Every good runner has a place they can take it easy and have a drink. This is that place, for all your out-of-character thoughts and discussions.

Anyone need legal representation?

Oi chummers! I'll be your Face for the evening.

Not at the moment, but I might need a face.

Magi-samurai at your service.  I also heal and wipe DNA.  On a perfect run only that last is relevant, but we're never that lucky, are we?

Definitely need a face, and frequent legal advice.

Glad you're around.

Mundane street sam here, got a chance to play a Troll in an RP heavy game and threw my hat in.

Probably more of a generalist, a good smattering of generally useful skills is what I'm going for.

Another mystic adept here. Not a samurai though, more of a... freelance acquisition and procurement specialist. Good for sneaking, scouting and getting into places.

In reply to Winter (msg # 5):

*looks at Winter's portrait
*looks at larger version of Winter's portrait on bio page

did...  Did Rpol add custom portraits when I wasn't looking?
This message was last edited by the player at 15:14, Tue 19 Oct 2021.

Hah, you wish (and so do I). No, I selected that portrait precisely because I found an image it was taken from. And then I've build my entire character around that portrait. Learned my lesson with making a character only to realize there's no good portrait for what I've build, again and again.

Hey, that is half the fun of selecting RPOL portraits!

"Hmm...I mean, I guess that one works. Except for the glowing face tattoos. The one on page 12 also works, but they are clearly an Orc! Gah! Maybe I'll check Sci-Fi..."

This is Shadowrun, if you have glowing face tattoos, you can turn them on and off.


...Do LED tats still cost essence in 5e?

Heh, good luck.

Choices were...limited for Trolls.

Chrome Flesh pg. 109 introduces bio-tattoos that cost 0 essence for 500¥ but you can't turn them off (but you can always just cover them up to negate the sneaking penalty).

Crome Flesh pg. 73 has LED Tattoos in small (0.05, 100¥) medium (0.10, 500¥) and large (0.20, 1,000¥)

The upside to LED tattoos is you can download new colors and patterns while bio-tats are set in stone once you get them but are cheaper and essence free.

Huh, RPOL's glitching.  Got an unread messages highlight on the main page, but I think it's for a thread I can't see.

It does that sometimes.

Poking the character in the player's curiosity is dirty pool Mr. Johnson.

Since when does a Johnson play fair?

I'll let you know when I find one who did.

Who is Tyrone, and why do I have the option to post as him?

Fixed.

Howdy there chummers, I'm Retro, a "decker".

Figure I'll toss it out here now, but I'm a sucker for making connections between PCs, especially in a game like SR where trust is something of a rarity.  So if anyone wants to sit down and hammer anything out, just let me know!  Shoot, odds are good that I bother most of y'all.  I'd say sorry, but that's a lie.

I'm all for PCs having contacts with one another but it will likely be awhile before any of you get jobs big enough to warrant building out a team.

I always imagine that most of the time runners are doing smaller gigs. "Find this person, steal this thing, watch this building".

Once you get to the big leagues thats when you start getting the serious heist and corporate jobs.

Also one thing I will probably do is that if you get tapped for a proper shadowrun, you're probably not going to be the team leader. Heists are incredibly difficult to plan via asynchronous communication so you'll be hired onto a team to be "the hacker" or "the mage" or "the muscle" and there will already be a plan in place and some leg work taken care of by NPCs. Now you are free to do your own things to prep but the burden of creating the whole plan of scratch will be like 75% complete by the time you get involved to help focus on the fun bits and avoid the "we take 4 game sessions to make an elaborate plan that fails in the first minute of the run" style Shadowrun that I'm very very familiar with :D

Agreed on all counts, so sounds good to me boss!

Offer still stands folks, reach out before I harass you, especially you Matrix types!

I'm actually in need of a good trustworthy decker.  Emphasis on the trustworthy.  Verifying trustworthiness is kind of a hard problem though.  Good RP opportunity that.

We should chat mate!  I'll drop ya a line here in a bit.

Welcome Retro!

I'll resume posting in the morning. It's been a crazy day.

Thanks mate!  I've had one or two of those.  But only one or two.

Also I need you to know, that I have this lawyer commercial in mind when I think of your character now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdinZ9DrhlY

Yeah, that's pretty much his client base these days. :)

I've got some people looking to lurk. Let me know if you want to open your solo thread up to the general public.

It's fine with me.

When I get one I don't much mind it being public, so by all means!  I trust folks to keep meta stuff out of character after all.

Not yet, some secrets are more fun if they're secret on the meta level too, at least for a while.  i.e. spoilers.  (Well, maybe.  Certain things would need to be moved into Private Lines.  It's ok if people know he's being blackmailed on a meta level, but not with what, not yet.)


On a different subject, does elemental aura hit on a block/parry?  It seems like it would logically, since you're still touching, but the rules don't say.  I'm not sure whether I want it to or not, I use the spells, but so can other people.  Either both sides would get to inflict their elemental aura on the other when a block happens, or neither does.  I want to melt other people's hands, but I quite like mine un-melted thank you very much.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:43, Sat 23 Oct 2021.

Okay. Work and rl have been killing me, but progress has been made.

Hi all.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:01, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

Not gonna lie, I was really hoping it was going to be one of the Texas Law Hawk commercials lol

Going to need to look those up now...

*Snorts*  Fair enough mate, but still totally worth it.

Also another Matrix type eh?  We should chat!

I've been in the game since the 19th but as stated above have not had free time to work on the character or get on here and say much. =)


...yeah. I don't know
This message was last edited by the player at 01:07, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

Oh trust me mate, I totally get being busy with work/life, so no judgement here!

And not a techno fan in character, or just territorial?

Maybe both, lol, but also need to wait to hear back from the GM on what I took to see if it's okay or not. But was planning on not being a huge fan of technomancers, for a quirk.

Entirely fair mate, you wouldn't be the first!  One of the big reasons that Retro here doesn't broadcast the fact that he's a techno at all actually.  Goes so far as to have a fake deck/license for it and everything.  Plus you know, "Geek the mage first" applies doubly to technos, so this only helps his life expectancy.

Ah. Then sure, we'll see Mr. Johnson GM says and then we can maybe talk. =)

Just as a word of warning this game is going to be a slower start so even if you have everything locked and loaded it might be a week or two before you get your first thread.


Current Status

As you can see I'm severely lacking in openers. Probably the hardest part of getting a new character spun up is putting together a good introduction. It will be my focus but there's a lot of you and a lot of reading I have to do to shake off the rust like "what da fuq does the matrix look like".
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:49, Mon 25 Oct 2021.

If you don't have an opener for Retro before mine gets to a certain stage, I can drag him into things.  Assuming the "sheet" checkbox in his row of your table is filled in by then of course. ;)


And the matrix looks however the winning hacker wants.  Everyone else just has to deal with your matrix sculpting/reality filter rolls after that.  (At least in 4e.  There are sidebars in the 5e corebook that mention matrix sculpting, but I don't have DT yet.)
This message was last edited by the player at 18:57, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

Haha don't you worry, I'm mostly just sitting here playing with the last 10 karma or so and the pittance that is my starting funds.  I'll figure it all out here by the end of the day today.

That said, yeah, I'd be amenable.  Less work for the boss anyhow.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:14, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

Yeah, definitely want to get those spent.  Karma costs change after chargen for... no readily explained reason.  (Seriously, why do qualities double in cost post-chargen?  Most of the game happens after the characters are created, just list the actual quality prices in the book, and increase the chargen karma appropriately.)

I believe the idea is most of the qualities represent things either born naturally or developed over years of practice beyond the typical scope of a campaign.

Suddenly waking up as a math savant or ambidexterous is something that strains credibility when you're typically a 20-40yr old runner already.

The designers were nice enough not to lock most of them behind a bold "cannot take after chargen" rule but they did price them so you have to be very certain you really want them.

Instead the rules imply that qualities should instead ben dolled out or taken away by the ST during gameplay. Hey you're addicted, hey you're wanted, hey you earned a favor etc.

Regarding that table, shouldn't Threshold 4 be outside the Limit for a rating 3 scanner operating independently?  Sure, if someone's actively using a skill with it then they're operating Attribute+skill+rating[Mental], but the device running on its own is just ratingx2[rating].  So there's a 0% chance, not a 10% chance, unless there's actually a decker with that patrol, in which case you're boned.


I suppose that's true.


Except that by the rules, if the GM hands you a positive quality, you have to pay the karma for it, and if they hand you a negative quality, you don't get anything, but getting rid of it costs karma.  It's pretty dickish on the whole, and while it might fit the setting for the system to get you coming and going, it makes it really hard to take a character sheet and figure out the karma total if said total either isn't written down, or can't be trusted (say, because someone forgot to update it.)

In general, I'm not a huge fan of systems written such that two characters with the exact same stats and net worth can have wildly different karma totals.  It just seems clunky, and there are better ways to do it.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:16, Mon 25 Oct 2021.

RE: SINs - The test is Device Rating x2 so DR 3 = 6 dice to roll. It's unlikely but possible to get up to 6 hits on a DR 3 or higher.

RE: Qualities - There honestly aren't many positive qualities I would hand out in the course of the game because as I mentioned they're really things that represent years of conditioning or even raw genetics however there are temporary things you could earn in gameplay that I would offer you the chance to pay karma for to make it "stick"

For example you raid an R&D lab and recover research on biocompatibility. Ordinarily you would just sell the paydata and the game moves on but if you decide you want to add that quality we can talk about your character spending their free time (aka Karma) to reverse engineer a drug/gene therapy (or hiring people to do it for you) to give you that quality.

Another one I can think of coming up is Erased. A Johnson might wipe your record as part of a reward but it won't "stick" unless you put in the karma for it.

As for Negative qualities I like the idea of mechanical consequences for actions. Having characters struggle with addiction fits the themes of the game perfectly and while I won't be handing out negatives like candy I do expect players to pick some long standing problems and scars along the way.

That's not the source of confusion.  6 hits on 6 dice is obviously possible if exceedingly unlikely.  But if a rating 3 device has a limit of 3, then even if it rolls 6 hits it only gets to keep 3 of them.  That's the point of the limits, it keeps things from going off the rails due to very low probability events.

The rule of 4 already prevents failing at parking the car if you're not completely incompetent, roll limits put a lid on the other end of things, where a very low probability of success becomes a guarentee just because the roll is getting spammed.  Because you're right about even a rating 3 fake SIN being relatively useless when it's getting scanned a hundred times a day with rating 2 scanners, because eventually one of them is going to roll 4 hits.  Unless those scanners aren't allowed to get more than 2 hits.


There's nothing wrong with mechanical consequences for actions.  I just don't like the way getting rid of a negative quality gained through play requires both roleplaying working past it and spending karma.

If you're addicted now, sure, have the penalties, have withdrawals, have willpower rolls to avoid falling off the wagon.  Make the character deal with the problem until they get through it.  But it shouldn't just be "Oh, lose eighteen karma because reasons."


This is the core of the issue.  If positive qualities are temporary unless you spend karma on them, negative qualities should be temporary unless you gain karma from them.  The Johnson has you erased as part of the payment, but it wears off if you're not extra careful to keep your head down.  Likewise, if you're hit with black ice and get scorched, that should be treatable.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:23, Mon 25 Oct 2021.

Oh that's what you were talking about. Yeah limits are a thing, lol. I went back and updated the chart to include limits. Nothing to argue about there, just a simple mistake on my part.

RE: Qualities & Karma


Respectfully disagree. Long term good things are very hard to get while long term consequences are very easy to step into. This is part of the theme of a dystopia crapsack world. The longer you live, the worse it gets. At this time though I would defer this discussion for when if/when it actually happens rather than handle hypotheticals. Rest assured I am aware of this disparity and I intend to plan accordingly before I start slapping down negative qualities on everyone.

Not talking about difficulty.  If a disad is obtained in play due to character actions, you should be neither required nor allowed to spend karma on removing it.  Do it the hard way chummer, this drek's not scrubbing itself.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:09, Mon 25 Oct 2021.

Alright every non-hacker is up and running. For all you hackers I am finishing up reading Data Trails so I can get a clear description going for the Matrix.

Kill Code has a really good short summary for GMs starting on page 42 that I recommend giving a gander.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.


...I had to.  I'd apologize, but you wouldn't believe me.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:13, Mon 25 Oct 2021.

You guys would hate me if the matrix was just described as falling sets of green gibberish text.

Depends on the rest of the context.  If a handful of nodes are sculpted that way because the admin is a fan of old movies, that'd be fine.  It's if they're all that way that there's a problem.

I am a lucky fool.  Being used to 4e, I missed the fact that reagents can be used to avoid drain in spellcasting.  So I didn't buy any.

And I have exactly one spell that can even meaningfully benefit from them.  The rest either have really low drain already, or the limit doesn't actually matter.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:21, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

Hah, well that's an easy enough fix eventually, so no need to stress.  And don't worry, every time I crack an SR book, I always seem to find something new, no matter how small it might be.  So yeah, been there mate.

Like I said, I only even have one spell that can benefit, and it's not one I'd need in combat anyway.  Damaging manipulations are weird on that front.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:58, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

Yeah, once I discovered that I always carry some reagents. Very useful for any spell where force does not really matter, only net hits. And besides reducing drain, reagents can also make magic less noticeable.

I'll probably end up carrying some too, once I have things they can actually help with.  Maybe a few just for the one spell I have that can benefit, but for the most part I don't actually have anything.

Alright, time to address a potentially touchy subject: Love & Relationships.

You can opt out this is purely optional and I will interpret silence to mean you're passing on it but....

If you want your character to be in a relationship with someone(s) let me know. Your significant other (or slam on the side) does not have to be a contact. A contact is just someone you use professionally. You can be dating an arms dealer but if you ask them for guns they'll just say something like "I don't mix business with pleasure". Instead it's yet another connection to the setting, a hook to draw you into storylines and a way to debrief and unwind after some high intensity action.

So if you have an idea for an SO let me know. Or you can just give me parameters and I can come up with the who/what/where/when/why on my own. Either way works for me.

Also if you think your guy/gal is single right now but open to love in the future again just give me some basic parameters of what your character is interested in and I'll keep that in mind for anyone that fits that type in the future.

To be clear, these relationships will be perfectly PG-13. I'm not interested in turning this into erotic literature so all the adult's only stuff will be handled off screen.

I think this is a great compromise. I am not looking to play out some porn, but taken as a whole the sorts of relationships, or lack thereof, that a person is in makes up a huge part of their lives. Facets that are almost universally ignored in these sorts of games.

Koolaid will be opting in, but does not have a romantic relationship as of yet. He hasn't for nearly half a decade, and he would like to be in one. He's hooked up on occasion, sure, but that's not quite doing it for him anymore.

I already opted in in my initial character pitch.  Boots off fade to black is fine.  Much more would require re-rating the game anyway, since it's M tagged but not A tagged.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:44, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

I will Opt In, but prefer to find someone in-game, and not start with a partner. Johnny is kind of at a low point in his life at the moment, and being happily coupled seems to go against that.

lol I meant for people to PM me but this works too :D

Doing it this way means it may or may not be NPCs only.  Say, Johnny/Winter (If Winter opted in, which may or may not happen.)


And yes, I picked them out of the lineup because then I can make a joke about Cold Law.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:22, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

I should drop Lowfyr on your ass for that joke XD

Haha just let me clear ground zero first please!

Seems like an excessive pun-Ash-ment.

You were right to use me an the example.

I am a sexy cyberpunk Adonis.

Well shoot.

Okay, next character idea: Sister Mercy, Christian Theurgist and Gun Bunny!

In reply to Johnny Law (msg # 71):

Specialty in kneecapping?

She can have a posse

That actually sounds like a fun beer&pretzels game.  A convent of shadowrunner nuns, running and gunning and slinging spells to push back...  Probably Azcorp, gotta keep those horrors out.

(Ignoring the way the ED tie-in is officially not a thing anymore.  Can't split from Earthdawn without retconning the existence of Big D.)

Wait why does ED tie into Big D? Also I thought they brought the horrors back.

Did they?  I kind of lost track of the license fights.


SR is the 6th world
ED was the 4th world
Dunkelzhan (And most of the other major GDs) were born in the 2nd world.  So it's not Big D specifically, but he's so tied into the foundations of SR that you'd need to make an entirely new game to cut him out.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:25, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

I might actually make a purchase. I love Johnny a ton already.


This message was last edited by the GM at 00:19, Thu 28 Oct 2021.

*Snorts*  Nicely done mate!

Domo arigato, Mr. Retro.

Never used Hero Forge myself, but I know plenty of folks who have.  That and as a longtime Warhammer/40k player, I love me some minis.

HF's model creator is pretty sweet, but I have no need to purchase prints from them, the .stl's suffice.

Ahhh, got a 3d printer huh?  Don't own one myself, but I'm lucky to work at an amazing school that spends way too much money on top-of-the-line tools.  So long as nobody else is using it, and I supply the materials, they're quite alright with me hijacking it for miniature-related projects.

Yep, SL1S.  Used to be an SL1 from the original kit, then they released an upgrade kit.  It's substantially more expensive to get pre-built, but the kit price isn't too bad for something not made with slave labor.  Phrozen has some nice stuff too, but Prusa had already shown a pattern of making upgrade kits when I was deciding what kind to buy.


Edit: Maybe I should say the original kit price wasn't too bad.  They don't seem to be offering just a kit for sale anymore.  Pre-built or nothing it looks like.  Pity, but I'm glad I got mine when and how I did.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:40, Wed 27 Oct 2021.

FYI if anyone is up for it the model creator is free to use and you can just grab a screenshot and put the pic up on imgur or something for your own custom digital mini of your guy/gal.

Man, this GM is being really toxic to me.  Bleh.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
...First enemy that's not a devil rat is a toxic shaman. ;)

---

This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 18:48, Thu 28 Oct 2021.

Everyone should have their solo thread up and running. Let me know if you can't see it for some reason.

I'm good, obviously. :)


Well, I can see it anyway, the contents aren't great at the moment. :P  That toxic shaman is just ruining the feng shui.

Yep, I can still see it.

I'm probably going to get killed by like five different people, but at least I can see it coming. :p

What a bunch of whiners. If you didn't have a dozen people gunning for your head, you're not playing shadowrun XD

If the grunts aren't bitching...

*Snorts*

Well said there mate.

Alright just need Retro's opener but I think we're all in good shape now. I know it took a few weeks but this isn't the kind of game I want to fire off without having some good footing and I had a lot of reading to do.

No shame in saving the best for last mate!

Seriously though it's a really ambitious game and I completely understand and agree with the need for you taking your time to get it all running.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:49, Thu 04 Nov 2021.

Apologies for no updates but I was in a pretty bad car accident. I'm fine but dealing with that is going to take a little while, sorry. I should still be able to get in a couple updates this week.

Well that sucks, glad you're okay.

Drek. Take care of yourself Boss. RL comes first, so we can patiently wait.

^

This.  Hang in there chummer, and feel better soon, we'll be here when you feel up to things again.

I'm very sorry to hear it and I hope you (and anyone else in it) are well or get better soon.

HOLIDAYS!!!!

We are entering that time of the year when holiday schedules are a minefield to work around. I am not calling out any specific break however please understand I might not be posting quite as often and I also understand if you aren't able to post as often. The game will muddle along and once we enter January I'll put a bit of pressure back on to try and get things cruising again.

That's fine.

Once it speeds back up I will presumably come out of the current situation with a rather handy (if distasteful to most) group of contacts.  As long as I manage to not die. ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 22:15, Tue 23 Nov 2021.

Makes perfect sense to me mate, no worries!

Ironically I get less busy around the holidays, but that's a side effect of being a teacher I s'pose.  Breaks and all that.

Hope everyone had a good set of holidays so you can recharge for the next set of holidays.

Just a couple of random musings that I have:

1) While I do have a bucket of plotlines in my pocket I am trying to let players drive the story more so if you see something that is interesting and put focus on it, I will add more focus to it and increase its importance to the storyline.

2) Because I am generally not trying to railroad you through any specific plotline you are free to let me know that you feel your character is stuck on something that isn't very interesting. I played in a game IRL where while each session was fun and exciting there was a general sense of frustration overall because even something as simple as "i walk to the store to get some smokes" turns into a 3 session mini quest. It felt like we couldn't breathe without a 4 hour discussion about the quality of air.

I don't want you to feel like you cannot make any progress or that you are stuck on mundane or uninteresting stuff especially if there is another plot element you would like to focus on.

Because these are solo games you can have some control over the speed as well. If you want to hit fast forward or pause or rewind or slo-mo, just let me know. I'm doing my best on pacing but because I can no longer guarantee daily posts I don't want you to feel burnout because you've been playing for months and months and months and still haven't completed your first mission or goal.

I'm both interested in the WTF!? you've presented me, and keenly aware of the time pressure for the current beer money run.

All I'll ask is - Aren't roommates the best? lol

Anyone else breaking into Arkham at the behest of a rogue AI to bust out a patient, or is it just me?

God help me, I love Shadowrun.

Sorry for the long absence. My work is deciding that hte holidays is the perfect time to dump 1000 things on my plate so apologies for lack of posting between now and end of the year. January should come with new energy and new life and resume frequent posting again but for now just expect to be a slower schedule, apologies in advance.

Awesome news.

No worries at all mate, been there once or twice myself.  We'll see you on the other side of the new year!

The holidays are always hectic on RPOL, don't worry about it. RL always comes first.

Don't they know their corporate Mr. Johnson can't organize a runner team for them if he's overworked?


Kidding aside, good luck with that.

Deepest apologies it appears I have come down with some illness. I think it is just a minor cold but it is enough to sap me of all my energy this week. Hopefully a few nights rest will get the creative juices flowing again.

Well, go yell at your immune system to give the uninvited guests a cold shoulder.  That's what it's for.  Then again, it doesn't have ears, so that might not help much.

Get well.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:30, Thu 23 Dec 2021.

Rest up, feel better!

No worries at all mate, feel better soon!

Yeah, take it easy.

Feel better Boss!

And Happy Holidays everyone!

Thanks Johnny!  Hopefully anyone who celebrates today had a good one.  If not, well, hopefully you enjoyed a day off?

Happy New Year y'all!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It needs to be better than the last 2.

Happy New Year!

I'll hope with you Rev.

I hope so, but it's twenty twenty too.

Hello! Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a nice break and I hope you are all looking forward to resuming a more regular posting schedule!

Huzzah!  And you're damn right!

Happy New Year everyone.

Welp, this'll be interesting, however it turns out.

Ah, drek...I just got a client killed. That's not going to look good.

Precisely my thought mate.  I'm sitting here staring at something that I know is a terrible idea, but it would be hilarious... so I'm gonna do it.

Mah beer run has gone to shit.


I meant that literally, the target has resorted to throwing poop.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:28, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

*Snorts*

Sounds like a heck of a good time.  I mean thank your lucky stars that it's not on fire?

I'm going to be kicking off a group thread soon enough. I know you're all chilling in your own little paradises but you'll be given the opportunity to encounter and interact with one another.

While you're all going to be forced into a situation, that doesn't mean you have to stay in that situation so if you're not feeling it there will be a chance to bow out.

Awesome, can't wait to see everyone in the flesh as it were!

WTF dice roller!?  I just rolled a total of 306 dice (rolling both sides) while trying to break through this barrier with acid fists.  I got 71 total hits.  Average for 306 dice would be 102.

Let's see, wolfram alpha binomial distribution calculator.  p=0.333333 (one third chance of a hit.) n=306.  Mean is 102, Standard Deviation is 8.24621, 102-71=31, 31/stddev=3.76.

There's a 99.9989% chance to do better than that.  Literally one in a hundred thousand odds of luck that bad.


What the actual fuck RPOL!?
This message was last edited by the player at 22:22, Sun 30 Jan 2022.

Going back and collecting the data from every roll I can see, including other players, it's 845 dice with 248 hits.  The mean is 281, the standard deviation is 13.7.  The game as a whole is 2.4 standard deviations low.  It's not just me, the dice roller is broken.


I'm going to ignore that critical glitch, and I'm not going to spend edge to do so.  The dice are weighted.  Not just a little weighted, they're a lot weighted.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:15, Sun 30 Jan 2022.

Interesting, rolling 100d6 at a time without recording the individual dice, it's really close to what the average should be.  644 hits on 2000 dice, 2000/3=666.66

But when I record individual dice, I get 126 hits on 400 dice (When recording, you're limited to 20 dice per roll, hence the smaller number of dice tested.)  On 400 dice, the mean is 133.33, with a standard deviation of 9.42809.  That's actually off by less than one standard deviation.  Hmm, hypothesis, the dice get more weighted when rolling fewer.  One moment while I roll 10d6 40 times.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:44, Sun 30 Jan 2022.

Well, hit the button one too many times, ah well, 410 d6's works just fine.  Mean is 136.667, standard deviation is 9.54521, actual hits is 148...

Huh, that's actually higher than average?  Interesting.  Wonder what happens if I roll 8d6 a bunch more times.

Edit: Well, with 416 d6's rolled 8 at a time, it's a bit low agian, but within reason.  Something's still hinky.  Why does it act so differently when I roll a bunch of the same roll vs when we've all been rolling a few dice here and there?


Do we seriously need to warm the dice up first to get valid results!?
This message was last edited by the player at 23:53, Sun 30 Jan 2022.

The dice roller is random. The issue is that it is randomized over large sets of numbers. Any given roll, even with hundreds of dice involved, still can drift one way or another which is actually a better sign that it is randomized.

If you rolled 100 dice and it always averaged out to 50 then you don't have a truly random dice roller.

If you rolled 100 dice and it was always higher than average or lower than average then you don't have a truly random dice roller.

But if you rolled 100 dice over and over again and sometimes it rolled a bit high, sometimes it rolled a bit low, there was this one bit where it rolled 100 like 5 times in a row...that is a random dice roller.

Dilbert did a comic on this

I also saw a great comment about this topic awhile ago:



If you don't know if a set of roll will steer higher or lower or meet the average...congrats its random!

In reply to Mr. Johnson (msg # 137):

A coin that alternates flipping 100 head and 100 tails isn't a fair coin, despite averaging out in the long term.

3.76 standard deviations low over 306 rolls is a streak bad enough you wouldn't expect to see it more than once in Thirty Million rolls.  This is "Deserving of further research" levels of improbable.

I created a test game so I could spam the roller there without messing it up here.  I'm up to 22900 d6 rolled.

Measuring with a rolling window of 100 rolls, I have four stretches that are more than three sigma off from the mean.  3 sigma is p=0.00135, so there should only be a 30% chance of seeing one such streak, good or bad.  (22900 rolls / 100 window size) = 229.  229*0.00135=0.30915 expected occurances.

Measuring with a rolling window of 200 rolls, I have five stretches that are more than three sigma off from the mean.  (longer stretches of good or bad luck are less likely, even if a subset of that streak is otherwise fine.  So 2 stretches of 100 rolls that are within 3sigma might not be when back to back.)  3 sigma is still p=0.00135, but the spans are twice the width.  So I should only have a 15% chance of seeing one.  I have FIVE.

Measuring with a rolling window of 300 rolls, I only have 1 stretch that's more than 3 sigma away from the mean, but I have twelve that are more than 2.5 sigma away from the mean.  The 3 sigma outlier only has a 10% chance of happening in 22900 rolls.  The 2.5 sigma outliers have p=0.00621, which gives a 47% chance of seeing one in 22900 rolls.  I have twelve of them, not one.


This roller is as streaky as a drag strip.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:21, Mon 31 Jan 2022.

But the question is this

1) Can you predict when a streak will happen?

2) Can you predict if the streak will roll high or roll low?

Every couple thousand rolls it looks like.  The pattern skips a couple times, but it's there.  I have my spreadsheet set to highlight 2, 2.5, and 3 standard deviations.  The streaks that only get to +/- 2 are much more common, they're not always as big, but they're easier to see patterns in.

And ~3/4 of them are a low streak.


Of course, when I'm not rolling thousands of dice in a row, other people are making use of that generator, so I don't know where in that pattern I'm starting on any given roll.  It's only when making a bunch of rolls in quick succession that we'd see that.

And now that I know it's streaky, I know to just stop rolling for a while if there's a streak of WTF!? level 'luck'.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:29, Mon 31 Jan 2022.

Welp, the shit, and the target, are on fire.  Time to exit the run.

Oof I finally have time to post. So early this week my father-in-law's house burned down. Everyone is fine but he also was a bit of a hoarder so the whole family has been called in to sort through the charred and soggy remains.

I'm fine, everyone is fine. I apologize for not posting sooner but pretty much I've been coming home, eating, and going to bed only to wake up and head back out again. No computer, no down time. Well, that's not entirely true but the downtime I did have was spent in a comatose state on the couch watching trash TV mentally preparing for the next day.

Anyway we are finally getting ahead of the curve on dealing with the fire and I finally have enough sleep and energy to fire up the computer and let you all know where the hell I've been for the past week.

I can't promise a post today or tomorrow. It's high on my to-do list but things are looking like it should return more to normal soon. Again, bear with me, family emergency yadda yadda yadda. The important thing is I'm still here, no worries.

Meatspace matters the most, and family comes first.  Hang in there omae.

Drek. Sorry to hear about your father-in-law's misfortune, Boss.

RL comes first, as always.

We can wait.

No problem, take it easy.

That's a hell of a time.  At least he has family who can and will come help.

I come here hat in hand to apologize for the slowness of updates. It's the usual trifecta: work, illness, holidays. I'm here but once we push through the next week or so things should speed back up again.

I recently switched jobs which is why this whole year has been slow but I'm getting my feet under me and right now I know I am lucky to manage 1-2 updates a week but I really feel like in a week or so we can get that pushed up to 3-4 or even...dare I say it...5 a week?

I'm finally pulling the trigger on the group thread although it seems like half the  players I had selected for it are MIA so we'll  take it a little slow while I bring in the remaining players.

IF YOU KNOW WHY YOU ARE THE MCHUGHS feel free to post. If you have no idea why you would be going to a downtown McHughs during lunch hour just hold up and you'll figure it out soon enough.

Mr. Johnson is a dick.  He'll make a tiny violin from a few of your character's heartstrings and then play it.  You won't miss them necessarily, but you'll hear the sound and go "oof."

*Snorts*  In fairness, he does it to the NPCs too?

I'll start posting in the morning.

Apologies this last week has been crazy for me.

Just as a blanket rule I'm overriding all connection talks that have been going on. Sorry but for the purposes of this game it is important that nobody knows anyone directly. Finding out you have the same fixer? Sure but everyone is in different circles.

I'm so sorry. I let this game slip at a critical point and you, wonderful players, took the initiative to have fun and interact with one another but unfortunately you took it in a direction too far.

I will restart the scene. I'll keep what you have written so you can easily copy and paste the parts that make sense or at least use them to build your new replies.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:07, Tue 03 May 2022.

Alright...thread restarted. Apologies for the delay and confusion. Take two!

Uhhh...  Did Retro leave?  I tried to respond to the private thread where we'd created that initial link back during character creation, and rpol won't let me select him as a recipient.

Yeah. He was given a specific role to play in the food fight thread and I think I just didn't remind him enough and he accidentally derailed the thread.

Turning back the dial after being gone for over a week meant he decided to drop the game. I don't blame him at all. I hate myself for screwing this up right now. I dropped the ball. I don't have a lot of stuff pre-planned but basically that thread is the one thing this whole game has been leading up to so while I don't have specific plans on the ending it needed to kick off in a certain way. I gave Retro the path and he either forgot or decided he didn't want to follow that plan.

I thought about just letting things run but in the end I wasn't willing to scrap all my plans over it. I took a minute and just couldn't figure out how to salvage it.

Like I said, I take full blame and I understand that this has done some damage to the game. I'm hoping you all are willing to stick it out but I also understand if this shameful negligence means you want to spend your valuable time elsewhere.

Any way to recover my old introductory food fight post? I think it was just fine. And if it wasn't, I think a few tweaks would be okay.

I'll PM you.

Thank you!

Okay so everyone is ready for the Food Fight thread. <evil grin>

Now comes the most important decision of that thread:

What do you eat?

The order that the "message" sent you is:

- Double Bacon McHugh Burger -  a typical double hamburger that comes out to about 1/3rd of a pound. Not real meat of course. Heck even the lettuce and tomato and pickle were probably secretly soy protein dyed green or red and flavored.

- Grilled Chicken Rancho-Tastic Salad - a typical chicken mixed vegetable salad with ranch seasoned (fake) chicken and practically swimming in ranch dressing.

- Nu-Apple Pie - completely artificial and it doesn't even try to hide it. A product from years ago that never went away, it was created as a  "sugar free desert". Marketing on this was heavy on it being a "diet food" until it turned out it still had almost 400 calories in its tiny, three bite form. But instead of sugar it had chemicals that were occasionally known to cause extreme gastrointestinal distress.

- Strawberry milkshake. While it definitely didn't have real milk in it, the whole city had been marketing blitzed for a month advertising it as having REAL strawberry (flavoring) in it. Even McHugh's haters had been saying it was...decent while the consurmists in the city were raving about it. It is the "Shamrock Shake" of Detroit at the moment. Everyone wants one, there are even memes of people lining up for them and it is a stroke of luck that they even have them in stock right now.

---

Of course it has whatever other traditional "fast food" menu items like burgers, fries, fake "healthy food" that is somehow worse for you than the burgers.

Please be meticulous about what you eat and how much you eat (i.e. do you just take a bite, do you finish it etc.)

There's no hiding it, this is going to play heavily into how the scene develops but I advise you not to get too meta about what you eat or not. You're in a fast food joint, it's lunch time. Act accordingly <evil grin>

Lock the fast food thread because before the scene can go on I need to know what fast food y'all are eating.

Simple questions:

1. Did you eat the burger?
   
2. Did you eat the salad?
   
3. Did you eat the apple pie?
   
4. Did you drink the milkshake?

The answer determines which thread you get diverted into...
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:57, Wed 18 May 2022.

Sorry to everyone.  After the long pause and the rollback, I try to write something in-character again and just bounce.  I've had long gaps in games and recovered before, but I'm just not catching it this time.  Sorry.

Partially it's the loss of a chunk of backstory I think.  I'd worked Retro into Ash's character history in relation to some other events.  If he was just gone that happens in SR, life is cheap, but the rollback on character details that were worked out in chargen is throwing me off I think.

I don't really want to drop, hopefully I can slog through soon.





Anyway, the current question, burger and shake I guess.  We'll see if I can pick things up.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:47, Thu 19 May 2022.

I already established what Geist is eating (fries, a small order) since she didn't order anything with the numbers and instead waited to see if anyone else did.

Johnny tried Soykaf, and lost his appetite.

Salad for Winter, plus a diet soda if there is time to get one.

Quick question, how do we deal with resources across game threads? Specifically, edge - did Winter start this thread with her edge fully recovered? Or is the same as in the solo thread? Or something in between? From what I gather, main game thread is happening a couple of days after the solo thread (at least for Winter).

Yes on the full edge for this instance.

Going forward it is handled on a case by case basis because the timing of events matters. If there is time for downtime and recovery then it isn't as important but if you're somehow in two places at the same time it might be an additional burden to share damage and edge across threads.

Ok so quick question about the jamming.

With 5 Noise Reduction, even with a top of the line Jammer (R6) and some extra noise for the grid being bad/busy (say 2?) matrix actions should still be possible, just sluggish. If that's not the case, can Geist determine whatever they're doing to the local network that I, the player, aren't seeing?

I don't know if this was made clear or not but you are free to post in both your personal threads and you group threads. Don't worry about the timing if you can. Group threads get a little timey wimey because  I don't want to try and actually put days and stuff but if it helps you, just assume your personal thread is happening BEFORE the group threads until the group threads are over and then at the  next time jump your personal thread will happen  AFTER the group thread  stuff.

Welp, it's that time, sad to say. Most of the players have dropped and I am at a point where I need to scale back my commitments on RPOL to accommodate real life pressures. I hope you all had fun, I know things didn't move very much for many of your stories but such is the PbP life I suppose.

I'll keep the game up in case there is anything you want to salvage. Also feel free to ask questions if you want to know the juicy details of the group/solo storylines. I'm dropping the game but I'm not  completely out of RPOL yet so ping me if there's anything you want to ask.

Ah, well. Thanks for the game, everyone. Maybe we'll see each other in some other game.

Noooo! I understand. I'm sorry to see the game go. Thank you for running.