Read my campaign thread to find out. Not you, FanGirl.

And I think the contacts are okay. Ana's great; I would never have thought of her. The overprotective agent... well... let's just say I watched Elektra the movie, and I hated it. But he really suits your character, so he's just fine.

Then again, I could make him very mafia-boss-ish, and he could still treat you like a daughter. He'll wave to you while his boys break the fingers of a pusher who's skimming off the top.

I agree, I like the contacts. One for being interesting, one for being so classicly cliche'.

Which one's cliche? The fixer? I agree.

And I never confuse classic with cliche unless it's in parody.

it's an oxymoron

"Classicly Cliche' ", not the fixer. Although I suppose he could be.

The girl is? What examples do you have of this "Socially Acceptable Veronica Mars" archetype outside of grade school girl serials?

Agh! No, "classicly cliche" is an oxymoron. The fixer is cliche'.

For your contacts, although Mackie may have lost touch with his Shadowrunning contacts, I'd still have him have a good ear to the streets and maybe a good connection with a few corps through past J's.

Having an ear to the ground will allow him to keep up with the digs on the streets.

Could you please come up with a new fixer? Pretty please?

And having a low contact fixer would destroy the tenous balance of overwhelming power that I seek to achieve. How would he know of her if he didn't have contacts?

No! Mackie is, like, my child! My forty-six-year-old. . . imaginary. . . child. . . yup.

Okay, I give in. Emo, you may feel free to change Mackie's life, background, and personality around to suit whatever purpose you may have. Make him a shark with a frickin' laser beam attached to his head if you like. All I ask is that he keep the name of Mackie Messer, and here's why.

Now, I'll have to switch some build points around in order to make a more connected fixer. I'm not going to change my attributes, skills, or qualities because they're pretty much set in stone now. However, because my contacts and gear haven't come into play yet, I consider them to be up in the air for now. The house rules state that every player gets a number of free contact points equal to four times one's Charisma rating at CharGen. Since I have a Charisma of 4, I have a total of 16 free points to spend on contacts. Here is how I have spent them so far:

Let's see Ana looks like a slavic spelling, Russian perhaps. Vladivostok is also in Russia and EVO/Yamatetsu is in Vladivostok. SO now we just need a good Russian sounding last name. How do you like Ana (Anastasia) Kiranova

Sounds good.

But you can keep the 6/4 fixer; that's fine. The party knows enough 4/6 fixers, anyway. 4/6 is pretty good; he can get you anything in town, and do enough runs for him, and his connection goes up.

Thanks, Emo! But I'll keep Mackie the way he is now, just for the helluvit.

BTW, here's a link about the name Ana. I like the sound of Ana Kiranova; I'll probably go with that unless someone can top it.

May 5th

Emo insisted that I post these pictures of me and him. Aren't we so frickin' adorable that you just want to puke?

EDIT: Posted larger versions of the pictures.

We're are the puppies???

In my MIND!!!!!

I know - but the pic should express it too!

Dude, they're scratching and barking up there. My eyes are squinted like I'm crapping out a shuriken, but I'm not, I just have puppies in my head.

That's exactly how I pictured both of you. Weird, huh?

I was thinking the same thing, at least about my picture. Squinting eyes, yelling mouth, katana, shirt with the first line of my sig... yeah, that's me.

And I made up every line in my sig. I am AWESOME.

May 7, 2006

Sorry that I didn’t make this entry sooner, but I goofed off all yesterday afternoon and much of the evening as well. Anyway, I would like to announce that our first run was a complete success! (Yay!)

As you may recall from last time, FanGirl (the TM), Johann (the sniper) and Vranton (the mage) were trapped in a shadow mall that had been invaded by insect spirits and had been hired by KE to take them out. The four shamans who instigated the mess had used the machine platform in the center of the mall to temporarily escape our heroes and hole up in the basement (along with their countless minions and equally countless innocent, injured victims), so the goal was to get to the basement and destroy them. Unfortunately, K broke his tailbone and was therefore unable to partake in the fun, so Johann rode the pine this session. C, however, was there with his newly created character, an elf PhysAd named Moloko Plus (a very horrorshow name in this devotchka’s opinion, O my brothers). Moloko was injured in the initial bug onslaught, but was fortunate enough not to get dragged off, and so he was healed by the security mage at S-K. As Vranton busied himself with binding a Force 10 Chaos Spirit—it seems that Vranton is a Chaos Mage, a follower of a new discipline invented for the campaign—Moloko and FanGirl went around and looted everything they needed.

FanGirl also managed to hack into the mall's master security system to spy on the flesh-forms in the basement, and sent a minidrone down into the ventilation system to check on the four ringleaders hiding in the manager’s office (because there were no cameras in there). As she watched, the troll shaman berated the gnome shaman for leading them to a bad end with his allegedly crappy plan. In response, the gnome manabolted the troll for his insolence, refusing to give any explanation for his actions.

As Vranton finished up with the binding, the shamans stopped arguing and went into the main room to do that voodoo that they do. The group made their rendezvous at S-K, while KE sent in one of their special ops to talk with them: a woman who just so happened to be a powerful Mantid. As she entered the building, FanGirl observed as the gnome shaman down in the basement stopped what he was doing and went over to the platform. As his comrades continued their sorcery, the gnome took the platform up to the main level, all the time in an apparent state of beatific joy. Mantid Lady startled at the sight of him, told the group to stay in S-K, and went off to speak with the gnome. Of course, our heroes are nothing if not busybodies, so of course they each ignored Mantid Lady’s obvious desire for privacy and used their own special methods of spying on the pair.

From the brief conversation that took place between the pair, it became clear that the gnome shaman had fallen in love with this woman and bound a Mantis spirit to her some time ago. Later on, he had been somehow separated from her—possibly because of her position as a KE op—and had pulled the entire crazy stunt just to get to see her again. (I should note that Emo played Creepy Gnome to great effect, speaking his lines in a very disturbing whisper that all of us found quite unsettling.) Mantid Lady weighed all the conflicting emotions that were welling up inside her, and managed to make the most rational choice I feel she could have made: she took Invae form and slashed Creepy Gnome open, causing his guts to spill out. S-K Mage healed Creepy Gnome just enough to stop him from dying, however, although not enough to make him able to try anything. Since it was obvious that Creepy Gnome wasn’t an immediate threat anymore, the group was able to turn its attentions on the remaining baddies in the basement.

To make a long story short(er), Vranton and Moloko got into the basement and got rid of all the bug spirits. They succeeded with almost no loss of human life: the three remaining shamans were killed because they were becoming the hosts of True-Form queens, but the injured and/or formerly possessed victims were going to be physically—if not mentally—okay. FanGirl did little except send a couple of drones up and down the ventilation shafts on errands for Moloko; she’s not much of a fighter, and the boys seemed to be managing well on their own.

The group went back upstairs, and Vranton, FanGirl, and Johann got Masked by the S-K mage (boy, was he ever helpful) while Moloko used his Disguise skill to apply some nanopaste. Once all the survivors were taken out of the building in some kind of super-dooper quarantine bubble thingy, KE sprayed their special brand of Raid into the building just in case there were still any bugs left. The group members each got their pay as well as their looted equipment, which the officers were nice enough to pick up and store in special boxes for them. After witnessing an interesting coda featuring Mantid Lady and Creepy Gnome, the group exchanged contact information and went their merry ways.

I must mention FanGirl’s own special epilogue, because it gives hints of epic Things To Come ™. After she went home, she went into full VR and hacked into the Novatech store’s server. She had selected the that particular target because she could sense Deep Resonance emanations, and even though the server was meant to be all but impossible to hack, it was a piece of cake for FanGirl. In fact, I didn’t even have to make any dice rolls for her. O_o To make another long story short, she met a wolf puppy sprite that lead her to a new AI. The AI didn’t give its name, but did made some cryptic remarks about being “interested” in FanGirl (speaking in a whisper similar to that of Creepy Gnome) before kicking her off the server. However, FanGirl wasn’t alone when she “woke up:” the puppy sprite had stowed away inside her mind, giving her a massive headache that only subsided when she stored the puppy in the commlink she had picked up at the mall. A little while later, Moloko was bored and called up Vranton and FanGirl, inviting them to hang out at a seedy bar known as The Rat Hole. We then made some awkward attempts at roleplaying before calling it a day. In the end, each group member was awarded with 6 Karma Points—even Keith, although he wasn't there— and 20,000.

I close with a Quote of the Week:

A bear shaman with a bear pelt on his back, bear skull on his head, and bear claws on each hand walked in, looked at Vranton, got a weird look on his face, and walked out.

Also, the AI said it was one of many, and that the many are of one. O_o

I love describing things in the Matrix. The security system was a large brain floating in the middle of nowhere, and when she hacked it open, the lobes split apart, unraveled the infinitely dense wrinkles, and showed a limitless expanse of screens. When she looked into the system, a wire from below every screen shot up and plugged into her head.

Yup, the Matrix is awfully trippy . . ..

I'm sorry I forgot about the AI's revelation, but in my defense, the research of Frederic Bartlett and others has shown that people are more likely to forget things that they can't put into some kind of recognizable schema or mental framework.

Anyway, I now have 6 Karma and 20,600 to spend, and I'm not sure how I should spend it yet. Emo is house-ruling in cash for karma: I can pay 2,500 for skill boosts, or 5,000 for stat boosts. I'm not sure how much skill group improvements will cost, though . . ..Emo, how much are they?

Anyway, here is my current character sheet. Any advice?

2500 per karma both for skill groups and individual skills, and 5000 per karma for stats. I won't allow cash-for-karma for Resonance and Magic; I'll use special rules for karma cost reduction for initiation and submersion. I'll base the rules for submersion off the rules for initiation cheapening when Street Magic comes out, and if you initiate or submerge before then, I'll allow you to retcon your submersions and stuff after they do.

You can, however, spend money on Edge like a normal stat; I'll assume you're gambling or something.

Wait, that doesn't make much sense. I guess you're gambling against people who are really good.

May 9, 2006

I have added an IC topic to "Welcome to the Shadows" entitled "Discussion: Something big happened to me today . . ." I'm posting as FanGirl, wondering about the experience with the AI. If you wish to give her some advice and insight into this, come make an IC post here.

I posted there! I posted there! Yay1!!11!!!! And I have a bl0g for my character now.

Emo, you are an evil little man...

btw, My character's icon is a badger from that site in a backwards baseball cap.

I just had to laugh out loud....

Do all hostile attack programs manifest as snakes when you run a reality filter?

And everybody, you can post on my character's bl0g if you want. Even FanGirl. :.(..... (Tears of loneliness)

I posted a comment to your new IC discussion.. just to give some depth.

Wyrm probably won't touch on the subject of AI's, seeing as she's still leary of them since her encounters with Deus and his Otaku minions. Though - if she can remember - she had met Morgan and found her quite endearing.... BronzeWyrm's view on Resonance is that it lurks in the in-between hidden places of the Matrix, and cause she loves drugs, she'll probably think you're high when you talk about Resonance servers.

Wyrm would probably be a good source of Matrix sub-culture (which shouldn't affect your game too much, to apease Emo) Unlike FanGirl, Wyrm's from a ganger campaign I play and is pretty much low grade as TM's go. (Thanks to the GM's gimped rule system) If you don't want me to comment any further FanGirl, say so and I'll take leave... I'll try not to rain too much on Emo's parade, the Matrix is filled with all kinds of views and opinions and - though NetSpeak filled - her views are pretty open. (probalby more open than mine as a player. )

[edit]
Don't worry Emo, I'll leave blog alone...

Dude, post IC if you want. He's supposed to generate hostile responses with his post.

May 14, 2006

Yesterday was our third session, and although K is all better now (apparently he had thought he had bruised his tailbone last week, though it actually turned out to be a sprained muscle near his tailbone) his girlfriend was ill and he felt obligated to keep her company on the phone, meaning that he still couldn’t come this time.

In this latest session...
(WARNING: LONG FRICKIN' STORY AHEAD)So that's the story.

Oh yeah, and I used cash-for-karma to buy 1 skill point in Con, then bought two new Rating 2 SINs: “Velma Kelly” and “Roxanna Hart.” Give yourself a cookie if you know what the names are a reference to.

So . . .any thoughts?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I also got a pocket laser in case I need to burn things, and I registered a bunch of sprites because they're just so useful.
EDIT2: Spoiler'd the part about the run, so you don't have slog through it if you don't want to.

My bodyguard character Bronze had a no-kill policy. (he's a bodyguard after all, payed to preserve life, not to end it) I've been known to walk away from games where the GM - even after having been warned of my characters values - still wanted him to do wetwork.

Of course these were online IRC games, where it is easy to walk away from the game, so I can see your delema... it's different for a live group.

I do wonder about the following:
Being a rich corp kid, wouldn't he have a Doc Waggon contract?
Could you approach the mage bodyguard and have the death faked?
Being the Matrix guru FanGirl is, can you dig up blackmail material anyway, forcing the kid to go with option 2 or be exposed. Even after the 'fake death' is done the kid would still be forced to go into hiding cause you still have blackmail material on him.

So this way the J can have his cake and you keep your morality clear of dirty deeds...

And remember that the entire reason for the founding of the bar was that someone crashed through the roof of the house and survived; if they go with the idea to kill him, they'll have to think of a way to make the fall a little harder than usual.

And I'll make sure you want to kill him. Hehehehehehhhh...

And the reason the media spectacle won't be nearly as lucrative if you do what you want to do is that the focus won't be on his bar; if he crashes and gets killed by something that shouldn't be there, the media's centered on the footage of his fall through the smiley face. If he gets caught attempting rape in an alley, the attention is fixed on a crying girl being walked to a car by her "uncle."

And damn right you won't get much karma if you do this!

Well, his bodyguard is a mage... counterspelling the 'magic safeties' of the whole event would result in a very unpleasant landing....

I know, and I said "harder than usual." And if you remember the history of the bar, it originally was a normal house. The reason there's a smiley face on its roof is because someone crashed through the roof and survived and the owner wanted to dissuade anyone jumping with the smiley face. This became the gimmick that made this bar the big hit that it is. I started out the campaign with someone jumping without magical protections after the first guy and surviving; even if the kid was really weak, he'd have a 50/50 chance of survival. No splat, no .

And do you know the RL name of the bridge so I can awkwardly retcon it into the campaign?

What about the inherent digninty of HIS human life?

Be hard to accomplish, but get the target to pay for faking his own death. Then you don't need to kill anyone, though you would need to get your hands on a dead body. Probably some laying around somewhere.

Johnsons pays for a spectacular death, target pays you to live, team gets more money for more effort (Which should motivate them, "We get more money if we don't actually kill anyone").

If you need to, blackmail the target into faking his own death.

Wetwork really should be optional... opportunities should be there of course so that players can go through the whole moral dilemma of doing it or no so it adds to character development and good roleplaying moments.

Someone that starts off very opposed to killing people may over the course of time realise that sometimes it's the lesser of two evils and vice versa.

The team I run with we pretty much sat down and asked what we thought of wetwork and most of us had no problem with it. Hell we nearly offed a random bod because he looked enough like our mark that we could still get the reward for it.

Either way if someone doesn't want to do it it's only fair to give them a chance to find a way of doing the job in a more pacifist way instead of forcing players into a situation where they would have to act OOC.

Most people don't rape women when they're drunk.

Think of this as inherent human dignity versus inherent human dignity. He views his as arbitrarily more than that of others and seeks to degrade that of others. Are you to say that he is worth more than those he victimizes?

That's the dilemma of belief in human life. Some human lives make it really hard to follow up on. But there are always answers besides just killing them.

Of course, I'm a huge fan of the death penalty. I have to be, or they'd revoke my license to be a Texan, and when I read (in today's paper) about two girls (14 and 16) getting gang raped and slowly strangled to death by six guys I wanna be the guy that squeezes the syringe. I can defintely see the other side though, and it would be much better to try and fix someone's psychological issues that result in that behavior.

That works if you have time, money, and a big fucking building to put them in. The runners don't have anything resembling that option.

There are options available besides incarceration. Brainwashing takes a while. A cortex bomb designed to go off if he rapes somebody works pretty well, and takes away the murder aspect, replacing it with suicide. a personafix chip would totally change his outlook on life.

As a GM I'm used to having characters kill left and right, but I've always found the most interesting campaigns to be the ones where killing wasn't an option, either because of morality or practicality.

Damn, I like that troll. He is awesome .

At that point, Gollum was harmless; CK is not. This is his only really foolproof way of protecting his business, and morally, it makes no difference whether he has him killed in a back alley or in midair over a house. Since he is the original victim and this is the only way to end it, he is in the right.

This does not refute a maiar, since the situations are very different.

I don't know the back story, but is death really the only way to end it? If it is, then I hope FanGirl walks away from the run in disgust and never works for that Johnson again, after having a long talk with her fixer about what sort of jobs she'll take.

But situations where death is the only recourse are rare, especially when you dremove self defense from the equeation, as this is obviously not a case of imminent deadly danger.

Hmmm.... maybe I'll find a way to put it back in.