I'm posting this to all of my SW games, I hope the DM doesn't mind...
I’d like to try running a Savage Worlds Necessary Evil (NE) campaign. Executive summary : the PC’s are super-villians, and are Earth’s last defense against a race of aliens that came to visit, wiped out all the Earth’s super-heroes, and are now taking over the Earth.
If you’re interested, please go to Recruitment.
I've already done some reimagining for some of the things I didn't like. My Moses and Kayla Kortex are a little different from the Moses and Kayla Kortex in the book, as are some of the other NPCs. That's par for the course with most RPGs, and I usually shift stuff around to fit my campaign as needed, nbd. What's more frustrating is that things that get mentioned explicitly in the story then aren't really statted or expanded on in any way.
To whit: the story included with the Terrible Valley of Static explicitly mentions that a second TAP helps you to deal with ghosts and hyper combat with ghosts, then helpfully doesn't stat a second TAP. They do have stats for a Data Spike Receiver Module that allows you to ghost, which is also mentioned in the story, and explicitly states that it needs a second TAP to activate and... Argh. They explicitly mention that Ghosts can't attack you when you have your TAP off. Neat! So once you know that, why would you ever turn your TAP back on?? Sure, being unplugged is a hindrance in a major city, but in Phoenix, you're not going to get harassed by mall cops for having your TAP off, nobody's going to give you guff for pushing open doors, the city's full of ghosts and the Deep wants to kill you. Most of the features of a TAP (that are actually explained, natch) don't even work right inside the Valley! There's some implications there about what technology can and can't be used without turning on your TAP, but that's never clarified either. Where do I draw the line? Can people with cyberlimbs still use their arms without having a TAP on?* Can you drive a car? Can you use your gun? What if it's a smartgun? What if you have cyberorgans? If any of that stuff was impossible without a TAP, you'd think they'd mention it explicitly since that seems like the sort of thing that would really matter. What does a TAP even look like?! It's an implant in your CNS, that's about as far as the book goes. And I've tried digging up clarification on the Gunmetal Games forums. Billy Black-Eyes' helpful response to f~%!ing everything is that it's up to the GM. Rad! But I don't want to homebrew my own game, because I suck at doing that. I want to play yours, Bill! I paid money to play yours!!
This is swiftly becoming my personal pet peeve with a bunch of SW licenses. They establish some cool stuff but don't apply any critical thinking to it, and they don't marry the cool stuff in any meaningful way to the statistics. It's like the gameplay and story are sitting in different cubicles and they don't like each other, and if you put them in a room, they get into an argument. The GM goes "guys, guys! can't we all just get along?" And they go "yeah right buddy, what do you think this is, Deadlands Classic?" I could rant for a f+%&ing hour about how badly the Siphoning gets managed in Hellfrost statistically when you compare it to the effect that it's supposed to have in the story. but that's way off topic.
I guess what I'm saying here is if it seems like I'm making stuff up as I go along, that's because I totally am, because half the stuff in the book isn't explained or makes no sense when you consider the implications for longer than thirty seconds. /Rant
*to be fair, that one got clarified on the forums. All your cyber works with or without a TAP. That includes stuff like smartgun targeting systems which really seem like they should break when you turn your TAP off, but whatever
With the rant over, here's rules clarification for the stuff Kayla just did and explained.
DATA SPIKE RECEIVER MODULE
A Data Spike Receiver Module (DSRM) digitizes a character’s
avatar into a free-form Hyper Object and downloads it to a Jump
Chair. Must be installed over a secondary TAP (already included in the strain cost) which balances the neural load required to ghost. As a handy secondary function, this also helps to mitigate damage, counting as an additional 2 points of neural toughness.
• Strain: 2
DOHS Attack
A Denial-of-Hyper-Service attack is just like an old school DDOS. It's pretty easy for an enterprising hacker can set up a simple set of commands to launch a few thousand requests at a target. Conversely, it's pretty easy for another hacker or a SysOp to detect and react to. Treat this as a trick roll between the hacker's smarts and the target's smarts. If the hacker wins, the target's firewall is reduced by 2 until their next action. If the hacker wins with a raise, the target's firewall is reduced by 2 until their next action, and they are shaken.
If its any consolation at all GM, when I'm at the helm at least 30% of all the crap I do is ad hoc, ESPECIALLY in a system like Savage Worlds.
As a player, I expect such things. Thanks for clarifying though.
Yeah, I figure it will come up a lot due to the nature of SW's rules (Ye olde Faste! Furiose! Funne!™) but there are a lot of story elements in IZ2.0 in particular that seem like they should get something in the rules and just... Don't.
I'm also willing to hear people out if one of my rules or things I come up with on the fly is confusing or a problem. See again: I kind of suck at homebrew. :)
Just curious, if 1dr0meda used the jump chair, she could project herself out as a ghost?
Treat this as a trick roll between the hacker's smarts and the target's smarts. If the hacker wins, the target's firewall is reduced by 2 until their next action. If the hacker wins with a raise, the target's firewall is reduced by 2 until their next action, and they are shaken.
So "their next action" refers to the target's next action, right? Not the hacker's next action?
Yes, 1dr0meda is now jumpchair compatible. I can send you all the rules with regards to it if you don't have a copy of the Phoenix book. If you'd like to have an avatar on hand in case you end up ghosting at some point, you create it exactly like you make a normal Mesh avatar in the core book. :)
And yes, it's the target's next action.
I do not have the Phoenix book. I'm willing to get one, but if you prefer we not have copies, feel free to send me what I will need to know to operate a jumpchair, at least if you think there is a reasonable chance 1dr0meda will be able to use one to help the team. I'll look at the rules for Mesh avatars in the meanwhile.
I should have asked this in gameplay when talking to Kayla, but I forgot. Is there any way for someone with a TAP turned on to distinguish a ghost from a real person/creature, other than the obvious act of turning off the TAP to see if anything disappears? Is it a notice roll or is there something that gives it away?
It seems that when the others were dealing with the ghost at Nexxon, they did not realize it was a ghost. I was hoping someone would describe that part of their adventure so I could have something I could add to 1dr0meda's knowledge of the phenomenon. I'll post something in the gameplay thread to elicit some information on that in character.
Also, how do you want to handle the DOHS attacks? Is it just a form of hypercombat or does 1dr0meda need to write an engram and have it slotted into place to make such attacks? If the latter, how do you want to handle the rolls to see how long it takes 1dr0meda to program one?
Finally, I've been preoccupied in RL and not attending to this game as closely as I am now, so forgive the delay, but I just remembered that you suggested Syzygy could be housed in a drone. Any available at Moses' place? If not, I'll inquire about same with Derek's when it seems right. I should give Syzygy a better body than the simpet.
We're trying to get into Kitsune's family's corporation headquarters, to see what resources we might find/use.
Hey, so two things:
1. I'm going to be out of town for the next five days getting drunk and talking like a pirate. Yarrr. I'm bringing my tiny little laptop and my phone can tether, but I'm not sure what the reception is going to be like at the camp site. Posts may be sparing yet again, but they'll level out once I get back on Tuesday morning.
2. How do we feel about roll20 for maps? I do a lot of my posting from work, but I can't access Google docs from these computers (bizarrely, r20 is okay).
1. Have fun, yarrgh!
2. Roll 20 is great for maps !
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Yarrrr!
Aye, matey. I be in the same skulking sloop, as 'twere. Th' scurvy googlin' docs be like warts on a harlot, but roll 20 be smooth as the edges of a gold coin plucked from the cold hand of the ship's captain that you ran through from behind while he was battling three other of yer swarthy dogs.
So grab some grog an' man a gangplank for me, an' lots o' other things that the band Alestorm sings aboot!
I can't access roll20 from work, might I suggest Google Drawing instead? It's not as fancy but its super easy to access and use. (If you can use MSpaint you can use Drawing)
It looks like I can't get a hold of Google Drawings from work computers either. I could also just look into doing one of those ASCII maps at the bottom of my updates... >_>
Hmm. I can host the Drawings if that's the problem. Or is the problem that your work filter is blocking access to Google apps?
I've used Roll20 with no problems.
I belong to Roll20, two other GM's use it in games I'm in.
That and my crippling depression. :)
Go ahead and sign into the Roll20 campaign when you can. I'll get everybody hooked up with their tokens and tabbed over to the map once we're in.
Ghiv, I can't reach google-much-of-anything from work computers. It kind of mystifies me that Paizo/Roll20 is okay, but if I stay really quiet, maybe the firewall techs won't notice. :')
I'm logged into your Roll20 game...
Just posted something in Roll20.
Cool. Everybody who's logged in, I've got you set up with permissions for your character token--Alanna and Neon, your tokens are set so anyone can move them, so you can go ahead and adjust/post your actions once you log in, and I'll ratchet the permissions down when they're available. I don't have any of that fancy DYNAMIC LIGHTIN' like other GMs but I'll reveal pretty wide swathes as they become relevant.
May adjust this map slightly, but the floor plan shouldn't change. It's just that Roll20's map editor is lowkey ass for building a map this size tile-by-tile and the tiles not lining up to the grid like they should is driving me bonkers. :')
So having the map, I see the tent is a ways into the room. If 1dromeda/Syzygy don't detect any traps, she will advance toward the ten. What is the scale for movement? As I figure it, a pace of 4 is 8 yards = 24 feet, which is 5 squares (assuming each square is 5 feet as with Pathfinder). I'll move her and Syzygy that far, but if she notices something odd in the path, she'll stop.
I've always played that a pace of 6 was 30' not...6x2x3=36ft
Like, a pace of 6 = 6 squares of 5ft movement.
Otherwise movement becomes a maddeningly complex series of mathematical computations.
Works for me, not that I find the math maddening. Is it okay with the GM?
Why not just make each square 1 pace (which is technically 6 feet according to RAW), and leave it at that? That's how I've done it when I've run SW with maps.
I would say that a pace is a pace for the purposes of SW. I'm hard-pressed to think of a situation where the exact amount of feet has been particularly important (though it is kind of weird they went with 6 feet per pace instead of 5...).
Perhaps set up a Google Doc graphic with the map of the second floor to help keep track of placement up there. If everyone shifts to that location, then the Roll20 location can reflect that.
So I'm going to do my best to update in a reasonable amount of time. Bear with me for a moment. My neighbor is abusing his girlfriend and I took umbrage with that and got into a fistfight with the dude over it. Spent a lot of time dealing with police reports and shit over the last couple of days. Also sleeping like 3 hours/night while cuddling a baseball bat because despite God's loving presence motherf+$~er is still not in jail and now he knows my face and name.
Hang in there. Sorry to hear about such violence. Hope you remain safe and it gets resolved quickly. Don't worry about posting here until things settle down.
I've been too upset to post since Sunday due to the Charlottesville events, which happened just up the road. It's a event I might have attended in support of the resistance to the white supremacists but I had to work on Saturday.
Yikes, hope all resolves well, Aloha.
Hang in there too, 1.
Yeah, resolution of that took a lot longer than I initially planned and I'm not thrilled but I'm out of state for some work stuff and I'm safe. I'm sorry you were in such close proximity to Charlottesville, 1. Hopefully everything has calmed down there a bit now.
I'll be updating today and most likely going to forego the map for a minute as it's not worth the time/effort investment commensurate to what we get out of it.
I'm still here and ready to continue. Glad things are better at your end GM Ten-Speed.
Hey guys.
I lost a friend earlier this month that was one of the first people I played tabletop games with. It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth surrounding gaming and use of time. At the same time I went home for training, then went back to my regular job, then to funerals and a wedding and it amounted to me not actually having a day off at home since August. I also have terrible avoidance issues with things I feel conflicted about, so rather than at least letting you guys know I just continued to not update. That's a bad scene.
I do really love this campaign and these characters, so I'm going to continue to update to the best of my ability. I know it sucks waiting on the GM to update. To that end I'm bowing out of most of my other PBPs on Paizo, leaving only the ones that I actually run and one other that's already very slow paced. That should leave me with a better amount of freetime to actually run these games. It may still be slow going (shooting for updating 2-4 times a week. I know the Paizo gold standard is every day, but that rarely seems to last long) but it should be more consistent.
Thanks for playing guys. I don't want this campaign to die.
Sorry to hear about your loss. Take your time to recover. I really like this campaign too, and am willing to slow the pace down.
I can completely sympathize and am sorry so much has been laid upon you. Obviously, I'm happy for the game to continue, but only if it still brings the GM some happiness and fulfillment. No point in doing anything like this out a sense of obligation alone. Hang in there and I hope things get back to normal with time.
Yeah, you do whatever you need to do to keep yourself healthy. I for one am not going anywhere :)
It definitely does still bring me happiness. I love this campaign, everybody's characters, and how everyone's beginning to really form up as a team. If it was solely obligation, I wouldn't be raring to restart the game.
Thanks for the kind words everybody. :)
1dr0meda and Syzygy - well, the Hacking rules just talk about doing damage, but a Hyper Reality attack sounds like it could be much more flexible in what you could do to your opponent (like "Control Security Camera" on page 281). And there's a line on page 276 : "Like characters, AI Sprites use the Hacking (Hyper combat) skill to make attacks against their enemies" (and I noticed that you listed her skill as "Cyber combat", but there's no such skill listed in the book). So Syzygy can do Hyper Reality attacks, but a Corporate camera has a very high difficulty...
Altho, with the right Trapping, a Psychotropic attack (TAP Engram) could cause the robots to become "Delusional" on an opposed Raise (which is tough to get!), and see things that aren't there, or vise-versa - could Syzygy create that engram on-the-fly (-4)?[/ooc]
Now that I look it over, programming is a knowledge skill (or skill specialization) which 1dr0meda has but Syzygy does not, so I guess Syzygy couldn't program on the fly, but she can engage in hacking activities.
Knowledge (Programming): Characters use this skill when attempting to make any kind of change to a network they have hacked. This skill allows a character to undo damage done as a result of a hack. With it, a character can do things like undo an edit to a data file or video, reconstruct a deleted file, repair an AMS (see Active Memory Sectors on page 274, in the Setting Rules chapter), recover a deleted skill Engram, or reconnect a TAP that has gone offline.
So Syzygy could engage in hypercombat but first she has to get past the firewall, I think. It's been a while so I'll have to reread things to be sure.
ooc update: my dad died. We had to go through some struggles to get the ashes (he died out of state and didn't have current contact info for his kids on him, I guess). Memorial is tomorrow followed by Thanksgiving with the family. I know the RPs I run have pretty much lost all momentum over the last two or three months and f*$+ 2017 seriously. I'll let you all know what the plan is once I'm home this weekend.
Oh man. I'm so sorry. No hurry man, take your time.
Very sorry for your loss and other problems. I've been joining some other games so when things resume (as I hope they will although I totally understand if they don't) my posting time may be impaired.
Aloha - so very sorry to hear about your dad. I hope eventually you can continue to DM, but take *as much time as you need* to recover. We'll be waiting.
So sorry to hear that, Aloha.
Best thoughts to you and your family.
As the others said, the game will wait and so will we
Take care...