Yup. Now, where is everybody? You've all gone and disappeareded on me.

Sorry, real life has been stepping in. I will make a post tomorrow. Should have some free time FINALLY.

I know how it goes....I hate working mornings. Thankfully back to my usual evenings for a bit.

Okay. Since things seem to have slowed...

I'd like everybody to get in their "What I'm doing on my shore leave" posts by Saturday night. Unlike normally, I won't wait. If you don't post, I presume you spent your shore leave (which, unless/until you guys indicate it to be longer or shorter, I'm fixing at 72 hours - so things pick up roughly the 12th of June at 2100 EDT/0100 13 June Zulu) doing just random sorts of things. For convos between two characters, I really strongly suggest RPing by IM or IRC and then pasting in a nice, narrated version of it to the IC thread. I'll be available on google chat for any RP you need to do with NPCs, when I'm not in class today or tomorrow.

Come Saturday night, I'll resolve any actual activities, rolls, etc. and fast forward to your undocking and such.

A word about speeds

Please note: The max speed of your ship, without redlining, is 14 knots. (Fortunately for you, most freighters top out at 12 knots!) Cruising speed (which is what I calculate fuel consumption off of) is about 12 knots (80% of top speed), and if you go faster, you drink more fuel. You can go up to 120% of top speed if you redline the engine, but if you redline, you will almost certainly damage the engines.

These numbers are temporary until I can do the math to convert the "Speed" listing of the H&W Classique III (you'll recall that that ship's our stat base for the yacht) into knots (a knot, for reference, is 1 nautical mile per hour). No karma if you do it for me, just a thanks.

And about new players

I am a fan of new players. I think 8 is a good size for the campaign, but I am certainly not adverse to taking on 1 or 2 extra players. I could accommodate more than 10, even, with help. But it all depends on recruitment. Which, because I am really bad at advertising, I'm leaving to you, the players.

Bring in a player who sticks around for at least one "run" and actively participates? You get 2 karma.

Each additional player? 1 karma more, until we reach 12 players.

(At 12 players, I go a-huntin' for a second GM from among you, to help me keep things straight if we expand at all beyond 12 players.)

And finally

Plot ideas. I may not use them as you suggest em! But I do welcome them, by PM or (preferred) email. They can be big plot ideas, or small little nuggets. No karma for this...But you may get the joy of seeing your idea used (in some form) in the campaign.

You'll note that I start you out basically on the "light side". This is sort of my default (I figure that unlike in movies, nobody starts out intending to be evil or do dark things), but not something that necessarily needs to be fixed. As you progress, I'll step back occasionally and take the "moral temperature" of the campaign. Shift to the dark side? I can accommodate that. Drift into the grays? I can do that, too. Like I promised, a lot of the campaign will be up to you guys.

(This initial freighter run, for the record? Meant to ease everybody into the campaign, including me. After this, you'll have way more freedom as to target. Even on the Navy runs, I'll try hard to give you a free hand.)

If you spot roles the crew needs filled, but we don't have filled among the playerbase as it stands, let me know by PM, IM, google chat, or email. I can add the note to our ad in the "career center".

More gear purchases:

60 x Stick-n-Shock Rounds = ¥560

Sometime during the leave I also install the sling and skin links on my guns.

Quick purchase: Endoscope 250¥

Mmkay. Purchases approved, edit your gear lists appropriately.

I don't know about you kiddies, but I'm ready to tear up shore leave or lock and load!

Yeah, sorry for the delay while PMs were being passed around.

No worries!

Okay, to answer the roll:

At 4 hits, you find out that the Jersey smuggling scene is still as diverse as ever (even amongst the Mob, which still controls the vast majority of organized crime in the state), with the Mob predominating over groups that are as diverse as the Yakuza (operating out of MCT corporate holdings, mostly), the Vory (operating out of Russian communities), various Jewish mobs, hyped up street gangs, motorcycle gangs....There's no single point of contact, and not even the Mob has much that crosses international borders and passes through New Jersey.

Awesome, thanks!

*points at her post* See, I'm still alive, and it is still Saturday.

Sorry for the long delay, I've been fairly busy the last several days. (And sick for a while before that)

Also sorry for the somewhat poor quality of my post, but I just wanted to finally get something out there.

Penta, I'm not sure if I ever rolled starting money or not (Don't have my most updated character sheet on this computer). I'm thinking not, because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to roll since I didn't buy any kind of lifestyle. By fluff/background she would have had a high lifestyle before giving it up just before play, but it certainly seems reasonable that she would have burned through that money in those last few days and so would only have the equivalent of a much lower lifestyle's starting money.

If the starting money is low, I figure I'll spend it all on 'parts' found at the junkyard. If you'd like me to be more specific with what I get, that's cool, but if you don't mind, I think it would be neat to just have a 'parts pool' that I can dip into to build whatever upgrade/drone/vehicle I happen to be working on (Representing the fact that my character is far smarter than I am, and so knows what to buy, and likely knowing before I do what she plans on building next)

Hopefully I won't be absent for nearly so long a stretch again.

My quick and dirty rule: If you don't have a lifestyle, roll 4d6 x 100 to get starting money.

Beyond that, noted.

Okay folks!

I'm noticing some progress on the shore leave sleuthing, so I'm going to hold off on posting the undocking and intel brief "cutscene". It's done, but I don't want to interrupt stuff that's actually happening. That said, Mawynn and Whizbang in particular, please keep things moving briskly.

Come tonight at 2359 EDT will start a 12-hour timer: If there's no movement by 1159 EDT tomorrow, I post the cutscene, move the story along, and any rolls you shoulda made come up failed. No glitches, but no hits. If there is movement, the timer restarts from the point of the post.

Again, alacrity is the key word here.

No matter HOW good you guys are at posting, I'll post the scene before heading off to school Wednesday, at the latest.

To give a quick preview:

It covers your undocking and transit to your first waypoint. Upon arrival at your first waypoint, you send an encrypted burst transmission to an overhead satellite, and are 15 minutes later contacted with your first intel brief.

After that, my ideal is that everything becomes up to you guys. I'll use cutscenes and similar "cinematography" to advance things when need be, but only in limited duration.

If people are really busy, maybe we should get some other crew members to rotate with. I know at least another guy who might be interested.

@Everyone: How busy are you guys? Do you just want to move onto the ship-to-ship combat?

I'm not that busy, but I am kinda waiting for general structure. I say we fastforward through this part if that's okay. If people want to RP their leave a bit more that's cool too.

Was kinda interested in the subquest (especially after investing in it)....but whatever people want. On to a (semi) guaranteed payout.

Personally, I definitely want to finish subquesting. However, with response rate so low, we'll be soon commanding a ghost ship.

Hmm....perhaps turn the subquest into a spinoff thread, and weave in results retroactivly?

I like it. All we need to be conscientious of is being killed, causing a temporal paradox, and imploding the known SR universe!

Yeah, no temporal paradoxes. Causality is not a suggestion!

In all seriousness, I'm going to declare that there's simply nothing more you can do for now, and advance the timeline.

Could always have the dead PC replaced by an identical twin brother/sister!

Beerfest FTW!

Ok, I'm no longer super busy. See my posts increase manyfold!

How are we fixed for non-lethal weaponry, speaking of taking over the ship without casualties? Rusty has an L36 with 2 clips of Stick-n-Shock, so she's covered there.

Iago has 5 clips of SnS for the Ares Alpha and Ingram Smartgun. He also has Stunball and can summon a Spirit of Man with Stunball too. He has 16 each of Gas, Flash-Bang, and Thermal Smoke grenades.

Two flashpack grenades as well.

I think we'll have to use non-lethal rounds, don't really want anything else ricocheting in the bowels of a ship.

John has 120 rounds of Sns. Plus his electrified fists can knock out people very nicely.

Just a thought, does anyone have restraints or handcuffs?

Plastic restraints are inconsequentially cheap as well as legal...I don't have any on my character sheet, but I can't imagine that our ship lacks for zip ties.

My drones only have capsule rounds, and I have SnS myself.

Sorry I haven't posted in ages, I thought we were still on that side quest thing. I'll see about getting a post up today to try and catch up.

Zalermo has 50 rounds of SnS on his silenced pistol, should be enough to last for awhile, even if it doesn't match the stopping power of some of the other guns floating about.

Just a quick bump to confirm: I am not dead, the game is not cancelled...I'm actually sitting back to let you guys plan, for what its worth!

I'm just busy with multiple things at once, too.

School primarily (I'm finding I need Word 2007. Looking at the prices for Office...Makes your GM want to cry. But I would have no idea how to acquire a properly-cracked and virus-free pirate copy anyway.), where I have a takehome midterm I've been procrastinating on and a whole lot of other homework (for my classes without midterms or finals) that I've just plain let pile up. I have no Earthly idea how I'm going to fully dig myself out of it.

But also something...Well, something closer to my heart. No, not another GF.

No. As I mentioned to CD this morning, on Friday night I...will put out to pasture my main character (Penta, naturally) at Ansible MOO, an Ender's Game themed MOO where I've been playing for the last 4 years. 4 years of rather active roleplaying...This character has become my headvoice at times even on RL stuff, has become alive and distinct from his creator in so many ways. Simply graduating him, as the case is, removing him from active play...Well, it's like saying goodbye to, or burying, a part of myself.

I found out about a month ago that his time was up, and hence have been RPing there as much as I could, to wrap plotlines up. (And I'm still finding there are lots of plots that'll be left untied-up...) That'll continue to the very end Friday night; after 4 years with this character, and with the people I've met there, I'm fairly determined to "give a good show", so to speak. I'll be making a new character soon enough, but this one was that most dangerous of characters: The (somewhat idealized) self-character. A crutch of mine when I'm new to a setting...And in this case, that fact makes him very hard to say goodbye to, even temporarily. (I say temporarily because I have no doubt he'll feature in "after-stories", so to speak...Eventually, anyway.) He was how I learned a lot of things. He was how I met my first GF, for one thing; Our characters had a crush on each other at first sight...And then, not long after, I found myself falling for her as well.

And now I'm saying goodbye to the "little guy". And that hurts. Ending a character is never easy, but this character...is especially hard to put aside.

---
Anyway, enough. I didn't mean to mourn in public. But...

For the next 48 hours? Penta will be a bit of a wreck. Not the time to tease your GM, guys, even if I'd normally appreciate it.

After I wrap things up Friday, I hope to dig in and focus: On school, yes, but also here.

However, I'm not going to push things along. When you guys are done planning, indicate it to me somehow as a group. Until then, I'll let you plan your little hearts out.

When you're done planning, I'll get working on the next cutscene and stuff, which will cut to...Well, I'm yet to decide that.

Good luck with the work. Fortunately, there is currently a version of Office 2007 for $60 from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts...us/default.aspx. Hope that helps!

Alexander can hit things with the back end of his rifle... he does have 50 gel rounds for one of his handguns. He has a whole mess of APDS and Ex ammo.

Frangible rounds would be a much better bet, but I don't remember seeing them listed in RAW...

Gear list for the Op:

Arsenal has low-velocity rounds in it... those might do. And flechette rounds are plenty frangible.

Did my orders not go over well? It's deathly quiet now!

Your orders were great. I'm just suffering from post Halloween hangover.

I'm ready to move out when the team is.

Okay, good to hear. Now if only your GM weren't curled up into a ball when he wasn't in class.

Yeah. My MOO adventures went smoothly...yay....But the combination of the late nights that provoked plus trying to do too much for school has me hurting physically.

Heh, well whenever you are ready Penta, it looks like the team is ready to move out. Also Karoline, Whizbang, and Ears have been pretty silent...

Karoline has been active elsewhere on the boards, so we just need to get her attention.

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO????????????????

Good to see you're still here, MM.

I'm not dead, just waiting for replies to my post advancing things...

Sorry for going quiet, my HD died and needed to be replaced. Just got it back today.

Was reading the 'Johnson memorial career centre' thread, and noticed Penta said you guys were 'always looking for new people'. I was wondering if a down on his luck, Philipeano ex-freedom fighter (read: pirate) and qualified merchant watchkeeper would be able to sign on next time you guys hit a port?

Yes, but we will have to get into port first... our IC thread has been at a standstill for some time.

I think we would be very welcome to have you aboard, but yeah, we need to come back to port first after getting the band back together after the holidays.