I finally had a moment to post... yay! Jimmy gets Stealth 1 for an unusually high roll hiding under the desk, and I'm pleased that his decking went so well. Next time I get a chance to post, Mr. Sowei's former employees arrive, so if you've got any last-minute needs, get them down. I imagine everyone's posted as much as they needed so far.

Regarding snowRaven's absence, if the drek hits the fan, Web has combat paralysis anyway, so he can just choke until snowRaven returns.

--K

Due to some exceptional rolls on Intelligence, Web and Rat are both suddenly inspired with Rifle Knowledge of 1.

--K

BTW, what /is/ your house rule regarding exceptional rolls leading to increased skills? I'd like to try implementing it in a game I'm trying to run.

More apropos to our game -- I believe that Needles feels outgunned-enough that provoking combat by reacting to the mage's casting would be a bad idea. No initiative-call-requests for him at the moment. =)

The house rule works thusly:

If you roll a number high than (CurrentSkill + 1)*6, and your current skill is less than the linked attribute, your skill jumps up by one. So, if you have Pistols 6, and Quickeness 7, and you roll your pistols skill and get a 42, congratulations, your pistols skill goes to 7. Your odds of doing that on 6 dice are 1 in 46,656, and of course, the Quickness requirement is awfully high. So that almost never happens.

On the low-end, to get a skill at 1, you just have to roll the linked attribute and get a 10 (or a related skill and get an . That's [(skill 0 + 1) * 6] + [penalty for linked-attr/related-skill]. People do this somewhat regularly -- they roll their 3 dice of Quickness while trying out a new gun, and get a 10, and thereby pick up the skill at 1. The odds of this are 23%, or 1 in 4.3.

The net effect is that people end up with lots of random skills at 1 or 2 this way, just from "life experience" during the game. Sometimes that inspires them to actually pursue that skill further, spending karma on it, which is really cool because then the character has a history on why they study that. Sometimes it means people have really bizarre skills like Barghest Riding at 1 because it came up once. That's cool too, just for flavor.

The house-rule also says that if you roll high enough to increase your skill, but the linked attribute is not high enough, then you get "a little inspiration", which reduces the karma cost to up the skill from the usual 2xSkillLevel to 1.5xSkillLevel (in other words, to the level it would be if the linked attribute were higher).

Points of possible contention -- can you keep rolling the linked attribute once you have the skill at 1 (in other words, can you roll your Quickness and try to get a 16 to increase Pistols to 2?). We say no. Also, do Combat Pool dice count for the attempt at the high TN for skill increase purposes? Theoretically, I think they shouldn't, but it's too much to track in our game, so we just say, "Sure."

Another possible variant is to reward the character with a concentration appropriate to their performance instead of the general skill. That's fair too. I do general skill, but concentration makes some sense.

--K

That's pretty cool. =) I had a GM once who did something similar -- he gave me karma, and then told me I had to use it to buy Tank driving (1). =)

Regarding our game, about how far away are Arleesh, the Somoan, and the ork? I'm assuming Arleesh is about 1-1.5 meters away, since she could touch Sowei on the nose.

Needles is hesitant to tell his team that they owe Mr. Sowei no alleigance -- after all, he did hire them -- but he feels no obligation to help Sowei extort the other team. He does feel that they agreed to protect Mr. Sowei's person and ensure fair negotiations. Should Mr. Sowei be the one that tries to make negotiations unfair, I'm not sure what Needles would do. If Sowei pulled a gun, he might actually try to disarm him or otherwise knock him out, to prevent more serious personal injury via the Samoan's firepower. *laughs* [edit](though doing that would probably be a Bad Idea , considering that Sowei's packing and would probably shoot him first for interfering. Are there any special rules for disarming a gun in melee?)[/edit]

You are correct, Arleesh is only a little over a meter away. She could easily be engaged by Blackout or Needles. The Samoan and the ork are about 10 meters away, purposefully staying at a distance advantageous for their firearms. Of course, they don't seem to know about Rat or Web.

This run is taking an interesting turn, since these are not professional shadowrunners. I didn't anticipate it, but it's cool. They're just not all that concerned with "death before dishonor" or any kind of face-saving reputation stuff.

If Needles needs to disarm Mr. Sowei, there are disarm rules that he can use against the handgun.

--K

I just realized (though I highly doubt that Needles would realize this) that Mr. Sowei might be acting under a control thoughts spell, or something, and might have (rather than telling us the heretofore unknown truth) been actually being simply a puppet for Arleesh; I don't know how the spell works, but I imagine it's possible. Oh, my mind hurts just thinking about it, lol.

You're very right about not being a typical running team, though. =) I know that Needles feels no obligation to Bushido or anything like that -- While he does feel that behaving honourably is the best way, it's better to survive and atone for dishonour later than to die for nothing. I know that Rep is important, though -- wouldn't want to be branded as untrustworthy, etc.

I think that it might behoove Needles to try and pick up some knowledge about magic -- how to recognize spell effects, for example. (Is he under alien mind control, or just truth compulsion? Probably hard to tell without astral perception...)

My brain hurts.

Actually, can Needles make a check to see if Sowei is behaving in a believable manner? Now that I think about it, it seems a little strange that he would be calling the others "these esteemed individuals", and that he'd want to "go with them" anywhere. Hmm. Do you guys (others, not just Krishcane ) think it would be reasonable (or wise) to suggest that they do the transaction here and now? Mr. Tubby and his friend make me worry that we might be morethan a little outgunned. (I was about to post that suggestion IC, but I think I'll wait for advice. For now, just translation.)

If they did, we'd be more likely to be able to tell whether Arleesh had puppeteered Sowei into screwing himself, or whether he really had been meaning to screw them. I admit that I'm curious...

Web is going to divide his spell defense equally between Blackout and Needles, while trying to keep an astral eye on the scene. He also wants to see if he can relocate somewhere without drawing attention to himself. If that seems unlikely, he will stay put, and pray to Spider that this doesn't turn ugly...

Needles is trying to get the other team to back off/retreat -- but if they point the gun at him, he's going to try and spray them. (Can I delay an action like that? I know it's not quite canon the way I handled it as far as delaying action in a pass.)

Okay people, I am back home again after a very nice vacation!!!

When Web's turn comes up, he is going to try and cast a Blindness spell at the Ork, ignoring the spell defense now that the mage is on retreat.

Acknowledged.... glad to hear you had a nice vacation! Where'd you go? What'd you do? Any pictures?

--K

"Vegas.
Sorry, classified.
None that we'll see" ...

j/k. Glad to have you back, SnowRaven

LoL - Thank you.

I went to Houston, TX and had quite a good time. My first trip to the states, actually (unless you count a one hour stop-over in Minneapolis on the way to Canada, where I've been several times...)

Spent most of the time in and around Houston, with a day trip to San Antonio to see the Alamo and the River walk (highlights of the trip) and one to Galveston.

Some of the pictures can be seen at my gf's webpage (http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/sweethearts/texas.html) and more will appear there in the upcoming days (I'm the guy with long black hair, in case you were wondering)

Blackout got an inspirational roll on Athletics to close the distance with the ork in just one round. He gets Athletics of 1. Yay!

--K

PS: snowRaven: Your girlfriend is quite devotional on that webpage! Congratulations.

ty krishcane *bows*

Woot! Inspiration rules!

I used it in my TT game the other night and gave someone an "identifying old milk" skill at level 1. In the same game, one of the players felt like attending a bar with occasional cage fighting. No prizes for guessing which fights were going on in the cage at the time.

Incedentally, the Impulsive flaw also rules.

Also, I've been considering Blackout, and watching the Simpsons, and I had something of an idea. If you haven't used his immunity to the natural toxin (not man-made) yet, I'd like to see if I can change it to blowfish toxin. As a side note, he thinks he's the ultimate blowfish chef, but really, it's just that he's immune to the toxin and doesn't know it.

I love the idea that my gaming ideas influence and amuse people 10,000 miles or so from here. :) Viva la Internet.

I like the idea for Blackout. The other character should be wary when he invites them over to his place for Fugu Soup. :) Bear in mind that the Man&Machine listings for Fugu-5 is a reference to a man-made, enhanced version of the same toxin. It would be unfair to extend Blackout's immunity to that, so I won't, but for purposes of cooking, sure. And he wonders why his friends don't talk to him again after dinner parties.... and why they don't talk anyone ever again and seem to mysteriously leave town or something....

By the way, in a few hours I'll be departing for some more ninja training and testing. We're going up to Ohio again for another phase in our testing toward 2nd degree. Fun fun! I'll be back on the Forums on Monday.

DigitalHeroin, Jimmy has the action after Needles....

--K

Edit: DarkScrier --- I hope you don't mind that I assumed Blackout's next action would be to follow-up with actually hitting the ork, as he planned. Between Blackout's personality and the fact that almost nothing had tactically changed since he declared that intent, I just went ahead with it.

Have fun krishcane, and good luck with the tests!

Thank you for the well-wishing. I am so sore right now, I can barely walk. Five hours of continuous testing makes me feel like I ran 15 miles. And of course, then we had to drive 500 miles home from the training.

It was a transcendent experience, as usual. It's funny that it could be so amazing every time -- it's different every time, but always hits a high pitch. I saw a lot of old friends, and one of them received his 7th degree black belt. I heard a lot of amazing stories, and saw some jaw-dropping feats of skill.

As for myself, I received solid marks for my work. I am one step closer to 2nd degree. I seem to be consistently just about average among my peers, and to be "average" among these folks is a very high honor.

--K

Congratulations then, krishcane I both envy you, and not (if you know what I mean... )

No response from gknoy to the action to Needles, so I just moved on...

--K

Web is going to attempt summoning a Watcher spirit to distract the elf mage. Only a Force 1, since he's suffering from drain and it probably won't matter much anyway.

Web's going to order it to manifest and taunt the elf woman for running away and hiding.

(He figures if it can distract her for a little while, and maybe anger her, that the others can get a chance to get to her as well)

Thanks guys. gknoy, thank you for the upcoming action for when you'll be out of town. That always helps.

Quick question for everyone -- I've been thinking about making an adjustment to the campaign after this run is complete. Normally, runs earn say 2 to 6 karma. However, on the Forums, runs take months to complete. I'm toying with giving a karma adjustment between runs to accelerate the power-growth of the PCs a bit -- maybe somewhere in the low double-digit karma range. We could think of it as "time lapse photography" -- a couple of months go by in-game, the PCs get some practice and shopping in, that sort of things.

What do you think? Or would you rather it stays low-level like this, with karma trickling in just a couple points a month on average?

--K

re: DJ Slyce noticing the elf woman coming towards him...

I think that next time, we need to have some sort of silent signal arranged as an SOS for the Deejay - like blinking the lights, or something, that we would know to look for but others might not. I hope we aren't moving to a hostage situation, because that would just suck (for all of us, really, of course).

Appologies for silence here, been feeling muay swamped lately, bit stressed, re-focusing now.

I like the concept of the time lapse deal between runs, eliminate the downtime except in snippets.

No prob for your silence, DH. It's great if you post when you can. Jimmy will have some decisions to make now...

--K

I also like the time lapse idea - things do take some time on here, and advancement is never a bad thing (though it's kinda funny to have a shaman who'll kill himself if he summons a force 2 nature spirit... )

I kind of like the time lapse idea, too. As far as the SOS goes, heck, we have cell phones set on open mic. All Jimmy has to do is give a shout.

Thanks for reminding me of the open mic!

Jimmy did some quick thinking it seems, and thanks to his average Charisma (which is unusual in any SR team, let alone this one!) he rolled extremely well to initimidate his stalker. Jimmy gets Initimidation skill of 1. Who would have expected a decker with Intimidation? I love it.

--K

True on the open mic -- but if he speaks into it, she might have heard him talking, and ruined his surprise.

BTW, is anyone else reminded of in Metal Gear Solid when Snake has people freeze? =)

I just love the imagery of this run. Here's the team casually chatting and arguing with the belligerent and semi-incoherent Johnson, although they already have the money, while their decker holds the opfor team leader mage at gunpoint in a tension filled standoff, not 150 meters away. How cool!

--K

Edit: A standoff, I might add, based almost entirely on a bluff.

I love it too, of course =D

*I* know that Arleesh is nearby, but hell - Needles has no idea. hehe. For all he knows, they're gonna have to spend an extra couple of days tracking her down.

And yes - part of the willing Needles is being so hard on Sowei is that they are in a sense beign asked to do something more. (unless I misremember things. If that's the case, I can edit/nix what Needles is saying.) that, and we already have a stronger negotiating footing since we've already been paid. <g>

I think Needles will try to negotiate for an extra 2000 (for the group, not each)... unless someone suggests a better number. And this is only to ensure that Arleesh accepts Sowei's agreed payment (not to just take the item).

If sowei doesn't wish to do this, and we do find where Arleesh is (such as by accident or Jimmy radio-ing us), I think that Needles doesn't mind one way or the other if she gets away or not - as long as Jimmy stays safe. If she hurts him, then we are of course obligated to commence beatdowns. [/ego]

I feel bad for Arleesh, sortof -- I have no idea whether Sowei really was trying to screw her team over (probably was, I expect, but then I'm gullible as heck). And if he was, then we are a buncha tools for helping him. But we can find that out later, I imagine, and then perhaps do something to rectify the injustice of the situation (maybe hire out to arleesh? lol).

Exactly. Isn't Shadowrun great?

--K

Oh yes - I love this run so far. I think we have walked every path from occasional brillance, to professionalism, to wannabees, to utter and complete amateur screw-ups - and all in all doing fairly well at that. It's been great!

And if it wasn't apparent, Web will move along down the path - trying to give the team directions ahead of time as they leave him behind (if that happens). As far as he is concerned, the job should be completed now, and he needs to rest before they do anything rash like run off on a wild goose chase. Or so it should be in his little perfect world, anyway...

I completely agree. I think that this new twist is another way this run jsut gets more and more interesting.

I'm not sure whether giving-the-desperate-J-back-his-money-in-trade-for-phat-lewt is (a) brilliant, (b) inane, © professional, or (d) alltogether too greedy ... but I kinda like the idea.

Besides, Needles is thinking that while none of us might know an auto fence, Martin might. We probably might need to take precautions to keep it from being ... *ahem* ... asset-reallocated by local gangs. Or sell it quickly. hehe. Either way, we have some nice gear out of this (hey, cool, a pistol! Can I have one? ) and the possibility for either a nice ride, or a lot more money than we had before.

Or, conversely, some people very mad at us for helping Sowei... but I suspect that Arleesh /already/ thinks we were out to screw her. Good thing Jimmy has some trid footage, that might come in handy at pointing out that She shot first ... assuming she'll even care.

In preparation for leaving the junkyard, I would like the following intentions from the PCs:

1.) What stuff are you taking with you? I know the team plans to take the guns and ammo that were dropped by the opfor. I already presume Rat searched the downed Samoan human. Will he search the semi-conscious and alive Hispanic ork? Will the team be taking Mr. Sowei's car?

2.) What about the opfor themselves? What will be done with the human's body, if anything? What about the alive and semi-conscious hispanic ork? Kill him, take him with you, stash him somewhere, or leave him be?

3.) Where do you want to go next? Do we go into fast-forward time, or would you like to detail some interactions?

Thanks!
K

re: the ork: I'd say leave him alive -- no need to be coldhearted.

Sowei already searched the ork, as far as I recall, for his Cool Thing, leaving some cigs, a pistol, and ammo on the ground; if Rat doesn't want to frisk him while he's alive, he could just grab those. If rat doesn't, Needles will take the pistol and ammo.

The samoan is probably too big to move easily, unless we all move together. I'm all for leaving him there -- or at least roll him over into a semideserted corner and cover him with some junk. If the law find him, they are probably likely to put pressure on /his/ crew, to at least find out who/what happened. Conversely, anyone have a "cleaner" contact? (j/k -- image of the guy from Femme Nikita came to mind.) Pressure on them probably means less pressure from his crew on us, for a while.

I'll take one of the pistols, if Rat is willing to share; we might consider keeping the hardware, and practicing with them (group cross-training, perhaps) in our downtime, as opposed to selling them.

The car sounds pretty nice; if we do take that and give Sowei's nuyen back (I vote for that, but I dont know where the others stand), I feel we should sell it, rather than have it draw attention to us on the mean streets of seattle.

[edit]
-- Oops, forgot to add the "where next" part. In future downtime, Needles would like to learn more about first aid (improve his Biotech skill), improve his Negotiation skill, and get some practice in with pistols. (assuming he has enough karma to blow like that...). He'd also like to see about starting lessons at Blackout's gym -- either to increase his current martial arts knowledge (is crosstraining like that OK?) or learn a second one.

Other than skill advancement: Needles will try to procure some personal armor for himself, having seen the kind of firepower foes are packing. He'll also try to get a portable medkit, and will probably buy a roomsweeper if Rat doesn't "upgrade", or if he doesn't get a pistol out of team "loot".

This all depends on how well we can fence the car (and IF we do), but we might consider pooling resources for a team hideout/base type thing - a safe place to keep extra gear, etc, perhaps ... then again, that might be getting ahead of our selves. Interested in others' thoughts on this.
[/edit]

Jimmy's gonna search the room he's in quick-like for anything electronic. Hell, he's already been party to murder and meyham, might as well add theft. Otherwise he'll back up the video he was capturing, and follow what the rest of the group does.

Not sure if Web will get there in time to have a say, but he cares little for trading the money against a car. The concept of selling loot isn't foreign to him, but something like a flashy car isn't useful loot in his mind. Of course, the more savvy members of the team won't have much problem arguing their point... (Personally, I'd say taking the car is a Very Bad Idea - especially if people are looking for Mr.Sowei...but, for this team at least, that can be more fun )

Other than that...he'll see if he happens to spot anything else useful in the junkyard on their way out. Web's main goal now is to get a good meal and probably upgrade his wardrobe abit. Maybe even take a shower, though that is overrated - if he smells too clean the rats in his alley may feel threatened

He would also like to get his hands on materials for a Medicine Lodge, and some Watcher conjuring materials. He has no clue where to find those though, and will try to enlist the aid of his newfound 'associates' for that.

As far as I am considered, fast-forward time works for those plans, I think. Karma-wise I am unsure of which direction I want to go with the character atm, so... we'll see. Leaning towards trying to raise an attribute, actually.

Rat, to be honest, is probably too paranoid to go for Mr. Sowei's deal. As far as he is concerned, they will be piling into a car that maybe one or two of them could barely drive, driving it far out into an unfamiliar area, and handing over the money to Mr. Sowei, who can just take out his cell phone and call the police to report his car stolen. And what will a bunch of ill-dressed thugs from the Barrens, packing a lot of heat, say? "Uh, no, man, ya got it wrong, the dude, like, gave the car to us."

Considering that Mr. Sowei has (apparently) screwed over one group of runners already, and only (luckily, in Rat's view) handed over the credstick because he was mind-controlled, Rat is disinclined to trust him any further than he can throw him. And Mr. Sowei's obvious desperation will make him even more suspicious. If more than half of the team seem to be going for this (in his opinion) hare-brained scheme, he will say "Okay, we can compromise, then...", and nonchalantly shoot Mr. Sowei. "See? Now, we got the friggin' car you guys wanted. Now, anybody know how to drive it?"

As far as the ork, Rat is inclined to leave him be, although he will pick up the pack of cigs (to bribe squatters with), leaving the gun to Needles.

Blaaaaaah.

/me utterly fails his clue test ...

Damn good points. I had not thought about that. So do we pretty much just leave him here and head off on foot? We might have trouble transporting the AR (unless we stash it someplace or something? do we even want it?)

Sowei is ... un-trustable, it would seem. Guess we leave Sowei as-is; after all, our contract /is/ complete...

Guys, this is awesome. I laughed out loud reading your posts and discussion just now -- especially the visual of the team trying to talk their way out of being pulled over in a Sabb Dynamit reported stolen.

It sounds like, after discussion, Needles, Web, and Rat come in against the credstick-for-Saab trade, and Jimmy isn't really focused on that area. I'd be interested in more details from from the team (aside from Needles) about whether they'd rather sell or keep the looted weapons.

I'm going to wait a bit to do a wrap-up post, to let Dark Scrier comment on Blackout's intentions, and then we'll move ahead.

--K

I'm all for keeping the gear -- I mean, we'd only end up buying similar stuff, right?

- Jimmy could probably use a larger gun than his hold-out.
- Needles could use a gun period, (assuming he spent time/karma to learn...)
- that AR looks like we ought to hold on to it, as we probably couldn't buy an equivalent for as much as we could sell it for.

For any gear that we do sell, Needles will take time after work and clean them up, before we show them to Martin. *winks*

As an aside, I think that I (as a player) would make an especially crappy shadowrunner. Sometimes my paranoia level is waaaay too low.

Blackout doesn't like the idea. Nuyen is nuyen, and that car could have a bomb in it. He saw a movie about that once. Sowei walks twenty feet away, everyone's happy with their new deal. BAM. No witnesses.

Okay, so I ran with that a bit. The team is now away from the junkyard, with the weapons, no stolen cars or dataterms.

I presumed Rat would want to keep the Savalette, and that no one would mind since he's the most skill pistolier. I let you guys decide who gets the rifle and the Hammerli LP. Rat of course can keep his Remington to himself (he did pay for it) or hand it out if he likes. Or sell it to Martin.

Let me know how you want to answer those weapon distribution questions, and then let me know what you'd like to work on during the cinematic fast-forward. (gknoy already did this for Needles... I just need to hear about the rest of ya... )

--K

Honestly, I'd consider buying the roomsweeper from Rat, if he is thinking of selling (knowing him, probably not ) - a gun like that is a lot more useful when the drek hits the fan than the light pistol is. I like the "style" point of the pistol, though.

Web isn't too concerned about the guns - he certainly doesn't want one, and doesn't know enough about it to judge their worth. He'll settle for his share of the money; maybe try and barter for a free meal as 'compensation' for not getting a gun