Anyone up for some scifi D&D?

The Game Room
101

Evan Paradise, aka ‘Maestro’, bears a striking resemblance to… Well… Evan Paradise. While this seems tautalogical, understand that the real Evan Paradise was a multi-platinum jazz artist some fifty years ago. Whether the current Evan is a relative, or just a sculpted fan, he refuses to discuss.
What is obvious is that Evan has a way with words. He speaks eloquently, and has a knack for tones and inflections. It likely comes out during the first run that Maestro can sing, and even whistle, hypnotically (thus Lucia’s headphones amuse him). It also likely becomes apparent that Maestro knows a lot of people, and is easy-going in social situations.
Where he is not so easy-going is in, well, Shadowrunning. He’s obviously had some training; he has a deadly level of skill with the throwing knives he carries, and he’s no slouch unarmed… But the whole thing seems somehow uncomfortable for him. He’s the first to suggest a social engineering solution rather than stealth or combat. He does, however, respect the group members’ own expertise, and will gladly defer in situations he feels others know more than him about.

As for appearance, how’s this?
http://www.celebrity-exchange.com/celebs/photos26/jude-law-2.jpg

102

Omi no Kami, may I suggest an RV and/or large van? It’s great for transportation, easy to make bland and forgettable (and a van is particularly easy to disguise as an authorized vehicle), and you’ll probably have room to set up a vehicle workshop. On Awakened Worlds (the Shadowrun 3e MUD I play on), every decker and rigger worth his salt has an RV as a mobile base. I mean, Every Single One. By the way, is your character any good at Gunnery?

I’ve given my character sheets to an artist friend who’s going to draw both of them, so I don’t want to inadvertently contradict how the drawing will come out by talking about their appearance. And I’ll focus on Grudge, since Click has frankly bored me. It looks like the way it will work out is that I’ll primarily be playing Grudge, and if you guys really need a sniper and/or extra backup in the Matrix we can call Click in.

As for his personality, Grudge seems stoic, though nowhere near as detached as Lucia. He’s in tune to his teammates, recognizing them as being among the few people a runner can count on in the Sprawl, especially a runner who likes to carry around a lot of weapons. Oh, by the way–Grudge likes to carry around A LOT of weapons. His mentality seems to be that any problem can be avoided or subverted with the right tools, and in his case, most of those tools are designed to hurt somebody bad. He wears a custom-sized pair of concealable holsters for his SMGs, and keeps a set of quick-draw holsters in his Suzuki Mirage’s meager storage compartment to switch to when the need arises. He also carries around a set of grenades including nausea gas grenades, thermal smoke grenades, high-explosive grenades, flash-bangs and a Flash-Pak. His mobile and omnipresent breaking & entering kit reflects his gear-over-textbook-knowledge philosophy, focusing on those tools which can be used with a minimum of specific technical
aptitude.

Except, of course, for the can of explosive foam and the detonator caps he keeps tucked under the more mundane equipment in his kit…

Anyway, despite not having a penchant for electronic subterfuge, Grudge also carries a small but powerful selection of handheld and RFID-based surveillance equipment–hence his refusal to go under Lucia’s tag eraser. Above all, though, he prefers to whip out his guns and shoot his way through any problems he runs into, and despite his notorious bad luck, it seems to work out most of the time–probably because of the intense study and practice he’s dedicated to the art of gun kata.

103

The RV or van sounds like a good idea, particularly if Lucia could find someone to help her modify the frame to make it a better road vehicle and eliminate the annoying tendency vans can have to tip over. :smiley:

And unfortunately, she’s absolute shite at Gunnery. Her stats that are relevant for decking, rigging, and pretty much any kind of electronic wizardry are amazing, but Reaction was one of her dump stats and she has very little personal skill with weapons.

104

Ah well. We’ll just have to have someone spend karma on Gunnery later.

As for the van, it really depends on how fast you’re going. You won’t be using it for high-speed chases anyway, since I have a racing bike that’s much better suited to the task and which we can easily carry around in the van.

A GMC Bulldog starts at 35,000 nuyen and starts with decent enough armor (8) as a starting point, although you’ll want to install armor plates. An Ares Citymaster, designed for use as a mobile command post, starts at above 50,000 nuyen and has poorer handling but comes with plenty of armor (20) standard plus a chemical seal, 20 man-hours worth of life support and a turret–but it also has 20R availability. So we’ll have to pull off some runs before we can get either one, but Grudge has 11,000 starting nuyen and you might be able to convince him to invest some of it in a down payment. But you’ll have to convince him in character, of course.

BTW, you guys’ characters have probably noticed that Grudge has no problem floating into a sea of gangers or security goons alone and dispatching all of them within 30 seconds at most, taking little or no damage–especially if they make the mistake of trying to shoot at him. I gave him a test-run against five Halloweeners gangers last night, and here’s how he did:

Round 1
Grudge goes first, and elects to go on full defense, using gun kata.
Ganger 1 shoots at Grudge and misses.
Ganger 2 swipes at Grudge with a hand blade (thereby bypassing his gun kata bonus) and still misses.
Ganger 3 shoots at Grudge and misses.
Ganger 4 swipes at Grudge with a hand blade and misses.
Ganger 5 shoots at Grudge and hits, but does no damage.

Round 2
Grudge pops up in the middle of the circle of gangers, about three feet from each of them. He fires his AK-97 Carbine at Ganger 5 and knocks him down, dealing 9P damage. He then fires his Uzi at Ganger 1 and knocks him down too, dealing 9P damage. Then he fires his AK-97 at Ganger 4 and misses, then shoots at Ganger 3 with his Uzi and knocks him down as well, again dealing 9P damage.
Ganger 1 makes a futile attempt at standing up, and then fails to attack at all with his wound modifiers and a penalty I added for firing from a prone position. (Not that he would have hit anyway :wink: )
Ganger 2 swipes at Grudge and misses.
Ganger 3 also fails to get up and fails to attack.
Ganger 4 swipes at Grudge and connects, dealing 1P damage.
Ganger 5 fails to get up and fails to attack at all.

Round 4
Grudge kills Ganger 1, Ganger 3, Ganger 4 (who hadn’t taken any damage at this point) and Ganger 5.
Ganger 2 makes a run for it (which the rulebook practically mandates in this situation).

Round 5
Grudge takes aim at Ganger 2 and shoots him in the head with both guns, killing him instantly. (I added a +2 attack modifier for shooting at someone who had his back to him at short distance.)

15 seconds, five gangers slaughtered, 1P damage taken. As Keanu would say, “Woah.”

Granted, there were a few modifiers I neglected to add. Hey, give me a break, it was 1:30 in the morning and I had just fried my brain on Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

105

aright… So… Should I just rebuild at this point and skip the combat stuff? I mean, I can further specialize in ‘face’ stuff, and can generally just be mediocre in combat if we’re going to have a male Lady Shiva in our midst…

106

Yea, it’s a little disheartening to know how grossly over-competent our tank is. My poor Lynx is going to be nigh-near useless for anything more than supporting fire in the face of that performance, so maybe I should forgo it and put the nuyen into more light and medium scouts…

107

Oh yes, and I’m happy to add Gunnery, but it’ll probably take a looooong time: unless it ends up being a totally absurd idea, my first priority is to extend Lucia’s range enough to let her physically stay in the vehicle or otherwise away from the run, since her presence is likely to be little more than a liability. The problem is that technomancers have terrible Signal scores, and so it’s going to cost her 52 Karma to extend her range enough to make long-distance piloting likely.

Oh yes, and she needs to have enough Reaction to let her manually take control of a vehicle in case something goes wrong, which’ll cost another 20 karma. >_<

108

Well, my combat simulation wasn’t perfect (I missed some modifiers, I went up against street gangers, I fudged some numbers for quickness’s sake, I implemented gun kata in a way that Diomedes may not precisely implement it in his game, etc.). Not to mention that Diomedes will no doubt delight in throwing us bigger and better challenges. I mean, sooner or later (probably sooner, now that the cat’s out of the bag :wink: ), we’ll be going up against a more competent force than five Halloweeners. Now that I’ve posted the results of my little combat sim, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to kill 10-30 CorpSec, a couple lieutenants and maybe some Lone Star on the side on each run. Plus, if the party relies on my tanking 100%, we are fucked if I lose or am not able to use my weapons (or run out of ammo, or get them confiscated, etc.), because at Diomedes’ suggestion, I’m changing my Incompetent to Unarmed Combat to balance him out.

I really didn’t intend to be a munchkin with this, I was just trying to make a competent tank. But he’ll eventually need backup, I would think. Supporting fire is always nice. I mean, if I were facing five gangers with armor, that scenario might’ve gone pretty differently.

:eek: OK, nevermind. Maybe I’ll try to pick up Gunnery later and you can drive the bike.

ETA: I’m game with starting this weekend if everyone’s OK with their characters by then. I’ve been champing at the bit to get started.

109

Hmm, I can probably work out a way to start this weekend. This tue/thur would be best, since I’ll be at a friend’s house this weekend, but I can make it work either way.

And yea, the Karma needed for my Signal to stop sucking is pretty crazy. The problem is that I’m not using a commlink, and a technomancer’s Signal = Resonance/2 rounded up. I started with 5 resonance, and since I used all 200 of my attribute BP, finding the 25 BP I’d need to start at 6 resonance would force me to nuke a lot of stats I’m just not comfortable lowering. (I found a way to make a rigger with a Body and Agility of 3 each, damn it, and I’m proud of that fact. :D)

Anyway, 5/2 = 2.5 which puts me at 3 Signal, forcing me to stay within 400m of my drones. If I can get my signal to 4 I’ll be able to extend my range to 1km, which should be enough to let me stay outside most buildings we break into, but to do that I’ll need one Submersion (which’ll be (10 + (Grade * 3)), 13 Karma in my case) and two points of resonance, raising me to 6 ( 6 * 3 = 18 Karma) and then 7 (7 * 3 = 21 karma), putting me a grand total of 52 Karma in the hole. :smack:

Actually, now that everyone apparently has their characters finalized(ish), this is probably a good time to talk about strategy: I’m assuming Lucia won’t want to use full VR since she needs to stay reasonably close to her drones, and her Reaction stinks so she’ll want any and all armed drones to be operated by their Pilots, but that leaves me at a loss as to what to have her personally do during combat. She doesn’t have any Firearm skills and it would be a bad idea for her to attract attention anyway, so I’m assuming it’ll be a bad idea for her to pitch in with physical fighting unless a dire emergency pops up. I kind of had this idea that she’d be useful for setting up traps behind and ahead of the party, but with his points in stealth and demolitions, Hostile’s guy is going to be preferable for almost any front action.

On top of that I really don’t feel comfortable having her trail behind the rest of the party, as that’s just begging the GM to send a team in to ambush us from the rear.

I guess I could buy her a shield to cower behind, but that might just make her more conspicuous, and since Strength was her other dump stat I’m not sure she’d even be capable of hauling one around without incurring penalties.

ED: Oh! I forgot to mention, Lucia’s big deal is pretty obviously signal intelligence, so it might be sufficient for her to simply keep watch during big fights: her description doesn’t mention it but almost all of her drones and her gear have an insane number of extra sensors built into them, so she could always spend combat rounds scanning the environs for incoming, cloaked, or otherwise undetected bad guys.

110

Unless, that is, the building has Wi-Fi blocking or jamming, which I’m willing to guess Diomedes will be throwing at us.

As for what your character will do during combat, you might try to focus on finding hiding spots to control your drones from in AR. Or VR: if I (or someone) plays my sniper character, you can just hang out with him and have him watch your back. ETA: Not that he’ll be a whole lot of help if the two of you get ambushed, but better than hanging out all alone. Of course, dragging in yet another ranged-combat character to watch over you while you hack away feels like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, to me.

OTOH, you could hang with the party and spend your combat turns controlling your drones or (if this is possible, and I have no idea whether or not it is) staying in full defense while your drones fight for you.

Or you could hang back and set up traps just in case someone tries to ambush us from the rear.

111

I already asked Diomedes about this privately, although it would probably good to ask for a formal GM ruling now: as I understand it though, his decision was that Wi-Fi jamming doesn’t effect Technomancers, since they don’t actually produce a signal, but that it would be possible (and probably likely) that an enemy hacker could intentionally try to jam my drones, which would make them invisible to me (and thus useless).

Dio, does that sound accurate?

Hmm. While it’s tempting to try waiting outside a building and using your sniper for cover, I think it’ll be easier if we endeavor to keep one cohesive group: Dio definitely won’t let us get away with hiding safely outside forever, and I don’t think it would be considerate to adopt a doctrine that would require him to frequently manage two simultaneous battles between two different groups, since I could see it dragging and eventually frustrating the half of the party who wasn’t currently fighting.

Dio sounds like he’s being really careful to consider the party’s circumstances, so if the rest of the group doesn’t mind, I’m comfortable playing rearguard: I have enough points in the Decking skills that I could even spend turns that didn’t require me to interact with my drones feeling out the Matrix in an attempt to detect ambushes, pick up enemy tactical chatter, or the like. Lucia has a knowledge skill in small unit tactics, which would justify the miniature tactical analyst route that this doctrine would probably evolve into, and it’s fun imagining her taking an approach to armed combat that would essentially reduce it to an RTS. :smiley:

ED: Oh by the way, could someone please point me to the part of the rulebook that gives the weight of items? Lucia can only carry something like twenty pounds of gear unassisted, and I want to figure out if she’s light enough to use a shield without incurring a penalty.

112

Wi-Fi jamming has no effect on a technomancer themselves. However, it will have an effect on your drones, which essentially creates the same problem. Furthermore, Wi-Fi blocking wallpaper would prevent you from accessing a place… in the end, you can’t count on your drones going on a run for you.

113

That actually comes as a bit of a relief: if I can’t depend on rigging over a long range, I can spend Karma on balancing my character out (better mechanic skills and Reaction, and maybe some basic firearm skills) rather than pouring everything into what is already one of my highest skills. :slight_smile:

114

As for gear weight, I’ve been scouring the rulebook for a week or two, I’ve read most of it a few times, and I’ve yet to see anything that indicates the actual weight of items. Either they totally forgot to put it in (possible, considering the level of professionalism in the book’s writing) or they intend for the GM to eyeball it and say “OK, dude, you can’t carry 25 grenades, three shotguns and two suits of armor. Leave some of that at home and find a way to justify what you do carry.” ISTM that burden modifiers are more for situations like, say, lugging around a big laser weapon you have to steal for Mr. Johnson (something that I had my buddy do in a Fear of Girls-like 1-on-1 gaming session/mini-run today).

115

Hmm, I think I’ll give it a pass for now. If physical damage ends up being a serious problem after the first run, I can find something to soak the damage then.

For now, I’ll just try and depend on being the least dangerous-looking target in the party. :smiley:

116

Oh hey, D_Odds, how is your mage coming? (No pressure here, just curious. :slight_smile: )

117

Upon rewatching the video, I realize that I’d forgotten just how sexual the Fear of Girls gaming session was. :smack: No, our game wasn’t like FoG after all…

(BTW, FoG episode 2 is up and it’s hi-larious.)

118

That was hilarious. I was always a fan of the old Dead Alewives skit (“I cast magic missile on the darkness!”), but I can’t find a complete version anywhere.

119

Soooo, are we set on a day to try this out?

120

So, what’s the deal? I’m busy today…are we starting tomorrow? Or Tuesday? Or what?