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[5e OOC] Tabula Rasa, Chapter IV

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Malevolence

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« Reply #825 on: <11-18-15/0338:26> »
We are going to use their 1M¥ to post the insurance. In short, the bomb is our insurance while they examine it and choose whether or not to purchase it. Once they have decided to purchase it, we insist on payment before deactivating the bomb, then make the transfer for the dead man's switch. That keeps us alive (hopefully) once the bomb is deactivated.


If they choose not to purchase, then we will have to get creative, but that should not happen - they already agreed to the price and know what they are buying - the inspection is basically verifying that we are providing them with the Real McCoy.


I've got Ohanzee's opening response to Canon in my head, I just need the time to commit it to electrons. Should have that up by lunch time (PST) tomorrow.
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Zweiblumen

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« Reply #826 on: <11-18-15/1115:53> »
Thanks for the clarification Mal!
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rednblack

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« Reply #827 on: <11-18-15/1138:52> »
@Mal, but they don't know about the bomb, so what was our insurance that they don't come in guns blazing?
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Malevolence

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« Reply #828 on: <11-18-15/1228:54> »
The drones would let us keep tabs on them as they approached. As they got close, we would send a caution mentioning the boom. Tec didn't mention this, but I suspect I should in my writeup, though I was simply going to roll with it and bring the explosive up for the first time after Canon showed up. I could go either way. I'm concerned that ret-conning might change Canon's deployment/response that Tec has already written, so I'm open to people's preference on this.


Also, our proximity to the artifact makes attacking us risky.
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rednblack

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« Reply #829 on: <11-18-15/1246:38> »
The drones would let us keep tabs on them as they approached. As they got close, we would send a caution mentioning the boom.

But this would be long after Canon had decided to come in hot, if he had so decided.  Obviously, he didn't, so I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but if the 1 mil wasn't put in to ensure that he wouldn't come in hot, I'm not sure what purpose it serves, or why Doc isn't with the team.

Also, our proximity to the artifact makes attacking us risky.

Not with chem attacks, most likely, and since I believe Jager and Canon are aware of how we got the artifact in the first place, it might not be a big risk for them -- the obelisk has already survived one firefight. 
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #830 on: <11-18-15/1304:21> »
Katsina and Ohanzee had a discussion back here about when to tell Cannon about the explosive device. Ohanzee suggested telling Cannon once he got to Rifle so that he wouldn't come in guns blazing; Katsina advised waiting until Cannon showed up in person, asking who among us would voluntarily show up to a meet if they knew the other party had a giant explosive device armed and counting down.

Technically you didn't have any guarantee that Cannon wouldn't show up guns blazing. I suppose we could have done an IC dance where we each showed each other one card at time to judge the other person's intentions - Ohanzee could have left the artifact buried, for example, so that they couldn't kill you without potentially losing its new location, while your drones scouted out looking for an RV - but that would have taken a week or more to RP out. I made a GM decision that doing so wouldn't be much fun and that the end result would be that both parties were reasonably confident that the other wouldn't ambush them, so I jumped past it with my IC post.

If you had a million nuyen to put into a DMS to scare Cannon away from coming in hot, you would have. You don't have a million nuyen however; you need Cannon to give it to you first.

The DMS solves the problem of "once we make the exchange - so that Cannon gives us the money and we deactivate the bomb - what's to prevent Cannon from murdering us and taking his credsticks back?" Having Doc at a remote location means that the money can be transferred to Doc immediately, both depriving Cannon of being able to recoup the payment as well as giving Cannon some incentive not to geek you for tying-off-loose-end purposes since, if he does, Doc will hire vengeful killers until Cannon joins you on the metaplane of death.

It's actually a fairly elegant solution, and I tip my cap to Malevolence for it, if it gets executed correctly. If it doesn't, then someone is getting executed instead.

rednblack

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« Reply #831 on: <11-18-15/1314:06> »
Gotcha.  That clears up a lot.  Thanks.
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Malevolence

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« Reply #832 on: <11-18-15/1505:05> »
Ohanzee is wearing his helmet, etc, but has the balaclava off. It's unlikely that he can keep his identity hidden from astral perception anyway, so physically revealing himself seems low risk.


Diamondback is not materialized, residing on the astral. Where he's probably highly concerned about the Great Form spirit.


Honestly, the GFS in and of itself isn't a huge issue. Banishing Resistance and (if they got enough hits on the ritual) Paralyzing Howl are annoying, but considering the size, they are nothing compared to the likely force. It's got to be Force 12 or so, which is Seriously Bad News™ if it comes down to a fight. Of course, considering the rest of Cannon's team, it's just overkill on top of overkill. Paralyzing Howl could make it more difficult to activate the IED, but it's still not guaranteed enough to make them more inclined to try, I don't think.
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Zweiblumen

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« Reply #833 on: <11-18-15/2012:36> »
mmmm sexy sexy credsticks... to bad we want them to put ¥1m in an account for us.

Tec: Thanks for running down what happens there.  Personally I appreciate it rather than giving me all of the data and me re-sending it.  Towards the beginning of the game and when we are very much in the middle of feeling out (especially these) characters that might be heavy-handed, but at this stage in the game I think it makes it flow really well.  Sorry to make you "play" Doc here.  But I think it's flowing much better this way.  (Plus I've been very bad about IC posting recently due to the metric shit-ton of crap on my plate these last two weeks.)
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Tecumseh

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« Reply #834 on: <11-18-15/2059:29> »
We just did 19 days' worth of combat, during which people were excellent about staying on top of their rolls and providing their actions in a timely manner. Thank you all for that. It was a neat and orderly combat.

Given all of the rolling and IC posting associated with that, I figured we didn't need to make people do even more rolling and IC posting about things that would be fairly obvious to their characters, especially since this group has been very open about sharing their observations.

For example, Ace, Sam, and Chino all have the Firearms knowledge skill, so they are the ones pointing out how the opposition is armed. Ace, being from Ares, recognizes the Screech Rifle, which might be completely foreign to Sam or Chino. Katsina's vampire sense of smell and hearing cover those angles while Ohanzee gets to see and interpret the social cues.

rednblack

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« Reply #835 on: <11-18-15/2114:33> »
mmmm sexy sexy credsticks... to bad we want them to put ¥1m in an account for us.

figured this back out. Ohanzee puts 1mil in the account now, and then we walk out of there.

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Tecumseh

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« Reply #836 on: <11-18-15/2130:02> »
Strictly by RAW, Doc doesn't have a place to put the money. He doesn't have enough credsticks to accept ¥1,000,000, nor does he have a SIN to have a bank account where it could be put. Technically the money needs to go into a bank account associated with a SIN or on credsticks. I'm not going to get strict with the bookkeeping, so I'll say either Doc races off and buys a ton of Silver and Gold credsticks on short notice, or that one of you have given him the RFID chip or whatever it is that broadcasts a SIN in the future, which he could plug into a commlink to pretend he's that person. (Warning, the paper trail will likely burn that SIN as the banks and/or corps and/or governments wonder why huge sums of money are being transferred without fees and/or taxes getting paid, unless you actually want to pay those. You probably don't, as getting a new SIN would be cheaper.)

Malevolence

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« Reply #837 on: <11-19-15/0017:30> »
The ebony credsticks are sexy, but we would have been almost as happy to have it on four platinum sticks. And they would have been significantly easier for Cannon to track down. So I'm pretty sure he has relatively easy access to these and was simply calling special attention to them for show.


I'm thinking that Ohanzee will have one of the others slot a chip and send the funds to Doc, preferably after a reboot to be safe. Then slot the second chip to verify the amount before we inform Cannon of the DMS and disable the device. I forget who has what, but whichever one has the highest rating commlink between Chino, Kat, and Sam. I'm also thinking that someone should verify the contents of the RV. I can probably use Diamondback for that since it'd be quickest considering astral movement. I'd inform Cannon what we were doing (aside from the DMS, of course) before doing it so that he doesn't get nervous. Verifying payment is certainly an expected thing.


Once Doc has the million, he should probably switch to AR in case he needs to reboot or physically remove a link-lock. He cannot allow them to trace his location and chances are they are going to try. Again, if things go south, his assistance really won't make a difference, so the AR vs. VR performance is moot.
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Malevolence

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« Reply #838 on: <11-19-15/0031:41> »
Regarding what Doc does with the million nuyen, is there a limit to how much can be held on a commlink? I had assumed that the limitation was simply on the credsticks as an offline medium, but that most people use their phones as "cash in pocket" and that there was no effective limit there. If there is, then we'll have to make between 10 and 50 transfers to Doc (waiting while he swaps credsticks in between each one) in order to move 1 million in silver/gold credstick size increments. In fact, it would make loading an ebony credstick a little painful as you'd have to do it in 100k chunks, or whatever the max capacity of a commlink was.


In either case, this would obviously be something we had prepared for in advance. At availability 10, a pair of platinum credsticks would probably be fairly easy to obtain, and he could have one in his deck and one in one of the spare commlinks (or any other device with a UDP) for easy, nearly parallel transfers. In short, we'd want to make it non-obvious that we were transferring the funds offsite, though the TM might be able to infer that form watching data streams, hence the desire to do it from a freshly rebooted, high-rating comm so that at least snoop is off the table.


Also, speaking of rebooting, Doc, what's your OS? I'm assuming you rebooted before Cannon showed up, and then re-took control of the drone, thus re-starting your OS.
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Malevolence

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« Reply #839 on: <11-19-15/0040:45> »
Actually, Sam is out for the transfer because he probably can't safely handle the credsticks anyway.
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