Occupational Hazzards, part 2, a funny thing happened at work today... Options

[Dog]

How much of your workplace, or area of study (if you're a student) shows up in your game? This may be an obvious question to you army guys, but is there a zookeeper who likes to make up funky critters or a maintenance guy who knows if you really can sneak down ventilation shafts or something?

Oh, and if you are neither employed nor a student....

[Tarantula]

Well, somewhat often as I work for a bank. It kind of sucks, as I get to see how pathetic bank security really is.

[Nikoli]

Funny, same thing here Tarantula

[Mortax]

We throw in elements from our school every now and then, just for kicks. Usually when it involves MIT&T or something. I also live in an area with a lot of old steel mills. Great places to give me ideas for corp facilities for runners to break into.

[Catsnightmare]

LOL, this gives me ideas.
Having the runners break into the dept store at night trying to steal the latest hot market toy, the Tickle-Me Dunky doll, only to have to wait, holding the overnight crew hostage, and keep the whole thing on the low, while they unload the 3,000+ piece shipment to get to the Dunky's all the way at the back of the truck.

[FrostyNSO]

Heh, my wife worked for a bank. I hear all about it :(

Hell, my workplace and "area of study" used to come into just about every run we did. Eventually I got tired of doing it at work and at home, so now our runs favor topics that I am blissfully ignorant of...

[Crimson Jack]

Never. I haven't found an "in" for graphic design or illustration yet. :)

[Kagetenshi]

All the time. Doing markups on hospital blueprints just lends itself to the game, you know?

~J

[toturi]

I was a civil engineer by training. So having scores and scores of floorplans are no problem for me.

[John Campbell]

One of these days, I'm going to send a group of PCs to retrieve something from the 963 raised floor at IBM's BTV site...

[mmu1]

I work in a bio reasearch lab - definitely useful for certain kinds of runs, even if the reality isn't very cinematic...

[JaronK]

You know, I think working at any job lets you see just how weak security is. As a theatrical technician, I've walked through so many security checkpoints at big concerts without having to actually prove who I am, just by saying the name of the Union. Heck, I remember having one gig where the security was tight, so they searched everyone's bags. They searched my toolbag, which was fully of knives, saws, hammers, and every other close combat thing you could imagine smuggling in, and let me go by... I had to wonder what they were searching for!

JaronK

[Prospero]

Not directly - I'm an ESL teacher - but I really bring in the linguistics stuff for all those language skills. People who want to (for example) default to Chinese from Japanese get a raised eyebrow and no chance at all. Plus I get to contemplate just how likely it would be to bring back a near-dead language like Sperethiel or Irish-Sperethiel, as well as all those NAN langs that are suddenly a lot bigger in the statistics.

[Fortune]

[Necro Tech]

As I'm a locksmith I know how bad everyone's security is and the ways around it. Conversly, I've seen high end security that is terrifying to think about.

Step 1. Burglar sets off alarm.

Step 2. Building locks down.

Step 3. Heavy equipment is brought in to cut hole in door so building can be brought out of lockdown. No I'm not kidding.

[Tarantula]

[Necro Tech]

There are whole building wings like that. You call in the professionals and they cut their way in. When you have millions of dollars in data and research a few grand for a door is chump change.

[Edward]

How dose that interact with fire codes.

I was under the impression that in the event of a fire it was required that people be able to get out. In witch case you could get out of a locked down building by setting of eth fire alarm, even if you have to light a small fire to do it.

Edward

[Bastard]

I have worked at a few hospitals, right now I am working in a lab. It seems like a nice place to have runners go, because:

1)They smell...+1 target modifier or more in certain areas :D

2)They are built like mazes, and in a fire fight, runners tend to forget where they are heading

3)There are a lot of hazards, that most runners dont think of, like battles in the lab (AIDS or HMHVV blood to be spilled), sharps containers, TB and other airborne yummies, plus its fun to have players slip and catch chlamydia (jk-im not that mean)

4)Lots of bystanders, including ambulatory patients and old people using walkers in the hall ways. This leads to entertaining exchanges, either as the runners try to protect the patients, or dont give a shit and start lobbing grenades.

[Necro Tech]

[torzzzzz]

Anything biological or chemical based the nasty the better, if i had my way i would have nasty viruses everywhere!

torz x 8)

[DrJest]

Only once, and then only for harrassment purposes. I used to work in insurance (FREE! FREE AT LAST! HAHAHAHA!) and I used a screwed up case to add to the rigger's stress load :)

Although, house insurance is pretty educational in terms of the stupidity of human beings in general and the protection of their property in specific.

[Spetulhu]

[Smed]

I'm an engineer who designs RF equipment. I had to look into RFID technology a while back and it gave me some great ideas.

RFID is a technology that runners fear in my games. Even with today's technology you can insert a small RFID transmitter right into the plastic housiong of something as its being injection molded, making it difficult to detect as its built directly into the plastic with no exposed parts. Without destroying the housing completely you can't find it with a visual inspection. Detecting the metal its made of is difficult as the rest of the device usually has other electronics in it that have larger masses of metal than the RFID transceiver.

You could conceivably make a scanner to detect it when its transmitting, but if the RFID transceiver is coded only to transmit when it gets the right coded signal, detecting it with a scanner wouldn't work unless the scanner put out the correct coded signal at the correct frequency, or the scanner happened to be on when the thing transmitted. The technology makes tracing goods much easier.

[torzzzzz]