Jackie

Ok folks here goes, I need help.

Does anyone know where I can snag a spiffy 'dice'

roller for my work assigned Palm Pilot??

Only stuff I've found are just d6 rollers...and only 2 at that...ugh...

If needs be I suppose I could build a Excel sheet and get a reader for that...but that seems a bit silly.

Anyway...that's my asking for 2 cents...

Jackie

Ok, I've just been granted a cheapie Palm from work...which I've got lots of free space on. Was

wondering if anyone knew of a dice-roller for

the palm that would work with Punk specifically.

Plain numbers are alright...Just would rather not

build a spreadsheet to do it....

The geek that is me...

Jackie

Well here's my two cents worth:

I run in a pretty mixed party....but things we've done to make the techies have a good time.

1. RC Drones...ala Robowars..ala Battlebots...

  was very fun for the techies to build them and

   race them..great down time thing....put

   cash on the trials..and the fixer to push the

   odds and you're in business for a night. Solo's

   can clean-up once the brawling starts.

2.  Antique repairs...works well....cars, weapons,

    old computers pre cybernetics...

3. Make a party member wanted....pray your local

   FX-Techie knows disguise and wardrobe/style.

4. The emp stuff works nice once in a while....stagger

   it around...zap a solo..let him get repaired...zap

  another later...rather than the whole pack of them.

5. Netrunners are cool...cellular is nice..but what if

   your in the middle of nowhere and the cell tower

   goes down...better pray you either have Satelite

   capability and don't mind a second worth of lag

   or a techie who can fix the bloody thing.

6. Any McGuyver plot.....I use/rework those alot to

  provide opportunities for my techies...

There's 6 ideas..there's more...

Maybe I"ll do some later

Yet more 2 cents,

I've run a few games of a variety

of genre and I keep coming back to

punk, for several reasons.

I agree totally that the combat

system and the 'gritty' feel of the

game makes a welcome change to the

"Hero" games like AD&D.

I'm in entire agreement with Pawn

on keeping the players needing a

'new' score to survive. For a

campaign setting I'm not above giving

the players a 'quick' shot at fame,

money, and fortune...just makes the

fall all the more interesting. For

me the transcendental nature of

not only 'stuff' but money and fame

is appealing. Some folks run into

a problem with 'hoarding' stuff..and

Pawn hit it right on the head..steal

it..break it...make them leave their

'super cool new gadget gun' behind.

What also  works well for me is

a simple reminder to players that if

they can buy/steal an item, someone

else can too.

If your looking for a quick and easy

'one off' to run for an evening the

best advice I can give is.."Make

them run". For the specifics watch

any of the 'chase' films that are

out there. You might even consider

doing a sleezy cop out and theft

a 'plot' from a film or a book...

I've been tempted to steal the

concept behind the movie 'The Game'

for example..

Anyway its possible to go on and on

but I'll save you the pain of doing

reading it all....

Ahh...more 2 cents.

Cops...everyone's favorite..be it good guy or

bad guy...cops certainly do end up figuring in there

somewhere.

I use police in both roles. Generally your local/city

cops tend to be mostly the 'working' stiff version

of the police. Out doing the rough work, but are

more 'person' oriented, where a individual can/does

make a difference. That doesnt preclude them

from having members with attitudes or prejudice, but

that also means its quite likely to end up so that

they will in general give your average 'punk' a chance

to clean up and get their act together...Zero or not.

Of course the 'Corp' cops have the feeling that

SINless folks are forsaken and if caught can be

disappeared, but they also have to toe the line with

respect to the rights of the SINed people.

Then you've got 'State' or Territory cops...generally

they're less 'people' oriented and tend to be the

'hardline' cops depicted in some tv and film. Very

strict and adhere to the letter of the law. The general

feel I try and use is these guys are 'looking' out for

their state/territory..and as such can't bend the law

or make loopholes for many...

Lastly you've got your Federal Authorities...these

folks I load up with all the attitude I can muster...

Even occasionally going as far as the 'Judge Dredd'

types...."I AM THE LAW"....absolutely no sense of

humor they're aware of...that kinda thing.

I think this helps to foster that 'local' feel of the game with respect to law enforcement and promotes

the 'big brother' idea and feel from the state/federal

cops where the 'people' or society...rate higher than

the individual...it works for me cinematically...but

that's my style....

Anyway..that's my 2 cents...

Well,

I'm thinking you can really opt to go two ways with it.

First by taking a peek at Home of the Brave they

can give you a little idea of how the US govt is put together. Also taking a look at Protect and Serve will give you an idea how some of the other police forces are laid out. From there it should be easy to modle

something from that.

Option 2. It to huck all the various stuff from varied

rule books and ask what you want these two groups

to be about. What kind of work do you want them

to be doing, and how would they go about it. From

those answers you'll get an idea how they're equipped, deployed, and how they're going to react

to what you PC's have up their sleeves.

When all else fails remember if you don't know how

it works neither do your players...so you have alot

of 'fudge' room if you need it.

And do remember you can use other sorts of things

as reference as well. Movies/books/Tv...

Take for example for the U.S. Martials

'The Fugative' and 'US Martial' as good films for

how a 'martial's' team might work.

And I suppose same could be said for 'Walker: Texas Ranger' as well.

I should also follow up saying I tend toward a very

cinematic style of game play and constantly am asking myself and my players if they think it would

'Look good' if they saw it...and so long as the answer

is 'yes' its all good for me.

If your style is more 'gritty realism' then you probably could find one of the discover/tlc/history channel programs on Federal/State crime force organizations very useful in generating your 'reality'

for these groups.....

Don't know if this was helpful, but its my 2 cents worth.

I've done a couple one off sessions based on

adaptations of 'real world' using punk's interlock

system and it seemed to work very well.

I will offer one bit of advice. If you start kicking around the idea of playing youselves, be very

careful. I've found if the roleplayers are good

it can be quite rewarding, but very emotionally

charged. So tread lightly if you go this route.

Hey if the ShadowRunners laugh to loud we'll just round'em up and drop them in a hole somewhere....I hear antartica's nice this time of year.

So far its working out pretty good, but there's been very little overlap. Now as bits and pieces begin to come out there will be more overlap. Meaning events that impact from 1 campaign to the other. Seeing as the players themselves at like 4 to 5 hour drive appart physically 'joint' session just shouldn't happen and that's easy enought to manage. But

am now going to start having events that begin to

cause cross impacting one another.

I concur having 'all the details' written up in advance

can be a big waste if your group is anything like mine. Who tend to wander off the beaten track with alarming regularity.

However having a good list of NPC's that might be 'common' and an 'event' log of sorts to track

who did what to whom and when can be important.

Another thing I'm trying to keep things from direct

'contact' is having the two groups a bit out of sinc

time wise...right now one group has about 2 weeks

up on the other, by design. The other big thing is

to have a good idea who the major 'bad guys' are, how they think, react et al...so when the party begins

to muck with their timetable they can adjust. Easiest way I've found to do this is to 'build' the npc as if it was going to be your player..then enhace them a bit, and plug them into the story.

More 2 cents.

Most of the 'auction' sights are pretty good.

I also do most of my 'inprint' stuff directly from

the RTal page...so I know where my money's going

to. And if you fail on all of those, sometimes the

bigger conventions that do dealer rooms aren't a bad

option. There's also the odd game store that has

lots of old 'used' games and what not. Locally

(Western NY) I can think of one in the Rochester

area called Millenium Book and Game...formerly

known as Crazy Igors. Anyway...more 2 cents worth

Thankfully I can give you a 'quick' hit on Fuzion system. Mechanics wise most the places you were

using a d10..you'll be using a d6. On to some more

specifics.

Assuming they keep the 'character' generation the

same. What you'll be looking at is a per 'year' job

thing for skills. So maybe at 16 you flip bugers for a year...you get a few points to spend on certain skills based on that 'job'. Likewise at 17 you decide school doesn't suck so bad..so go back to school..you'd get

a few new points in vastly different skill pack to choose from. Yeah yearly pack is only like 8 points so the skill point totals stay about the same. (as best as I can recall).

If you really want a good look at the mechanics and

you like Anime..I strongly suggest Mechton Zeta. Gives you a good feel for the Fusion mechics design

and an idea of where its strengths and weaknesses are.

As a point of personal preference I perfer interlock, but I"m not opposed to trying fusion, and I'm definitely not above stealing nifty neat ideas and

making back modifications to bring them into

interlock's system.

I can try and provide more specific answers if you want'm...but would need an idea of specifics so I don't end up tring to conver all of the mechanics

as a whole.

well for my campaigns old tech is generally used by

the nomad/zero's. Also for the times my players trot off to other parts of the world, I make heavy use of

low/old tech stuff cause after a while it beings to wear on them attrition wise. If you can't simply replace 9mm caseless easy..makes the bullents that much more important. Same for fuel and other nifty

tech gadgets...I also am fond of removing the ability

to conviently recharge those nifty 'toys' some times

it keeps them relying on 'themselves' rather than the

nifty gadgets..also makes them appresiate them all

the more.

Some interesting points. Would any of you ever

consider letting a PC play a 'net entity'...either

an AI or perhaps a 'ghost in the machine' ala

soul killed person, or maybe a runner who was in

long enough the body itself died.

Out seeking 2 cents and to start creative ideas

going. I've got a bit of a unique situation and

I'm looking for other people's opinions, as

it does tend to generate cool new ideas.

I'm presently running two seperate campagins for

two seperate groups of people, but it all takes place

under the 'same' story arc. Now I'm wondering if any of you have run PC vs PC games, where the group

either splits or two groups run against one another.

In my case they may not be so much 'against' one

another as running along disparate paths which will

periodically cross, sometimes in conjuntion other times in opposition.

Reason I'm doing this silly thing is an attempt to

'ease' some of the 'plot making' on my part and get

my groups personal objectives as driving forces that

will only take little nudges here or there for purposes

of plot development.

Any thoughts, I'd be interested to hear.

I'm actually polling to see if anyone else is using AI's as major antagonists in their campaigns. I know its been done to death in literature, but the concept of something in competition with humanity in its intellectual nitche is intriguing. If any of you are using them I'd love to hear about it, mostly for perspective. But I'm not above thefting really nifty ideas if I see them.

Also interested in any rules you may

have developed to deal with some of

the sticky problems with AI's. Things

like 'roaming' AI's, attack vs defense,

AI coding on the 'fly'..things like that.

Jackie

(Edited by Jackie at 6:28 pm on Feb. 21, 2001)