In reply to Raven (msg # 35):

It's been gone over a bit in this thread (I think it's this thread).  Please feel free to continue that discussion if you like.  ^_^

Edit: The first and biggest reason for moving back further is because I simply picked a number during game idea thread.  If I'd actually looked at the timeline, I'd have picked an earlier number then.
Awakening happens in 2011.   Dunkelzahn appears in 2012.  The Great Ghost Dance (and the series of events that happen which will ultimately lead to NAN) around 2014.   Cyberware appears in 2019.  And so forth.   My reading of the timeline says that by 2030, the mega-corps are already in place; so if you want to produce meaningful change then you're wanting right around 2012.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:23, Sun 06 Aug 2023.

I've just been thinking about Raven's comment some more.

The reason we are going back so far is among other things to 'not have too different a timeline'. There are several reasons for this. The availability of existing resources to help put everything in place without having to do a load of checking for example. And for me it's important because I play other games, and I would just get confused, make mistakes, forget... and so on.

But a very simple change that wouldn't impact much, if anything, would be to have orks and trolls arrive at the same time as elves. That would mean IronSides would still stick out, but in the 'oh look Mommy it's a troll' way, rather than 'EEK WHATS THAT! RUN!' sort of way.

Mind you... I would quite like the 'EEK WHATS THAT! RUN!' if I was playing IronSides. Free +10 circumstance die bonus to intimidate most of the time.

Alright, as long as Ironside is fine with whatever we are going with, I am fine with it.

GM, got a request (again). Would it be possible to change my character name? I am just not feeling Raven here after changing the character. How about Cain?

In reply to Raven (msg # 39):

No problem!

Okay, so there's a couple of things I'd like to go over and be assured that there's a general consensus before I get very far into the planning stage.   If you've got a better suggestion, please toss it out.

So, yes.  Everyone please speak up, I'll be able to start working things up once we've gotten these bullet points (pun intended) solidified.

---

I'm looking through the run rewards.   I'm planning on keeping the listed karma awards; but considering a replacement for nuyen, assuming how the overall story works out (see below).  I'm leaning toward giving out temporary Edge (usable until the next time karma is awarded).

Nextly, I need a firm consensus on who's ultimately going to be paying the bills and otherwise keeping you in the latest toys.   While I've suggested U.S. Government in some form; if anyone has an alternative that they'd prefer, please speak up.   Assuming no other suggestions that the group wants to do; I'd like a consensus between: Homeland Security (Internal Intelligence), CIA (External Intelligence), or Military.

Finally, unless there's an actionable alternative to 2012; we'll go ahead and use that time period.   I'm not going to fix an amount of time between runs; and as long as everyone picks up the Advanced Runners Pack, I'm going to hand-wave away lifestyle and equipment.

 Homeland security is a red line I won't cross. I can't RP working for such an evil organisation. My vote is the military. But I'm good CIA or military.

Nuyen is going to be plentiful. I can't see how Angel isn't going to be the richest woman on the planet within a few days if she wants to be. I should say that in a former life I was a cyber security architect for a European high street bank, so I know exactly how weak their IT security was at that time. Do we want $250M in unmarked Euros? No problem. Probably two weeks to set it up. And it's not like we have an objection to theft.

That's especially with the others to do protection. We should embrace that. By that I mean that nuyen dollars won't matter much for what we want to do. I mean sure we can buy some stuff but at the end of the day it will be about us. That's pretty much the same premise with almost every super hero game (and this is now a super hero game).

And the Military or CIA aren't exactly going to say 'no' if we say 'we need to spend 10 million because of this schitck' given the scope of what they can get from us. We will be the hottest propery on the planet.

I don't know that you need to worry about a replacement. XP matters. Having fun matters. I wouldn't worry about Nuyen. Just say 'you have enough' and then ignore it.

Oh just to add to it. NP if we are coerceed into HS or something. It's only voluntarily that I'm talking about. If we were, I'd do my very best IC to destroy it and expose it rather than what we were there to do. But I'm good if that's the thrust of the compaign we want.

If we go military or CIA I can get behind it be and an enthusiastic member

What is Homeland Security up to? I am not really all that familiar with this part of the setting.

Anyway, I am fine with working for whoever is least likely to disappear and then vivisect us. If that's the Government, that's fine. Cain's goal is screwing up things for the corps, so strengthening national governments (plural) at corporate expense is fine by him. I'd be fine with also going completely freelance and working from the shadows, but I am not at all sure we could keep our secret secret without help.

Can we agree to leave real world politics off the table?  I'm sure that there's things that the government is doing that we (personally) don't like.  Admittedly, I'm making the rather broad assumption that something like Homeland (i.e. focused on internal security and isn't the FBI) exists in some form.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that the corporations would not only happily disappear you, but dissect you at the appropriate point of time.   And just hand-waving the away money is fine by me, also.

No problem. I think I misinterpreted Angel's post and assumed there's something in the setting where HS is up to no good.

Not an ingame thing. I just have real world issues which I'd like to dodge.

How about just a name change and then we can leave the real world politics out of it? I like that idea. We could call them ... The FBI maybe. Or the USDD. The Us Defense Division. Or US Internal Security. Or even the NSA (My existance would terrify and delight them. Encryption? That's so last year. You're still using public key encryption???? Ha ha ha. Which governments messages do you want to decrypt. Let me make you a machine that can do it.

As for the corporate thing. I think of all the characters in any game we could pick that could fade away into 2012, or escape a 'disappearing' a shadowrunning team is at the top of the list. I don't think a 2012 corporation has any idea of just how deadly or effective that team is. Remember magic has been around for around a year. Technomancy is unheard of. Cyberware /Bioware totally science fiction.  Especially as prime runners. Within a month we have all the cash and identities we need. A quite country change or two, build up the power and money and tech base. And the world is ours...

All that said go for the GMs idea and work with the government. He has a vision for the game. Let's run with that.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 47):

So, we'll change Homeland to No Such Agency (NSA) then.

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Just to go over it again.   Please either list them in order and/or offer an alternative suggestion....I have no particular preference between the three.

• NSA: You'll basically be doing what you were doing before the time slip, focused primarily on North America.
• CIA: As above, except focused on external locations.
• Military: It's probably easiest to pick this one as more action heavy than the other two, but I won't know for sure until I get into the planning stage.

This message was last edited by the GM at 05:02, Mon 07 Aug 2023.

Love it!

I am 100% happy with all three. Hardly even a mild preference so I'll go with what the others vote. If it's a tie I'll vote then

**throws a wrench into things** How about the Intelligence Support Activity? I have a soft spot for them since Person of Interest is one of my favourite programmes.

I like that too :)

In order of preference... along with my reasoning for that order...

• NSA - I prefer to think of this as working for the Secret Service or some other interesting organisation where we have protection from the government, but the facts surrounding our arrival in the current time period are not known outside of a select few. Also lets us operate domestically without the problems of working for the Military.
• Military = This is interesting too if we're operating on American/UCAS soil, since technically the military isnt allowed to operate domestically unless martial law were declared. A way for the military to take certain unilateral actions that would otherwise not be possible for them. Of course if we're found out working domestically, we cant rely on the Military to bail us out since we're a deniable asset.
  [*[ CIA - Also a nice option - if we were to do this, at least one of our characters would need to be linguistically diverse (my character does speak a little Japanese)

I would probably be fine with any of the three, but if I had to pick, let's start with NSA? I would like to do some globetrotting at some point, but it would be nice to start off locally.


That sounds good to me.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:34, Mon 07 Aug 2023.

Alright a lot to catch up on

1) I'm totally fine with being the only troll in existance, the girls will love it, the other guys we fight will run screaming and hiding under the guise of magic lets me bitch and whine about how badly trolls are treated...and can be something he works towards preparing the government for Goblinization and reducing racisim....because I'm sure they can fight the Mega Corps a lot better if they take care of and raise a legion of loyal government Orks and Trolls...can't see anything going wrong with that idea, not at all (sings be prepared from the lion king to himself)

2) Organization wise I think I like the idea of CIA/NSA then Military (only because secret agents is the first shadowrunners and CIA because being air dropped into strange locals via stealth bomber sounds like a blast.

3) Also, skillwires is a thing and I think we have a technomancer who can thread lingusofts for Ironsides if needed....although there might be an echo you need for that, which is unlikely she took. Oh and lingusofts are super cheap, so I'm fairly sure uber-mancer can program us up a lingusoft for us all to use as needed.

There's no echo (that I can find: I just have three books. Core, Data trails and Kill Code) but there is a complex form. There used to be a SR4 echo that did something like that, but not this edition. If you can find one do let me know :)

The complex form doesn't work well at all or I would have taken it. It is an enormous drain. It lasts for one combat turn per success. And it only works if I 'steal it' so its opposed by a ton of die - I have to roll against my own willpower.... It's on my 'do I/don't I' list. But even then it won't work with autosofts (unless I had skill wires and then it would just work for me)

I do have 10 linguasofts. To use them I run them in a comm link (Don't need skill wires for linguasofts/knowsofts). They are only level 1.

Given what we know today about translation, making linguasofts is totally within the grasp of 2012 tech base. Buy some graphics cards (cheap and readily available back then) put them in a server farm (if only I had 18+ die in hardware... oh wait... I do) and then we can make all the linguasofts we want.

I'm posting here so I can find this discussion in the future as it applies.

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Because I hadn't planned on replacing characters (or pausing the game, for that matter); I'm kinda stumped how to proceed with that.   I had intended for the event that moved you in time to be a unique circumstance, which is why I've even opened the topic up.

Several possibilities present themself to me, and if there's alternative that I haven't posted here....toss it out.
Continuity Hiccup: Any characters being replaced where "never there".
Running a Bit Short:    However, the group size under three probably won't work.
Local:  The group gains a replacement.  However, said replacement is from the current time and lacks both the abilities and equipment that the first characters bring.
Starting Over:  Because we're not very far along, simply hitting Restart is an option; though this one is my least favorite choice.

OK a few thoughts at the start:
Players leave. In the first few months you can expect 40%. After that about 30..40%  a year.
Long running games make it easy for new players to join

• Continuity Hiccup: the easiest OOC. We just squint and don't worry about it. This for me is option 2
• Running a bit short: I agree it won't work well
• Local: I don't think it will work well. Different character creation rules and I wouldn't want to join this game as a local, but I would say that there are people that would.
• Starting over: normally this is my least favourite, but actually here we could just start the next round in this room at this point in the story. Doesn't help long term though, so still not fond of this

I'd like to suggest another.

When we arrived in the past there were other people on the platform. We didn't get to say hi because we were all arrested. Each of those is from another runner team: perhaps to find out what happened to us. That gives you a nice pool of people who can join at any time. Perhaps they have already been shipped out of this compound (to Guantanamo say, or kept under chemical chains somewhere). We just (OOC) don't go and investigate that too much until there is a new player in the scene... That gives you a pool of people that can join at anytime. If there is a in game clue about 'there was only one event' then they could easily have been caught up in 'echos of that event'

My vote order

• My new idea
• Continuity hiccup
• Starting over

Yeah, sadly player turnover is a major problem on rpol. Especially at the start, I've been in games with horrendous player attrition. It does get better later on as the game gets a core of players that stick around. And I've seen all of the solutions to it proposed by Angel in play.

I generally agree with her here, long running games tend to have some mechanism that allows retiring old and introducing new characters. Her idea might work. Or we can go with another portal opening somewhere and bringing more characters as needed.

This is my preferred option tbh, the others appart from continuity hiccup are non starters for me. And if I was coming in as a local, I would be grumbling I didnt get the boost the others did.

so I guess

• The new idea
• Continuity hiccup
• Thats it.

This message was lightly edited by the player at 20:35, Wed 22 Nov 2023.

My thought on a local character would be one that uses the mage creation rules, with the option of gaining physical adept abilities once play starts.  As it looks like we'll be needing non-mages, I'll consider options there....I'll have to consider how "other teams" might make sense.

Cat is going to pop into the role of co-gm, now that Ironsides has dropped from the game.