Skyscrapers & ... Groundscrapers? (OOC)

If have not heard from @tibbius I am going to move this along in a next few hours and assume default cautious behaviour from Arthur.

@lemagne: Go ahead and narrate your arrival at the break-site, your reaction to the sight, and what you do.
Feel free to include as much or as little detail as you want (about your reaction, about what you were doing when you got the call, about the call itself, or anything else).

@vagueGM We (I) haven't worried about equipment/encumbrance - I just assume that we are driving the "*** Institute" van which has a full load out of stuff we probably need and I have a backpack that I can load with whatever. (?). I assume at least I have a helmet, an armored vest, handgun, mace, a first aid kit,Hazmat gear, knife, lighter, glow sticks, zip-ties, walkie talkie, energy bars, water. And C4? I am a sherpa more or less.

Opinions vary, but, personally, I am not a fan of @ mentioning people every time. This is a 'new' feature on the site and not something I use by habit. It also leaves messy artifacts on the home page (they don't clear when we read the post, we have to manually clear them (usually all at once, which does not make them helpful)).

I tend to only mention people if I think they might need to be attracted to a page they might not otherwise have read. That way the prompt on the font page might catch their attention (if they read that... as I hinted, I don't think this is a properly worked feature:).

As the GM I pretty much have to read all posts. :) This is the same reason I suggest not bolding NPC names (in Help! Formatting (optional)), the GM has to look at them all anyway.

As I say, though, opinions vary, and many are in the habit (possibly from newfangled things like twitter?) of appending @s to everyone's name (even before the site did anything with them). I don't care either way, my home page will be cluttered up with someone @tting me anyway. :)

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All we really need to do specify how much we are bringing in. You do this with the checkmarks by Equipment. This defines both how fast you can move and react, and the number of items you have on-hand and in your pack (pack items take a while to get to and use). This is about how much you brought in, not about how much you can bring out, though going over the numbers means you move slower, and, if you need to move faster, you can say you are dropping stuff (littering).
That seems simple, that way you can adjust your loadout based on what you find when you arrive at the break, and possibly even have someone coming in later bring you things you neglected to bring (as you suggested in your RP [ref]:).
Yes, you have a certain number of items in your 'pack'. Your sheet currently says you are running a 'Normal' load. Which is 5 items in your pack and 3 items 'on-hand' which could be 'on your belt' or in a holster and such, this includes armor and stuff you are wearing.
If you are wearing armor then it can be an armored helmet, else I assume you have 'caving helmets' or something suitable for going into unknown areas.
If you want to load up for a fight, then sure. This is not DnD, we don't assume you are fighting things. But what you choose will be what you face... until it isn't.
If you want to say you always have those with you, then you can start with them marked. Else you can leave it vague and, if you still have checkboxes available, mark them when you find you need them and say you always had them.

Sometimes saying later that you had something that was not mentioned before can be a bit complicated, like if you have been hurt a few times and did not deduct Armor from the Harm and now say you have Armor, we just ignore these incongruities for the sake of convenience. They are not retroactive, in this example the Armor did not protect you before 'for reasons' (a bullet-proof vest does not stop one from being shot in the throat (or from twisting an ankle)).
There is a whole lot of stuff listed at the top of the On-Hand section. I assume the 'Rig:' stuff is considered 'free' and does not count towards your load (though we can talk about if you ever want to 'drop everything' (for reasons of speed?))
That is listed under Supplies. If you bring them then you have them, else you would need to make do and bum off the others? This is exactly the sort of thing you can mention later, like when you find you are spending enough time in here, or mention up front if you want to say that your character 'always comes prepared'. What would your character do?
If you want. See the point about 'Supplies' above.
If you want to be a 'sherpa more' then you can increase your Equipment load and be 'Slow'. This will give you more options.

You can still keep these Pack and On-Hand checkboxes for later marking if you don't know yet what you would bring. We can assume our characters have a better understanding of the world they live in than we do.

Wow, you weren’t kidding about Herman being tonally very different than the rest of the game, VagueGM. He’s something!

One wonders why the Institute thinks he is valuable. What do they know that we don't? (It's probably about that so-called 'Arcane' stuff, right? Has to be?:)

1 - ok no more @s
2- then the stuff I put in RP applies. And I guess since he is used to thinking in terms of being equipped to perform on stage then, ya, what he has on him per my RP, including C4, is his assumed normal load for a gig like this. for the gun it would a 9mm glock. The knife is a basic combat knife. He knows how to use the pistol (NV is an open carry state w/ lots of libertarians) He's not really a fighter (so he's not concealed packing when not on the job) but he wants to be prepared for whatever.

Are we in NV? I missed that

his birthplace/hometown is Las Vegas

...home of libertarians and cheesy stage/comic magicians...

Oh gotcha.

Though, I assume, they don't all have to be born there, they just all have to move there... :)

Trying to get clear picture. We have a small "skyscraper" 150m in height that is tilted 45 degrees so that lobby entrance is now underground. I am assuming that the pivot is very near the entry point since we only need to go, say, 4m below the normal ground level in order to enter. Sorry to be a nerd.

And I assume that there is a mound built up under the tower where the central elevator/stairs are. Since thats "underground" where the goblins, etc are.

Yes, how could you! A nerd in an RPG! Unheardof! :)
We are playing 'theater of the mind', which can be a bit of work to gets one's mind around. Ask as many questions as you need.

One of the benefits of theatre of the mind is that we don't have to define more than we need to, so the scene is free to evolve as it needs.

A downside is that people may be picturing something different to each other. It is surprising how little this actually matters. :) Till it does. :(

Whenever you need clarification we can nail down details.
Around that height. It was defined as 'thirty stories tall and had a footprint about the size of two football fields side by side' [ref]

I am not sure about the 'two football fields' as that makes it rather cuboid. Your 30m base seems reasonable, but we don't really care about these dimensions. Picture a 30 story skyscraper, and that should be enough to get everyone on the same page.
Yep. It fell that far... and then stopped, as though it crashed into something, but there is nothing for it to crash into.

Once inside it looks like it is laying on a hill/mountain, but from the outside you can not see anything for it to lay on. You have to go through the portal to see the ground and the caves below (beside) it.

This is meant to be a confusing location, there are two places smashed into each other and I am not sure we can really draw a map of how they connect. So far it seems pretty linear, but there is no way to know if this correlation will continue as you progress further into the break.

None of you have a clear picture of that the previous break was like and any attempts to map it out afterwards have shown that everyone had wildly differing opinions on the facts.
No, the lobby entrance is right were it always was, at the intersection of the front (now bottom) wall and the pavement.

The entire building has rotated around that point. The far side has lifted out of the ground to accommodate that fulcrum. Much as you have drawn, but without any sinking of the lobby entrance which is now a portal.
It pivoted around the entry point, like that is a fixed-point in space.
No. That is at ground level.
From outside there is nothing 'under' the building, it looks like it is laying on open air, like a magic trick.

In order to get in you have to walk under the building, so it leans over you. There are kids playing under the building and you saw a helicopter fly under it as well. It just hangs there.
Er... not sure? The elevators are inside, so you can't be sure from outside. They are near the center of the building.
No. The goblin underground is out through the window, into what, from the outside, should be open air. From inside it is dark below (to the side) and turned out to be 'resting on/in a hill' that does not show up from the outside.

It is confusing! Like reality has broken!

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Does that help? Anything more you need? Happy to talk more.
The characters are supposed to be confused. But we want the players to understand enough to be able to play them within this reality.

That turned out to be gecko gloves. But you still have space in your pack, so you could mark Climbing Gear and find you have some in there. Going straight up the side could be quicker than going through the building.

Can we drop the gecko gloves down to Herman? He'd be going up a 45 degree angle glass exterior; that should be easy with gecko gloves, right?

Maybe? But they are light and could be blown away, it would be a gamble.

They could also break, they are technology with batteries and everything.

He could get some from the van if you want to go that route, it should not be an impossible mission. That way you could have four sets between the three of you, so a spare.
He would still be going up 90°, and also have to traverse at that 45° angle along the wall.

With a rope he would be hanging in mid-air till he gets up to the glass, then still have very little to hold onto except the rope.

Ah, it sounds like he should just walk the long way. Herman?

I am having a challenging time today following the previous action. (One could wish there was a display mode in gamer’s plane that would sequence/interleave the RP and OOC posts.)
Now as I understand it, the building is literally tilted at 45 degrees over on its bottom front edge where the sliding, normal or revolving doors would be but right now these doors are mostly replaced by a misty, shimmering portal field that we have to climb up into and/or through. And before we can enter the portal there is an expansive, two or three foot deep pool of muddy water caused presumably by the places where the water and sewage pipes were severed. My teammates have already verified that the water is not in contact with live electrical current and so is safe, if messy to cross.
Once through the portal field you are now in a 90 degree valley/trench with one side the (marble, tile, or carpet) floor of the lobby and the other the (luckily thick shatterproof) front windows of the building. The trench bottom is cluttered with various pieces of reception furniture and decor. The building lobby is open two or three stories in the center with escalators and elevators however around the center it has a mezzanine level splitting the vertical space.

Because we at a 45 degree slant the escalators that are parallel and in front of us are actually vertical now. This also applies to normal stairs (one run will be vertical and the next horizontal. )

And how did we climb up to the third floor? Using some kind of gecko gloves? Cos the low tech way would be to use a long ladder OR a grappling hook with rope ascenders which you can buy from REI or wherever. So just climbing to the third floor to catch up might take a minute.

Am I in the ballpark?