Here’s what we currently know about our 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
Chapter 8: Sunday, February 5, 2079
Seventh Interlude: Wednesday, February 8, 2079

Link to Jawsey

Placeholder link to Tamarind
(not sure that she shows up in this interlude, but just in case)
(as of this edit, starting attributes and qualities are at 'final draft' stage, as is her character background. Skills, gear, 'ware, and all of the spending of chapter rewards still to be done. Some parts are still partially edited copy of Jawsey's character code)

Link to Bobby

I don't think the guy is planning on springing a surprise, I just didn't have much else to say.

AM: https://stormy-waters-2075.obsidianportal.com/characters/am

What's AM going to do to 'take care of Mato'? I'm not even sure what Bobby is suggesting.

Just to speculate, a bit of healing (to help recover from surgery), bring him fresh clothes or Fashion what he has there, give him a really quick update on when/where he is and that SIS is intact and functional.

Too late for Heal. Mato is in the world of medicine now.

He'll be wearing a patient gown, although I suppose he'll need fresh clothes for when he leaves.

He did ask about Makeover. That would do him some good.

Yeah, I was also talking about makeover and potentialy something to numb the pain, like Resist Pain - or help endure with a willpower boost.

Mato is already Willpower 7 so any boost to that will require some serious Force.

He's holding up; he's just not at fully functional yet.

Jawsey would offer detox (via a spirit) to help clear the after effects of the drugs used to induce the coma, but it might also clear out drugs keeping the pain manageable.

I figure his nephritic screen is already doing the same thing.

Right! I did read that in the IC, then forgot again after. (Hi, welcome to spring allergy season when my attention span and memory span are measured in ... oh look, a bird!)

Hi guys, I bad right now in hospital. Will ping when i am back.

Hi guys, I bad right now in hospital. Will ping when i am back.

Well that's alarming. I hope everything turns out okay!

Get well soon! All the best to you and your family.

Gilga: wishing you a speedy and thorough recovery. Focus on healing, we'll be here when you are ready.

gilga, update us when you're able as I'm sure we'll all be concerned until we hear back.

It's okay for AM to be in the background for this next bit so I'll keep the IC dribbling forward.

I was slow actually writing my last IC post after I'd started it, so I hadn't seen Jack's post go up. Nothing really conflicts, but apologies that it also has verb tenses wrong to blend properly.

For Tamarind I'd been planning on taking one of the qualities that makes a certain class of knowledge skill 2-for-1 in character creation and discounted by 1 karma for levels 3 and above when buying with karma. When I settled into looking at the type of knowledge skill (academic, interest, languages, professional, street) that made the most sense for her to focus on, I thought maybe "interest". When I went to look for the relevant quality I didn't find it? There are:
- College Education for Academic
- Linguist for Language
- Technical School Education for Professional
- School of Hard Knocks for Street

Am I missing something, or is that actually the one knowledge skill type that doesn't have a related quality? (if the latter is the case that is fine, I'll either tweak her background and knowledge skill selection a bit, or just skip that quality and take a second 'subtle pilot' type of vehicle with those four points.

I can't think of one off the top of my head.

All the others cost 4 karma. I think we could houserule a "Hobbyist" quality that costs the same. I have yet to see knowledge skills break the game, so I don't have any objections.

That said, we've got a boatload of knowledge karma, at least 82 points if I kept complete records. And I think before we were doing knowledge karma we gave out 10 free knowledge skill points. (The difference is that the karma version can be spent on things like Contacts too.) Is that not enough for all of Tamarind's interests?

Oh it is probably is more than enough

I was looking at simply because I have a tradition of buying one of those qualities with each character who will have much in the way of knowledge skills, as a way to explore different approaches to knowledge skills. (Jawsey had Linguist, Preston had Technical School Education, I know I had college education on an older character but I forget who now). Taking School of Hard Knocks would a) complete the set, b) fit her background well, and c) make me do the exact sort of work that this exercise was intended to do. So I'll tweak my mental picture of her a bit, take that, and adjust knowledge skills some (she'll still have some interests, which are there mostly for RP reasons, so the actual skill in them doesn't matter that much. As in, she'll still be pulling out knitting on a regular basis, the results just may not be consistent).

Fine by me as well
I'm really looking forward to see how our new colleague will react to the remaining cast

Beta, let me know if you want to put anything up ICly.

I'll try to give things some breathing room so that gilga doesn't get too far behind.

Nice way to buy the trustfund quality - which level are you going for?

Just 5 karma, although we'll have to discuss about how it applies to our shared lifestyle. Either we'll pay less or we'll pay the same but (narratively) live better.

This is my third incarnation of Mato, the other two having only been trotted out for one-shots. The other two drafts of Mato had him flip-flopping back and forth between Aztlaner and Native American heritage. Conveniently, the name means something relevant in both Spanish ("I kill") and Sioux ("Bear"). Somewhere along the way, maybe Chapter 5, I decided that I could introduce some infidelity into his ancestry in order to split the difference, and perhaps explain why he's so small as an ork (because his biological father was an elf).

Trust Fund was part of an earlier draft of Mato (the Aztlaner version) but it didn't make sense for a game centered around the In Debt quality. But now that we've emerged from that debt, minus some debt between AM and Bobby, we can open up the nuyen spigot a little more. I also wanted to have a partial IC explanation for the karma-to-nuyen conversions that he'll be doing. I'm sure he'll be talking to Green Toes too.

Sounds good - especially since you can upgrade once you "deepen" Mato's relationship with his father. If you want I can design a chapter around this at some time (same offer to the other players, of course, if you want to explore the families of your characters - all I need are the immutable anchor points of your story vs. What's free to my interpretation)

As for using your new free lifestyle: per the rules text you can't share it but you get instead a complete separate flat/house for yourself.

You'll probably want to invest into a good fake SIN too, to keep that quality around

Mato has an R4 fake, which is about the best you can reasonably get due to Availability.

Tangent: I don't like the fake SIN rules very much. The cheap ones should be much cheaper and the expensive ones should cost much more. I would probably do Rating*Rating*1000 for the price rather than having it scale linearly. I would also make it so that a SIN check isn't an opposed check but rather a threshold check: the scanner's rating in dice (not rating*2) vs. a threshold set by your SIN rating. Right now an R6 fake has too high of a chance to get burned by an R6 scanner (18%). An R6 should be an alternate life that should hold up almost every time. (99.86% of the time in the approach I just outlined.) End tangent.

As for the rules saying the lifestyle can't be shared, yes, it does say that. However I don't fully understand the logic so I'm willing to overlook it if others are. If others don't wish to overlook it, I could have Mato move next door (since we haven't really specified details about our block) so that there's more space at HQ. Someone won't have to share a room anymore. Or Mato could get a respectable home-office combo elsewhere, just in case we need to leave Redmond suddenly. Again, open for discussion about what people think would be fun or interesting or flavorful.

I think it's more a question of not suddenly housing more people without paying for the increase in costs. I'm fine with just paying the additional overhead (or getting the quality myself, so we can share again)

Getting a place outside Touristville is likely the better idea - we keep the old place as our offices and sleep at Mato's new diggs.

Yeah, the formula for dongles would make more sense for fake SINs. I generally avoid rolling SIN scanners - I just compare: is the scanner below the SIN Rating? if yes, it gets through automatically, otherwise, there is the roll you mentioned.

also agreed about the current SIN system being pretty meh. It has the benefits of being simple, but the drawbacks of not being very interesting.

(as a SIN aside, remember that one of the house rules lowers the cost of SINs for 2000 per level, instead of 2500. Was reminded of that again while going through the house rules while working on Tamarind. )

Beta, let us know if there's anything you want to IC.

We'll cut back to Mato soon; this is just a little break to get the lawyer out of there and skip forward in time a bit, like an hour.

A living space outside of Touristville is an interesting idea. It's also possible that Tamarind could help steer this decision. It would be cool to have a garage and a working space for vehicles and drones.

I like Bobby's approach to keeping Mato around -- for at least one meal.

FYI, Grey Mana Tattoos don't affect healing magic: "Counterintuitively, beneficial magic targeting the wearer works as normal" (Better Than Bad, p. 157).

Yeah, I know, but I couldn't think of an easy to explain IP reason to not get them.
OP, they are a bad choice because: They only go to R3, don't stack with clothing using GMI (and that can go up to R6) and also have an essence cost.
The only thing they have going for them is the price.
But then, if you skimp on protection, you are in for a rough ride anyway.

Really, just wearing a longcoat with GMI is usually the better option.

Hey, gilga's alive! That's great news!

@Jack
Grey mana clothing interferes with beneficial magic whereas tattoos don't. And the rating for clothing caps out at R3 unless you have armor with a chemical seal. Our game doesn't really have us walking around in full body armor (yet) so the fact that clothing goes to R6 is a bit academic for our purposes.

For Mato and his cyber singularity seeking, I imagine that the Essence loss of grey mana tattoos is a feature, not a flaw.

Fair enought, though you can get the coat off if you are going to receive a spell

Alive, but sadly not yet back. Just some fonefo.

Hang in there and well soonest

@gilga
Get well soon. This is just RP so things are in a good spot for AM to hang out in the background.

@All
Any idea why Grey Mana stuff is Forbidden? This is the one thing that bugs me about it. It fits Mato but it's potentially problematic if it's grossly illegal.

I might need some help with Availability tests. In my head the doc is reasonably good at getting materiel for shadowfolk - she's Connection 4 and has this private room for the high-margin work (like she's doing for Mato) that helps fund the rest of the place - but I'm not sure her dice pool for acquisitions is better than, say, Jawsey's. I'm not in love with the Availability rules in the book but at the moment I don't have the brainpower to propose something different.

I suppose I could dump a bunch of knowledge karma into getting a Contact who is really good at getting 'ware.

I have a talismonger (Bill Whitewater) that might be able to help you, since he is a supplier for the magical branches of the SDF.

But all in all, AM is the best at finding stuff like that with her high Charisma stat.

It's more for the ware than the tats.

Cyberears and reaction enhancers, the latter of which are especially high Availability. R3 start at 15 and Beta-grade are a 19.

@Gilga glad you trending up. Keep taking care of yourself!

Sorry, I wrote up a post on Saturday but must not have hit send on it. Nothing of consequence, but I hadn't meant to be quiet for so long.

Yah, availability on reaction enhancers is tough. A key part of Tamarind's build, but R3 used or R2 regular is where starting availability draws the line.

And this discussion just made me realize that Beta as a user name in ShadowRun boards could seem kind of pretentious ("beta grade"). The name actually evolved from user my initials (BET) on some early gaming discussions, then not wanting to sound like a gambler and arbitrarily adding an 'x' to the end of that, and then when I got involved with play by post wanting something easier to say so briefly flirting with Betax, and then deciding that dropping the x and just using "Beta" was easier.

@Tecumseh As a way of connecting Tamarind with SIS, I was thinking taking a Sioux contact that one or more of the other three share, who could introduce them. I was wondering about Cutty, but I don't recall what part of the Sioux military he was in? (Tamarind served four years beyond her mandatory one, but was my current writing was that she was in some version of vehicle driving & maintenance (Is motor pool the right term?) the whole time, so I'm not sure she would have crossed paths with him? Then again, I guess when you are shuttling vehicles and drones around and occasionally driving people around you could meet just about anyone, the only question is having made enough connection to find out that he's set up a gym in Redmond).

If that doesn't work out, it could be something like they used to go to the same bar on Friday nights. Or just that some other contact sent her to his gym after it opened.

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

Jawsey's fixer contact Comcomly hasn't shown up much in game so far. He has them at L2, and they are connection rating 4. My concept of them was always about what I wrote in the IC: someone who can help arrange fake SIN, help obtain gear that normally would need a legit license or was otherwise harder to get when you were not really legitimate, and arrange a certain amount of lower risk smuggling, help families extract people from bad situations, and so on, all focused mostly on the native (especially Salish-Sidhe) community. I took the name from a 'leader and diplomat' among the Chinook tribe (in what is now Tir Tainguire) around the time of early European trade on the west coast, so I assume that they see themselves as something a bridge between the native and anglo community. (oh, and 'they' because my first concept for this contact had been based on 'Gone-With-The-Spirits', another native character from that period who headed off with fur traders as a woman but returned to her tribe declaring that they were a man, married a woman, and shows up in the historical record a few more times after. The less gender-clear part stuck in my head after switching to Comcomly, although I've never bothered to define exactly what Comcomly's background is)

@beta
Cpt. Razak might be a good way to get you to the group. Bobby is still in contact with him and he was the one that got Bobby this gig in the first place.

I had assumed Tamarind would be a Captain Razak referral, but Cutty works just as well, maybe even better. (Since Cutty is more of a day-to-day contact and Captain Razak is more removed.)

I imagine Cutty as the close quarters combat instructor for the SDF, so he might have been her instructor during her mandatory year before she was shipped off to the motor pool. But it would be up to Tamarind why she bother to stay in touch with Cutty, or vice versa. It's possible that Cutty also did a short stretch in prison so they could have that in common if you wanted.

How old is Tamarind?

Tamarind has been out of the military since at least '62 (she got work in the orichalcum rush in the year of the comet), so she's been out for a long time. Assuming that she was no younger than 23 (18+1+4), that would put her birth in '39 at the latest. I think a year or two of caring for her ailing mother and doing odd jobs after mustering out before the orichalcum biz feels right, so say born in '37, mustered out in '60, and is (41? 42?) now (I forget which year we are in)

She wasn't in prison, other than that she may have been held under arrest in Denver for a briefly. I'm reworking that part of her history a bit to tie things together better. The crux of it all is going to be that the Denver law had also picked up the Spirit Bundle she had stolen (without knowing its significance), and she would do anything to get it back -- and so turned informant for a period around when Ghostwalker was kicking everyone out. This will tie into her "Big Regret" negative quality. I haven't decided if she actually spent time in jail, or if that decision happened quickly after she was scooped up.

Razak and Cutty are both too upright for her to have known from the smuggling side of things, and neither was in the sort of role where they might have been chasing after her. If she knew them from the military it was some sort of long lasting bond, but friendships can be the darndest thing. If the ages line up they could have been in basic training together and just stayed lightly in touch?

Actually, I very much imagine Captain Razak being in charge of "alternative assets", like SIS or a smuggler. But I'll let Bobby say for sure.

I always put the date in the first IC and OOC posts. It is February 2079 at the moment.

Cutty is early to mid 40s, so very similar in age.

Yeah, that's pretty much Razak's role now - deniable assets. And he actually prefers slightly tarnished individuals - those are usually more morally flexible 😉

Ok, Razak works well then, and him having another handle on SIS is probably interesting. I may take Cutty as a contact too, just for the "wait, I know you from the gym!" moment.