Whereupon we discuss the nature of punk, violence, rebellion, sex, and music.  And character actions.

This is my current work station.



Between drawing, writing two comic scripts (for fun), another D&D game, being a parent, husband, and firefighter, I have a rather full schedule.  That being said, I really want to do this thing.  Patience is going to be key.  Especially since I'm going to learn by doing and I haven't run a game in a looooong time.

A few random thoughts.

At the beginning, I'd like to not have any Netrunners.  We can handle that off camera via NPCs.  Going forward, sure, but if we want to get off the ground with momentum, that's one less rule structure not to have to master out the gate.

What's your general sense of how to use humanity?  The system really needs it, but I have a hard time taking a Solo with an empathy of 4 and saying you only get 40 points of cyberware before you're bonker balls, but a Rockerboy with and Empathy of 9 can go full borg.  Thoughts for ways to compensate/adjust? Or is it all about therapy?

Let me know what you guys think!

If we're sharing workspaces, here's mine.  I didn't tidy up just for you guys - the cleanliness is accidental from earlier this morning.



I'll preface this by saying that my ability to commit to a PbP is still very low.  Every time I think about it, it sounds like work rather than fun.  I've been fitting in my own writing and other stuff where I can over the past few months, and the ability to do that on my own schedule without external pressure has been very refreshing.

Having said that - I think CP Red is one of those settings in which the group needs some idea for campaign direction before building individual PCs.  Twilight: 2000 has an implied purpose for the PCs to be together and a long-term agenda for them to pursue; CP Red does not.  The inherent opposition in which some of the archetypes find themselves is evidence of that.  So before "who are we playing?" I think we should kick around "what kind of story are we telling?"

Current plan is for an initial run of track, extract, and secure a kidnapped victim from a gang.  We could go from the direction of the characters being an existing team or drawn together by a Fence for the mission without know each other.  I think Media characters might be kind of hard to set in at first.  But we can make it work with enough planning.

Yeah, Netrunner as NPC is always good.  The new rules even allow a Corp to take one as a minion...

This is my Netrunner... Notice anything different about him?...  He doesn't even speak English!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoYC_8cutb0

Since I temporarily moved back into my mother’s house my workspace is my old bedroom. The other day Toto’s  ‘Africa’ came on the radio. I felt like I was back in the 1980’s. The only thing missing were some Molly Ringwald posters.

Don’t get me wrong, my desk isn’t usually that much of a disaster, my backpack threw up on it while migrating projects.

Back to an earlier question:



I'm not sure this is a bug; it may, in fact, be a feature, and it's a central conceit of the setting as well as a game balance function.  If that Rockerboy goes FBC, even with maximum therapy, he'll still lose 2 max Humanity for each cyber component and 4 for each piece of borgware.  That, in turn, will still drop his EMP.  While many of the social skills run on COOL, a Rockerboy with shitty Human Perception and Conversation will lose his edge in a lot of offstage activities.

Also note that cyber isn't the only thing that'll drop Humanity.  Check out the mental trauma rules on p. 231.  EMP shouldn't be a dump stat for any PC in this world, and not just because it lets you replace more meat with metal.  Higher EMP means you're less prone to "dissociative mental problems" or "psycho-pathological/schizophrenic illnesses," as the game puts it, regardless of your profession/role.  The rules only get into detail on cyberpsychosis but that's far from the only thing that can go wrong with the headmeats.  The Solo with EMP 4 is the guy who never should have gotten past the recruiter and the psych interview to be a soldier/cop in the first place because he's more likely to break from the job, even if he keeps his body at factory spec.

(Don't get me started on how damn near every single person still alive in T2k should have some degree of PTSD.)
This message was last edited by the player at 12:15, Mon 23 Nov 2020.

I appreciate that perspective.  I also haven't made it that far into the meat of cybernetics yet, just trying to get a hold on other people's thoughts.

And yeah, if there ever was a system where characters need a psychological trauma system, T2k fits the bill.

I think my favorite psychological trauma system in any game is the one in Unknown Armies because it's multidimensional:

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Unkno...#The_Character_Sheet

In reply to Tegyrius (msg # 10):

The downside is that a system would require some ability to actually RP the results. In my experience most T2K players are just there for the gunfights. Character development of any description isn't that common.

I don't feel familiar enough with the rules to offer anything substantial here. Looking at the templates (pg 117) the Rockerboy template only lists four items which gives it the lowest HL of all of the templates. Maybe there's scope for a penalty based on actual number of augments? Like after four or five the penalty doubles? So that way the rockerboy catches up with the solo more quickly if he gets more augments? Just thinking aloud really...

I guess that means you're going to be overly-critical of my pitch for a British aristocracy SBS officer Solo/Exec/Rockerboy.

In reply to Tegyrius (msg # 13):

To be fair, with a few tweaks, you probably just described Prince Harry...