Background Count, How often, when and how strong? Options

[tisoz]

Right, that is actually something i never thought to consider O.o
Basically, every time you cast a combat spell or any high force spell, you create your own little pocket of BGC . .
Same for the sammy opening up his fully automatic grenade launcher on a bunch of enemy goons or something. .

I have yet to have where this was not limited to a created BGC of 1.

As for the mage . . i don't like mages and magic, let's get that out of the way right up front now but . .
If he creates the BGC, would it not, kinda by definition, be aspected towards him specifically and towards his type of magic generally?

Interesting idea. You have great power at your mental command, but after you wield it, not only does it Drain you but it sickens you as well. There's some fun in that for the GM.

I don't think of these lower, temporary BGCs as aspected toward the caster (Stahlseele) or sickens the caster (pbangarth), or any other magically active. I tried thinking of an analogy and what came to mind first was cooking aromas. When starting to cook something and the aroma can be smelled in the area, perhaps enough to effect the next step in the preparing the dish (like tasting to see if spice is just right and having to distinguish between the sample and the aromas in the area.) Maybe a little better analogy would be wine and cheese tasting. Though I have never really done it, I am told part of the alternating between the wine and cheese is to cleanse the palate (or negate the previous taste) of the previous. If you didn't alternate, then the taste starts getting mixed with previous tastes (sort of forming a background taste.)

Just thought of perhaps better analogy. Ambient noise is much like a low BGC. When one speaks, they are not going to be heard as clearly. Perhaps the analogy to more drain is the irritation when the listener asks the speaker to repeat a part?

And for the record: going by the created by the big masses of people i still maintain that every city should be covered in BGC from that alone technically.
Because even if the BGC from that would go away over time as stated by tisoz above, the masses of people would not go away and thus the BGC would not go away either, as long as the people are there . . and depopulating an entire city would probably create some sort of BGC itself i guess .

I do not agree that just the presence of masses of people causes BGC and do not play it that way. As I read it, it takes strong emotion from those people. So maybe a temporary BGC gets created during rush hour congestion if enough people get angry over it, but it will likely be limited to that stretch of highway and be gone within the hour after traffic gets flowing again. And even this event is pushing BGC creation, in my opinion. Now if your version of the future world considers cities quite dystopian where the wageslaves know they are hopeless and everyone is suffering from depression, then by all means run it as having a perpetual BGC.

[Stahlseele]

Well, a mage can be traced by the magical imprint he leaves behind by casting spells so i take that as an indication that if he creates a bgc, it should probably be aspected towards him specifically, and not even just his tradition . . and combat magic will be both strong emotions, violence and high power magic united in one event so yes, that could probably create some bgc i guess . .

It's not my version, it's what's in the BGC table.
And even if it was not the masses of people, then the rush hour stuff would still be a repeated offence, on a much bigger scale than churches and other such things because it's twice a day and not just once a week and by several tenthousand people not some dozend to hundreds . .

[tisoz]

I guess I'm missing the part where just the presence of large amounts of people cause a BGC. I read the table under BGC 2 and it does address masses of people creating a BGC, then I go to the previous page and see how they could create a BGC. The examples given in the table for BGC2 are even more specialized than the ways on the previous page (as expected as they are just some examples.) But it requires some level of emotion by the mass of people, not just the mere presence of masses of people.

Also, regarding my example of rush hour, I don't think every part of slow traffic is necessarily going to generate BGC. Is it going to elicit strong emotion? Maybe, but maybe not if those effected by it are accustomed to it (it does happen twice a day.) I've been driving the Stevenson in Bug City (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) the last couple years and rarely does it get me emotional. Plus I can see too many people contributing to the gridlock by texting or otherwise diverting their attention from driving, so I doubt they are getting emotional about slow or stopped traffic. I used it as an example because road rage does occur even if it doesn't result in bodily injury.

[Smilingfaces]

SR3 Magic in the Shadows Page 83 it starts on BGC and on PAge 84 is a little Table:
BGC1:
Any Place where Background Count was briefly or recently generated; (interpretation by me: means BGC does not go away, if it has ever been created?)
The Site of a heated argument or passionate affair, a magicians convention or a bar frequented by the Awakened, an alienating corporate office environment, a hospital, any site where violence was committed or a heroic action taken within the last hour
(interpretation by me: so, basically mostly anywhere in a modern city then?)

BGC2:
Any place where BGC was generated by a large number of people or over a length of time: a rock concert or riot, a sports game or revival meeting, a maximum security prison or enchanters workshop, a ward for terminal patiets or cyberware-clinic, a corporate research facility or large factory (interpretation by me: so still many if not most places in a metroplex then?)

BGC3:
Any place where significant BGC was created in the recent past(last 100 years[interpretation by me: so yes, even before magic so basically anywhere all over the world]):
Major Battlefields, slashed-and-burned forrests, burned-out residential areas, organ-legger chop-shops, most cathedrals, monasteries, lasmaseries, shrines and so on. (interpretation by me: so still many places in a metroplex)

BGC4:
Any place where significant BGC was created and the condition that created it still exists: battlefield that has seen heavy fighting and is still in use, a dragons lair, a heavily polluted area such as a slag heap or strip-mine, sites long and repeatedly associated with strong emotions, such as arlington national cemetery, stonehenge, scenes of sudden mass death such as transportation disasters or terrorist massacres like the chicago shattergraves.

BGC5:
Any site whose bgc was created by an event historical in scope: any place within 5 kilometers of a nuclear blast site(hiroshima, nagasaki, chicago, bikini etc; any genocidal death camps or gulags such as auschwitz(which, btw, SR4 WAR i think assigned a BGC of 8 . . and then made people go in to get a nazi administrators scalpell because they did not dare actually use the name mengele and to get to it you'd have to fight jew-zombies/spirits of the deceased prisoners) or the native american re-education and detention centers , any lethally toxic areas or radioactive waste storage sites.

OK going off from his list here the thing here 1-3 for the most part deal with people interaction. And the "group" as in the people with high emotions create energy, "residue." That's what they have in common for the most part.

The 4-5 is stuff that generated serious destruction or malice ect. I think this background count mechanic was based off the premise that psychics can feel an area or pick up an object and know who had it. The whole magic system in shadowrun is esoteric, so yea it would die down at least 1-3 would. As far as seattle if you wanted a more concrete site that's historical for 4 or 5 background count you would have to look up chief joseph time and a little after him but that was 1904 when he died.

[SpellBinder]

Interesting. BGC of 2 in the 2050's for a rock concert but BGC 4 to 6 for the same event in the late 2070's, and the blast sites of Hiroshima/Nagasaki jumped from a BGC of 5 up to the 13 to 15 range in the same time (numbers from SR5's Street Grimoire, page 31).

I know magic's supposed to be in the upswing in the late 21st century, but a tripling of the BGC in a span of 20 years seems to be quite a quick pace to me.

[Tiralee]

As GM, anything that involved a background count tends to impact, quickly, on the players.

Although they got much better at assensing the areas before pulling out the TN 6+ spells after a really nasty scare (ever magically healed a Sammy in a BG 3 environment? Yeah, not a good idea)

Background counts are a great way to make the simple jobs harder (or impossible, if you're being a bastard) or making sure that MagicRun ™ actually uses those glorious cybered meatshields for something apart from getting the McHughs. Also rather good at moving the plot along, if your players are the nasty, suspicious sort.

"the apartment looks abandoned, nothing here but the smell of bleach."
"I Assense the area"
"You can't pick up anything distinct, there's a background count that's interfering with your impression."
(Team looks at the Gm, Looks at each other)
"Ooookay. Background count and smells of bleach. If we're lucky, it's just a wetjob. If we're not, it's live organlegging."
(All the guns come out)


-Tir!