[gilga]

The Ford cost 16k, there is the GMC 442 for 14k which is slightly cheaper.

[Jack_Spade]

Yeah, the Chameleon for 14k is probably the best choice - followed by buying two Morgans

[Tecumseh]

If I can get 4k from Jack and 4k from Beta then I think I can cover the rest. I'll try to design something tonight.

[Beta]

You have my 4k.

[Beta]

"Jaw-Jaw" is Tsimshian by map nationality, but Haida (albeit with a fair bit of European mixed in) by his own description.  In one of the many small misdeeds inflicted on the Haida by the Tsimshian, Guujaw was kicked nearly to death by Tsimshian security when he was nine, and his attackers thought he was dead after he spontaneously astrally projected, leaving his body apparently lifeless.  He encountered his first spirit then, which helped him find help, and he survived.  Survived, but with dire injuries.

His father had already been working construction in Seattle to send money to the family, and now he took Guujaw back with him to get him what medical care he could.  It took a long time to restore the boy's body and face, time which Guujaw spent mostly astral, playing, fighting, chasing, avoiding, and generally living with spirits around Seattle.  His father and the doctors and 'doctors' that they saw thought he was having some sort of seizure due to brain damage from the attack.

His father eventually saved up enough money to move to the slums of Cheyenne, and to take Guujaw to a renowned shaman healer in Cheyenne, who informed father and son of what was really going on, that Guujaw was awakened, albeit with only weak magic.  After an emotional scene, Guujaw forced himself to start spending more time in his body.  He tried to find decent work, however his damaged body kept him from taking on most more physical jobs.  He tried learning magic, but not much of it stuck.  He eventually learned that the social skills he'd learned dealing with spirits could earn him more than he could ever make with honest labour, and that what he could learn astrally could earn him even more than that.

Then his father fell ill, and he had to pay for doctors and healers.  In the end they couldn't save his Father, and Jaw-Jaw, as he'd become known, found himself alone and in debt.  He left Cheyenne, and returned to visit the lost beaches of Haida Gwai, by returning to Seattle.  But in Seattle he had even less contacts and reputation than in Cheyenne, and he was getting desperate when a man came and made him an offer that he couldn't afford to refuse.

=====================================
Negative qualities not finalized, but probably include infirm and Creature of Comfort (middle class) to reflect his damaged body and how much he depends on a good mattress and orthopedic chairs and decent food to not end up grumpy from pain and discomfort (he swears good food helps his back!).  In debt IV.  And something for a few more points -- probably Sinner: national (Tsimshian) but I want to take a good look to see if something else fits in well at three points or so.

(I had planned biased: vs MCT and unsteady hands, but I just had way too many points of negative qualities, so had to dump some)

The Tsimshian government has fallen in the intervening years, so he can't take vengence on them.  He knows he can't take down MCT, but any chance that he gets to do them some damage he is apt to take.  Long term goals....I'm not sure just yet.

He won't take missions to brutalize people.  He's not entirely against killing, although he doesn't much like it.  But leaving others like he was left?  He can't do that. ( Except maybe if they were senior enough in MCT.)

====================

I'd been hoping to get the character sheet together tonight, but it is approaching midnight, so not happening today.  To give people something: metatype C, attributes A, Special D (mage), Skills B, Resources E.

attributes
=======
strength 2 (1 with karma)
body 3
agility 4
reactions 4
logic 5
intuition 5
will 6
charisma 7

Edge 4
Essence 6
Magic 2

Magic
====
Spirits: spirit of man
Spells: catch, astral armor (both from Hard Targets)
Astral Projection

Skills:
=====
Influence skill group 5
Con  (fast talk) 6 (
assensing (aura reading) 6 (
astral combat (spirits) 6 (
spellcasting (manipulation) 1 (3)
summoning (man) 1(3))
13 more points of skills.

Gear:
Nothing too special.  4k towards their vehicle.  A sword cane (to be made a weapon focus later).  Rating four ID with a couple of licenses (PI, firearms).  Some reagents.  binoculars

Positive Qualities:
===========
Too many options, haven't decided yet for sure.  I want a mentor spirit with +2 on manipulations spells and a useful skill bonus, but so far of none of the ones that have that really feel right for the character.  Will see.  Then talents useful to his face side, but haven't decided between bland and human looking to support disguise type work, or more straight up help with facy stuff in some circumstances.

Note: could instead spend 15 karma to take magic to 3, but I'm think I'll leave it at 2 for now, buy some 'ware in a bit, then buy it back to two and then three.

[Lorebane24]

Woohoo!  The whole crew is up!

So I was thinking about it earlier this week, it has been mentioned here, and one player sent me a message about it - forum stability.  I share the concerns of others, and wouldn't be averse to using a more stable forum for the game thread.  You seem to be a lot more experienced than I am with PbP games, so I'd defer to your judgement on which site to use, but if you guys are all on board, I have what will be my last full day off in A FREAKING WHILE (had my grad orientation today and imma be busier than I thought!) on Wednesday and if you guys can point me to a good forum, I can get it all set up then.

[Jack_Spade]

Well, there is always dumpshock
or the little exclave www.rpgplayroom.net

Then again, this forum is pretty stable. The recent hickup was part of the admins trying to curb the influx of spammers.
The only thing speaking against this forum is that we can't use spoilers to hide OOC stuff like rolls and rules questions in the corresponding posts.

[Tecumseh]

Regarding the forums, I am open to staying here. I ran a 3-year game at Dumpshock but strongly feel that these forums are better. I ran a one-shot over at rpgcrossing.net but the formatting drove me nutty. I currently have two games going over at rpol.net, which I like pretty well. I've never played at RPG Playroom, nor had I even heard of it until just now. I wondered where Aria ended up... question answered! I'm open to playing there if the others recommend it, since it looks like everyone but me and the GM are playing there.

@GM
Is Performance now a knowledge skill, similar to Artisan, or is it still an active skill?

@Team
Here's our vehicle, with 4k from Jack and 4k from Beta and the rest from me.

Ford Americar
+ Amenities (High) - a nod to Beta's Creature of Comfort quality
+ Anti-Theft System (Rating 2) - a nod to the High amenities
+ GridLink Override - which presumes that GridLink comes standard, as the text implies
+ Manual Control Override
+ Morphing License Plate
+ Spoof Chips
+ Smuggling Compartment

Open for discussion. Amy/gilga is the best driver, and probably won't be pulled over for Driving While Ork like I might be, so I imagine she'll be behind the wheel most of the time.

[Beta]

@Tecumseh: aww, that is sweet!  Nice if we have to spend the night on a stake out

@Lorebane:  I'm fine with keeping the game here.  The new software has seemed stable.  Any site might have outages occasionally, but the question is really how often, for how long, and is anything lost?  I think we look reasonable on that front here now.  Showing that PbP games still happen seems like good advertising too.  That said, I'm fine with moving.  If Obidancer is willing to support other games I can certainly vouch that rpgplayroom.net that he set up works nicely.

The one thing I'd messaged about was possibly setting up an obsidianportal campaign page.  Even with the free version it gives a place to post characters, NPC write up, place descriptions, etc.  (and personally I prefer using it to a google drive type page because my work blocks gmail, drive, yahoo mail, etc.  all in the name of making it harder to move work files outside the company.  But Obsidianportal  is fine to access.  Makes lunch time updates much easier when I'm not trying to load things on my phone).  Games can also be run using the forums for a campaign, but I think the forums may only come with the paid version, so not pushing that.

[gilga]

@Beta - One of my characters (in Jack's game) got her hand on R6 weapon focus, and as she has the mental stats for it I figured it would be nice to dabble in astral combat. However, as I thought about it more and more, I figured out the best focuses are the weapons with high reach. R6 Knife - is about as useful as an R3 spear. (give or take, resistance to BGC).  (Actually, less effective because the spear also helps in defense).

So, if/when you do get a weapon foci, notice that even the most simple spear would give you reach of 3, and as you are projecting, you are in the astral, and the physical spear can stay in the car or something. Thus even at F1, you'll get +4 to hit, and -3 dice to the opponent as there does not seem to be any other way to get reach in astral combat.


Does that make sense? I mean I am sorry if it is obvious - it is for me the first time to consider astral.

@Lorebane - I am fine here, but I don't mind DS/Rpgplayroom.

[Jack_Spade]

I'm not sure if reach is a property that carries over to the astral, but there can be certainly made an argument for it, since weapon foci do retain their damage and their accuracy on the astral (though that leaves the question if you also keep the AP value - if that's the case, get a Nodachi or Highland claymore Weapon Focus asap)

@Tecumseh
Cool, that ride sounds about right

Btw, I have limited mod rights on rpgplayroom, so I can open the ooc and ip threads.

[Beta]

Given the nature of astral combat, I'd assumed that reach would not count?  If it does, for sure I need to look at how to make use of it.

I don't recall the rules saying anything one way or another -- anyone else recall if there is a reference that would push things one way or another?  (I was going with the sword cane for the +3 damage, decent accuracy, and somewhat easier to cart around.  He'll have a couple of other canes for when weapon scanners would be an issue.  But I'm not wedded to it.)

@Lorebane: I was considering giving Jaw-Jaw a knowledge skill for the faerie courts (he went through the Yellowstone astral eruption while in Cheyenne?  He met spirits from there?). But wanted to check that a) it is a thing in your game world, b) you are fine with a character having knowledge of it, and c) you are ok with the character having knowledge while the player doesn't?

[Jack_Spade]

If reach is a thing, you probably will do best with the
KRIME BILL (BLADES)
ACC REACH DAM AP AVAIL COST
5 1/3* (STR+3)P –2 12R 1,500¥

from Street Lethal

[Lorebane24]

So it sounds like we are okay with these forums?  If it becomes an issue later we can always move then.

@Beta.   I actually plan on making use of the faerie courts, but they are a smidge different in my world from what is laid out in the Court of Shadows.  Most notably - guns do not change into crossbows or whatever in the faerie realms - they stay guns.  The people of faerie are basically familiar with them, heyve seen them, and a few carry them, but they are still considered "unfashionable."  Other big thing is that I'm ditching the weired mental matrix analogue they habe and replacing it with - the matrix.  In my little revision, Renraku (as the first corp to get any sort of foothold in the court) has helpef them set up a sort of planar intranent, unconnenected to the matrix on the material plane.  It othwrwise funtioms the same, but not all info held in one will be om the other, and no one has even tried to explore the Foundatiom there yet.

 For a knowledge skill, "Seelie Court" might be an okay general knowlwdge skill, but if you want to specialize, seelie politics and fey creatured might be appropriate niches.

[Beta]

@Lorebane, sounds great!  I haven't read the faeries court book, so I don't have much to unlearn :-)

Re: weapon focus in astral combat.  Book does confirm that weapons get their usual accuracy and damage code, but doesn't say anything about reach or armor penetration. By their omission when the other items are mentioned, I'd read it as they don't apply in astral.  But GM's house call in the end I think (although I'll probably put this to the forums sometime soon, to see what they think.)