Sombra Console

Blows off Dust

2012-01-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

I see Eric with the mop and shovel, cleaning up, turning the lights on, brushing away the cobwebs.

Here's my character (for my own reference), current name Jaime Le (but that might change).

ATHLETICS 3

BRAWLING 2

CHARM 3

CRYPTO 4

FIREARMS 2

TECH 2

STEALTH 2

PILOTING 1

CASH: 2300ƒ

LIFESTYLE: Communal

CONTACTS:

Anton Yamamoto: handler, patron, legal

Mrs. Park: fence (interface/crypto)

STUFF:

Corruption brand suit, red undershirt: +2 Charm

Adidas Ninja Shoes: +1 Stealth, +1 Athletics

Novasports Parkour Gloves: +2 Athletics

Aragami Shotbrace Armguard: +2 Firearms

Benchsteady Ender Folding Combat Knife: +4 Brawl

Chihaya Heavy Industries Vassal(tm) high-end computing platform: +2 Crypto

Dusit Thani Modified Linux 6.2.3: +2 Crypto

Aragami 14mm Pistol: +2 Firearms

Chihaya Heavy Industries Leg Exos: +2 Athletics

"Toolkit" (generic, shitty): +1 Tech

Looking forward to seeing what a parkour hacker yakuza face-man can do in the gritty world of franchise governments!

Four years

2012-01-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

Until Mark mentioned it in his "Bite Sized AP" post on Story-Games, I'd forgotten that this blog even existed. I'll give you, the bored link-clicker, a quick update on what's happened in the past few years since I posted last.

We played a couple more sessions.

In an effort to "streamline" the system, I managed to present my players with one of the crappiest games I've ever run.

Embarrassed by how bad the game had become, not wanting to go back to a previous iteration, and otherwise occupied by life, I let the whole thing drop and proceeded to play nothing but proven game systems.

After playing a few wonderful sessions of Lady Blackbird, a long campaign of HELLAS, and a one-shot of TechNoir, I was inspired to re-visit the island.

Two or three iterations of rules later, I finally found something that I thought might be fun.

We played one playtest session, which consisted of 2.5 hours of game introduction & character creation followed by about 3 hours of actual play. Surprisingly, the system worked exactly as intended, and fun was had by all.

At this point we are looking at giving the game another shot this upcoming weekend. A few things have been added and tweaked here and there, but mostly it's just setting and clarifications. The rules are pretty solid as-is, so I'm trying my hardest to avoid altering them or adding things to them.

I'm looking forward to meeting Mark's character's paton, Louis XIV (that's Louie exEYEvee to you) and discovering how his interests intersect with those of Andy's patron, and owner/leader of the island Yakuza.

Rebuild on hold

2008-02-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

After this past weekend's session, I mentiond to the other players that I was feeling a total tear-down rebuild of the system. Start from scratch, you know? But I changed my mind. Everyone else says they're enjoying it as-is. And the rebuild I have in mind is going to be pretty severe. So, instead of messing with the system mid-game I'll save all those ideas for a new system.

Character Sheet, Part I

2007-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

I've added a character sheet to the links. It's just the front page of what I expect to eventually be a two-page modular sheet. That is, I'll be designing two or three different 'back' pages, each having a different slant of information on it. I'm imagining one that has space for many extra vehicles, one that has space for spells, and one with extra space for weapons.

And maybe a fourth that includes a little bit of room for all those things. Just in case someone wants to make a magical rigging decker who carries a small arsenal. Just in case.

A look at a nascent NPC stable, as well as PC character generation

2007-12-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to contribute every now and then with some setting junk. Stuff I came up with off the top of my head, for use in the game. Perhaps much of it will get folded into Eric's setting canon, perhaps some of it will get documented and tied together later.

Today, we'll look at My Character, a Face Man/Decker:

Name: Jun Ohshima ("Jun")
Nickname: Corvo, also has handles on the net as "Islander" and "Chapel_VF_4024".

I built him in, well, not too long at all on our first game day. Probably the fastest Shadowrun character build ever (I've made about 5 characters for play in my life), but that's about 25% due to the fact that I wasn't planning on buying any cyber gear other than a datajack. The other 75% was because of the streamlined buying guide that Eric made. And yet, I still found about 80% of the time I was spending shopping for stuff. Which is awesome, because in doing so I totally defined my character.

Frex, I decided after a minute of thought to not go for the latest and greatest decking gear, rather going for "above average". In turn, I bought the "Low Life" lifestyle rating at 25k: It has no real game effect, but I thought it said something about my character; his status, what he comes from. That, plus a 5k contact == "... ... ...Oh, I'm Yakuza!" And starting running with it from there. Bike. Sword which I own, but can not use. Honor, face, camaraderie, shame, I'm buying into the whole works.

(I've been on a big yakuza kick lately, having just completed both Yakuza/Ryuu ga Gotoku games for the PS2, and just general interest in and knowledge of that subculture (I can even speak "Yakuza-style Japanese", which is pretty fucked up for a white boy). Crazy enough, my wife's father's family has all sorts of bizarre yakuza ties, but they're hardly "movie yakuza cool", though. Anyway, I've got an interest, and I'm dragging Eric the GM along for the ride, I guess (^.^; ).

As I was thinking about my character, I started penning out possible other NPCs that Jun interacts with in the city, giving Eric a stable of NPCs to bring into the picture if needed, rather than having him need to make each and every encounterable character. I'm hoping to take on the role-playing of some of these characters when they appear. All these below are presumably "Shadowrunners", next I'll need to make up a stable of "non-leet" NPCs that we can regularly meet.

Note how I left the races blank for now. Also, I sprinkle in Portugese for flava:

Other people that Jun knows from the biz:

Shiro the Straightjacket : She's a street samurai I worked with for a
few jobs back in the early days. Now I avoid anything that he's
involved with. Talk about "needing to get your gun off", this gajo
can't be satisfied stealing a book from a library without a
double-digit body count. Foda-se.

Sluice : Sluice is a Korean kid, like twenty years old. Walks around
with his eyes always glazed over. Not really very lucid, like he's
stoned, distracted, and on three hits of acid. Never seen him not
hacked in to, like, three networks at any point. Rides low everywhere,
like he's always laying in bed. But man, if he's with you you will
Win. If he's against you, you will not crack their servers. Make sure
you know where he is at all times.

Marisa Karasu : This chick knows her shit. Infiltration specialist. I
heard she was Brazil special forces or something, trained by some
ex-Seals or something. I never met a gajo who could walk into the
lobby of a building and know, KNOW, the location of doors, exits,
security cameras, choke points. She guessed at the location of
security devices on floors we weren't even on, and was right. Can't
hack, but damn can get past just about anything. Really expensive to
work with, but if you can afford her on your crew, she's the best.
Very professional without over-compensating.

Legendary Fist Maximus : Ever see a trickster shaman kung fu master?
Gajo's great at parties or in a fistfight (I saw this gajo punch
through an inch of steal, swear!), but kind of unhinged. Always makes
people call him "Legendary Fist Maximus", not "Fist" or "Max" or
whatever. Crazy.

The Rules

2007-12-29T10:29:00.000-08:00

Whew. Okies, I've posted the rules over there.

Warning: There may be holes. There may be inconsistancies. Getting this thing tweaked out the way I wanted it turned out to be a crapload more work than I'd originally imagined, so I occationally cut corners.

But! I'm pretty sure what we've got there is good enough for us to work with over the next couple of months. Whatever's not there is probably in my head. When issues come up, I'll either update the document or post about it here. I'll probably do blog posts more often than not. It's a pretty thick document for a hack, and I don't relish the idea of re-printing the thing every time we find a new bug.

Enjoy!

Shopping

2007-12-28T20:48:00.001-08:00

The updated shopping list is up there now too.

Andy's character and Shane's character may have some money coming to them. In simplifing and smoothing out the prices, many things ended up a bit cheaper than they were at first.

The spells

2007-12-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

I've finished with the document with the spells that will be commonly available to mage characters. Use these as a baseline. I'm encouraging any magic user players to consider authoring their own spells.

I reserve the authority to dictate what type any new spell should be categorized as and to adjust the drain of any new spells. Naturally, I'll work with the players and not against them with this.

The Shadowrun Hack

2007-12-28T16:32:00.001-08:00

This is my blog for tracking our hacked Shadowrun game. Once I have the documents ready to go I'll put the links up over there for you. I expect to add all the players as contributors as soon as possible.