Interface Zero: Upgrade in Progress

[nDervish]

Finally done (I think)!

Haven't gone over it in detail, but a couple quick things from my first look:

Bartenders can make a Streetwise roll before each session to see if they know some juicy gossip. If successful, they get either 500 credits or a +1 to a single Trait roll.

That should probably be per-mission/adventure rather than per-session, but I'm open to disagreement on that point.

Hindrances
Debt (major)
Shakes (minor)
Loyal (minor) [because of cyber psychosis]

The psych hindrance from cybertrauma is in addition to the normal 1 Major/2 Minor.

Motivations
Blue platers +
Corporations -
GLU -
NAC -
NATO -

Pick three to be "official". Or combine the GLU/NAC/NATO into a single "-Participants in Second Civil War" or "-Warring powers in Chicago" or something like that.

[bladerunner_35]

Bartenders can make a Streetwise roll before each session to see if they know some juicy gossip. If successful, they get either 500 credits or a +1 to a single Trait roll.

That should probably be per-mission/adventure rather than per-session, but I'm open to disagreement on that point.

No problemo

Hindrances
Debt (major)
Shakes (minor)
Loyal (minor) [because of cyber psychosis]

The psych hindrance from cybertrauma is in addition to the normal 1 Major/2 Minor.

I taught we said that my gutterware would act as a hindrance (since glitched doesn't work). If there's an issue with my lungs being streetware I'll happily downgrade them (and feel paranoid all the time that they'll stop working).

Motivations
Blue platers +
Corporations -
GLU -
NAC -
NATO -

Pick three to be "official". Or combine the GLU/NAC/NATO into a single "-Participants in Second Civil War" or "-Warring powers in Chicago" or something like that.

I guess I can live with that.

[bladerunner_35]

Finally some images! My character and his NPC contacts. All by Jean Philippe Kalonji. Not at all cyberpunk, but then all of these people are wealthy enough to look old fashioned. And they'll probably wear different clothes to work.

I like the pictures. Very different, like all fat cats are!

[nDervish]

I just finished a pass through the equipment book and updated the Weapon Licensing page on the wiki with a bunch more examples of items falling under each license category.

The one addition that I expect to be somewhat controversial is that I put everything tagged "Heavy Weapon" into Category 4 (Military). Monofilament weapons are tagged "Heavy Weapon".

My reasoning is that only Heavy Weapons can affect a target with Heavy Armor (even if it's just one point of HA) and The Powers That Be would like the idea of being able to slap a little heavy armor onto their enforcers (police, soldiers, whatever) and make them immune to anything a civilian might throw at them. The counterargument is that, given Chicago's history, they're likely to want to prevent NAC/GLU forces from having that same immunity from Chicago's populace.

Also worth considering is that most HW-tagged weapons are already Category 4 by virtue of being machine guns, explosives, etc., regardless of the HW tag. I don't have time to check right now (need to head for work), but it's possible that the "HW is Category 4" listing might only affect melee weapons anyhow.

Thoughts, anyone?

I taught we said that my gutterware would act as a hindrance (since glitched doesn't work). If there's an issue with my lungs being streetware I'll happily downgrade them (and feel paranoid all the time that they'll stop working).

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear when I suggested that... I meant that buying gutterware would have basically the same effect as Glitched, not that it would count as a hindrance.

[Willard]

The one addition that I expect to be somewhat controversial is that I put everything tagged "Heavy Weapon" into Category 4 (Military). Monofilament weapons are tagged "Heavy Weapon".

I don't have a problem with this. Your reasoning is sound.

I looked through the Chicago Neighborhoods again. You said you added a bunch from San Francisco/Boston, like the Fat Cats, Corporate Zone etc. While I appreciate the slight modifications between each zone, wouldn't it be better to map those to some existing geographical neighborhoods? I found a decent map overlay here: http://chicagomap.zolk.com/ Maybe we could use something like that. And then decide on a zone or two that falls into the different categories.

Here's another one. http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/da ... umbers.pdf

[bladerunner_35]

I taught we said that my gutterware would act as a hindrance (since glitched doesn't work). If there's an issue with my lungs being streetware I'll happily downgrade them (and feel paranoid all the time that they'll stop working).

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear when I suggested that... I meant that buying gutterware would have basically the same effect as Glitched, not that it would count as a hindrance.

Oh. Well no problem. I've got a bunch of hindrances I almost took during char creation. I'll probably get Code of Honour regardless if it's a major hindrance.

The one addition that I expect to be somewhat controversial is that I put everything tagged "Heavy Weapon" into Category 4 (Military). Monofilament weapons are tagged "Heavy Weapon".

I don't have a problem with this. Your reasoning is sound.

Me neither. I think it is safe to assume that The Powers That Be are more concerned with an armed populace than with another invasion.

I looked through the Chicago Neighborhoods again. You said you added a bunch from San Francisco/Boston, like the Fat Cats, Corporate Zone etc. While I appreciate the slight modifications between each zone, wouldn't it be better to map those to some existing geographical neighborhoods? I found a decent map overlay here: http://chicagomap.zolk.com/ Maybe we could use something like that. And then decide on a zone or two that falls into the different categories.

I might be missing the point but isn't all the trappings like Fat Cats and Corporate Zone directly connected to existing (in 2090) geographical locations?

In any case here is a decent if a bit small official map of Chicago 2090. Btw the starting date is april 15 2090?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/821 ... sts/490874

[nDervish]

I looked through the Chicago Neighborhoods again. You said you added a bunch from San Francisco/Boston, like the Fat Cats, Corporate Zone etc. While I appreciate the slight modifications between each zone, wouldn't it be better to map those to some existing geographical neighborhoods? I found a decent map overlay here: http://chicagomap.zolk.com/ Maybe we could use something like that. And then decide on a zone or two that falls into the different categories.

It's just the tags ("City Trappings") that came from the Boston/SF books. The neighborhoods themselves are from the list of Chicago areas given in the IZ1 core book and they do all correspond to real-life areas in/near Chicago. IZ hadn't invented the City Trapping concept yet when IZ1 was written, so I reviewed the descriptions of each neighborhood and assigned whichever trappings seemed most appropriate for each.

In any case here is a decent if a bit small official map of Chicago 2090.

Ah - good find! I've just been looking up locations on google maps so far, but having an updated map for 2090 is a definite plus.

Btw the starting date is april 15 2090?

Yep. I picked April 15 more or less at random and only much later realized that NAC (and probably other former US territories) income tax returns are due that day. :p

[Rekreativc]

I just want to say I'm really excited about today!

Btw Dave, do you need anything else from me? I'm at work right now, but I'll have about 20 mins of time after work before I have to embark for DMF.

See you at 6!

[nDervish]

Btw Dave, do you need anything else from me? I'm at work right now, but I'll have about 20 mins of time after work before I have to embark for DMF.

Nothing else pre-game, no.

When we meet up, we should take a few minutes to review everyone's characters and figure out how you all know each other, the tone of your relationships, etc., but that's the only thing I can think of.

I know we've kind of gone back and forth a bit in how people have referred to the relationships (or lack of them) among the group, but, realistically, I think you should all start off knowing each other and having at least one friend (or close acquaintance) among the other PCs. Getting together with three strangers and saying, "Hey, let's go do some mercenary work!" doesn't really make much sense.

Note that, in a highly-networked world, this doesn't necessarily mean that you've met in person, just that you've met and spent a fair amount of time interacting. All being guild members in an online game would work just as well as if you're a bowling team.

[Rekreativc]

I think I like the story involving Björn's character if he agrees? As for PCs I'm sticking to Clint and George I've mentioned.

[bladerunner_35]

Sure. I don't mind. We can talk about it today and set the details.

[God45]

Got home early today (Yes, this is early)

I have an idea for how and why we should trust each other. A milk run! We have had some contact before and a fixer (why not Björns mentor Max?) have gotten us together as a team. But to make sure that we can rely on everybody being a pro and nobody being a narc we have to do a trial run, a try out session.

"Gentlemen, I have found a way to stick it to...the MAN. Our consumerist society runs on greed, and on inferior services that we are expected to be thankful for. The people bleat and feed from the trough of mediocrity. It is up to us to free them.

By which I mean...

The armed robbery of a motherfucking Micky D:s."

[bladerunner_35]

Go home sim. You're drunk!

[Willard]

You do realize Almighty has no interest whatsoever in sticking it to the man. He is the man.

He may have some contact with Paladin's hippie commune, however. Their vegetables are just the best.

[God45]

Go home sim. You're drunk!

Drunk is the only emotion I have ever experienced other than sugar, hunger and schadenfreude

You do realize Almighty has no interest whatsoever in sticking it to the man. He is the man.

He may have some contact with Paladin's hippie commune, however. Their vegetables are just the best.

Sure but you are a super arrogant ubermench with extremely refined tastes. Would you really miss the opportunity to mess up a McDonalds and teach the masses an lesson

[Willard]

Those are some powerful emotions.

Sure but you are a super arrogant ubermench with extremely refined tastes. Would you really miss the opportunity to mess up a McDonalds and teach the masses an lesson

Hrm, well yeah, that sounds like something I'd rather miss.

[Willard]

On a train to Halmstad for the day, so I wrote up a (surprisingly lengthy) account of last night's adventures on Obsidian Portal. Sorry if I missed a cool move or kill, but feel free to add your own versions!

[nDervish]

So, a successful first run and neither you nor your employer betrayed each other. A good start!

We didn't really have time for any kind of epilogue, but CC (formerly known as "Donut") was met at the CEL embassy gate by security guards who took Connie off his hands and escorted her inside. Everyone was 800 Cr richer by the time they got home. 3 XP all around.

How did you guys think it went? Was there anything in particular that you'd like to see more or less of as we continue?

And the other two major questions:

1) Is next Monday still good for the next session?

2) In-game, when do you want to make your next run? I know I was talking earlier about leaving a month between adventures, but now I'm feeling like it might work better to do them closer together, both to keep a better flow of world events and because I seem to recall that some of you can't reliably meet your cost of living with only your day-job income...

If you want to follow up on any of the other news/job/bounty listings, you'll need to do that sooner rather than later, before the news gets stale or someone else collects on the jobs/bounties. There's also the matter of Bullseye's leg wound, which will probably take a few days to a week to heal up.

Once we've figured out a date, I'll update the world and write up a new Chicago Free Press so you can decide what you want to do.

On a train to Halmstad for the day, so I wrote up a (surprisingly lengthy) account of last night's adventures on Obsidian Portal.

I saw that you were making a lot of updates this morning. Now I know why...

Sorry if I missed a cool move or kill, but feel free to add your own versions!

That's the idea. There's room for everyone in the adventure log!

Regarding Obsidian Portal, I've rediscovered how poorly-integrated the "Characters" tab is with the rest of the site, so I would suggest that we use plain wiki pages instead of the "Characters" section, at least for NPCs.

The issue is that, if Connie Acosta (just to pick the first NPC who comes to mind) is on a wiki page, she can be linked to from just about anywhere by putting [[Connie Acosta]] into a page and, if the Connie Acosta page hasn't been created yet, it will show up as a red link that you can click to create the page.

If, on the other hand, she's in the "Characters" section, you link to her with [[:connie-acosta]]. If the character page exists, then it will pull her name from it, display "Connie Acosta" in the page when you view it, and everything is happy. If the character page doesn't exist, however, the page will display "Content Not Found: connie-acosta" and no link to create her.

Using wiki pages allows you to put links to anything and everything you mention without having to worry about whether the pages have been created yet or not and, when they are created, the links will immediately start working. Using Character (and Item, for that matter) pages only allows you to link to things that are already there, so you can't put in links in advance, which makes it much harder to keep everything richly cross-linked.

[Willard]

Can you have pictures on the wiki pages though? That's basically why I've used the character version so far. I'll get back to you on the rest.

Edit: I think I know how to get the pictures now, exclamation marks around URL, according to the syntax help site. I'll try that when I get back home. (On the train again.)

[nDervish]

Can you have pictures on the wiki pages though? That's basically why I've used the character version so far. I'll get back to you on the rest.

Yep, although they have to be hosted somewhere else. For example, to link to the image "World on Wire" from http://robshields.deviantart.com/art/Wo ... -352811293 (IIRC, this image will be the lead-in to the players' section of the final IZ2.0 book) the code would be:

!http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/ ... 5u1yxp.jpg!

...but it's kind of big, so it would probably work better to size it with:

!{height:200px}http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/ ... 5u1yxp.jpg!

Finally, to put the image off to the right and have text flow around it, like it does on the Character pages, add a ">":

!>{height:200px}http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/ ... 5u1yxp.jpg!

(Strangely enough, you can't use "<" to put the image on the left and flow text around it. Instead, that causes the image to not appear at all...)