Here’s what you currently know about your neighborhood: https://stormy-waters-2075.obsidianportal.c...is/touristville

Here’s our shared lifestyle: https://stormy-waters-2075.obsidianportal.c...gative-services

Chapter 1: Sunday, September 18, 2078
Chapter 2: Monday, September 26, 2078
First Interlude: Saturday, October 1, 2078
Chapter 3: Monday, October 10, 2078
Second Interlude: Sunday, October 16, 2078
Chapter 4: Sunday, November 6, 2078
Third Interlude: Wednesday, November 23, 2078
Chapter 5: Thursday, November 24, 2078
Fourth Interlude: Sunday, November 27, 2078
Chapter 6: Thursday, December 22, 2078
Fifth Interlude: Sunday, January 1, 2079
Chapter 7: Friday, January 20, 2079
Sixth Interlude: Wednesday, February 1, 2079

Got the initial post up for the interlude. I have extra time available today and tomorrow before things get busier on Thursday (US Thanksgiving) and Friday (no school = dad duty) so I wanted to get things started while I could.

It's the beginning of the month so it's time for lifestyle payments. Let's do a round Charisma + Etiquette rolls to see how much we earned in January.

Mato: Charisma 4 + Etiquette 2: 6d6t5 2 hits, glitch!!

Let me think about what to do with that glitch, which is a bit complicated since it's part of a Teamwork roll. I'm open to suggestions. Maybe Mato did a job that earned some cred but pissed someone off in the process.

With Jawsey gone most of the month I think it makes sense for him not to roll?

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

Improvement post section 6, interlude 5, and section 7 all rolled together
- buys off last point of in-debt (2 karma, 7500 nuyen)
- magic ->4 (20 karma)
- spellcasting and summoning ->5 (total of 18 karma, due to JoaT)
- buys off creature of comfort (20 karma)
- takes survival from 0 to 2 (4 karma due to JoaT)
- takes his first initiation, taking the Channeling meta-magic (13 karma)
- buys focused concentration 4 (for 32 karma)
- learns to summon water spirits
- (and maybe learns a spell? has 7 karma left but I've not come up with one that was an obvious pick, so maybe just save that for later)

I certainly won't force you to roll. If you prefer, Jawsey could roll but not be the leader in the Teamwork test.

Upgrading Spellcasting and Summoning would be 28 karma with Jack of All Trades, not 18 as written, but I presume that's a typo.

Does Jawsey want Clairvoyance to go with Clairaudience?

Oo, channeling...

Congrats on retiring the debt!

Charisma + ettique: 10d6t5 2 not the best roll this time.

Seems like Bobby is getting more civilized
Etiquette: 6d6t5 4

For the glitch I'd say we go for a vengeful spouse whose infidelity we uncovered

By the way: How did we decide to split up the 20k from the last job? Is it split 3 or 4 ways?

I'm going to raise my magic attribute from 7 to 8 for 40 karma, keeping 10 in reserve

I'm saving money for a qi focus tatoo

@Jack_Spade My memory Base money we've always been splitting 4 ways, with bonus items going just to the characters involved.

@Tecumseh Jawsey rolling, but not leading, makes sense. He may have contributed in one way or another
side business roll for January: 13d6t5 3

Also for each skill buying from 4 to 5 is a cost of 2x5=10, reduced by one for Jack of All Trades = 9, and 2x9=18. Am I missing something?
(and noting that to go higher the cost will start increasing by 1 instead of reducing)

Channeling is a lot less exciting for Jawsey than most characters, as his 'infirm' negative quality means that not only are his max physical attributes lowered by 1, but that none of them can ever exceed that lowered maximum. So no matter how big a spirit he channels, he caps at 5 for strength, body, and reactions, and 6 for agility. Still, 5, 5, 5, 6 is better than 2, 3, 4, 4 if he does have to do things physically, and the cancelling of wound penalties is also nice. And if he buys off infirm at some point (would need good story justification!), then it is much more potent.

@Beta
Oh, I'm a dork. I was thinking of a 6E house rule where skills are New Rating * 3. Edition + house rule fog. Carry on; you're correct.

Infirm is pretty brutal. Probably should be worth more than 5 karma per rank.

Have you spent any time drafting a possible replacement character?

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@Jack
We always split 4 ways.

Not only is this fair OOCly - so that we all benefit equally, no matter who is GMing - it also has some real-world parallels where Sioux communities are more communal than Western (specifically, US) society as a whole. The US very much has a self-reliant "every person for themselves in this harsh, empty [except for the Natives and they don't count] frontier" worldview deeply embedded in our psyche. If you ever scratch your head at US politics, especially our social policies, you'll often find that mentality at the base of it.

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@All
AM is the team leader with 10 dice. She gets 2 hits, then we'll add 9 Teamwork dice from the rest of us:

January Teamwork: 11d6t5 3 hits

That's ¥3,000. A slow month outside the excitement with Brent. We pay ¥7,400/month so that leaves ¥4,400 to be divided between us, so ¥1,100 each for this month's Lifestyle expenses.

Alright, that means I did it right

@Jack, so each of us got 5,000 from the run, and minus 1,100 for rent leaves 3900 for less debt. For the sake of roundness, I'll remove 100 Nguyen from her account and make it 4,000, so currently, AM owes Bobby 8k down from 12k.

@Beta These are interesting insights; I had the cooperate/capitalism interpretation - each of us holds 25% of the stocks in SIS so each of us deserves 25% of the profits.

Are you sure you want to pay that much at once? Bobby certainly isn't going after your kneecaps.

Yes, sure. I mean I reckon that there is no stress by Bobby but I play AM as a neurotic person always looking for bad things to happen and she really wants to get out of debt.

@gilga
There's a difference between being an owner (and thus entitled to 25% of the profits) and a worker (and thus entitled to compensation for labor). SIS blends the two together in a way that we've been sweeping under the rug for OOC convenience. I only mention this because my wife is currently on a long and winding odyssey that explores this very question. Lawyers are involved.

@All
Two IC posts are up: one that's more backward-looking (the previous week, including training and Mato's glitch) and one that's forward-looking (what's happening with Cutty).

I included a link in the IC post but I wanted to post it again here. Bobby had an interaction with these Halloweeners in Chapter 5 that's important to remember: https://www.rpgplayroom.net/rooms/the-found...r-5-ic/page/14/

Jack should refresh his memory on the matter. Beta and gilga are welcome to review it if they want, as Bobby mentioned the exchange to Jawsey and AM.

Thanks for posting the link, I knew I had a run in with them, but wasn't sure were.

summon spirit of man, force 5, optional power psychokinesis (not channeled)
summon F4+1=5 spirit of man: 11d6t5 5
spirit resist: 5d6t5 2
drain resist vs 4: 13d6t5 3
3 services, 1 stun

Oh, before I forget, Sean Benton is from the Sprawl Sites book (from February 1990). He's been in my back pocket for 25+ years now.

lololol that's the gym my wife goes to

Intimidation: 10d6t5 6

I actually googled to make a reference.

I'm missing something, who is Sean Benton? (I was going to go grab my copy of Sprawl Sites and go looking for him, but I'm not sure who you are referring to). And btw, the card from Bau Chou was on a card rather than a sheet of paper specifically so I could call out 'Happy Memories' that was a greeting-fax company in Sprawl Sites. Was such a well done book

I did notice the 'Happy Memories' reference and I appreciated it.

Sean Benton is from p. 65 of Sprawl Sites (Rich Folks Encounters #4) where the players are attending one of his free-for-all parties.

Actually, now that I look, he's mentioned on p. 66 as well. (Which, as it happens, is the same page where Happy Memories is mentioned.) Although there's a bit of a mismatch between p. 65 - where Sean is described as a champion - and p. 66 where he's described as a "the hottest rookie". I suppose they could both be true, as p. 66 mentions that the championships are about to start in a couple days. So maybe he won the championship after p. 66 and then threw the party on p. 65.

I'll update my post to say that he won a championship in 2050.

I appreciate the Shakespeare reference with Urubia. It is brilliant, sadly I doubt AM would appreciate it.

Wow I actually just now saw Jack's post, I guess I should have refreshed before typing. I'd probably give up the latter and let Bobby do his intimidation.

I'm very pleased someone else caught the Shakespeare. Of all his plays, I find Julius Caesar to be one of the most quotable. (Yesterday my 6-year-old - who is learning to read - was going through my books and asked, "What does 'To Be or Not To Be' mean?" I said, "How much time do you have for me to answer?")

Definitely leave AM's post up. The tag-team of Bobby+AM - and their different approaches - amplified Bobby's Intimidation roll.

He is fantastic; Sadly for me, I can't quote for shit despite studying most of his plays because I learned it all in Hebrew.

A meta question on that guy: Is he needed for later stories? Because right now Bobby has every reason to just make the guy vanish by turning him into a goldfish and flushing him down a toilet.

Carn-evil doesn't have any plot armor.

But they're not a nobody, if you'll forgive the double-negative. You can't just disappear them without consequences. They'll be missed by someone (or something).

I see. Well, there is something to be said about having him vanish under mysterious circumstances.

I'll say this here and, because it's important, I'll say it again later: I'm a big proponent of sandbox games, of open and organic worlds that respond to the characters. This isn't what I'm asking for as a player - because I'm fully aware that not everyone wants to GM that way - but it's what I'm offering as a GM. You're fully welcome to disregard any plot and put your own plans into motion.

This will be important for Chapter 8 as a good portion of it will be self-directed. It could be very long or very short, depending on how you respond. It will be a bit experimental in that regard but I think this group has the collective experience to handle it. It's part of the reason I asked for Jawsey to have one last lap around the track, as much of the story leans on the shared relationships of the characters.

So with that in mind, nobody has any plot armor whatsoever. Andrew, Big Stank, Bonita, Carn-evil, even Nightmare are all in play. That doesn't mean you can do whatever you want and automatically get away with it - taking a shot at Urubia will almost certainly get you killed - but with some wise planning, careful execution, and a little luck...? Big things are possible.

There are consequences to whatever you do. There are also consequences for what you don't do. In short there are consequences either way, so this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Fair enough! I like sandboxing
Just think it's polite to ask before inadvertently ruining the GMs plans

AM would actually try and talk to Carn-Evil to figure out WTF is going on, but I can totally see and feel Bobby's prespective.

I'm not averse to talking - it's just Bobby's previous interactions (where he managed to get death threats pretty much instantly) that let him contemplate a first strike.

This interlude was meant to represent this scene and find out which approach the team would use to resolve the situation. There were many viable options (depending on dice rolls); intimidation was one of them and it succeeded.

The intended scope was anything you do at the gym and immediately afterward, say for the rest of the afternoon/evening. (ICly it's about 17:10, right at sunset.) That can be as much or as little as you want. Once that's done, we'll move on to Chapter 8.

Oh, going for a kill is viable and even moral considering he threatened to kill Bobby.

The ball is in your court, if you want it.

Gilga, I loved those posts as AM punched the bag, great stuff!

Thanks, glad you appreciate it. I really enjoyed the opportunity to rethink her story and paint it a bit differently.

About a mentor spirit. I went through all of the options again, earlier this week, and just didn't find one that was quite right. Seducer or Pig would work to some degree, but at the same time I've been trying to show Jawsey moving away from his more self-indulgent stage. He might be moving towards something else, but not quite there yet (like Wise Warrior or Dog), or else they mechanically were not so helpful. (for example, Eagle would work in some ways, but the allergy to pollutants would be bad in this game.) Or in a more in-game perspective, he's still too self-absorbed to be reached by a mentor, but maybe he's starting to open up.

@Beta
Did you consider Coyote from Counting Coup? Another trickster spirit that prefers "guile, wit, and misdirection" instead of a straight-up confrontation. +2 Con and +1 to Manipulation and Illusion vs. Wil+Cha (4) to use brute force or head-on attacks. (Jawsey would have a 68% chance of generating the 4 hits necessary to overcome this.)

Pig and Seducer are interesting. Jawsey has the dice to succeed in resisting the disadvantage 86% of the time. That could be him succeeding most of the time, but not always.

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@All
Mato did not take a car. Per the IC Post #5, he went on foot/skimmer.

Our Shared Lifestyle page has us owning two cars. Did someone say a while back that's not correct, that we sold one of them? If so, it never came off the wiki page. We have been paying for an off-site garage (¥100/month, I think) so if we only have one car then we do have a safe-ish space to put it.

Are people planning on staying at SIS HQ or are you planning on sleeping elsewhere?

Quick edit: Short IC post to say that Lysander agrees. Leaving it open for now in case Jawsey calls Andrew or anyone wants to do something in the hour prior to talking with Lysander.

@Beta Perhaps Boar spirit? (The one that likes routines - kind of downplaying the creature of comforts, but still within the area).

IC post is up. I left things ambiguous as to who goes where and when.

Jawsey has Lysander as a contact too so it would make sense for him to join Bobby. AM could join them too and then meet up with Black afterward (either downtown or in VR), or she could go directly to meet Black.

Does anyone have physical descriptions of Lysander or Black that they want to use?

To simplify this, we'll give Lysander three options: a broad overview for 100 nuyen, a medium overview for 200 nuyen, or everything he knows for 400 nuyen.

Parking at the Hilton is 45 nuyen for the night, not covered by Lifestyle.

Honestly, I always imagined Lysander as pretty androgynous - good looking, professional, but no gender defining attire

And Bobby will take the full overview

I had Black as a contact for a few of my characters, but she never made an appearance.

Here is what I have on Black.

Her decker name is triple Zero (the RGB coding of Black), and her matrix icon is the Black Square painting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square_(painting). A very famous picture worth today tens of millions of dollars and it literally is a black square.

The name Black is meaning of triple zero RGB(0,0,0). Black is semi-famous in the gaming community as TripleZero and all forms of online communities. People who have no personal relationship will go by TripleZero, and her friends call her Black. She does not use the name Black in her matrix presence - it is just a different way to say TripleZero.

She made her fortune stealing art while working for the Mafia all over Europe. She has incredible stories about art.
Black arrived at UCAS to cool down and retire living comfortably. She finds retirement difficult because she tries to live a boring life - and would occasionally work or do something illegal for the Mafia. Perhaps because her lifestyle is bigger than her trust fund -or perhaps because she is addicted to the excitement. She tries not to commit any grand larceny that would risk her assets, against her nature. ​The name Kira Benson is fake, AM assumes it is because she knew Black also under a different SIN.

I never physically described her, but elf native to Ukraine, about forty years old. So feel free to imagine/write her as you fancy within these lines.

IC posts are up. They were getting long so I broke them into two.

My brain is foggy today so I have a strong suspicion that I forgot to share something I intended to. I'll revisit it tomorrow to see if I overlooked anything. Feel free to ask follow-up questions too, which might spark my memory.

Oddly I'd imagined Lysander as clearly male but rather androgynous in presentation. Maybe it is something to do with the name?

I think Jawsey will stay at SIS home base, keeping an eye on things while the other two are out.

summon F4+1=5 spirit of water: 9d6t5 1
spirit resist: 5d6t5 0
drain resist vs 2: 13d6t5 7

1 service, no drain (again an amazing drain roll). Not channeled. optional power of binding.

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Jawsey has invested 200nY a month in the baby-gang near their headquarters, starting at the start of November (so three complete months of it so far). I refer to them in my tracking table as the 'pizza kids' but the food may not always be pizza. He's been trying to build up some good will and earn a bit of trust, while recognizing that they alternate between thinking he's a sucker for giving out anything for free or figuring it is a trap. The money invested is not huge because he didn't want it to seem too much like a trap, but about 50nY a week for some food that he manages to get to them (he's good at finding them, given astral projection).

==================
Comcomly hasn't really been fleshed out in game yet. I just have him down as a fixer in downtown Seattle, of native descent (I stole the name from a native leader during the early days of European contact in the pacific-northwest)
Any objections to him buying them now as a L1C1 contact? I'm going to write him using them into the IC post, but whether or not they cooperate is up in the air.

Beta, go ahead and give me a Perception (Visual) roll and an Assensing roll too.

You can get your cane tonight if you're waving that kind of nuyen around.

@Jack
Give me an overview of your plan, maybe with a Perception (Visual) and an Assensing roll.

Perception (hearing): 9d6t5 1 for non-hearing it is the same disappointing result (the success was not in the last two dice)

Asensing: 11d6t5 4

And for the record I love the suggestion of providing a meal to cam-evil, heck Jawsey would even endure helping deliver. But it is up to AM to decide whether to pass that suggestion along.

. wrong thread.