Sunday, April 26, 2009

Shadowrun IC Posts (post 4/25/2009 session)

For shadowrun, for those who weren't there yesterday, congratulations, you've survived your freshmen year in The Hannim School for Gifted Children. This means you get 100 karma. In general, you can only raise any given trait by one point. You may also raise magic by two, due to the unusual magical experiences you've had, you may purchase multiple grades of initiation since you're in a group, and if you do not have the knowledge skills of metallurgy, botany, zoology, or geology, you may purchase raise them up to level 2.

Anyone interested can also spend ten karma points to buy the matial arts quality and/or four points to purchase maneuvers (you can only have two maneuvers for each purchase of the martial arts quality, and the martial arts quality may only be purchased up to four times total, whether you purchase new powers form the same martial art or learn a new art).

You need to agree on your magical group strictures, the people there yesterday suggested:
Exclusive Ritual (you can't perform magical rituals with people not in the group)
Fraternity (You must help group members if it is withing your power to do so)
Deed (You must perform a service for the group on a regular basis, such as finding magical materials or going on astral quests to get magical formulas for the group)
Material Link (All members must provide a material link to the group. This allows the group to easily perform ritual magic on any member or ritually track members)

The NPCs added to your group will be more useful if you have more strictures. More group members (assuming you're willing to recruit classmates) means more pseudo-contacts, and occasionally magical backup or magical assistance.

You also have a summer assignment to complete before class begins, since your habitat for metahumanity project didn't get finished do to an attack. You must locate additional magical reagents, and get them refined. Refining requires the enchanting skill, but you can bargain with other students (or each other) to get refined reagents. The income from your jobs will be consumed in travel expenses. Early class projects will include making ritual materials for those perusing the enchanting skill.

Please post your relevant skill and attribute totals for finding, collecting and refining reagents:

Find Reagent: Intuition + Survival (outdoors group)
Raw reagents (Extended Test, 8 successes required, 1 hour per test)
Refined Reagents (16, 1 day)
Radical Reagents (12, 1 week)

Gathering Test (made only if you find reagents)
Animal Reagents: Intuition + Zoology (doesn't work for finding animal radical reagents)
Herbal Reagents: Intuition + Botany (may also require combat tests for refined+ reagents)
Metal Reagents: Intuition + Metallurgy
Mineral Reagents: Intuition + Geology

Refining
Creating Refined Reagents: Magic + Enchanting (number of reagents of the same type, 1 day)
Creating Radical Reagents: Magic + Enchanting (2, 28 days, non-extended)

For those who weren't there, you habitat for metahumanity project didn't get finished because of an attack by two magicians who were planning to use the area to create a magical domain, although the two that attacked you weren't particularly compatible with each other, so why they were cooperating remains a mystery.

Master Ken has decided that he likes the idea of Habitat for Metahumanity, and has drafted you into helping him with his own version of the project. He's managed to get government and corporate sponsorship to rehab a city block worth of low-income howsing in a bad part of town. The new hope of the residents moving in (many recruited by Master Ken) has started creating an astral domain in the area, now he needs help aspecting it. He's given you, and his other students, various rituals to perform, as well as instructions for assisting in the easier parts of rebuilding to help him aspect the comain for conjuring. This will make all uses of conjuring in the area easier, and hopefully won't inhibit other magical skills. From what you can tell, its at least possible for this to work, although it will take longer than normal geomantic processes. (If successful, this will give two additional dice to all conjuring tests made in the area). Master Ken also plans to move his place of business to the area, so you'll be visiting frequently.

While you don't have much free time before the next school year starts, any actions that could be done during your other activities should be posted here before the next game session (whenever that may be).

Comments:
Looks like you set up your blog correctly, 2 years ago...

As far as all the info you've posted here, this will be a good place to keep track of your Shadowrun stuff. Just provide a link on my blog so people know to look here when you have Shadowrun stuff going on. Regarding the info you provided, I have next to no idea what most of that means, being a newbie to this game. I suppose I'll learn as I go.
 
Being a straight Adept, will the magical group help me that much? I'll be a part of it, but from the benefits that can be gotten from it, doesn't sound like Adepts benefit from it much.

I'd say that the two strictures should be Fraternity and Material Link.

Also, with me being an Adept, can I go about doing the stuff for the reagents?
 
Cedrik heard them come in, but didn't skip a beat as his fingers rhythmically moved across on his deck with the sound of a faint, rattling rainfall. He had nearly enough now, and was monitoring all the backdoors he'd left wide open. Nothing had surfaced so far, but something would eventually--it always did. Patience was a powerful weapon in the arsenal of a cracker, and every spare moment was a moment that could be seized to spin tighter code. Few would be able to follow his stream, and even fewer could approach without him knowing. Getting caught was not an option, not ever.

"What'd you find, Toke?" Cedrik mumbled with half-interest as his lithe Japanese friend, Tokata, moved into the room. He was surprisingly stealthy, despite his gruff appearance.

Master Ken had something to do with the spot, he learned. Something to do with all that summoning that was going down. Bugs liked the spot, too.

"Don't see how that conjuring stuff really concerns me. That's Lube's territory, right?" The other elf in their group was totally different than Cedrik. He wasn't at all into tech, but then, that might be a good thing. That meant Cedrik was always the one they'd go to when they needed a specialist. He liked it that way.

He finished planting a few more in the memories of his customers' personal computers, and then logged out. Time always produced an answer, one way or another. You just need to know how to grab the stuff out of the air.

[D5o
 
As to the question of adepts and initiation, initiation provides many benefits to adepts. First and foremost, it increases the cap for your magic attribute. While that isn't a benefit right now, it may benefit you in the next in-character-year. Also, each level of initiation provides you a metamagic technique. Adepts have the following choices for metamagics:

Adept Centering (reduce penatlies to combat skills)

Centering (reduce drain, this one has little benefit for normal adepts, but is useful for magic adepts)

Attunement (Item)(gain bonus to using one specific item)

Cognition (temporarily shift around mental attributes)

Masking (change your aura, temporarily)

Psychometry (learn more about items from assensing, requires astral access)

Sensing (feel strong magical activity at long range)

Somatic Control (temporarily shift physical attribute points)

Extended Masking (requires masking, allows you to mask other things like active weapon foci)

Divination (learning about the future of a person, place or object)

Flux (requires masking, puts your aura in flus for a short period, making ritual magic harder to use against you)

There is also an optional rule to allow initiate to purchase one metamagic technique in addition to the free one for each initiation grade, and another OPTIONAL rule I'm considering is allowing adepts to purchase additional power points when they initiate (I need to think of a way to limit that option before I allow it, but it makes initiation way cooler for adepts than it is for mages).

Its also the way characters describe their magical enlightenment.

Also, YES adepts can learn the enchanting skill, which lets you refine reagents (and do lots of other things). The survival skill is used to find reagents, and gathering them requires successful use of Metalurgy, Botany, Geology or zoology (depending on the type of reagent).
 
Another note, only initiates can normally undertake an astral quest. However, adept initiates need a spirit with the astral gateway power to help them get into astral space in the first place.

Astral quests let you learn magical formulas without spending months on design (although they may still take several day, during which time your meat body appears to be in a coma). Astral quests have a lot of other uses, but that's the most common one.
 
Cool - another Blog!

Here are my Skill totals:

I have 4 ranks in Botany, Geology, and Zoology each. None in Metallurgy or Enchanting (at least not yet - I assume I can put a few points in when spending my 100 Karma?)

I definitely want to purchase a martial arts Manuever of some sort - I'll need to check the book for details, but there was something like "counterstrike" that looked interesting.

Could you post a quick set of rules regarding spending Karma? I thought it was something like:

2 * the new rank to raise an Active Skill
2 points to start a new Knowledge
5 * the new rank to raise an Attribute

I may be totally wrong on those costs, by the way...

As for what Marcus is doing during summer vacation... Hmmm... I see him as a sort of a character with mixed feelings about technology and the current state of the world: as an Adept, he can strive for self-perfection without being dependent upon technology and some of the trappings of modern society. By the same token, obviously one must exist in society to hope to have any positive effects on it.

Anyway, he'd probably spend some time during the summer trying to make a contact in the AmerIndian area/reservation/nation/region/etc especially around where we were attacked by those elementals. Marcus figures that being 1/3 AmerIndian may help him gain some trust among the people there and he's really curious as to what exactly was going on and if there's any knowledge there that might be relate to the bug spirit problem in Chicago - they are both summoning and magic of sorts, and he doesn't know much about magic since it just "sort of happened" to him when he became an Adept. He feels rather out of his element, so he'll study what he can in that area... also, he'll probably try to bump up his Driving skill a notch since way out in the boonies away from civilization (his hometown) people probably don't care if 15-year olds learn to drive or not.
 
Oops... Marcus is 1/4 AmerIndian - I'll correct that before somebody notices... Oh, and we're going to the Hannim school for the gifted? Hmmm... must be a relative of mine with a similar last name...
 
Karma Costs (NR = New Rating)
New Specialization: 2
New Knowledge/Language: 2
New Active Skill: 4
New Skill Group: 10

Improve Knowledge/language: NR
Improve Active Skill: NR x 2
Improve Skill Group: NR x 5
Improve Attribute: NR x 5

New Spell: 5

Initiation:
Cost 10 + 3 x new grade
Since you guys are in a magical group, you get a 20% discount (round final cost up)

Also, if you take an ordeal, you get another 20% off (We'll handle ordeals the next time we play shadowrun, so you might get a point or two of karma back).

Once each initiation, a character may purchase an additional metamagic technique for 15 karma points, however, you must learn it from someone (another PC, a spirit, NPC/contact or astral quest). Adepts and Magical adepts may instead spend 15 karma points on an additional power point, however, it must be a power chosen from Street Magic, Astral Perception or the power point can be used to increase the magician side of a magical adept.
 
Hey Terry,

Here are the websites of what we talked about on Saturday.

This one is the one that started to make a Shadowrun MMO, but had to change it because of Microsoft:

www.sixthworldgames.com
or
www.awakenedmmo.org

This is the one that got the electronic rights to Shadowrun and all things FASA:

www.smithandtinker.com

It was Jordan Weisman that started Smith and Tinker and got the licenses from Microsoft.
 
The storm was passing now, with windswept rain lashing the streets of Chicago in cold fury. Lightning flashed in the distance, but Marcus paid it no heed; the Thunder Spirits that roamed the northern Plains were more impressive than these.

A shaft of light pierced the clouds and fell across an ominous tower that loomed in the distance - a hollow, cage-like spire that clawed at the sky. Even from afar, the ruin radiated a creeping sense of evil, and though Marcus wasn't able to truly sense the exact nature of what lay within, the lingering sense of doom was enough to warn him to keep his distance. He shook his head and walked back down the street that lead to the local talisman shop, knowing that there wasn't anything he could do about that looming evil - at least not yet.

The summer had been a busy one, and the next school year would be starting soon. He had continued his training throughout the summer months, half expecting to be attacked by members of the gang that was tied to the beings within the dark spire, but his foes never showed themselves; Perhaps he was beneath their notice. The elders of his tribe often spoke of how one couldn't avoid destiny in the long run, and as one of the Awakened, he knew that his path in life would not be easy; it was difficult enough to leave his family and friends and take up residence in this crowded city - a place full of suffering - and he knew from what the upperclassmen had told him that the challenges at school would only grow more brutal as the years progressed. But this was his destiny - he had seen it in a vision quest years ago: he was to rise above the others and do great deeds in this world. But for now, it just another year at school...
 
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