Yeah, after that initial 8 success attack, I was expecting Tasha to have to come in midway to shoot Brock in the head. Fortunately, good luck tends to get balanced out by bad luck eventually, and he totally botched that damage resistance roll.

Good thing it didn't come to that - Sonny and Shellie probably would have taken Tasha apart.

You know, if Shellie was the only one betting against Brock, she might be able to afford that new mixer, after all.

Hah, even Shellie didn't bet against Brock. There may have been plenty of people in there who wanted to see Brock go down, but Zee was the only one who actually expected him to go down.

So Tasha has Sticks, and now Zee has Brock. Maybe they could double-date some time.

Well, somebody has to get all the money that was bet against Zee. I assume the house keeps it - which might not mean Shellie directly, but since she found the fighter who was able to set up that kind of hustle, she'll probably get a cut.


And, yeah, I've played more fights in SR in table-top games, but they usually go down like that. The characters can usually dish it out more than they can take it - so the first hit ends the match. This Brock guy could dish it out AND take it.

I also remembered that I forgot to add a die to all of those rolls for Zee's personalized grip - but that's okay, it wouldn't have made a large difference, anyway.

Also, since Brock just ordered Zee a drink (this was bound to come up eventually), is her mimic modification sufficiently advanced that she can ingest things (and expel them someplace later), or would drinking something seriously mess up her insides (like that kid in the movie "AI")?

Edited my post, and spoke up for Brock, to keep things moving along. I didn't expect to spend a lot of time on that conversation, anyway, and this way, if Glyph checks in first, Tasha can head inside faster.

That fight also emphisised how big my mistake was when assigning attributes. For some reason, I made Charisma Zee's high stat (thinking the command program would be important - which its not- it will probably never be used). For a jumped-in-rigger-type, Intuition would have been the way to go.

I'm fine with leaving it as, is, but after this mission, if Krayola wants to keep running, and has us remake our characters with Karma-gen, I might flip those two attributes, if he's okay with it.

Any way you want to play it is fine by me. Hell, you can even give her taste receptors or something so she can tell the difference between a sizzling hot steak and a Stuffer Burger.

Yeah, I'll be tweaking Tasha a bit when we re-do the characters, too. She won't be as good in melee as she is at ranged combat, by a long shot, but I'll give her something. The complete lack of close combat skills was part of the original concept, but the face version of Tasha doesn't have quite the same mix of bravado and insecurity, so the weakness doesn't fit her as well.

If you want Zee to give her some training, just ask.

Well, taste is apparently mostly smell, so maybe her Olfactory sensor could double as a basic taste sense. Otherwise, I'd need a price or something, and would have to give up some other sense to make room for it. Either way, I avoided the question for this scene, but eventually, being able to swallow something might be important for pretending to be a human - so, good to know.

Ha! Nice catch. I saw "Tommy" and thought it was probably important, but i couldn't remember anyone named Tommy. I would have totally missed that clue. Good job.

Not to be too big a pain in the butt. I just figured if we're going to assume Peyton is alive, for now, let's go save him, first, then deal with Osborne once our primary mission is complete - maybe with some sweet weapons he paid for that we pick up at the doss.

If we're assuming Peyton is already dead - we're sort of done. We have proof of who did it, why, how, and I'm sure Biggs will want revenge - but that can pretty much come at any time or place. We're not in any hurry, if we're not hurrying to save Peyton.

Nah, Tasha agrees that it might be worth at least checking the place out, now that we're already in the Barrens. Plus like she said, it could be a cheap way to upgrade her transportation.

Given that Tasha has a much faster ride - it makes sense for her to pickup the gear. Otherwise, they could trade bikes, but I assumed that would be an even larger inconvenience. Plus, before the gear arrives, Zee could drive around the area a bit and start mapping it out with her radar. Particularly, the adjacent buildings - and if she can get close to the main doss (assuming they don't shoot at people driving along the road), then she might even be able to map out the positions and weapon-loadouts of the occupants.

Some dice rolls for the arrival (before the gear is delivered), to make that back-and-forth go a little faster.

Current Loadout
- Clearsight
- Defense
- Covert Ops
- Disguise
- Pistols
- Electronic Warfare (switching out for Unarmed Combat once the scan is complete)

Infiltration to get around, while staying out of sight.
Response (9) + Handling (1) + Covert Ops (4) = 14 dice
#D=14 : 15124545452133 n1=3 n6=0 nHit=4

Radio Signal Scanner, scanning the nearby airwaves for any non-encrypted chatter
Electronic Warfare(4) + Sniffer (6) = 10 dice
#D=10 : 1656612623 n1=2 n6=4 nHit=5
If they are using even basic rating 1 encryption, I get nothing, but even for 20 guys, that gets expensive. I'd expect that communication with Osborne would be encrypted, but I'm counting on some random punk's phone call to his girl would not be.

Ultrawideband Radar scan of the building:
Sensor (4) + ClearSight (4) = 8 dice
#D=8 : 25511353 n1=2 n6=0 nHit=3

If clearsight actually helps when using the sensor as a cyberscanner (not sure), that roll can probably go for both, otherwise, here is a purely "device rating" roll for that.
#D=4 : 5342 n1=0 n6=0 nHit=1

Which, hopefully, will be enough to let me know what kinds of weapons we'd be up against, and how many of the Desert Stings have some chrome in them.

Not sure if you want to use the sensor-test for the radar as the same sensor-test for the other sensors (bundling it all together in one perception test), or not.

If not, here's another test for regular perception in the area:
Sensors (4) + Clearsight (4) = 8 dice
#D=8 : 52113441 n1=3 n6=0 nHit=1

Hopefully, if there is anything to see, I pick it up with the radar.

Edit: I forgot to add +3 dice for the vision enhancments on Zee's camera and microphone sensors... so add:
#D=3 : 542 n1=0 n6=0 nHit=1

means a total of 2 hits on non-radar perception tests.

I take it by "your sensors have crashed" you meant the radar sensor. If all of Zee's sensors crashed, she becomes deaf, blind, and numb - and the run will have just gotten a whole lot harder.

Also, any objection to me killing time there (basically keeping an eye on people coming and going) until Tasha shows up? Hopefully, with her infiltration roll, Zee can manage to stay out of sight, or at least blend in (and maybe park her scooter out of sight behind a dumpster or something) - but if any of the people outside were going to start some shit, I won't post too far ahead.

I'm guessing it won't take as long as Zee needs to reboot her radar, but she's not going to make her move without her gear.

Also, are there windows in the building? Boarded up? Lights on/off? Any silhouettes in them?

Nope, no objections there. None of the windows are boarded up, some have lights on, others off. Most of the rooms with lights on were the ones where Zee spotted people before.

Yeah, it's just the radar. Earlier glitch kicking in, or something.

That's what I figured, on both accounts. I was planning to use the lights-on as a secondary metric for how many people were inside and where. You beat me to the punch on that one.

Alright, that was the green light I was waiting for.

So, I'm not sure how slow or fast you want to take this (how many stealth rolls its going to require), but I suppose the first one will at least be getting across the street, and to the front door, unnoticed.

Response (9) + Handlign (1) + Covert Ops (4) = 14 dice
Actually, we can probably move forward faster if we assume Zee will just buy 3 successes. That's pretty good - and then we won't necessarily have to take this a few steps at a time.

With the suit on, observers are at -4 dice on perception tests or Zee gets 6 more dice (which translates to 2 more hits bought) on her test if the people are using thermographic. She'll attempt to remain hidden while moving around the house - with active-camouflage, she could probably even go unnoticed in a room while people move through it unless they get really close.

Also, I suppose a perception test to tell if there are people on the other side of the door, or not, before attempting to sneak in (peeking through window, crack in doorway, or listening for sounds of movement or talking).

Sensor (4) + Clearsight (4) + Audio/Visual Enhancement (3) = 11 dice
Again, lets assume she buys two hits, when she needs to - which I am guessing should be enough if the gangers aren't planning an ambush.


While she makes her way through the house (as far as she gets before something else goes down), she's looking for Peyton (and maybe this redhead Tasha mentioned) - but would also want to keep a tally of Stings spotted, and weapons observed - forwarding all the data to Tasha (and still allowing her access to Zee's eyes - the radar-map is offline).

Okay, since the stealth rules suck for anything except sneaking past one person, here's how I'm gonna handle it. Your infiltration roll will be used for two parts: sneaking in and sneaking out. For sneaking in, I'm going to make a random roll to determine how many people you encounter on your way in, depending on how large the facility is, how close to your destination you are, etc. Let's say you encounter 5 people. I'll take the ganger with the highest perception pool (say he has 4 intuition and 2 perception for a total of 6), apply modifiers (camouflage, being distracted since he's probably doing something else, etc), add +1 die for every extra person you encounter (+4 in this case), and roll. If you beat it by at least one success, then you manage to sneak in undetected. If you tie, then you get busted by one person. If it has one more success than you, then you get busted by two people, etc.

Sneaking out: depending on the facility you're infiltrating, you'll have a certain threshold that you have to beat. 2 would be an average facility, 3 if it's particularly crowded, 1 if there's massive amounts of space. The gang house would be a 3. I roll the same number of dice as the test for sneaking in except this time you have to beat it by the threshold. If you fail, then you're detected on your way out, an alarm is raised, and it's time to whip out the guns.

If you have more than one person sneaking in, the smallest dice pool is used for all infiltration tests, with a -1 modifier for each additional person in the group.

If you still want to buy hits, lemme know, otherwise toss me an Infiltration roll.

Oh yeah, since I'm rolling everything up into one test, Edge cannot be used for your Infiltration roll. It doesn't matter in this case since I don't think Zee has any Edge left, but that's just for future reference.

That all seems fair. Two notes. Well, one note, and a question.

Note: Let's say there are 20 guys (since there are that many here), spread out throughout a large facility... you would be unlikely to ever have to sneak past more than one person at a time (which should be trivial), but you might eventually have to sneak past every one of them (lets say, you roll high on the random roll to decide how many people are encountered). Well, with +19 dice to their roll, even a crappy average person, defaulting on perception (dicepool of 2) would probably be able to buy enough successes to automatically notice you. Also, since they're likely to beat you by a lot, that means you're suddenly likely to encounter groups of them all at once.

I think, for an abstraction, its pretty good - but is *sounds* like if we are expecting there to be 20 people in a given building, it would be suicidal to attempt to sneak past them, even though no single ganger has any real change of noticing a trained (or programmed) Covert Ops agent in full camo gear.

Do we get any hints as to how the number will be randomly determined? Because if there's a good chance I'll pass everyone (if I have to search the whole place out, or decide we need to take them out and try to sneak up on each one before attacking), that +19 dice pool modifier makes it not worth trying. They can automatically buy more successes than I can reasonable expect to get.

Question: You add a threshold (3 in this case) to sneaking out. Why is sneaking out harder than sneaking in? Again, I'm not objecting, but I'm not sure why sneaking past 5 guys from the front door to the safe-room would be harder than sneaking past those exact same 5 guys going in the other direction.

Infiltration roll incoming - since this is still the plan - but if you happen to be online, and see this before I submit it, and address the question about how many people to expect... I might just not want to try sneaking past them (instead, I would want to sneak up on them, and attack each small group).

It seems like taking them out one at a time, as I encounter them is WAY better than letting them get a big roll (particularly on the way out, where I basically lose 2 hits) and end up being suddenly surrounded by a group of guys that I could have taken out individually on the way in.

I thought about rolling, and decided to still buy the 3 hits (5 if their using thermo).
Rolling would give a better average - but since we're only rolling once, I can't afford an unlucky bad roll (and couldn't use edge, for a number of reasons, to fix it).

Again, the combination of camo and thermal dampening is a little non-intuitive.
If they're using thermo, Zee gains 6 dice (already factored in, above), otherwise, the camo matters, and they lose 4 dice. I'll let you figure it out either way, but given that the lights are on, I'm expecting their not all using thermo-vision.

If we do get to a point where Zee is spotted, I'd like to call for a surprise round (basically attempting to knock the guy, or guys, out before he, or they, can shout for help).

Okay, let's see...


When I said you get busted by two guys, I didn't mean at once. Say you tie against the gangers in the infiltration roll. That means you get past 4 guys and get busted by the last guy. If they beat you by one success, then you get busted by the 4th guy, and you'll probably have to take him down, and then later you'll get busted by the 5th guy.

Also, when I say "guy," assume I mean group if they're all together. So if all the gangers are in one room, that means they only count as a single person if you're sneaking around the house. If you're trying to sneak through that room, then they all count as individual people, which does make it pretty much impossible to do, but that's fine because you're not supposed to be able to sneak into a room with 20 people in it no matter how good you are.

One more thing: Just because there are 20 people in the house and you're searching the entire house, I'm not gonna make you encounter all 20 of them. I'm gonna assume that for most of the rooms, you're just gonna peek inside and move on, which is easier, so I'm probably gonna count all the people in rooms as a single person for ease of calculation. The master Infiltration roll only matters for people that you actually have to physically bypass, like if they're in a hallway or something.


I can't think of a way to do this without making it ridiculously complicated, so I'm just gonna wing it and you'll have to trust me to be fair.


Sneaking out also encompasses the time you spent in there doing whatever you went in there to do, which in this case would be searching the house. The longer you stay in there, the harder it is to remain undetected. Also, there's a chance that someone might've noticed a clue that they've been infiltrated while you're inside - say, a locked door that is now unlocked, an unconscious body stashed in the closet, etc.

Okay, I didn't understand that. That all seems fine. I was mostly worried about accidentally running into all 20 gangers in one room or something.


Sounds fine. I've been impressed with your GMing so far, so I don't have a problem trusting you with this - it was mostly refering to my worry about encoutnering everyone at once.


Okay, makes sense, there too. Good to go with the bought-successes I mentioned above.

Okay, IC post coming in a bit after I take care of some stuff. I've only resolved the sneaking in part, lemme know if you want to sneak out again.

It'll probably depend on what is seen on the way in, and if Zee finds Peyton or not. Take your time, I've got some errands to do here too.

Oh yeah, what weapons do you have with you? I'm assuming you're not bringing your sniper rifle, because that's gonna affect your Infiltration roll since it's not covered in camo. Seeing a giant sniper rifle floating in the air is probably gonna turn some heads.

Sniper rifle DOES have the chameleon coating mod (which it says is necessary for any weapons larger than a pistol - otherwise the camo bonus is reduced).
That said, Zee pretty much has them all with her. Two shock gloves, two pistols (in concealed holsters, but small enough not to matter), one camo-ed rifle, and a retracted whip (also in a concealed holster) tucked away.

By "padlock" do you mean an old-school combination lock (we are in the ghetto), or did you mean maglock?
Also, were any of the gangers on that floor particularly close to that door?

The padlock is just one of those large metal ones that you open with a key. The door is about ten feet away from the den where most of the gangstas are chilling.

Also, noted on the sniper rifle.

Oh yeah, and the door is down the hall from that den, not across from it, so if you can find some way to get in without making a lot of noise, they won't be able to see you, assuming they stay in that room.

Considering attempting to (default and) pick the lock. Currently, don't have any tools (and no autopicker), but I might be able to improvise something found around the building (a bobypin from one of the bathrooms, a discarded needle, a knife, etc). Expecting either the -2 or -4 dice pool penalties from the build/repair table, anyway.

Does that seem possible?

Another (separate) plan I am rolling around involves the weapon-cache. You mentioned explosives. Anything with a timer or detonator? any grenades or rockets?

And if there are grenades, how many - can I tell what kind? And can they be (safely) connected to Zee's PAN (like, tuning a bluetooth headset to a device) or does each grenade have its own username and password that she would have to hack?

Oh, and do you want another stealth check for moving around the house (returning to the weapon cache, or basement door) or just when Zee tries to leave?

There are several boxes worth of grenades, but they're the good old fashion pull the pin and throw 'em variety, so they're not hackable. There are also some plastic explosives that aren't assembled with a detonator yet, so they can't be blown unless you assemble them with a Demolitions roll. There's a Panther in the room, so it's possible to use that if you don't care about noise.

You can attempt to pick the lock with a -4 penalty against a threshold of 8. Every combat turn, I roll 1d6. If it comes up a 1, your presence is discovered.

No more stealth checks required unless you try to do something really whacky. I'll just use your original one when it comes up.

Are either the detonator or the Pather wireless-capable (or are they old too), if even if they're not - would hackign be required to add a random weapon to my PAN? or is there some kind of "connect" button you hold down like I do in reeal life with random wireless devices? (Might need to know later)

Sounds good. Does the threshold mean the lock is of particularly high quality (I think the threshold is usually the rating) or that its of particularly shitty quality (like, fi its rusty, and unlikely to open, even if I had a key), or did it go up from lack of good tools?

Sounds good. I would probably just buy successes again, anyway.

No wireless on either, but there are also remote detonators for the explosives in addition to the timed ones. Most of the stuff in there looks to be older models that are of less than pristine quality, but they can probably still make things go boom pretty well.


Big ass, high quality lock plus defaulting on a technical skill.

There are a couple of newer weapons in there that you can add to your PAN since they're unsubscribed right now, so if you want to do that for some reason, lemme know.

Alright, well, demolition would be a default, and is based on logic (so I'd only be looking at 4 dice), so I think I'll pass on that line of thinking.

Will pick up two grenades (clipping them to suit somewhere). The panther is damned tempting, but would negate the camo, and I'm not quite ready to shoot my way out yet. Short of attempting to set the explosives myself (which I think would probably blow Zee up) I don't think there is much I can do to remotely sabotage the weapon-cache... so maybe it'll still be there when we get done here.

Current Loadout
- Clearsight
- Defense
- Covert Ops
- Throwing (*change*)
- Pistols
- Unarmed Combat

Here's some rolls for the attempt to pick the lock:
Response (9) + Handling (1) + Defaulting (-1) = 9 dice
#D=9 : 515463432 n1=1 n6=1 nHit=3
#D=9 : 561246114 n1=3 n6=2 nHit=3
#D=9 : 411154125 n1=4 n6=0 nHit=2

Which should be enough, based on the threshold you specified... now... to see if they hear me working on that.

Not at the moment (unless they're grenade launchers or something that cause explosions), but good to know for the future.
The only reason I asked before, is that I thought it might make a good backup plan to be able to fire off a wireless command to detonate their weapon-cache, if Zee gets seen (before people can rush there to gear up).

You forgot the -4 modifier for not having tools, which means you need 2 more hits. One more roll ought to do it.

Oh, good catch. One second.
#D=5 : 52625 n1=0 n6=1 nHit=3

Working on my next IC steps. Couple of questions:

A) You said there was 18 guys in the apartment (not sure if that counts the girl getting laid upstairs or not), and that most of them were in the den, with the dog. I'm approximating about 8 in the den, with the other 10 spread out in the house, in the other three groups. The large(ish) group being the group of 4 making whoopie on the second floor. The second and third floor kitchens each having a group of 3 (planning some attack, and debating who's hotter, respectively). Does this fit with your picture of the layout?

B)Was the weapon-cache in an room with a window to the outside? or was it one of the interior rooms - I'm guessing interior, because I didn't notice it during the brief period where I had radar penetrating the exterior rooms.

C) Where the automatic rifles against he wall in the den, or did each of the ganger-infested rooms have some rifles within easy reach?