[Zweiblumen]

Welcome back Ryo!  Good to see you around.  Hope you like what happened with the story, we had a *lot* of fun with it.  Great premise, thanks for coming up with it.

[Poindexter]

Howdy all. I've been dead for awhile, but I heard some congratulations are in order, which seemed a fitting reason to come back to life.

So yeah, well done. You guys saw it through to the end. I wish I had been around to see it happen and guide you through it, but I'm glad to see you were in good hands with Tecumseh taking the reins. I'll have to go through the IC threads and see where the stories of the slates ended up. I bet it was a hell of a ride.

We miss ya dude! How ya been?

I've been....well, not great. Kinda went dead to the world for a few months. After I got over that I totally forgot about these forums, and the stories I had started here. But Tecumseh PM'd me last night about you guys finishing the campaign, and my email alert did the rest. Been catching up on everything I missed.

Uncle Sam became a Fomoraig? Did not see that one coming.

I was pretty shitty for a while there, myself. Things are looking up now though. Hope it's the same for you. Think ya might ever come back? RednBlack's running a helluva game right now and I'm about to start one up in the new year.

[Ryo]

Howdy all. I've been dead for awhile, but I heard some congratulations are in order, which seemed a fitting reason to come back to life.

So yeah, well done. You guys saw it through to the end. I wish I had been around to see it happen and guide you through it, but I'm glad to see you were in good hands with Tecumseh taking the reins. I'll have to go through the IC threads and see where the stories of the slates ended up. I bet it was a hell of a ride.

We miss ya dude! How ya been?

I've been....well, not great. Kinda went dead to the world for a few months. After I got over that I totally forgot about these forums, and the stories I had started here. But Tecumseh PM'd me last night about you guys finishing the campaign, and my email alert did the rest. Been catching up on everything I missed.

Uncle Sam became a Fomoraig? Did not see that one coming.

I was pretty shitty for a while there, myself. Things are looking up now though. Hope it's the same for you. Think ya might ever come back? RednBlack's running a helluva game right now and I'm about to start one up in the new year.

I might. I've heard the recent source books are better than the last ones I picked up. May find some inspiration there. There's also the games I had going before I dropped off the map. Probably can't pick them up where I left off, but there was potential there.

Reading through Chapter 4 now. I'm on page 12. I'm actually surprised how many twists I haven't seen any sign of. Either Tecumseh dumps a lot on you guys in 6 pages, or there's a lot of backstory you guys never saw.

[Tecumseh]

I'm actually surprised how many twists I haven't seen any sign of. Either Tecumseh dumps a lot on you guys in 6 pages, or there's a lot of backstory you guys never saw.

There was a lot of backstory that they didn't see ICly. I shared your notes OOCly after the game had finished.

OOCly, the game ended here (six OOC pages ago), the backgrounds were shared here, and speculation about what you were intending is here. You are, of course, free to confirm or dispute any of that.

The explanation behind Sam getting Infected is here.

[Ryo]

Finished the IC and going through the OoC now. I did notice this question got asked:

What did she trick Ohanzee into doing? There was evidence that Kat had used Influence on him as well. Unless Ryo had messed up and meant to place that signature on Crumpled instead.

This was intentional, Katsina did in fact cast Influence on Ohanzee shortly before the crash. This was directly related to another question that was never answered, namely how Blue Team and Red Team came to be in the van together.

As you may recall, the dig site where the artifact was stolen from was actually in the side of a mountain, with a trail that had to be followed from the base camp to reach it. This means that the artifact had to be carried down the mountain before it could be loaded into the get-away vehicle.

Red Team arrived at the base camp about 10 minutes after Blue Team headed up, and found it was already cleared out, so they just walked on through and up to the main site. This means both teams attacked the base pretty much at the same time, but Blue Team got to the Artifact first and was making their escape. Red Team did some damage to the site, but upon realizing that Blue Team already got the goods, they decided to fall back to the base camp. Their plan was to ambush blue team when they got clear, rather than risk fighting the security forces and blue team at the same time.

Unfortunately for Red Team, Doc Hack was a better hacker than APB. While Illeana and James waited to pounce near their getaway vehicle, APB had stationed herself in a matrix overwatch position and was supposed to be their back up, but got bricked pretty much from go by Doc. She was taken hostage by Blue Team, and used to make Red Team stand down and disarm themselves.

The Influence came at this point. Rozhki immediately suggested putting two in the chest and one in the head of everyone present. Illeana picked the only person present who she felt could veto that suggestion; Ohanzee. Despite being Awakened, he was distracted with the artifact and didn't notice what she had done. Ohanzee recommended they take Red Team captive and make them talk. Rozhki agreed to that, since he suspected that the Johnson betrayed them and hired Red Team to take them out, and wanted to get them to confirm that.

[Malevolence]

I had intended to do another IC post with a look back at the future-past, including things like his message to Cannon with what the artifact actually does and where he ended up going in to hiding. I had some vague ideas involving Levitation and maye some of the cool new vehicles from Rigger 5.0, but I ended up getting lost in reading Rigger 5.0 and missed the deadline. And still never came up with any ideas that seemed worthy, so meh.


Anyway, welcome back (however briefly) Ryo. I'd also like to chime in with how thoroughly I enjoyed this adventure and to thank you once again for introducing us to these diverse and interesting blank slates.

[Malevolence]

Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.


The sign was faded and likely a relic of the old USA, but whether out of thrift or nostalgia, it still stood at the Georgia-Florida state line. The new RV kept chugging along under the skilled operation of its autopilot, run flat tires chewing up the road at a pleasant pace. The experience with the Nateley's RV had taught them a harsh lesson about tires and auto pilot, and so Doc and Chino had worked together to update the autopilot in the vehicle as well. They had also made sure that at least one window opened on each side, including the rear. Rounding out the customizations were a landing drone rack that allowed them to maintain a constant patrol of minidrones that could land and recharge while the vehicle was in motion, and an extra exit on the roof of the RV for anti-aircraft operations, or to release the captured roto-drone. There were more changes Ohanzee wished they could make, but leaving the Denver area took precedence.


Chino was acting as outrider somewhere, putting his new wheels through their paces. And in this fashion they had made their way halfway across the country in a less than a week. Shortly after crossing into the CAS, both Whale and Doc had confirmed that there were no visible tails, and so Ohanzee had sent a final message to Cannon using one of the burner 'links.

<< Cannon [Hanz] You have held to your word, and so I have a bonus piece of info for you. You will likely find out sooner or later, but the purpose of the artifact appears to be to separate the metahuman spirit from the body, releasing it as a free spirit. If you have already created a few drooling victims, this information may help you to reunite them with their "souls" before it is too late. It should be apparent that such a device can be easily misused, but could also be used to save those whose body is failing them, and perhaps other good acts that I have yet to consider. It could also tear the astral world asunder, releasing hordes of new spirits looking for bodies to steal or perhaps worse, making it of keen interest to the ASPS. I'll not go in to any further detail about it, but should you be visited by any spirits claiming to be me or my associates, be assured that they are not us and may not deal with you in good faith as we have. Research into an unrelated matter with the lab you have provided proceeds apace, and perhaps you will hear from me in some months with more information that will most certainly be of interest to the Draco Foundation, and I trust you to make sure it finds its way there. Best of luck, and say Hi to Ms. Air for me. >>


Ohanzee is pulled back to the present by a message from Doc, resting comfortably on the bed in the back as he wanders the ephemeral world of the Matrix.


<< Team [Doc] Well, I don't know if it counts as selling out, but we are all now shareholders in some of the Big Tens. Not easy to get, but a virtually guaranteed source of income. The IDs we picked up yesterday sure came in handy for that - well worth the additional cost. >>


Ohanzee was pleased - they were almost upstanding citizens. And the lion's share of his share had gone into the investments, which Doc had researched meticulously. They should be able to retire and live comfortably in hiding indefinitely, providing Doc the opportunity to research the nanites they found themselves infected with without interruption. He let a smile play across his face, and it remained there as there seemed to be no imminent thoughts to remove it.

[Malevolence]

I can't really do a 3 month/6 month thing since I don't know how the CFD will progress in us. But I suspect that at some point there Doc's research will be sufficient to report to Cannon so that he can forward it on to the DF. From the splat books, we know it doesn't result in much change from the documented timeline, but at least they are fighting the good fight. Or perhaps they've decided to play for the other team. What I've read of the existing resources don't give much insight into what a completely converted head case thinks, just saying that it differs depending on strain. Do we just want to be metahumans and enjoy the real world? Do we want to take over the world or push some other agenda? Are we one of the more alien strains with inscrutable desires? Who knows, so I'll just leave it where I've left it. The 3 month reunion is a lock, but not having much idea what people want for their characters, I can't really write it.


I tried to keep the RV mods to a minimum to align with their time on the road. Much like the Rating 6 IDs, they overpaid for them to get them in a short time frame anyway. I only mention Ohanzee sinking most of his earnings into investments just in case others have different plans, but leaving it vague enough that the others (including those heading to Cal Free) could take advantage. I also don't mention the make of the RV since we didn't decide who was taking the RV we got from Cannon. If the Cal Free team takes it, then the Florida bound team buys another RV (maybe an Airstream Traveler Preserve with upgraded amenities, though the General or Hellhound looks tasty). I also left out the description for Chino's wheels since I assume he;d get something sporty, but I don't know if it'd be a bike or a car (or something more exotic).


Ohanzee is wary of dealing with Styles since the Vory might be looking for him there, but chances are he did anyway, and put the funds on one of the Ebony credsticks as a souvenir.

[Tecumseh]

Ha, nice. I also came to the conclusion that Katsina would invest hers nuyen in corporations. I went so far as to list out the ones I think she would buy. I figure that she's a trained financial investor, given that vampires need to be astute with their finances so that they last forever.

Katsina asked for the Winnebago from Cannon so Katsina gets the Winnebago. Blue Team has to buy their own.

RVs are inexpensive in the Shadowrun universe, at least according to 4E's Arsenal. Compared to other vehicles, they only cost half as much as you would expect them to. I don't have Rigger 5.0 so I don't know if they make an appearance there.

Tangent: @Mal, I need a Rigger 5.0 review as soon as you're ready. End tangent.

Second tangent: DriveThruRPG is having a big sale on Shadowrun PDFs. Almost everything is marked down 50%; the only exception I could find was Rigger 5.0. I have nine items on my wishlist and I've been waiting for something like this so I might just get them all.

Tangent 2B: @Zweiblumen (and anyone else who owns it), I need honest opinions of Data Trails. The online reviews have not been kind. Does it have enough crunch to justify $12.50? I'm leaning toward it, because I feel guilty not having it, but I don't want to just waste my money. End second tangent(s).

As for the CFD, where your personalities are in 3-6 months is up to you. In a way, you're all "children" of Doc since he is the one who infected you. Given that Doc's strain is reasonably human (minus to compulsion to eat sand) and that his final form happens to be relatively sane and stable, perhaps the same will be true for you. It's possible that there will be twists and bumps along the way - like what Chino is going through - or that competing nanite strains could be introduced into your systems, but for the most part I think your personalities will be largely the same as the ones you RPed during the game. Perhaps accentuated in some respects and moderated in others, but you'll end up recognizably similar.

As for Fake IDs, I dislike how they are currently handled in the rules. I dislike how the price is linear (given the significant difference between the different ratings) and I dislike how easy it is for a high-rating scanner to burn a high-rating ID. In my houserules, going forward, the cost of Fake IDs will be Rating*Rating*¥1,000, so that a Rating 6 costs ¥36,000. The flip side is that ID scanners only roll their rating, not their rating*2. That means a rating 6 scanner would only have a 0.14% chance to beat a rating 6 fake ID, instead of 17.77% chance like they currently do. I want cheap IDs at the low end and expensive IDs (that will last you most of your life if you treat them right) at the high end.

[rednblack]

DT is weak. Some of the Qualities are nice, but I really dislike the deep delve stuff, and will be re-fluffing/rebuilding deeper delve stuff in my In the Shadows of Texas game. In short, I'm glad that I have DT, but mostly use it for chat gen purposes.

[Zweiblumen]

tl;dr:  DT has some good content but is a PITA to get to.  Rigger 5.0 is a great book with a few flaws.
Overall I'd agree that DT is weak.  As to it being worth $12.50 is not something I can say.  I don't know how important $12.50 is to anyone but me (and it's not my business).  I bought it at full price like I do for all of the books as I'm hoping to throw money at the problem of bad editing.  Maybe if we buy enough stuff they'll get better?  I know it's not good economics, but wishful thinking works sometimes.  Right?  Maybe?  Dunno.

Anyway, there are useful things in DT.  There are rules for customizing commlinks and decks that I like as well as the repair rules and such.  I'm a bigger fan of the Deep Run stuff than RnB is.  I think it's well written.  Some of the weird things are that TM's are better suited for doing DRs than deckers are, but a TM needs to spend at least 13 karma and then NOT take any of the other much more important echoes in order to take non-TMs/deckers on a deep run with them (as you need to be running a special program).  Or, a decker can spend the ¥200 and give up a program slot to bring others along.  They point out how TMs and Deckers can work well together (which isn't new, but most groups don't see a reason to have a decker AND a TM which I more or less agree with).
As RnB pointed out there are some good positive and negative qualities.  Also, they flesh out AI's reasonable well.  That said, I've yet to be able to make a PC AI to my satisfaction.  It think they have a lot of the same problems as TMs in that it's a great idea that wasn't fully thought out.  That said, they've much more in depth rules for AIs than the do for TMs.  DT did not help TMs very much.
Finally, if you are interested in the CFD storyline there's a lot of stuff in there for that as well.  There's a "cure" in there that requires at least 1 TM and probably several deckers in addition to the rest of the team running in meat/astral space.  Ryo's 3rd world artifact may come in handy if it works in both directions here as they don't go into how to get the old persona back.  Just how to get the AI out.
And lastly the ToC is a joke and there's no index.  Okay, that's putting it too kindly.  The ToC is literally a waste of paper/bits.  The chapter names are fluff not crunch so you can't tell what's where.  I LOVE SR fluff in the books, but this goes too far even for me.
(image under spoiler tag)



Luckily I just use PDF for everything, so [ctrl]-f ftw.  Still not great.
Rigger 5.0 is a great book.  The editing errors and typos still piss me off, but at least that's all errata-able/fixable with re-prints etc etc.  The quantity of fluff to crunch is perfect in my opinion for the most part.  The exception would be the vehicle descriptions.  A lot of the descriptions talk about built-in gear and such that I've not found the crunch to describe :/  But IMHO that's things that a GM can fix/house rule easily.  Shouldn't have to do that, but it doesn't ruin the book for me.  The ToC is the same quality as in CRB and they've great tables in the back, but no index.  Again, PDF makes it so you don't really need an index and having a fully functional ToC makes it easy to navigate to topics.
I want to make a decker/tm/rigger type using a Horizon-Doble Revolution with a rigger cocoon in it.  MMMM recumbent giant wheel with armor... so sexy!

[Malevolence]

I agree with the previous assessment on both books - DT has some useful info: life modules if you swing that way (which apparently few do), the commlink and deck mods, some new programs, and new qualities (such as Doc's Go Big or Go Home).


The Deep Run and AI sections are hit and miss. It's nice that they finally have rules for AI PCs, but they are lackluster and sorting out how they work is burdensome. I haven't sat down to try making an AI character with them yet, so maybe they'll become much clearer if I actually use them, but at first blush it seemed that they are very attribute intensive like TMs. The Deep Run stuff is like a psychedelic experience, or the holodeck of the Enterprise. It provides a way for the GM to put the characters in a multitude of different settings without having to make shared dream sequences or other hackneyed excuses. Of course, the whole Deep Run system is a hackneyed excuse, but its an official one and fits with the whole magic/resonance part of the setting. I'm curious to try it once, but its success will very heavily depend on the skill of the GM.


As Zweiblumen points out, the navigation is horrific. It's a great read, but a horrible reference. Strike that - a practically unusable reference. PDF is the only way to go, and it is still painful since people expect great navigability from PDFs and it fails on that count as well. And apparently it is impossible for them to update PDFs (despite doing so for Rigger 5.0 already) because it STILL blows today. The search box is the only thing that makes it a viable supplement.


For $12.50 I'd get it - as Zweib says, I don't know what your financial situation is, but you seem to own quite a few SR books already, so for about the price of a couple splat books you can get a core book that I think is, despite its flaws, a better value crunchwise - though maybe just barely.


Rigger 5.0 doesn't bring clarity to any of the pain points of Rigging, but it does provide a system for modifying drones and vehicles and it brings in lots of shiny new toys for riggers. The Swarm program is a godsend to Riggers (until they over-nerf it, of course), and there is an attempt to bring some sanity to the weird speed categories. All in all a good offering.


On the down side, Autosofts got a sound nerfing (sorry, "rules clarification") in that the rating of an aoutosoft is limited to the DR of the device running it. So your DR 5 RCC can only run up to a rating 5 autosoft. Your pilot 3 drone is stuck with a rating 3 autosoft (for a massive and devastatingly effective dice pool of 6!). Repair costs got bumped from the 2% per box of Missions to 5% per box. There is no love for RCCs - no new ones and no way to mod them. The mod rules from Data Trails which should apply to RCCs have had the devs come back and specifically exclude them, so RCCs are officially the bastard stepchildren of devices.


I'd rate it a strong buy even if you don't play rigger characters as it has some good stuff for everybody. It is a bummer that its not on sale for you, though.

[Tecumseh]

Thank you all for the good, lengthy reviews. I appreciate you taking the time to write them up. To express my thanks, I accidentally purchased two copies of the The Vladivostok Gauntlet last night. (Price on sale: $1.) If anyone wants a copy, PM me and I'll shoot it over.

As for $12.50, it is not a sum of any consequence to me. However, I do find myself hesitating slightly at $18 (Clutch of Dragons) and $25 (Rigger 5.0), even though their sums are not meaningfully more significant. I shall have to reflect upon my psychology and economic reasoning. Perhaps the hesitation is due to the fact that I bought 9 PDFs last night which will probably take many weeks to process and absorb, so that my appetite for additional content is diminished for the moment.

Edit: forgot a key "not"

[Poindexter]

On the down side, Autosofts got a sound nerfing (sorry, "rules clarification") in that the rating of an aoutosoft is limited to the DR of the device running it. So your DR 5 RCC can only run up to a rating 5 autosoft. Your pilot 3 drone is stuck with a rating 3 autosoft (for a massive and devastatingly effective dice pool of 6!).

ARG!

This utterly destroys a character I'm currently playing in another game!

[Malevolence]

On the plus side, if the autosoft is being run on the RCC, it is limited by the RCC DR, but can still apply to any drone slaved to it. So if the DR 5 RCC was running the autosoft (at rating 5), the Rating 3 drone would be able to have a dice pool of 8 (3 for the Pilot rating, 5 for the autosoft) - making RCCs more critical to the riggers arsenal. Oh, and Swarm (you can have a swarm of 1, and you can have any number of swarms p to the slave limits of the RCC) allows you to have the RCC DR act as the pilot rating for the drone, so with a DR 5 RCC and swarm, you can effectively have up to 15 (RCC DR x 3) Pilot rating 5 drones. Running rating 5 autosofts (if the autosoft is on the RCC). If you add multiple drones to a swarm, you could also share more autosofts as each drone in the swarm is considered to be running the highest rating autosoft present on any drone or the RCC. There are certainly many ways to exploit this which I will leave to your imagination (or see here for one such idea).