I've added another full location to my site. A posh apartment complex, matrix site, etc.

Direct link is here.

Want some feedback on this one - please let me know what you think or if you use it.

K.

This is really excellent! I can think of a lot of uses for this in my game.

A few questions: On p. 2, how many apartments are there, 2 or 4? If it's 2, how are the right and left halves connected to each other? If it's 4, how come some of 'em don't have dining tables?

What is p. 5 supposed to be? My guess is parking garage, but it's unlabeled.

Some of the Matrix nodes would probably benefit from being Nexi - otherwise they won't be able to handle connections by more than a few residents at a time before bogging down. You also might want to stat up a security hacker, since this kind of establishment seems like it might have a spider or two - if you don't want to stat 'em, at least indicate that they're there, since I would certainly include them.

I don't know if this is within the scope of what you want to do here, but could you go into a little more detail about security? Is there any kind of astral security, in particular?

But mostly, this is awesome! Good work.

Thank you.

There are four apartments on each residential floor. I should probably put a scale on there if it's not obvious how large they are from the furniture. They're all laid out differently to be realistic. For example, the kitchen / dining area is present in the top left apartment, replaced with a breakfast bar in the two on the right and in the bottom left, they just leave it as extra space. Probably a bachelor who does most of his socialising via the Matrix and doesn't feel the need for a dining table.

Page five are the basement parking floors. I've now added a label. I suppose really I should add an external map to show road layout, etc. I might do that later. Anyway, I've re-uploaded it with an extra label for the garages and I noticed that the back wall of the ground floor was missing. Heh! That would make breaking in rather too easy for the players!

As regards the Matrix side, I'm actually happy with the nodes as they are. They don't need to be Nexi for their purposes as they wont be supporting lots of personas. For example the Community Hub and Gaming Hub nodes can provide a virtual environment for lots of people to enter without actually being Nexi. They'd only need to be Nexi if the people were running their Personas on their but they actually run them on their commlinks which bear the burden of running that software. Subscription limits apply to the personas, not to the nodes. The Nexi rules from Unwired were good, but they weren't clear enough, imo.

You're right about the need for a bit more detail on security procedures. I'll go back and add a bit about Astral security and Matrix security. I imagine them not having magical security on-site (unless any of the residents bring their own), but having a contract for Spirit assistance if they sound the alarm for it. The Matrix level may need adjusting for different games. For me, it was pitched right. This is an apartment block and residents will naturally have their own Matrix security arrangements if they wish. I didn't see it as being cost effective to have a fully qualified spider sitting on the site 24 hours a day - that would hit profits hard! This is what IC is for! When I used this in my game, it worked out exactly where I wanted it. The team's hacker made her way in through the reception node at user level which was sufficient for her to let her team mates in. She then tooka look at the building management and security nodes and after some good Matrix Perception rolls, decided to hedge her bets and hack the building management node first. That got her the details the team needed on their target and having had a near-ish miss getting into it, decided to gather her backdoors and leave for now. The thing about a node that you can hack with an 80% chance of not being detected, is that if you try three such nodes in a row, your chance is around 50:50. You don't gamble the mission on 50:50 chances - at least not in my game. Obviously you could boost security if appropriate for your game. You could do this with an on-site spider or if you want to be, imo, more realistic, you could bolt on an "IC box" running some roving IC that patrols the system. I really must get round to finishing the updated Matrix Examples document at some point, seeing as that's been downloaded at least twice as much as any other file I've ever made.

K.

EDIT: I mentioned outsourcing the Magical security. If you want an idea the sort of company I envisage doing this, I wrote one up here.

Very Nice.

Thanks once again.

They might not have a full time spider on site but might have a scramble spider ARC that brings in the contracted security response guy to check things out in the event of an alert.

Cool. I always like maps I don't have to make myself. This is the way the old Sprawl Sites book should have done things. Thanks Knasser and glad you are back making stuff like this.

Love the building's design, especially the enclosed balconies.

Some issues to consider:

• The font you used can be hard to read unless zoomed in. I would suggest using either bold, a thicker font, or a larger point size.
• The Pool/Bar being under a dome on the roof might go well with the design of the enclosed balconies.
• The Pool/Gym/Bar level should have walls (even if glass) between those areas. The humidity, chlorine, and sweat smells would not be conducive to enjoying the bar.
• Is the Pool/Bar/Gym level below, or above all the parking levels?
• The lowest level of the Parking garage shows a ramp going down... Where to?
• Based on the furniture illustrations, the bedrooms seem a bit too small.
• There appear to be long thin hallways between the living rooms and the bedrooms with doors at each end into what might be closets. Why not just have the bedrooms open up into the living space?
• The one bathroom is across the living space from the bedrooms. Not a big deal for a couple, but my be less desirable for a family, or those having out-of-town guests staying over.
• I would also suggest two bathrooms for Apartments this large, one as part of a master suite, and one shared by the other bedrooms and the living space.

Thank you.



Really? I do tend to like dense text. They're intended for printing out and look okay to me, but I can increase the font size. It's a little a matter of taste. If a couple of others could comment and say what they'd like, that would be useful. If people do think the fonts I use need to be bigger, I'll update this and keep it in mind for future PDFs.



That was the original plan, actually. I started drawing the bubble on the roof, found that I couldn't make it look right next to the VTOL platform and decided to just stick it in the basement. You are right that it would be better but this, like some of your other suggestions, are things for the hypothetical day when I can spend hours fiddling around re-doing images already done. The suggestions are welcome, however.


Hmmm. You have a point about the chlorine smells. The idea for the bar was to be a big open area where people could move casually from swimming to looking good in their swimwear at the bar. I'm thinking 2070's decadence here. I'm willing to handwave the chlorine and humidity with fifty years of air conditioning technology. Given how polluted Auburn can be, the whole complex has to have a pretty good air conditioning solution anyway.



Right. I have taken note from all the feedback that my setup wasn't entirely clear (at all, apparently). I've now gone back and added floor references for everything and an overview of how its structured to the introduction. The idea is that you have the main building, the gym / bar / swimming pool below this, and then three floors of parking below that. That lowest level, the ramp is going up, I'm afraid.



They're big beds! And the rooms are actually quite large if you visualise it. At least I think so. Perhaps not by American standards? Note also that some of these apartments are family apartments. You have a master bedroom which really is big, and then maybe the kids' bedroom(s).



Sense of privacy / territory. The place is largely open plan, but it's still nice when you have guests not to go immediately from the very personal territory of your bedroom to all those strangers in your house, but rather to have that buffer zone. At least, that's my take on it. The corridor separates out the personal home from the welcome home.



You may be right. It's too late for me to start redoing all the plans now. I once dated someone whose family home had two bathrooms. I was very impressed at how I'd gone up in the world. I also couldn't believe that her family still had arguments with such luxury. As far as I was concerned, a family was a collection of people who fight over a bathroom. Still, these apartments are typically a couple or a couple with two kids. I can't believe even High lifestyle has more than one toilet per four people. Luxury level, maybe.

Thanks for all the feedback. I've updated the location with a lot of the suggestions, including some more Matrix security details. I'll await a couple more comments on font size and style before changing though on the grounds that I like it as is and changing things based on two people having different tastes doesn't make sense. If some others can confirm that I'm in the minority, that would be helpful and I can then amend it (and future works).

Really appreciate all this feedback - makes it all worthwhile.

Peace and coolness,

Khadim.

FWIW, I think the text is fine.

I think that maybe number of bathrooms is a regional thing, but I live in PA and I know lots of not-particularly-wealthy 4-person families with 2-bathroom houses. Usually only one shower/tub, but two toilets.

The typical family home in North America has 2½ bathrooms: 1) A master bath off of the master bedroom, 2) A full bath shared by the other bedrooms, 3) a half-bath (no shower/tub) off the living space.

Now I have never been a city dweller, but from how they are portrayed in fiction I have always assumed that apartments (like small homes) just lose one of the bathrooms. Small apartments of course would just have the one full bath.

I.E., If I was drawing a one/two bedroom apartment it would have one full bath next to the bedroom(s). A three+ bedroom apartment would have bathrooms more like a house.

P.S. My relatively typical townhouse also has 2½ baths, 2 bathrooms upstairs for the bedrooms, and the ½-bath on the ground floor.

P.P.S. It occurs to me as I write this that the addition of the ½-bath is probably linked more to multi-story residences, than it is to the size/value of the residence.

How do you people keep all this clean?

Would you like to see a picture of my bathroom? There are many adjectives to describe it, but "clean" is not one of them...

Thanks, got an adventure coming up. Needed a location to run it and this fits perfectly.

We also have relatives colloquially known as "mothers" who do most of the work.

I can only imagine my mothers response if i asked her to clean my living space, i'm not sure I'd survive it.

Mine bothers me every few weeks about how not-clean it is (the last one was shrugged of with a "Yes Mother"). She does however clean the rest of the house, which is 1 and a half baths plus (there are 3 and a half in the whole house, Library, Office, Kitchen, Dining room, Living room, Cat's room, my room, sister's room, master bedroom--so its not small).

We'll some of us live on our own so it comes up a lot less frequently. Now if i could just persuade the fiance' to clean.

I'm a uni student living off campus with two other students. If any of our mothers were to come around I think they would disown us.

This, is fantastic. Thank you.

The location or the ongoing confessional about the state of our bathrooms?

K.

VERY nice. Any chance of a middle class, low class or slum-dog version? The latter especially I use very regularly (i.e. - building converted from office space into squatter or low living areas.)

It's not out of the question. I'm open to requests, but not deadlines. I have a squatter location sketched out for my game, but it's not in a publishable state. Also, you get less out of a squatted office block. I suppose I could liven it up with some gang fortifications, etc. Hmmm. Would a Crimson Crush stronghold be of use?

The next two things I have scheduled though are the updated version of WWSD? and another full location (an ork clan living in and around a fortified mine in Puyallup). The former is nearly done, I'm just waiting for my friend to finish writing me a Shadowrun combat calculator to automatically figure out who will win fights on average - e.g. one samurai vs. three gangers, one samurai vs. five gangers, etc. He can be tricked into doing these things if you can make it sound fun.

I'll keep yours in mind.

All I ask for these location write-ups is that if people use them, they post a comment back here saying how it went. That rewards me for my effort and it brings the location to people's attention and boosts my downloads. (I don't profit from the downloads, I just like seeing the numbers rise).

K.

As far as I'm concerned, an updated WWSD would be medal-worthy ^_^

My secondary has a 2-bedroom apartment (fairly small) with 1.5 bathrooms - toilet and sink off her bedroom, and a full bathroom off of the hallway from main space to bedrooms.

I disagree with that : )

Consider this...
Seattle architecture is rarely how we (I) imagine it - it's low and sprawling. Imagine a two-level strip office space. Office furniture has been stolen and damaged. What remains has been cobbled together into privacy walls. You have 2-4 full families in each "room" competing for space, a common cooking area, a latrine area. There's a little drug den around behind. The top level belongs to the local gang, for meeting, fighting, storing goods for sale, and also LP/OPs. The whole place needs some sort of security - just gangers and 6-year-old spotters? Tin cans on a wire? Who are their neighbors? Dealers? Stuffer Shack? The Johnson's laundromat? What's the street access yet. Have they created a barrier out of something to protect their little fief? Do they charge a toll to use this road?

I always struggle over all these details. Every time I go in the barrens I come to hate Seattle more, because looking on the maps, everything is rolling, green hills, pleasant suburban homes and elementary schools. I definitely would enjoy your spin on the situation.

Excellent building, although if it were named for our Beloved Governor Kenneth Brackhaven... excuse me **walks off and various gagging noises can be heard before his return**. Sorry about that. Was saying that if it were named for Kenneth, then in our campaign it would have to be the Brackhaven Memorial Tower. Maybe it can be one of the structures built to replace the ones that have been destroyed in the last few days in our campaign (Seattle isn't a happy place at all right now in the Shadow Kingdom).

A suggestion for having the pool/bar/gym area on top would be to have the top two floors of the building to act as support and physical plant (water circulation, building A/C, etc.), as well as a place for the roof to be widened somewhat. Then have the pool situated around two of the building sides, the gym/bar along the third side, and the dome segregating them all from the helipad with the building's existing central lift column providing access to all. Having the pool and helipad situated above the building's primary roof air intakes would also provide a measure of physical security as it would be harder for someone to access them from topside (and the interior access can benefit from all the usual interior security).

I look forward to seeing it when you're finished.



All good suggestions. I really must get comments enabled on my site so that future downloaders can see all these suggestions. I've drawn a line under changes now, though as I'm in the midst of the next location - a Fire Draka lair. Thanks for the positive feedback. It keeps me writing this sort of stuff.

K.

The location I'm going to use the resource in a session very shortly

(apologies for the late message)

That's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear. If it's not too much trouble, post back to say how it went, even if it's minor!

K.

Yeah I addressing the issue in my "Urban vs Sprawl" thread. However, we came to the conclusion that Seattle has changed a lot in recent years (last 50 years), and population density means that in addition to sprawling the city also grows vertically - thus you have things like the Renraku/UCAS arcology, the Aztech Pyramid, and alot of highrises.

Even today Seattle's city centers have skyscrapers, and I'd think at least 5 story office buildings would be common even outside the most urban areas.
If you want to find low architecture I'd think what remains of housing in the Barrens would be appropriate - these houses are probably 60-70 years old, and features the old iconic suburban houses in cul-de-sacs. Of course the state of these houses would be very bad - probably similar to a warzone or Berlin 1945. Still some are intact and in use by gangers and squatters.

BTW Nasser - great work. If only I had the patience of making such detailed maps myself. I'll be sure to use this some day.

However the Matrix section is sorta staggering - do draw maps of matrix topology for all the systems the runners are likely to hack/interact with? I myself try to limit the time it takes (out of game) to hack systems as the other players have nothing to do meanwhile. Also while I understand the concept of security in depth, making the hacker hack 3 nodes just to get what he wants, with a small chance of failure seems excessive when he might just make one harder check instead. In other words, limit dicerolling as much as possible.

I also hate extended tests in the game and before the rule of "lose a die with every toss," I always used the quick extended test option.

I used it in the corprate downtown area of Calcutta. While it did not get used for tactical combat, the design did make for a great way to meet one of the NPCs (Top of a posh apartment complext in a bar over looking one of the temples across the river. Defnitely helped in giving atmosphere to the meeting between their Johnson and the NPC.

I do tend to sketch out Matrix systems to roughly that level of detail in my game, although you have the presentation version in this PDF. Sometimes I have to improvise, but if it's something I know will come up I'll ideally prep it like this.

As regards these networks in play, I try to cut them to fit. I can tell you how this one played out in game. Firstly, it was the player's first serious attempt at hacking (prior to this had just been a couple of vehicles). The group hadn't had a hacker before so there was some general interest from everyone. Additionally, the hacker player was narrating things to them over the commlink as she went along, reporting what she'd found and taking advice. It didn't take that long and it held interest. In this case it proceeded as follows:

Set-up: The players are seeking a particular target. They suspect she lives in this apartment builiding (she does, but it's under her husband's name which threw them earlier) and they want to check it out before they go in guns blazing. Two of them have set up a fake road works across the street and are keeping a watch on the place. The hacker connected up to the public reception node and hacked in at Security level. That only took a moment of real time (pointing the appropriate total (pre-calculated) on her character sheet and a few opposed rolls. The difficulty level of this system is not that high - it's just an apartment building. She got in and the other players started making suggestions what she should look for: "see if there's a record of who comes in, etc." There was but they wanted more info. The hacker had options of hacking further in to either the Building Management system or the Building Security system. This prompted some discussion amongst them or whether it was best to go for the juicy security node or make do with the management systems first. The group decided that tipping off their target was a serious risk as she might go to ground and they'd lose her and that the information from the management system might be enough for them, even if it wasn't perfect.So another hacking attempt was made with everyone watching. Again, this is just a few opposed rolls and only took a minute. From there, she was able to get a lot more information, identifying the apartment and that their target was out at the moment.She then decided to go for the security node in the end, the rolls were looking a bit chancy though so the other players started saying "Get out. Get out now." "We've got enough, we can use this." It was fun, people were participating with advice on exactly where the balance between risk and reward was best placed for them. Now if the hacker player had been a bit more selfish in monopolising the search and not listened to them, or had got involved in an intensive battle with IC, it would have been a bit different. But the former shouldn't happen in a good adventure - everyone should have a stake in the outcome and therefore an opinion on the process. And if she encounters IC, then her main aim would probably to get out of there. You only stick around if there are high stakes and if there are high stakes the rest of the team are probably on the edge of their seats rooting for her anyway. Combat flies when there's only one PC involved. This is also a smallish system. You'll find that when I design larger systems, they tend to have two qualities. Firstly, they tie into an active run quite closely. E.g. the hacker is cracking the doors open as the PCs sneak in, disabling motion sensors as they pass. Secondly, larger systems are often too hard to hack for a lone person (note I don't have TM's in my game), so the hacker is dependent on support from the team: infiltrate into area X, plug the wireless drone relay into Nexus Y, torture the security chief, you have fifteen minutes to get his passcode out of him, etc. The principle in both of these is of course team work.

I'd say if your group are individuals that basically sit there waiting for their chance to show off and gripe at other people getting too much time, then you're forced into the role of mother, making sure every player gets their share. That's inevitable anyway, but if the team is a bit more of a, well, team, then they should all be willing to get involved in one player's efforts on their behalf. And larger systems, as I say, are a team effort regardless of who is a hacker and who isn't. If you're designing Matrix systems as a solo-game for the hacker player, you're doing it wrong.

(Also, I know the Matrix rules backwards. That helps too.

K.

Will do, you may have to wait a little bit though, I have a feeling the whole group is going to be dying next session (tomorrow night) so may have to try it with a new set of characters.

Woah long answer. I must admit I don't have the time or patience to write up those models. You sound like you have a nice group. In my old group (which was very nice as well), the hacker was more of a loner, and didn't trust the team completely and certainly didn't think they were competent enough to give hacking advice, thus he never gave them info they didn't need. Thus the team couldn't help out with tips unless metagaming (and he didn't really need tips anyway). So instead we got the the point where the other players started playing Magic the Gathering instead every time the hacker would hack a significant node. yeah I know I should have stopped it right away but there you have it.

Now I didn't design hacking as solo-games, it was just that the player in question kept asking questions, testing things and basically pushing everything to the limit whenever he hacked, and such things take time. The mage in the group went on similar "solo missions", but his were much shorter typically as he met unexptected resistance or was quickly done with his scouting.

Your group probably has a very different background and culture, while in my (old) group the basic mantra from D&D was "never split the party." Not because it was dangerous or foolish, but because it meant everyone else had to wait while a single player did everything.

In any case the issue with hacking was one of the main reasons the campaign ended in the first place. This time around I'm gonna try to prevent the same thing from happening. Also, this group seems to be much happier when the hacker is able to do the whole mission by himself and they can just chill it and get karma Well as long as they get some action once in awhile.