Never Deal with a Shoggoth: A CthulhuPunk Shadowrun Story

Game Master Loup Blanc

The UCAS one would be very common, but the Vatican one would be much more rare, I would think. He keeps the other two well hidden!! LOL

At the moment, I don't have access to my own facility to work in and modify gear, and I also can't afford to purchase one on my own. Facility level equipment costs 100,000. I can buy stuff to have Shop level gear, though. I have a contact who I could talk to that can hook me up with a facility to work in, however. As the firing selection change is a considered a large modification, I'll need a facility to work on it in. I'll give my contact a ring and see if he can't help me out here.

Also, the Large Firing Modification has a Threshold of 40, so it was actually be faster to do the SMG. Alternately, I can do all the work that only requires a kit and I can give my contact a ring about a facility later to finish both projects.

Hey, would it be possible to get my contact to install a facility in my apartment in return for a favor? I took an upgrade for my Lifestyle to have the room, but I didn't have the money for one. Perhaps a job he needs done?

I fully concur with everything that Paladin just said. =)

Hmm. I'm not opposed to contacts giving jobs with extra benefits and rewards, but I wouldn't want something like that revolved in interludes without the rest of the team. After all, the runners who work together... get paid together? It's not as snappy as the established mottos...

In any case, that's certainly something for the future, but for now, I'd say work with what you have. I'll definitely add it to my list of jobs, though!

Yeah, I meant for later. Could I still call him to ask for the favor of using a facility? Like, using the contact rules? If not, I'll just buy tools I can afford for now and do some work.

I return!

I spend the last three days writing non-stop, and then I crashed to sleep for 21 hours. I managed to pick up a new (umpteenth-hand) hard drive as well today, and I'm now back in business.

I'll post a short post from Geezer in a minute, I got people to warn that I'm finally back!

Update:

It wasn't a short post. I got the writing bug after my pause, it seems. @GM, I thought it was relatively realistic, and I tried to make it as believable as possible, considering Geezer's particular skillset, but if it irks you in terms of continuity, feel free to say it wasn't canon, or happened in the past.

Following this round of belated updates--this week had some craziness, including my phone breaking--I'm letting you all know that I'm going on another trip, starting later today. This is very short-notice, I know, but I didn't know I was going until last night myself. My younger brother is still looking at colleges, but this trip also brings us near my older half-brother who I only get to see once in a great while. (Incidentally, he's the person who got me into RPGs in the first place.) His schedule happens to be open for one of the days of the trip, so I'm going along to get to see him.

Like I said, we're leaving later today, and I'll be back on this coming Tuesday. We're staying in hotels the whole time, so I SHOULD have wi-fi and time to post, but in case I don't, that's the reason why.

Hey. Quick heads up. My sister is going away to college for the first time this weekend and the whole family is going with to help her move in. I'm leaving tomorrow morning and I should have internet, but my posting may be slower than usual until Sunday.

If anyone is interested, I'm kinda doing a fun little one-off.

Let's get this craziness started.

Hey dudes, FNF sent me and Victoria a text letting us know his laptop is currently busted. As such, he doesn't really have any way of posting at the moment and doesn't have the money to fix it. He's looking into some ways to try and post, but he may be out for a while.

Well, tell Loup not to sweat it. I, for one, will be waiting with no complaint.

And I'm here to say that that may have been a false flag. It was probably just a crash, but I've had bad luck with computers in the past so I was expecting a worst case scenario. I should be okay, but if I go dark the old message stands.

Glad to see this is back! Best of luck with computer issues GM - on a related note, I backed up all of my stuff today and got an SSD, so I should be alright for the foreseeable future.

Atlas, this is positively insane, and I LOVE IT!1!, but I'm a bit overstretched by now. I'll probably add it to my 'reading list', however!

As a note that comes to mind, I want to say: Shadowrun, in some ways unlike many other RPGs, can lend a lot of agency to the players and their characters when choosing what "adventures" to partake in. In your typical fantasy game there's some world-threatening crisis that needs stopped and your (usually inherently heroic) PCs willingly take up arms against it. Even in other sci-fi games it's typically something along those lines.

Shadowrun, though, features criminals (even if they have hearts of gold, as I've no doubt our team does!) taking on high-risk jobs for payment. It's a dangerous line of work characterized by people who play it safe and smart lasting a lot longer than numbskulls who take every offer and waltz off to their deaths. As such, it's fully within the realm of possibility for a team of runners to turn down a job opportunity. Hell, it's even expected to a certain extent.

Usually this would be fielded by a decent fixer who acts as a sort of buffer against bad work--for example, Tilt is aware of certain things the team doesn't like. If a Johnson from Knight Errant were looking for a runner team to gun down Catholic orphanage that's owned by Pensodyne Genetics, he'd scoff at the ridiculous premise and pass on the offer. But a job might slip through the cracks before the details come out, or it might seem totally good until the Johnson says something that makes the team start second-guessing. And of course, the team might just decide that the last run paid enough and they'd like a vacation.

My point in all this is, I don't want you guys to ever feel like you have to take a job that I cook up for you. In fact, I don't want you to feel like there's a right or wrong response to any given job, whether it's accepting or walking away. That's not to say there won't be consequences to the choices you make, but that's all part of the game.

tl;dr--Just because you see me spend time writing up a run description/offer for the team, that doesn't mean you have to take it. I'll come up with others, and I enjoy the writing, so no worries.

When I read this I was about to write a post in direct opposition.

My friend told me this story of this one time he had written a long, beautiful adventure for his tabletop group. It started with them walking past a tavern (as many adventures do) and hearing a commotion.

They collectively said "Nah, we don't wanna mess with that" and walked off, turning 30 pages of quest into garbage.

Hence, I've often been a 'pro-railroad' guy, counseling that it's the party's job to go through the experience that the GM has crafted for them. To wit, the party gets all the say on the tactical, but very little on the strategic.

...

Then I actually read that la su that is thrown down before us and I'm wiling to make an exception. ^_^

I have always firmly been of the opinion that nothing ever goes into the garbage if it doesn't get used, so to speak. I just recycle it for later and use it again. It's not like the players are going to know if they never follow a lead, you know? This is a little different in that we've seen the start of it, but a fresh can of paint would make the job completely different to us while being the same for him from a planning perspective. That's my personal GM philosophy, anyway. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Besides, I've seen Loup have his writing thrown out when we were in class before. He'll be fine.

That said, Nathaniel is just a skeptical runner. I had every intention of taking the job, but he's not so easy to please as I am.

Hey guys, this is a blanket notice going out to all of my games here on the boards. While I am thankfully outside the path of Hurricane Harvey, current projections for Hurricane Irma are sending it barreling up the coast of Florida to sweep much of the eastern coast of the United States. As I live directly on the ocean, I'm already gearing up for a potential evacuation at the moment. While hopefully all I get is a lot of rainfall, it's likely that by the time Irma hits Maryland it will still be at least a Category 3 storm, if not worse. I will have my laptop and such in the case of an evacuation, but I likely won't be able to post with any real schedule or frequency. Moreover, given that I live more or less directly on the ocean, it's more likely than not that if I'm forced to evacuate there will not be a home for me to come back to after the storm passes. The island is not built to withstand that kind of storm, and the last time something anywhere near that deadly swept through, it made an inlet where there used to be a road. My point being, if I'm hit by the hurricane it's very likely I will be off the boards for a long while, or at least my posting will be sparse and intermittent.

I'm sure I'm not the only one following the storm on the news, but I'll do my best to keep everyone updated on my status. It's likely the storm, if it hits me at all, will make landfall here early next week. If you see on the news that the storm has hit Maryland and you don't hear from me, that's probably why. I just wanted to put this message up now as I'm prone to losing power during storms and I didn't want to leave anyone hanging.

Thanks for understanding,
Jon

I hope it isn't as bad as it looks on the news. At any rate, I hope everything is alright for you and all in the path of the tornado.

The situation from the previous hurricane down in Texas is, from what I understand, exactly as bad as it looks on the news. Thankfully, the storm itself has moved on and they can begin to do things like rebuild, but there are areas that will likely be flooded for the next month. For reference, gas prices went up over half a dollar in a week after Houston was hit. They refine about 25% of the gasoline in the US.

Irma is just not hitting Puerto Rico and then Florida, and then we'll see what happens to me.

Jesus. Well, like I said, stay safe, and thanks for the warning. Hope it (somehow) turns out to be better than it looks to be.

I've often wondered if there isn't some way to fight hurricanes. Like, if it's true that they draw their energy from the heat of the water, if we had massive ice-making machines that dumped huge amounts of ice into the way of an approaching hurricane, would that decrease it's strength?

Or if we had big, huge, gigantic concrete barricades to stand in the way and absorb the strength of the wind? (Or if large bombs went off in the middle of it, disrupting the air-flow pattern?)

Sry, I guess what I'm saying is, hurricanes bad.

I'd imagine the by-product of heat of such ice-making machines might end up causing hurricanes somewhere else, since those gubbins produce more heat than they create via ice/cold water.

Building a wall (with or without making the hurricanes pay for it *wink* ) might be a bit better an option, but it'd still be more of a patch, rather than solving the problem, or finding a smaller-scale solution to it. Speaking from an engineer/amateur physicist's point of view.

But, hurricanes truly bad.

Even worse than DAMN INTERNET BURNING MY ENTIRE, FIVE PARAGRAPH, PLAN-DETAILING, QUALITY GEEZER-ING POST! I'll get on getting that in the thread in a couple of hours.

cntl-A, cntl-C, chummer. =)

I dunno. At the very least, sending a team in to detonate an experimental bomb in the middle of a hurricane to try and dissipate it sounds like the premise for a fantastic film. Or a good shadowrun, for that matter...

Also, out of curiosity, cntl? I'm used to the keyboard abbreviation being CTRL.

Thanks, FNF! I've actually read a long discussion about what kind of 'narrative power' the players possess - I assumed that both a city map and a venue review would be available to the characters, since, well, we all have them now. That being said, I won't assume anything solid, and I'll not plan for anyone or assume what any NPC's are doing! Still, if there's criticisms to be given, I'll take them at any time and any place.

Nix, per a prior conversation with the GM, you roll Hacking with your Logic + Skill, with programs acting as a bonus (presumably you would face a penalty for not having one at all?), so your pool is likely a little bigger. Nathaniel is also in hot sim, for the record.

Ah. Right, I have 3 ranks in every program in the books, so I do have a bigger pool. And Nix has a Hot Sim module and trodes to go into the Matrix without a jack, so she can work with him.

@GM: Just a brainstorm: Would it help speed the game up if we had an easier system? Like, say, Savage Worlds Interface Zero?

It's everything Shadowrun is, but with the easier SW rules base. I could teach everyone, and we could all have converted character pretty quickly.

Just sayin'. =)

Other than Hugo, I know the rest of us are at least passable when it comes to SW; considering all of them are in an SW game I'm running, I know they at least know the basics.

If the GM wants to switch that's fine, but I would honestly prefer sticking to Shadowrun. I'm in 3 SW games at the moment and I like playing other games other than that one (although I do love it in general).

Oh no, I fully understand. I love SR too and I think it's great that I'm in a game that's running it.

I'm just tossing this out for the GM to consider. Things have been quite slow, and I was wondering if switching to something with less ponderous mechanics would help. And I know that Loup does SW because he's running a Rippers/WWI game.

I'm just thinking outside of the box to try and get a rally going.

BTW: Have you played IZ? It's amazing! =)

Never played IZ, personally. I'm using the system for an XCOM game, and I'm also in Loup's game as well as another Rippers game. He also had a Fallout game using SW at college.

He mentioned to me and Nix that he'd been pretty busy, but I'm not sure with what.

I'd put my vote in the Paladin's camp, in that I do like SW (I just started playing a game of it, with Loup, to boot!), but I just like SW's system(s).

Now, if someone was to propose running a SWIZ game... *nudge*

I'll be interested, frankly.

@GM: I hadn't posted a Geezer response, since I mentioned that I'll be visiting the chopshop, and I won't be escorting the guys/gals/wizards. I'm still checking the forums a couple of times a day, and I'll get a post going as soon as I feel I can make a good one.

Also, what's Rippers? Sounds pretty fun!

Hey there...have not played SW, but would love to give it a try sometime, but for now lets maybe stick with SR. What is IZ?? do not think I have heard of that one before...

I'd put my vote in the Paladin's camp, in that I do like SW (I just started playing a game of it, with Loup, to boot!), but I just like SW's system(s).

Now, if someone was to propose running a SWIZ game... *nudge*

I'll be interested, frankly.

@GM: I hadn't posted a Geezer response, since I mentioned that I'll be visiting the chopshop, and I won't be escorting the guys/gals/wizards. I'm still checking the forums a couple of times a day, and I'll get a post going as soon as I feel I can make a good one.

Also, what's Rippers? Sounds pretty fun!

Assuming you're referring to XCOM (maybe you aren't) over half the people in this game are actually in that one... it's a real party. Rippers is a Victorian monster hunting setting, although Loup's game is set in 1920s Vegas. The standard Rippers game I'm in, I play the most terrifying peasant woman you'll ever meet.

Interface Zero is just a cyberpunk rules setting for SW, I believe.

There are Savage World rules for everything. It's pretty great, though I'm not personally familiar with Interface Zero. I might have the book on my hard drive somewhere though. I should take a look. I'm kinda bad at Shadowrun, but I'm enjoying the system, but it never hurts to learn about new ones.

Has anyone heard from Loup in the past 2 weeks?

Holy drek I see that Loup posted to StoryTeller Shadow's Recruitment thread -Wednesday-. While we've been idle two weeks.

Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Sorry. That was inappropriate to post that to Discussion.

Sorry all, I've been kind of off the boards for more than a week here, for a lot of reasons that I don't really want to go into. Also sorry that my first time back on the site I was only able to post in a recruitment--I'd intended to get around to everywhere that day, but it didn't happen.

I'm hopeful to get us moving here again, although I can't promise it'll happen today or tomorrow--later today I have a real-time game over Discord with some folks, and tomorrow I have training for a job and I don't know how long that'll be (as they haven't told me). So my apologies for everything, and know that I am still around and hopeful to get this going again.

I don't know if anyone else is in his other games, but Loup did get up some posts in the other games he's running. I won't speak for him, but it seems like stuff is letting up and he'll be getting us running again soon.

Glad to see the GM back, and us getting this back on track. Geezer going into shadowrunning to help his business and household somehow strikes my fancy, so I decided to roll with it!

And speaking as a player, here, why is something telling me that that gang situation is a bit more complicated than it sounds...

Not positive if you took this into account, but my apartment has the Free Access quality, which makes it harder for intruding systems to find us. I forget exactly what the threshold increase is, but that's part of the reason he always goes to his apartment to hack. So, I don't know if that would prevent us from being discovered, but it's worth mentioning. We can always stick with it and just remember it for next time tol, if you want.

Nathaniel is in hot sim, as hacking attenpts only take an hour as opposed to a day. I added the +2 dice to my Hacking roll earlier.

The Free Access quality only applies in cases where they're trying to Trace your location, whereas right now, the system's Firewall just happened to catch your hacking attempt. I'm also not sure whether hot sim itself reduces the hacking time--from my reading that's only determined by using AR versus VR for the work. Hot sim does make you better at pretty much everything during the hacking, though, and if you already included the bonus then you're certainly using it. Nix, if you're in hot sim as well, then your initiative technically beats the IC--not that it matters for this passs, since its attack didn't do anything.

I was thinking of VR versus AR.

I'm using whatever Paladin is. However, since I kind of don't really know all the details of the hacking subsystems in detail I forgot to add the bonuses. Nix mostly has computer skills because she'd logically be trained to disable computer and electronic security as well as physical security.

Hey guys! I'm in the process of moving for my new job, so I might be sketchy in the next couple of days. Just warning you, and I'll be moving on with a post ASAP.

Quick update - a particular individual managed to drek up my name on the tenancy agreement, so I'm currently in England, but without a place for my own yet while we get the paperwork sorted.

Ironically, that particular individual's last name is Talbot.