[vinnmun]

no problems

[Glyph]

Take whatever time you need.  Don't push yourself - you're doing this for fun.  It should be interesting.

[Xzylvador]

Posted up the full story here.
Far too late, I know.
I can only apologize.
Since the game was over, I didn't give it as much effort as I could have and should have.
But there, now you have it.

I'd like to invite anyone, also people who weren't in the game but who somehow manage to read through all of that horrible writing, to share comments.
Personally, I hate to say I think the game's somewhat of a failure.

I wanted to run a player versus player combat game, but not in an arena. To be at least a bit Shadowrun-like, I felt it would be a lot more fun to set the game in a "real world" environment.
This would allow different kinds of characters a chance to win with entirely different approaches... and I really do think I explained this to the players, too.
I really, really specifically told them they could end up playing in an airport or downtown Seattle just as likely as an abandoned piece of land in the barrens.
So I'd like to share this with the players:

vinnmun: You had a fully armored vehivle with walking mode and two mounted machine guns. That thing was a tank! Even if you somehow didn't get attacked by law enforcement, any other player could've noticed (and avoided) you from a mile away. I'd really like to know what you were expecting of this, what you were expecting to happen...
I have to admit though, you had me worried. The heaviest weapon the guards had was two panther XXLs, stashed away in two different security stations. It was going to take quite a while for them to organize their offensive and even then could have probably taken them out and destroyed their weapons. Still, eventually you'd either run out of ammo or KE would arrive with armored vehicles and heimdal drones to take you out...
But you got pretty much taken out by a gang of hackers. Just to be clear: I did NOT put them there because there was a rigger with a tank in the game. I had them on the map long before I had seen any charsheets. The Reality Hackers are a gang which according to the books are located in Puyallup, and I'd figured they'd be in the mall, hanging out, making a bunch of electronic stores in the malls 'theirs'. They hacked your comm, mocked your software agent's failed hacking attempt and told you to stay away from them. Had you steered away, that would've been it. But instead you charged a group of hackers and then shut down your own commlink for 30 seconds while trapped inside a rigger cocoon? I really don't know what you were expecting...

Netzgeist: you played great at the start. Good character, smartly made. Could have stayed inconspicuous with your Ares Executive Protector briefcase, maybe walked right up to your enemies and then shot them point blank... so I was very much amazed when you instead fired at them from a large distance, across the lobby, while your character was standing right in front of a security desk with 5 guards, a drone and you'd have the turret shooting at you.
To my amazement, the character was so good it actually survived with all this insane amount of firepower against him... and then you attacked the Ancients! Why?? They were attacking one of your opponents!
 I really, really couldn't make sense of those two decisions.

Jackleg Rooster: When I saw your charsheet, I feared it'd be the same as vinnmun's tank. A flying drone with a visible gun and your only weapon a machine gun... that'd be pretty visible! Coming up with disguising the NERF advertisement was just brilliant though. But it did leave you without a gun in your hands... Not so much of a problem when you kept the drone close, but then you sent it to a different floor... Why? Also, here you kind of ran out of luck as I rolled a processing check for your drone's dogbrain on how to handle the orders it'd been given (stay close, attack, come to me to give me my gun, go to another floor to scout... it was getting a bit much) and the drone glitched. It wouldn't have been that much of a problem, it was only 'frozen' for 10 seconds... but then you bumped into Grey at that exact moment. Which sucked.

Glyph: Very well built character. Very visible and recognizable, much more than I'd like to be when being hunted down, but you pulled it off. Why'd you just walk into clearly marked Ancient territory (with Nasty Vibe and Astral Hazing)? And worse, why'd you attack the elves? You could've ignored them, just said something back or just turned away. Any would've been good. There were getting a live show of a robot tank shooting down guards, they weren't really interested in a fight. But you attacked while there were at least a dozen of 'em! Even if they weren't of your level, ally bonuses stack quickly. Was that acting out your Vindictive quality?

Anyhow. I'm too tired. Going to bed.
I'd love comments and criticism.

[Netzgeist]

That was, without a doubt, an epic battle.

And I'm talking about both the one narrated and of the effort in narrating it. Good job, Xzyl! It was a good (although pretty strange) game, and it's really nice to finally know what was happening.

Well, let me try to comment on what I think went on in there:  Shortcut was only thinking in the prize, and when he saw the fight scene, his battle instincts kicked in. And then, on the OOC side of things, in the space between two PMs, I forgot the gun had sound suppression.  I shot thinking that among the confusion no one would perceive from where the bullets came from, and then I forgot why I thought this was possible.
And about attacking the Ancients... well, all hell was already happening, and I didn't know why they were after anyone. For all that mattered, they could just turn around and start fighting the dwarf. In the end, a dumb move. But yet a killing move! Too sad it was an auto-killing move...

That's the short of it, or at least what I could make of the posts I've reread. Just trying to undestand that now almost got me a headache;I just can't figure how you managed to read the entirety of the PMs that we all sent and make any sense of it. This deserves a medal or something.

Anyway, even though in some ways it was a little bit disappointing (and from a gaming perspective, we ensured an ending without climax or glamour), it was really interesting. And crazy. Maybe too crazy.

[Netzgeist]

Ops, I was forgetting something.
On the future, you should probably start the PMs or entitle them with something along the lines CT#3, IP#4, or something like that, and mantain the same numbering system for all players during all the game. Maybe that could have helped in sorting out what was going on in at what time.

[Glyph]

Thanks for the writeup, Xzylvador.  It's good to have an overall view of the whole thing, now.

Grey was very optimized lethality-wise, but with a rash, hot-blooded, and vengeful personality undermining her effectiveness.  Here is what I originally PMed when the gangers taunted her:

Backing up might be the smart thing to do, but Grey is a bit too arrogant about her augmentations, and tends to assume that most gangers are like the Halloweeners grunts in the main book, forgetting that gangers can have tougher than average specimens just like the syndicates do.  Plus, being insulted for her exotic appearance is one of the things very likely to trigger a violent response from her.  She will fight, maybe not even making it to her first opponent.

I think outside factors impacted the game more because everyone took kind of a "pink mohawk" approach to things, and maybe underestimated how dangerous the security forces and gangers could be.  It was an eye-opening experience to see actually play an extremely optimized character, and find out that such characters are far from invincible.

[Xzylvador]

Invulnerable, no, but the amount of attacks you took without taking a single point of damage really amazed me. If I recall correctly, at one moment the elves around Grey had a +5 bonus from 'allies in melee' and Grey's cumulative 'previous defense' penalties were stacking rapidly, but she still managed to keep them off.
If there's one thing Grey's character tought me, it's the power of Edge.
Some -many- people on this forum think of edge as a waste of points, far too expensive for such a limited amount of uses. Grey spent 50 points on a stat she could only use a couple of times in the entire game, 50 points which could have otherwise maxed out a combat stat or a couple of skills or removed some of those NQ's.
But it's that Edge that managed to make her win. Dodging the elves, making an attack hit the moment it's needed and rerolling all those missed Dodge dice against Radical's incoming Full Narrow Burst (MG, +9DV, Ex-Ex... that attack would've shred her to pieces).
A powerful boost you can draw from when it really matters, that seemed to be Grey's most powerful feature, even more than her skill and speed.

[Sentinemodo]

AMAZING read Xzyl.
took some time, but certainly worth the wait

[Glyph]

Yeah, an Edge of 6 is pricey in karmagen (90 karma, versus 40 BP), but it was still worth it.  I think Edge is underrated because people use it to replace being good in other areas - I see a lot of attitudes being "Well, I have 8 dice for attacking, but if I add Edge, I can have 16 exploding dice".  It is better for characters who are already good at their specialty.  They can use Edge for things like super-important dice rolls, re-rolling unlucky dice rolls, or when they run into a problem outside of their normal specialty.  Edge is a finite resource - it kept Grey alive, but she used up all 6 of her Edge points, and this was a character with a lot of dice pools in the high teens.

[Jackleg Rooster]

Great read. Couldn't wait for this to come out. Much love to Scare_Crow for picking up my slack. I hated having to drop like that.

As to the drone question, I'll say it seemed like a good idea at the time, trying to get an idea where the other players were. No idea they were that close! Next time I'll keep more than shock gloves on me.

Any time you wanna run another game ill be there...to the end this time!