Not even sure how big those bills are. I wasn't really considering it, but I think for simplicity I'll go with no. I've always kind of assumed the listed price included having the stuff installed in you.

OK.

You still need players to round the roster, yes? If so I have a team I can start working on. I was hesitant at first but if it's going to be a while before the game starts then I should have time to play...

Yep, can always use players. It's unlikely to start before the end of the month.

New to SR, I have been playing a couple of months now and a friend (who has played for a few years) would like to be a team if you don't mind a team of 2 that will be new to this type of format.

Certainly don't mind. There are enough singles around that I'm sure there will be someone to fill that 3rd spot on your team. And this type of format will technically be new to everyone, since it really hasn't been done before Least not in SR.

I have the bulk of a 4 man mercenary team: a sniper, a mage, a rigger, a gunner. I can play them all or pick one or two to merge with another team or give the chars to play to someone else. As you like it

That's up to you, but teams have been dropped to 3 people, so you'll need to cut one of them loose if you're playing a full team yourself.

I'm bringing in a a Field Medic (Sy), a Hermetic Magician (Zy), and a Cyborg (Gy). Team name SYZYGY.

I have dropped the sniper. An assault cannon can snipe just as good, and the fans will love it How will you handle rockets? Just wandering if one really needs an average 14 net hits to hit something And do you allow the karma to be used to quicken spells?

I will work up a team.

Have you thought of using Google Maps or something similar to grab a portion of an existing city to use? I like using the high altitude images for games I run.

Yep, that's what I was planning on doing

Can characters build spells using hte design rules in Street Magic before the start of the game?

Yes, but I will have to approve the spell.

I would like to participate too. I could play a single character or a whole team. Just what suits best.

But one Question: Are biological weapons allowed? Especially, can you flood the whole area with FAB III to take out most of the enemy mages?
(Which shouldnt be effectiv at all, because statistically seen only 1% of the runners should be awakened. But somehow i have the feeling that this statistic wont apply ;-D )

Its not like I am planning to do that, but if there actually isnt a rule that forbids that, I want to know it before I build my characters (and take countermeasures).

Probably no one would have come up with the idea if i wouldnt have asked, but i want to make sure.

Damnit, damnit, damnit. I was going to spring the FAB-3 question when I did it.

What is so good with FAB-3? It does not attack Awakened, but astral forms. Even if you are a carrier, if you switch Assensing off once every 6 hours, you are safe. If you switch your Foci off once every 6 hours, they are safe. Projection is safe: the cloud is not fast enough to follow a projecting mage. You can drop your sustained spells once every 6 hours to prevent the FAB cloud from growing, or you can just let them lose 1 point of Force once in a while, no big deal.

True, it won't kill mages. What it does do is collect on astral forms, background count, and dual natured critters. Combine that with the Detect FAB-3 spell.

Don't know much about FAB-III, don't remember what book it is in or anything, but best of luck to you at managing biological warfare on the level you're talking about.

Oh, did I mention... oh, no, that was going to be a surprise

If you notice FAB III and know what to do, its no big deal indeed. But if you dont, you will face magic loss. It an astral perception (3) test. (Streetmagic, ca. page 125).

When issuing Commands to Agents and Pilots, are we using the 200 character limit?

Could you referee a practice skirmish? A little bit of friendly sport? No one will go past overflow. Not all of it, anyway.


I'd like to stress test these toys before the bit fight, so I'm going to make a small Fireteam of 5. It will be these guys here, and a comms guy. The last team standing captures the prize of 2,500nY and 2 Karma for each competitor (up to 5). Losing teams collect 1 pity Karma for each competitor (up to 5). Alternately, I could referee and see how other people use my toys.

Myself and two of my real life friends are very interested in making a team for this. We've never played online before, are there any primers or anything we should read first? Can we purchase mapsofts for the battle area? If so how much?

I'm going to withdraw team Syzygy from Shadow Wars. I think I would make it no fun for anyone else playing or running it.

Oh...wow.

Perhaps I should explain some of my strategy for Team Syzygy:

• 10,000+ mesh tags with Worm Programs running node scripts to probe targets.
• A secondary network based on laser transceivers that allows me to keep track of other players using the mesh tags without being connected to the mesh network.
• Once targets are probed, do not mess with the systems in any way. Later, when I want some other people to fight, use an Edit program to tweak incoming sensor data to lead other player groups into firefights with each other.
• Ruthenium Polymer coated Dragonfly drones with needles to "help" other players fight by surprise supplying combat drugs.
• Autonomous agents running Agent scripts in tandem with search drone swarms, Search Spirits, and Ritual Detection spells to observe everything.
• Have the above observers covering the field of battle using Dijkstra's Algorithm for shortest path, split so as to have each area of the map optimally covered.
• Find, cultivate, and spread magical diseases.
• Nanites. Oh, the nanites.
• A buried, warded, hardened command center located in the most toxic spot on the map, with a Magic Lodge inside (1 day per rating to set up).
• Team are resting inside of medical vats rolling ~40 dice for First Aid/Medicine so they can overcast, oversummon, and not care about biofeedback.
• Feeding the ghouls on the map with cloned skin, and having them do my bidding.
• A number of other disturbing actions based on esoteric rules that will slow the game down and make everyone hate me for playing.

Stuff like that. I think my tactics would piss everyone else off, and make the game no fun. And yes, all of that is easily within budget.

I think you ran out of money on like step 1

Nah, tags are 1 each, so that's only 10k.

I won't point out the dozens of other problems with the ideas though.

You make it sound as if you intended to start the game with everything deployed. How could that be possible?

Or even that the traditional SR hacker defense of " all my wireless connections are shut off" was not enacted by every non-hacker on the field.

Well I guess thats what the nanites are for: jamming connections open.

As Karoline said, the mesh tags cost 1nY each if you buy them by parts. 10,000+ mesh tags bring easy Matrix access to an otherwise (probably) matrix free area. They wouldn't exactly be easy to miss, to they sit there as a juicy trap for other hackers. Would people use them or be paranoid and not? Either way, it's an advantage.

Construction drones are 4,000nY each, and can work 24 hours a day.
Centipedes are 1,000nY each, and can click together for moving landscape up to a strength of 10.
100 Bust-A-Moves cost 35,000nY, and can be treated under swarm rules (depending on GM decision).
A Vista is 25,000nY, a body of 20, and can truck in a bunch of crap. Give it off-road tires, and stick a Containment tent Rating 6 inside of it for 12,000nY. Now a team of 3 is good for 10 days without needing to go outside. You won't even have to spend money on environmental protection for the bus, just the construction drones that are going to excavate the hole for it to live in. Earth has an Astral presence, so it will hide you in the astral.
A roving hub with a CCU adaptation is 27,000nY, and can be upgraded.
A repeater drone with EM shielding costs 5,000nY, and gives out no signal to it's presence when it's not in use.
A mobile medical shop is 15,000nY, and can clone.
A "unit" of skin grows in 4 hours, and costs 300nY. Use it to cover the tent to provide a biological cover to keep Astral snoopers out.
A Unit of FAB-3 will maintain it's Force rating in a background count, up to the Force of the background count. A magician with Detect Fab-3 can keep track of it, and see where it spreads to keep track of magical things in the area. It's a sucky attack, but good for information.
A Ritual lodge takes 1 day per force to set up, and then ritual sorcery can be used with detection spells to keep track of everything going on, and provides a ward to announce any astral visitors.
A Rating 2 nanohive costs 20,000nY, and a cyberhand costs 5,000nY. Depending on how many hands and nanohives you want to buy, you now have a constant supply of nanites.
The Biotechnology skill covers MAKING bioware and cyberware given the appropriate shops.
Drugs can be purchased at 10% book price if you have the Chemistry skill, so bring some jetfuel or some other organic compound with long carbon chains, and a crap-ton of chlorine, and you can make some cheap and nasty toys (including insecticide in case of bug spirits).
If you are having problems with mages, bring 30 kittens and murder them in your base camp to drive up the background count.
Did I mention 40 dice of First Aid?

The point isn't that I don't want to play, it's that I'll annoy the crap out of everyone by basically playing a different game than they are.

Were it me, the kittens wouldn't increase the background count. Only sapients would.

We could manage that, too. There are likely to be innocent bystanders to brutally kill. Nothing like Nopaint, Red Mescaline, and Psyche to wreck a mind.

We understood the gear limitations very differently. To me "bring with you" means that you have to carry your stuff, so I figured no vehicle larger than a small drone. Karoline, can you clarify this? Otherwise, it will not be Shadowars but Drone wars.

And Karoline, while you are here, which rules will you use for rockets?

A cyborg adapter for the bus costs 15,000nY.

That does not make it less of a bus. It is not part of the cyborg: transferring the CCU from one drone to another takes less than a minute. The jarhead's friends could even take the CCU out and carry it around with them if they wanted

Yea, that was the hope. I also liked the idea of having a roving hub with a CCU slot. Nothing like having 30 Analyze programs running at the same time to discover hackers.

While I applaud you for thinking outside of the box, it does kind of defeat the purpose of participating in a game like this, I know you have withdrawn your team, but why would you bother?

I get carried away. Does it say something bad that I didn't understand your question at first?

'Bring with you' means you will be air dropped into the city, and anything you bring has to be deactivated until you touch ground. So yeah, feel free to bring a bus if you think it will survive the 2k ft fall into the War Zone

Even if this wasn't the case, a team would be unlikely to have more than a hole dug before other teams found them (Attracted to the noise of heavy construction). The mesh would run into problems with distributing 10k of them throughout the city. I do very much enjoy the out of the box thinking, and you're welcome to try what you can, but things are unlikely to go nearly as smoothly as you're envisioning them.

As for the rockets, I wasn't aware there were multiple rules for them Mind explaining a bit?

That is quite different than I envisioned it. I was thinking of an area of a couple thousand square kilometers, so this is a whole different ballgame. I'm guessing we are talking about a town in the 100,000 population (size. I assume the actual population would be a great deal smaller)? Yay! Order of magnitude smaller thinking time!

Should we take the Parachuting skill?

The scatter stats changed between SR4 and SR4A.

SR4: bare rocket 2D6, -1/net hit, airburst link 1D6, -1/net hit
SR4A: bare rocket 4D6, -1/net hit, airburst link 2D6, -1/net hit

With the SR4A rules, it is pretty much impossible to hit a vehicle with an AV rocket. You can just pray to roll low on scatter.

Ah righteo, its okay I hardly understand myself half the time. Don't feel I was having a go at you, just wondering why is all. Like I said, thinking out of the is great.


Karoline, is there a chance our characters would get to see an aerial of the area before we get dropped in? (like maybe a few days earlier or something?) And I take it we would not all be dropped in the exact same spot, as in we would be split up into our teams and dropped in various locations?

It doesn't have to be a small town for others to find you when doing heavy construction, especially because there is a good chance others will be looking for you actively anyway. That said, it isn't going to be crazy massive, you guys have to be able to find each other after all. As for current population, it is (supposedly) zero. No one is supposed to be living in the city.

You don't need the parachuting skill, but it certainly couldn't hurt.


Well, you would at the very least get to see some of the location while being air dropped in, but yes, you will actually be provided maps once I procure one. And yes, people will be dropped at various points around the city, so no one should be too close to one another. Also, people skilled with parachuting will be able to dictate where they land much better, so they can try and move themselves further from or closer to other teams.

Good catch on a fine detail, folks. Thanks.

How will Edge refreshign be handled? I have a near uncontrollable desire for a 6-8 edge character.

Refreshing Edge every time you kill an opponent would be fun. How about:

1 member: 1 Edge
Last team member: full Edge

And maybe some for the Enforcers too.

That sounds fairly good actually. Also, various awards will carry varying amounts of edge refresh (like Camera Hog and Fan Favorite).

Enforcers will likely be full edge refreshes.

I am curious as to how the Enforcers and Neutrals will work. Are the Enforcers show-sponsored OPFOR? Will they already be on site when the teams are sent in? Do they have different gear requirements?