Interface Zero: Upgrade in Progress

[jeronimooo]

Hey Dave - CW,

Maybe it is a good idea to have these kinds of theoretical/mathematical discussions in a separate thread (or maybe on OP campaign forum?) Not that it isn't interesting (I can sort of remotely follow what you guys are talking about) and I also don't want to take away your fun in discussing/developing this model, but it is kind of clouding up the thread... Say Tobias or any other new player decides to read up on this, it might scare the crap out of them... it would also make it easier for the non-mathematical people to follow what is going on with the campaign as such...

[bladerunner_35]

A most excellent suggestions. There is a possibility to create a subforum for the entire group. Do you want me to try to set it up?

[Willard]

Damn it! Lost another super long reply for the first time in a month or so. The page keeps logging me out every hour or so.

You're right about setting up a sub-forum and separate threads. Let's do it.

[nDervish]

it is kind of clouding up the thread... Say Tobias or any other new player decides to read up on this, it might scare the crap out of them... it would also make it easier for the non-mathematical people to follow what is going on with the campaign as such...

You have a very good point.

I've also been wondering on and off whether this forum might have any sort of suggested post count limit for threads, but keep forgetting to ask about it. There obviously isn't one that's rigidly enforced, but we're well over 500 posts on this thread now and I'm not sure whether it's better to keep this one going or to start a new one in general.

There is a possibility to create a subforum for the entire group. Do you want me to try to set it up?

Personally, I think I'd prefer to hold off on requesting a new subforum until we've worked out all the issues of tone and grit and so forth and can be a bit more certain that the game will continue running long-term. I think a new thread (or maybe two) should be sufficient for now.

Or, like Jeroen said, maybe the best option would be to set up a campaign forum on Obsidian Portal. We could continue posting things like scheduling here, so that any new people would be able to find the game, but keep the more detailed stuff like rules and storylines over there.

Damn it! Lost another super long reply for the first time in a month or so. The page keeps logging me out every hour or so.

I got an "invalid form submission" earlier today, when I was making my last long post, but it didn't actually log me out and I didn't lose anything. So it's not just you having problems like that.

[Willard]

I'm sure the campaign, or at least the group, will be fairly long term no matter what level and definition of grit we decide on. Individuals may come and go (myself included, as I'm not at all sure what my spring will look like), but the group is large enough to survive that.

I'm also all for having a forum on obsidian portal instead, because that site doesn't keep logging me out at every turn. Strangely the issues are on my stationary PC, and not on my phone, but that's beside the point.

On the other hand Obsidian requires a subscription, and that's a bummer.

[bladerunner_35]

There's also the possibility to create a group on Facebook or G+. I have no idea if everyone uses them though (I use both).

[jeronimooo]

There's also the possibility to create a group on Facebook or G+. I have no idea if everyone uses them though (I use both).

I use neither...
that being said, we could also use 1 or 2 quicktopics if we just need extra forum space...http://quicktopic.com/

it would be free, I didn't know we needed a subscription for the OP one, just noticed the forum tab there...

[Rekreativc]

I have G+, but not Facebook. If you create a group there I'm happy to join it.

See you at 18!

[nDervish]

Continuing with this thread for the moment, but I'll set up a forum on Obsidian Portal tonight, then start a new thread here after that's in place (so the new thread can link there).

I've done a quick pass over the PCs to remove skill specializations and recalculate everyone's current skill point totals. It looks like I made a few mistakes adding them up previously... The current totals are:

Almighty: 20
Bullseye: 19
Mal: 16
Paladin: 13
Ryder: 20

Everyone should be at 15, with the exception of Ryder who appears to have taken +2 starting skill points in lieu of an edge, so he should be at 17.

This is primarily intended to just be informative and give a general sense of where your characters are at with respect to their skill point totals. After setting up the forum on OP, I'll post over there with everyone's skill lists and how the points add up so that you can double-check that I haven't made any mistakes with your skills or their costs.

[Willard]

Cool.

Remember that human 2.0's effectively have two more skill points. Not sure how well I've done with that, but I'll primarily reduce boating and then repair.

You also wanted to come up with some stats for Englewood Dynamics, how can I help?

[God45]

Nice, more skill points

Is acrobatics worth taking? I want to be able to do some parkour stuff, is this the skill for it? And it is the intimidation skill you use to shake people in fights?

[nDervish]

Remember that human 2.0's effectively have two more skill points.

Yep, I costed your Driving, Mal's Stealth, and Paladin's Fighting up from starting at d6 rather than from 0. (Which is where Paladin's 2 extra skill points came from...)

Is acrobatics worth taking? I want to be able to do some parkour stuff, is this the skill for it?

Athletics would be the relevant skill for running, jumping, climbing, and so on, but, if you really want to get into parkour-type stuff, you'll also want to get the Acrobatics edge, which will give you +2 on rolls to do acrobatic maneuvers (and +1 Parry in melee) as long as you're not encumbered.

And it is the intimidation skill you use to shake people in fights?

Either Intimidation or Taunt, depending on how you want to go about it. (And Charisma generally doesn't apply to either of them.) The only mechanical difference is that Intimidation is opposed by Spirit, while Taunt is opposed by Smarts.

You also wanted to come up with some stats for Englewood Dynamics, how can I help?

It would probably be easier to explain in person either before or after an upcoming session.

[nDervish]

PC skill lists with point breakdowns are up at http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns ... alizations Head on over there and post a reply to let me know what you want to do to get your skill point total to 15 (or 17 for Ryder).

[Rekreativc]

I took a look at the new edition of Chicago free press. Two things jumped out and grabbed my attention:

2090-04-30: Locate endangered hybrids. Last seen near Zion Forest Preserve. 3,750 Cr, possiblity of followup contract. Contact Edward Moore.

This speaks for Bullseye's motivations and he is certainly interested what "endengered" might mean. He is a trusting fella by nature but for some reason he is specious of the possibility of the followup contract - surely it's not exterminate is it ?!

2090-05-06: Firebugs needed to burn Oak Lawn warehouse. Not for the faint of heart – all product must be destroyed. 10,000 Cr, NDA required. Contact Jennifer Freeman.

This speaks to bullseye's professional interests. It takes a proper fireman to insure a fire is strong enough to really destroy all contents but not spread to the surroundings and cause collateral, or even lethal damage.
And out of game this sounds interesting as well, since it's a step away from the usual go talk to x, find out what happened to y.


I'm up for one of these two for Monday, how do the rest of you feel about that?

[jeronimooo]

I thought that Monday we were going after the AI?

other then that, the light dispels shadows mission really has peaked my interest protect someone from assassins also seems like a whitehat thing to do

[nDervish]

I thought that Monday we were going after the AI?

That does seem kind of necessary at this point, yeah, unless we want to banish Mal from the group. Maybe you've got other ideas for how to get the group back together, Jeroen, but I really don't want everyone to just magically be happy with each other and suddenly forget about what happened last time for no reason.

other then that, the light dispels shadows mission really has peaked my interest protect someone from assassins also seems like a whitehat thing to do

I guess that's something else I should have had on my list last Monday: How often (game-world) should sessions be? We'd previously agreed that about one run per in-game week was good and people had said they didn't want The Party(tm) to do everything together constantly, but now there's a lot of "I really want to take this mission before it has time to expire" going on... Do we collectively want to reduce the normal time between runs so that you can take more of them before they go away? Or should I just reduce the rate that new public missions are posted in CFP?

Completely unrelated to all that: What are everyone's first impressions of the Obsidian Portal forums?

[Willard]

Let's go hunt that AI on Monday.

I'm perfectly happy with us not fully succeeding and having VRZG become a sometimes-recurring villain. Not the equivalent of Sauron or anything, but just like it's cool to have positive contacts develop over time it's "nice" if there are some antagonists with character as well. Of course, if the hunt goes REALLY well and we play splendidly it should be destroyed/captured, but what we need at this point is a reason to get back together, not to save the world.

The fact that there are a bunch of missions that we actually want to do is a good thing, and at the rate things are going I don't see why the new ones would be any worse than the ones that are on offer now. Not having time to do everything you/we want to do helps make the world feel alive, so I say let them expire as usual.

The forums are certainly different from this one. Not being able to quote, or at least doing it differently, is one such thing. It'll be interesting to see how it handles high post counts.

[nDervish]

what we need at this point is a reason to get back together, not to save the world.

Exactly!

The forums are certainly different from this one. Not being able to quote, or at least doing it differently, is one such thing. It'll be interesting to see how it handles high post counts.

Given a dedicated forum, I don't think high post counts will be an issue on the software side, since it won't just be one topic that contains everything. This current thread's 576 posts would, in that context, be spread out over at least a dozen (and likely even more) smaller threads, most of which would be well under 50 posts.

However, OP doesn't seem to have any clear indication of where there are new replies aside from either email notifications (which will flood your inbox), memorizing the post count in each thread (which is horribly inconvenient), or guessing based on the last updated timestamp (which is only given approximately) and, even when you do find the threads with new posts, there's no "jump to first new post" option, so any large, fast-moving topics will likely be a PITA to track.

Not having an explicit "reply" function with quoting is a minor annoyance to me, since I like my detailed point-by-point responses (obviously), but it's not that big a thing to adapt to. The lack of tools for finding new posts, though... that could be a deal-breaker.

One other minor issue I ran into: I added a calendar entry last night for the upcoming session on the 28th and attempted to link from the session description to the current CFP issue, but wasn't able to find a way to make the link work. (It was always a red link, even when the page it wanted to create had the same URL as the existing page.) I'm not sure whether that's a general issue with calendar-to-wiki links or if it's just because of the commas in the CFP page title.

[jeronimooo]

I thought that Monday we were going after the AI?

That does seem kind of necessary at this point, yeah, unless we want to banish Mal from the group. Maybe you've got other ideas for how to get the group back together, Jeroen, but I really don't want everyone to just magically be happy with each other and suddenly forget about what happened last time for no reason.

other then that, the light dispels shadows mission really has peaked my interest protect someone from assassins also seems like a whitehat thing to do

I guess that's something else I should have had on my list last Monday: How often (game-world) should sessions be? We'd previously agreed that about one run per in-game week was good and people had said they didn't want The Party(tm) to do everything together constantly, but now there's a lot of "I really want to take this mission before it has time to expire" going on... Do we collectively want to reduce the normal time between runs so that you can take more of them before they go away? Or should I just reduce the rate that new public missions are posted in CFP?

Completely unrelated to all that: What are everyone's first impressions of the Obsidian Portal forums?

I think you misunderstood... Going after the AI is a necessity for Mal, there simply is no way around it... the AI going rogue and the group getting called in by Stopwatch to solve the mess they created is kind of inevitable... depending on how hard/easy you make it though, we could just go over it quite fast and just consider the AI beaten and the group unified after that (maybe a very short fight if the bike hasn't been repaired and we know it's location and storm in all guns and EMP's blazing...) and then there would be time to do something else after that... OR we could have it turn into a 2-3-4-5 session mission or even let him get away and make it a recurring villain as is also suggested... I am perfectly fine with whatever solution that gets chosen, as long as one does get chosen...

with regards to the missions, I am perfectly happy to have less in game days expire between missions if someone really wants to do a particular one, or maybe you could (if notified of it) let that mission not expire?

if it 's not possible, or if the group rather lets those missions expire and go for new ones, then so be it... it's far from a dealbreaker for me...

[jeronimooo]

Hey Dave,

have you thought of determining a black and legal price range for the Len stealth coating for weapons yet? how does 20% (legal) and 50%(black market) and 75% (black market with high-quality - falsified license) of the weapon's price sound?