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WinterRat1
Welcome to the Recruitment Thread for Down in the Gutter (DITG), a long term gang campaign using SR 4 rules, set in 2070.

DITG will chronicle the establishment, rise, and quite possibly fall of one of the countless third-tier gangs that come and go in the Redmond Barrens. The game will open one hour after the conclusion of a spectacular gang war that rocked the Kingsgate Area of the Redmond Barrens and drastically altered the balance of power.

You will play one of the survivors of this gang warfare, now in need of a new gang to call home in order to survive to see tomorrow. You will participate in the formation of the new PC gang, solidify it as a presence in the Kingsgate Area, and be a part of its attempt to carve out a place to call home in one of the worst slums in Seattle.

The game will focus on life in a Barrens street gang, and everything that entails. Simple survival is a daunting task, let alone climbing up the shadow food chain. This is not a street level runner campaign. This is a story of living hand-to-mouth, trying to get by each day by taking what you need from others to survive and trying to stop them from doing the same to you.

More details can be found at:

Down in the Gutter Wiki

Specific Sections of Interest Include:

About Down in the Gutter
Character Generation Houserules
Posting Guidelines

Our current roster of players includes 3 GMs on staff and approximately 15 PCs.

Since our current roster already has two adepts we will not be accepting adept submissions. Our current roster technically has two magicians, but since one of them is extremely new (i.e. he Awakened one hour before game start), I will consider accepting another magician character or mystic adept if the concept is sufficiently impressive.

I will note there are plenty of mundane character concepts available that have not been taken yet; additionally, I want to emphasize that as a gang, character creation should be less about finding a ‘niche’ that has not been taken and more about building a person that will be fun and interesting to play in a gang environment.

If you are interested, post your character concept only here. Once I have given you the ‘ok’, apply for membership to the wiki and post your character in the Character Generation section for review.

If you are not wiki-proficient, you can ask one of our talented wiki GMs, ES Sparky or Vegas, if they would kindly do so for you.

Since there is plenty of information available on the wiki and in the Down in the Gutter Planning Thread, I will not be recapping it all here, but if you have any questions, please post them here and we will be happy to answer them for you. We hope to see you in the game with us!

The Down in the Gutter Crew
HeySparky
Sweet. Recruitment!

As WR said, Vegas and I are - respectively Wikisarus Rex and Wikitron Rex. PM or post questions here if you have wiki questions.
Konsaki
'Well met!' to all you brave bastards who feel you can survive the hell that is called the Redmond Barrens.

Name's Konsaki and I'm going to let you know what I'm about in this game. Listen up and you might actually live long enough to eat your next meal.

My job of Player GM involves discribing the world as it tries to slowly whittle your character away until there's nothing left but dispair and that naggin craving for your next fix. But fear not, there will be many things in this world you can derive pleasure from, though most are just as likely to kill you as sustain your need for escapism and excitement. This leads me into my next title very nicely...

Opposition GM
Yes, that's right, all you chip heads and druggies who call yourself gangers. There are things out there that don't like to get shot at and fully plan on shooting back at you, if not slinging some crazy mojo instead.
One on one fights in a back alley, you and your buddy getting ambushed by a pack of ghouls because you stayed outside way to late or squads of gangmembers shooting it out over a street corner. Fights are mean, bloody and ruthless, fitting for the wastelands they take place in.
At the epitome of these battles, you might get to see full gangs duking it out for pleasure, food, money, turf or just to see your ugly mug smeared all over the pavement. That is, if you survive long enough...


I'd say good luck to you poor sods, but if you had any luck at all, you wouldn't be in the Barrens at all. Instead, I'll just say 'Have fun while it lasts, cause there are no guarentees in this world except that everything dies in the end... everything.'

Oh, one last thing, I'm the nice GM.
Shadow
Name: Ghost
Race: Ork
Age: Late Teens
Previous Gang Affiliation: Bleeding Edge

Ghost is a street orphan, born in the slums and raised in hell. His mother never even held him, just passed him off to the clinic for her fix. He was raised by the Redmond Orphan Fund, a nice way of saying he got a meal once a week. By the time he was 6 he was on the street, shadowing other people, trying to steal enough food for him and his pet cat. When he was 10 he stumbled into the wrong territory and got the snot beat out of him. Luckilly for him he didn't die. A street friend helped him to a street doc who patched him up. Then he goblinized. No more scrawny ten year old, hello big ork.

The way things changed was night and day. People started listening when he spoke, and doing what he told them. The weight of this never really struck him till he was with the Edge. When decisions he made sent friends to their grave. He left them and went to be a soldier for a bottom feeding all ork gang. Anything he could do to get away from making decisions. Now they are gone to, and others are in need of a home. He doesn't want the role, but if he can help, he will.

Game Info,
I am thinking he will have a little bit of cyber, maybe an arm (lost from an infection) and he uses a stun buton as his primary weapon. He is all to familiar with what happens when a rival ganger ends up dead.

For Winter
[ Spoiler ]
WinterRat1
Shadow - Concept approved, request membership on the wiki and put up your character for approval when you're ready.

Are you still on Active Status in LITS, I haven't seen Ivan running around lately. What's going on with him?

Regarding your spoiler -
[ Spoiler ]
Shadow
Sweet! Yay. Working on him now will get him up ASAP.

I am still in with Ivan, Gren and I are working out the details of his triumphant return.

[ Spoiler ]
WinterRat1
Shadow (we can probably do without the spoilers, but just to keep the thread on track...) -

[ Spoiler ]
Vegas
@Shadow

You've been added to the wiki. you can find your pages starting at Ghost

If you need help getting a sheet up on it let Sparky or I know smile.gif
Unarmed
Hey Guys!

I didn't post at all on the other DitG thread, because I wasn't really sure if it was invite-only, but I thought I'd throw out a character concept here and if it gets accepted, then all the better. This would be my third messageboard game, so I don't have a tremendous amount of experience, and if I'm not the kind of player you guys are looking for then just let me know and I will not be offended.


Concept:
Name: Doc
Race: Human
Age: 27
Previous Gang Affiliation: 8-Balls

Doc grew up in tacoma, an area far better than most of his present-day peers. His father was poor, but he managed to send doc to school. His mother had left the boy and the father a long time ago. The main problem was that the boy was loathsome. His personality grated on everyone he met. He was lecherous, even when he was a kid. He leered at teachers and got into scuffles in the playgrounds, but he was never really a big kid and so he had to resort to cheap tactics to stay in the fights. He was a bright kid but not at all motivated by anything but causing trouble.

When he got older the only job that he could get was the janitor in a pharmacy in a shitty part of tacoma. This suited him well because he used to just steal prescription drugs right off the shelf. He used to try and pick the brains of the pharmacists, attempting to get them to tell him how to make harder stuff, but they all hated him and wouldn't give him the time of day. He had enough money to afford a crappy comlink and dug up enough information on the matrix to allow him to start making bliss out of his run-down, peice-of-drek doss. He started trying to sell it, but not many people were buying. He couldn't find clients in Tacoma, and when he moved out to redmond the locals would just beat him up and take the stuff, leaving him credless.

He decided he needed help to sell his stuff. He approached a local gang, the 8-Balls, out of the blue. They were highly skeptical at first, but he spun them a tale of being a down on his luck ex-pharmacist who just wanted to sell some drugs. They locked him up in a warehouse with his things and told him they'd be back in 5 days. Either he'd have made enough bliss in that time to make them 500 nuyen or he'd be dead. He made the deadline, and earned the trust of the 8-balls.

Doc was burning the midnight oil the night of the explosion. He had worked his way into a position of confidence in the 8-balls: he was responsible for a large portion of their drug production, and had managed to keep up the charade of being a former pharmacist. He had left the warehouse that night to get some food and a bit of long haul from his doss, and he was just putting his hand on the door when it happened. He survived - barely - but his face was horribly scarred and he lost part of one arm. He managed to afford a new cyberhand from a chop doc he knew, but there was nothing that could be done about his face. Horrible personality, horrible appearance to match.

Game Info:
Doc will have pretty high mental attributes (aside from charisma) and a bevy of knowledge skills related to drug production. He would lose a fight to any of the other gang members, and his personality has likely irked them all by this time, but he is tolerated because he genuinely does know what he is doing.
Vegas
Hey Unarmed! Welcome to the threads!

I'm actually pretty excited about where you could go with Doc, perhaps only because I'm biased and my character's coming out ot the 8-Balls and I dig seeing someone else run with what I started wink.gif

There are others in the game who are veterans of the DSF boards and some that are nice and green. I think if you're willing to commit to the time and the dedication that this game is going to be asking for we'd be hard pressed to turn you away.

Granted I'm not a GM, but I'd say go ahead and start working up a CS to post here in the thread for WinterRat1 and Konsaki to look over and if they give you the go ahead we'll get you ported over to the wiki. Every member is gonna have their own personality quirks to bring to the table in this game which is what's going to make it so damn interesting. Functioning as a unit with all the "disfunctional family members" nyahnyah.gif

If you need any help or want to "flesh out" 8-Balls background feel free to drop me a PM smile.gif

Looking forward to see what you come up with!
Abbandon
I was hoping somebody would make a drug cooker.
Meriss
Yeah means we can start competing with the other gangs from the get go
WinterRat1
Unarmed - Concept approved, apply for wiki membership and start posting your character sheet there for review. Welcome to the threads, and don't worry about your experience. Everyone here was a noob once upon a time, so we all know what it's like. As Vegas said, if you're willing to commit the time and effort, we're willing to help you go through the paces. smile.gif

Two quick comments on your character.

The drug production skills would be Active, not Knowledge, although you'd most likely have both Active and Knowledge skills relating to drug production. The key distinguisher is that Doc would be Active(ly) using his skill to create the drugs and have practice doing so, as opposed to a mere theoretical understanding of the process. Hence, an Active skill. I still suggest having Knowledge skills to support/supplement this Active Skill however.

27 is a pretty old ganger. If that's what you want it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But he will be significantly older than most of the other gangers, in case you care.
WinterRat1
Meriss - You gotta survive the get go first. vegm.gif
Unarmed
QUOTE (WinterRat1)
Unarmed - Concept approved, apply for wiki membership and start posting your character sheet there for review. Welcome to the threads, and don't worry about your experience. Everyone here was a noob once upon a time, so we all know what it's like. As Vegas said, if you're willing to commit the time and effort, we're willing to help you go through the paces. smile.gif

Two quick comments on your character.

The drug production skills would be Active, not Knowledge, although you'd most likely have both Active and Knowledge skills relating to drug production. The key distinguisher is that Doc would be Active(ly) using his skill to create the drugs and have practice doing so, as opposed to a mere theoretical understanding of the process. Hence, an Active skill. I still suggest having Knowledge skills to support/supplement this Active Skill however.

27 is a pretty old ganger. If that's what you want it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But he will be significantly older than most of the other gangers, in case you care.

Thanks for the warm welcome, all!

I've got the time and I'm willing to put in the effort, and I'll try not to noob it up too much. I do know the SR4 rules well, so that won't be a problem. =)

It makes sense that I'll have to use an active skill to make drugs. It doesn't seem like any of the current active skills would actually work well for what I want to be doing. Should I create a new skill for the character, linked to logic, and specializations would just be for specific drugs?

I wanted Doc to be significantly older than the average ganger. He's not really your average street tough, and he's lasted this long mainly because he usually sticks close to the gang headquarters and he's pretty paranoid. I originally had him older than 27, but dropped it down because getting much older than that is pretty far-fetched.


Vegas, once I get my character sheet up and everything worked out, I'll send you a pm and we can discuss the 8-balls.
rob
QUOTE
It makes sense that I'll have to use an active skill to make drugs. It doesn't seem like any of the current active skills would actually work well for what I want to be doing. Should I create a new skill for the character, linked to logic, and specializations would just be for specific drugs?


WinterRat and I had this conversation about halfway through the planning thread - my character (Bockscar) has the same skill (probably at lower levels than yours). We put up Chemistry as the active skill and a specialization in street drugs (where other specializations could be cooking up explosives, etc; hypothetically at least).

rob
yoippari
Aww, and my first character idea was a chemist. Drugs, toxins and demolitions but with the focus on drugs. I'm concepting out a dwarf right now though I keep getting too verbose. I know that we aren't supposed to be going for a niche but I have a feeling two chemists would start stepping on toes sooner or later.
adamu
Hey all - don't let him deceive you - Unarmed is not THAT much of a noob. He did a great job in the once-promising, now dead Painted Samurai game.
Glad to see you joined, Unarmed.
Konsaki
QUOTE (yoippari)
Aww, and my first character idea was a chemist. Drugs, toxins and demolitions but with the focus on drugs. I'm concepting out a dwarf right now though I keep getting too verbose. I know that we aren't supposed to be going for a niche but I have a feeling two chemists would start stepping on toes sooner or later.

There is a purposed change to the way drug making skills will be in the planning thread. If it is put into play, then it would greatly reduce the stepping on toes that the current setup has.
WinterRat1
Hmm...good trick Unarmed, set the bar low, then wow us with your skills, raking in the karma and praise. But it won't work now, because we're on to you! mad.gif

(You can thank Adamu for that. smile.gif)
yoippari
Name: Trojan
Meta: Dwarf
Age: 24
Ex-Brickhouse Boys

I'm a simple dwarf, unassuming, unambitious, hard working, your steriotypical dwarf in fact. But that's something people don't get, steriotypes are based on truth. They don't get that I really don't want to do anything other than what I'm doing. A little more ventilation would be nice though. Oh ya, don't trip in here, it might be dangerous.

I'm Trojan. They started calling me that when I was able to walk into another gangs territory and come back out with a box of chemicals without being noticed. Take the symbolism however you want. I'm not that good with a knife, and I can do little more than pull the trigger on a gun, but if you need to gas a building or even collapse one I can probably figure out a way to do it. I have a hard time working with most gangs since I'm not the best fighter and usually they want *every* member to fight. But when my old gang went off and got killed leaving me with some equipment and a leftover pepper-punch grenade I started studying up and now I can crank out a decent amount of coke when I need to.

Now I'm with the Brickhouse Boys. Cooking up whatever they need for parties or keeping the pimps in line. Not a bad gig actually. A party whenever I'm in the mood and I get to keep the good stuff for my own personal use. They use to come over and grab some product on their own, but that stopped when they *ahem* mistook some Gamma-Scopolamine for Novacoke. That was a boring night, at least for an hour or so, after that things perked up a little. That might have been an expensive "mistake" but it was definitely worth it.

Mechanics: Will take the Blandness quality and probably a couple points of shadowing and/or disguise. Given his "profession" he'll probably keep a super squirt (his one over rating 6 item?) with some pepper punch or something around. That is unless he needs a shop for making chems.
WinterRat1
Yoippari - Concept approved, apply for wiki membership and start posting your character sheet there for review. Stealth ganger and drug dealer eh? Should have a lot of opportunities available to him.
yoippari
Applied for membership. I'm wiki-illeterate but I'm computer literate and will just figure it out as I go along. I'm also not very experienced at... role playing. I've done some table top RPG-that-shall-not-be-named, and I'm in two SR games currently going on but very slowly. I'm also doing a maptools RPGTSNBN combat heavy game and a openrpg RPGTSNBN role play heavy game.

It sounds like a lot but it's just two sessions a week I've been doing for 3 weeks and making a couple of SR characters that haven't really done anything yet.

I'm afraid that to make him a capable stealthy guy and a chemist (not sure about being the dealer) and giving him any combat ability might be stretching him a bit thin.
Unarmed
I'm sure any gang worth it's salt in drug dealing would probably have more than chemist, so I'm not really worried about it. wink.gif I'm liking the rule change suggestion too, it makes things a little more interesting.

And Adamu, I told you not to tell them about that! I was going to split the karma with you.... somehow.
yoippari
Should I post questions about the game over in the planning thread or here? Either way...

I just checked the skill suggestion. I'm picturing him to be a actual chemist who also makes drugs. So besides drugs he would make pepper punch, explosives, perhaps gunpowder, and be able to whip up some decent alcohol from whatever he could get cheap (potatoes?). Might make some "molokov cocktails" with said alcohol or even one of the gaseous toxins. So high chemistry skill without spec would be the most suitable with a point in various support skills like armorer and demolitions.
Abbandon
Hey I vote we give the two chemist there own building because they are so important!!! .....not to mention what would happen if they screw up making something....
Konsaki
QUOTE (yoippari)
Should I post questions about the game over in the planning thread or here? Either way...

I just checked the skill suggestion. I'm picturing him to be a actual chemist who also makes drugs. So besides drugs he would make pepper punch, explosives, perhaps gunpowder, and be able to whip up some decent alcohol from whatever he could get cheap (potatoes?). Might make some "molokov cocktails" with said alcohol or even one of the gaseous toxins. So high chemistry skill without spec would be the most suitable with a point in various support skills like armorer and demolitions.

Ok, while I admit that all the situations you bring up do involve a bit of chemestry in the process, I say that having Chemesty as an active skill in the terms you are discribing is way too broad and overpowered. Not to mention that there is already an active skill for Demolitions, we created one for Drug Making and there would be one for Brewing if anyone wished to make drinking alcohol.

Chemestry, as I see it, should stay as a knowledge skill which would support the other three active skills by the effect of your character being more knowledgable in the basics of the current craft they are in. Here's my plan and bare with me:

Ganger X has Logic 4, Drugmaking 3 and AK:Chemestry 2.
Ganger rolls Logic + AK:Chemestry and gets 3 hits.
We take those 3 hits and divide them in half, round down to get 1.
When Ganger X rolls his Logic+Drugmaking for actually making the test(s), he gets a bonus die due to his AK:Chemestry roll.

Since this isnt a live game, the extra roll wont bog the game and it will still keep Chemestry a useful knowledge to have.

Here's a breakdown of what skills you need to make things:

Demolitions - Explosives, Chem bombs(Device /w premade payload), Molokov Coctails, etc
Drug Making - Anything under the 'Drugs' catagory in the BBB, any other narcotic
Brewing - Any beverage, synthed or not, which contains alcohol, also could be used in bartending but come on you're ganger
Medicine - Poisons, Antidotes and chemecals used in Chem Bombs (Peper Punch, etc)
Software - BTLs and Sim chips
Abbandon
Demolitions is about where and how to place stuff though.

Chemistry Should be a group skill(10BP). Sub group skills or inidividual skills would include:

Drugs, Explosives, Brewery?, Bio(4BP)

Then you can specialize in stuff like bliss, or c4, or beer, pepper spray

Knowledge skills or whatever would include recipe's. Academic skills relating to the science of chemistry.
yoippari
Ok, that makes sense as far as chemestry being a knowledge with related active skills. Actually the one skill and group of skills, and a supplemental knowledge skill all make sense for this. The problem is balance and realism.

Demolitions is about the "preperation, measuring, and setting" of explosives. That is the description in the book. Someone with that skill should be able to buy and handle explosives, but not manufacture.

And brewery? what chemist doesn't know how to brew something simple? Actually, isn't brewing a part of chemistry? A skill that is needed to make all sorts of chemicals?

I thought the Drug Making skill was something that was being talked about but wasn't actually in use. Besides, drug making makes me think of someone who got a recipe off the internet and is just following directions. Thats not chemistry, thats cooking, a chemist is the one who put it on the internet in the first place.

I'm not a chemist or anything but separating drugs, toxins, and alcohol seems like separating swords, knives, and axes. But it is also similar to the mechanic group in that they are all similar but due to their operating differences and the uses of them in game are separated out.

You know, this seems like a debate thats better suited for the sr4 board, not chargen. I'm not going to argue a theoretical rule in a game I'm just now joining. In my opinion Chemistry should include brewing (which is a process in chemistry), drugs, and toxins (which by definition includes alcohol and drugs). If the you choose to use separate skills then fine. This guy is a chemist, not just a meth cooker or a micro brewer, I'll buy the group with a separate knowledge skill on the side. Any combat skills I get I'll pick carefully to compliment the heavy investment into technical skills.
rob
@Yoip:

How bout we move the chemistry debate to the planning thread? That's what it's there for. *tips hat*, and BTW thanks for being one of the few internet forum folks who will actually drop a debate wink.gif

My character has a minor stake in this as well.

Rob
Vegas
@ Yoippari

Pages have been created on the wiki for your character. You can find them starting here for Trojan.

All the pages that need to be filled out are linked at the top of your CS main sheet.

Please let ES Sparky or myself know if you need any help with the wiki... I'd rather people ask for help then try to learn it all on their own and end up making more work for Sparky and I later wink.gif
HeySparky
Yoip, I recommend using the text editor rather than the visual editor to learn how the various formatting works. It's eye opening and more flexible than the Visual editor (which doesn't always behave like you think it might)

Again, PM, ask, message at the wiki if you have any questions.

Thanks for setting up his sheet, Vegas.

@WinterRat1, All - I reformatted Shade's Journal a bit. Check it out. Feedback welcome.
Unarmed
@ Sparky,Vegas

I signed up for the wiki so I'm good to go on my character sheet whenever you guys have a sec. I'm a wikinoob too so I'll probably be working through that slowly, heh.
Vegas
@ Unarmed.

Sorry I'm slow. Doc's pages are now up on the wiki here: Doc

Same rules apply. If/when you need help adding things to the wiki come to Sparky or I smile.gif
HeySparky
All the new players are added to the template and to everyone's 'Takes' lists.

Also, created an Inactive PCs page as a place to put links to pages of PCs whose players have had to drop out permanently or temporarily with or without notice. It's accessible from the PC roster page.
Vegas
@WR & Konsaki..

Quick question for you guys regarding character generation specifically pertaining to Skill Groups and the possibility of breaking them up at char gen with specializations? Is it allowed or is it a no-no or just too big of a headache for you guys to manage?

Also are we still getting "gifts" for all the stuff we've been doing to get the game going? Not trying to sound impatient or whatever, but if we're getting anything before the game starts, it'd be nice to perhaps be able to spend those BEFORE we get underway wink.gif
Konsaki
If you purchase the firearms skill group at 2, that's what it's going to be at gamestart. No specs and no breaking the group before that.
Groups are cheaper, but you're a generalist in everything within that group.

As for the bonus BP for performing extra tasks for game maintenance, that's up to WR1 until he specificly tells me to hand it out.
WinterRat1
Re Skill Groups and Specializations: This is a no. Skill groups cannot be broken up with specializations. Once a specialization is taken for any skill in a skill group, you no longer have a skill group. As Konsaki stated, this cannot be done during character creation.

Re Rewards: Here's what we're going to do. PM me a list of your contributions, a 'wish list' of any and all rewards you would like your PC to have and most importantly, tell me why you want them for your character. I also suggest you give me some sense of relative priority/desire you have amongst your rewards.

I will then select and choose your rewards for you based on your contibutions. This prevents me from having to constantly adjust my awards because of new contributions (if you make more contributions after receiving your reward, I can just give you another thing from your list as I deem appropriate) and circumvents the problem of anyone feeling their reward was unfair relative to person X.

Rather than simply hand out bonus BP, which in my opinion is more difficult to assess (plus has the annoying bookkeeping that would go into spending them), I thought it would be more appropriate to give you rewards that bring your characters closer in line to their particular concept, as well as allow you potential access to benefits you might not otherwise have been able to obtain.

If anyone has a problem or questions regarding this reward system let me know. Otherwise send me your list of contributions, 'wish list' of rewards complete with rationale for each, and a relative ranking of where they fall on your desirability scale, and I will get back to you ASAP.
Vegas
@ WR1 & Konsaki

Thanks for the clarification guys. I'll start plotting karma expenditures now... assuming Nevada lives long enough wink.gif
WinterRat1
My, it's amazing how fast the PMs start coming when the word 'rewards' is tossed out there. wink.gif
Vegas
it's like rats n' cheese biggrin.gif

or rabbits and carrots...

or junkies and their next fix...

I could go on for days wink.gif

p.s. Citizens demand Rewards! biggrin.gif
Konsaki
Reminder to everyone who is waiting for their char sheet on the wiki to approved, you must either place an 'X' in the 'Ready' box by your character or notify the Wiki Staff that your character is ready for review.
Without this being done, I wont know that your character is ready for my review and the game will be delayed that much longer.
WinterRat1
So which one are you Vegas? smile.gif
Vegas
Rabbit definitely. Need the carrots please wink.gif
Unarmed
Alright, I have retooled Doc's background significantly, and so I just wanted to post my new concept here just in case anyone has any problems with it. Unless I hear otherwise I will be going ahead with this character on the wiki.

Concept:
Name: Doc
Race: Troll
Age: 25
Previous Gang Affiliation: 8-Balls

Doc grew up in tacoma, an area far better than most of his present-day peers. His father was poor, but he managed to send doc to school. His mother had left the boy and the father a long time ago. In school, Doc was never very good at fitting in in social situations. His personality was grating and he always seemed to say the wrong thing. He used to get picked on all the time in the schoolyard... until he goblinized into a troll at the age of 13. Like many goblinizers, all his relationships changed. In most cases, the bullied became the bully. Doc still wasn't accepted, but he was feared. Unfortunately, this was the last straw for his poor father. He could not accept his son as a troll and disowned him.

Doc hit the Tacoma streets, fending for himself, mugging humans for cash, and getting hooked on the dog-eat-dog world, in which he was a bigger dog than most. He eventually ended up in redmond, a hotspot for drug selling activity. He also managed to get himself hooked on Kamikaze, and when he felt the drugs run through his body he felt alive at last. He couldn't really support himself solely on muggings, so he used to try and buy excess drugs and sell a little on the side. He survived this way for a few years, but it wasn't working. It wasn't enough to be big and tough and surly on the streets... he needed skills to survive. He managed to get in touch with his father, who this time was ready to accept him. His father may have underestimated what he'd become.

He managed to cajole his father into getting him a job working as a janitor at a local pharmacy. It was perfect for doc, he used to steal prescription drugs and sell them off to the underworld contacts that he still had. He also used to pick the brains of the pharmacists that worked there. They all hated him, but he managed to glean a fair amount of information from them. He used the matrix to figure out how to make better drugs out of the stuff that he could steal from the pharmacy. He took out chemistry books from the local library and went through them for all the information he could find. He was surprisingly bright for a troll, and picked up on things quickly. One night, when he was working the night shift, he was caught lifting drugs by one of the pharmacists. Rather than get caught, he killed the pharmacist with a knife. He realised that his time at the pharmacy was up, and that he'd once again have to hit the streets. He stole a troll-sized labcoat from the pharmacy, as much drugs as he could carry, and disappeared. He never saw his father again.

He realised that he couldn't be a freelance drug dealer and survive for long. Most of the gangs guarded their turf well, and they all had their respective markets cornered. Even for the biggest troll, flying solo would get you killed. He went back to redmond, and by this time, some of the other kids he'd met on the street had grown up. A couple of them, Caine and Able, had formed a gang called the 8-Balls. It had started as a group of street friends who'd banded together for protection, but branched out into drugs and neighborhood protection. With his background and knowledge of drug production, he was able to get into the gang, despite his lack of social skills and surly demeanor. He used to wear the stolen labcoat whenever he would cook up a batch; this, along with his above-average intelligence, earned him the nickname "Doc." The rest of the gang just assumed that he had some kind of background as a pharmacist.

Doc was burning the midnight oil the night of the explosion. He had worked his way into a position of confidence in the 8-balls: he was responsible for a decent chunk of their drug production, and had managed to keep up the charade of being a former pharmacist. He had left the warehouse that night to get some food and a bit of long haul from his doss, and he was just putting his hand on the door when it happened. He survived - barely - but his face was horribly scarred and he lost part of his right arm. He managed to afford a new cyberhand from a chop doc he knew, but there was nothing that could be done about his face. He'd missed most of the gang war, and almost everyone he knew was dead. When he saw Legion and his boys rise from the ashes of the gang war, he knew that something big was happening. He knew he couldn't survive alone on the streets of redmond, and so he decided to attach himself to what he thought could be the next big thing; even with his abraisive personality, he thought that his skills would make him valuable enough to bet on.
Shadow
In Runner Haven it says two things that might affect the game. It says there are no street hookers in Redmond and that it is a Static zone with no or very limited wireless. Are we departing from canon for our game or interpreting those statements loosely.
HeySparky
Wow... that neuters Badmarsh "Fledgling Pimp."
Unarmed
QUOTE (Shadow)
In Runner Haven it says two things that might affect the game. It says there are no street hookers in Redmond and that it is a Static zone with no or very limited wireless. Are we departing from canon for our game or interpreting those statements loosely.

Well, we could impose some kind of penalties on wireless to account for the shoddy reception, although probably not as harsh as the ones set out in the book.

I'm curious: what reasoning does the book give behind there being no street hookers in redmond? I guess I could see there being no unaffiliated street hookers, but the gangs would surely run street prostitution rings on their own turf they could, right?
rob
I think WR specifically nixed the idea of no street hookers out of implausibility. I would be inclined to agree, as it doesn't make any damn sense to me.

As for the static zone, we're operating near touristville and highway 405. A static zone doesn't mean commlinks wouldn't work, just means that there's no area-wide wireless access. Touristville would probably have some, Highway 405 would definitely have some, and if it's anything like EVERY POOR NEIGHBORHOOD in the world, about a third of the houses would have sattelite links.

Static zone, with some foresight and a couple characters who know anything about electronics (mine is one), only means for our purposes that the signal rating of the commlinks becomes very important, to keep them within enough range to ad-hoc network to each other.

Rob
WinterRat1
QUOTE
In Runner Haven it says two things that might affect the game. It says there are no street hookers in Redmond and that it is a Static zone with no or very limited wireless. Are we departing from canon for our game or interpreting those statements loosely.


Ignore both these statements. I already dismantled them in the planning thread for their complete and total idiocy and a prime example of Fanpro completely mailing in Runner Havens. I even included a mini-rant.

I find it amazing that Seattle Sourcebook is STILL the best location sourcebook for the main game setting as far as actually doing what it's supposed to do, which is tell you everything possible about the city.
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