This is the OOC thread for Brave New World.

Click here to access the master database for this game.

Cast of characters:

Alexander Darton Smith, played by Glyph (Hermetic Sorcerer, Former Lone Star Cop)
Frank Cutler, played by crizh (Ares Firewatch Operator)
Jack Koverman, played by BlackHat (Skillwires Specialist, Data Courier)
Sam Jones, played by Chance359 (Intrusion/Combat Specialist, Former Ork Legbreaker)
Sid G., played with thearistocrat (Mafia Rigger)

What do we do now?

The official IC thread launches next Tuesday, July 7th. Use the time to make any last minute sheet revisions to your characters. The game begins two months after the Containment Wall goes up - decide where your character's starting point is going to be and start putting together your first IC post. It's been two months since you've been cut off from the rest of the world and forced to survive inside the Containment Zone. What are you doing now? What kind of life have you made for yourself? Are you working security in Wrigley Dome, using your skills to protect the refugees living inside the haven and training promising recruits in the art of combat? Are you running a makeshift free clinic in Archer Heights to provide medical assistance to the sick and needy? Are you a hired gun working bodyguard detail for a powerful warlord? A driver running an armored cab service to ferry survivors from one end of the Zone to the other, braving hostile insect spirits and gangers with every trip? A treasure hunter who specializes in raiding abandoned corporate facilities to loot state-of-the-art gadgets that have been left behind when the suits fled the city?

You guys can choose to begin at the same launch point or start the game as completely disconnected individuals - whatever you decide will have a significant impact on the course of the game for you. If you begin separately, take note that your paths may converge in a way that you did not anticipate, and you guys may even end up working against each other, depending on your actions and choices in-game.

How often am I expected to post?

I'll be making a minimum of two posts a week, and I ask everyone to try your best to do the same. I understand that sometimes real life can bite you in the arse, so if you need to take a short break, just give me a heads up. An exception to the two per week guideline is combat: if combat has been initiated, anyone who does not post their action within 24 hours will be skipped for that Initiative Pass.

How does karma work?

One point of good karma will be awarded every Sunday. Characters can earn bonus karma for stuff like going the extra mile when posting, coming up with intelligent and creative solutions to problems, producing a particularly clever piece of dialogue, etc...basically, anything that impresses the GM. I also traditionally hand out OOC karma upon completion of the game for any reason, including character death. OOC karma is intended to be a token of gratitude for sticking with the game til the very end, and can be applied to any characters you create for any games I run in the future.

Is there anything else I should know?

Always keep at the forefront of your mind that this will be a deadly game - if you don't play smart, you will die, and even if you do play smart, there's no guarantee that you won't die. All NPCs, even the grunts, have at least one point of karma pool. Due to one of the house rules, characters can pump their entire combat pool into a single attack, unrestricted by skill rating. This means that even a little old granny with a pump shotgun can kill your character if she gets off a lucky roll. I do not fudge rolls, either for or against the players. However, I hate killing off characters, and you will always have at least one way to survive in any situation if you look hard enough (i.e. no snipers headshotting you from a million miles away without you even having the chance to make a Perception roll). Play smart, look after each other's back, and you just might make it long enough to see the world outside the Wall again - and even if you don't, you'll go down knowing you gave as good as you got.

Other stuff:

Everyone - please check your online character sheet to view your starting equipment. Let me know if you find any discrepancies between the sheet I uploaded to the website and the one you originally drafted.

Glyph: +3 karma for Doc (OOC karma from Origins)
BlackHat: +3 karma for Jack (Ditto)
crizh: +1 karma to Frank for writing that kickass piece of short fiction

I forgot all about that little reward. Awesome.

No discrepancies between the original draft and what you have, but I'm moving my "last minute changes" here rather than the recruiting thread.

I can't seem to connect to the link. I'll try again later.

Link updated. Added a reverse link back to this thread as well as a super cool map of the Containment Zone for visual reference. Don't save the site to your favorites or anything just yet, since I'm testing out different hosts right now to find a stable one, so the actual address might change.

The new link works, and Alex looks good. The only discrepancy is that his makeover spell should only be Force: 3, not 6.

Updated character sheet looks good. Three questions:

1. It says "personal secretary" in gear. Is that supposed to be a pocket secretary? Or does he have a person who follows him around and keeps track fo his appointments?

2. Can I have an induction-datajack adapter to go with that, pretty please. It'll make accessing Jacks' cyberware a lot easier since that's the only way in or out.

3. Speaking of what we're up to after 2 months in the zone, did you want us to pay for lifestyles, or just roleplay it out? I set aside some cash for a lifestyle (and had some left over for a second, if need be), but I assumed it was his old one and would be lost when he got trapped in Chicago - and I assume a lot of other people didn't set aside money for one because of the limitation on gear.

Okay, I had planned to try this out for a Denver-based game I had planned to run that never got off of the ground - so I thought I would throw the idea out there for this game and see if Krayola or anyone else thought it was worth doing/finishing.

I have created a google-map for the Chicago Containment Zone at: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&...0917e0522f324bd

I put in the zones and locations from Krayola's map (estimated locations, since I don't know the area well). If people send me their gmail usernames, I can add them as collaborators, otherwise I don't mind managing the thing when new items come up. I thought it would be cool for calculating distances/routes between places - marking who hates us and who loves us, etc.

Also, if I can figure out how the maps in the book relate to this one, I can try to add items from them a little later. None of them have scales or anything, so I have to look for landmarks to line them up.

If this turns out to be more hassle than its worth, or if Krayola would rather not have people go there for map-information, that's fine by me.

Went ahead and added everything else I could find maps for from the BC book. It got easier as it went along.

Also, I had to guess at the names of a couple of the places on Krayola's map. He can edit them back if I got them wrong at some point.

Another thing, both of my contacts were picked assuming his life before the containment. I'm fine with being cut off from them (that was what I intended, anyway) or they could be trapped here too (lol), but given that he's been making a life for himself for two months, do you have any objection to me spending 5K of the remaining 8K on a new level 1 contact (I think that's how much it costs) so that Jack has managed to make a single friend (well, friend might be a little much) in that time?

I've been thinking about where he might start, and what he might have been doing in the last two months, and it seems like making at least one contact in the zone would be a good idea.

Since I am already being a chatterbox today, I might as well add another question to the queue. Can we use the OPTEMPO rules from rigger 3 (pg 75)? Alternatively, I'd be okay with ignoring maintenance altogether (my old group did that, for riggers) but I suspect that because fuel and parts and vehicles are hard to come by, it makes more sense than ever to track it - or to at least force us to RP finding a way to fill up the tank.

At least two of the PCs have vehicles, and if fuels is as hard to get (and as expensive to buy) as I assume it must be, I think those vehicles will spend a lot of time idle. The default maintenance rules make owning a vehicles cost a ton of money, no matter what. At which point, you might as well drive it everywhere. Optempo seems pretty simple, but would probably mean we'd avoid taking them out unless we needed to (since every single trip costs something).

As an example, a Ford Americar would have an optempo rating of 0.2 - meaning it requires 0.2 nuyen of maintenance (gas, repairs, oil, whatever) for every kilometer traveled during an adventure. However, assuming we're using something close to the markups in the BC sourcebook, the 1500% markup would mean more like 3 nuyen per km (so, 60 nuyen for a one way run between the Core and the Wrigley Dome).

Conversely, normal maintenance (assuming no stress points are incured) would be 200 nuyen - with 1500% markup becomes 3000 nuyen a month. This is roughly 25 round-trip trips across the Zone. Assuming we're not taking daily joyrides, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to go with Optempo.

Oddly, in either case, fuel economy does not seem to come into play.

Hot Dang, I messed up the Chal'han ritual. I'm blaming Ancient History, I just copy/pasted it but I should have proofed it more thoroughly. The last verse has 'they' instead of 'thy', twice.

And after literally hours trying to chose a nice Catholic cemetery inside the CZ I manage to pick one that one of the Mega's has built a frakking tower block on top of.

You can see it in Blackhat's Google Map, in the Core sector, the Fed-Boeing building is right next to Mt Olivet. Blackhat has put it in the right place according to the map in Bug City but the fluff in the section about the Core mentions that Fed-Boeing is actually built on the cemetery and Ares and some other stuff built over the cemetery across the road....

So I'll have to move that part of my background two blocks West to St Casimir's. Which isn't all bad, as I recall St Casimir's is traditionally for Lithuanian Catholics so it is a good location for a grave that won't draw attention.

I'll move both sites onto the cemeteries you mentioned. I was pretty much eyeballing them based on teh maps in teh book, and in a few places where I read more of the text and could get a more accurate description (such as an intersection) I moved them. I'll mark St. Casimir's too (as a cemetery) for future reference.

I've been thinking about where Jack might live/start and what he's been doing (and working on an introductory post) but I thought I would throw some ideas out there in case the other PCs wanted to co-habitate or something.

I am thinking that Jack would start someplace corporate. He enjoys living the high-life, and is used to dealing with corporate-types, although he doesn't strictly work for one of them. From what I can gather, there are some big players with assets still trapped in the zone: Truman, Yamatettsu, Federated Boeing (although the write up makes that place sound abandoned), MCT, Fuchi, Ares (not to mention the Azzies). He is also quite used to attaching himself to people and organizations that are more powerful than he is. He would think that if anyone would have contact with the outside world, it would be them, and would guess that if anyone from outside was going to send a rescue team to recover people from inside, it would be one of the corporations (and, even then, it would be mostly about the data and property those assets could bring with them). So, Jack's best chance for escape would be being there when they do, and making himself useful enough to the people leaving, that they take him with them (maybe he can get a gig as a 5-10 Gp data-safe for the return-flight).

So, the Core sounds full of that sort of stuff, but I'm not really sure if it is habitable, or not - or if the corporations there are locked up tight, or if they would take in a guy who could fit in and make himself useful. The upper stories of the sky scrappers are bug-infested, and some Corporate NPCs are described as living all the way across town in the Dome. The Core is also made to sound like the sort of place runners might go on a loot-run, rather than to live. *shrugs*

Still mulling it around. Anyone else have any thoughts about where they might live?

While I'm technically still on Holiday I will certainly have dropped by the Dome to have a word with Captain Ravenheart who, while not in my direct chain of command, is technically my superior officer.

I'll have given her my comm codes and frequencies in case she wants to contact me but I won't have joined up. I'm on Holiday and have my own agenda but I'm happy to help her out if she needs help now and again.

The sourcebook is a bit vague about whether the Ares headquarters in the Core is occupied. It implies that this is not the case but it likely has automated defences. I've certainly made a point of going down there. If setting up residence there is feasible I certainly will have done so.

It likely has a Knight Errant barracks and doubtless the Firewatch facilities were extensively used in the build up to the raid on the Hive. Technically it is still extra-territorial property that I actually have a valid SIN and security clearances within. Presumably much of the useful kit is currently in the Dome although I imagine that it would have been difficult to move it all given the length of time they had.

Perhaps I could have made a deal with Ravenheart to bring specific bits of kit back. Firelance vehicle Lasers sound dangerous, you wouldn't want to leave them lying around.

I've probably been building up a base of operations all this time, possibly making a start on the preamble to my revenge. Now, in the weeks following Cermak, Frank is getting braver. With most of the True Forms in Torpor I'm more inclined to start being more proactive.

Making the sort of friends that can help with my long term goals is certainly high on my list.

At this stage the usefulness of insecticides is becoming common knowledge, I might actually be considering clearing out the Wasp Hive in the Ares Tower and other nearby blocks. If you could dose the tanks that supply the fire suppression systems with DDT you could clean the place out pretty easily.

BlackHat:

Pocket secretary, not personal secretary.
Yes on the induction datajack adapter.
Yes on the new contact.
No on lifestyles, just RP it.
No on OPTEMPO, we're just gonna wing it.

Freaking awesome map, I replaced the jpeg on the site with it. Add me at krayola dot red at gmail dot com. +1 karma for making something that'll make life for your GM a helluva lot easier.

Oh yeah, random suggestion for crizh: you might want to give Frank some social skills, at least a few points in Etiquette bare minimum. Life in the Zone will be very difficult for our Firewatch man if he has no social skills whatsoever.

Or make some charismatic friends, fast.

All sounds good. Consider the money on the contact spent, I'll get the details out tomorrow before the initial post.

Should have an invite.

This would also put you right next to your favorite grave.

Also, I had the same question about the whole Core. I sort of imagined those skyscrappers as something like a corporate Tenpenny Tower (from Fallout) or Paradise Falls (from the zombie movie Land of the Dead) - but the sourcebook seems to have them all set up to be by-the-book shadowruns (expecting the players to break in after some wiz tech, and deal with security forces, armed drones, etc). Obviously, if there are manned forces, they have to live somewhere (I presume, in the lower 200 floors) - but who knows.

I'm imagining them as more like ancient Egyptian tombs in Hollywood movies, aka booby traps hidden around every corner, except instead of corridor-size boulders and pit traps with spikes in them, you have an automatic sentry smartguns and gas chambers. Every corp worth its salt would have a full building lock down protocol in place as a contingency for events like this, and if you're going to go in there, you're going to have to defeat their automatic security measures. No doubt some of the security would've already been overcome by raiders, scavengers, bugs, or people who just want to live there, but the further in you go (aka where all the top secret super duper prototypes are), the more of a chance you're going to run into an unexpected surprise.

Edit: Of course, some facilities might actually still have physical security, since there will always exist fanatically loyal employees who refuse to shirk their duties even in apocalyptic times like these. Corps with particularly sensitive property may even take steps to hire people from inside the Zone to guard their hoard from would-be looters.

Sounds good to me.

BlackHat, nice job with the map.

I'm going to have Sam living out or a stuffer shack a couple of blocks to the East of the Burbank mall (added a mark)

I did try to find a way to do this but I wanted to have the soft's for Gunsmithing and ran out of cash.

Any chance you might consider adding an Etiquette chip to my gear list?

It's on my list of things to acquire asap.

Can someone please check my numbers, I'm getting different totals if I build by hand or NSRCG.

Sam Jones


Attributes: 158 Karma
Skills: 176
Resources: 96 (540,000)
Race: Ork 20 Karma
Total: 450





Attributes

(36) Body: 7 (9)
(28) Quickness: 7
(30) Strength: 7
(18) Charisma: 4
(28) Intelligence: 5
(18) Willpower: 4

Essence: 0.8
Bio Index: 3.50
Magic: 0
Initiative: 9 + 2d6

Combat Pool: 8
Task Pool: 0
Karma Pool: 1

Good Karma: 0/0

Active Skills

(12) Athletics/Climbing: 3/5
(21) Electronics: 5
(14) Electronics B/R: 4
(14) Lock Picking: 4
(21) Light Guns/Pistols: 4/6
(21) Medium Guns/Shotguns: 4/6
(14) Etiquette: 4
( Negotiation: 3
(21) Stealth: 5
(30) Brawling: 6

Knowledge Skills

Criminal Organizations: 4
Evaluate/Jewelry: 3/5
Gambling Card Games: 5
Biology: 3
Navigation/Land: 3/5
Paranormal Animals: 3
Pop Culture: 3
Security Procedures: 4
English: 5 (R/W: 2)

Cyberware

Autoinjector (Stimulant Patch: 6)
Autoinjector (Trauma Patch)
Biomonitor Processor
Biomonitor
Titanium Bone Lacing
Cyber Ear Replacement
- Dampener
- Hearing Amplification
- Spatial Recognizer
Cyber Eye Replacement
- Eye Light system
- Low Light
- Flare Comp
- Protective Covers
Internal Air Tank
Retractable Climbing Claws
Smartlink 2
Wired Reflexes 1

Bioware

Enhanced Articulation
Muscle Augmentation 1
Muscle Toners 2
Orthoskin 2
Nephritic Screen

Just at a glance (since I'm not sure what ork mods are, and I can't look them up this instant), karma costs for your athletics (rating 4 ) should be 14 not 12.

How many points are you off?

According to the table on the BECKS 2 pdf, its:

(8 ) Athletics: 3
(5 ) -Climbing: 5

Making it 13, NSRCG says its 12

Ah, I forgot that specializations worked differently when done with karma

House rule: social skills cannot be translated into activesoft format.

Are you rounding up or rounding down? NSRCG apparently rounds down for all skill costs. I checked my copy of 3rd ed and it doesn't specify either way.

Frak!

When did you add that?

That's a pretty major change, let me have a look and see what I can shoehorn in...

Actually, just now. I've always had a beef with chipped social skills that aren't complete personality overrides, I just forgot about it until you brought it up.

IC up. Gimme a kick ass intro post whenever you guys are ready. Take your time to think it through, cuz like I said, where you begin will be a major influence on your character's story. I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days starting tomorrow, so there's no need to rush.

And in breaking news it appears that I have totally arsed my skills up...

Yeah!

Forgot you pay double for skills above the linked attribute.

I'm wondering if I should maybe replace Medium Guns(Assault Rifle) with something strength linked like Heavy Weapons or Bows.

A RangerX sure would be a cool weapon for guerilla warfare if you like that whole Rambo vibe.

I'll sleep on it.

So for a 3/5 specialization, 12 is the right number (assuming a linked Attribute of at least 5).

My first post is coming along nicely, but I still haven't decided where he is going to end up. I'm also trying to edit it to gloss over some of the details, so that it is not a day-by-day account of the last 60 days, but still makes it sound like a shitty last couple of months - I tend to ramble. I apologize in advance if it is lengthy.

I'm still trying to iron out the details of the changes I'm going to have to make.

I think I may just opt in the end to continue defaulting to Charisma for Social Skills. I watched First Blood not all that long ago and that sort of surly anti-social combat monster is quite appealing.

On the other hand I could tame his combat capabilities down and drop High pain tolerance to squeeze in Etiquette.

I'm considering living in the Ares Tower very seriously. I might even go so far as to be actively trying to clear out all the downtown Wasp Hives.

It could be like Die Hard meets Aliens.

edit

Here's an example core skillset.



I'm figuring a decent bow is as good as a sniper rifle in an urban environment and I could have actually brought one with me with the right permits.

'Yeah officer, I'm going Elk hunting..'

Otherwise I'm going to have to drop my primary ranged skill to 4 although that would make it easier to squeeze in Etiquette.

I'd have to put another induction pad in my off hand for the Bow Accessory Mount...

I put a marker on the map for Jack's location. I also (and hope its okay with Chance) updated his marker - making one for the stuffer shack to mark its location, and another for his character (which I figured, we could move around as our characters do).

Ah hah, can't believe I missed that.


You have one karma point, you can always pick up Etiquette: 1.

Not a bad plan, go with that then?

Any objection to the skill changes I made above or to my having brought a RangerX with me?

I'd alter the B/R 'softs to drop Medium Guns B/R and replace it with Projectile Weapons B/R.

edit

eep, I wonder what the password might be?...

If the skill changes above are final, I'll update your sheet on the website.


Take a guess. Roll Intelligence if you want a hint.

Yeah I think they are pretty much final.

Do I make an INT check or does Giblet?

Well...Giblet, duh.

OK, after a couple of false starts trying to work out SR3 dice rolls...

INT check: 10,8,7,4,2,3

Password: C _ _ _ O _ T _

Woooo it's just like Wheel of Fortune

Can I buy a vowel?



I'll post IC in a bit, got tea to cook...

A New Challenger has entered the arena
Sid "The Squid" G.

BP

Vitals

Attributes

Augmentation

Skills

Vehicle & Drones

Contacts

Lifestyle

Background

Krayola, question, can I swap the Lone Star Black Mariah for a heavy pistol and some more ammo? Since the stuffer shack I'm starting out in probably wouldn't have a garage, I dont know where Same would keep it.

Also I dont have any contacts that fit so could I pick up the Hung out to dry flaw, balanced out with 2 boxes of high pain tolerence? If not, I'd probably write up a joy girl and a street kid for contacts.