Yes, it's 20k for the group, which probably won't be enough. I don't know how much core drillers cost.

Once again: We're not being asked to extract, mine, or otherwise acquire the substance.

Tisoz: I love how you're playing Skeeter. Reminds me of Marv from Sin City.

How are we supposed to determine whats there if we don't mine or extract?

Um, a core driller isn't a mining tool. It's a surveying tool. It drills down into the ground to see what's in there. And like Chance said, we are in fact being aske to extract a small amount of material, because we kind of have to in order to see what's down there. A core driller is a circular drill which extracts a long, thin cylinder of material, about 3-6 inches across and anywhere from 20 to 500 feet deep. The cylinder is broken up into shorter sections for transport, of course. I'm guessing he won't want us to go more than 50 meters deep though.

We don't know yet that it's a raw material that he wants. It could be artifacts, or perhaps some sort of magical phenominon that makes the land itself valuable.



JaronK

By the way, I know the two Ravens thing is getting confusing... I'm getting lost too. I'm trying to put the pronoun "he" in when talking about my Raven. The moment the group learns each others' names, I'll have mine switch names. If there's any confusion, mine is a male elf, a combination Assassin/Weapons Expert/Face type character who has regularly used being a corporate accountant as a cover, and therefor has a lot of corporate skills (such as negotiation, accounting, etc.).

JaronK

<just rubs his temples a bit>

Heh, things are going to get interesting. Less interesting than I'd hoped since I didn't look at a SR map when I picked the location and thought it was in a different country than it is.

Yes, the 20k is for the group as a whole. He will be providing a few skillsofts and the survey equipment, though.

[edit]Raven doesn't notice any uncertainty in the Johnson at all. He is convinced that he's not sending the PCs out on a wild goose chase and he appears to be playing them straight.

On negotiation for payment... be careful. I'll allow one and only one roll for it, and loosing results in an a net loss of payment (though it won't necessarily look like one on the surface).[/edit]

Actually, he did say he wants samples. Even if we did have some way of finding out what was down there without physically obtaining a sample, which no one has suggested a method for, the Johnson would want some proof that we aren't just making up our results. So in fact, I have been assuming precisely jack squat.

I'm not sure what thread you reading, but until his last post he said nothing about samples or mining.

Now that he has given us some more information, it would probably be safe to assume he does not intend for us to do any mining, and what equipment we will need he will provide. So you can tell Jack to go home now.

There's plenty of ways of doing it, but I prefer not to plan things too far ahead. You'd be amazed at what you can learn just by asking a gnome...

Oh, and as requested in PM...

johnny boy did mention he'd acquired the necessary equipment. quit getting all worked up for nothing. you're like a bunch of little girls.

<yanks Creche's ponytail hard, then runs off crying 'cause she tore my dress>

Yes, spectrographic analysis could do the trick, but that requires equipment that isn't man-portable, as well as a bit of spectrum-wide radiation. And incidentaly, Panzer never, ever said we needed to do any mining. Effective use of the straw man requires more subtlety than that.

I'm in, and I can take care of the border-crossing part. Don't negotiate; if this guy's corp has any brains, he will be the best negotiator in the whole company.

Or better yet, negotiate if it seems appropriate to your character and don't worry about meta-gaming.

Assensing reveals:


On the negotiation again, anyone can do it IC. It's just that I'm only going to go with one roll OOC.

How many of us are left in this game? And are any of you trolls? My hovercraft has 1 bucket one bench, and one reinforced bench, so we may need to bring a van as well.

Anyone mind if I try bumping the downpayment up?

Knock yourself out, devilbovine.

Go ahead, Slick. Your character is the only one made form the ground up as a Face.

The downpayment, yes, but don't mess with the 1%.

I've seen 10 people post IC at some point or another. I've seen 8 people post since the Johnson started talking yesterday. I'm relatively sure the other two are still going to be posting (weekends tend to be rough) as well. Right now, 7 people have declared themselves in.

You're going to need a bigger boat.

We don't need everyone to fit into Beast's vehicle, because we don't need to smuggle everything. We simply put all the illegal and suspicious stuff into his hovercraft, and sneak it across the border, while the extra people take a perfectly normal vehicle and drive through a border checkpoint, carrying the food, medkits, and camping equipment. They don't check SINs at the border do they? My understanding is that they simply do quick electronic scans, and randomly do quick searches of a few vehicles. Anyway, we have a second rigger right?

Sorry guys, my character can do this so much better than I can RP it.

TN should be his INT-1 (unless he was a woman before, then its INT-2). I'm throwing in Ettiquite and Corporate Politics, just to make sure I made the offer right IC. Like, how corps do it and stuff.


BTW Tinker, they best my system can handle is an optimized rating 5 soft, or an optimized rating 7 specialization if you fudge me a single MP. Which, in retrospect I shoulda bought just in case of something like this, but I didn't think about it. Haven't played a soft user before, and anway I considered using softs over 6 a little munchkin at this point.

I've got a pretty fast bike. I may need a new soft to run it fast over wilderness though. I'm also pretty darned near completely legal except for my weapons. I also have a fake SIN good enough to get past, I hope.

Rating 5 will be more than enough for some simple mineral sampling. This isn't the oil crew from Armagedon after all. And it's good you have a fake SIN; we might need it to buy a car.

My Raven is completely legal, but she would prefer not to have to use it that ID to cross the border, but she could if need be.

As for the locating of resources, I think ROUS' character has it well in hand, but I may be wrong.

Once we find out where were going it will make it easier.

Holy crap. With that kind of skill, maybe you should ask for his firstborn son and some stock options too.

Metallurgy (and other similar skills) are Knowledge Skills anyway. Skillwires and headware memory not required, rating can be as high as necessary. My character already has some experience on the subject as well.

My understanding is the TN for negotiations is the opponents INT. -1 for Good Looking. He rolls his negotiation vs my INT as well, and our sucesses cancel each other out. Every success over adjusts the price 5%.

Beast: I dunno, the Johnson looks pretty good himself, and there's no reason he ain't packing the same 'ware I am. It could be pretty close.

Quite so. I've got a knowsoft link myself, and Panzer has chemistry. Operating the equipment he provides for us may require an active skill, but it shouldn't require a very high rating.

Panzer, I'll be using SoNA for border crossing rules. It's not so easy and yes, they do check SINs. Along with doing random magical and technological sweeps for contraband.

The important stuff is all knowsofts, you probably already have the skill or activesoft that he's going to provide (probably better than he provides it).

Hellcow ended up with one net success after the Johnson made his roll. He'll up the upfront amount to 22,000

[edit] I've always played net successes as 10% increases/decreases If Hellcow uses karma, the 11 doesn't reroll.[/edit]

Is that from my Karma Pool? Sure, i'll use it. It's the only one i've got

EDIT: Er, I can buy a success? That's just as good right?

Crap, I don't have Shadows of North America. I do have New Seattle, if that helps. I'll also get a fake SIN, though I think I'll most likely try to sneak across the border rather than trying to fool the checkpoint guards.

No, don't burn a permenant Karma Pool point for an automatic success on that Number 6, just use one Karma Pool point (without burning it) to reroll all your dice except the 11 if you want to. If you want to keep trying, the cost increases by +1 (so two Karma Pool points for another reroll, three for another, etc). Note that each of those rerolls only reroll dice that weren't successes; you get to keep any successes you make with progressive rerolls.

You probably want to check with TKG to see how often he refreshes the Karma Pool, though. Some GMs do it once per Turn, most I've gamed with do it once per scene, and some really strict ones do it once per adventure. If it's the latter, save it for when it's really important.

Screw it, play it as it lies.

Karma pool refreshes once per run (I was pretty sure that was the default refreshing). Other pools usually once per turn.

[edit] On review, I'll let Karma pool refresh every 24 hours. I'm used to short term runs [/edit]

No smuggling, then? That leaves me with my pistols and very little else.

Can't we just stash our contraband on the hovercraft running the border and meet up later?

Well, someone is going to have to smugle stuff across the border. Raven can probably get herself, her gear, and one other person across unmolested. But it would be problomatic. It could not work. She would prefer it if we just ran the border. There is plenty of places to do it in .

Right, like Panzer, said, we can put all the illegal stuff that needs smuggling in my hovercraft, and the legal gear and some of the people in a van to just go on a highway. If you look at a map of the Seattle region, you'll see that my hovercraft's ability to travel over the bay greatly expands our options. I can use my smuggler routes knowledge skill to pick a good route. My hovercraft had a sig of 1, but tht can be raised using a spirit's concealment power. It also has eletronic deception rating 2, which means a border patrol vehicle would need 3 successes on an active sensor test to detect it, 4 successes to identify it as a hovercraft, 5 successes to identify it as a GMC Beach Patroller, and 6 successes to identify some of my modificatons, allowing them to tell it apart from other beach patrollers. I also have the stealth skill and photovoltaic chameleon paint to hide us from passive sensor tests. So, just conceal it with a spirit, and we will do fine. We do have a shaman in the group right?

...

You snagged a hovercraft with a Signature of 1 and didn't bother to hike it up? It'll take an uber powerful spirit to conceal that to anything worth concealing; even a Force 5 will only give it the signature of an average metahuman, and competent border patrols for any paranoid country will easily have ECD in the 1-3 range. I'm certainly not going to want to trust any of my more sensitve gear on a noisy vehicle like that... simply walking across the border will be more productive *and* a better use of a spirit with Concealment.

It'd be smarter just to steal someone's Leyland-Rover van and use that.

There are a few rigger tricks that can make getting through easier... with Signature 1, they might not help much, though.

Yeah, that's why I was suggesting the Leyland Rover... it comes standard with a Signature of 5, inconspicious, and easy to acquire (either legitimately or illegitimately).

And possibly taking on a dragon's minions, eh? Now I see why the Johnson was tight-lipped.

Sadly, there isn't much you can do to decrease signature using after-market modifications without taking up a lot of load rating. Anyway, keep in mind that ECD doesn't simply reduce the rating of ED, it merely adds extra sensor dice, so a rating 3 ECD used against a vehicle with signature of 6 will, on average, get zero or one success. Add that to the one success expected from sensor 5, and you have two, still not the three you would need. And if he does get three successes, he only detects something, maybe a hovercraft, maybe a drone, maybe a pellican. He would need 4 successes to know it's a hovercraft. Also, ECD reduces flux ratings, so if they have it active they will have to be close to us.

Tinker, can we get a map of the area?

Then he should have picked a wiser vehicle for shadowruns. A signature 1 hovercraft is a pretty silly choice.

Anyway, getting into the Salish-Sidhe shouldn't be difficult, especially if we can just convince someone in the Cascade Orks to let us use one of their pipelines. If that's not a desireable option, getting around their typical border patrol is pretty darn easy even on foot (though the noisy hovercraft would be a bad idea even then). If memory serves, they even have an Inferior rating.

Besides, land crossings are fun just for the random encounters.

You both have good points. The hovercraft has a good chance of making it across the border, but would have trouble using rocky terrain, and going over water would leave us open to scanning from miles away. The hovercraft is also well-armored and armed, and has a lower handling rating.

An electric Leyland-Rover microbus would indeed have a signature of 5, and plenty of cargo space. It could easily be fitted with an extra bench seat and transponder library, and the vehicle termination chip could be removed. I could put the morphing plate from my hovercraft on it as well. However, it would not be able to go over water, and without ED, it would only take one success to detect it. Plus, it would be unarmed and unarmored. It would also only be able to go 100 km on a full battery, but I could install solar cells easily. It would take 2 or 3 days to do all the modifications.

Any other considerations I missed?