Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

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Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

Post by Username17 »

Magic in Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker is defined into traditions and paradigms similarly to how Shadowrun 4 does things. However, there are substantial differences. This is not Shadowrun magic.

First, a bit of nomenclature: "Tradition" and "Paradigm" mean the same thing. If you have a pseudo-scientific path of magic, you have a "Paradigm". If you have a pseudo-aboriginal path of magic, you have a "Tradition". Either way, you'll have a "Path". Your "Path" determines rather more than simply what flavors of spirit you can summon (if you can summon spirits). It determines what skills are associated with what types of magic. That is, people in different paths do different things to get good at magic, and those different things they do are mechanically represented by having distinct skills that they use to use different kinds of magic.

Now you may ask, what are those five types of magic? They are:
MagicCoversSample SpellsAssociated Demitype
AstralDetection
Space Warping
Metamagic
Clairvoyance
Dimension Door
Spirit Ward
Deep Ones
EnchantmentShapeshifting
Transformation
Polymorph
Stone Skin
Alter Self
Ogres
EvokingKinetic Forces
Time
Telekinesis
Stasis
Earthquake
Asura
IllusionImages
Emotions
Veils
Invisibility
Phantasm
Fear
Elves
ThaumaturgyFixing
Destruction
Creation
Heal
Disintegrate
Sterilize
Dwarves
ConjurationSummoning
Possession
Communion
Contact Other Plane
Planar Binding
Create Undead
Humans

And yeah, each of the types gets an associated magic type. If you buy up all the available Deep One powers ad get a high Stress rating, you'll have a bunch of Astral magic at your fingertips. And you still have a path. So depending on what Tradition or Paradigm you are part of, your Deep One mutant abilities will have different skills that they run off of.

Magical Targeting

Magic requires a link to affect something. A link can be achieved through sympathy (casting through a related object), or through touch, or through reaching out and touching them with your aura. That last one allows you to cast spells on things you can see, but it still only goes a limited distance. Having more Magic Stress makes you have a more powerful aura that can reach targets farther away.

Sympathetic targeting requires you to synchronize the two objects, which is time consuming if the objects aren't already in close proximity. And once the connection is established, they are like quantum entanglements, and you can "collapse" the link by casting a spell through it. This means, for example, that you can have a magical healer keep attuned blood samples on hand and then cast healing magic on them from far away if they get injured (and the healer knows about it).

A special shout out needs to go to Teleportation, because it is so problematic. Teleporation in Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker does not create "go to" statements, it creates "come from" statements. That is: with a sympathetic link setup, you could make a man on Mars teleport several meters, but you couldn't teleport someone from Earth to a sympathetic link in the Mars colony.

A second special shoutout needs to go to Resurrection, because again it is super problematic. Raise dead does not exist. But necromancy does. You can talk to ghosts and you can make zombies. But you can't use magic to actually raise the dead.

Paths

The main thing that your Tradition or Paradigm gives you is skill-magic associations. It also gives you a summonable creature type that in turn gives you a list of powers that your spirits can select from when you summon them. And of course it also comes with primarily flavor concerns: different Traditions and Paradigms use different stuff for ritual use. So Northwestern Forge Magic looks like this:
  • Astral: Chemistry
    Enchantment: Mechanic
    Evoking: Demolitions
    Illusion: Artisan
    Thaumaturgy: Armorer
    Summons: Spirit Constructs (Fire Aura, Stabilize, Strengthen)
    Accouterments: Hammers, Metal Powders, Alchemical Metals
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

If necromancy exists, which of the 5 tradtions/thingies/whatever does it use?
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Re: Cyebrpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

Post by Manxome »

FrankTrollman wrote:Teleporation in Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker does not create "go to" statements, it creates "come from" statements. That is: with a sympathetic link setup, you could make a man on Mars teleport several meters, but you couldn't teleport someone from Earth to a sympathetic link in the Mars colony.
The first sentence seems to say that you are restricting Teleportation to "Summoning" types of spells, where the source of the magic needs to be at the destination of the teleport rather than the origin.

The second sentence seems to say that Teleportation has a range limit based on the origin of the thing being teleported and not on the location of the caster.

I don't see any connection between those sentences and get the distinct feeling that I'm utterly missing whatever point you were trying to make. Though the "come from" thing makes me think of the linking books from Myst that teleport the user to the location where the book was written, which I always thought was an interesting way of limiting teleportation.



On an unrelated topic, where is the concept of "stress rating" explained?
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Post by Stahlseele »

This sounds really nice O.o
i'd be the first to make a dwarf with the north western thaumaturgy forge magic . .

in the general cyberpunk heartbreaker topic.
it's basically what the den decided on to use instead of humanity/essence . .
so our all for one balancing argument for all kinds of drugs, magic, ware, kit and skills . .
Last edited by Stahlseele on Thu Jul 14, 2011 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Orion »

Those meta pairings are too perfect. I was skeptical about the idea until I saw the application. This actually redeems ogres and asura for me, whom I was previously unexcited about.
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Re: Cyebrpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

Post by Endovior »

Manxome wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Teleporation in Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker does not create "go to" statements, it creates "come from" statements. That is: with a sympathetic link setup, you could make a man on Mars teleport several meters, but you couldn't teleport someone from Earth to a sympathetic link in the Mars colony.
The first sentence seems to say that you are restricting Teleportation to "Summoning" types of spells, where the source of the magic needs to be at the destination of the teleport rather than the origin.

The second sentence seems to say that Teleportation has a range limit based on the origin of the thing being teleported and not on the location of the caster.

I don't see any connection between those sentences and get the distinct feeling that I'm utterly missing whatever point you were trying to make. Though the "come from" thing makes me think of the linking books from Myst that teleport the user to the location where the book was written, which I always thought was an interesting way of limiting teleportation.
This doesn't make much sense to me, either... it needs to be explained much better; it basically sounds like while you can't go anywhere you want, you can bring anyone you want to you, given a link (so instead of scry-and-die ambushes, you go around stealing people's blood so you can magically teleport them into your dungeon for mindrape or whatever, which is arguably worse). At the extreme, it would mean you're saying that someone who is already on Mars can teleport (perhaps summon would be a better term...) other people to Mars, in the same way as he can summon spirits from the netherworld or whatever... and conversely, someone on Earth can summon people from Mars to his own location.


EDIT: Oh, and Stress was explained in the main CFH thread; discussion is ongoing, but basically think Essence, except that you use the same pool for both your magic and your cyber, both are equally bad for you. Having a high Stress rating means you can tolerate having lots of magic or cyberware without going mad; bad things happen if you go over.
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Post by Username17 »

Manome wrote:The first sentence seems to say that you are restricting Teleportation to "Summoning" types of spells, where the source of the magic needs to be at the destination of the teleport rather than the origin.
No. We normally think of Teleportation as "going to" somewhere. So wherever the "target" is would be where you end up. Teleportation in this "comes from" somewhere instead. The target is the person being teleported and the effect is a few meters of spatial shifting. So no matter where in the universe your target actually is, no more than a Nightcrawler's Bamf worth of actual spatial shifting happens.

Stress

Stress is generally bad. If you get enough of it, bad things happen to you and you stop being able to act. What specific bad things happen vary. Sometimes it's fatal, sometimes it's a psychotic break. The point is: you are not playing that character any more. Stress accumulates because of Magical things (attuning magic items, learning spells, acquiring demitype powers, and so on), and Stress also accumulates to the same pool when you get cyberware or other technological augmentation. So the reason you can't play a Penanggalan is because when the parasite takes over your viscera, you get a very large amount of Stress, and then you can't play that character. And then "you" become just a monster that unzips your skin and has a your viscera crawl out and eat people like in the Parasite manga.

Anyway, Stress can also be temporary, and this stuff takes you out temporarily when it hits the cap. Maybe you pass out, maybe you're just too exhausted to go on, whatever. Things that give Temporary Stress give it out over time. Using magic items, having spells cast on you, taking combat drugs, being in VR, overclocking cyberware that can do that, and so on all provide Temporary Stress at some rate. So the more Stress you have, the less time you can spend with buffs on you before overheating and shutting down. The more buffs you have on, the less time you can spend jacked up before you fall down. But if you have any buffs on long enough, you'll collapse. You can't just pop Nodoze indefinitely - eventually you have to sleep.

Some sources of Permanent Stress actually reduce the accumulation of Stress from specific Temporary sources. The @man presumably has a SimSense unit in his spine that costs Stress. But it reduces the rate at which he gains Temporary Stress for jumping into an Avatar. The Fetishist binds magic items to himself, which gives him Permanent Stress, but makes him accumulate Stress slower when using those magic items. The Juicer has an internal infuser, and that racks up some Permanent Stress, but it makes taking Valkyr easier on his body.

Now, having a higher Permanent Stress works against you in a couple of ways. First of all, certain attacks (such as knockout serum) give you Temporary Stress directly. The guy who is mostly metal has a proportionately larger effect from anesthesia (that is actually true). The second way it works against you is by acting as a penalty to certain social tests. And those tests include the tests to make evidence disappear. The guy who is less Augmented has a straight up easier time walking across the bridge and discretely dropping some hot firearms into the river without anyone noticing. And perhaps the biggest way Stress works against you is that it is an in-world phenomenon that people talk about, and which has legal consequences. And perhaps the biggest consequence is that different regions have different Stress cutoffs where they stop considering someone to be a human being. Penanggalan are basically not considered humans anywhere, Vampires are only considered to be humans in a few places, and in most places there is going to be some cutoff where you stop being considered an Elf and start being considered a spirit that happens to kind of look like a human.

But all is not lost. As you go up in power level, you get Stress Resistance. And then you can literally ignore a certain amount of Stress for purposes of falling over or getting social penalties.

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Post by Stahlseele »

So now being stressless means you are the better face? good . .
so somebody who trusts entirely in his own body and skills has lower target numbers or something, because he has less stress in his system?
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Post by Vebyast »

FrankTrollman wrote:No. We normally think of Teleportation as "going to" somewhere. So wherever the "target" is would be where you end up. Teleportation in this "comes from" somewhere instead. The target is the person being teleported and the effect is a few meters of spatial shifting. So no matter where in the universe your target actually is, no more than a Nightcrawler's Bamf worth of actual spatial shifting happens.
Ok, I see what you mean now. If you have a sympathetic link to someone on Mars, you can teleport them through the airlock even though you're sitting in a chair on Earth. No matter what you do or how many sympathetic links you have, though, you can't teleport that same person back to Earth or out to an asteroid fort in the belt.
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Post by fectin »

FrankTrollman wrote:Stress is generally bad. If you get enough of it, bad things happen to you and you stop being able to act. What specific bad things happen vary. Sometimes it's fatal, sometimes it's a psychotic break. The point is: you are not playing that character any more. Stress accumulates because of Magical things (attuning magic items, learning spells, acquiring demitype powers, and so on), and Stress also accumulates to the same pool when you get cyberware or other technological augmentation. So the reason you can't play a Penanggalan is because when the parasite takes over your viscera, you get a very large amount of Stress, and then you can't play that character. And then "you" become just a monster that unzips your skin and has a your viscera crawl out and eat people like in the Parasite manga.

Anyway, Stress can also be temporary, and this stuff takes you out temporarily when it hits the cap. Maybe you pass out, maybe you're just too exhausted to go on, whatever. Things that give Temporary Stress give it out over time. Using magic items, having spells cast on you, taking combat drugs, being in VR, overclocking cyberware that can do that, and so on all provide Temporary Stress at some rate. So the more Stress you have, the less time you can spend with buffs on you before overheating and shutting down. The more buffs you have on, the less time you can spend jacked up before you fall down. But if you have any buffs on long enough, you'll collapse. You can't just pop Nodoze indefinitely - eventually you have to sleep.
I like this so far. I like this a lot. I think that it is rock solid.
FrankTrollman wrote:Some sources of Permanent Stress actually reduce the accumulation of Stress from specific Temporary sources. The @man presumably has a SimSense unit in his spine that costs Stress. But it reduces the rate at which he gains Temporary Stress for jumping into an Avatar. The Fetishist binds magic items to himself, which gives him Permanent Stress, but makes him accumulate Stress slower when using those magic items. The Juicer has an internal infuser, and that racks up some Permanent Stress, but it makes taking Valkyr easier on his body.

Now, having a higher Permanent Stress works against you in a couple of ways. First of all, certain attacks (such as knockout serum) give you Temporary Stress directly. The guy who is mostly metal has a proportionately larger effect from anesthesia (that is actually true). The second way it works against you is by acting as a penalty to certain social tests. And those tests include the tests to make evidence disappear. The guy who is less Augmented has a straight up easier time walking across the bridge and discretely dropping some hot firearms into the river without anyone noticing. And perhaps the biggest way Stress works against you is that it is an in-world phenomenon that people talk about, and which has legal consequences.
Those mechanics still seem solid, but also seem prone to a lot of bookkeeping. Would it also work to change from "resistant to some kinds of stress" to "immune to some kinds of stress"?
FrankTrollman wrote:And perhaps the biggest consequence is that different regions have different Stress cutoffs where they stop considering someone to be a human being. Penanggalan are basically not considered humans anywhere, Vampires are only considered to be humans in a few places, and in most places there is going to be some cutoff where you stop being considered an Elf and start being considered a spirit that happens to kind of look like a human.
That part still bothers me. Is that bar generally going to be set so that it hits PCs, or so that it only catches Ghost Robot the robot ghost?
Last edited by fectin on Fri Jul 15, 2011 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Vebyast »

fectin wrote:Those mechanics still seem solid, but also seem prone to a lot of bookkeeping. Would it also work to change from "resistant to some kinds of stress" to "immune to some kinds of stress"?
Probably not; Juicers need to fall over after overdosing, just like anybody else, but they need to be able to survive a much higher overdose without reaching the same stress level. That means that each unit of drugs has less of an effect on them, which in turns means stress resistance rather than stress immunity.
FrankTrollman wrote:Magic requires a link to affect something. A link can be achieved through sympathy (casting through a related object), or through touch, or through reaching out and touching them with your aura. That last one allows you to cast spells on things you can see, but it still only goes a limited distance. Having more Magic Stress makes you have a more powerful aura that can reach targets farther away.

Sympathetic targeting requires you to synchronize the two objects, which is time consuming if the objects aren't already in close proximity. And once the connection is established, they are like quantum entanglements, and you can "collapse" the link by casting a spell through it. This means, for example, that you can have a magical healer keep attuned blood samples on hand and then cast healing magic on them from far away if they get injured (and the healer knows about it).
How strong are sympathetic links, and how durable are they? Does every magician have a suite of spells related to establishing links, or do paths give their followers a properly-flavored ability called "create link"? Do some spells include the part that establishes the link to the target, or do casters have to spend an action extending their aura or drawing a circle? Can you carry around a magazine loaded with bullets inscribed with little magic circles that you can use to guide spells to your targets? Are there any nonmagical ways to remove a similarity link, or do you have to go for the whole "cleansing fire" thing? Can you project spell effects beyond the reach of your links using more persistent effects (for example, use Telekinesis to put a bullet through someone that you can't reach directly)?
Last edited by Vebyast on Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by name_here »

Can we get the B and the E in the title of this thread to switch places?

It's really starting to bug me.
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Post by Manxome »

FrankTrollman wrote:We normally think of Teleportation as "going to" somewhere. So wherever the "target" is would be where you end up. Teleportation in this "comes from" somewhere instead. The target is the person being teleported and the effect is a few meters of spatial shifting. So no matter where in the universe your target actually is, no more than a Nightcrawler's Bamf worth of actual spatial shifting happens.
OK, so my conclusion from your example was correct but your attempt at abstract explanation only makes sense to you.

You are not contrasting "go to X" with "come from X", you are contrasting it with "go X distance in Y direction". That is, you are contrasting an absolute destination with a relative movement.

But the important part is the much simpler concept that you are putting a (small) limit on the distance between the origin and destination of the teleportation. Which is actually a completely independent and unrelated point.
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Post by fectin »

Vebyast wrote:
fectin wrote:Those mechanics still seem solid, but also seem prone to a lot of bookkeeping. Would it also work to change from "resistant to some kinds of stress" to "immune to some kinds of stress"?
Probably not; Juicers need to fall over after overdosing, just like anybody else, but they need to be able to survive a much higher overdose without reaching the same stress level. That means that each unit of drugs has less of an effect on them, which in turns means stress resistance rather than stress immunity.
I don't think that's true. "Juicers need to not be able to boost themselves infinitely" is though; there definitely needs to be a limit. I suggest instead that normal drugs just don't work on Juicers. Their internal reservoirs are huge (relative to dosages), and they maintain specific serum concentrations of drugs. If a Juicer chows down on pills, his internal stores recharge, and he gets no effect. If he's allowed to override that, it is a Juicer-specific ability and has Juicer-specific effects, because the whole "Juicer" augmentation is already a specific rules subset.

As laid out, an application of stress involves comparison against a list of reduced effects, then math, then writing down some amount of stress. Stress from enemies is worse, because it involves a discussion first, and allowing partial effects makes that a longer discussion.

I propose instead cutting that down to just compare against a list, then write down stress if needed. Discussions are shorter too.

It's clearer if you think about an @man. He shouldn't be taking continuous stress from inhabiting a mechabody, because he already sank permanent stress into it. Maybe that is specific to a single mechabody ("anatta" for "not-self"?), but that should basically be his character. If nothing else, it should be okay for him to be a crippled kid who lives in his mechabody all the time, which stress accumulation would prevent.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

I'm willing to bet that temporary stress accumulation can result in catastrophic failure. You don't have to keep track of every little thing that's stressing you except for when you're specifically activating it or deactivating it. Otherwise you're just dealing with a single clock ticking towards doom.
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Post by Orion »

I really don't want to be having to multiply the Stress of the various drugs I shoot up by 75% or whatever. Having a Juicer mod put in should either

A: Give you N Stress resistance that only effects drugs. (IE, burn 2 strees on a permanent mod that negates 3 points of temporary drug stress)
B: Be a unique rules instance. That is, a Juicer implant doesn't modify the way pre-existing drug rules work, it just can be turned on to give you X bonuses and Y temporary stress.
C: Modify the *effects* of the drugs. You now get +4 instead of +2 from your Speed.
D: Modify some other aspect of the stress accumulation rules, like making the stress "proc" at longer intervals.
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Post by Grek »

Why not X permanent Stress in exchange for a thing that gives you +Y on your periodic check vs. getting stress?
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Post by Vebyast »

Grek wrote:Why not X permanent Stress in exchange for a thing that gives you +Y on your periodic check vs. getting stress?
It sounds like we actually need to define how drugs, magical buffs, and so on work mechanically. Do you make a single check when you shoot up to see if they drive you crazy? Do you make periodic checks while you're high? Do you make a check when you come down to see if the shakes drive you insane?
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Post by fectin »

Grek wrote:Why not X permanent Stress in exchange for a thing that gives you +Y on your periodic check vs. getting stress?
From my perspective, because I don't want there to be any periodic checks vs. stress (unless you are on fire or something).
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Post by Grek »

It shouldn't be a one time check, obviously. Having stoneskin up for a day should have a worse negative effect than having it up for an hour. It should also be variable, such that you don't know in advance if it's going to be "a bad trip" or not.

Based on that, it should clearly be a stress over time sort of deal, either due to making a modified roll every set time period to see how much stress you get, or (as is my preference) making a modified check to determined how long the interval between hits of stress will be.
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Post by Username17 »

Orion wrote:I really don't want to be having to multiply the Stress of the various drugs I shoot up by 75% or whatever.
You shouldn't make tests for Stress at all. Buffs have a Stress Rate. Some buffs have a slash and a lower Stress Rate for people who invested Stress in attuning them. Since you only get the lower rate by accepting Permanent Stress through augmentation, you shouldn't be being asked to recalculate your Stress Rates on the fly at any point.
fectin wrote:From my perspective, because I don't want there to be any periodic checks vs. stress (unless you are on fire or something).
The only time die rolling comes into it is when you hit your Stress Cap, when it is semi-random how long you can John Henry before you collapse.
Manxome wrote:But the important part is the much simpler concept that you are putting a (small) limit on the distance between the origin and destination of the teleportation. Which is actually a completely independent and unrelated point.
The fact that Teleportation is a short distance displacement effect that does not target the end location is important because of the way sympathetic magic works. It doesn't have two targets (the origin and the end point), because then people could use linking to cover large distances.
fectin wrote:That part still bothers me. Is that bar generally going to be set so that it hits PCs, or so that it only catches Ghost Robot the robot ghost?
The goal is to have anonymizing be an action that you take that gives you screen time. So you need to buy some supplies, and the nondescript guy goes and buys them in cash, anonymizing the transaction. You need to go dump some hot weapons, so the nondescript guy goes and chucks them in the water, anonymizing the activity. Creating investigative dead ends is an active on-camera task that low stress characters are optimized for automatically.

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Post by Grek »

Your "go to" vs. "come from" explanation is bad and does not clarify what you meant. Here's a better explaination:

A special shout out needs to go to Teleportation, because it is so problematic. Teleporation in Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker does not send objects to a synchronized location, but rather shifts a synchronized object a short distance. That is: with a sympathetic link setup, you could make a man on Mars teleport several meters, but you couldn't teleport someone from Earth to a sympathetic link in the Mars colony.
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Post by TheFlatline »

FrankTrollman wrote: The goal is to have anonymizing be an action that you take that gives you screen time. So you need to buy some supplies, and the nondescript guy goes and buys them in cash, anonymizing the transaction. You need to go dump some hot weapons, so the nondescript guy goes and chucks them in the water, anonymizing the activity. Creating investigative dead ends is an active on-camera task that low stress characters are optimized for automatically.
Not to mention the normal guy doesn't leave an astral signature, nor is his cyberware identifiable in security footage.
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Post by fectin »

TheFlatline wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: The goal is to have anonymizing be an action that you take that gives you screen time. So you need to buy some supplies, and the nondescript guy goes and buys them in cash, anonymizing the transaction. You need to go dump some hot weapons, so the nondescript guy goes and chucks them in the water, anonymizing the activity. Creating investigative dead ends is an active on-camera task that low stress characters are optimized for automatically.
Not to mention the normal guy doesn't leave an astral signature, nor is his cyberware identifiable in security footage.
That part makes sense. I was asking about how likely PCs are to be deemed inhuman.
...You Lost Me
Duke
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Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:21 am

Post by ...You Lost Me »

name_here wrote:Can we get the B and the E in the title of this thread to switch places?

It's really starting to bug me.
Dammit! I hadn't even noticed that till now...
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
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