Fisher St Club

Game Master Mighty Glacier

Yes, fine work, Green Smashomancer.

Something is happening in the gameplay thread. Could it be...?

I see we'll at least be avoiding the evil blonde trope at least.

One of them is secretly wearing a wig, and is actually blonde!

The three NPCs, along with you six players, together form the Fisher St Club. On your future jobs, you can give them tasks to perform. They are meant to assist the PCs, and to make the group more well-rounded.

• These NPCs have 0 or 1 Secret Talents.
• These NPCs have Agendas.
• These NPCs have no Challenges.

Delgado, Freeman, and Bond have their stats in their profiles. Bond has an extra $10,000 for plot reasons: it's still much less than what a real Talent (like Daddy Got Dough) would have given her. Any other NPCs that may appear along the way will not get their own profile, most likely.

Another thing. We need to create the list of purchasable items. I first talked about this here:

Sundakan wrote:

Ah. I missed that we start with $5000. Guess the next question would be "how much do things cost?". Like, if I wanted to buy a gun, what would the general price range for that be. Or is this a literal "Look it up online and see what you can afford IRL for that" situation?

The "Look it up online and see what IRL price tags say" one. We might gather a separate document to list some basic, most common things, like:

• Handguns, and other guns, and ammo
  
• Bulletproof vests
  
• Poisons like cyanide
  
• Spy cameras
  
• Vehicles, and their rent

...This is going to look weird on my Google search history. Let's hope we don't end up in NSA's lists or something.

If any of you happens to be knowledgeable in these kinds of things, please, contribute!

Oh, right, one more thing. Do you guys want there to be character advancement or not? For example, after each "mission", you'd get a mini-Talent that would give a minor boost (I'm thinking along the lines of +1 to a skill).

Edit: Oh, and of course there'd be a fourth thing. Will, Milo, Adrien: We're going to be using quotation marks on character dialogues.

For example:

"We talk like this," he said.

Not:

Something's missing here, he said.

"Got it."

Also, definitely yes to character advancement. It'd be weird if we never improved at anything.

i'm in agreement with Mr.Wesson, on the subject of Character advancement.

I like the idea of advancement or hero points for temporary one time bonuses.

As far as equipment goes we could use the internet, over the weekend I'll see if I can find some other source.

I'm good with some character advancement. It wouldn't need to be very common, and I think keeping it to +1 (probably to a skill you used at least once) makes sense.

Agreed on all counts. Catching up on the thread.

Im not going to be able to avoid imagining that Jake sounds like Nick Valentine. Hopefully he wont get uploaded into a robot though.

Hm hm, it seems like some character advancement is what everyone wants. We can work out the details along the way.

We're only a few days in and I'm making so many grammatical errors. I know this is the Internet and no one cares, but for my own sake I'll correct them here.

Im not going to be able to avoid imagining that Jake sounds like Nick Valentine. Hopefully he wont get uploaded into a robot though.

I'll be honest, I was just getting back to Fallout 4 and doing all of Valentine's stuff for the first time when making Jake. =)

Hm hm, it seems like some character advancement is what everyone wants. We can work out the details along the way.

We're only a few days in and I'm making so many grammatical errors. I know this is the Internet and no one cares, but for my own sake I'll correct them here.

** spoiler omitted **

If it matters, I appreciate the thought. Personally, I don't think it's hurt the presentation of the game yet.

Green Smashomancer wrote:

Im not going to be able to avoid imagining that Jake sounds like Nick Valentine. Hopefully he wont get uploaded into a robot though.

I'll be honest, I was just getting back to Fallout 4 and doing all of Valentine's stuff for the first time when making Jake. =)

I recently made a guy specifically to be Buddy Cops TM with Nick. And because I wanted a punchy dude. No idea what to do to close off the main questline though. I should see if Nick likes the Railroad or Minutemen more.

As for equipment, can cars of an average quality be a part of the "Day-to-day" expenses we waive because *yawn* to that noise?

As for equipment, can cars of an average quality be a part of the "Day-to-day" expenses we waive because *yawn* to that noise?

As per the rules, each PC starts the game with a car of average quality (unless their background would suggest less: a homeless person or a poor college student might not get the luxury! Or if they have a Talent that gives them extra cash: in that case they can negotiate a better car and/or apartment). Gas (as in, petrol in British English) is part of day-to-day living expenses, of course.

I'm thinking a sports car would give a +2 item bonus on Driving skill rolls. For example.

I will be on the road Tuesday – Thursday please feel free to bot me as necessary. I do not foresee having any problems posting. However, tomorrow is going to be an 18 hour day and I might just hit the sack when I get to my hotel.

So, what do we already know? I've been kind of spinning my wheels trying to figure out where to start. Do we know the identities of any of the victims, or where they were found? Anything else that might give us a street level starting point?

That's a good question. Well..

You've read about the deaths on newspapers, so you at least know how many there have been (7 so far). The victims are of somewhat varying backgrounds (uneven victimology is probably a contributing factor for why the police are struggling), so it would be rough to start piecing facts together off the top of your head. Anyone with the "Photographic Memory" Talent cab bypass this, of course.

The identities (names and so on; only age and approximate occupation) haven't been published in the press.

Maybe you could acquire old newspapers, and dig deeper from there? Or use the internet. The internet mass media hasn't reached its current glory yet, but there might be something there. Or ask experts. (Or use some other means, surprise me.)

Or you could start from the 2 victims you do know about: the latest ones. See the "prop" in this post.

(I hope this is a good balance of "open road, avoiding railroad" and "throw a bone, give hooks".)

If you have Google docs, you can prep longer posts in there, then just copy/paste when you're done. It helps me out to combat the paizo post eating beast, might help you if your computer does that to you again.

That's a great idea, Thanks!

I'll be happy when we get some physical evidence to look for. I feel like all Jake is contributing ATM is enough paranoia to cover everyone else and then some. =)

Alright, this is a ways after when the question was asked, but I finally finished nailing down some thoughts re: one of the world-building questions. Hopefully it isn't too late for some of this to be useful.

This make sense, seem good to people?

Nice work. I had some plans for an Italian mafia, and this helps. I'll just change a few names around and it fits like a glove.

Okay, we got couple of things to talk about.

First, the price list. Discussed previously here. I've made a preliminary list for stuff to spend your in-game money on. The link is in the stat line of this alias. Remember that this list is anything but exhaustive, and that you can always suggest a better price tag for something you think looks a bit weird or unrealistic.

Second, character advancement. Looking at the your responses, it looks like it can be done in different ways. Here's my initial suggestion. It has two parts: one for small rewards and one for bigger rewards.

Advancement Points

• After completing a small-scale mission, you get an "Advancement Point"(AP) that is "tied" to two different skills (eg. Driving and People).
• You choose one of these skills, and the GM chooses the other.
• At any point in the future, you can use an AP on either of those skill rolls. When you use an AP, it always improves your roll in some way. It can turn a failure to a barely-success (which is a success, but with some setbacks, but still better than a failure), a success to an even better success, or a critical failure to a regular failure.
• Here's the catch: you can only use the AP on one skill roll (eg. so if you chose to spend it on a People skill roll, it's expended and can't be used again for a Driving skill roll), and you can only use it before the results are announced. Finally, you can only use up to one AP on any given skill roll. Hoarding is still okay, but just remember that you can't turbo boost one roll.

• After completing a larger-scale mission, you get an "Advancement Talent". As a general rule, an Advancement Talent should be much less profitable than a full Talent. In practice, this means that it should be on the power level of:
• +1 bonus on a skill along with some other minor benefit, +1/+1 bonus on two skills, or some other benefit.
  
• Once again, the process of designing a Talent (whether it's full or not) is art, not science.

I like it. Makes permanent advancement a long-term thing that only happens at significant points in the story, but gives shorter-term bonuses when we complete smaller objectives. Seems good to me.

I assume the GM-chosen Skill would probably be one that was used during that mission? I imagine it's probably good if the Skill we choose makes sense in some way as well, even if it isn't directly used. (E.g., Artemiy doesn't actually Shoot anyone, but he hits the range with a couple buddies and takes a gun off a bad guy, so at the end of the mission he gets an AP for Shooting.) Likewise with the Talents.

I'll echo the vote for the layout you've laid there.

I assume the GM-chosen Skill would probably be one that was used during that mission? I imagine it's probably good if the Skill we choose makes sense in some way as well, even if it isn't directly used. (E.g., Artemiy doesn't actually Shoot anyone, but he hits the range with a couple buddies and takes a gun off a bad guy, so at the end of the mission he gets an AP for Shooting.) Likewise with the Talents.

Yes, the intention is for the AP (and AT) to be related to skills the character used during the mission. I will not enforce this, however. It's cool as long as you can justify the player-chosen skill to some degree (your example sounds legit to me).

Any other comments on these ideas? Any other ideas on how character advancement could be done?

Oh, and:

He has an uneasy idea and asks, "Do you think we could draw the killer out by being very obvious about our search?"

The GM's reaction to this idea

That about concludes a short-scale mission for each of you. Some folks got more spot-light than others. But that might just be because of the types of tasks you set out to do.

Each of you get an AP for your efforts. Pick your 1 skill to go with it, justify it to some degree, and I'll finish it off with the other skill.

In this mission, Artemiy met a number of new faces, and was informed he'd be working with them. He proceeded to engage in a game of poker with some, and while it was in the end a relatively friendly affair, it still raised some points on the importance of reading potential opponents.

People is the first skill tied to this AP.

Putting a skill point in deception.

Will's eyes weren't as sharp as they likely could have been, one AP to Perception.

People is the first skill tied to this AP.

And Occultism is the second. Maybe there was something magical about those high-quality playing cards.

Putting a skill point in deception.

And the other half of the AP goes to Agility. Maybe you wished you could hide those discriminating pieces of evidence a bit faster.

Will's eyes weren't as sharp as they likely could have been, one AP to Perception.

And the other goes to Biology/chemistry. Maybe you remembered something about your school years while looking at the office plants.

I'm keeping track of the APs in the Campaign Info tab.

One into People, Jake is getting used to being part of a team again.

I'm going to be putting my point into Deception as well

I'll go with perception since Adrien believe in recollecting data before taking actions.

One into People, Jake is getting used to being part of a team again.

Get another in Endurance. If anything, your sitting muscles got a workout in the library and in the parking lot.

I'm going to be putting my point into Deception as well

The other half is Finance/law. Maybe you took some work home with you.

I'll go with perception since Adrien believe in recollecting data before taking actions.

You too, get Endurance as the second half. Even with cups of coffee, powering through the sitting sessions must have been excruciating.

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the USA. Everyone else Happy Thursday!

From the looks of things the holidays are over for now, and we can return to our regularly scheduled scheming. (Now that's a mouthful.) Any progress?

Is something the matter?

I'm not sure for other people, but I've been swamped with the end of the semester the last week or so into the coming couple days. I'll be able to post more frequently and with better content soon, I hope, but for now I figured Artemiy was just tagging along with a group to check out a crime scene, letting the others choose where.

I've just been waiting for you to take us to the taxi cab.

Well, I think some of the other players are busy with holiday stuff, as for me I just really have no idea where to go next. Jake Milo and Artemiy are planning to check out a crime scene. I'll try and think of something useful to do with myself.

I was mostly asking which crime scene you want to head to first. Sundakan/Jake seems to want the taxi, so let's go with that.

Sorry, I was travelling a couple of days ago. Short flyings but the climate delayed the things.

Would I still have my badge?

Would I still have my badge?

I'm afraid not. Standard procedures would have you forfeit it, see.

GM MM MG wrote:

Jake: Do you give your actual phone number or a fake one?

Sort of depends. Are prepaid drop phones as ubiquitous in '04 as now? I didn't get my first cell phone until '07.

As far as I know the cellphones were a bit expensive even back in '04. Availability wouldn't have been a problem, it's that if you had a second mobile phone that would count as an in-game purchase, let's say $250. But making up a fake phone number isn't that difficult. Or if you're asking whether the driver would be able to call you, sure. Let's assume that the majority of population has some kind of mobile phone.

I asked the question because there might be consequences, either way.

I was asking more for if I could easily buy a burner phone to toss after I gave out the number and they'd called.

Oh right, burner phones are a thing. I've no idea how widely-used (or known) they were in 2004, but who cares. Let's say it costs $150 to get a pre-paid, disposable phone.

And how much money do we have again?

And can we file expense reports to our mysterious benefactor?