[gilga]

1. getting a deck would make her a reasonable decker. I'll need to find how to teach her electronic warefare, but the rest seems less important to me. (e.g. I can live with skipping cyber-combat).

I'll finish her in a few days, moving my apartment so the brain is not working due to tiredness.

P.S is the limitation of using a single 'A' priority a hard one? Indeed I get a slightly better build with two A priority, but the strange thing is that as my build requires many attribute points and many skills (So I decided on Skills A)...  I could only do it with an elf. (as Elf + attributes B is similar to Human + attributes A).  I don't mind her being an elf, just never planned it.

[Lorebane24]

I'm pretty married to the "only 1 priority A" limit, because I've seen some of the shenanigans that entail when players can starting doubling down on the As.

[Tecumseh]

Switching the character name from Machk to Mato. (Machk is Alqonquin; Mato is Sioux/Lakota. Plus I remembered that I already used Machk for another character in another story and I need to keep them straight in my head.)

What are the two or three most important formative experiences in your life?
1. Mato was born to corporate drug addicts, who produced a baby about as small and weak as an ork can be. He's been physically underdeveloped all his life, and thus rejected by Sioux culture. He spent his youth on the sidelines, both literally and metaphorically. This fostered his powers of observation, while simultaneously stoking his desperation to physically participate in life.

2. Mato's parents were killed in car crash that he attributes to their drug use. He took his inheritance and his parents' life insurance money and decided to pour it into cybernetic enhancements that would help him overcome his physical limitations. He wasn't bright enough to put some aside to help overcome his mental limitations.

3. Mato overspent. Not having a good head for numbers, he blew through his funds to the point where he needed to borrow money from the Koshari. He's not deeply in debt, but just enough where he needs steady employment to keep the legbreakers at bay. (Mato's legs are made of titanium and are unlikely to be literally broken, but the debt collectors could probably do a number on ribs or his nose or somewhere else painful and fragile.) This has inspired him to pursue gainful employment in Seattle, which conveniently gets him out of the Koshari's territory while he earns enough to pay them back.

How did they acquire their skillset?
Once he had his basic cybernetic implants, Mato threw himself at physical pursuits with the zeal of the newly converted. He wanted to learn everything he saw on the trids growing up: fighting, shooting, sneaking around like a Native ninja. The Sioux culture is militarized enough that there were plenty of opportunities to pursue these hobbies. Mato paid a lot of ex-Wildcats to be his mentors. Mato is skilled but not an expert, which is attributable to his desire to do lots of different things in an effort to make up for lost time. This robs him of the discipline to focus on any specific talent (Jack of All Trades quality).

Where did they come from and how did they get here?
Mato was born and raised in the Sioux Nation. He has come to Seattle to pursue a business venture with the investigative agency, which he believes will put food on the table, keep the Koshari at bay, and lead to greater earning opportunities.

What motivates you beyond money and survival?
Mato grew up feeling worthless and scorned by Sioux society. While he certainly wanted cyberlimbs to compensate for his physical infirmities, his subconscious motivation was a deep-seeded inferiority complex. He wants to feel valued and respected. To that end, he wants to put some of the skills he's learned into practice in a real-world environment.

Any jobs they wont take? 
Mato won't take a job that openly involves violence against children. He would also decline work from standard antagonists, e.g. Humanis Policlub, Human Nation, Alamos 20K, insect spirits (except mantids), dragons, etc.

In pursuit of his quest for respect, Mato traded in most of his metahumanity. He is impassive about violence and death, so he is open to wetwork and distasteful protection or intimidation services. His opinions of the weak and downtrodden are complex: they remind him of everything he used to be, and he resents the memory, so in killing them he is (metaphorically) killing the part of himself that he hates. Still, he can't help feeling lingering moments of compassion and a desire to help them better themselves, especially children with untapped potential.

What ideals would they betray an employer for?
Mato isn't intelligent in the traditional sense but he has the right instincts to do a common sense risk/reward analysis. He's not going to jeopardize his reputation and future earning potential unless the payoff is significant enough to negate the need for a good reputation and future earning potential.

He might also "betray" an employer if he feels like the job was significantly misrepresented and/or accepted under false pretenses. He wouldn't consider it a betrayal but rather a renegotiation of terms.

Any personal goals?
Mato grew up in relative comfort, with two gainfully-employed corporate parents, but he also witnessed the results of this first hand: namely, stress to the point of being driven to excess in terms of drugs, BTLs, and other vices. His goal would be to obtain a similar standard of living, but without the accompanying stresses. A permanent High lifestyle would be a personal goal.

[gilga]

I am finally done with Amy Maka.  She has a deck, and she still needs to learn, but she decks alright.

I added contacts (as well as other important non-contact people in her life).
https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=27929.msg504739#msg504739


interview:

What are the two or three most important formative experiences in your life?

1. Driving around the NAN with my daddy, wishing that the road would never end.
2. Apprenticing under 'Beer's wing, which was like a parent for me.
3. Leaving the Sioux nation, my boyfriend, my family and everyone behind.

 
How did they acquire their skillset?

It is easy really. My daddy taught me driving and shooting, my mother taught me about technology, and Beer taught me how to develop my talent. The rest of what I know is social skills which I learned by surviving.  My position was also weak, and I had to learn to blend in, to mislead convincingly, and to bargain to make sure that the few coins I had could sustain me.

Where did they come from and how did they get here?

I ask myself the same question... I shouldn't have gotten here, not like this.  However, something broke in when I failed to protect the love of my life.   You could say that I lost it, I left everyone, and everything and started over again outside of the NAN where I never belonged due to my western appearance, lack of legal status, and circumstances.

I never planned to be a criminal, not a big one. I got into a significant debt due to expenses in getting here - and then if I did not get money people would physically harm me.  It gets easier over time, which scares me.

What motivates you beyond money and survival?

I want to prove my worth to myself. I want my daddy to be proud, I want him to formally acknowledge me, and I want to meet his family, my family. 

 I want to be a Sioux patriot and to be a legal Sioux citizen.  Or to leave it all behind, and be someone else. It is confusing... Perhaps I just want to belong to something bigger than myself, and to be legitimate in some manner without the need to always look over my back.

I want to fix things with Crying Fox, or at least to close it. He is a bleeding point in my heart.  However, all these are nice and dandy, and I am really in a bind right now. I need the money. I'll do anything to get it.

Any jobs they wont take?
 
Yes, plenty - if the money is not enough. If the team assembly is inadequate for the job, or if I cannot trust the Johnson enough. I avoid jobs that leave people dead unless there is absolutely no other alternative.

However, I have a debt to influential people - and I would at the end of the day do anything to be free of it.  There is nothing I would not do if I am in a corner, and the alternative is not to pay my monthly payment.  Given a choice, I'll go for the less violent, and less dangerous options though.  I'd prefer a job that I could somehow morally justify. Nobody likes to be the villian.

What ideals would they betray an employer for?

Never, If I accepted the job, I deliver.  It is a matter of honor, and of survival. I live because I get the job done.
 

[Lorebane24]

So the forum is back!  I think at this point we're just waiting on Beta's character, and need to finalize the details of where you guys are operating out of.  If you think that the back and forth of hashing that out on the forums would take too long, I could also draft something.

[Jack_Spade]

As I said, I'm fine with a shared lifestyle - Medium should be enough.
I imagine a single suburban house from were we operate.





As for the offered contacts: If I understood that right I have 4 points to spread on Loyalty
I'll take the Info Broker with 1 Loyalty and the Neo-Anarchist hacker with 3

[gilga]

Amy Maka takes the Talismonger with loyalty 1, the delivery service loyalty 1, and the arms dealer at loyalty 3.  I'll update her character sheet.

[Jack_Spade]

Just played around with Home-By-Me for our shared acommodations (see previous post)
Madcat takes the utility room 

[Beta]

Sorry for being slow on the character.  In my first post I mentioned how I was about to start transitioning out of the job that has been eating my life?  Yah, that starts next week, and the last part of this week seemed determined to remind me of why I needed out.  So I'm still at the point of choosing one of the following somewhat face-y characters:

1) Traveler based (the concept just won't die for me ...).  attributes A, metatype C (elf), magic C (traveler), but then either:
 a - Skills E, resources C.  ~15 dice on negotiate and con, 13-14 on astral combat, decent etiquette, and everything else is off skill 1.  But bioware and good gear, clothes, etc.
 b- Skills C, resources E.  The classic broke magician build.  A little lower on the strengths, a little less weak at everything else.

2) A more classic face, attributes A, skills B, reources C, Meta D, special E.  Social skills, disguise and imitate, enough 'ware to be a little dangerous and ware and gear to boost social skills.  You know this build, just details that vary.

3) A 'Medium' take on the shaman/face-lite build.  Charisma tradition, either illusion or manipulation as their school of magic, and likely 16 dice in that area, and 1 spirit type available.  Attributes A, magic B, skills C, meta D, resources E.  Not face level social skills, but good enough to team work.

I'm probably not going to get back to this today, but will make some time tomorrow.  In the meantime any thoughts or suggestions appreciated (as in : I've not really scanned the other characters to see where we may have a hole that needs patching)

[Tecumseh]

@Lorebane Is it okay to spend free Loyalty points on the group contacts and then to upgrade those Loyalty ratings with the Contact karma we get from chargen?

Mato will take the street doc (Heather Huxley) but I'm still working on the rest of his Contacts and knowledge skills.

@All Are we concerned about the stability of the forums? I moved two PbP games off the forums last year (over to rpol.net) because things were so unstable. Obviously things are much better now than they were back then, when things would go down for two weeks at a time and the reboot would lose your most recent progress, but I don't know if Friday's outage was an anomaly or a warning.

@Team For lifestyle, I was thinking more about a shared office, maybe with a barracks or small bedrooms upstairs.

For location, I can imagine us setting up shop in Touristville, or perhaps the small semi-respectable city center of Puyallup. (Not out in the Barrens.) I think that's where Jimmy Kincaid's office is in Russell Zimmerman's stories.

If we stick with Medium neighborhood then I think we can land anywhere with a security rating of B. Here's a map: http://www.1w6.de/rpg/sr/map/?borders=on

From Run Faster, a garage might be something we want to include.

Cutting Aces also has some Social Subscription Software that would be relevant to a PI agency. I don't know if it's appropriate to roll these up to a Lifestyle cost, but they are monthly expenses and would be relevant to our work. Things like:

CarnivoreGold: linguistic database and code-breaking software
MonaLisa: facial recognition software
Pheromone Detection: niche, but Mato could use it
Speech Template Comparison: detect impersonators
Target Tracking: tracks individuals in a crowd
Thermal Mood Reading: assists Judge Intentions
Vocal Tension Lie Detection: also assists Judge Intentions

Each of those cost ¥250 per month.

@Beta I like #1 and #3, mostly because I've never been in a game with either. #1 is great for scouting, #3 is great for having some summoning abilities that we don't otherwise have. With a Shamanic build we'd get air spirits if you go Illusion and spirits of man if you go for Manipulation.

[Jack_Spade]

Honestly, with the finances of my character, he'll need quite a bit luck to even make rent for his shitty low level lifestyle.

With only 85% income (National SIN) and the strong wish to keep his kneecaps (3000 NY/month to stay afloat) he needs to earn 5200 every month to stay afloat - any kind of subscription falls squarely into the "nope" category for  him.

[gilga]

Well, my character is even in more debt... So let's keep the expenses minimal.

As for traveler, how about:
Skills: A/B
Attributes: B/A
Meta: C (elf, or dwarf (?) )
Magic: D (full mage - there is the house rules).
Resources: E

The reason I suggest it is that the house rules actually allow you to take full mage at priority D and get astral projection.  Skill A would give you plenty of skills for astral combat and so forth. Even if you decide to take all special points for edge and leave magic 2 (astral combat is not affected by it), and you can have no magical skills if you wish to be a traveler. You could also buy FA mastery qualities with the spells you get (some may make sense - e.g. the one that gives better assensing).

[Lorebane24]

Good catch on the mage thing.  I had just lifted the traveler (explorer?) From FA, I think, and hadnt considered its relation to my revised stuff.  A low priority mage seems like a good way to work it, but if you really just want to be able to project we can try to figure a priority D rework for it that woild be more balanced.

For the group contacts, you can spend your usual karma/points to enhance them, but they still have the 7 total limit (so max 4 loyalty in any case).

[Tecumseh]

Let's look at Lifestyles.

The base Medium lifestyle is ¥5,000. Each additional occupant is an extra 10%. Since there are 1 + 3 of us that makes an extra 30%, for a base price of ¥6,500 per month.

The advanced lifestyle rules from Run Faster have the following ratings for Medium:

• Comforts & Necessities: 3, since we don't have any allergies, this is good enough not to suffer any fatigue penalties
• Security: 3, we should upgrade this to 4
• Neighborhood: 4, a B security rating

We have 4 optional points to spend.

• I recommend putting 1 into Security (making it 4).
• I recommend another 1 point into Grid Subscription so that we're not always on the public grid. This costs an extra ¥50 per month.
• I would put the 2 remaining points into Garage, which covers a vehicle rating Body 5 or higher (i.e. team van). This costs an extra ¥100 per month.

That would make the final price ¥6,650. Four ways, that's ¥1,663 a month per person, which seems highly affordable to me.

Open for discussion!

[Beta]

Nice catch, Gilga!  Indeed gives a better build, and opens up some interesting possibilities.  Wheels are churning