given up chasing after the fleeing runners
• The Fire elemental has just entered the cafe

We are most of the way through round 2, about to start round 3

I'll have a go at doing something similar to the other story soon.

[AppliedCheese]

Alpha 3 and 4 survived both grenades? Tough bastards. Alpha 2 apparently survived his second frag grenade of the night as well.

Question: Are the alpha goons near Dealer's exit so stunned as to be susceptible to a coup-de-grace? They were just soundly concussed by two hand grenades. In this case, coup de-grace = muzzle stuffed in your face or other exposed or very lightly armored areas, and then a short burst.

Question 2: Does the tacnet have any indicators of relative amounts of damage suffered by each potential target?

Question 3: Is there any reasonable cover around Dealer's position?

[Seth]

@AppliedCheese

• Alphas 2, 3 and 4 are all looking really really really ropy.
• The tacnet's damage assessment says "hit by multiple grenades and they are looking ropy"
• You are in a lorry park with 50 lorries, 20 cars, miscellaneous vans, smoking ruins of drones and bits of machinery: plenty of cover. Beta squad are all pretty much behind cover as well

[AppliedCheese]

Allow me to phrase more mechanically. Can I use a simple action to kill each of the goons next to me? No rolls, no shenanagins, just stick the muzzle in their face plate and blow their brains out? or are they still active combatants?

P.S. I was wondering more about beta for tac net.

P.P.S It was Demon who joined the group earlier. You have dealer double tapped in your chronology.

[Seth]

1: They are still active opponents until they are unconscious.
2: Gotcha. The survivors are largely untouched.
3: thanks and editing the chronology

[Aria]

Seth, can we assume Ember and Tempest will deal with that elemental? No time to roll myself ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ) but happy to let you or someone else do it!

I don't think reach counts in astral combat but my weapon focus and 'friends in melee' should do?!?

Sorry for not being able to do it myself...will try and step up again on Monday!

[Seth]

NP Aria, I'll do something sensible with Ember, and try not to get him killed