OOC General Chat

I can appreciate your time constraints, and your efforts to post; we'll work the kinks out over time. If everything is going smoothly, I should be able to have a post up in the narrative every day by 4:00 PM GMT (10:00 AM my Chicago time).

Also, there may be times when, if everyone has already posted for the day, and it's not too late for me, that I can post the night before our next game day, allowing those of you who want to post as early as possible to do so.

Trust me when I say that I want to help keep things as easy as possible for everyone involved and help make the entire experience enjoyable for all. Again, with a little time and some more experience all around as a group we'll get it down.

EDIT: I may occasionally post at other times of the day as well, to resolve actions, further allowing the plot to move forward for those more involved, as long as it doesn't leave other players behind or feeling left out.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

This message will frequently look the same, but please pay attention to it as I will make the occasional announcement outside the norm.

Announcements: None

A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, December 12, 12:00 PM GMT - Friday, December 16, 12:00 PM GMT.


A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of Friday.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you' are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

One of you had a question about the OOC General Announcement/Game Plan post I'll be putting up weekly (usually on Thursday mornings, toward the end of our weekly game session; again, I'll try to be routine and predictable as possible for everyone's convenience).

Every week I'll copy the weekly Announcement/Game Plan post, make changes to the dates, add any important announcements, etc., then simply paste it as a brand new post, keeping it in time with whatever else is going on in the OOC General chat and our game. As such, when posted, it should draw your attention to its 'newness' much like any other new post does.

Also, I know that it is very likely all of you already know this, but I try not to assume that everyone's knowledge base is the same (some people are newer than others to forum posting or GP, etc).

When checking for what's new in our game, or anywhere on GP, the best way to get to the most recent new post is to the left of the thread title; if there is a new post you haven't seen or read, a little black 'page' kind of looking icon appears, notifying you as much. Hover your mouse pointer over that icon and it will read "View new posts." Clicking on that will take you to the first post in the thread that you haven't read, making finding your place when resuming posting or reading easy, while also making it hard for you to miss anything.

Yeah, all of you probably knew that. I'd bet the house on it. But, I allow for the possibility that someone might be new to using forums and, if so, it's really no trouble to help.

Not 100% sure that this should go here, but Hawke's looting an arm and a leg from the cyborgs and sticking them in Engineering until he has a chance to look over them more thoroughly.

Added to your character sheet.

Just as a learning point to help you along, Lissewa just used Deception on Zhaff, and succeeded. Granted, it was a subtle Deception, but was playing along with the running lie of 'we've called for medical help.' There were no setbacks to remove via her Convincing Demeanor talent, as Zhaff recognizes and appreciates your help, which actually earned a boost die for Squeek's roll, which was further modified by a boost die from the lingering effects of Krosus' Influence. All in all, with Lissewa being a decent liar and the extra boost dice, she was convincing.

Something else to add: Lissewa won't have to pass a check for that specific lie with Zhaff again, unless Zhaff came across something that made him question her. However, other characters would likely have to make the check if they talk with Zhaff about 'calling for medical help.' This would reflect the potential that he can discern something in the interaction that gives away the lie. However, seeing as Lissewa, with Krosus' aid, has sold Zhaff on the fact that help was called for, the rest of you would get a boost dice if you talked to him about it again, as he firmly believes, for now, that help was called.

Again, I'm outlining the above to help you guys get a feel for the game mechanics and better idea for when rolls might take place, as a way of helping you be aware how you play your character. And yes, *IF* Zhaff lied to you, I rolled your Discipline checks to detect the lies.

The space we're in, is there a point large enough to get the ECUL out? I will point out IC that Lexi will pilot the ECUL, just figuring out if we have space to use it here or if we have to take a different tack.

As far as preparing to leave the Spear and take the ECUL into Kraspen, we don't need to RP that out unless you really want to.

All I really need to know is that everyone is on the same page and ready to leave. For my post tomorrow, I'll assume those of you who don't voice an opinion on where you think the group should go next are fine with the group's consensus, which seems to be Zhaff's suggestion of heading to see his contact at the Kraspen Espos Station (FYI, an 'Espo' would be a singular member of the planetary police).

If you are ready to go, you can use OOC General to describe what you'd like to do to prepare: what you'll take with you from storage, what you'd like to put on the ECUL, etc. Feel free to discuss anything you need to as a group. Again, I don't see a need to RP logistical considerations and prep, unless you want to. Ultimately, if we were sitting around the table, you'd simply go over your character sheets and make any necessary changes. Let me know and I'll make them for you (I'll keep taking care of the character sheets from here on out, as it simplifies things for me).

And yes, you can take the ECUL via the same way the Spear docked (the hangar doors provide a horizontal point of entry, rather than descending into the hangar from above).

After last week's hiccups things are going well. :)

Just remember to follow the posting etiquette (don't describe other character's actions, etc) and you'll be fine.

STARTING CREDITS

I've given everyone 100 credits, representing STRAT-COM's doling out some cash to help your squad make its way. I know I'm making the changes on your character sheets, but moving forward I encourage you to check my work. I do occasionally make mistakes.

Since I imagine most of the planning will be done here, I would imagine that we will bring everyone along but BS-10, name of my security Droid btw, will stay behind since there has been an established threat to us at this point. I would suggest bringing anything along that might prove useful, but we should avoid being to well equipped since we are heading to the police station and we aren't fully aware of the laws and stuff here. With that in mind, when Lissewa gets a chance she will be downloading any relevant information regarding the laws of the planet and such to upload into her droid.

BS-10 has already interfaced with planetary law, and reminds the group that weapons are permitted as allowed by the owner of the property or business, etc. Weapons are not permitted inside the Espos Station, but Zhaff points out that the group can simply drop him off. Remember, at this point Zhaff's understanding is that you're taking him to a safe place, that's it.

At the same time, he has a basic understanding of your situation as far as (1) You're not the usual types, so to speak. The guns and such give away that your group is, at the least, more than civilian, and that you work, to some extent, in and around conflict and (2) You might want to get your bearings and meet his contact, given the what happened in your hangar bay with the body count and such. Zhaff gets the fact that you may have questions and be looking for leads, etc. As such, he mentions that he can arrange for his Espos contact to meet you after he gets patched up at the station doc.

WEAPONS AND PERMITS

In addition to private establishment laws, you need a permit to carry weapons at all on Bonadan. Zhaff tells you that Espos have the authority to do random checks in public.

250 credits per light ranged or melee weapon, 500 credits per heavy ranged type weapons.

Tajanna will bring her entire kit, sans ACP Repeater. She'll also recommend to Lissi that she bring her Wilderness Survival Kit, Fusion Lantern, Medpack, and possibly her toolkit and extra Stimpacks.

Well weapon-wise Hawke's leaving his new blaster on the ship as well as the knife, but he's bringing his lightsaber. Now just need to figure out a justification for carrying around part of a femur on his belt.

As for everything else, he's taking his stimpacks, emergency med kit (assuming that it isn't a one use item), and his armor as well as helmet.

I'm going to assume that everyone wisely conceals their lightsabers, not wearing them where they are visibly seen. Especially when the hilt is made of a bone. However, if any of you want to do otherwise and wear it on your belt, hoping that it passes for some harmless tool, let me know. I mean, it depends who's looking, so maybe it would.

Maybe.

A NOTE ON CONCEALED WEAPONS

Concealing weapons is essentially based on the encumbrance of the weapon and the character's Stealth skill. Weapons with an encumbrance value of 1 can be easily hidden on a person (assuming you actually make an effort to hide it), and can only be detected via a patdown type search. Larger weapons would require some sort of place to hide them that makes sense (e.g., a trenchcoat) and each additional encumbrance over 1 adds a boost to the searcher's Perception roll against your Stealth, wherein your Stealth would be the difficulty rating (wherein your green dice would be treated as purples, and your yellow dice would equate to reds).

Oh Hawke is most assuredly going to be concealing his lightsaber. Given how I'm assuming that he gets weird looks for a bone lightsaber on Akrulta, it's a safe assumption that it would be a no-no in the wider galaxy.