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[5e OOC] Tabula Rasa, Chapter IV

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Malevolence

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« Reply #465 on: <10-08-15/2010:58> »
Couple inputs:


1. I'm not sure that DIMR/ASPS would much care if SecForce got involved, since they are largely on the up and up. They might get some egg on their faces for buying a stolen artifact, but they could easily claim ignorance since the artifact was kept hush-hush. So the advantage goes to them in a city if bullets start flying.
2. As for who leaves first, I doubt it matters much. Once we get to the main road, they head toward Denver, we head away from Denver. It might be an awkward drive (like saying goodbye to some friends and then when you get in your cars you all head the same direction to the freeway), but once the deadman switch is set and they have the artifact, they have little to gain by attacking us. In fact, I'd probably be more worried if they insisted we go first... It is probably better if we insist on leaving all together, parting ways once we leave the valley.
3. Maybe we can move things closer to the main road so that we still have the advantage of an avalanche, but less ground to cover before open road where we have at least two directions for egress. So long as the terrain is still favorable (dense foliage for air/astral cover, snow, and avalanche possibility).
4. Having multiple lynchpins has its appeal and I left it as a possibility before though I hadn't considered having one or more of the lynchpins be present at the meet. I suppose we could all be lynchpins as you suggest so long as one of us is largely beyond reach of the organizations. Alternatively, maybe Doc can code up a simple program that triggers at midnight if we don't disable it and it executes a contract if we haven't disabled it by then. We pre-negotiate with Styles (and ideally at least one other fixer) for the job (not mentioning it's a DMS) and the program releases the funds to complete the deal.
5. Limiting their areal support would not be very effective since in all likelihood their main avenue of attack will probably be spirits.
6. Should Ohanzee over summon for his spirit buddy? He could probably summon a F9 fairly safely (taking on average 2 boxes of damage, which still avoids a wound penalty). If things go south, it might not make much difference anyway.
7. I could also perform a long term binding of a low force spirit to act as our DMS, or as part of it (verifying completion of the task and releasing funds to the claimants by means of a passcode or something).
8. rnb does have a point in that they might have a financial incentive to collect bounties on us. Hopefully the DMS will take that off the table. Maybe Doc can take a look to see what sort of interest there is in us floating around the matrix.
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #466 on: <10-09-15/1523:32> »
1. True. If the bullets start flying the DIMR/ASPS don't even have to pretend that they were buying. Perhaps they were attempting to "liberate a historical artifact from dangerous terrorists", etc. etc.

2. No comment.

3. You can move a bit closer to the road but honestly the distance is so small (maybe 1km) that it's hardly worth the RP to make it happen. Let's put it this way: there won't be any crunch benefits (or liabilities) to moving slightly up the road.

4a. Doc isn't the greatest at coding (Software 2) but luckily his Logic makes up for it. He could probably cook something up on his own. Alternatively, you could buy a low-level Agent (~¥1,000) and put it on a burner comm, which would be able to put events in motion if Doc doesn't deactivate it by a given time.

4b. The team doesn't have many other Contacts other than Styles. Ohanzee could ask Long Shadow, his talismonger, to serve the same function as a back-up, but he's certainly not in a strong position to be hiring outside talent on your behalf.

4c. I don't want to do a long separate negotiation with Styles. He would want to work on a prepaid retainer, since he wouldn't be interested in a "maybe we have a job for you, maybe we don't" uncertainty of a DMS (even if he doesn't know it's a DMS). He would want ¥2,000 upfront (which could be applied to future services should this contact not be necessary) plus a percentage of the contract. He would normally ask for 6% of the contract cost but is willing to take 5% because of his relationship to Ohanzee. Ohanzee can try to negotiate either of these down further, or he can leave it be since if Styles is executing the contract it means Ohanzee is dead and won't care about the money.

5. No comment.

6. Oversummoned spirits will use Edge to resist the summoning.

7. I thought Ohanzee had some sort of restriction on Binding? Now I don't see it but I don't think I made it up. Or did we discuss that as a possible restriction but decide against it?

8. Doc can investigate bounties, if he likes.



The survival bubble referenced in the IC post is from p. 83 of Run & Gun.

It sounds like we're getting close. Ideally I would like to get the final details ironed out over the next few days. I'm out of the office both Monday and Tuesday, but with luck we can advance to the meet sometime mid-to-late next week.

Zweiblumen

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« Reply #467 on: <10-09-15/1915:12> »
Matrix Search for bounties (Comp 5 + Int 4 + Ganglia 1 = 10): 5#10d6t5 3 3 3 2 6

Searches alphabetically:
Ace
Chino
Doc
Katsina
Sam

Forgot Ohanzee :(
Matrix Search for bounties (Comp 5 + Int 4 + Ganglia 1 = 10): 10d6t5 2
Nearly a Glitch, the >50% rule saves me.
« Last Edit: <10-09-15/1941:33> by Zweiblumen »
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Malevolence

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« Reply #468 on: <10-09-15/1933:25> »
We might have discussed no binding as a Geas for his initiation, but we went with not having spirits he has summoned be disrupted. Which makes him very nervous since if they start off by dispelling his spirit, he'll suddenly be completely ineffective as he'll lose his magic as well.


However, he has noticed in the past that he has a strong distaste of binding, going so far as wondering (dreading?) why he even has the skill. However, if the circumstance is dire, it is not precluded as a possibility. Especially since he would not be placing the spirit in harm's way and would only be assigning it a single task, making it almost more of a vacation for the spirit. And if they survive the night (or week if they want to be completely sure), the spirit gets released and can still keep the karma that was required to complete the contract - a rather advantageous deal for the spirit in Ohanzee's mind. He would certainly treat the binding as a negotiation, not forcing the spirit into anything it doesn't fully agree to of its own volition, though once agreed it would be bound to honor the contract.
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #469 on: <10-09-15/2057:15> »
@Malevolence That explains it. Thanks for the reminder.

@Zweiblumen I don't think I've done this yet but I'm going to pull a (minor) GM fiat and swap Katsina's search results with Sam's, mostly because it's more interesting. IC with search results is up.

Zweiblumen

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« Reply #470 on: <10-09-15/2245:07> »
No worries,  I just figured the alphabetical order would be good.  I've not problems with GM Fiat for good story reasons :)

And I wasn't sure if you wanted one roll for each of us or if it was a "group search" in which case it would have been multiple searches.  1000 ways to skin a cat and all that jazz.
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #471 on: <10-10-15/2337:12> »
Katsina has the Wanted quality.

Katsina also has the Distinctive Style quality due to her mask. I suppose her sword is fairly distinctive too, but Ryo said the quality was specifically for the mask.

Katsina's sheet is now complete, with all Attributes, Skills, Qualities, Spells, etc. revealed.

Zweiblumen

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« Reply #472 on: <10-11-15/0341:55> »
The only group skills I can really think that would apply for doc being left are stealth and athletics. He's yet to need either one though. Guess we'll see. 😝
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Malevolence

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« Reply #473 on: <10-11-15/1330:43> »
At a guess, I'd imagine Ohanzee's undiscovered skills are either in the Enchanting SG or the Acting SG. I know it's not performance as that was specifically tried already, and I imagine that Kat's multiple attempts at Alchemy would have alerted him, so it's got to be either Impersonation, Artificing, or Disenchanting. My money's on Impersonation simply because the other two are so unlikely to come up and that one plays to his strengths being based on Charisma.

Some distant seconds for options are Disguise, Palming, or Running as they are generally useful skills to have, but don't necessarily fit in with Ohanzee's build specifically.

The problem with all of the above (bar Running, maybe) is that I don't see him attempting to use those skills in the near future, so they'll likely remain undiscovered for the remainder of the campaign. Similarly for some other longshot skills such as Navigation and Tracking - both of which probably would have been discovered around the events of the Bandersnatch encounter anyway), or any weapon skills. Or any other skills, really. Instruction is keyed to Charisma, so that is sort of a possibility, but he did attempt some instruction with Sam, so that probably would have been discovered already as well.

It'd be funny if one of the undiscovered skills for any of us ended up being something we'd never likely use in the campaign, like Swimming, Diving, or Free-Fall.
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #474 on: <10-11-15/1402:13> »
You're both correct. Seeing as you've given it some thought, I don't see a need to keep it hidden. We are toward the end here, and the odds of these skills coming into play is compartively small (but not zero).

Doc has Athletics 1.

Ohanzee has Running 2.

I suppose Ace's dossier (which isn't public) is detailed enough to know that Ace has Biocompatibility (Cyberware).

In a way it's too bad that only Poindexter and I got to go through that initial wave of "zomg i have no idea who i am and what i can do". That first week was a gas.

Skills remaining to be discovered, none of which are likely to come into play:
Chino - 3 (plus one very random Quality)
Ace - 1
Sam - 1

Poindexter

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« Reply #475 on: <10-11-15/1414:14> »
In a way it's too bad that only Poindexter and I got to go through that initial wave of "zomg i have no idea who i am and what i can do". That first week was a gas.

That was really fun.
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Malevolence

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« Reply #476 on: <10-11-15/2342:06> »
I was following along with the story during that phase and I had a gas learning about the characters with all of the original crew. It really was fun and is what made this the PbP I was most interested in playing by a long shot (I was too green to ask at the time or I might have saved APB). It still hasn't let me down, so thank you to Tec for keeping it going.
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Zweiblumen

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« Reply #477 on: <10-12-15/0128:44> »
I was following along with the story during that phase and I had a gas learning about the characters with all of the original crew. It really was fun and is what made this the PbP I was most interested in playing by a long shot (I was too green to ask at the time or I might have saved APB). It still hasn't let me down, so thank you to Tec for keeping it going.

This.... all of this!  iirc I just missed the signup for this, and caught Ryo's high powered campaign that died around the time that this one did the first time around.  That one tried to come back once, but fell apart as well.  The amount of work that both of you (Tec and Ryo) have put into this campaign are amazing and I'm sure I'm not alone in saying, thank you!  Both.
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Zweiblumen

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« Reply #478 on: <10-12-15/0135:37> »
Looks like Doc has never figured out his str, either in his cyber arm or his body.  He should do some pushups!
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #479 on: <10-12-15/0245:50> »
After doing some push-ups and squats, Doc figures that while his cybearm is Strength 6, the rest of his body is only Strength 2. (These are the same values as Doc's Agility.)

 

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