im perfectly fine with handwaveing for minions

it just makes our actions more important and gives you a better tool to advance the story in a direction you choose.

No worries. If you need me to help you out with some NPC's, I'd be more than happy to oblige. I've played a lot of games on different servers, and I'm looking for a game or two to fix my shadowrun-addiction. PM me if you need me.

Cheers,

Maarten

So, what do we want to do with our new minions, I mean, recruits?

Wonderful. Now that we have the chemicals dealt with... what does the group want to do with the recruits?

If nobody else answers, I'm planning on bogging us down in learning who each of the recruits are, judging how trustworthy they are, finding out who they know, what they can do, and what their likes and dislikes are. I'm sure that Mr. GM would punish us for that giant waste of time, so... somebody come up with a plan.

We could ask them to prove their loyalty?

Bring in some nuyen / goods / information / etc which is worth money to us.

Appearantly 'Joe' was a very popular name about 15-18 years ago...

Are they all guys? Or are there a few Joanna's in there too?

No, they aren't all guys, but Jane was the popular name.

Id say we need to get them in our colores asap. ..might need to hack some shops nano fax and do a BnE to get them all jackets

would make a worth wile run to prove loyalty.

maybe split up the group and do 3-4 mini runs like 1 to get the colors maybe 1 to get some hot bikes for the upper managment like our original minnions. Key is to get them vested in us and us in them.

What colors?

A shops nano fax is going to have RFID tags and suchlike, so we'd bring our ganger career to a short end if we got them clothing that way.

We could use the massive numbers to B&E a warehouse and steal a ton of stuff? Many hands make light work and all. Aim for something low enough tech and make sure everyone has gloves on. Take the stuff we've stolen and sell it for nuyen to equip everyone.

rfid tags are nothing . Tink can erace them no prob.

but then again.. maybe we just throw a rave???? let us eyeball the recruits a little more

initial test of admittance: locate needed gear. (colors [yes, we need to pick some out. Anyone have a problem with black with gold lining?], armor, commlinks, etc.)

Subsequent test (aka ranking test): arrange to procure needed gear.

Additional possibility: Dress some of them in the other gang's colors and have them opening steal/vandalize some local businesses, then we approach said businesses in our colors and offer our services as an "independent security initiative" for a fee, of course.

id like to avoid giveing the other gang any recognition at all. and black and gold sounds good what about an emblem?

Gold is a little too flashy for Alexei's liking. He prefers understated colours, like dark reds or blues. Mostly as they're harder to spot when sneaking around.

How about we combine the robbery and the rave, do a big B&E then head off somewhere for a major party to celebrate?

That way we thin out those who aren't serious about what we're upto and reward the ones who are? Plus we make a little nuyen in the process.

good idea.. hit a music store for equipment.. then have a rave. i like it.. risk then reward.

good habit to foster

How about a more subdued gold, then? or maybe just trimming it? And we're Death Road Ministry, right? (I can't quite remember)

How about something like THIS for our emblem?

simpler for the grunts or the inartistic types, and something more creative for those who want it?

I'd like something along the lines of THIS on the back of my Jacket...

Points for a very cool looking picture, but something like that tends to not work out as well on a jacket (The second one)... then again with the tech in 2070 I'm sure it could happen.

And yes, Death Road Ministry was indeed the officially decided name. Doesn't mean it can't change, but that is what it is currently.

Alexei wouldn't mind having some small degree of gold stitching perhaps. With a smallish logo on his jacket.

He likes to keep things plain and simple to draw attention to his custom guns.

Music store sounds good to me, we could even keep the gear for throwing raves and hold regular big school wide parties.

for a fee, of course.

Remember... gangs exist for two reasons. 1) protection of those within the gang. 2) make some freakin money!!!

Well I have no detailed ideas for what we are going to do to raise money (I do like the ideas I've heard so far) but I have some more generic ones...

For the new members we need some kind of trial or proof of loyalty... Followed by 'ritual' of acceptance of some kind... The robbery and party could easily fit this.

For the gang we need a place to call our own, veichles to get around on, and gear to do stuff with.

I say we treat this as bunch of shadowruns were we are our own Johnson. We find a place that has what we need, make a plan that fits what we can do and hit it. Successful 'runs' would bring in karma and nuyen, and add gear so would could do better 'runs.'

So the question becomes which resource do we wish to acquire first? (and think we can pull off)

we'll go with the party supplies first. Might as well get these buggers into the gang and liking us before we go and start a crime spree.

After that, we need to establish our control of the area. Translation: Take over the other gang.

In order to do that, we need to subdue their leadership or kill them outright. Weapons are in order, methinks. So, either we find someone who'll sell us some weapons on the sly (which means we need money), or we find a weapon shop and loot it. The first is the safer approach, because it's less likely to bring Lonestar down on our heads.

I still like my idea of looting local shops and blaming the other gang, then getting paid to stop the thefts...

Killing is likely to be a bad plan. We can't have students just dying or vanishing as people will investigate unless we come up with a reason why they're gone.

Getting them framed for a crime and arrested however....

holy crap. Tristen just rolled heinously well for his judge intentions roll... I almost wish I had used edge on it. 4/6 are successes, and three of them would have exploded!

Are we waiting on my sorry self to post something? I know you guys want that short-list of shops you can 'protect' or not so protect.

Ah yes, the fighting group and the unknown group need responses. Was planning on waiting for the other two groups to get some sort of greetings first, but if something doesn't come up by about noonish at the latest tomorrow I'll go ahead and move the two along and catch the others up later (No issues, not condemning anyone. So need a way to show emotions in this stuff, just wanting to keep everything together.)

P.S. Anyone know a good way to get a reasonably detailed map of the Seattle area? I'm having trouble finding anything that isn't a google/yahoo map to work with.

Anything more we need to do with the new recruits?

(I guess our leader needs to find out about the spies and then tell everyone gathered about the plan right?)

Well, need to resolve the spy, and once that is done any kind of standing orders you'd like to give to the various groups or gang as a whole (For example, pointing out exactly who the leader/s is/are to prevent confusion, instructions to bring their weapons for show and tell, get together at some place for training, blah blah blah yada yada yada).

Also need the stealth group to do something, and I need to respond to the tech group. Was once again hoping to hear from them before moving on, but I'll go ahead and post in a few minutes.

Sounds like a cue for the boss to make his name known to all.

Tristen going to say a little something?

Given that Ghost Cartels just came out and is packed with drug related stuff perhaps we could put Tayler in charge.

Although I guess BAD's are probably a bit out of his league right now. Plus we'd all die horribly if we tried move into that market....

Don't have it, not entirely sure I can spare the cash to get it at the moment. Collectors edition of Fallout 3 ate up a good bit of my 'entertainment' budget.

I /really/ wanted the collectors edition of Fallout 3, but couldn't spare the money without being unable to buy Red Alert 3 too. Looks like it's going to be a really good game from the reviews and previews.

Only just got the Ghost Cartels PDF today, seems quite interesting so far. A lot more accessable than Emergence was, might even be something I run with my offline group. If my players are interested.

Yeah, going to be passing on the new red alert till it comes down in price some unfortunately, cool as it looks.

As for Fallout 3... Yeah, I can hardly wait. Reminds me I need to call my gamestop and see if they're doing a midnight release or not, apparently alot of them are.

Never got Emergence either. Adventure books tend to not grab my attention as much. Most because so many people get them and then know everything about the adventure in advance. Even if you tweek a few things, it'll still turn out fairly similar.

I prefer making my own stuff as you can see, the more out of the ordinary the better. If I wasn't busy with classes, new games, two games I'm playing in and one I'm GMing in I'd try and top myself.

Oh, and expect some kind of store listing by tomorrow even if I can't manage to find a decent map to work with to start plotting out where this stuff actually exists.

That also reminds me. A large percentage of the people pay protection money to the Halloweeners for their houses and stores and such. Given the huge relevant street knowledge ranks held amongst the party I figure that would be fairly common knowledge.

Sorry, my connection is rather flaky at the moment.

You asked for it and here it is, the short list.

There are eight of what anyone would really call businesses in the intimidate area.

There is, as everywhere, a stuffer shack. This is run by a rather overweight greasy sort of man who tends to keep 'special' items behind his counter.

An electonics shop that specializes in sound equipment: large speakers and the like mostly, but also has plenty of things like earbuds. The shop also has a dedicated connection to a music node to download songs from, for a price.

A grocer that deals mostly in soy and krill based product. They can get real food from time to time on special order, but it goes bad too quickly and is affordable by too few to actually keep stocked.

Gres' uncle owns a tailsmen shop in the local area.

A local junkyard contains all kinds of scrap, from cars to soy-processors. It is run by one of your minion's contacts, and the owners son has actually just joined your gang.

Another electronics shop, this one focusing more on commlinks and their programs also graces the local area, they even help out with the occasional 'specilized' program.

Lenny operates from the back of a truck, moving where he sets up every few days, and only those who are regulars generally know where to find him. He sells BTLs and more conventional drugs, as well as a few items of 'personal protection'.

And finally there is a reasonably large clothing store, that caters to everyone. From the cheapest of clothing to things that might actually pass at a somewhat fancy party. They are also avalable for custom jobs and have armor for those that desire safety more then fashion.

Everything else people generally get from the matrix and have delivered, or have to head into a neighboring town.

So, the music store seems like a perfectly viable target. Not much furture use for us as a contact and they sell the kind of things we could use for throwing a big party with.

Anyone got a better plan to suggest? Or are we sticking with robbing it and throwing a rave?

Robbing the music store sounds good to me. Who knows, we might even be able to get some decent tactical gear out of it.

So, anyone have any better plans, or shall we get this show on the road?

I think we've established that's the best plan anyone has atm. So I say we kick it off and see how badly the recruits mess things up.

Apologies in my own part on the slowness lately. First PBP game so trying to get a feel for the balance giving people time to post and keeping things moving. I'll try and lean a bit more in the moving area, if anyone feels they aren't being given enough time, please say so.

Hopefully I'll get around to not being lazy and be able to provide a few things to make things easier for everyone. I'm going to pass on a map just yet. You guys can find a map of the area, the topography and roads are basically the same. This is partly because I can't find a map that I can work with to add the things I'd like, and partly because I wouldn't have too much to add just yet.

I will however be putting up a chart to help everyone (myself included) keep track of what minions are in the gang (Divided into type and race and possibly other things as they are requested/thought of). Will use BBcode if I can, if not... anyone know a good place to host a spreadsheet?

no need to apologize. You did say that this was going to be largely driven by us.

as to the hosting site... check out the community projects forum. They're using some pretty good ones for free hosting.

Just a note, I mostly wanted to leave the individual parts of the mission up to the rest of the gang (leave most of the work for the recruits, just be there to pull their asses out of the fire if they screw up). As for Me, Tristen, and James... we'll probably go look into the possible locations for the rave, as well as collect some recreational drugs from my dealer.

What location did we decide on, again? I don't recall.

We didn't decide on a venue. We needed to check the Train Depot because people thought it had potential. (Although I'm not convinced it's a great idea if it's going to be full of homeless people).

Might be an idea if Alexei's group checks the place out first, because picking up drinks isn't likely to be a major task.

Venue is selected.

Erm... and what sort of venue is it exactly?

While we don't need to know specifics it might help for the rest of the PC's to have an idea what it'll be like. Because Alexei will want to know it meets his requirements for how easy to defend it is etc.

Edit - And this is probably silly to ask, but what format was the message sent in?

Because you've used yellow which is the formatting for GM induced injury. ;P

He's trying to give you a hint

But no, fairly sure it was a text message via commlinks.

I assumed it was a commlink message. Just wanted to double check.

As for it being a hint... my reading of it was more that a location had been decided via a forum message or we were just going to hand-wave on the specifics and just throw the party in random location A.

No, he and I did some one on one via IM to get through that, so no, it wasn't handwaved, just not done on the boards so as to not take up 40 posts. And of course you wouldn't see it anyway, so works out fine.

Edit:
On that note, if anyone wants to do their stuff via IM, feel free to contact me and we'll see if we can work something out. Allows the game to move on much quicker then normal at times, especially when everyone is breaking into groups as is happening now.

Didn't you hear? Dryden's surge evolved so that he now has mind-to-mind communication. only problem is it causes, oh, 3P damage per word. Sorry guys. ^_~

Actually, I'm just trying to keep track of too many formats and got them confused. Sorry! I fixed it, though. Is that better?

*Coughs* At least you didn't forget your character can't read and inputted his message via text. (Changed now)

(I'm going to assume Tayler read the first message out for him. Or else Alexei would have no clue what the hell his orders were)

Edit - Does the music store have any compatable generators for the music equipment they're selling? Things for running an outside gig and suchlike.

Edited some more - Tayler will be driving. And the tougher soldiers bit mostly means he's keeping the Ork and Dwarf members together as a metahuman brute squad.

Did I miss what we were doing with Carson?