Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Session Report – Under the Mountain – Sessions 2 and 3

[These sessions happened December 19th, 2016, and January 2, 2017.  They were mostly planning sessions with little actual activity, so I combined them to speed things up.  The Other GM was running.]

[In Session 5 we realized we needed to do some ritual magic for the safe house and retconned it to happen in-game on Tuesday.  I’m inserting the activity here for better story continuity, even though it doesn’t happen for another three sessions.]

PCs
Void – female night elf physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Moondance – male street samurai with an Ares fetish and a sniper specialization
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Wasabi – young male human mage with more than a touch of ADHD
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Ezekial Tee – male human mage of the Zoroastrian tradition [new character]

NPC’d
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegant
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser


Tuesday, May 26, 2076
The group did extensive planning and brainstorming. We asked Bookie to put together a data file on the target.  While he did that, we located a small abandoned warehouse in Renton to use as a safe house during the job.  [It wouldn’t do to have Aztechnology track us back to our office, no it would not.]  We found one to suit our needs and immediately set up security on it.

We placed an order for four “portable doors”.  These are pre-rigged breaching charges on rectangular frames.  Once triggered: Boom!  Instant door.  We ordered them strong enough to cut through a foot of reinforced concrete – they’ll arrive Thursday.  We don’t have a specific use for them yet, but most of our plans involve a quick escape and underground labs have a reputation for strong walls.  [My notes don’t indicate which character secured these, it was likely Void, but it could have been Killroy or both of them separately.]

Bookie delivered a data file with all the public data on the target, Dr. Zoe Berganza:

  • She was originally a citizen of Renraku.
  • She has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Biochemical Engineering.
  • Her parents are dead, but there is evidence she had a significant other.
  • All public records stop in 2073 – there is nothing on her after that.

We speculated that Aztechnology did what we are going to do, extract her, in 2073.  There is some evidence her significant other was also grabbed at the same time, so we might end up extracting two people.  There was a debate on whether or not the pay covered this.  We decided that for nearly half a million in pay, it did.

That night we called in Baelthor and a new mage The Fin recommended, Ezekial Tee, to assist Wasabi in the ritual casting of some wards.  The first ward was [Rating 6] versus magic and was cast on a Mage Bag [our name for a body bag with a rebreather system inside it to administer air laced with NeuroStun to the occupant].  The three of them got too ambitious and channeled WAY too much magic for the ritual.  Wasabi’s heart stopped from the strain; Baelthor’s heart went into fibrillation; and Ezekial Tee flopped around on the floor with smoke rising from him.  The Mage Bag nearly glowed from all the power in it.

Prometheus immediately clapped his [Rating 6] Medkit on Wasabi and triggered it to restart Wasabi’s heart.  Sin attached his Medkit to Baelthor and it brought Baelthor’s heart back to a regular rhythm.  [Wasabi burned through all of his Physical Damage boxes AND all three of his overflow boxes. Baelthor through two of his overflow boxes.  Ezekial Tee was able to shrug enough of the Drain that he didn’t go into overflow, but just barely.  The GM allowed for Prometheus’ use of the Medkit to save Wasabi's life because Prometheus has an inhuman reaction time, always has the Medkit on him, and could apply it the same round Wasabi took the Drain damage.]  Minutes later, Doc Wagon arrived on site and applied lots of professional [and expensive] healing.  It will be Friday before all three mages are back up and running, if not healthy.  [Doc Wagon Gold Card - NEVER Shadowrun without it.]

Wednesday, May 27, 2076
Quiet day.  Mostly securing the safe house while the three mages recover from their near death experiences.

Thursday, May 28, 2076
Bookie was able to deliver accurate plans for the HVAC system and the security set-up of the underground lab.  It is both better and worse than we hoped for.  Pertinent data on the HVAC system:

  • There is a separate underground processing system that pulls from three concealed surface vents spaced around the site.
  • The processing system connects to the lab by large vents with graduated air filters.
  • The air filters are replaced from inside, meaning the vents are large enough for people to move through.
  • The next scheduled cleaning for the system is scheduled for Thursday, June 3rd, 2076, meaning if we quietly use this system for access, no one will notice for several days.

The interior security for the lab was not as bad as we feared, but there were more guards than we wanted to deal with.  Cameras can be looped [especially with our access point attached to their security systems], but actual guards had to be dealt with or hoodwinked.  Also, we didn't want them chasing us on the way out - a running gun battle to the safe house would draw Knight Errant attention.

A plan was starting to formulate.  The HVAC system looked like the fastest way out of the base, but would require a lot of climbing to the surface.  We placed an order through one of Void’s contacts for four sets of gecko gloves and kneepads.  We overpaid by 3000¥ to expedite the order and were told they would be available Saturday at Noon.  This sets our infiltration team at five people (Void doesn’t need the gecko gear due to her PA powers).

The "portable doors" arrived.  We carefully stashed them in the safe house.

End of Session(s)

[These two sessions were short from the description side as they were more planning and requesting of data.  We also started ordering gear we thought we might need so it would be available by the day of the run.  We figured the worst that would happen is that we would have spare gear if we ended up not needing it for this run.  Plus, that’s what an expense account is for.]

[One of the reasons we were doing so much planning was not analysis-paralysis but actual fear.  This was the first time we’d gone after one of the magic-heavy Big Ten and we had no idea what sort of Pandora’s Box we were about to open up.  Add on Aztechnology’s reputation for nastiness and dirty tricks and we were genuinely concerned for our characters long-term survivability if any of them got caught.]

[Ezekial Tee’s player doesn’t actually join the group until Session 4, but as mentioned, the ritual work was retconned during Session 5.  The player ended up with scheduling issues and was not able to stay past this run, which was unfortunate.  We enjoyed having him at the table.]


Session 1

Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7 [Not Yet Written]

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Session Report – Under the Mountain – Session 1

[I’m reaching back into my notes archive for this one.  This session happened December 5th, 2016.  The Other GM was running.  As it has been a year since we played, I might be missing some details, but that’s life.  Also, it is short.]

[I have skipped one run since the last session report I posted.  I might go back and write it up later, but the odds are low, mostly due to the skimpy-ness of my notes and the amount of time that has passed.  I only bring it up for two reasons: we did a character re-spec before it and we swapped out some characters.  The Fin was replaced by Wasabi, and Bookie was made an NPC and replaced by Moondance.  Wasabi’s player reverts to playing The Fin almost immediately after this run, but Moondance hangs around.  Also, Void is now an actual elf with body-shaping PA powers and Sin and Prometheus received equipment upgrades.  Also-also, Murdoc’s player moved away and had to drop from the game, which we all regret.]



PCs
Void – female night elf physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Moondance – male street samurai with an Ares fetish and a sniper specialization [new character]
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Wasabi – young male human mage with more than a touch of ADHD [new character]
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it

NPC’d
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)



Monday, May 25, 2076
Moondance was contacted by his father, Sundance, who is a Johnson for Ares [referred to after this as The Johnson].  The Johnson wants a target extracted by the Pleiades Group from a corporate facility on June 1st.  The target’s brain must not be damaged as data is to be extracted.  The pay was high [430,000¥ plus a 10,000¥ expense account] due to the target being unaware and located inside a secret, underground, Aztechnology lab in Puyallup!  On top of this, while it was recommended that the extraction happen after 2:00 AM, the drop-off will happen at 8:00 PM in a park in Bellevue, meaning the Pleiades Group will have to sit on the target until the drop while Aztechnology magically scours the city for retrieval of their personnel and revenge.  No pressure.

Moondance accepted the job and brought the job particulars back to the Pleiades office [located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Downtown].  He consulted with Prometheus and the two of them put together a team and started sketching out a plan.

Additional details on the job include:

  • Details on the lab (two floors above ground, three floors below, ~50 personnel)
  • Map of surrounding area (most secretly owned by Aztechnology)
  • Name of the target, with picture (Zoe Berganza – female human Awakened researcher)
  • Name of inside contact (Hercules Mulligan – male human on security team)

We spent the rest of the session trying to get a grip on what we didn’t know but needed to know.  We decided we needed more information about the HVAC system for the underground lab.  We also needed to contact our inside man (Hercules Mulligan) about connecting an external access point to the lab’s matrix systems so Bookie could hack in and get us some floor plans and the security layout.

Tuesday, May 26, 2076
We sent Hercules Mulligan an external access point via a courier drop.  He agreed to have it up and running during his next shift, Wednesday night.

End of Session

[So a hallmark of this run was a lot of planning and brainstorming on how we were going to pull this one off.  We were very concerned with the fact we would have to sit on the target for a while, during which time Aztechnology would be actively searching for her and us.  As the megacorporation with lots of magic and the most fearsome reputation on revenge, keeping our involvement secret was our highest priority, followed only by keeping the target hidden and alive.]

[One other thing: it took us a couple of sessions to put the pieces together, but we (the players) are fairly certain that the Johnson on this run (Sundance) is the same guy Prometheus shot at the end of the Urban Surfin’ run for intercepting the delivery of the case.  We very much hope this run is not his revenge on us.]


Sessions 2 and 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7 [Not Yet Written]

UPDATE: Corrected some formatting to match my style guide and changed meeting with Hercules Mulligan to sending him the access point.  Reading in later notes I realized we don't meet face-to-face until later in the run.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Novel Status Update and Resumption of Blog Posts

So I reached an agreement with Atlas Games on licensing their Over the Edge IP for Getting Educated, the novel I'm writing.  More accurately, the novel I started in 2009 and set aside until earlier this year when I finally returned to it.  I finally worked out where the story was going after a particularly knotty wall of writer's block on the subject and resumed writing.  I'm now over 45,000 words total, with a target of ~70,000 words by the time I finish the first draft.  I've set myself a deadline of the end of April 2018 for draft completion, which is very do-able.

When I get closer to 60,000 words (or the end of January, whichever comes first), I will start releasing it in ~1500-word chunks per week on Royal Road Legends.  I'll post links here as things go live there.  I have an account set up, but I'm not certain I want to keep that user name or use something closer to my actual name or something based on this blog's title.  I'll hammer that out by the end of this month.

My plan was to open a Patreon account when I started posting content on Royal Road Legends, but with the current kerfluffle about their new patron fees, I find I need to review that decision.  I may start on Patreon and then move to a different service when a good replacement becomes obvious.  Patreon looks to provide value to me by showing me what I need to do for that style of interaction, but they don't seem to really understand their own value or how people use their service.  I'm still evaluating options.  Push comes to shove, a PayPal tipjar might do in a pinch.

UPDATE: Patreon has reversed course on the new fees.  Read more here.

To avoid getting stalled on writing, when ever I hit a block with Getting Educated I switch over to a series of fantasy short stories I'm writing on the side.  It's D&D 4th Edition fan-fic using an original character named Epikydes and is fun and light.  Bouncing between that and Getting Educated helps keep me writing on my writing days.  I might post the Epikydes stories over on RRL.  We'll see.

Finally, I will resume posting my Shadowrun session summaries mid- to late-next week.  I don't have the exact day set, but Thursday seems likely to be accurate.  I have notes to work from for two complete runs and the run we are currently working, so there is plenty of material for me to write up, which is good as the holidays have been playing havoc with our gaming schedule.

That's it for now.  See you again on no later than the 21st!

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Novel Update

So a quick update because I haven't updated often enough.

I've heard back from the Atlas Games and they said I could publish my novel as fanfic with no problem, but they wanted a publication proposal if I was planning to publish for sales so they could work out a licensing deal.  That is not inconsequential.

So I've been putting together the proposal, which forced me to start getting much more specific about my publication plans.  I plan on sending my proposal in on Monday (September 25th) and then we'll see what they say.

In the meantime, this has lifted a huge writer's block off me and I'm pushing forward on the story.  Funny how having permission from the IP owners frees up those creative juices, isn't it?

That's it for now.


Thursday, August 31, 2017

Harvey

First, let me say that I was very fortunate in that Harvey was mostly a big rain storm that just wouldn't stop.  Houston is occasionally prone to events I call "The Week That It Rained," which are different than actual tropical cyclones.  These are heavy and long lasting rain events where, it rains for a week or more, usually flooding some part of the Houston or another.  For me, Harvey felt like one of those events - it rained a lot and was overcast for a week, but except for two small power outages (one for 30 minutes and one for 2 hours), I wasn't particularly in danger, nor was my property.  The area I live in only received 21 inches (53.3 cm), or about half a year of rain, over the four days Harvey threatened.

Not everyone was that lucky.

One of my friends lives in the (upside) vicinity of the Addicks Reservoir and faced mandatory evacuation Tuesday.  He's now in Austin at his brother-in-laws place with his wife and two kids.  My in-laws' neighborhood became an island, with all roads in flooded at some point.  This happened to several other friends as well, whose homes became islands as the streets flooded in their neighborhoods.  For some this was expected as it is how their neighborhood deals with heavy rains.  For others, this was the first time it ever happened.  Rainfall levels ranged from 30-50 inches (76-127 cm) over the four days of the storm, depending on where in the Houston area they live [I can't find the official map right now].

At this moment, no one I know personally had water in their home, but that may change as some were evacuated and haven't been back to check yet.  I attribute this statistical anomaly to the fact that most of my friends are long term Houston residents and researched what potential flood plain their home might be on before buying.  Most of us are on the 500+ year flood plain, which is as high as regulations require designating.  I suspect that might change in the next couple of years.

You might have seen pictures online showing flooded freeways with Downtown in the background [I can't find the image I've seen now and it's late enough I have to pack it in for work tomorrow].  One of my routes to work goes through that area.  It is clear now and I'm going in to the office tomorrow for the first time since Harvey approached the coast last Friday.  The biggest flooding was on the south-southwest-west sides of town and those parts of those areas will have water for up to two weeks or so as the rivers slowly empty.  Most of the bayous are already way down, with the notable exception of Buffalo Bayou, which is being fed by the release of waters from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs [to avoid complete failure of their retaining walls].

That's it for this week.  I hope to have something more game related for next week.

Later!

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

On the Edge CCG Game Day

This past weekend I held a On the Edge CCG game day at my place.  I supplied all the cards, folks just had to show up ready to learn a new game.  After various scheduling twists and turns I ended up with four people attending (including myself).

The first round was played using pre-built decks.  The decks were:

  • Mad Science! : a deck based on the Gladstein conspiracy supported by a Dog Face contingent, because all mad science should have monkeys involved (in this case, Attack Baboons).  The deck has plenty of Fringe gear and conditions to boost characters.
  • Hermetic Aries : a deck using the Hermetic magic-based conspiracy boosted by Aries gang muscle, because Hermetics have pull but are pretty weak by themselves.
  • Big Government : a deck pulling from the C&I, the DBI, and the CPC.  Pretty strong, but requires an additional Resource or two to get its characters out.
  • Beginners Deck : a deck based on the example deck in the OTE User’s Guide.  The base deck is weak and unable to win, so I tweaked it a bit – it is still the weakest of the four pre-built decks.  This is the deck I used in the teaching round.


The advantage of teaching with themed decks is that they work immediately (barring a bad shuffle).  They show the benefits of having characters and resources that support each other in play and reduce the number of duplicate characters, avoiding the need to discard characters due to uniqueness, which would be frustrating to new players.  I should also note that these decks were all ~40 cards each.

The first game ended with the Big Government deck winning after a slow start.  In hindsight, the slow start may have helped.  By the time the Big Government player was finally able to get characters in play, the other three players had beat each other’s’ conspiracies down.  This left the Big Government conspiracy in a position of strength, able to smackdown or resist the other conspiracies’ attacks.  It was a good game and everyone had fun, even though it ran long.

Once that game finished, I passed out decks and boosters from the Burger Box starter set.  This gave everyone a Standard starter deck, 2 Standard boosters, and 2 boosters each from the Arcana, Cut-Ups, and Shadows expansions.  This gave everyone a pool of 140 cards to build a deck with.  We did not trade between players before the first game, each player building their deck as a solo exercise.  As a result, all four of us had the Aries gang in our deck (they are common cards).  This produced some frustration for all of us during the second game, especially for those of us who were unable to get them in play quickly enough.

After the second game (first one with the self-built decks), we all re-tooled our decks to fix their deficiencies.  One player doubled down on the Aries gang.  Two of us jettisoned the Aries gang entirely and replaced them with different factions, borrowing cards from other players to make it happen.  I added in the Kergillian faction [aliens conspiring to take over the world with implants, ala Triffids] and the other player chose the Throckmorton faction as she had both the Throckmorton Device and Angela Reyes [a conspiracy based on sub-quantum interference in reality from the future by the Device making sure it is made so it can give control of the world to Clyde Throckmorton, currently a humble bug exterminator].  I’ve played using the Kergillians before, but I’ve never seen anyone field the Throckmortons before, so I was interested in seeing how that worked out.  The fourth player dropped the Hermetics from his deck and focused more on non-Hermetic Astral cards as he had few cards that supported the Hermetics specifically.  I should note he was playing with a 60-card deck to the 40-card decks the rest of us were using – it seemed to be no more or less effective than our decks.

The third game was quicker and ended once I was finally able to get my Kergillians in play, especially Fabrissa Melors, whose Surprise ability coupled with a Hostility Channeler allowed me to efficiently pop the heavy hitters and blockers the other players were fielding, exposing their pullers to easy attack.  My late start also meant that the other conspiracies were running on fumes after battering each other early.  I’m beginning to think that not doing anything but bringing out Resources for the first 4-5 turns may be a winning strategy in a 4-player game.

After a dinner break and a few more tweaks to the decks, we played a fourth game.  We were pretty even in Influence and felt we had time until the Throckmorton player brought out Angela Reyes and flipped her to bring out the Throckmorton Device in one turn.  The Throckmorton Device is a Resource that can generate Pull for Influence (victory points).  None of us had anything in our decks to go after resources, so all she had to do each turn was crank the Device for an Influence and wait until the inevitable happened.  Suddenly the table was on a count-down!  We thrashed and flailed, but, long-story-short, we were only able to stop each other from winning before she did.  After that game was over, anti-Resource cards were quietly slipped into the rest of our decks “for next time”.

After the fourth game, we started cleaning up and talking about what folks thought of the game.  Everyone enjoyed playing and we scheduled a repeat in October [I don’t want to have them too often to avoid burnout].  We also noticed that certain cards always showed up in our hands.  The Throckmorton player always seemed to draw Atavism: Ninja early from her deck and Rain of Walrus seemed to always be in my starting hand [I used it in games 2 and 4 to great effect].

I really liked the limited resource environment.  Players had to field what they could, not necessarily what they wanted.  At later events, my shoe boxes of cards will be available to pull from, so certain cards will likely disappear from play because there are better choices and that will be a little sad.  On the other hand, I’m able to play a CCG I really like again for the first time in over 20 years, so I have that going for me.  ðŸ˜Š

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Personal Update

Two items of news:

  1. Have not heard back from Atlas Games on getting permission to write in their IP since the initial inquiry.  I'm hoping sending my draft as a writing sample was not a mistake.  I was up front that it was a draft and not a polished piece of work, but I still have a niggling worry about it.
  2. I was in the hospital for arrhythmia three days last week.
That second item is what I'm writing about here.

Tuesday night at 2:30 AM (so really early Wednesday morning) I awoke from a dream with my heart racing and occasionally pounding in my chest.  My wife was just coming to bed and I was wide awake, so I got up and sat on the living room couch, hoping my body would calm down and I could go back to sleep.  I dozed a bit, but at 5:00, my wife came out and asked if I was OK.

I really didn't know.

We talked a bit and tried a few things that are supposed to help fix an irregular heart beat and they didn't work.  At 6:30, we decided to get me to an urgent care facility.

[Note: not all urgent care facilities are open 24 hours a day.  Some only open at 9:00 AM, like the closest one to our house.  They are all over the place where I live, so I checked online with my phone for the next closest one that was affiliated with a hospital and went there.]

I checked in to the urgent care facility and they hooked me up to get readings from my heart.  I couldn't see the readouts, but the doctor and the nurses put on faces that outwardly said "You should keep calm as we can fix this," but inwardly said, "Holy Shit this looks serious."  Based on what they saw, my atria were "spazzing out" and firing randomly while my ventricles worked overtime to keep my blood circulating.

They started me on an IV drip and a bit later added another medicine, trying to get my heart back to a sinus rhythm [the "lub-dub" everyone is familiar with] and slow it down.  They also wheeled in a defibrillator and put two large patches on me, one over my heart and one under it on my back, "just in case".  As the saying goes, "Prepare for the worst, hope for the best."

Because of where the defibrillator sat at the foot of my bed/chair/seat thing, I could see my pulse rate readings.  They varied anywhere between 98 and 174, rapidly switching and hitting random numbers in between.  Occasionally, I'd get a solid thump or two in my chest.  I sent some texts to my family to let them know something was up.  My mom called back and we talked, but the nurses asked me to stop talking on the phone as it was negatively impacting my blood pressure and heart rate.

The ER doctor told me that. as I had not responded immediately to the IV drip, they were going to transfer me to the hospital.  Some short time later [I really have no idea how long], they arrived and hooked up a different set of electrodes to me [their equipment was not compatible to the urgent care facility's], asked me the standard set of questions [Any pain? Any shortness of breath? Any allergies? Any alcohol use? Any smoking? - all "no" by the way], and helped me switch over to their trolley.  [That's not the right word, but is how it felt.  I'm 6-foot tall and had to concentrate to keep my flip-flops from falling off.]

The ambulance ride wasn't special but beat walking - the guys did a good job keeping it low key.  I'm glad it was early morning as the A/C was not the strongest and the guy riding in back with me said the interior got way to hot in the afternoons.  When we got to the hospital, they wheeled me up to one room, but not my room.  My room number had been changed while they were coming to pick me up, so their paperwork was dated.  While one of the guys sorted it out with the nurses, the other guy printed out the current reading of my EKG as they rarely got to see someone in that stage - usually it was later when things went critical.  I'm was fine with being an educational experience and did not really think about the unstated part of what he said.

As an aside, I had no chest pain and was breathing fine.  Mostly, the situation was distracting.  My concentration was pretty short-term as every 10-20 seconds my heart would make a big thump or what felt like a gurgle, which is VERY distracting.

They sorted out my correct room number and took me up to the 7th floor, where I had a corner room.  They attached ANOTHER set of contact to me for their machine, which was a small pack that wirelessly transmitted the data to the monitoring station.  So with five contacts per monitoring device, I had 15 of the contact points stuck to me at this point.  They did take the defibrillator patches off, which was a good sign.

Once I was settled in, texts went out to friends and family and I started having visitors.  The docs upped my dosage of the IV drip and gave me shots of another drug through my IV connections.  [Yes, plural, as they stuck me on the back of both hands.  Did I mention I have a thing about needles?  I totally do.]  Most of Wednesday was chatting with friends and family while waiting for my heart to get its act together.  If it didn't, they'd have to a procedure to shock my heart into sinus rhythm.  I'd be unconscious as it would be very painful.  It was scheduled for 1:00 PM on Thursday.

Around 10:00 PM, the last person finally left (my mom) and I got some sleep.  When the nurses came in at 11:30 PM to take my blood pressure again [done every 4 hours], they told me my heart had slipped back into sinus rhythm.  Now they had to get my blood pressure down.  That took another two days before the medicines brought it down far enough the doctor would discharge me.

So after dinner on Friday, I got to leave and come home.  I'm on four medicines and need to make follow-up appointments with my primary doctor and the attending cardiologist.  I'll participate in a sleep study, as sleep apnea can trigger this and my diet now radically reduces the amount of sodium I can have.

Saturday morning it finally hit me how close I came to dying.  Writing this on Sunday is still hard.  I've had to pause several times to de-stress while writing this.  In fact, I'm stopping here for now.  I'll do an edit later - I just needed to get this written so I can think about other things.

Later!