The Found Arcana – Second Interlude [OOC]
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The Found Arcana – Second Interlude [OOC]
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The only applicable knowledge skill for Bobby would be Underworld
Knowledge Underworld: 9d6t5 5 [9d6t5=3, 1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 6, 2, 6] -
@Tecumseh I just more carefully re-read the neighborhood info on the wiki, and I have a few questions:
– what is ‘The Verge’ (is that the eastern edge of Redmond?)
– whose territory were we on (beginning of September, say). I seem to recall that we were already paying off gangs for utilities? (I’m trying to understand if this is the Crimson Crush driving out another major gang, or if it was only just a small gang-of-the-block sort of situation being pushed out)
– If I understand that write-up properly, the Yakuzza maintain some presence over at least Touristville, and nominally all of Redmond, but they don’t really fight the gangs for controlling turf, they kind of operate on another level. So you have to deal with both your local gang (to be able to walk down the street in peace, get water, etc), and the Yakuzza (to not end up firebombed or something). A bit like paying taxes to your city and your state (but with more potential bloodshed).
I admit that I’ve never gotten too involved in the gangs side of SR previously, and haven’t really read up on them very carefully or spared a lot of thought on the topic, sorry if my questions are really basic.
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@beta
Your questions are fine. Questions about how the world works are completely valid, since it’s a fictional world and not everyone agrees about how the setting works.The Verge is a neighborhood in Redmond, like Touristville. It’s the next neighborhood to the east, more or less, but they don’t border each other. See the map here: https://i.redd.it/uj6e45o5qamz.png
The First Interlude was only two weeks ago. Mato mentioned you paid ¥600 the Brain Eaters to 1) provide utilities, specifically electricity and wireless, and 2) to leave you alone. He noted that it didn’t really cover protection costs. For that, you paid the Yakuza ¥600. Here’s the relevant passage:
”Perhaps you are wonder what services are rendered in exchange for your monthly contribution to our neighborhood organization. A reasonable question. We provide a neighborhood watch, of sorts, one that is more reliable and more responsive than our friends in the Knight-Errant offices near the District Hall. We endeavor to prevent harm to you or your property, or – in the unfortunate event that harm comes to pass – then justice and recompense from the perpetrators. We also offer dispute resolution services, especially between community members. Should you feel that you have been wronged by one of your neighbors, we can arbitrate the situation independently and fairly. The neighborhood respects our decisions.”
As for the Yakuza, they’re the predominant syndicate in Redmond, but they don’t have the manpower to run it directly themselves. Instead, they act as an umbrella organization and get the gangs to be their front-line soldiers and to do their dirty work. Again, it’s fair to wonder why you paid the Yakuza two weeks ago and now the Crimson Crush are busy stomping around now, making a lot of noise. A couple conclusions might be 1) the Crimson Crush are working with the Yakuza and they are double-dipping, or 2) the Crimson Crush and the Yakuza are competing.
@jack_spade
In this case, given his strong Underworld roll, Bobby knows the answer is #2. The Crimson Crush are in bed with the Triads – who provide the Kong-Hot BTLs that are their major revenue stream. Bobby also knows that the Crimson Crush and First Nations had a gang war back in the early 2070s when First Nations was being fueled by Tempo profits and was growing rapidly.Bobby also knows that First Nation is in bed with the Komun’go Ring (one of the Seoulpa Rings) and the Dogmen (a Salish-Shidhe gang), forming a proto-syndicate of sorts. So there’s competition between the Crimson Crush and First Nation both at the street level and at the syndicate level. The same is true between the Triads / Crimson Crush and the Yakuza / whichever gangs are aligned with them.
As AM has correctly intuited, there is confusion about who you are and what you’re doing there. Depending on how things play out, you could potentially have a hundred angry orks surrounding your HQ with torches and pitchforks (and assault rifles). You could alert Andrew (your Yakuza contact) about the situation, but there’s no guarantee that he can muster the manpower to resolve the matter. Or, if he does, you might just get caught in the middle between two steamrollers.
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Thanks, I have a much better feel for what is going on now.
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Glad it helped.
Edited my last OOC post to say “a hundred angry orks” instead of “a hungry angry orks”. I’d blame autocorrect but I was on a computer at the time.
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I just noticed that I cross-posted with Jack. Nice integration.
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I finally finished updating Jawsey’s character sheet for all of the post runs 2 and 3 work (run 2 was there but I’d never mentioned it in a thread). Combined those are:
Karma Spends
3 – Arcana 0 -> 2
4 – reduce in debt 5 → 3
3 – Navigation 1→2
3 – Tracking 1_>2
1 – Ritual Magic 0 → 1
1 – Counterspelling 0 → 1
15 – Magic 2 -> 3
16 – Spirit Whisperer quality
20 – Home Ground (astral) quality (area is … Touristville? I keep forgetting to check how wide an area astral home ground covers)Nuyen Spends
15000 to reduce in debt 5 → 3
lodge materials
monthly lifestyle and debt costs -
I don’t think there are firm limits around how much turf Home Ground covers. I think it’s one of those things that’s up to the GM (or GMs in our case) and what makes sense for the game. In a ganger campaign, where your horizon is only a few blocks in each direction, then it might be a really tight window like a single block or maybe even one giant building (like in the projects). In a broader campaign like ours, which covers the Seattle Metroplex, I don’t think one neighborhood (Touristville) of one district (Redmond) would be too unbalancing, especially not for the x2 price that Jawsey is paying after chargen.
That said, we might want to come to a consensus about how to treat background counts. I’ve been figuring that the general, day-to-day misery of Touristville isn’t affecting us by default. There are certainly corners of Touristville where the background count would spike higher, but those are specific locations rather than the generalized astral space of the streets. Home Ground would apply to those specific places, but let’s make sure Jawsey’s getting his karma’s worth. 20 karma is most of a chapter payout, and the difference between Magic 3 and Magic 4.
As for Assensing the ganger, I’ve always figured that the overall effects of drugs fall under 1 hit (“The general state of the subject’s health”, “The subject’s general emotional state”) and that precise knowledge of what drugs they’re on falls under 5 hits (“An accurate diagnosis of any disease or toxins which afflict the subject”). For example, Jawsey will be able to see that the Crush ganger is a bit buzzed, and is feeling some liquid courage. Because Jawsey is pretty intelligent (Logic 5), he can put two and two together and conclude that the guy has been drinking some of the hurlg that’s being passed around. Not enough to get him drunk, but enough to make him just a bit braver than usual and just a bit dumber than usual.
I’ll write this up in an IC post later today when I take a break at work (you know, a different break than the one I’m currently taking).
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Home Ground is a weird quality.
By the rules staying a few weeks around any place with a particular background count will let you acclimate to it and no longer experience the negative effects of that place.
So I’d say this expensive Quality stretches quite a bit beyond where you usually roam.SG p.30
Becoming acclimated to an area with a background count means that a domain doesn’t affect an Awakened individual’s use of magic, but they also do not benefit from it. For example, Teotihuacan magicians are used to the pollution, so it doesn’t affect their spellcasting—or at least, it doesn’t affect them the way it would affect a tourist. The same would go with Awakened patrons at a bar or an enchanter at his shop. It can take weeks or months of exposure to become acclimated to the background count before his skills aren’t affected by it. Generally speaking, you should plan on one week of exposure per rating point of the background count. The trick, of course, is that background counts are variable, so sometimes they change before you have time to get acclimated to it. -
@Jack_Spade
A couple things before we get started.First, they’re not going to sit still while you transform and then charge. The two ways to approach this would be to either have the Initiative counter start immediately before your casting (making the casting IP 1) or immediately after (making the attack IP 1). Either way, they’re going to get actions prior to your attack. The same is true for AM and Jawsey.
They’re also not likely to recognize this as “a fair duel”. One could quibble over the definition, but ultimately it’s their opinion that matters. That could cause things to escalate dramatically.
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Well, I am not sure how to handle it mechanically. The moment AM feels that she and Jawasey are in trouble she’ll recklessly cast two invisibility spells,and attempt to leave peacefully for her and Jawsey. She would not like to leave Bobby alone, but he can turn into a bird and just fly away or a rat and leave through the sewer – so his options are better than her. (or butcher a score of Crimson Crash gangers 😉 )
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Well, he was the one to give up his gun…
But yeah, I didn’t particularly expect them to honor the duell.
I’m ready either way.
Personally, I prefer to give players one free action that acts as the trigger for initiative. But if the spell is the first action it’s fine too, Bobby will just go on full defense and endure their reaction
Hopefully some are worried about hitting their boss -
Jasser is going on full defense.
On character improvements, I’d had in mind that attribute improvements were 2 weeks x new rating, but it is only half that. In which case, if nobody objects, I’ll pull back the home ground and save that for continued magic upgrade. It was only three weeks for the first point, so he’d be well into his work on the upgrade to 4.
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@Beta
No objection here, although your two most recent posts have referred to “Jasser” and “Jersey”. I’m guessing your phone’s dictionary doesn’t know what to make of Jawsey.@All
As a reminder, I spell things out fairly explicitly. I know you’re all experienced players and GMs yourselves and that you’ll already understand most of what’s going on, but I err on the side of over-communication and transparency. This lets us check each other’s work and point out things that might have been overlooked, or to iron out differences of understanding and interpretation.@Jack
Arguably we could say that the Attribute Boosts are the free action that trigger the initiative, since we need the initiative counter going to track how long they last. But, for ease, we can say that they happened immediately prior to casting, even though there was some chit-chat there in the IC.As I said, I’m fine if the spell is prior to IP1 (although we’ll still count it as an IP for the purposed of the attribute boost counter), but I would still give the gangers a chance to react. They’re not surprised and – under the circumstances – they were expecting something like this, so they’re going to respond.
Here’s how I see things playing out:
CT0 IP1: Attribute Boosts, AGI lasts until CT4 IP1, BOD lasts until CT8 IP1
CT0 IP2: Bobby casts, AM casts, Jawsey movement, gangers all draw guns
Roll Initiative
CT1 IP1: Bobby ____ ? Charges? Goes “on Full Defense and enduretheir reaction”? Both?Bear forms have x8 movement for running. Given Bobby’s Agility of 7 (9) in Bear form, he can run 72 meters in a Combat Turn. (86kph for those wondering, such is Magic and Shadowrun’s generous movement rates that ignore acceleration.) That means he can cover the ~20 meters between him and the Crush in one IP, so no problem there.
The question becomes what exactly does Bobby do during CT1 IP1. If he just stands there looking all huge and scary but not charging, maybe the Crush don’t fire first. But if he charges, takes his swing, then goes on Full Defense, then we’ll see how the dice play out.
As for dice pool for the attack, I see Agility 9 + Unarmed 6 + Charging Attack 2 – Called Shot 4 = 13 dice. A sweep isn’t really a “tooth and claw” attack so I wouldn’t use Bobby’s specialization, nor would I apply the extra damage or AP that come from claws to the damage from a sweep.
@Beta
I never broke down the Assensing for you. In addition to the effects of the hurlg, the spokesman is feeling confident. (Well, prior to CT0 he was feeling confident. During CT1 he’ll feel alarmed.) He also feels the need to be posturing, both for the gang but also for the locals. He has a couple STDs, but nothing that should interfere with his combat effectiveness. In terms of cyber, he has dermal plating, bone lacing, muscle replacement, and Boosted Reflexes (the bioware one from Chrome Flesh). His Essence is 2.0.@gilga
Per the IC sequence, AM has a 4-hit Invisibility spell and Jawsey has a 2-hit Invisibility spell. Good drain rolls; statistically you should be at ~5S instead of 1S. The first spell is sustained with Focused Concentration; the second spell gives AM an -2 sustaining modifier.@Beta, @gilga
Go ahead and roll Initiative, please, in case we need it.@Jack
I don’t think any of the gangers are going to beat Initiative 29, so let us know what the final verdict is for Bobby’s CT1 IP1. -
It was lucky! but invisibility in such a chaotic/public situation seems to reduce the mage geeking chance.
Initative: 9+1d6 15
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My plan was to charge and knock him down if I get to act first.
If my transformation was the first action in the normal ini order, I’d have gone full defense and attacked in my second ini phase.
But now I’m thinking, option two is better anyway and I spent my first action posturing (and activating Focused Concern)My calculation was this:
Agi 9 + skill 6 + specialty 2 (I’m using the beast form to fight, which is what I mean with the tooth and claw specialty) + 2 charge + super human psychosis 1 + mentor spirit 2 – sustained spell 2 -
@Gilga
Good Initiative roll.@beta
No roll from you yet, so here you go: Initiative: 1d6+9 14Not as good as Gilga’s roll. You can blame me.
@Jack_Spade
“Beast Form” works for me. Thanks for the reminders about mentor spirit and superhuman psychosis.CT0 IP1: Attribute Boosts, AGI lasts until CT4 IP1, BOD lasts until CT8 IP1
CT0 IP2: Bobby casts, AM casts, Jawsey movement, gangers all draw gunsHere’s our order for CT1. I number the goons so that there’s a clear naming convention for everyone to refer to.
Bobby @ 29 – Bobby activates Heightened Concern (Complex), has a Free action remaining
#1 Ork (spokesman) @ 18 – Delayed Action, Speak a Phrase (Free)
AM @ 15
Jawsey @ 14
#2 Ork (female) ??
#3 Ork (male) ??
#4 Ork (male) ??
#5 Human (male) ??
#6 Troll (male) ??Next
I’ll post ICly for the reaction from the gangers. Usually I try to keep “Speak a Phrase” fairly literal – just a handful of words – but in this case I’ll borrow a Free Action from CT 0 to give the spokesman a few extra words. -
I’ll wait for things to resolve. in CT0 AM sneaked invisible to avoid combat. If she notices that things devolve to a gunfight she may help Bobby with mojo to not reveal her position.
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Yes, let’s delay.
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