At the time of writing, the campaign is envisioned as a group (in this case four) Shadowrunners from the mid-2070s being thrown back in time to the mid-2030s.   The exact specifics as to how and why that happens aren't set in stone at this point; and much like other facets of the game, is anticipated to be character directed.

The discussion will start here....

There may be a need to either fudge some of the dates in the timeline and/or pick a different year (like 2015) to land in.  That said....

I'm planning on picking four players plus a co-gm; whom will also have a character.   Selection will be finalized Friday morning.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:36, Wed 02 Aug 2023.

While we're not really at the point of talking about character backgrounds yet; I'd like everyone in the group to have worked together several times before.   The opening that's been brewing around in my head involves physical penetration of a black site to secure materials....hence my desire to have everyone possessing some form of combat skill.

Thoughts.....

<joking on>Shadowrun should really be renamed 'magic-run' :)  <joking off> A mage or a mystic adept is strictly better than all other characters mechanically. And as the karma comes in they get better and better (and importantly more fun to play) All that said a troll cybersamurai is awesome and might give a mage a run for their money and they are a lot of fun to play. I am thinking of this.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHgZh4GV9G0

I'm not planning on having any combat skills as per the other thread. It just doesn't fit the idea. I mean I can throw the idea away and come up with something, but I am quite attached to this idea and a big part of it is NOT being good in combat. This character is a support character, not a primary combatent. Come combat it's kiss the ground time

To support your idea of the start (which sounds like a great introduction) The blackops pentration can easily be done with Angel 316 in a Transys Steed and a rigger cocoon. In SR4 that would be about 10K nuyen. I assume there is similar stuff in SR5... but I don't have the books. I do know I don't have the resources for that... but that's easily fixed 'it blew up' or 'it won't fit in the time machine' (i.e. the gear we don't have points for can be left on this side of the time rift). And then I can make one / do stuff on the other side when we get the resources.  If Angel 316 does her job properly then there won't be any need for fights. That's what deckers/technomancers do. And if it does come down to combat then the combat mages and troll will deal with the problem.

Nothing Angel 316 does in combat would make a difference physically, but hacking the enemies tacnets and giving confusion works a treat. When the alarms go off somewhere else, orders come over the tacnet to redeploy 'this is just a diversion the real attack is ...', or sticking hallucinations into their AR. Or cooking off their own grenades. Or....  That kind of action is far more effective than shooting them with a popgun using 4 die when we have Ironsides. And makes for a more interesting character for me (I've played many shooters or melee characters in shadowrun, this character is something different for me). It works against most corporate enemies. Doesn't work against spirits or a non-cyber controlled parazoological critters... but you can't have everything with one character. And that's why we have mages and a huge troll alone.

It's an interesting idea to have been on a couple of jobs together. I'd have to adjust the backstory I have in mind a little but perhaps the 'last run' was 'getting me and Ironsides' out, and then we could have done one or two easy runs before this one.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 4):

Transys Steed is found in Rigger 5.0 on page 140: I found it online but not in the wiki.  I'll put the stats here for reference.

Transys Steed
(Pilot Ground Craft)

• HANDL 4/2
• SPEED 1G
• ACCEL 1
• BODY 3(1)
• ARM 0
• PILOT 2
• SENS 2
• AVAIL 2
• COST 4,000 nuyen

This message was last edited by the GM at 19:07, Fri 04 Aug 2023.

That's great thank you! Could you price adding a rigger cocoon to it (assuming that exists in SR5)

It's actually useful for all sorts of things. Mages. Riggers. 'Guests'.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 6):

That's actually in the Shadowrun Wiki under Vehicle Mods.  ^_^

On the other subject: As long as you're reasonably confident that your decking/rigging skills are going to sufficient to make you an asset in combat, then I'm happy with that.  I'm more concerned about anyone being nothing more than a target.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:13, Fri 04 Aug 2023.

I've been thinking about the setup of this campaign. I am not sure how the GM plans to play this out, but if our characters really get transported 40+ years in the past, we would have to be very, very careful not to reveal this to anyone. I mean, look at this entry from the Shadowrun timeline, year 2026:



Can you imagine the effect of showing up in this world with, say, a trodes headband that can do the same thing, only better? Or a comlink device that can run circles around their mainframes? Every piece of knowledge our characters have - from future tech to magic to politics to culture to whatever, every scrap of data on our comlinks, every piece of gear we bring back from the cheapest comlink and clothes on our back to state-of-the-art implants and magical foci - all would be absolutely incredibly valuable.

Seriously, if this became known, I imagine any number of factions would disappear us down some hole to never be seen again, strip every possible bit of info from our minds and take every bit of tech we may carry (which is kinda of a problem when that literally includes someones arm and a leg, not to mention parts of their nervous system).
This message was last edited by the player at 21:40, Fri 04 Aug 2023.

In reply to Raven (msg # 8):

Exactly. As a mage, you can hide your time travel past by only casting those old, common, spells that have existed since that time period (think spells that existed in SR2 or 3) like Trid Phantasm, Improved Invisibility, Increase/Decrease Reflexes etc.

Although I will point out that Power Foci in SR2 and SR3 were actually -more- powerful than SR5 rules - you could use them to help with drain tests which I beleive in SR5 is not the case. Also, according to the older rules, you couldn't use regeants to assist with reducing drain whereas in SR5 you can - that would be incredibly valuable knowledge but you'll have to find a talismonger in the past who posesses the skills to create the stuff.

In reply to Raven (msg # 8):

My expected story route is that you'll end up working for the U.S. Government in some capacity; but the final decision on that is up to you as the players, hence my comment about the story being player driven.

I consider the most likely scenarios to be either in Intelligence (CIA or Homeland) doing basically the same kind of black ops work that you've been doing.   Alternately, you could swap over to the military; in which case you'll be doing stuff more like you find in the movies 13 Hours and  Act of Valor.

But that's the main purpose of this thread; to tell me how you want the story to play out so I can start figuring it out before we get there.   Also bear in  mind, that you can easily swap knowledge and tech for a cushy lifestyle in addition to the danger driven elements.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:55, Fri 04 Aug 2023.

So we're G-Men (and G-Women)? I always saw ourselves as working independently in the past as the prototype for what shadowrunners became (making it something akin to the grandfather paradox), trying to take on jobs and work out a way to return to our time time.

Can you flesh out your idea some more of how we came to be working for the government? To what end?

In reply to Sunshine (msg # 11):

Okay, let me try and elaborate; so you can pick it apart and give me a better idea.

What's been brewing in my head is that the target location of your first run is an old abandoned U.S. research facility.   Upon reaching the appropriate point in the run, you'll be flung backwards (i.e. a time skip).   When you arrive, you find yourself surrounded by soldiers in US Army uniforms.   Lots of soldiers.

So, I'd expect an initial interrogation and things will work out the way that the group had decided to go.   If you'd like to take the easy route of working for the U.S. Government; then we can spin the story-line as I've previously outlined.    If you'd like an alternate story-line, then I'll need to know that before we get very far into the actual game as I'll have to manipulate events so you can do that.

I'll add a few more things then let the group hash out how they want the campaign to unfold.  I'm not a big fan of "rail-roading", FYI.

If you remember, I asked for a "goal" for your character.   If s/he'd like to see that the mega-corps never became mega, what avenue(s) might they prefer to explore?    How about preventing the planet from becoming a toxic wasteland?

And so forth.

The setup sounds fine! I could see the government trying to undo the mistakes that led it to becoming sidelined next to the power of the megacorps and essentially at their beck and call.

I am actually pondering if we could just let the roleplay dictate our fate - death, vivisection, escape or working on the governments' leash.



For my part in this game..
IC goal - preventing the premature death of my characters' birth mother.
OOC goal - To return to the 'present' time period and see what changes our activities hath wrought to the time line - if any at all. Nothing more, no thing less.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:04, Sat 05 Aug 2023.

Add to that the fact that I have 12+ die in making/understanding most of that tech... (assuming I am as per vision). Both the science behind it and the skills to make it. The GM said 'we couldn't go to a Walmart and get gear' but I'm expecting to be able to make quite a lot of stuff.



My preference is for it to be a game with plenty of downtime. As a technomancer it takes a lot of time to register sprites, and I am also a person who can make/repair stuff. I'd like to do that :) I'm good if we have a 'no it's going to be half a day downtime at most' but then I'd change the character a lot. So it's nice to be able to talk about it here

My goals
IC goal - Pretty simple. Stop Universal Brotherhood in it's tracks. But just stopping them isn't enough: it has to be 'stop the insect spirits'. And maybe things like them. As the magic level increases more things like them will come through.

OOC goal -To have a fun time RPing. I want to explore technomancy and tech making rules because I've not done that as a Shadowrun character before. I like the idea of this kind of time travel. I also like the idea that we could be the tipping point that makes a difference in mankind surviving the horrors in this magic cycle.

Railroading
Nothing wrong with railroading in the prologue which is what we are discussing. It's really just a way to get us to the start of the campaign. We could get here just as easily with the GM saying 'hey this is what happened to date' but I do like the idea of RPing through it. I personally fully support the idea of all the metagaming in the world to get it so that we (at the end of the prologue) are in the campaign the GM wants to run. After the prologue of course I'm a fan of letting the players do what they want, with some steering.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 15):

I'm going with the "Can't get more gear at Walmart" because it has to do with tech level.  I'll just point out the discussion about Christopher Columbus building a nuclear submarine; and stop there.  I had several rather simple reasons for the characters ending up working for the government; again, I'll try to be brief.

• First reason: the government in it's current form already has laws and systems in place to prevent the kind of monopolies that a mega-corp would ultimately require.
• Second reason: the government can put the necessary resources into black projects under the guise of "National Security" and already have the tech before the corps could possibly develop it.
• Third reason: it's the easiest way to integrate the characters into society as it stands today.
• Fourth reason: the character can trade not only tech but knowledge, which has been touched upon already.  They could easily acquire the equivalent of a High or possibly Luxury lifestyle: think about the first time going to the grocery and realizing that "real food" is affordable by everyone....How much steak can a troll eat at one sitting, anyways?

500 years tech difference.. Not forty. And physics is approaching fundamental limits already in the areas we are talking about.

A better example is 'can Christopher Columbus make a Cannonade instead of a Cannon because he knows wrapping wire around the barrel is awesome, that if he mills the gunpowder it will double in strength and that using standardized ammunition will increase his firepower by a factor of four'. All of that is 'just knowledge' that you can do stuff that wasn't known. Another example is that you could make a pipe organ or a telescope in the stone age. They just didn't know they could.

Go back twenty years and very little has changed in tech capability. Things have got a smaller. They haven't got much faster (fundamental limits in physics are preventing them getting faster). Sure you have more memory but programs are bigger and we have more waste consuming that capacity.

I'm not challenging your game world by the way. It's your game and if it can't be done, it can't be done. I'm just hopefully triggering thoughts

In either view of the world I can make a drone with a forty years old CPU. It just won't be as good. It will work though: the lunar lander program as an example was pretty awesome.

---

Working with/for the government. I'm all for it. Your reasons are all sound. I could easily come up with just as sound counter reasons, but we have to make a choice. And 'go with the campaign the GM wants to run' is a great reason for the choice.

One of the interesting outcomes is the ability to swing enormous research budgets. And research works a ton better when you know what you are looking for can be found: the manhatten project was immense. Copying was far far easier.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 17):

I'll get a little geeky then put it aside.   As far as I know, we don't have the capacity to run small electronic devices purely on bio-electricity nor the DNI interface.   Until those two hit common use, there's no datajack.

I'm thinking we'll need to go back a bit further than 2030.  From the reading of the timeline, the U.S. more or less starts to disintegrate around 2018; and the first successful cyberware in 2019.  So, I'm thinking we'll need to either be hitting somewhere in the mid-2010s or fudge the timeline so that stuff happens 20 years later.

I'd be a lot happier going further back. It makes the tech discussion much easier among other things. (because I can answer your questions but what's the value in that... it's off topic. But see the example of the Cannonade. And the pipe organ. And the telescope.)

I would be cautious about having Trump as president for all sorts of real world politics (I have that in another game so I speak from learned pain). It's explosive and there's no need for those explosions when we can have more fun with C5.

I wouldn't go back further than 2011 for obvious reasons :) But again your call.

That sounds like 2012/2013 would be great times. I'd prefer that to changing the time line so I personally don't get confused and there is a lot of material made by others to help us

Okay, so unless there's an objection we'll go with 2012.

Looks like the first elves and dwarves popped up the year before, which is also when the Awakening seems to occur.   Yeah, I pretty much picked 2030 out of a hat before I looked at the actual timeline.

One thing - Ironside was going to be a troll, wasn't he? But trolls only showed up in 2021. It would be possible to play one even before, of course, but he would stick out even more.

Interesting. BUT he's going to stick out anyway :) Flaunt it! Own it!

Maybe one of our mages can do an illusion? Plenty of karma for spells :)

Oh, and first cyberlimb was made in 2019. So, if Ironside is sporting those, it's going to be even more obvious he's not from around this world. Maybe it would be better to push the time to after goblinization?

Ok, so here's the big question from me: How will the rules of time travel even work? There's three options that I can see.

1. We go back, change something (no matter how small, 50+ years is enough for small changes to lead to wildly different outcomes), leading to us or our parents mostly likely never been born, leading to us never going to the past aaaaand we have a world-breaking paradox on our hands.

2. We go back, but whatever changes we make were already accounted for in our original timeline. In other words, we can't change anything. And if we try to break the timeline in a big way, something will stop us. I don't know, maybe time police or something.

3. We go back, but not in our past, but to a world identical (or close enough that we can't tell the difference) to the one in our past. However, since this isn't actually our past, changes are possible and will not result in a paradox. Our own timeline carries on without us, safe from any change we might make.

GM, I am guessing we are going with option 3 here?

In reply to Raven (msg # 23):

4. The GM had no plans having you time slip forward....so hadn't planned for that?

I think that the answers to that question are 'best not know' :) We can ask and ponder in character. The only way we'll time travel forward is one day at a time, and to us there is little difference in which it is.

Of course... philosophically it's really important. And Angel 316 for one will be contemplating that often

Yeah, this are mostly just philosophical musings, though it might still have effect on our characters. Sunshine has a goal of saving her mother... but if option 3 is true, then the person living in this world is not really her mother.

Eh, probably best not to overthink this.

A good book that is very similar to the plot of this is 'The Appocalypse Troll' by David Weber. It covers that philosophical. And then comes to the conclusion 'it doesn't matter'. If you can't tell the difference there is no difference.

Now I've got to go read it again...

Ironically, I have a copy sitting on my bookshelf.  Completely forgot about it....

Well I hope no one told the characters this would be a 1-way trip :)
Although, 40 years, its possible that the characters could return to their own time period but by the process of natural aging, if nothing else. Forty years of being in the shadows.... that is a long time.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:31, Sat 05 Aug 2023.

No we can come back. One day at at a time. It's only 60 years to get back

We'll just use magic to make a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff to get back home!

Kind of like a 'suspended animation sleep spell'? Sounds easy enough. Enough drugs and a life support machine can do it

Trolls stick out normally anyway, and I have a rather nasty habit of taking distinctive style etc so yes, I think the massive almost three meter tall mountain of a creature with goat horns is going to stick out a touch......

2012 is it?

What you said Iron sides :) Besides at least one of our mages has invisibility...

---

Just a thought. 2012 is ours for the taking computer hacking speaking. Turns out (who would have through it) a Technomancer hacker is OK at hacking. So... how much money do we want to steal from the bank? Or do moderately legal things... Like buying bitcoin... We could buy our own government and then we would be working for the government. Just saying

Actually the GM wants us to go government. So we should. But ... wow I am tempted with the idea of owning the worlds IT systems and using them to build factories with the tech advantage we have from 40 years advanced tech.

Hmm...do I have a badge that says 'kidnap me' written on my forehead?

Hmm. I'll admit I'm still not completely sold on that going all the way back to 2012 is a good idea. In 2012 a three meter tall mountain of a creature with goat horns is going to do more than just stand out - he is likely to draw all kind of attention on us everywhere. As in terrified people with guns attention, both civilian and police.

Now, we could keep him hidden, sure. Raven will also have invisibility and physical mask as well.. but besides needing to sustain the spell, isn't using magic all the time to hide the fact that Ironside is a 3 meters tall troll kinda defeating the point of him wanting to play a 3 meters tall troll in the first place? Where's the fun in that?

I don't hink we get to pick IC :)


I have to admit it sounds fun to me. Go back and look in this thread where we talked about it to see why

In reply to Raven (msg # 35):

It's been gone over a bit in this thread (I think it's this thread).  Please feel free to continue that discussion if you like.  ^_^

Edit: The first and biggest reason for moving back further is because I simply picked a number during game idea thread.  If I'd actually looked at the timeline, I'd have picked an earlier number then.
Awakening happens in 2011.   Dunkelzahn appears in 2012.  The Great Ghost Dance (and the series of events that happen which will ultimately lead to NAN) around 2014.   Cyberware appears in 2019.  And so forth.   My reading of the timeline says that by 2030, the mega-corps are already in place; so if you want to produce meaningful change then you're wanting right around 2012.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:23, Sun 06 Aug 2023.

I've just been thinking about Raven's comment some more.

The reason we are going back so far is among other things to 'not have too different a timeline'. There are several reasons for this. The availability of existing resources to help put everything in place without having to do a load of checking for example. And for me it's important because I play other games, and I would just get confused, make mistakes, forget... and so on.

But a very simple change that wouldn't impact much, if anything, would be to have orks and trolls arrive at the same time as elves. That would mean IronSides would still stick out, but in the 'oh look Mommy it's a troll' way, rather than 'EEK WHATS THAT! RUN!' sort of way.

Mind you... I would quite like the 'EEK WHATS THAT! RUN!' if I was playing IronSides. Free +10 circumstance die bonus to intimidate most of the time.

Alright, as long as Ironside is fine with whatever we are going with, I am fine with it.

GM, got a request (again). Would it be possible to change my character name? I am just not feeling Raven here after changing the character. How about Cain?

In reply to Raven (msg # 39):

No problem!

Okay, so there's a couple of things I'd like to go over and be assured that there's a general consensus before I get very far into the planning stage.   If you've got a better suggestion, please toss it out.

So, yes.  Everyone please speak up, I'll be able to start working things up once we've gotten these bullet points (pun intended) solidified.

---

I'm looking through the run rewards.   I'm planning on keeping the listed karma awards; but considering a replacement for nuyen, assuming how the overall story works out (see below).  I'm leaning toward giving out temporary Edge (usable until the next time karma is awarded).

Nextly, I need a firm consensus on who's ultimately going to be paying the bills and otherwise keeping you in the latest toys.   While I've suggested U.S. Government in some form; if anyone has an alternative that they'd prefer, please speak up.   Assuming no other suggestions that the group wants to do; I'd like a consensus between: Homeland Security (Internal Intelligence), CIA (External Intelligence), or Military.

Finally, unless there's an actionable alternative to 2012; we'll go ahead and use that time period.   I'm not going to fix an amount of time between runs; and as long as everyone picks up the Advanced Runners Pack, I'm going to hand-wave away lifestyle and equipment.

 Homeland security is a red line I won't cross. I can't RP working for such an evil organisation. My vote is the military. But I'm good CIA or military.

Nuyen is going to be plentiful. I can't see how Angel isn't going to be the richest woman on the planet within a few days if she wants to be. I should say that in a former life I was a cyber security architect for a European high street bank, so I know exactly how weak their IT security was at that time. Do we want $250M in unmarked Euros? No problem. Probably two weeks to set it up. And it's not like we have an objection to theft.

That's especially with the others to do protection. We should embrace that. By that I mean that nuyen dollars won't matter much for what we want to do. I mean sure we can buy some stuff but at the end of the day it will be about us. That's pretty much the same premise with almost every super hero game (and this is now a super hero game).

And the Military or CIA aren't exactly going to say 'no' if we say 'we need to spend 10 million because of this schitck' given the scope of what they can get from us. We will be the hottest propery on the planet.

I don't know that you need to worry about a replacement. XP matters. Having fun matters. I wouldn't worry about Nuyen. Just say 'you have enough' and then ignore it.

Oh just to add to it. NP if we are coerceed into HS or something. It's only voluntarily that I'm talking about. If we were, I'd do my very best IC to destroy it and expose it rather than what we were there to do. But I'm good if that's the thrust of the compaign we want.

If we go military or CIA I can get behind it be and an enthusiastic member

What is Homeland Security up to? I am not really all that familiar with this part of the setting.

Anyway, I am fine with working for whoever is least likely to disappear and then vivisect us. If that's the Government, that's fine. Cain's goal is screwing up things for the corps, so strengthening national governments (plural) at corporate expense is fine by him. I'd be fine with also going completely freelance and working from the shadows, but I am not at all sure we could keep our secret secret without help.

Can we agree to leave real world politics off the table?  I'm sure that there's things that the government is doing that we (personally) don't like.  Admittedly, I'm making the rather broad assumption that something like Homeland (i.e. focused on internal security and isn't the FBI) exists in some form.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that the corporations would not only happily disappear you, but dissect you at the appropriate point of time.   And just hand-waving the away money is fine by me, also.

No problem. I think I misinterpreted Angel's post and assumed there's something in the setting where HS is up to no good.

Not an ingame thing. I just have real world issues which I'd like to dodge.

How about just a name change and then we can leave the real world politics out of it? I like that idea. We could call them ... The FBI maybe. Or the USDD. The Us Defense Division. Or US Internal Security. Or even the NSA (My existance would terrify and delight them. Encryption? That's so last year. You're still using public key encryption???? Ha ha ha. Which governments messages do you want to decrypt. Let me make you a machine that can do it.

As for the corporate thing. I think of all the characters in any game we could pick that could fade away into 2012, or escape a 'disappearing' a shadowrunning team is at the top of the list. I don't think a 2012 corporation has any idea of just how deadly or effective that team is. Remember magic has been around for around a year. Technomancy is unheard of. Cyberware /Bioware totally science fiction.  Especially as prime runners. Within a month we have all the cash and identities we need. A quite country change or two, build up the power and money and tech base. And the world is ours...

All that said go for the GMs idea and work with the government. He has a vision for the game. Let's run with that.

In reply to Angel 316 (msg # 47):

So, we'll change Homeland to No Such Agency (NSA) then.

---

Just to go over it again.   Please either list them in order and/or offer an alternative suggestion....I have no particular preference between the three.

• NSA: You'll basically be doing what you were doing before the time slip, focused primarily on North America.
• CIA: As above, except focused on external locations.
• Military: It's probably easiest to pick this one as more action heavy than the other two, but I won't know for sure until I get into the planning stage.

This message was last edited by the GM at 05:02, Mon 07 Aug 2023.

Love it!

I am 100% happy with all three. Hardly even a mild preference so I'll go with what the others vote. If it's a tie I'll vote then

**throws a wrench into things** How about the Intelligence Support Activity? I have a soft spot for them since Person of Interest is one of my favourite programmes.

I like that too :)

In order of preference... along with my reasoning for that order...

• NSA - I prefer to think of this as working for the Secret Service or some other interesting organisation where we have protection from the government, but the facts surrounding our arrival in the current time period are not known outside of a select few. Also lets us operate domestically without the problems of working for the Military.
• Military = This is interesting too if we're operating on American/UCAS soil, since technically the military isnt allowed to operate domestically unless martial law were declared. A way for the military to take certain unilateral actions that would otherwise not be possible for them. Of course if we're found out working domestically, we cant rely on the Military to bail us out since we're a deniable asset.
  [*[ CIA - Also a nice option - if we were to do this, at least one of our characters would need to be linguistically diverse (my character does speak a little Japanese)

I would probably be fine with any of the three, but if I had to pick, let's start with NSA? I would like to do some globetrotting at some point, but it would be nice to start off locally.


That sounds good to me.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:34, Mon 07 Aug 2023.

Alright a lot to catch up on

1) I'm totally fine with being the only troll in existance, the girls will love it, the other guys we fight will run screaming and hiding under the guise of magic lets me bitch and whine about how badly trolls are treated...and can be something he works towards preparing the government for Goblinization and reducing racisim....because I'm sure they can fight the Mega Corps a lot better if they take care of and raise a legion of loyal government Orks and Trolls...can't see anything going wrong with that idea, not at all (sings be prepared from the lion king to himself)

2) Organization wise I think I like the idea of CIA/NSA then Military (only because secret agents is the first shadowrunners and CIA because being air dropped into strange locals via stealth bomber sounds like a blast.

3) Also, skillwires is a thing and I think we have a technomancer who can thread lingusofts for Ironsides if needed....although there might be an echo you need for that, which is unlikely she took. Oh and lingusofts are super cheap, so I'm fairly sure uber-mancer can program us up a lingusoft for us all to use as needed.

There's no echo (that I can find: I just have three books. Core, Data trails and Kill Code) but there is a complex form. There used to be a SR4 echo that did something like that, but not this edition. If you can find one do let me know :)

The complex form doesn't work well at all or I would have taken it. It is an enormous drain. It lasts for one combat turn per success. And it only works if I 'steal it' so its opposed by a ton of die - I have to roll against my own willpower.... It's on my 'do I/don't I' list. But even then it won't work with autosofts (unless I had skill wires and then it would just work for me)

I do have 10 linguasofts. To use them I run them in a comm link (Don't need skill wires for linguasofts/knowsofts). They are only level 1.

Given what we know today about translation, making linguasofts is totally within the grasp of 2012 tech base. Buy some graphics cards (cheap and readily available back then) put them in a server farm (if only I had 18+ die in hardware... oh wait... I do) and then we can make all the linguasofts we want.

I'm posting here so I can find this discussion in the future as it applies.

---

Because I hadn't planned on replacing characters (or pausing the game, for that matter); I'm kinda stumped how to proceed with that.   I had intended for the event that moved you in time to be a unique circumstance, which is why I've even opened the topic up.

Several possibilities present themself to me, and if there's alternative that I haven't posted here....toss it out.
Continuity Hiccup: Any characters being replaced where "never there".
Running a Bit Short:    However, the group size under three probably won't work.
Local:  The group gains a replacement.  However, said replacement is from the current time and lacks both the abilities and equipment that the first characters bring.
Starting Over:  Because we're not very far along, simply hitting Restart is an option; though this one is my least favorite choice.

OK a few thoughts at the start:
Players leave. In the first few months you can expect 40%. After that about 30..40%  a year.
Long running games make it easy for new players to join

• Continuity Hiccup: the easiest OOC. We just squint and don't worry about it. This for me is option 2
• Running a bit short: I agree it won't work well
• Local: I don't think it will work well. Different character creation rules and I wouldn't want to join this game as a local, but I would say that there are people that would.
• Starting over: normally this is my least favourite, but actually here we could just start the next round in this room at this point in the story. Doesn't help long term though, so still not fond of this

I'd like to suggest another.

When we arrived in the past there were other people on the platform. We didn't get to say hi because we were all arrested. Each of those is from another runner team: perhaps to find out what happened to us. That gives you a nice pool of people who can join at any time. Perhaps they have already been shipped out of this compound (to Guantanamo say, or kept under chemical chains somewhere). We just (OOC) don't go and investigate that too much until there is a new player in the scene... That gives you a pool of people that can join at anytime. If there is a in game clue about 'there was only one event' then they could easily have been caught up in 'echos of that event'

My vote order

• My new idea
• Continuity hiccup
• Starting over

Yeah, sadly player turnover is a major problem on rpol. Especially at the start, I've been in games with horrendous player attrition. It does get better later on as the game gets a core of players that stick around. And I've seen all of the solutions to it proposed by Angel in play.

I generally agree with her here, long running games tend to have some mechanism that allows retiring old and introducing new characters. Her idea might work. Or we can go with another portal opening somewhere and bringing more characters as needed.

This is my preferred option tbh, the others appart from continuity hiccup are non starters for me. And if I was coming in as a local, I would be grumbling I didnt get the boost the others did.

so I guess

• The new idea
• Continuity hiccup
• Thats it.

This message was lightly edited by the player at 20:35, Wed 22 Nov 2023.

My thought on a local character would be one that uses the mage creation rules, with the option of gaining physical adept abilities once play starts.  As it looks like we'll be needing non-mages, I'll consider options there....I'll have to consider how "other teams" might make sense.

Cat is going to pop into the role of co-gm, now that Ironsides has dropped from the game.