I'm currently updating the Mercurial adventure to 3rd Ed (as well as making a few tweaks to fit my own personal style). One of these tweaks is changing the 555- numbers to RTG-based numbers listed in most other books. However, in the old Seattle Sourcebook, phone numbers were listed in a (xxx) xx-xxxx format, while in New Seattle, the RTG numbers are four digits. Are the current numbers (xxxx) xx-xxxx or something else? I scoured NS but couldn't find an example of a phone number. Any books have any? Thanks...

The Abstruse One

Shadowbeat has one for the Seattle office of Lone Star. Lemme see if I can find it.

NEED MONEY FAST? LONESTAR CAN HELP!
Lonestar will pay up to 1,000¥ for any information that leads to a criminal arrest!
Just call LTG# 307(71-NARC) 24 Hours, 7 Days a Week

There were a ton in Seattle Sourcebook, but they were in the same format of (403) 84-2855...yet according to New Seattle, the part in () should be 4 numbers. I was wondering if anyone had a 3rd Ed or even 2nd Ed phone number listed somewhere in the books...or an LTG number or something...

The Abstruse One

Go check the Germany sourcebook; all the locations and named bars have LTG numbers, but their in German fashion, i.e. variable numbers of digits. Looking at the country code in the Germany sourcebook (the first and German one), the country codes dividing up the regions of Germany are 4 digit numbers. I'd go with 4 digit numbers; IRL the country codes are 3 digit numbers.

Don

Why not just look at it like they added a digit and all the old prefixes became 0xxx and new ones added are 1-9xxx?

Really, there should either be a lot more numbers or the numbers should actually be alpha-numeric. Even with a 3-4-4 combo, that's only 100,000,000,000 combinations at most, and in reality quite a bit fewer since those first three numbers are limited to specific regions. While that seems like a lot, it really isn't. Numbers would run out really quick that way. They already are today, and we're only using a 3-3-4 combo most of the time. By 2060, the demand for new numbers will have dwarfed our needs today several fold.

which the Germans side-step by having numbers of varying length. Heck the area codes are either 4 or 5 digits, while the remaining portion of the number can be 5+ digits.

Wonderful system, but a real pain when trying to actually enter the number into a system such as electronic applications.

Don

Interestingly, since the original Seattle sourcebook has come out, we've also added 253 and 425 area codes, due to population growth

SR has it pretty well if it's 4-2-4, because those are the numbers before country codes. And there are a LOT more countries in the SR world than now. 3-4-2-4 = 10,000,000,000,000. That's round about 1,000 for every person on the planet.

The Abstruse One

personaly i would guess that you could most likely have more then one layer of numbers. say that you have at the bottom the RTG numbers that are issued when a phone is turned on and hooked to the net somehow. then the phone contacts a listing server and tells it that "hi, im this and that phone and now i have this and that RTG number, please update my listing" then when a call comes in to the number in the list you get directed to that RTG number even tho you punched the phonenumber (it can allready be done today, its called dns)...