What's New Pussycat OOC discussion (Trying to keep the thread a little cleaner)

winkingchef wrote:

Sam Dekker wrote:((I mean... "Had no choice" is pretty strong. We chose to do it that way. As recently as this conversation, Sam provided a different route (say we represent someone wanting to commission a work from Roku, vs someone who wishes her harm/wants to make her stop) that Sato brushed off in favor of threats. If Sato had just approached her with that plan, calmly and in person, at the club things might have gone a lot more smoothly. We haven't been at all railroaded in to threats and violence. We chose that. At pretty much every turn.

I wasn't really commenting on frequency of posts so much as constantly talking plans to death, changing Minor details, and then not necessarily carrying through with said plans. In this instance, the characters doing that would be, literally, sitting there with Sam smiling awkwardly at Akane for however long the back and forth planning would have taken))

((that plan went out the window as soon as we kidnapped her - Sam is awkward, but even he would have known that.  That was indeed our Plan A.  We pursued that several times, first at the bar with the fanservice costume, then in the church with the attempted conversation after the meeting.  After the second time the GM chose not to pursue that thread, it was pretty clear to me that he didn't see that angle as realistic, which pushed us to Plan B.))

((In any case, it's pretty clear this world has pretty strong consequences, so a post or two making sure we are agreed on a plan doesn't seem like too much to ask, right?))

((for Sato this is very much in character - he has the "Consummate Professional" negative quality, which means he likes his runs clean and quiet with no pink mohawks even in the zip code.))

I'm not trying to start, or have, any kind of fight at all. There's, let's say, three categories of planning before doing. 1) Too little planning, 2) The right amount of planning 3) an obscene amount of planning.

I will admit that I probably skew a little bit into category 1, from the ideal of category 2. And I think that you fall squarely (from my perspective) in category 3. The play-by-post exacerbates this dynamic. So, whereas around the table your planning might seem a little bit much and I would roll my eyes some, in play by post it translates to a week or more of sitting around. So, in short, I'm trying to push the narrative forward. I'm not looking to offend you, at all.

I don't have any problem with any of the actions that Sato has taken. Except for the exception of the debavle in the club, they were all perfectly within his character. I just disagree with the assertion that we've been in any way railroaded into this course of action.

I don't think that plan necessarily had to go out the window when we kidnapped her. Sam, bumbling and terrible at it as he was, calmed Akane down a little to the point where it seemed she would have been willing to listen to Sato, if he had chosen to run with the story that he started to spin.

Again, I am not upset, or even unhappy, that Sato decided not to. That's a perfectly acceptable and reasonable character decision. But, it was a decision for threats over peacefulness.

I don't think that we ever actually did anything that would have adhered to what we're calling Plan A. We said we were going to, but instead we jumped into her orgy, then tried to hit on her and said she smelled like shit, got up, and walked away immediately when she wasn't interested, then we kidnapped her.

Again, I'm perfectly content with all of the things that we did. I'm just saying that to categorize any of it as having attempted Plan A but been railroaded into Plan B is a pretty big misreading of events.

winkingchef wrote:((I should add that the decker-face combo can be one of the most enjoyable tag-teams to play in Shadowrun - the decker gathers leverage and opens doors for the face to manipulate and infiltrate - I am hoping we can develop a repartee such that our two characters work very close together - I play the decker half of this combo in my home game and I am having such fun setting up the Face.))

I agree! I think the Sam/Sato dynamic is a lot of fun, even before taking the mechanics advantage of their teamwork that you're referring to into account.

Perhaps she came across as more inapproachable than I intended for her to be, but so far she has been approached in ways that make her uncomfortable.

The first attempt was breaking into her room and essentially cock-blocking her. If she was initially approached after she had finished her encounter, she would have been in a much better mood.

The second attempt was an extremely brief interaction with Nobu where she was kind of annoyed because of said cock-block and when hit on, she curtly asked why she was being approached because she was in a bad mood is generally suspicious of police potentially trying to get info out of her. She immediately was told that she smelled like shit rather than trying to come up with any kind of compelling reason to speak with her.

The third attempt was harder since she specifically tries to avoid being alone with men from SA. A woman would have had an easier time talking to her here, but she could have been talked to if you weren't overly aggressive. Grabbing her by the arm wasn't going to win you any points there, but she wasn't running yet. She could have still been talked to at that point, but that's when the kidnapping part happened so there was no chance to try.

Now I realize it is easy for me to say she could have been approached when I know how she is going to react from behind the GM screen. I also realize it is an entirely different world when you are on the player side and don't know what I know. So I don't fault any of you for taking an approach that didn't get you the results you wanted. You're working with what you have. Generally though, I do present things as far more difficult/severe than they actually are. If I am not making you sweat for your victory, I am not doing my job.

Sorry, just noticed this thread.


I do want to start out by saying that I really like this campaign, the world and the players. I'm excited to see what happens to us all.

I will admit that I'm still trying to feel out the game. As you both no doubt know very well, Shadowrun is a very flexible system and it can be run many ways. Very different than D&D where you expect to see monsters of an appropriate challenge level, in Shadowrun, foes can often be very deadly (either individually or in aggregate).

My home game is very "Black Trenchcoat" which means that the decker (me) does a lot of legwork up front and we form detailed plans. However, it wouldn't be Shadowrun without plot twists and betrayals, so invariably the drek hits the fan and the guns come out (though if you trigger that recklessly, our GM has no problems killing our characters).

As far as my recollection of what happened, we had very little to go on going in to the club, so we had to do the legwork blind. We lost one of our muscle because his Dwarf Pride wouldn't permit him to leave his axe at the door. As soon as we spotted Akane, she went in the room with 5 cybered companions, so I figured I'd have to do some legwork socially and since she was jacked in to simsense, I'd have to do it jacked in. In retrospect, I should have taken the "wait and see" option, but because I had limited time on my vacation to think/post (two families with kids) I felt some pressure to move the plot forward so I went for what looked like the only viable option. Boom dumpshock and unconsciousness with no chance to act. My conclusion : "whelp, there's my warning that there are hard consequences, so be more careful next time."

At the church, we still didn't have any incriminating leverage on Akane, so it seemed less and less an option to talk to her. I tried the art comment, but she didn't acknowledge it at all, so I considered that just the evening before, she was breaking her SA pledge so maybe she'd respond more to that angle than pursuing Plan A. In retrospect, yeah, we could have pushed that harder, but again, I felt some pressure to act, so I figured that angle would be the most efficient way to get her in the closet.

That's how we got to where we are.

I'm not unhappy (I like twists and turns), just wanted to explain how I see us getting there and how I really never saw an option to pursue Plan A in a realistic way - I felt the cues were pointing another way.

Let's continue - I'm excited to see how it pans out.

The matrix fight there was a sort of mix of things. First off I wanted to try and get the others more involved since Sato was pretty much the only one doing things at that point and you were on vacation, so I didn't know how long everyone would be waiting on you. The rest was kind of a series of errors on my part. One of the IC I ended up actually making a mistake with how it functions (it was only supposed to be able to mark you once regardless of how many hits it makes, rather than a mark per hit, which ended up pushing the damage up a lot when the attack IC hit him). Then I didn't realize that Sato would have a bottom of the line commlink, so he ended up taking a lot more damage than I had expected him to. I was mostly thinking that he would get hit and Sam would step in to help him which would have gotten the IC focusing on him, then Nobu could have seen something was up and tried to delay physical security while you guys finished up in the matrix. But Sato got knocked out a lot quicker than I was expecting and Nobu's player didn't notice the split I made for him so I never got to get him involved.

Since things kind of got screwed up more for OOC reasons than IC reasons, I had the bouncers escort Sato out rather than calling the police on him. I wasn't really trying to come down hard on you, it just sort of accidentally ended up that way. So my bad for that.

No worries.  Your explanation totally makes sense and I should have asked.

In the future, if you feel I'm posting too slowly, send me a PM and if I don't respond to that, feel free to autopilot me. I generally try to get at least one post in the Pacific Time morning and one in the evening during my commute (though sometimes I have to travel so my posting time may shift)

It all depends on the situation. When everyone is waiting on one person to resolve something, I tend to get a bit more urgent and will start pushing things forward after a couple of days. If we are in a situation where anyone can act as they like, then I don't mind terribly much if people go for days without posting. But if you want me to give you a warning poke that I am about to move on, I can.

Feel free - I don't want people to wait on me. I love that your game has such complexity, but that also means I frequently need to reread a bit before posting and sometimes I just don't have the mental bandwidth.  I love it though, don't change a thing (except for the reminders/autopilot)

And I thought our adventure was exciting. I hope you guys make it out of the car, I think that we are time shifted in our storyline right now? When do you think Team B will have a chance to get involved in the Team A storyline GM?

Well, if they decide they need the help, you guys aren't doing anything, so they could theoretically call you for help. Not sure what you guys will be able to do that they can't though.

Yeah. I hope they don't get all blowed up.

I hope you don't get blowed up guys. Chougou is with you in spirit.

I don't expect them to