Whoops, was too slow in editing:

If you enter the building, you'll keep the watchers, but you'll lose the city spirit you just conjured.

It might be hard to ID Jonah from the astral, but you'd definitely recognise him on the mundane.

Sedna:

OK, one more OOC post here and hopefully all confusion will be aside. Virgil will assign the spirit to defend the car as it's final and only service. He will then enter the building and to a quick scan so see what apartments are occupied currently, that way the mundane search can go much quicker.

-Thanks for catching my almost spirit mishap. Let me know if I have left you wanting for anything else.

Sedna- Should I be waiting on you to post or is it pretty open still? I was a bit unsure. I guess logically Bandit and Ronin, I'm waiting on you two as well, since Dragon would wait in the car until Virgil reported back or if Ronin had something to say. Just fyi on where I'm at.

EDIT: Sedna- I didn't have Dragon and Virgil going all the way in because I didn't want to assume any doors were unlocked or that we had easy access. Here's a perception roll to see if Dragon spots anything suspicious (besides him and Virgil, of course)

Perception (-1 TN): 05 05 05 05 04 03 02

Let me know if anything else is needed

grendel, here's my Perception Test (-1 to TN): 5, 5, 1, 11, 7

Roll me an appropriate skill, WinterRat We'll make it an opposed test. You'll need two successes against TN 4.

Aw crap...

Etiquette: 02 01.

Well it appears the dice definitely have decided to validate Dragon's existence. Put him in a gunfight where it's all on the line, and he's definitely someone to be reckoned with. Put him in a situation where talking is better than fighting, and he well...sucks. I almost got rule of 1 on this. Be grateful for some small things, it seems.

And btw Sedna, I don't know if you know, but every character Ronin has EVER played has had Shifty as a contact, and in one post you put more life and entertainment in Shifty (who was previously a male) than in the last 10 or so years I've been playing with Ronin.

BTW Ronin, do Shifty and Dragon know each other? It seems that they might from Sedna's post. Should Dragon know her? Quite possible, since Dragon and Daedalus have known each other for years.

Hey! I just thought of a really bad pun. Since the team is Dragon, Daedalus, and Virgil, and there's three of them, they could call themselves D&D V.3. Get it???

OK please don't kill me everyone...

Yes. Yes it was. You shall now be coated with honey and suspended headfirst over a hill of red ants.

Male? ronin, did I misunderstand your e-mail?

I don't think Dragon and Shifty are likely to know each other directly. Know of each other, obviously; and just as obviously you've both talked about Shifty: but this is a place where background diverges.

WARNING:
We're into the Mysterious Disappearing Post phase again. It's not something I want to bug Neuron Basher about, I'm sure he already knows and is trying to make it work somehow: so just make sure you save your posts before pressing send?

Karma Awards for my Players from April 21-May 10 (finally caught up there)

Sedna: 7
(1 per week +1 GM bonus/week +1 quality for conversations with Grail)
Paul: 3
(1 per week)
Scrapheap: 4
(1 per week +1 quality bonus for character insights and social problems resulting from Cyberware)
Digital: 2
(1 per week for 2 weeks)
Slipshade: 3
(1 per week)

(I actually had two separate posts written, depending on the results of that roll. Does that make you feel better or worse, WinterRat? )

Eyes: I burst out laughing when I read about your dream

Sorry, guys. Have to run for a bus.

As much as I hate to be jumping ahead of the pack in terms of time, I guess it just can't be helped; so much of what Eyes does is too boring to actually be detailed in posts. Of course this is not to say that I want his life to suddenly become interesting--there's an old Chinese proverb that basically translates to, "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time that be a man in a chaotic period," and I doubt anything interesting in SR will ever happen that isn't naturally chaotic. Take a look at Dragon and Co, for instance.

Well at least we advanced rather far. That was a great flurry of action, I haven't done that in a long time.

Eyes: What, you mean you don't want to be engulfed by an elemental, shot at by snipers, ambushed by enemy mages and street samurais with Body of 14 (who are HUMAN! or possibly ork) and then have not one, but TWO missiles fired at you? Oh, and a nice friendly freaking BLIMP picking away at you with an SMG? That doesn't appeal to you and your character?

Sedna- Two posts written? What, bad and worse?

Eyes pt 2: Definitely be careful asking Grendel for something 'interesting'. You have been warned.

ahh crap!

stare at the screen for months and we progress 2 hours..
spend one day away studying and the storyline jumps!

just one thing, Daedalus wanted to send Talos to the clinic and blow the smitherenes out of that downed drone... Icarus wasn't really going to stop watching it till that happened... i don't suppose i could have it picked up and harvested for parts.. ... (ok, not quite blow to smitherenes, but enough to take out its SENSORS and weapons systems so enemy drone cannot track us)

back to the books...

It's amazing how much trouble we have gotten into . . .when we're not even on a paying job! Only in the wonderful world of LiTS Just FYI, eventually (as in soon) I am going to have to get back to reading papers tonight. So I won't be sitting at my computer hitting the refresh button for much longer

hrm can we just say it was done or should I post? (I figure it would have occured around 15:50, giving enough time to catch up and be waiting outside the building watching these two and their antics.

yeesh.. sorry guys, i gotta catch up on the story... .. later tonight..

Always post, if in doubt. If nothing else, it adds to the storyline, and demonstrates you're still around and actively participating (useful when the GM is handing out karma).

And yeah, we really flew today. I've been parked in front of my comp from 6-9:30, since I devoted today to catching up on posts and stuff.

Sedna- Whether Shifty is female or not, Ronin and Sedna, I vote you keep her as a female. I think she has MUCH more personality this way. But that's just my .02

ok, posting now.... and a better idea had occured to me....

yeah I like what Sedna has done with Shifty, one of our long standing NPCs brought to life at last.

Now what would really bring back some crazy memories would be if a few choice old-PCs began to make an appearence . . .

-a certain nightclub owner
-a certain ex-cop
*any character who can can safely use the battle strategy of . . . ."Drop a gernade at your own feet"

Ok, now it is time for me to hit the scientific literature.

ah.. lets not even begin with that last one.. though given the opposition so far, we may already have someone like that around...

::shudder::

ok NOW time to go study... for real.. really. ...

WinterRat-

Bandit, my belated Perception test:

Perception Test: 01. 03, 05, 02, 02

Oh, dear God, my character was struck deaf, dumb, and blind apparently!

It seems to have been a bad 24 hours for Perception and CH-related tests all around: things overlooked, people just happening to be looking in exactly the wrong direction at critical moments. Let's hope we break that here.

bandit: need an appropriate CH-related test for Virgil's action, probably Etiquette. You're looking for 2 successes against a TN 4. I'll write up the results later.

Relieved to hear it, Sentinel. Was just asking because sometimes the IC reaction is the only hint that the player is feeling seriously jerked around by an incomprehensible world where things don't make sense; where the player is having difficulty imagining any possible reason for complications that have the potential to significantly impede progress toward the character's goals.

It can get into a vicious cycle very quickly:

1. When the player's feeling disconnected, the character doesn't take any initiative in interacting where there is a perception of less than total control over all elements of the situation (which is almost always).
   
2. Because most information can be gotten only by interacting, the character (and consequently the player) gets less and less information about the situation.
   
3. With less information, the player feels even more disconnected from the situation; and tends increasingly to let others take the lead in what is personally seen as an increasingly incomprehensible situation.

Since I know that an absolute not-knowing without any kind of speculation can be frustrating, and since I've tossed out a fair bit of IC information by now, any OOC guesses as to what's going on? (I'm willing to let others into the guessing game if you agree to it.)

Sedna: I meant to post a preemptive etiquette roll, it just completely slipped my mind. The wonderful thing about the Irony Games dice roller is that I can make the test at work (very quickly) without drawing any strange looks

etiquette (5): 05 04 03 02 01

*I kid you not. . .1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Although I put them in order, the dice roller still gave me successive numbers. Weird.

Scrapheap, do the following three steps and post your response/results.
1. Pick three numbers
2. Roll 3D6. Post each die result separately, do not total them.
3. Call odd or even

Any non-decimal or fraction numbers.

Scrapheap:
My formula for this dumb luck test was: ax + by – cz = odd/even
You picked: 10, 25, 53, so 10x + 25y –53z = odd (which you called)
You rolled: 3, 4, 2, so 10*3+25*4-53*2 = 24, which does not equal odd.

Therefore you get the ‘bad’ luck, and will not be able to speak to Keira.

You may NOT arrive at The Respite Soup Kitchen until AFTER the events in Slipshade’s story. You MAY arrive while he is still present, which means you may arrive at any time after 10:45:38.

You can either write up your own reason why, or I can come up with something for you, just let me know in the OOC thread which option you prefer. In the meantime, you may continue playing, but for continuity’s sake, if you have nothing to do, I would recommend fast forwarding to the next day and The Respite Soup Kitchen. As I recall, John needs sleep badly, so this might not be a bad time to catch up on some of that, and/or work on some Strength training time, as you indicated you wanted to do earlier.

I did this because the two storylines proceeded a bit disjointly, so I couldn’t decide if it was fair or not to say you got there before the kidnapping or not, but obviously you could not be present during the kidnapping. For consistency purposes, I figured the fairest way was to roll for it and let the story work itself out from there. Let me know if you have any questions. And yes, the plot is thickening.

WinterRat-
Sounds good. The only thing I was thinking was that I would swing by Finn's bar and see if he managed to come up with anything else (or, if he even continued to look). I'll write that post up tonight.

Sedna and Winterrat:

Just FYI in case a flurry of posting starts up again, as it did last night. I am on the way out the door to make an end of the year dinner celebration. I do not know when I will be back to my computer tonight . . .. and the plot is thickening too.

Understood -- I'm just back from a wine and cheese and the partial intent was to take full advantage, we'll see how coherent my posting is now

Scrapheap and WinterRat1 - Sorry I have been sick for the last week, I will post in the next couple of days, when I unbury myself at work.

Slip

That's one of the more unfortunate reasons to be away. Hope you're feeling better, Slipshade

WinterRat, ronin: since bandit is gone for the nonce, I'll give it a bit of time before posting an answer, just in case either of you want to post an action. I'm far enough behind on coding in any case ...

I have nothing to post and enough to catch up on myself, so go ahead and post if you got the time. Aren't we all behind?

Public Service Announcement

Karma Pool Guidelines are up in the Guidelines thread. They are here below for skimming if you wish.

1. Karma pool is gained at a staggered rate per SR Comp, pg. 82
2. Karma pool refreshes at dawn.
3. Karma pool does not renew AT ALL during extended projects. Karma pool is available over the entirety of the project, but will not refresh until the time limit on the project is up, regardless of whether or not it was successful.
4. Metahumans gain 1 karma pool per 20 good karma, humans 1 karma pool per 10 good karma.
5. We’ll remind here that the points in the Karma Pool are transferred Good Karma: ie. that the point that appears in the Karma Pool has been lost from Good Karma.

More detail to be added as necessary.

Might want to consider adding in:

5. We’ll remind here that the points in the Karma Pool are transferred Good Karma: ie. that the point that appears in the Karma Pool has been lost from Good Karma.

as that's sorta buried in the current guidelines. Regarding KP not refreshing during "extended projects," do you just mean the KP spent on that project, or all KP in general? Because Eyes had been working on a small program plan which could be called an extended project (he's about 8 hours into it, IIRC, and so has 14 hours to go), and at the rate he's going will probably be working on it for the rest of the week at least. Does that mean his pool isn't refreshing until that program plan is done, even though he didn't spend any Pool on it?

Heh, where the heck am I ever going to find the time to actually write the *program*, if just the plan's taken me... how long now? Two months and counting?

Damn you, WinterRat!!!!! That's addictive!

Now I'm getting to that post

ronin, just fyi, I'm not forgetting about the double-monitor you have going on

What WinterRat said holds good: even if it's a "back-post" because the action got a bit ahead of you, write it. It's my job to work out a way to make it work somehow. And rigging (like astral, like decking) is on a slightly different time flow in any case.

Hey everyone, just a note, watch for PMs not getting sent again. Might be a good idea to save all important posts/correspondences for a while.

WinterRat: this conversation isn't really happening in English, is it?

It’s happening in your head, and can take place in any language you can speak. No matter what language you speak they respond in kind. You understand them just fine, and they understand you just fine.

Noted. I'd just thought that in this context, a different language might have been more appropriate and/or instinctive.

Heh…getting ideas and theories are you? Don’t worry, I’ve thought this out very carefully, and everything that happens is quite deliberate and planned.

Scrapheap- Feel free to jump to tomorrow when you feel like it/can get around to it, but remember you cannot show up before 10:45.

I've been speculating about this ever since they first showed up. (There really isn't an appropriate smiley for this.) So has Alleycat ... but I suspect her guesses are rather different than mine. What I'm writing for her, I'm writing straight, "cold".

Does it say that I trust you or that I take it for granted, that I never questioned that everything you're doing in this context is deliberate and planned?

WinterRat-
Will do, I just wanted to get something up there. I'd have posted more, but I'm at work. Stupid work!