Absolutely. Ol' Tubesnake is a methodical, thorough investigator. He simply left it for the kids to stick their noses into dusty old nooks and crannies.

And get eaten by the Free Spirit hiding in the duffle bag.

...I'm curious what you're thinking. Well maybe that should be discussed IC.

For clarity the comlink does have a basic password, and I don't believe Bongo has any way around that. That's just the profile it shares if Bongo plugs the battery in and checks with their own comlink.

I put links to characters in the first OOC post. You might want to check I'm linking the right spot. Especially for having proper perception test info.

Also I believe Selena still hasn't checked the place out right?

Now I keep imagining Tubesnake just standing there with everyone just thinking to himself "dusty vents, trapdoor in basement, old piping, dufflebag in crawlspace" *sips soycaf* "out of code wiring, democracies in the wall"

FYI on that other business trip I mentioned. So sorry for being slow.

This time I'm in Buffalo NY. Previously Knoxville.

Currently at the bar claiming to be where the whole wing thing started. They have rare/custized motorcycles and the like all over the walls.

Take photos for Willie!!

So I'm PMing with crossbow on their character. They might start interacting sometime here. I think that will be the full set.

Looks like we're not getting a hacker, so I think I'll make one. On the player side of things I've been annoyed by some spotlight stealing GMPCs.
So I think the hacker's street name will be "Gold" because he thinks he's not simply autistic, he's "Au"tastic! Solid at what he does, but not much for leading people...or staying focused on mission objectives without a little direction. He wouldn't mind staying behind sometimes, and actually strongly prefers it so long as he isn't too broke.

Good point with the astral.

Fiona is still guarding the bike in front of the building.

Bye
Thanee

Hi people.

Sunnyside has very kindly let me join your game as a technomancer. I will be a couple of days in Chargen.

I used to play dumpshock, but I've forgotten about how everything works, so if I make mistakes please be gentle with me

Welcome, Seth. Never played with a technomancer. Should be fun. Pretty well rounded team now.

Looking forward to being back on dumpshock! And playing shadowrun again

Technomancer
Well the bad news is that they aren't as good as a tweaked decker. But it should be 'good enough'. And there are some 'unusual' things that might be fun to see if they work.

I think with a lot of karma they get awesome (but so does everyone).

We'll need to work out how to get me into the party. (After I work out a name for 'me'). I can probably join as soon as the shape of the character is sorted out (I doubt if we'll be rolling many die in the first few posts together). Can someone give me a snapshot of 'what has happened so far' (if anything)?

A couple of questions:

• Do we have a rigger in the party?
• Do we have a person who can make/repair things (armour/weapons/vehicles/...)

Hello and welcome!




Not much happened, as we are still in the pre-stage here.

Basically, everyone got to Baltimore (either from the city, or from outside), and the fixer hooked us up with a townhouse, where we were just arriving and checking things out.

We do not even know what the job is going to be about, yet.




Tubesnake should cover both.

Bye
Thanee

Tubesnake is a decent, but not minmaxed chargen-level rigger, and a quite creditable technician.

He's not quite so good on BANG! POW! KA-BLOOOIE! but he can help patch people up after some of that.

Got it. OK I think I'll just be a 'hacker' then.

My current plan is to not be good in combat (1 initiate pass, low physical stats, no combat skills, pacifist, combat paralysis). So that's going to be up to you lot! Think 'the knapster' in the Italian Job.

What I see so far is as follows:

pbangarth (still playing two)

Quick Willie: street sam and non-rigged driver
Bongo Slade: face/scout/"distractor"/third string combat

Koekepan

Tubesnake: mechanic/rigger

Crossbow

Flatline: hermetic mage street doc

Thanee

Selina: street shaman (Cat) + ally spirit

Seth

??????: hacker

So, with a dedicated street sam plus 2 magicians plus an ally spirit, Seth, firepower should not be a problem. It looks like a well rounded group to me.

Did something happen to the ímages? Or have they never worked?

Reads like a good team to me. I'm going through Chargen with the GM now. I've not one a 4th edition for years, so I could easily have violated a dozen rules! But hey.

Are you all an established team? Or is this our first mission together?

The reason I am asking is that in my backstory (still to be approved) I hired some shadowrunners to 'extract' me from an unpleasant situation. You could easily have been that team. It would certainly explain how you know me. And if you need a decker, then you'd know that I was a decker.

Most of us have not worked together. This is the first time all are together.

Quick Willie and Selina were in a short-lived campaign in Seattle, so maybe that could work?

I think it could work well

Again need GM to agree.

They were hired to extract a number of teenagers (might be just one ... aka me) who were in pods in a corporate facility. Turns out those teenagers didn't know they were human: they had been in the pods since before birth. And they were the ones that hired the runners to get them out. The experiment was blacker than black of course.

So my character would be a person who doesn't do a lot of running yet. Walking...got that sorted out. I mean the bodies were in 'good condition' (2070s tech is awesome). Still having some problems with the whole 'I'm not an operating system' though.

So obviously a character like that would be a 'great decker'. Just not great at anything physical. Like getting shot at! Or running away.

--

Still work in progress. If GM doesn't like it, will do something else

We could call him "Podling"!

I'd like to thank you for making me a part of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B76SlBX1QUE

One nice thing about being a technomancer is flooding peoples head up displays with inappropriate images when they call you names... I wouldn't do anything like that of course.

Maybe there's some min maxing with hackers I'm unaware of.

However my strong impression is that with threading and registered sprites a technimancer, right out of the box, can do crazy things. No system can really hold up to them, even detect them, without stretching the rules to hose them or having some bad luck.

However hackers can just hack willy nilly, and nearly ignore taking a little persona damage here and there.

Technomancers have extra steps, will burn through sprite services, and may start filling up their stun track.

edit: Just messing with tags.

Any suggestions about how I make an appearance in the IC thread?

Just show up at the door. That's what I did.

Note: At the moment, there is a white Suzuki Mirage parked out front with a black cat sitting on the seat.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, Willie, Bongo, Selina, and Tubesnake are inside doing their own reno show. Flatline hasn't arrived yet, either. We've just arrived and started chatting.

Bongo and Willie have settled into rooms on the third floor. The rest are up for grabs?

We mostly just mentioned Brewster and got on with it.

Koekepan, you're having fun with all that Tubesnake construction shit, aren't you?

OK thanks thanee.

Are you OK with the character sheet GM?

Oh I changed Avatar. Having an avatar of a troll didn't really seem right!

Yup! It's how I tend to think. Bits and pieces, forming a big picture like a plant growing.

Then, one day, it blossoms, turns into a triffid, and eats Pittsburgh.

Not sure if sunnyside wants us to have rescued Angel 316, but what the hell. We can edit later.

Read good to me. I just ran with it. This is 'cooperative fiction' as well as a game after all

Well, if you went with the whole "washed up in Ridgleys Cove" thing it wouldn't be this team that was involved, so you'd be new to them.

(Basically it seemed a bit much to have two pod polts involved so I offered to merge them. Though you could go a different direciton, corps could reasonably have all sorts of pod projects going. )

Just to restate it here in case Crossbow wonders too, the GM directed disadvantages don't count towards the limit of 35. So that gives you some more points to work with.

I'd say you're close enough to start interacting except

1. You'd need to decide if you want to have them already know you via some Seattle background you could work out or if you want to go with the Baltimore backstory
2. You need some way to get to the house that doesn't risk brining cops down on it immediately. Well, I guess you could always get a cab or bus and walk in on foot.

*laughs in an embaressed way* Sorry I already turned up. My bad I misread something somewhere. I do mean sorry. If you want we can delete them. All good (although I will say I like them)

I walked in on foot. With my Transys Steed riding shotgun... No make that 'assault rifle'. We can assume I met them at Brewsters before if that's better for you.

Oh, man, sunnyside, you're going to have your hands full wit this crew!

And I'm looking forward to seeing how we all mesh into a team. Stand back, A Team. Watch out, Misfits.

We The As-Yet-Unnamed are about to show you how it's done.

Yeah, between Angel and Willie it feels like you might have a hard time going to a stuffer shack for some Soycaf without a firefight and an all points bulletin.

I was trying to push Seth to go with a concealed weapon option, but given their character it might be more fun to just stick with exactly what they wrote and assume that this time anybody else on the streets just assumed they were a cop or corporate or just didn't give a flying frag what they had if they weren't shooting at them. The gangers were expecting her, if not her ride. So she got to the safehouse OK.

But its availability lists it as a forbidden vehicle mod. You can get a license for an assault rifle these days, but openly carrying one has a fair chance of inviting trouble, either from the police or whoever's turf you are on depending on how nice the neighborhood is. But maybe the rest of the team can help them out with that.

Just to be clear this wasn't a pre-made team.

Most of the team doesn't know each other. It just so happened two of the players used characters they already had that happened to know each other from some other game on the forum.

Edit:
Looks like the group is rolling with the option where they knew you from before, so Angel wouldn't know Brewster either, except by reputation. The local gangers would still be expecting Angel by description, but also wouldn't have met her.

Clear as mud!

As the local, Tubesnake will probably be your resource in character for what you can get away with where. Though just basic searching can get a fair bit of info pulled up in your AR in a pinch.

In terms of neighborhood I suppose I still mostly think in terms of AAA, AA, A, B, C ,D, E and Z. However that isn't so emphasized in 4th, if it ever was. Maybe it would be easier to go with the neighborhood classifications from lifestyles in the runners compendium? At least Thanee knows those. This might seem like an entirely squatter area, but there's more of that going on in Baltimore downtown areas, with functional businesses around your neighborhood manages a solid "low". The Balitmore Police Union has jurisdiction and is notoriously ineffective, even in better neighborhoods, but can somewhat erratically come down on things, especially if called or if they think they can pull it off without too much trouble.

For Seth, I'll just seperate their backstory from other stuff to avoid confusion and consistency issues.

They got extracted in Seattle, Brewster is broad enough to have been involved, especially in a virtual hire. Of course Brewster would be interested in roping in a technomancer after the fact, and moving to Baltimore would foil most attempts to track Angel down by anyone thinking they're in Seattle.

Sounds like Willie was involved, but the rest not. Which could work well as I think pbangarth could handle that.

And for Seth's benifit there are maglocks on the front and back doors. Everyone has user but not security or admin access currently. The bedroom doors also have maglocks, the players also have user access to those, but they are designed on a first come first served basis for claiming a room so you're the only one with access.

There was another comlink but Angel wouldn't know about it, and I don't think Bongo or Willie ever put it's battery back in so it's entirely off.

While the gangers are talking my understanding is the wheelchair is just inside the open front door.

I think, those work fine. And they definitely still have those in 4th edition. At least Z and AAA are directly mentioned in the Advanced Lifestyle Neighborhood categories.

They also seem to translate pretty directly to the Neighborhood categories.

Z - Street - Z-Zones/Barrens (0 LP)
E - Street (0 LP)
D - Squatter (1 LP)
C - Low (2 LP)
B - Middle (3 LP)
A - High (4 LP)
AA - Luxury (6 LP)
AAA - Luxury-AAA (7 LP)

Bye
Thanee

That perhaps drifts a bit, but really does seem like a logical enough mapping I'll just stick with it.

There was table for enforcement based on weapons etc, and some refences to the letters in runners companion, but as an upshot:
There really isn't a police presence in Z or E/Street. The difference being they're scared of a Z zone, but just don't feel like checking out the sewers or abandoned buildings of E
D Once you start shooting you might well get police attention
C/Low or up you'll want to watch it with moving around with automatics the like. (where you are currently)
B/middle and up in wireless 4th ed you start having to think about cameras proliferating and queries for a SIN.
A/high and up and you want to keep your stuff concealed and look like you belong, though the world seems relaxed about melee weapons and pistols, perhaps assuming folks have a permit if they aren't acting up.
Visiting a AA or AAA area is almost a run in and of itself if you don't belong there.

In terms of moving forward I'm going on my vacation. Not sure how much I'll be able to post.

I'm not sure if Flatline is joining, but I think when I get back, or sooner if you want to call Brewster I'm liking the idea that Baltimore is indeed busy and he's got two things.

Flatline needs to do a somewhat risky "house call" and pickup for the clinic, and Willie has a boat to get him there. This might be handled off screen until/if Crossbow finishes the character.

The rest of the party goes ahead as planned.

Let me know if you feel you have everything up to date. I think most have some little things to do, and please have the math right.

pbangarth perhaps make some space separately for things gained post char gen, such as the SIN/Cash from Brewster for being out of town and maybe the other things they've snagged or have on their beds.
Koekepan I think you were going to have a medium Brisket so your drones were only one Body high.
Thanee If the 1/1 contact was from the nightclubs knowledge skill it's a freebie. I think you meant to do that but you indicate you paid.
Seth I think you haven't incorporated some of the extra points from GM disadvantages yet.

Anyway let me know when you think you're chars are done and ready to run.

I havn't added any free contacts, but can add one more for the Nightclub knowledge.

Bye
Thanee

Out of towners can also wait on free contacts and make them here. So you could just leave it as is.

Let me know if the character sheet is considered done.

I've updated Quick Willie and Bongo Slade in post #26 to reflect Brewster's gifts, but I don't know the rating of the fake SIN.

The gear we found is still laid out and likely to become communal property.

I'm happy to have Willie and Flatline go for a little nautical jaunt first, if Flatline joins us.

Oh, yeah. That is a good idea, actually.



I'm done from my perspective.

Bye
Thanee

Is there anything I need to do? I think I'm now busy until people come and get me

How many hours is that by the way?

There is the matter of the conclave in the garage, which may be nothing more than a compassionate city taking care of its disadvantaged residents. (Shadowrun?? Care??)

Once that is worked out, and Flatline appears, there would appear to be some small action to get Flatline to/from an important place in town for some important thing.

If that is dealt with, or Flatline does not join the group, we will be ready to rock!

We've gone very quiet

If we are waiting on a starter... why don't we just start anyway? It takes time to do briefings and the new starter can just be a bit late

I think we are waiting for sunnyside to come back from vacation.

Bye
Thanee

Mostly that

But also waiting for folks to confirm characters are ready. Did you update yours Seth?

Willie and Bongo are set up to find new contacts with the gifts the GM gave.

They are ready to go.