The Silk Road OOC Chat

[Scrasamax]

I havent heard or seen anything from Dozus, so he is on autopilot until he pops back up

[valadaar]

Guess we are waiting on the Captain's reaction. Is she still game, or are we going to need to 'negotiate'

[EchoMirage]

Valadaar, any ideas in smuggler town? I'm just interested in a little information gathering.
Also, will we be getting a Kassy anytime soon, or did the Kassy pull a no-show?

[Scrasamax]

Treat the smuggler city like you would Mos Eisley, it is a hive of scum and villainy, and full of people who's friends dont like you, and they dont like you either

[Scrasamax]

Val: I dont know who you are wanting Jerome to contact, message me and lets get it sorted out.

Echo: I want to throw Blue something fun, with the letters, but I need some time to work it out.

I am starting vacation tomorrow, and I've been feverishly working on getting the house ready for the petsitter, and our costume project, yes, there is a costume contest on my vacation and I've made a near full sized horse for it. There will be pics on FB later. I want to throw some stuff out for the game, but I am going to say its pretty likely this will be a 5 day pause on my end, and I give my apologies on that.

This costume has been stressful

[EchoMirage]

As a re-enactor, I fully understand. Costumes are a) important b) stressful. We're patient adults, too Enjoy!

[valadaar]

I was just creating a random hook  

[Scrasamax]

Back from vacation, and I want to get back into things, so before launching headlong back into it, what would you fine fellows like to see in the upcoming section?

[valadaar]

Sorry for the delay. Family issues. I like where it is going now, but I'll put some more thought into it.

[EchoMirage]

I think the issue is complicated somewhat by how 'soon' in the campaign this narrative arc occurs.
We have run 0-0.5 adventures with our characters in the cosmic era setting. Thus, we as players don't have many connections with the world, even though the characters would be connected to their associates, fixers, military comrades, friends, enemies, contacts...
Many outside forces act upon them now, and the scope of the adventure is very wide; due to the characters' isolation, they naturally slip into the role of victims of the story, and not so much active agents.

I'd like the characters to take on more agency, to drive more of the story, but don't see a good way how. Any ideas?

[Scrasamax]

My hands have been full, but the ideas that come to mind are a common goal (more so than grab the money and run) , or a common enemy.

The germ of an idea I have now is the USS Indianapolis

Like the ship that delivered the atomic bombs to the Air Force to drop on Japan, the party have become the custodians of not one but several wunder weapons.

I think that the hidden patron that has hijacked Mataos is going to be in touch in a day or two. Hopefully, I need to do something with the idea, and have family business to attend to tomorrow

[EchoMirage]

One question: can Blue or Jerome do any custom programming on the mom-bots? Is there any whiz kid in the Interzone who can do so?

[valadaar]

Jerome's day job before he left the service was as a bot-handler, so I'd think he'd have a chance. Given their payload he has been reluctant to get too close to them.

[Scrasamax]

Jerome's day job before he left the service was as a bot-handler, so I'd think he'd have a chance. Given their payload he has been reluctant to get too close to them.

Outside of the payload, they are functionally fetish/pregnant sexbots, nothing super sophisticated, hardware wise. Their programming seems pretty benign as well, the defensive explosive kids only go off when faced by a threat to the mothers.

[EchoMirage]

Hi, a few questions:
> The hashish-dispensing lass (HDL) does not want anything else, she's just a piece of local colour giving out drugs?
> The HDL does not know of a way to make a secure call?
> The HDL does not know of anyne ding jailbreaking on bots?
> What's Charlie Foxtrot's? A bar? A kindergarden? A statement about life?

[Scrasamax]

Hi, a few questions:
> The hashish-dispensing lass (HDL) does not want anything else, she's just a piece of local colour giving out drugs?
> The HDL does not know of a way to make a secure call?
> The HDL does not know of anyne ding jailbreaking on bots?
> What's Charlie Foxtrot's? A bar? A kindergarden? A statement about life?

HDL is a local piece of color
Yes she does, but it will cost ya
Yes she does, but again it will cost ya
Charlie Foxtrot's used to be something, but now it's a burnt out shell that people use as a flophouse to stay out of the rain and EM noise

[EchoMirage]

So, what else is needed to get the ball rolling?
> we will rig the bots to blow, ideally alone, but if we're not able, we'll get the minimum necessary tech support
> we get a ride, something that handles bad terrain well and is quite inconspicuous
> we get a few mercs to cover our butts
> disable Matos' wireless, or at least get him drugged
> hand over the merchandise
> abscond

[EchoMirage]

I am kinda confused, the whole plan involved getting Matos drugged or disabling his wifi so that not-Matos would not interfere.

[valadaar]

Yeah, we did want to keep Matos in the dark...

[Scrasamax]

Mataos and his guest dont know what Jerome and Blue have been up to, but it has pretty much guessed that they were going to horn Mataos out, that's what people do when they discover that one of their own is compromised. Mataos is not it's first proxy job.

[EchoMirage]

That's ... nice. But it's somehow disheartening that once we actually manage to think up a plan, agree on the plan, and act out agreeing on the plan, the plan is kinda made invalid by not-Matos. Also, the way not-Matos walks around like he owns the place and we can't do sh!t makes one feel dis-empowered.

[Scrasamax]

A. Not-Mataos doesn't know what your plan is, it is executing a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess). To be honest, it has it's own plan, but doesn't have the full agency to do it itself, hence the use of proxies and unsuspecting shadowrunners.

B. Not-Mataos has a good bluff score, eh?

[EchoMirage]

Just my belated apologies for not posting - I still am completely at a loss regarding how to continue this role play.

[Scrasamax]

I'm not sure what went wrong in translation, but something did, and I'm fine with dumping it at this point

[EchoMirage]

Well, taking a step back, I can at least deconstruct what went wrong for me:
> The way the story was set up, my character would have had far more extensive knowledge of the world than I do, but also would need this knowledge to navigate properly. Thus, I felt kind of lost.
> Given the way events played out and the choices which were perceptible to me, I often didn't feel like there was much of a choice. Personally, I am not all too fond of stories where the PC is massively overwhelmed by superior forces, either.
> I couldn't find many NPCs with which I'd like to interact, and those where I tried to establish some rapport did not seem too responsive (e.g., Arjan).

Some of the issues I had are integral to forum RP:
> people dropping out
> lack of meaningful interactions with other PCs, see Matos and the discussion about whores that fell absolutely flat, and little else
> the other PC was introverted Jerome, with little of his inner life surfacing, and not giving me too much to work with

And of course, there's the genre, I may be closer to the somewhat kooky Shadowrun that's centred around adventure and self-expression, rather than dystopian horror.