OOC New Beginnings DAWN Options

[Titan]

One of these days I am going to figure out how I seem to always have issues translating things to players.

Problem is healthy paranoia is a good thing in a shadowrunner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It'll probably help to stop assuming it has anything to do with paranoia.

See, I was instructed that etiquette is very important to Clementine. And Jane is treating her like she is a dumb thug who can't even be trusted to think.

To make matters worse, even though Clementine was assigned the role of "Tactical Leader," in spite of not having any qualifications to be so (admittedly, she didn't ask for it), when she tries to approach a situation tactically - not one character backed her up besides the new member.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the characters are still stuck in a situation that they can't do anything. Not one thing. Only one character can even communicate with the pirates, and she gets the shit beat out of her whenever she does so. No one brought a deck of cards so we can't even play solitaire, much less strip poker. Every player has checked into the thread at least once since we got on the boat... And we are still on the boat.


For what appears to be only because the GM likes making the players sit around and twiddle their thumbs.

[Crossbow]

I was trying to give everyone time to address the whole Con/Snow thing, as well as to reinforce the setting. It has also been a bit difficult for me to find time advance the story properly.

By the way, that whole tactical leader/rebellion thing was an organic PC thing, I had very little to do with it.

Professionalism is what I tried to stress with Clem, not so much ettiqutte.

[Titan]

I can respect all of those points.
Primarily:

It has also been a bit difficult for me to find time advance the story properly.

If you made mention of that anywhere else, I apologize. I don't remember seeing it.


But here is the thing on the other points.

What player character really wants to pour salt in O'Connor's wounds / kick him when he is down? At best, the characters can pick up on the fact he is torn up about it. At worst, they fear he has lost his shit.
At best, not one character can risk the play we have made by trying to console O'Connor in front of the pirates. At worst, they fear even looking his way.
There really isn't any way to address that now.

Professionalism still kind of works with what I posted. If I had know that earlier, it would have been easier to get to the point that I had. (There would have been less internal debating on slaughtering the pirates.)

I never meant to claim you had anything to do with the tactical leader thing. I was simple pointing out, I already expressed my desire to get off this train wreck, and only one player has done anything to try and change my mind. And that player is one of the more recent acquisitions form your groups long standing tradition of losing players over, and over, and over again.

You can't take the blame for every failing here, Crossbow.

[Necrogigas]

I already expressed my desire to get off this train wreck, and only one player has done anything to try and change my mind. And that player is one of the more recent acquisitions form your groups long standing tradition of losing players over, and over, and over again.

This so called train wreck will be five years old come January. In my experience most pbp games fall apart within months, so we're doing something right.

We've lost people along the way sure, but real life takes precedence. Hydroraven told Crossbow he was bowing out because of such issues. Rhat was a prolific poster on the Catalyst forums so for him to just abruptly stop logging in, in my estimation, means something catastrophic must have happened to him. So fuck you, you don't get to use our friends' troubles to take shots at us.

Stop acting like being apart of New Beginnings is such a heavy burden and you're doing us a great favor. If you don't want to be here, then don't be. See yourself out and don't let the door hit your hoop on the way out.

[Titan]

Stop acting like being apart of New Beginnings is such a heavy burden and you're doing us a great favor. If you don't want to be here, then don't be. See yourself out and don't let the door hit your hoop on the way out.

You post that as if I asked to be here. I was recruited due to the ~50% player turnover rate this game group has been having.

So if you can't pull up your big boy pants and suck it up. Don't try and lay it out on me. But don't pretend you actually did anything improve the new recruit experience.

[Necrogigas]

You post that as if I asked to be here. I was recruited due to the ~50% player turnover rate this game group has been having.

So if you can't pull up your big boy pants and suck it up. Don't try and lay it out on me. But don't pretend you actually did anything improve the new recruit experience.

Why should I come begging and crawling to you when you made it clear from the beginning that you didn't want to be here, didn't like us, and had nothing but contempt for us?

You literally asked to be here. Crossbow didn't message random people, he put out a wanted ad. You responded to that ad.

[Crossbow]

Okay, cease fire.

[Crossbow]

Titan, I am a big tent kind of guy, so while I really do appreciate you jumping in to help out, this may not be working out.

To clarify a few points, yes, you were invited, but if you are under the impression that you are indispensable and that we are in any danger of folding without your support, you are mistaken.

My game may have taken lumps along the way, but these players have been with me from the beginning, and they are some of the best gamers I know. I have avoided getting crossed up in player interactions, but I guess that this is getting unavoidable.

It was your job as the new player to make nice, you chose not to do that. Passive aggressive nonsense and disrespectful commentary are not going to do the job.

If you can't bring yourself to apologize to my other players and try to play nice, I guess we can simply part ways. Your choice, but I will not have you talking badly about my players or my game anymore.

[Titan]

If you can't bring yourself to apologize to my other players

Your call.

It certainly doesn't hurt my feelings.

[Mercy]

I certainly am sorry if I have helped cause any problems. I have zero problems in how Con reacted to the situation that I created. Snow is not suffering much and has no idea that Con has a past that makes this hard on him. In her opinion (and mine) he did exactly as he should have. Snow is a big girl and has been at this dance before. In her mind, this was a natural flow of how people in this part of the world look at things. Not only that, but she was trained extensively to be a corporate joygirl, and that meant learning to survive this sort of thing.

Neither the player nor the character have any beef with the way Con hit her. In her mind it is not abuse, but necessary to further the team's options. She would even have accepted it if Con had loaned her to the pirate captain for his use on the boat in order to sweeten the deal and gain some sort of benefit for the rest of the team.

But I am sorry if my actions have caused any harm to any character or the team. Do we, as a group, want me to not continue in this vein while we are in Lagos? I do think that it is safe to assume from what we have been told that the women there are treated pretty much like chattel and do we hurt our cause if we do not have at least one woman who is just that? I happen to think we actually need to keep Snow in this position for a couple of reasons: First, I think it helps our cause with the locals, who would expect it. Second, Snow is prepared to accept it and what happens, and is probably the only female in the group that is. If we maintain the illusion, we can allow the other women to be stronger. Snow is big enough to know that the team does not hate or necessarily want to hurt her, but she feels it is needed and she can recover the stun and bruises heal and she has no hard feelings.

I will, of course, stop this course of action if the other players feel strongly enough about it. Just please know in advance that I am not taking it personally at all.

[Thvor]

Titan,

This game started with 8 players--very big for a PBP. Crossbow handled that well, and wrangled us through a very fun introductory adventure. He then asked us if we wanted to continue--five of us agreed and started a new adventure. In the course of that, we lost one player who just disappeared from the forum; as Necro indicated, this was unusual, and we hope that player is ok. Crossbow found a replacement and wrote them into the story, and that's the group that we had right up until Hydroraven ran into personal issues and had to drop.

I'm giving you this history because you claim that we have a 50% drop rate. While technically true (actually, if you include all of the original 8, our drop rate is much higher), it's very misleading. Three of us have been with Crossbow since the beginning, and the two who left mid-adventure did so because of life, not because of issues with the game, the characters, or how the game is being run.

From the time you joined us, you've been concerned about running Clem in a specific way. You started by referencing a system that I'm not familiar with as a shorthand for how you thought her character should be (which you've since deleted); as far as I can tell, only one other player actually understood the reference. Crossbow and farothel tried to help. Your immediate next post was a passive-aggressive threat to drop because you don't like the characters; the only one you mentioned by name is Clem herself, though you'd already made it clear that you didn't really understand how she'd been played; you left it wide open for the rest of us to wonder if our character was also on your personal shit-list. Mercy responded by suggesting that you should feel free to adapt her personality to something you were comfortable with, at which point you suggested murdering the entire pirate crew.

This suggestion shocked me, largely because I'd assumed that one of the "fun-sucking" characters you'd complained about could have been Con, due to his periodic psychopathic behavior (which I've had trouble accepting at points). But even Con has never suggested the sort of cold-blooded carnage that you felt was perfectly acceptable. If that's your idea of what makes a fun game, it's certainly not mine.

But if you can't be arsed to tell us what your problems are before threatening to drop, pardon us if we can't be arsed to peer into our crystal balls, hold seances, and consult a deck of tarot cards to figure out what your issue is. We've made it clear that our team are not murder-hoboes; if that's hatyour looking for, feel free to look elsewhere.

[farothel]

I certainly am sorry if I have helped cause any problems. I have zero problems in how Con reacted to the situation that I created. Snow is not suffering much and has no idea that Con has a past that makes this hard on him. In her opinion (and mine) he did exactly as he should have. Snow is a big girl and has been at this dance before. In her mind, this was a natural flow of how people in this part of the world look at things. Not only that, but she was trained extensively to be a corporate joygirl, and that meant learning to survive this sort of thing.

Neither the player nor the character have any beef with the way Con hit her. In her mind it is not abuse, but necessary to further the team's options. She would even have accepted it if Con had loaned her to the pirate captain for his use on the boat in order to sweeten the deal and gain some sort of benefit for the rest of the team.

But I am sorry if my actions have caused any harm to any character or the team. Do we, as a group, want me to not continue in this vein while we are in Lagos? I do think that it is safe to assume from what we have been told that the women there are treated pretty much like chattel and do we hurt our cause if we do not have at least one woman who is just that? I happen to think we actually need to keep Snow in this position for a couple of reasons: First, I think it helps our cause with the locals, who would expect it. Second, Snow is prepared to accept it and what happens, and is probably the only female in the group that is. If we maintain the illusion, we can allow the other women to be stronger. Snow is big enough to know that the team does not hate or necessarily want to hurt her, but she feels it is needed and she can recover the stun and bruises heal and she has no hard feelings.

I will, of course, stop this course of action if the other players feel strongly enough about it. Just please know in advance that I am not taking it personally at all.

Mercy, I have no problems with the way you portray Snow. Of course, I know from other games we both play in that you tend to have characters who are ... well, off in some way (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) . And in my almost 20 years of roleplaying I've seen more weird characters, so that's not the issue. But I do understand for someone new it might be getting used to. Also taking over an established character in an established group can't be easy.

My character, Sammy, feels that Snow shouldn't do that, but she also thinks that Snow is a grown woman capable of making her own decisions. But if we have to do this again (or show you with a face full of bruises), I can do that with an illusion spell as well.

Sammy can't be in that role, since she's a mage and in Lagos that's something worth killing for (mages are respected there, even if they are female, but can also be targets of extractions, which is why I haven't been using any on the boat).
As soon as we get some XP again, I'm going to search for the spell 'purify water' (or whatever it's called). That spell alone can probably pay most of our bribes in Lagos.

[Necrogigas]

Mercy, as a player I don't have a problem with the play Snow made. I actually like where it's heading. Part of the appeal of O'Connor to me as a roleplayer is the challenge of trying to bring depth to a character, that on paper, is extremely thin.

[farothel]

Mercy, as a player I don't have a problem with the play Snow made. I actually like where it's heading. Part of the appeal of O'Connor to me as a roleplayer is the challenge of trying to bring depth to a character, that on paper, is extremely thin.

Everything that brings more dept to a character and makes for a more enjoyable experience for the player is to be considered at least. If it diminishes the joy for other players, you might want to discuss, but as Mercy has indicated he has no issues with it, I would say go for it.

As for the other players, at least for me it's something that brings a bit more dept to Sammie as well, as she has to deal with what's happening, even if it's not happening to her.

Of course, it's not appropriate for everywhere in Lagos and I certainly wouldn't do it near the Daughters of Yemaya, as they are a group who fights (and often violently) for oppressed women and children.

[Mercy]

Thank you for the support. I also think that these experiences are bringing depth to the characters, even those that are only watching, because they have to come to terms with their feelings over what is going on. And I disagree with the idea that Con is a thin two-dimensional character. I like most of what is there and perhaps together, all of us can work on helping each other work on rounding the PCs out and making them more real.

Is it OK to look at the Lagos source material? If so, I would like to get it and see what sort of information Snow is supposed to be digging up. Thanks for the warning about the Daughters of Yemaya. We do not need to piss of people just because.

[Mercy]

LOL I should have read the IC first. Good post for Con. Perhaps he and Snow should talk this out?

[Crossbow]

Feral Cities has all the info you could want on Lagos, and more than a bit that you could wish you hadn't seen. BTW, Jane wasn't kidding, her contact, Black Mamba, did write the Shadowland datafile on Lagos.

[Mercy]

Are we allowed to look at the source material?

[farothel]

Are we allowed to look at the source material?

I'm not sure if we're allowed, but I did.
-I had a campaign in Lagos a couple of years ago with my tabletop group
-My BBB character, Na'Nele, is from Lagos, so I had to refresh my memory to write her background.

It's the same if you take a character from outside of Seatle and bring it in. The player will already know about the Barrens and such things, even though the character probably doesn't (depending on where exactly he/she gets in).

EDIT: normally the Hawala tokens themselves can also be used as a form of currency, if I'm not mistaken (and are better than cash money). Not that any of our characters would know that.

[Crossbow]

Are we allowed to look at the source material?

Anything that is on shadowland is accessible source material for study, especially for Snow, so yes you can.

[Necrogigas]

My computer took a crap on me, so I'm using my phone for the time being. Does anyone have Arsenal on hand?

[farothel]

My computer took a crap on me, so I'm using my phone for the time being. Does anyone have Arsenal on hand?

I think I have all books on PDF and I have most in dead tree, so shoot.

[Necrogigas]

As indicated, O'Connor plans on adding some accessories to the AKs. I need prices (though those are probably variable to the local economy) for a few items and confirm which slots they take up and that they only need an armorer kit to install.

Sling (should be null slot)
Gas vent system (barrel slot)

Smartgun system (top slot)
Foregrip (bottom slot)

Laser sight (top slot)
Grenade launcher (bottom slot)

Can you also give me the stats for the AK?

[farothel]

AK97: damage 6P, AP -1, SA/BF/FA, RC -, ammo 38 ©, cost 500
sling (no slot, cost 10, kit, treshold 4)
gas vent system (barrel; 2, cost 200, shop, treshold 4; 3, cost 400, shop, treshold 4, 2 slots)
smartgun system (top/under, cost 500, shop, treshold (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
foregrip (under, cost 100, shop, treshold (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
laser sight (top/under, cost 100, kit, treshold 4)
grenade launcher (underbarrel weapon, cost as weapon, facility, treshold 20)

You can't put all of those mods on one weapon. Besides, if you have a smartgun, a laser sight won't help any further, so you don't have to install both.
If you really want a grenade launcher, take the AK98 (arsenal p26), which has the exact same stats as the AK97 but comes with build in underbarrel grenade launcher and costs 1000
If it was my weapon, I would add the smartgun, the gas vent, foregrip (if you don't take the grenade launcher) and sling.

Availability for weapons should not be an issue in Lagos, as all weapons are readily available (nukes might take a couple of weeks though). prices are probably also slightly lower than in other parts of the world due to larger availability, but as an Oyabos (foreigner) you probably pay more anyway.

[Necrogigas]

We have two AKs. There's also a distiction between weapon accessories and mods. Accessories can be added or removed. Mods are integrated into the weapon. Since you're giving thresholds, then those are from the mods section, if memory serves me right. Can you double check to see if there are accessory versions of the grenade launcher and foregrip and if the prices for the accessory versions of the rest of the items are the same in the core book? And please see if there are any rules for installing accessories that are distinct from mods.