[rednblack]

Phew, sorry it's taken me a bit to get back here.  I've been so singularly focused with the Sunt game and otherwise just plain exhausted. 

Let's see if James' last hurrah "sticks," as it were.  16 dice.
Melee Attack: 16d6t5 5
Meh.

I thought the fight was very interesting.  Riposte is a rightfully terrifying, and the Adept version of Riposte may have worked out well had they not needed the Free Action: Called Shot -- which may not have applied -- or Pre-Emptive Parry -- which definitely would.  Looking back, I do think James would have come out better had he make more judicious use of Reading the Defense, as his extra passes were of limited usefulness. 

James will be disappointed that Wilhelm doesn't want to stand and talk about James' "real name," but he won't push it.  The next step, I guess, is to decide whether to approach the Baron with subterfuge or candor.  If Wilhelm is aware of who James is, and who he's representing I'd say there's a fair shot that others at the party know as well.  This may mean that a general coming clean is in order, if only to gauge where the Baron stands with his relationship to Ms. Senio.  James will ask Illeana her thoughts on the matter, but he's pretty keen at this point on leveraging some working of the room into a conversation with the Baron, probably bringing Illeana in early and using her SIN as a silent punctuation of why they're really there.

Should we do some rolls first and then IC how they resolve?  If so, where would you like me to start?

On another note, I have another idea for James' immortality, given that we're breaking all sorts of shadowrunning rules and dealing directly with dragons and all.  James could petition Schwartzkopf on becoming a drake.  5e doesn't have rules for this, and I'm not clear on previous editions take on the matter.  There's also story considerations; this could well bring us somewhere we don't want to go.

Good luck with your reports.

[Tecumseh]

Parry: ?d6t5 9 hits, attack parried

The seconds come crashing in and the fight is done. Don't worry about any rolls yet. I'll work on an IC and will figure out what rolls are necessary along the way.

I would encourage you to prioritize Sunt over this game. You're the central figure there, and when you're held up it holds up three others. If we're both getting up a substantial IC post each week then we're making fine progress.

Interesting idea about becoming a drake, but they don't have the Immunity (Age) power. There are no rules for becoming a drake because the fluff is still mysterious about their origin. It's clear that they are a product of Great Dragon magic, but the fluff hasn't announced whether it's the product of some sort of ritual magic or whether it's the result of some sort of magic/genetic breeding program (so you have to be born that way), etc.

[rednblack]

Interesting idea about becoming a drake, but they don't have the Immunity (Age) power.

Huh.  I'd read some fluff about some drakes being from the 4th world, so I'd figured that they would have Immunity (Age).  Oh well, probably best not to be the explicit property of a Great Dragon.  Pawn is scary enough.

[Tecumseh]

I have to retract my earlier statement about the origins of drakes. Howling Shadows is more explicit than I remembered:

"

• ne cannot become a drake—it is something he or she is born with" (p. 165).

I went back and checked 4E. Drakes didn't have Immunity (to anything) back then either.

[Tecumseh]

Woah, that is some goofy formatting. Copy and paste went off the reservation there.

I'm thinking through the IC post some more. Let's do one roll for each of the social and social-esque skills. (Illeana will be in favor of throwing Schwartzkopf's name around.) James will be the lead and Illeana will provide teamwork dice. Here are her hits to add to James' tests:

Etiquette: 3 hits
Negotiation: 3 hits
Leadership: 1 hit
Intimidation: 5 hits
Con: 2 hits

[rednblack]

There's also this from the Shadowrun wiki page on drakes:

Drakes draw their appearance from one of the four dracoforms. In addition, they can be divided into two broad groups: true drakes, who are dracoforms created by Great Dragons; and bred drakes, who are metahumans born with the traits that manifest at some later point (as of SR4 this distinction had been lost until The Clutch of Dragons).

I'm not sure what "created by Great Dragons" means, but from the quote you listed above, I'd assume that they are pulled out of the ether in some way.

Ok, with how orokos was treating me in the Sunt game, I'm a little hesitant about rolling here, but let's see how it goes:

Etiquette, James has: CHA (5) + Etiquette (4) + Tailored Pheromones (2) + Mensur Boost (2) + Teamwork (3) = 16 dice.
Etiquette: 16d6t5 9
Social Limit is 8, boosted to 9 with Teamwork, so James keeps all Hits.

Negotiation, James has: CHA (5) + Negotiation (5) + Tailored Pheromones (2) + Mensur Boost (2) + Teamwork (3) = 17 dice.
Negotiation: 17d6t5 4

Leadership, James has: CHA (5) + Leadership (6) + Tailored Pheromones (2) + Mensur Boost (2) + Teamwork (1) = 16 dice.
Leadership: 16d6t5 8
Man is born to lead.

Intimidation, James has: CHA (5) + Intimidation (6) + Tailored Pheromones (2) + Mensur Boost (2) + Teamwork (5) = 20 dice.
Intimidation: 20d6t5 5
Not bad.  It was mentioned before that James blood may be an additional bonus here, I think.  I'm going to roll 2 dice in case that holds.
Blood is scary: 2d6t5 0
No help.

Con, James has: CHA (5) + Con (6) + Tailored Pheromones (2) + Mensur Boost (2) + Teamwork (2) = 17 dice.
Con: 17d6t5 6
And in case the Fast Talk Spec applies:
Fast Talk Spec: 2d6t5 0
Weird.  Both 2 dice sets I rolled were the exact same distribution of no hits.

James won't be opposed to throwing Schwartzkopf's name around, though he'd probably find it a bit garish to go showing selfies of the three of them from the restaurant

[Tecumseh]

Illeana will cast Analyze Truth @ F6 and sustain it via Focused Concentration.

Spellcasting: Magic 8 (6 due to low Essence) + Spellcasting 7 = 7 hits, capped at 6 hits by Force, that's plenty
Soaking 4 drain: Intuition 10 + Willpower 6 = 5 hits, soaked

I suppose some of these tests should be limited by the language barrier. Of course, that's dependent on me figuring out who does and does not know English. Illeana has German 4, which would cap a lot of these at 4 hits.

Wikipedia tells me that 56% of Germany speaks English as a second language. That, of course, is the result of US hegemony, whereas the Shadowrun timeline splits off in 1989, the US is fractured by 2017, and Japanese culture is more dominant due to the megacorps.

But what the hell. I'll still make it a coin flip whether the relevant Herrs and Fraus speak English.

[rednblack]

Languages in Shadowrun are interesting. While doing prep for the Missoula campaign I thought the tribal languages would be more prominent, but English is, by far, the most common tongue. I guess a large part of that is the number of tribes under the SSC, and any of the major tribal players would probably not take a different tribe's language being the common tongue, even if that does mean they're left with a colonial language.

[Tecumseh]

A shorter IC is up. I've touched on the Etiquette rolls and Con but not on Negotiation or Intimidation. If you want to leverage those in your IC response, feel free to do so.

Baron's English: Does the Baron speak English? 1-56 yes, 57-100 no: 1d100 43, yes

His entourage's English: Speak English? 1-56 yes, 57-100 no: 3#1d100 97 81 85, no no and no

[rednblack]

Got a short IC up.  Next few might be pretty economical as well, depending on how this dialogue goes.  Not sure if you want to count that as Negotiation or Intimidation, or if any other mods would come into play. 

Illeana doesn't have a Detect Enemies spell, or something Quickened on her, does she? 

James is not expecting this conversation to net them a meet with Marie Senio.  Since the Stealth Tags fell through, I think their next best bet is to physically tail him from the party.  When things don't go right, James will be keen on leaving almost immediately, potentially in a huff, maybe with a vague threat of having to report back with bad news, and then wait for him until he too quits the place.

[Tecumseh]

Illeana has a pretty decent Detect Enemies (4 hits @ F6) quickened on her. Nothing is triggering yet but that might change.

Illeana doesn't have the Essence to boost her Magic, which is a pity because that might work well. I suppose she could use whichever Metamagic makes your Magic rating look bigger than it is, but she's worried about getting called out of a bluff. Instead, she'll try name dropping and will pursue the Initimdation route. I'll flip the scenario and make her the lead. That gives her 5 base hits and 4 extra dice to roll to represent James' hits.

Intimidation Teamwork: 4d6t5 1 hit

So that's six hits. At Essence 4, Illeana's Social Limit is still 7 so she keeps all the hits. Let's see what the Baron can come up with. I'll give him some positive modifiers that could have been negative modifiers for James/Illeana if I had remembered them earlier.

Baron defense: Charisma 3 + Willpower 6 + Outnumber 2 + Obvious Magic 2 - Schwartzkopf 2: 11d6t5 3 hits

I suppose James might have gotten some dice for carrying his sword around. In any case, it appears that the Baron is discomfited by confrontation. He will cave.

A curious aside: since this is mostly mental intimidation, should I use the Baron's English skill as a Limit on the "attack" roll? The idea is to represent that you can't be mentally intimidated in a language you don't understand. In this case the limit would be 4, so he'd still fold, but it's an interesting thought.

Behind-the-scenes GM rolls that you can look at if you want, or not if you want to maintain a surprise.

[spoiler]
Baron rolls 4 hits against Detect Enemies, so Illeana will not detect his hostility at being intimidated.
Three Amigas roll 4 hits, 11 hits (holy shit, odds of that were 0.07%), and 2 hits respectively, so Detect Enemies only works on Yao, the Asian gal.[/spoiler]

The Baron swallows hard and agrees to take you to Marie. Not sure when I'll get the IC up.

[Tecumseh]

Short IC is up. I'll push things along further when I have a chance. I've been doing some preliminary writing for the Wildcats game, for which I need to come up with a good name.

I had some clarifying questions for Sunt that I posted a couple days ago. I wanted to make sure that you saw them, rather than us both waiting for the other to speak since we think the ball is in the other person's court.

[rednblack]

I think I got all the answers up in the Sunt game.  I would've posted sooner, but I've been doing a lot of research for that game, and needed to answer some questions before I push things too much further along ICly.  This is what happens when the GM comes up with weird questions in the middle of combat.

As far as your earlier question for Intimidation, at first I didn't think there was any cause for language to act as a Limit, as screaming at someone in English while waving a sword in their face is probably just as intimidating as doing it in their native tongue, but I think you may have a point when you classify it as "mental" Intimidation.  Some of the subtleties of language are likely to be lost, or strange and grammatically unclear phrasing could have some weird effects -- somebody says something in a humorous way, or phrases things in an unintentionally ambiguous fashion.  I could see that.

[Tecumseh]

Looks like we have a second lease on life on this one. I have recorded copies of the OOC and IC threads through our pausing point in March. Wow, that was three months ago already.

My wife is taking our son to Idaho for two months starting in early July. I'll be bouncing back and forth between Seattle and Idaho, with two weeks here, two weeks there, two weeks here, two weeks there. I should have more time to post while they are away, as I won't have my regular daddy duties. In theory that should be enough time for us to wrap up our current chapter. As such, we will tentatively resume this in four weeks.

We had PM'd a bit on RPoL about some of the games you were planning. Did you have any additional thoughts on those?

[rednblack]

Looks like we have a second lease on life on this one. I have recorded copies of the OOC and IC threads through our pausing point in March. Wow, that was three months ago already.

My wife is taking our son to Idaho for two months starting in early July. I'll be bouncing back and forth between Seattle and Idaho, with two weeks here, two weeks there, two weeks here, two weeks there. I should have more time to post while they are away, as I won't have my regular daddy duties. In theory that should be enough time for us to wrap up our current chapter. As such, we will tentatively resume this in four weeks.

We had PM'd a bit on RPoL about some of the games you were planning. Did you have any additional thoughts on those?

Just wanted to check in here.  I'll have more to write next week on the other games.  Unfortunately, nothing has progressed on the Missoula game, but I'm hoping to get back to that one soon.