LOL, when I saw that threshold, I wondered if we weren't going to get some Wanted action.

As an aside, awesome post Lobo. I appreciate you making Grease look badass!

-DrZ

Agreed, what fun!

Thanks

The idea is that everyone should have their moment in the sun - Grease has this, Overkill has the 3 fully automatic weapons going off (Not to mention his fame in the Denver Tribune )

Amy and Jack haven't had their moments yet, but they are sure to come.

As an aside, just the way the rules work, there is not a hope in hell of these guys catching you.

Your car is faster, you roll like 10 more dice than they do, and your thresholds are 2 less. I don't have a problem with you just RPing IC leaving Yak territory and then doing whatever it is you want to do (that is all of you, not just Grease).

Jack has survived so far, so I'll take that as my moment in the sun.

RPing it along sounds good to me. I figure Grease will probably do some evasive stuff once we cross into Fronts territory. Jack might even suggest we take an easy-to-follow/direct route towards Vory or Los Mags territory in case someone does manage to follow us (magic or drones) in order to deflect any potential trouble away from us. Then Grease could do some crazy driving to try to lose anyone following us, then we head back to Nic's? Maybe an extra hour of driving?

We're going to have to get a bit of sleep before we start working again, I think.

ETA: R&G Preview #4 is out. All about team dynamics. Fairly interesting.

That.
was.
AWESOME!

Also, as an adept I request my chance to dodge (or catch) those commlinks!

@Lobo

I'm not very worried leaving a signature in the Warrens, be it in Yakuza territory, or should I? Are mages all able to just track each other at any time and attack? How should Amy handle the aftermath of their confrontation?

Several things:

1) In order for him to recognize your Astral Signature, he needs to have succeeded on a Threshold 3 test. He may have gotten it, he may not have.

2) Maybe I'm not seeing something in the rules, but an Astral Signature for me is more like a fingerprint than a beacon. In other words, the mage now has your Astral Signature "on file" so to speak. It doesn't let her track you, it means that if she runs into you again and assenses you, she will know that you were the one she ran into before.

If you murdered someone using magic, and didn't wipe your signature, and the police were able to find it, and then you were later assensed by Lone Star, they could charge you with the earlier crime.

3) There isn't anything you can really do at this point, as you've left your astral signature in the park with the Phantasm spell, so there isn't any way to get rid of it.

4) I would say the normal reaction would be to avoid going into Yak territory again, for fear of being recognized. However, that is also going to depend on how paranoid you are.

Do you think the Yaks will come searching for you (or your team)? You didn't kill anyone (that you know of) or steal anything valuable (that they know of) - but whether or not you think they will be out for revenge is sort of a decision your character would make.

Astral Tracking (p. 315)

The writing is (typically) a little weird. It specifically says "active spells" but I have always played it that any Astral Signature that is still extant can be used as the starting point for an Astral Tracking attempt.

ETA: With that said, Amy should have had a little bit of time to erase the signatures for her Influence and Phantasm spell. It takes 3 seconds per point of force.

The way I read it, it requires the spell be active - so if she is sustaining a spell, then someone who is observing the spell may backtrack to her physical body, or observe a spirit that Amy summoned and backtrack it to find her body, etc.

But just having an Astral Signature cannot be used to find someone.

I'm cool with that, but then I wonder when the "Each hour passed since astral link was active" condition would ever be applied.

It's actually a complex action (it would take me 5 passes to wipe clean the only spell that was cast successfully).

This being said, I never mentioned Amy was erasing her signature, even though she would have had ample time to do so.

@Jack, the timing is for reading the astral signature itself, not for tracking. YOu have that much time to go read the astral signature.

The way I've seen it played is that a complex action is generally three seconds when you're not tracking initiative. I don't think it says that explicitly anywhere. You also cast two spells, it doesn't matter if they were resisted for signature purposes (Phantasm and Influence).

Wow, fun scene.

Sorry I got pulled away by the family, just got back on.

Are we still being pursued? If so, I am gonna brick one of their cars and see if they get the hint.

I guess you're right for the 2 spells. But the stuff about tracking initiative seems bogus. For things that they want to last 3 seconds, the rules use the phrase "combat turn" instead of "complex action". It's an obvious difference, and I don't see why you would want to make things different when you're not in a combat.

As far as you can tell, the only pursuit was the two cars, which Grease would handily escape from.

Is it reasonable right now to slow down for about 10 seconds and Amy can wipe out her two signatures?

Drave is going to start inspecting the commlinks that they recovered, and ready all the info for the rest of the team.

I'm away from books, but I think you have to be within LOS to erase an astral signature.

Overkill - you are going to need to charge them first - they were on when they were buried and after a month the batteries are dead.

Chrome - Jack is correct - you have to be in LOS.

Ok, well we'll see what happens with my signature. I don't see why they would come at me in force given that nothing significant happened and we're not worth their trouble: they know we're tough, especially the mage should know that. I'll try to avoid the Yakuzas for a while, not that we were close...

About charging the commlinks, Overkill could probably use the power in his deck or the car to power them, using a universal port, no? Maybe it requires some kind of Hardware test?

Not sure his deck would be able to power it - it might be able to - have to think about that - but you are correct that the car would be able to.

Just a quick Hardware test to "fix" it and clean it up after being in the dirt for a month - given his 5 skill and 8 logic, I'm going to assume he would be able to get it running with no problem.

Is this something you guys want to do in transit?

What is the plan? Are you going to go home and then operate on the couple hours sleep you got, or are you going to try and get some more rest?

We should probably head back to Nic's and try and get a bit of rest before continuing on with the rest of the day.

Jack is of the opinion that we drive around for about an hour, just in case we're being followed. Do our best to spot any tails, then head to Nic's. Should get back to Nick's around 5AM, we can look into the links then in the event we need a hardware kit or something (which, uh, no one seems to own unless I missed something). We probably should get a decent bit of sleep as well.

NB: For the wireless smartgun users, each Take Aim action provides both +1 dice pool and +1 limit. Just noticed that while reading through a post-fight about smartgun/smartlink systems on the main boards.

DOH!

Sorry, I knew there were going to be some things I missed for equipment selection during chargen; this was one of the first Shadowrun characters with any kind of tech skills I have made.

I still should have thought to get tools I needed to repair my Cyberdeck, though. I deserve a lesson in gamer-shame.

I'm cool with Grease tooling around until around 5 AM before heading back to Nic's. We could also stop someplace and purchase a hardware (and possibly a disguise) kit. Neither are restricted items, as far as I know.


-DrZ

ETA: Paging through the R&G preview, it occurs to me we should have an IC discussion about who is "in charge". I feel like we were stalling there for a bit, and if someone had made a decision we could have avoided a lot of the shenanigans we ended up getting into (as fun as they ended up being).

-DrZ

Yup, sounds like a plan. Amy will look in the astral the whole time.

I think a standard SR crew works best when whoever the specialist for a given situation takes the lead, but I see your point about not really having anyone step up and take the lead in a situation like the one we just went through, where the scenraio is too elaborate for the crew to function in the pseudo-democratic style we do under normal circumstances.

I think that method works fine under normal circumstances, but in combat I think it benefits from having someone in charge to make decisions. Otherwise, we get what we had here, where we each were hoping someone else would step up and take ownership (and blame) for whatever happened. A non-decision can be as deadly as a bad one, on occasion. I can restrict the rest of my thoughts to the IC discussion; I don't want to talk about this OOC too much because I think there's room for character development around it (if that makes sense).

-DrZ

I do agree that we probably should have the conversation. I think one of the challenges being that we're all so "new" to the whole shadowrun business that we may not really have anyone who would understand the team's full capabilities. I doubt anyone of the non-Awakened are going to understand Amy's abilities and limitations too well. Likewise, Grease probably understands a bit about what Overkill is capable of, but the rest of us likely do not.

From a background perspective, I think Overkill would have the most "experience" with a shadowrun lifestyle given his time in Berlin.

It will be interesting to see what comes of the discussion. Jack tried to take lead being somewhat soldier-like, but it didn't seem anyone was listening to him, which isn't necessarily surprising. Then again, in retrospect, I feel like I played him too tactically given he doesn't have any real background in military tactics (or only as much as an amnesiac accountant/contract negotiator with military cyberware would have).

ETA: Might be a good conversation to have after we get some sleep and have a chance to individually assess our performance.

EATA: Unless anyone has objections, can we cover the hour of driving, returning to Nic's, checking out the commlinks, and then getting some solid shut-eye in one GM post?

I imagine a good leader as someone who takes the macro decisions when needed, like should we leave or stay, should we split or stay together. A good leader will also know when to ask and even put in charge the right person for the right situation, or at least ask for the necessary information to take a good decision, weighing that team member's opinion heavily in the decision. Any kind of planning or strategy can be decided as a group in advance, the usefulness of a leader imo is to give commands in the heat of the moment, when something needs to done quickly, possibly in a coordinated manner.

To some extent, this is more IC than OOC, in that we often discuss what we want to be doing OOC.

I'm totally happy to have this conversation IC too.


I'd like that too.

Will have time to put this up tomorrow morning

What specifically are you looking for in the commlinks?

Well, if they have any information of value, it would probably be something along the lines of any saved messages, call logs, recorded location data, data files (audio and video), etc.

Maybe cash transfers could be interesting too, although I doubt it would trace back to the source.

Great write-up, Lobo!

Should we assume that you've already made any pertinent knowledge rolls in regards to the three names Overkill pulled off the commlinks?

Thanks

Yes - he is unable to identify the three names given his set of knowledge skills.

P.S. How did I miss that Overkill spoke Japanese? (Granted, its only a 1, but I swear I looked and didn't see that)

Sorry, I meant knowledge checks for all of us. Not sure if anyone has appropriate skills for it.

Hey, if the PC didn't say anything about it...

LOL, we could have been listening in the whole time?

I went back and looked, and although one of you had a tangential skill that applied, the roll was not high enough.

Sorry - to track them down you are going to have to do it the old fashioned way

ROFL, I completely forgot I took it... got it because a lot of the tech manuals Drave would be reading would be in Japanese. I think for some stupid reason I thought the Yaks were speaking Chinese, ( Yakuza: Japan; Triad: China, got em flipped, derr)

But yeah, no fault on you Lobo, I should have remembered to point it out. Will have to remember that for the future.

OOC: For planning purposes, I think Amy and Overkill were planning on going to that rally tonight. I believe Grease is also supposed to be there for... other reasons.

He will graciously offer them a ride!
-DrZ

Yeah Amy definitely wants to be at the rally. At what time is it? I want to make plans about it IC.

I think it was 8PM.

800 is correct

@DrZ: I have to say, if I didn't know OOC what Grease was up to, I would have NO CLUE you were working a side job. That was really well done.

As long as nobody gets hurt, what's the problem? Famous last words, I'm sure..

Good question Jack, what kind of security would Chomsky normally have? I imagine it would be mostly volunteer on his end. Greeley on the other hand, we don't really have an idea of what kind of resources that she and Rebuilding Together have at there disposal.

I will get my IC out as soon as I have the information to include for a reply to Jack's question.

He hasn't read the paper yet IC, I may throw in his reaction to that too.

Just to make sure I haven't missed anything, the current contacts that you guys have feelers out with are:

Ramirez - looking for:
Info on Case #5427
Info on Bradshere
Twoman's SIN
Exact location of the Taylor murder

Honeypot - looking for
Any info on Overkill and Amy - i.e. who knows they are asking questions, who is interested in finding out about it, etc.

Ramirez is supposed to get back to you sometime tonight - Honeypot did not give an exact time.

Was there anything else? I don't believe so, but I'm just checking.

Sorry - read your post wrong - answer back up in a sec.

I mean, we may honestly just be seeing connections everywhere at this point. Other than the possible connection between an anti-drug/police non-action rally and the job we're working, we don't have any specific threats at the moment.

I imagine we would likely want to simply be armed and observant when/if we go to this rally. I think three of y'all are definitely going, Jack probably will simply for a lack of anything better to do (and in the interest of not splitting the party) and the possibility that something might go down or be of interest to our job, as Grease pointed out.