Connections makes sense. After all, Nomanisan Island.
I like the idea.
Connections is interesting and I also like the idea a lot, but I am struggling for what Nature's contact (for lack of a better term) would be. She doesn't really...participate in humanity, except to try and wipe them all out. They're just getting a reprieve because of the alien invasion.
Nature - I was thinking maybe you could have an animal "contact", but having just one animal would be pretty useless, and giving you access to many animals would be too handy. Any counter-thoughts?
I had a thought about this last night. What if there is a cult that worships me? They could be either small or scattered (since they would be a cult), but then I could have a contact among human people that Nature wouldn't even know she had.
I was tossing this exact question around earlier.
Perhaps an Enemy of my Enemy situation.
Say an atlantean kill all surface dwellers faction/cult. They hate you as you are a surface dweller (in their eyes at least) but you are useful to them as they can point you at targets while maintaining deniability.
They are useful to you because they can provide support and as they are, for example, magic or psi rather than tech focused they do not do the scale of environmental damage that your usual targets do.
Is short you are on each others To-be-killed lists but are pretty far down so there have always been bigger fish to fry.
Jack is easy, smugglers, black marketeers, even the Family is an option.
Ok, so let's do this! Everyone gets the Connections Edge for free.
Please describe the connection's job/situation in some detail, so I can decide what kinds of things s/he can do for you.
If you don't have Persuasion, you'll probably have to spend a Benny or two to get some help from them. And if you want to make better use of them, you can get Persuasion with an Advancement.
Also, any other final thoughts on the HQ situation? There's four points left...
Also also, Jack brought up the topic of Minions. While they're usually bought with PP, I'd be willing to give you some stay-in-the-lair mooks for...$1000/month?
I like the idea of there being a cult of Nature. There is one guy, by the name of Jacob Patterson, who will be the point of contact for the group. He's a lackey, but a brave one (most of them were took afraid to approach her directly).
Think Enkidu's contacts would be in the high-end medical research/medical field. He's spent his entire life living in Children's Hospitals and treatment centres, and to a lot of those people, he'll always be the poor sick kid they worked with for years, always managing to survive when so many other kids died. Doesn't matter what he did later, he's still that kid.
They would have access to experimental drugs, doctors, treatments, medical and scientific equipment, prosthetics, as well as potential access to restricted scientific locations in Star City.
Dark Angel's contact will probably be the first person she met upon her return; a young man named Carl Penneck. He was the one who found her unconscious in an alleyway when she was returned to Earth.
Contact: Vincent "Vanessa" Redgrave.
Vanessa is a courier/smuggler/fixer/coyote operating out of Star City.
He is known to work both with the Family and with other movers & shakers in the Star City black market. Exactly how closely Vanessa is tied to any faction, person or group is up to Zen. Jack has not see Vanessa for some time. For all Jack knows Vanessa could have joined the Family and be a fully 'made man'.
Vanessa got his nickname from his red hair and his last name. No relation so don't ask. He hates the nickname but as it has saved him from jail time, miscommunication from a confidential source had the police looking for a woman, he keeps it.
Uses: Vanessa will mainly be useful for introductions. He knows people who know people if you know what I mean. A good word from him could get a meeting with the Family where they talk with us rather than at us, sort of thing.
He also will have access to the Star City black market. He is good at finding things/guns/ammo etc and will, if he can or if we do him a favor, give us a discount.
Alpha's contacts would probalby be specialized equipment suppliers. A black market connection if he possible. That way he'd be able to get access to the equipment he needs to make sure he can complete the missions he's taken.
Suppliers could run from fire arms to special equipment, maybe even an alien tech scavenger.
Wolf Spider would probably have a couple of minor crooks and villains as his contacts. He's had a long rogue's gallery of villains and heroes he's fought but not all of them hate him (or he them). His contact would probably just be whoever he gets his costume materials from: some crook with a minor power to reshape small amounts of simple materials.
Minions would be better bought w/ power points from the base. No loyalty issues, no upkeep, better skills, and they replace themselves if killed.
But that is FAR in the future.
Lair priorities now are security, food, power, and quarters. Once we have the cash for those we can start thinking about adding in goodies.
Zen, Roland brings up a good point in the main thread:
Eventually I hope we can work our way up to insurance companies. No, really, I've got a plan to kidnap some high muckitymuck, mind-rape him for his passwords, then walk in and transfer truly insulting amounts into accounts that we can access. If we liquidate them quickly enough we should be able to get away with it.
Is the house of cards and blind hope we call the international banking system extant enough to make this kind of theft an option?
Does Star City even have functioning banks? Is everything on a cash/barter basis circa 13th ce? Or 17th ce metal/goods backed notes? Or modern fiat currency?
International banking took a nose-dive with the V'sori invasion, but it has slowly been regaining its footing.
Local banks have fared far better, and given the state of technology pre-invasion, I would imagine that most people still use credit/debit cards.
Small local banks probably don't have much cash on-hand, but larger central offices located in Uptown might...
Okay, bad news on my end. My computer is down for what duration I cannot say. I might be back online in a few days, it may be a few weeks. Needless to say, this suspends my gaming. I can log on through my wife's computer, but I cannot access any of my files. Hopefully, this will be resolved within a week. Please bear with me.
If I am in your game, bot me as necessary (though I will try to log on once a day).
If you are in one of my games, I don't know what to say. I will try to keep things moving as best I can with what I have to work with, but as I said, my files are inaccessible right now. Just hang in there and we'll be back!
Apologies for not being active. Been unfortunately busy with a few things in real life. I'll endeavour to get up to date and participatory asap.
You picked a good time Enkindu. We appear to be between things at the moment.
Ok, now that you've got some money, it's time to re-visit creating the HQ again. These are things that would cost you money to "install" :
Advanced condition. +5 pts
Command Center. +1 pt.
Garage, +2 pts.
Kitchen, +1 pt. I also think we should have a primitive replicator that just makes us food because that is a FANTASTIC thing to have. Otherwise do you know how much time we're gonna spend grocery shopping? +1 pt.
Library/computer room because bonuses to things are awesome. +1pt
Medical Center. +2 pts.
Personal Quarters, +2 pts gets us 8 lavishly advanced rooms.
Security Cells. At least one. +1 pt, because we're probably gonna take someone alive at some point.
Secure Access +1 pt so the GM can't randomly have small children showing up in our underwear drawers.
Dr. Toxic wants his own lab (+2).
Keep in mind, generators are monitored closely by the V'sori, so you can't just say you get one. You'll have to rip one off to get it.
Size : Huge (7 points) - built-in.
Teleporter (1 mile long underground tunnel) +2 - provided by Dr. Destruction.
We had a discussion about Camouflaged and Well Hidden, that wasn't really resolved. Here's my suggestions :
Camouflaged +1 (outside only) - built-in.
Well Hidden +3 (tight-beam comms, blackened windows, EMI shielding, etc.) - this you'd have to pay for.
So that's 22 points of stuff you'd have to pay for, for a total of $88,000. And you have used 32 of your 40 points available.
Anyone want to add anything to this?
If we want a generator, destroying a building is a fantastic way to get one.
Right. We need to give someone the authority to manage the lair. Construction by committee, while normally effective. does not seem to be the best plan for this case.
So who wants the job?
and
Are we allowing them the proceeds of this job to get the work done?
Please post whether or not you want to be Lair-Master and if you release your share of the Nightclub job for the work.
My answer:
1. I do not want the job
2. I, reluctantly, release my share.
I have no desire to be Lairmaster and Angel has no need of money, so she will release her share.
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Mmmrmph. I'm always leery of giving any party member anything more, in ways of say-so or anything, than anyone else, but in this instance I suppose we'll avoid arguments if we have one person to say "that is our final answer" and have an end to it.
I, uh, do want the job. Seems a good fit since I have a passing interest in the HQ. (I suppose there will be an election if someone else wants it?)
And since this job was easier than most, I see no problem with giving up my share.
Mmmrmph. I'm always leery of giving any party member anything more, in ways of say-so or anything, than anyone else, but in this instance I suppose we'll avoid arguments if we have one person to say "that is our final answer" and have an end to it.
Agreed. The job needs to be done and it is easier if one player takes the admin work. Kind of like the poor slob (usually me) who gets the job of keeping the contents of the community bag of holding/wand of cure wounds up to date.
If anyone has a real issue with any decisions made then we can work from there. We just need someone to do the paperwork and keep track of things. Especially as it looks like the Eclipse pad will be built piecemeal as we get more funds.
I figured if there was more than one candidate and the High Noon solution was rejected we could just have a roll off.
If it's not obvious by now, Nature is an immortal walking natural disaster. She has little interest in human posessions, and will only hesitantly even spend time in the base, so I'm really not the best person for it.
I dont have much to do with the base yet, so im not interested. I didn't do anything, so I guess I can give up my share
-Posted with Wayfinder
Alpha will do it in a practical manner, but he prefers to be on-site doing missions.
I don't mean to impose my will on the group, but I thought the whole point of this mission was to get the money to outfit the HQ. Why did needing to "give up your share" of the loot suddenly become a thing?
And Alpha, I think they're asking for someone to just make decisions about *creating* the HQ, not stay there and "manage" it full-time.
Are you still interested?
I don't mean to impose my will on the group, but I thought the whole point of this mission was to get the money to outfit the HQ. Why did needing to "give up your share" of the loot suddenly become a thing?
And Alpha, I think they're asking for someone to just make decisions about *creating* the HQ, not stay there and "manage" it full-time.
Are you still interested?
Well the point was to get money full stop.
We need it for food/clothes/basic supplies. Building up the lair will solve a number of these problems. Quarters for clothing and shelter, Kitchen and auto-chef/minion for food.However we also need money for guns. About half the group has no or only limited ways to harm folks wearing heavy armor. Money can fix that. Additionally going up quislings like the Slashers gives us a chance for some high-tech/heavy weapons as loot.
So that was my reasoning.
As far as the shares. It is good to establish as soon as possible how income/loot will be dealt with. Equal shares keeps everything simple and will work for villains such as ourselves.
As far as the Lair Zen has it right. Just looking for a Player to take on the paperwork/fiddly details. Nothing to do with the Charactor at all.
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Alright, screw it, we're starting to get bogged down here. (When you take something exciting in every way, but then make it boring, that's called "pulling a Zack." Or, rather "dropping a Snyder".
-I'm- the guy that makes the call on the building. Anyone else can fight me for it. The battle will be a fight for who can say the longest word. And we're including German, a language I sort of speak.
We're going forward with the points as detailed, but we only have enough money for 20 points, so we're dropping Doc's lab (sorry Doc).
Also, we're swapping out the Security Cell for 1 point of Defenses. That gives us 2 points worth, so we can get Attack, Ranged, level 1. Auto turrets everywhere!
If anyone wants to debate this, the caveat is you also have to post in Gameplay. We're turning into Debate: Super Edition! here, so let's go beat up a kid for his lunch money. =)
Apologies, rough college week. Had to pull an all-nighter and a half so I'll be posting in character tomorrow morning when I can think a bit more thoroughly.
I wouldn't mind managing base details, but it seems that Thomas is much better versed in the options and has a sense of everyone's needs. As long as he takes input and requests seriously, he seems like a good fit.
I do think that "splitting" funds is complicating things. However, group benefits are a serious concern so I would propose any haul of cash or funds, half goes to communal benefit (base upgrades, info buy offs, etc) and the other half is split into personal funds for those of us who have characters that rely on equipment.
I'll be posting in character in the morning when I get my creativity back.
Sorry I've been absent. I just got out of the hospital. I nearly dehydrated myself into some serious trouble. I will try to catch up.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Also, we're swapping out the Security Cell for 1 point of Defenses. That gives us 2 points worth...
I'm not following your logic. You have enough money for 20 points' worth of stuff, so you dropped Doc Tox's lab to bring it down to 20. Dropping the Security cell *does* give you 1 point back, but how do you get that you now have enough money for 2 points for Defenses?
D'oh! I even *read* that in the book and missed it...
Good work Thomas.
(Though I would have gone Minions over autoturrets. More flexible)
But autoturrets can't feel empathy for human life.
After going over everyone's plans. I feel like Wolf Spider's really small time compared to everyone else. :P
But auto-turrets can't feel empathy for human life.
they also can't clean the toilet. We live with Enkidu and Doc Toxic, enough said.
;7)
After going over everyone's plans. I feel like Wolf Spider's really small time compared to everyone else. :P
You are a spider. You lurk and let the opportunities come to you.
Wolf - with Wall Walker, Lockpicking and Danger Sense, there's probably few places you couldn't get access to and roam around in freely.
Get creative and pull a job of your own, like Jack and Nature!
I forget are V'sori blades (I am assuming the blade I took off the Slasher mook was Fish-tech) Heavy weapons?
Also is this a dagger, short sword, sword, rapier, greatsword, katana or what? Need to know for the stats and such.
Vibro-knife : Damage Str+d6+2, Wt 1, Heavy Weapon, AP 2
Vibro-knife : Damage Str+d6+2, Wt 1, Heavy Weapon, AP 2
Thank you.
I look forward to much stabbing
I must apologize, I've been neglective of this game. Life has been distracting me a great deal lately. I feel like I may be too far behind to catch up. I am considering dropping out, out of fairness to everyone. If you'd rather I pull it together to get caught up, I did notice a few other apologies of a similar nature up above. Let me know.
I'd say stay. I like your character concept and I'm not that active right now, either.
I say stay as well. Without you around Jack might have to do some work.