The past and the future...

So, I don't know if anyone else noticed, but we pretty much spent 15 or 20 minutes on the run this week and spent most of the rest of the time talking about our old game. It's been kind of a trend since we started, really, but it's more or less completely taken over our game. I think is caused by a combination of things: partly that the other game ended before any of us were really ready to walk away from it, partly that we're using that as a method to reconnect socially, partly that there are issues with the current game... probably lots of things.

I think we're running into the same problems with the current game that we were talking about Traveler having last night. Because the team isn't a traditional shadowrun team being hired to do runs, there's not a strong sense of direction. The characters are basically feeling their way around, and that means the game is as well. It's partly my fault for underestimating just how wide-open your course of action would be when we first started talking about the concept. It started to hit home when I planned for a raid on a local office building, and you guys instead talked a young designer into going to Paris with you. It's always kind of hard to plan for a game because you can't predict the players, but honestly, it's next to impossible for me right now, because I pretty much never have any idea what you guys are going to do. It's not that you guys could jump the rails at any moment, it's that there aren't any rails, and it would pointless to try to make any, because you're in a flying time machine.

Honestly, though, I think that's the smaller portion of the issue. I think the reason we keep coming back to talking about the old game rather than playing the new one is that we'd all rather be playing the old game right now. I know we talked about this before we started, and we talked about it a bit more last night, and we all know the reasons for not doing it... but I think those are pretty much like the reasons we were always talking about a reset years ago. Sure, they were pretty good reasons, but we never did a reset because ultimately, we didn't really want to. We were all having fun still.

Yes, we'd be playing without Mikey, but honestly, his main character had a good, excellent even, ending and separation from the group way back when he "rescued" that Mr. Johnson from the rest of the group. Since then, his other characters drifted in and out of the group like any of the dozen players we had that did one or two runs and then left. We'd be playing without Brimstone, but he'd been talking about riding off on his bike and doing something else for quite a while. Honestly, all the people we're talking about "it wouldn't be the same without them" were invited to this game and either said no or said yes and then backed out.

Basically, what we're seeing now is Will put out word that he was getting the band back together, and we took the people who showed up and put the drummer on tambourine, the bassist on vocals and the guitarist on drums, and even though we have the same people writing the songs and music, we're trying to play country and western when we used to be a punk band. I think we should revisit the idea of just dusting off our old characters and playing that game again. At least if it doesn't work, then we'd know it won't work instead of playing the "maybe it won't work" game and talking ourselves out of what we all actually want to do.

Well whats most important to me is getting together (even if it is online) and having a good time. I think that we are doing that no matter what. Now part of talking about the old game is that well... we all miss it. Its been damn near 4 years since i gamed with you guys, and we have alot of old stuff to talk about. The other thing is that i don't think any of the characters feel driven yet. (maybe thats the reason that Kelley stopped playing Cole, and chose to play Gideon forever.) I'm up for continuing the old game if thats what we want to do. I'm also up for giving this game a couple more weeks. I finaly developed a story hook (that won't get everyone killed) that I think our group would bite into.

As far as asking Mikey, I've tried to talk to him about the game again, and as soon as I mention it i get the silent treatment. So I'm giving up on him. All and all that puts us at 4 players and 1 GM. I personaly would like 1 or 2 more people. just my opinion. I think we also are going to have to start the game up at times without the entire group online.

I'm not sure what Rockwell has planned for next week, but I'll say again that I would rather see the selling of the goods done in the abstract.

Me and rockwell discussed that there are still a ton of things the old group didn't do. Fist fight cyberzombies, Deal with a dragon, shake hands with a windigo... there is still so much in the world of shadowrun that we can do with the group. But there are a few questions that this will bring up.
1) what do we do for character sheets? just find the one in our old computer folder w/e that looks right?
2) what do new players start with? i'd hate to see a 500 BP character try to compete with station, however, It might make for some intresting internal monoloug.
3) What happened to the group? was there a hiatus for 3 years in wich the spread into the 4 winds for safty? now some threat has brought the legendary runners grim back together. Corporations will shake! (Fuck i just gave myself goosebumps)

If you guys want to go this rout i'd happily run the first game, but will need a couple of weeks for a plot hook and what not. however if we decide to stay with our current game I really need backgrounds for firingpin and nachos.

Either way i'd be excited to play. Just let me know.

Right, getting together and talking about the old game and not gaming is all well and good for those of us who were a part of the old game, but not all of us were. Let me tell you, it's boring as fuck to listen to for longer than a couple of minutes if it wasn't your game.

As far as getting the old group back together, that's easy. I could run that game next week if we decide to go that route. Yes, we went our separate ways for a few years, and did our own things. Let the up-and-comers do regular jobs. Let any kid with an assault rifle and Wired Reflexes so generic extraction #17. Some thing, though, really, REALLY require the pros. Especially when it's a run one of those pros needs to get done for their own purposes and won't trust to contract it out to just anyone.

Also, bringing in new players at 500bp is what we did right up until the end, and it worked out alright. If you make a specialist, a 500bp character can really excel at almost anything. No, they won't be Station or Gideon or Slide or any of the old guard as they are now... but they can be A-Bomb, Shelley, or the like. If a 500bp character takes a role we don't already have covered, then they're a valuable asset. Yeah, another hacker/rigger will be in Miyori's shadow, but Heavy Weapons Troll or Demoman or Steely-Eyed Sniper, or Bruce Lee Adept can step up and be an important member of the group.

Oh, and even though I say I could run a game next week for the old group, it would be a more awesome game if everyone used that time to explain what they've been doing in the meantime or if we take however long we need to fill that in and then pick up having that done.

Mostly, though - I just want to make sure that it's clear that I'm being serious here. I really think that it's what we all actually want to do, and it doesn't serve any of us to disrupt the game we are playing talking about the game we want to be playing rather than just playing the game we want to be playing. That way, when we stop to talk about what Gideon would do, it's relevant. When we talk about our old runs, it's in-character. We won't have to "what if" about differnet characters being there nearly as much when several of those characters actually are there.

I've actually grown to like our current characters but for me there's really no competition my vote would go for picking up the old game.

There is this issue, at least for me, that I've forgotten a lot of stuff. I've got notes but there was so much stuff going on there's no way I'll remember it all (as a player or as a GM.) Also there is the issue that various players had to drop out of the game at various times so there are things that happened that they were never present for. We may have to do a historical recap of important issues and reestablish game cannon so that we all start playing and GMing from a common position.

I also agree that if we go back to the old game we will need 1 or 2 more people. I would love to be able to invite 1 or 2 of my friends from high school, they are veteran gamers that could both play and GM and I think they would fit in with our play style. Of course if anyone from the old group wanted to play I think they should get the open seats but it sounds like we've asked everyone and they've said no. Again, I won't ask them unless you all agree.

Anyway, at this point it sounds like the 3 of us want to do this. Any word from Nikki or Morgan?

Nikki suggested it after the last game session, actually, and was part of the inspiration for me making the original post. I'm all for doing a recap of what we did, who we knew, etc. so we're all all more or less on the same page. It's no big deal of some of it falls through the cracks, but it would be best to get as much in place as we can reasonably get (luckily, the old forums still exist as a resource we can use in compiling this).

I'm open to bringing in more players as well.

Oh, my this is actualy a huge undertaking. We I'm gonna have to start looking at some stuff on the old forums. I think we can get alot of the recaps in more or less chronological order due to the fact that the forums are all sub divided. So what about the characters? I'm not sure how much nuyen/karma I had on slide when i steped out. I think I had him on my old laptop so I wouldn't have an up to date version of him. I'm not even sure if I have a version of him on my desk top come to think of it. Looks like I finaly have to unpack it. I suppose morgan would be playing Miori which is good. There are alot of things we never resolved with her.

I was also thinking that I would need to be up to date on all the stuff from after the time i left. Which was when Station's girlfriend was murdered. So, we start up a time line?

Morgan seems cautiously open to the idea, by the way.

Compiling signifigant forum entries I currently am at about 40 Pages. and this is just from the stuff before I left. I'm not so good on the dates however.

Some of the dates are going to be wrong. We're just going to have to ballpark some stuff and call it good enough. No way around that, I think.

Edit: poking around on the old forums, I found this: http://skirmishshadowrun.freeforums.org/character-history-t444.html

Looks like some of the work has already been done in the form of previous recaps.

Just poking my head in to say I am on board with the game and the new potential players I'm cool starting with a 500 BP character, obviously she won't be able to compete with say, Station or Slide, but it's not about competing. I'll find my place. I actually really liked the sniper with a bow idea, so I may expand on that with another character, should be different enough from Slide that we won't be overlapping. I'll make sure to write a background for her so she is much more filled out and realized. It won't be to the point that your characters are, obviously, but it will be a start.

Nikki: Shadowrun is so open ended you actually can make a starting character that is much more powerful than an experienced character (at least in one or two aspects.) Usually experienced character are just more well rounded.

Since we established that the current game is in the same game world as the old game I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to keep playing Naxos if you want but making a new character after you've plaid a few sessions seems to be a tradition with all of us.

Everyone: I've been looking trough my old files on the computer and when we stopped Gideon had 567 Karma and his character sheet was 47 pages long and included 3 appendices as well as the history Will linked to above plus some more up to date info too. I'm going to try to find a way to post it all online so everyone will have access to it. I even found the map to Nephlim's metaplane... scary stuff.

I'll check with some of my friends from high school to see if one or two are interested in the game.

That sounds about right. Station was right thre with him until I swapped out for Kalika, so he's a bit behind now. So, because we actually have characters who are eligible or would become so as soon as they save up the Karma to buy it, we should probably decide whether or not we are allowing people to take the Legendary Quality. It requires that the character have at least 500 lifetime Karma gained, and costs 100 Karma to pick it up. Legendary characters score hits on 4 or better instead of 5.

I thought about sticking with Naxos, but then got really excited about this other character idea that we may have possibly spent the whole day building. Maybe. >.>

Yeah I think slide is a good bit behind that. I seem to remember him having the high 200s.

That makes sense... You joined later and were in and out a bit (what with the whole Navy thing and all). I think Miyori was in the lowish 200s if I recall correctly. Looking back through the old logs, she was present for a lot more runs than I had thought... I guess I exaggerated how much Morgan was in and out of the game in my memory.

I don't think so, but I also think that Morgan was there for alot of the more important games.

I was there for a good portion of alot of the things. i think it was more i was in some ssessions of different runs so i was there for most the runs just not all the sessions. I'm on board for all this, i'm actually getting excited to play miyori again. when we do this i would like kelly to make a family reunion portrait though lol.
i'm already coming up with what miyori has been up to. i just don't know how this is exactly going to work out.

I got your reunion photo right here.

http://www.infrno.net/users/slide/photos/25162

Ten years ago / In [20]72, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the [Seattle] underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

LMAO HELL YEAH!!!

You know, that's kind of what happened, when we left the Gamma Teams, I mean... only we managed to not wind up in the stockade because we ran before they got to us.

I'm so glad that miyori was on board for the sex change to make this work.

Didn't you know? Miyori got the cyberware that gives her modular genitalia. She's whatever you're into down there. Why do you think Eric always referred to Miyori as "elf boy"?

I've been thinking about the legendary character rule and I think it's actually not an unreasonable one. It's not going to give you a whole lot more success but you will see a bump for sure and it kind of helps compensate for the fact that you inevitabley end up spreading your Karma points all over the place. A quick count of my character shows 23 level 1 skills. Spending 100 Karma to give one or two extra success for those level 1 skills plus better results on the higher skills sounds about right. Of course my character is eligible for this right now so my opinion may be somewhat biased.

yeah i'm a good way from the legendary rule. Personally I'm not a fan.