I think doing a touch only attack is a little bit dubious while berserk but even if you lost two successes you'd still hit, and do extra damage to boot...so, unless your initiative is seriously crap I think you're right

Dana's initiative is 29 (after the clarification that wounds are cumulative).

Damage resistance: 7d6t5 2

Berserk states
When you’re berserk, you go after your attacker(s) without regard for your own safety. If you run out of targets before the time’s up, you keep attacking their bodies.

so okay no full defense, but I can see no reason why she would not be able to attack like she wants. (or even randomized the opponent). She just cannot stop the violence until she is out of berserk, She does not attack allies as well. I thinkt hat Dana can 'come to momma' and laugh in her chilling voice, enjoying as the life dissipates from the hound's eyes - even when berserk. A different character would use a pistol, leave cover and charge at his aggressor, and I can see tasers, stun batons and perhaps even dataspikes being dished in berserk. Just my 2 cents - I really do not want to make a discussion out of it.

Feel free to IC that then!

We'll have to agree to disagree on how tactically aware you are when berserk ...somewhere I'm sure there's text about 'using your most powerful attack' but I may be remembering past editions as ever

What I am saying, she is still at -4 wound penalties - there is want and there is can. I sense that she does not enjoy her full range of movement and everything she does hurts. She wants to smash that hound - but how much strength she has left? This entire combat I play Dana as going after the visual threats rather than tactically playing her. She attacked the Rad hounds because of mutagen power that make them more menacing, she did not attack Uberhund - because it did not use that power - so it is less menacing.
She did not finish off the spirit - and frankly what keeping her on her legs is mainly some dice luck in some key roles.

Being brezerk does not give Dana any mechanical benefit, her body is still in terrible pain that would render a lesser fighter incompetent. She is struggling to get what she can out of her body. I see Dana as reverting to primal nature, but in a way she was not very far from that very same nature the entire combat. The only tactical thing she wanted to do - fly away - was ruled impossible due to fear power.

Fair enough! Just pointing out that in this case berserk is a serious disadvantage, as opposed positive adept versions for example (although I can't remember if they have made it in to 5 anyway )

I saw the adept versions - they seemed negative as well. You get +1 to all physicals but -1 or 2 to all mental. So I figured that even in combat an adept or mystic need mentals to cast a spell, resist spirit effects and so forth, and I went with elemental body instead.

This fight is largely over! That is unless you choose to prolong it?!? Uberhound won't return and will summon the remains of the pack to him...they've got more than a few days meat on the corpses you've left strewn around!

So you can IC it to conclusion... I'm probably not going to manage any more IC before the New Year now so have a lovely Christmas all and we'll catch up with the story when I get back...probably after a 'time jump' but that depends what you all come up with over the holiday!

A

Yay, forums are back up -- I forgot to keep checking back after a couple of days, so missed when they first came up.

Enjoy the holidays, Aria, and everyone else too.

I'm fine with a time jump coming up, although will IC some of Addie doing her best to nurse Dana back to health (anyone else have more than five dice in medicine?)

Alright lets see:
Body + willpower: 8d6t5 2
Assuming Dana kills the remaining dog one way or the other, in IP 2, the elemental body is up for 3 initiative phases and Dana collapses from exhaustion. (drain is magic/2 + initiative phases so 4 stun, that fills up her 11 points of stun, that exactly fills her stun track without overflow.

So, I assume that Lindsey's spirits will carry Dana to the rest and that she will wake an hour or two later in camp with a terrible headache, a bad attitud, and a life debt to Lindsey.

How does that sound?

And yes, I see plenty of RP opportunities and character growth.

Based on the instructions to protect Dana, the spirits would just hang around waiting to see if Uberhound comes back, at which time they'd jump the Uberhound since Dana is no longer able to run. I'll have Lindsey relay what happened and the group can come back and address Dana's body.

Hi folks, Happy New Year!

Catching up slowly… I’m about ready to time jump you approximately 1 week in to the future, assuming you’ve followed the river valley around to the north and then west of where you were originally deposited (following Blank incidentally)… I think that was the plan right?!? Giving time for scavenging I’d guess you’d make 15-20km a day in travel?!? Takes you away from dogs and toxics! But that would skip RP opportunities around Dana’s recovery and meeting of Lindsey’s and Maya’s groups again so if you would like to explore those then I’ll hold off for a little bit!

Lemme know!

Just trying to get back up to speed myself.

I'm happy to pick up after a time jump, and deal with both Addie/Dana and the leadership issues through a mix of past-tense and in the moment discussions. But if others want to play through some of those other moments I'm fine with that

Dana may be mostly recovered by this point (she must have a pretty good total of body + Will, and Addie can roll her 5 dice in medicine (medicine 1, logic 4) to add to that, unless someone has better. Although I'm sure there a pile of negative penalties for having to be moving, bad conditions, etc.) Rolling those dice if we are jumping could be good, to see where things are at. Are conditions good enough that Edge recovers? (I think Dana used hers all up, so this could be important in the future).

I'm not sure that they'd get as far as 20km a day, unless they find decent trails (or an old road)? Even with that, 20km day-in-day-out is quite a bit -- they might do it, but it would require the leadership really pushing people, I think. After all, these are kids not generally accustomed to long marches. I seem to recall that RuneQuest 3 had some pretty well researched travel per day tables in it, and I think I still have those books around somewhere, for some reason. Will try to dig them out tonight and see what they say.

Depending on how lucky Caillin is with the heal spell, Dana might as well recover very quickly, and there is an opportunity to use first aid before by (Maya?) and collaboration if you want. I am all for exploring these opportunities though the game is kind of slowish lately. I have no problem with a time jump as well.

oh and happy new year.

Do the kids have shoes ? because without them they will never make 20km a day. Consider that they also need to hunt I think 10 is more realistic. Or few days to hunt and then move the camp and redeploy after food was stockpiled for a few days (or consume the food we already have to move faster?)

Yeah, the fight took a while, I didn't want any messages to be lost in the middle of it so I didn't post but... Well...

Anyway.
For the heal. Cailin starts by using some of her few reagents to set up a new lodge.

Then she summons an Air Spirit (Heal spirit for her) to help:
Air Spirit [4] (Sumonning, defence, drain): 12d6t5 5 4d6t5 1 10d6t5 4
4 services (limit is 4 + 2 due to lodge acclimating the BGC to Cailin's tradition), no drain. That's a good start. Except that I checked (after of course...) and the Aid Sorcery is a bound spirit service. Oh well...

So... Let's set the Spell Force at 7. It means I have a limit of 9:
Heal [7]: 16d6t5 6 good start. Now let's edge that for the 3 missing successes.
Heal [7] (edge reroll): 10d6t5 5

So a total of 9P healed. Now the DV is 3P:
Drain [3P]: 10d6t5 5 and no drain at all \o/

So less than two hours after Dana comes back, she's good as new.
And 99.999% of that time was setting the lodge up.

Wow she still need to sleep her stun damage, but a day after she is golden. Thanks! Caillin is a miracle worker.

Yeah, that fight, like all SR fights, took a very long time. The difference this time was that only one person was doing the fighting and that left the rest of us putting fluff out or doing nothing. I hope we have not lost too many players due to that. I would recommend that we try to avoid solo fights in the future, please.

That could be hard, as realistically if anyone other than Dana is fighting, it probably means that we are in big trouble. I think the preferred solution would normally be to support Data as best we can, and hope that she can take care of threats.

Also, nice job on the heal! That means that Addie doesn't get to spend days nursing Dana back to health, so expect some IC mixed feelings. But overall, thank goodness for magic

Well I do not know what that combat was all about, but it seems that Aria had some detailed plan about it. I think we might just find out.
But we hadn't had an IC post in over a week, though.

Hi folks... I've been busy updating the Google Maps for Run! ... added 6 days worth of journey give or take... coupled with Dana's ability to fly you should have some idea of your surroundings most of the time. Still no real sign of human inhabitation (apart from the traps that Blank left behind him!)... I don't want to plan any more direction from here as I don't want to assume too much on what direction you might like to take... suffice it to say that San Francisco is a possible location to aim for (and various spirits might point you in that direction!)

So, have a mull over the weekend, decide on a route, IC any of the jounrney to this point that you fancy and then I will pick up with an IC early next week!

As ever, please shout if you have any questions!

Oh, and I second the 'no more solo fights please'

By the map, in the area covered by the hike so far there was a road down in the valley, with bridges over tributary streams. With 'no real sign of human habitation' I guess they are not seeing any of that?

I ask in part because, looking ahead on the map the river goes into a real gorge, and there is eventually a road that leaves the river and cuts up through the hills/mountains, and I'm wondering a bit how easy to find that route will be.

ETA: Any objection to scouts having found the suits that Blank had hid? I'd think that, having seen the hut, one thing that might be going on is asking a spirit to search for man-made things each day (and another probably looking for dogs!)

The indentations left where roads were will be visible...you've been following one without really knowing it! I've taken some liberties with river crossings, you may well just have stayed on one side for most of it. When you get to the gorge you will have to leave the river for a bit, but aerial scouts will easily alert you to that ahead of time.

Yes, you can find the suits...even if Blank hid them, and I'm not sure he did

I worked up an IC post, but going to park it here for the moment, in case Aria wants to do a transition post, or others want to write more about the six days of hiking. (nothing of substance here, just bringing her forward)

==============================

Addie, day 11 (?), late afternoon

After days of barely moving, it turned out that the secret to getting the group migrating had been easy: scare the girls enough that they were willing to walk until their blisters bled, and the boys came along – whether from pride, lust, or protectiveness Addie barely cared anymore.

She took another minute to soak her aching feet in the freezing cold water before she decided that they were as numb as it was wise to let them get. While she wiped off as much water as she could she muttered what had become a common refrain in the camp “They gave us these high tech body suits, but they couldn’t give us decent hiking boots?”

Eventually her feet were dry – although they’d also warmed up enough to start throbbing again. They’d tried shredding flats to make bandages for blisters, back on the first day. Unfortunately they just didn’t have a way to keep them in place well while walking, so that didn’t help a lot. Caillin healed up anyone whose blisters got TOO bad, but nobody wanted to exhaust the poor girl too badly, and her spells didn’t take out the ache, just heal up blisters. She made sure nobody was going to die from an infected blister, but she couldn’t do a lot to make the cumulative toll of the hikes suck any less.

Addie examined her blisters as impartially as she could, and concluded that she didn’t need to bother the little elf, at least not today. She felt her shoulders relax a bit. She couldn’t help but like Caillin in some ways, and she sympathized with the girl’s breathing issues given that Addie had grown up with similar problems – but the other girl always brought up mixed feelings in Addie. Dana had fought some sort of heroic fight with magical and spiritual dogs, winning due to her magic and Lindsey’s spirits, while Addie hadn’t been able to do anything. When they’d found Dana unconscious, Addie had at first just been relieved that her lover was alive. There had been a few frantic moments while they made sure that she didn’t seem to be slipping away, and then Addie had found herself in the roll of nurse, and had even imagined days or weeks of nursing Dana back to health.

Then Caillin had come and fixed Dana right up, in about as much time as a trid ad would run. Of course Addie was grateful, how could she be anything but grateful? But she had to admit that she felt a bit left out, too.

And when she’d described the vista she had seen from the top of the falls, it turned out that Sim’s spirits had already mapped out the curve in the valley, and her information hadn’t helped at all. And each day the magicians consulted before sending various spirits off on various scouting, foraging, and protective tasks, and later reported to the rest on where they should go for the easiest walking, to find certain berries or other edible plants. And each night the magicians would convene to sort out the defenses.

And then there was flying. It was only when she’d wanted to fly to Dana’s aid that she realized her electrical gland was depleted, and she’d realized that it had to have something to do with the shape changing – Dana thought that it simply disappeared when Addie was a bird, and re-appeared when she changed back to human. Which seemed impossible to Addie, but whatever the reason the effect was the same: if she shape shifted again, she’d be largely unarmed for hours and not up to full capacity for a day. Plus it was maybe just possible that after what had happened on their last flight … that she was scared of trying it again.

So Dana had taken other people flying. It made sense, perfect sense, in fact Addie had urged her to do so. But it was still hard to watch Dana strip down with another of the kids, then fly off together.

Addie supposed she should get used to it. That way, if they ever got out of here, it wouldn’t hurt as much when Dana went off live the life that her magic opened to her. It might not happen right away, and maybe they’d stay friends after a fashion, but magic was going to come between them sooner or later. To distract her from that thought she shoved her feet back into the remains of her sneakers, barely whimpering at the pain at all.

Then she rolled back to her feet, put a smile on face, and moved back into the pack of kids. “Who caught that turtle? Jugalo? Nice going, yah, you should wear the shell afterward, like a trophy or something.” “Sure Leslie, I can wrap your ankle, but maybe you should have Maya take a look at the scrape, see if she can do anything for it, or if she thinks you should see Caillin? They can both do a lot more for you than I can.” “Mark, you crack me up. I can’t believe that you are planning on going into computers and not entertainment, I swear I’d pay to see you.” “Pierre, Widget, stop trying to convince me – I’m not the one who will decide if we should try building rafts, that’ll be Maya or the mages. For what it is worth, I think that you should come to some agreement – if you two agree on a technical matter, probably everyone will listen. And for what it is worth, while I’d love to just float down the river, I’m pretty worried about waterfalls.”

It was actually kind of soothing, not trying to make the decisions, not giving orders. It was clear that things were going better without her sticking her finger in and screwing it all up, and at least simply being friendly wasn’t anything that required magic or competence.

“Dewie, slow down, I can barely make out one word in three… oh, the birds are back? Good spotting, thanks!” She double checked for probably the hundredth time that the bundle of clothing she had slung over one shoulder was still intact, and hurried back to the flat rock near the river edge where she’d been soaking her feet – it was screened from the main camp, was a big enough open area, and had a fallen tree trunk next to it that Dana could land on if she was feeling fancy.

As the other two reverted to human form Addie made sure to have a big smile on “Welcome back, anything interesting from this trip?”

All that looks ok to me! Bit concerned about the slide towards 'MagicRun' ...had hoped that Background Count would be more limiting than it seems to have worked out...perhaps you could add something in about spirits becoming less cooperative and more prone to misinterpreting commands... you'll still have Dana's flying but allows me to maintain some elements of surprise...and I know PCs love surprises

Without spirits, three of the four Awakened take a huge hit.
And particularly Lindsey, since she doesn't even have spells.

Yes of course...I'm not trying to unreasonably penalise anyone and I don't want to stop you using spirits, but I would like the PCs to shine more if possible and not rely totally on spirits for everything! Its an RP thing rather than any actual restriction on how useful spirits are...but if it feels like I'm being a bit heavy handed just shout!

To be clear, that post was not remotely meant to be factual reporting on the state of affairs, it was all strictly Addie's thought stream and actions and she is NOT an impartial reporter!

I'm really not saying that spirits really did everything -- that post is all from Addie's point of view, and her feelings about magic doing everything is meant of a sort of echo of her loss of confidence in her leadership skill. She is used to being in the middle of things (because she feels she should be involved and so pushes herself there, and because her various attributes tend to make others pay attention to her), and now she's deliberately trying not to be, and feeling rather lost. Much as some of the NPC runners may have felt in the early days that it was a small group making all the decisions, currently Addie is seeing things more from the outside and has picked up on magic as the dividing factor. (edit to add:) Or to paraphrase The Brady Bunch "Magic, Magic, Magic!" *stomp foot*

As a suggestion, someone could follow that up with a post from one (or more) of the magician characters about how much they still find magic to be a struggle in this place?

As to the background count, well, I ran the Boston Lockdown supplement for my son (one player game), and despite background of 2 or higher everywhere, magic was still an immensely powerful force (less in sheer combat power, but more in levitation, barriers, invisibility, astral scouting, spirit concealment, etc). Made me realize that some spells are either quite potent in any situation in which they can be used. So for Run! I still figured magic to be powerful, but I'd been playing a couple of mages in PBP games and thought I'd do something else.

Overall as both a GM and player I'm OK with magic being a major force in the game --, ShadowRun is distinguished in part from standard Cyberpunk type games by the presence of magic, so it should be an important factor I think. I do agree that SR5 can slide towards playing a bit like Ars Magica with magician characters and companion characters, but overall I like the magic in the game. I certainly don't have problems with the use of magic to keep the kids alive!

Well Dana will not fly forever, increasing her body is on my todo I had to increase edge to survive the combat, so...

Aria, magic is so powerful because we have virtually no access to any other form of technology, we barely have low rating bows. (and the opposition is very tough to a point that people say that there is nothing for their characters to contribute in a combat. Other than my genetically engineered fighter.

Was there ever a resolution on who was elected the leader of the camp or if we just decided to not have a leader?

I think that after the commotion of the girls group attack, it ended being de facto Maya.
It's not like there is a lot of opposition: Addie is not interested (and probably more preoccupied by Dana than anything else), Klarissa doesn't want to lead (but intends to make sure that the orcs are not screwed over), Lindsey will need (at least, probably) a few days to overcome the debacle of her expedition.
And Cailin doesn't want to lead either, thinking she doesn't know enough about the current situation to do it. Plus she's too young. What she intends to do is make sure that no one is forgotten, everyone is treated fairly, and help keep the morale at least higher than below ground. In addition to the healing of course. Though in a week she will have become noticeably weaker, with a rash here and there on her skin. And she'll sometimes be easily grumpy/irritated. Being a dryad in here is not a sinecure :o
But I'll IC that and a few other things at some point.

Does anyone have a link to that updated map?

It's at the top of the very first message of this thread ^^
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?hl=en&am...eVRkc6jlN2su9t8

Yeah, Lindsey is on the downswing what with the failure of the girl's expedition.

I just posted that May wants to give her some responsibility with the girls. She respects Lindsey in some fashion, and wants to get her help.

For what it worth - Dana feels indebted to her.

As does Addie.

Which Cailin finds stupid, since all that was a consequence of Lindsey striking on her own.

Maya believes that it is important to give everyone a chance to prove himself or herself. She is sure that Lindsey has probably learned some valuable lessons from that and can see a real leader in the making. She also sees the same traits in several others, including Addie, Cailin, Rafferty, and Nim, as well as Pierre and Klarissa. The talents of all of us are needed if we are to survive and get the people back to civilization. After that, those who do not want civilization can return to the wilderness with Maya.

Perhaps 7km NNW of the camp, around where the map shows Shilling Road intersecting Buckthorn Road, looks like the nearest area for anything like bison that don’t deal with steep slopes well. Although if Dana blew her perception roll, perhaps she mistook something like bighorn sheep for bison? (how much would she really know about North American mega-fauna?) So she might tell Addie that whatever she saw was living on the slopes.


ETA: sorry for back to back posts in the IC thread. They were at different times with different people on different topics, so I thought it best to separate them. Also everything seemed to be going too well and people were too happy, so it felt right to maybe create a bit of personal tension -- but as Addie pointed out, having stuff to do should take care of most of that.

Or perhaps they flew a bit further than they thought. Sorry I did not get to do an IC today, I'll do one tomorrow.

Tossing to whoever wants to catch it the question of whether Niyaf can be found, where she is, is she OK, etc. (trying to take a queue from Anarchy about tossing in some complications to let others deal with).

Also: Mercy -- I should have apologized yesterday for Addie being so cranky toward Maya. I knew why she wasn't being very nice about things, but should have made that more clear to you/others.

It is all OK. Maya is trying to lead a rather disparate band of people to an objective without the real skills needed to lead. She is very good at what she can do, but nothing in her life has prepared her to be the one trying to make the decisions at this level. She will get over any rudeness or anger and keep trying to get everyone to safety. She has no other goal in life right now. Anything beyond this is, well, in the future and she cannot think that far ahead.

Yes, please do add in any complications you like

I'm going to give you the weekend to see what you come up with before either pushing you on or springing something new on you...would be nice to get you out of the mountains though.

For reference of anyone who thinks you are headed towards 'cleaner' lands, Background Count is going to continue at 2 on the plains and then rise as you get closer towards the city! I would normally wait to reveal that but with astral scouting etc you could easily decide to head that way fairly quickly!

Ok, so it seems nobody has bitten, time to dump you in the shit again will try and work something up this afternoon!

Edit: there you go, something to think about...hope this can re-energise the thread a tad...there are still enough of you active to keep it going if you want, or I can skip ahead some more towards a more telling resolution... there's even a sequel in mind if there's enough interest but I don't want to flog you all if your hearts aren't in it anymore!

I've been slacking hard on all my online stuff. Trying to get a house remodel going is apparently more time consuming than expected. I should be able to have Lindsey chime in about the spirits being annoying tonight.

Edit: Not a huge post but hopefully it's a sign of more to come!

5 dead hunters, Jamal was clearly one... and it's getting pretty dark down in the valley, an owl maybe for scouting? Not that you've seen any here...bat maybe? Will do weird things to perception

I'm getting worried about Rafferty! Although I'm sure he is not the only kid detaching from reality by this point (assuming that is what is going on)

Mercy: Addie is going to avoid going with Dana because it powers down her electrical gland (takes a full day to re-charge), and she'd rather not be without her best weapon (even if it is not so useful versus arrows). Just giving you OOC the reason that she won't say in character.

Yeah, I get the reason why Addie won't fly, but Maya does not know.

Whoever rolls for Mercy's First Aid, could you add Rafferty's help as a Teamwork test?

I'd do it myself if I could get onto OP to see the character sheets....I will if I manage to get on.

OP won't come up for me at the moment either.

Eventually got this message:
but that doesn't let me sign in and get to the campaign, so far as I can tell.

Hmm, assuming it does come back up, I should probably start backing up my character sheets

Here are the first aid rolls I promised.

I think we picked up some med supplies somewhere, but no kit, so that's a wash.

Outdoors is -2.
Raf's base pool is 7 dice.
Maya's sheet says 9 dice, and I'm not the GM so I'm not going to quibble.

So Raf - Teamwork first aid: 5d6t5 1
So add one to Maya's pool and limit.

So she totals out at 8 dice.
First aid on Fish: 8d6t5 0

Well, last time anyone asks me to roll for them.

Magical healing anyone?