I think you could fool the Crimson Guard, especially since AM hasn't been to the Funhouse in two months.

I don't think you're going to get one past a dragon though. Urubia might not know AM, but she'll understand Trouble's true nature.

As far as you know, nobody is trying to track or trace the connection between Trouble and AM. Urubia's efforts seem to be concentrated on wooing/adopting Jawsey.

To Jawsey, Urubia just made the case for why he should return to Tsimshian and move towards a leadership position where he can help find a better future for his people. I don't know how well Urubia can read that this is his interpretation.

Fair enough. She'll see the intention but won't understand the destination.

I'd not had Jawsey go get his focus earlier due to my confusion on timing ("he can pick it up tonight" but I thought it was still the afternoon).

Open RP. Nobody is opposing you or obstructing you for the next few hours.

OOCly, we can be done with the Interlude at any time.

What kind of weapon focus?

When you'd like we can move to my chapter.

I was actually planning on doing Chapter 8. The events of this Interlude feed into Chapter 8.

The idea was going to be one last hurrah for Jawsey, and then Beta might introduce someone new. My chapter makes more sense with an established team rather than with a newcomer.

But let's talk it out and if necessary I'll see if things can be adjusted.

What a luxury problem: Two people who want to GM

@Gilga Jawsey had a force 1 weapon focus (his sword cane), but he's been getting it upgraded to force 2, so that it doesn't become inactive quite as easily with background count.

Gilga had been looking at running something earlier and gave way to me as I was thinking my chapter would be short (the chase down the river ended up making it longer than I expected, but it seemed like their most logical reaction to having been found by a dangerous mage)

I have the concept for a new character, but first pass ended up overspending the nuyen budget by about 2.5x and skills by about 1.5x. Need to make time to cut out a lot of what I thought was reasonable, tweak the concept appropriately, and try the build again. 'Tamarind' is a forty-ish woman of mixed heritage from the Sioux nation, a mechanic and a drone rigger (more in the utility sense than the shock-and-awe combat sense). Calls herself Tamarind because "I'm a small, brown, and lumpy, and an acquired taste" (and nobody in Seattle pronounces her actual name properly, not that most know what a tamarind is either, but she doesn't much care if anyone else gets her jokes).

@Tecumesh, no worries I did not know that.

I prepared something with the arcana cards, hopefully making them more defined and less obscure. Lorebean left some notes before he bamfed, so I figured I'll tell some of their story and the power struggle behind them. It is not directly related to current events so I don't mind waiting for another chapter. I really enjoy AM and Trouble, and the more I play them the more real they feel.

@Beta
I like tamarinds, for the record, although I'm usually cooking with them or putting them in my sparkling water.

Sounds like you went for the drone rigger rather than the bioware/geneware investigator.

I would suggest keeping Jawsey for Chapter 8, which would give you some more karma to work with so that Tamarind doesn't have to cut so much.

I can't remember what we discussed for transitions. I usually play it that karma follows the player, not the PC. Nuyen can be a little trickier, especially since we've spent so much of ours on retiring debt. (Which I know gave us a jump start in Chapter 1, but then took a long time to work off.) Open to ideas here.

@Gilga
Yes, we seem to have struck a rich vein of RP. I'm very pleased with how well that's gone. Let's keep that going in Chapter 8 so that it doesn't get put on hold during your chapter.

we agreed that would take karma based on the game, and I think also the directed benefits coming out of the interludes (minus the relationships perhaps), but not the nuyen. I'd been trying to combine some of the less combat oriented ware with rigging and the costs really added up. If after cutting out the investigator ware I still have trouble working the drones and essential ware in a way I like I might then take a stab at the bioware investigator with a bit of basic drones. But I went the rigger route after I noticed in Rigger 5 the drone modification to give it a personality, and I was struck with the image of one of those mechanic's halper drones with a quirky personality (showing up in the morning to get coffee, putting on small costume elements to match the skills it is currently loaded with, like a deer-stalker cap if loaded with forensics, etc). And then thinking of the person who would encourage this in their right-hand drone, and then things began to fall into place conceptually.

Sounds fun to me. I read a great short story once (fan fiction) that used weapon personality software to a similar effect, which was fun. It's like getting two characters in one.

What exchange rate did we agree to for karma-to-nuyen?

@Beta good luck!
Rigging is super expensive, and Tamarind seems promising. A control rig is actually my personal favorite augmentation.

Do far we used the standard exchange 1:2000
But we discussed 1:5000 to help the mundanes out

I'm currently taking a course in Cyber-Security in automotive product development (basically how to minimize risk of accidental or malicious re-purposing of functions in vehicles). Makes me wonder what the similar course would be like in the SR world, where near-magical hacking is a thing? Also it is running on German time (so I'm up at 3am, today through Friday), so I may or may not get my head together to post much IC for the rest of this week. (I was trying to have Jawsey reply to AM during a break at 4:30am, but meaningful words were challenging. May try again later, see if it goes better).

But since SR character thoughts are a reflex activity I can do while mostly asleep, a thought dump on the eventual 'rigger' character, to fit within the envelope that I want for making sense in SIS. (note, not a standard shadowrunner build, because this is not a standard shadowrun game. Capable, but not built around heavy damage). My thoughts have been:

Needs (basics to do the job):
- High Logic and Reaction
- a basic control rig so can jump in
- a good flying spy drone (want: more than 1) with raised pilot and sensors, so can can have a decent dice pool if on its own (like being left to monitor a location)
- a portable drone with at least a basic weapon, to be able to use with gunnery (so has a decent attack pool with her at all times.)
- mechanic's friend drone with a variety of professional skills and the personality mod, also with raised pilot (fun to write and provides utility)
- pilot ground and air craft at decent levels
- gunnery at a decent level
- appropriate engineering skills to mod and repair drones
- appropriate kits and/or contacts to be able to do repairs
- basic runner skills at non-catastrophic dice pool levels (etiquette, sneaking, perception)

High Priority Wants (things that make things hang together better)
- Solid Intuition and willpower
- Logic raising bio-ware to at last R1
- Smart link
- half decent RCC (so can run autopilot drones with multiple programs running, plus noise reduction)
- additional infiltration drones (crawler bug, water snake styles), again with raised pilot and sensor rating
- Electronic Warfare skill to better deal with matrix challenges and to provide lock-on
- A vehicle
- A firearm skill at non-catastrophic levels
- Some Arcana knowledge and an interest in the arcane

Medium Priority Wants (character as I see her, but less directly related to her roll)
- Logic raising bio-ware to R2,
- Mnemonic Enhancers R2 along with knowledge skill enabling quality (so many knowledge skills, all at +2 and built on enhanced logic and good intuition)
- Perception enhancing 'ware of some sort
- Reaction enhancing 'ware of some sort
- Multiples of basic spy and combat drones, for redundancy and to make them more useful when not jumped in
- Vehicle modded for enhanced sensor suite and not being noticed
- A couple of bits of utility 'ware
- A quicksilver camera

Things that at this point I'm positive don't fit, given priorities:
- good agility (from raw attributes or ware)
- boosted meat initiative
- heavy combat firepower drones
- a boat (I really wanted her to be living on a basic boat before coming to SIS, for absolutely no good reason)
- a bunch more utility 'ware
- a touch of hacking, to provide basic capabilities when Gilga is GMing

Anyone have any thoughts on this approach, or think anything is in the wrong category?

Electronic Warfare has been turned from the scrappy to one of the best hacking skills in the game since Kill Code came out. EW allows you to get MARKs with the Watchdog action and it can be boosted through various pieces of equipment. Hardware is a close second for a rigger as modification rules for electronics opens up enormous potential for with comparatively cheap gear.
Engineering is less relevant - most repair checks are Hardware. Engineering rules are ill defined and cover inventing and building new designs.
Gunnery can replace all your gun skills, as long as the gun is mounted on a drone. You can even have a hovering revolver, keeping your hands free.

Drone swarms are fantastic if it comes to getting things done - large quantities of cheap drones (take a look at Stolen Souls "Bust-A-Move") in combination with one solid good drone like an Aztech Crawler can accomplish amazing things.
If you ever have the chance to get a cheap (i.e. damaged PI-TAC) jump on it. With the right accessoires it can boost your EW skill by 5 and help reduce noise

If you build your character for jumped in actions, you can leave the meatside a low priority.
When I have a bit more free time, I can write down some of my rigger tricks for you

I think the approach is generally on the right track. Essentially we need to prioritize surveillance and stealth over combat and the rest is mostly details.

For OOC considerations, we already have two vehicles so we hardly need a third. Either Tamarind doesn't need a vehicle or we'll have to get rid of one that we have.

I have to review the details but I don't think our lifestyle would support a workshop. We're the GMs so we can work around this, but it's something I would want addressed narratively.

Drone swarms are very powerful but also can be a big headache as a GM. Although that's based off my experience of a player who had a drone swarm with grenade launchers, which basically never missed because of the overly generous scatter + AoE rules of grenades basically meant something always landed close enough to work. That won't really be our approach, unless the game takes an unexpected 90-degree turn toward the pink mohawk. I guess that's one way to deal with Halloweeners though.

Let's go with the 5,000:1 exchange rate for mundanes and see if that gives Beta some room to make Tamarind to his liking.

We'll wrap up the Interlude today or tomorrow. Maybe a post from Beta with Jawsey's reply to AM, plus a post from Jack with whatever Bobby is up to tonight.

Noice usually takes care of drone swarms in combat.

I'm talking primarily about its application in a workshop or for hacking (did you know, you can default on most of the hacking skills?). Having drones patch you up, delivering longterm care, creating drugs and modifying gear is amazingly fast - basically like having a scifi fabricator at home.

But yes, a workshop might be a sound investment for the future. Bobby is likely interested in getting a bit more use out of his armorer skill.

@Beta Some of your desires can be done with positive qualities rather than ware. Perhaps you can even do a successful technomancer with the heaps of karma we gathered I think that you have some replacement to control rig in techno-magic. Being physical adept (even a burnout) may also help (e.g., you can boost initiative with adept power rather than with super expensive augmentations.

Since you have plenty of karma I'll say that 'perception increasing' can also be done with the perceptive and hawkeye positive quality for a modest amount of karma. Save your nuyen for the things that positive qualities can't buy.

For 'meat space initiative' there is also a quality that you might throw in in a pinch lighting reflexes I think that helps a lot, and there is adrenaline surge. The ware alternative is super expensive.

Beta, was there more to your IC post? It ends abruptly:

Turning back to AM he finishes "

I was wondering about that aswell
@Jack your post makes me want to play King of Tokyo again. (Panda Kai to be specific).

Leftover sentence from editing, removed now.

Alright, in that case I'll write up a response

Sorry for another wall of red text. Felt like a chance to type out a bunch of Jawsey's origin story (although I've said most of that before, in bits and pieces?). He's probably off stage soon enough so kind of nice to just put it all down.

The bit early on about masks and identities is just a nod to this "method actor" quality, which hasn't seen any use because our cases don't go that long (bad investment on my part). But I figure that plays into his identity, he builds a role for himself and occupies it, and may be very different when in a different role. (we've only ever really seen him as part of SIS).

I was thinking more of KungFu Panda, but that works too

The first thought through my head was, "What? Like Kung Fu Panda?" Which is curious because I've never actually seen the film.

@All
Really great Interlude with really great RP from everyone.

I'll keep the rewards a bit more generic so that Tamarind can benefit from them more easily when the time comes:

12 karma
6 knowledge karma
+1 Loyalty to Cutty (now Loyalty 4)

Neat.
I brushed Bobby up on Police Procedures (0 to 3), with the implication that he has been studying to bring up his game as a detective and spy.

With the Karma, I have enough for my next initiation (though without Jawsey I'm not sure we are able to get the initiation discount).

@Tecumseh

The first movie is pretty good, even if it is heavily pandering (no pun intended) to the Chinese.