 So, what's all this then? This is Antumbra Saga, a mod for Shadowrun: Dragonfall: Director's Cut. It was originally released on the Steam Workshop by "cirion" in October of 2014, and it's the first in a three-mod series which I'm calling the CalFree Trilogy - all three of them are set in the California Free State, an area which has a lot of potential for stories, but which has been sadly ignored by Harebrained Studios, the team that developed the Shadowrun Returns games. A mod, eh? Is it any good? Very. I wouldn't be doing this otherwise. All of the trilogy's mods are great fun, and while I'm not sure I'd call them better than Dragonfall or Hong Kong, I'd say they can compete, and they definitely beat Dead Man's Switch (insert joke about that not being much of an accomplishment here). OK, but what's it all about? I'll just quote the mod's description here. Antumbra Saga Workshop Page posted:Venture into a sprawling campaign set on the Pacific Coast. In Antumbra Saga you will rise from a lowly shadowrunner to a pivotal player in the struggle between CalFree and Tir Tairngire. Along the way you’ll nurture alliances, build up a party, and make decisions that will affect your fate and that of the factions you encounter. Not a lot of detail, but I guess we'll have to discover everything as we go, as is the tradition for a struggling runner to eventually stumble over things far greater than they ever envisioned stumbling over. How will this LP be going along? Basic screenshot fare. But here's a couple details on how I will be going about this: - I will be playing through the mod a single time. I will not go out of my way to show off alternate paths, because that way lies madness and endless delays. If you want to try other things, you can check the mod out yourself. Some boundaries just must be set. - I will not be giving any explanations on Shadowrun lore beyond what is given by the game itself. The reason I'm doing this is because unlike baseball, I don't know too much about Shadowrun. Furthermore, the other HBS Shadowrun LPs have shown that there's a couple loremasters in this subforum that gladly share their knowledge if questions come up, so I'll just have to rely on the audience to clear up lore questions that come up. - Spoiler policy: No spoilers for the mod, period. Spoilers for Dragonfall past where Kanfy's LP of the game has reached and for Hong Kong are allowed under tags, but I would ask that you only post them if they're relevant to something going on here. Dead Man's Switch is fair game. I want for people to be able to follow this thread and Kanfy's thread in parallel. - The thread will be creating the character that I will be playing, and in doing so will determine a general idea of how the character should act that I will attempt to follow. Furthermore, as the game continues and we meet new people, groups and situations, the thread will be able to act as the character's conscience - if it wants me to act in a certain way towards a particular character or group, tell me, and if enough people are on board, I'll go with it and play the character accordingly. Now, enough waffling, on to the game. Update I - Let's Play God Update II - Delivering Johnson's Package Is Hard. Update III - Rock 'N' Roll Runner Update IV - All These Years, And The San Francisco Giants Still Haven't Rebuilt. Update V - All Marines Are Bastards Update VI - Getting Into Showbiz Update VII - Maybe A Monster Mash, Definitely A Graveyard Smash Update VIII - The Mission Mission Update IX - We're In The Army Now Update X - This LP Is Going Into The Dump Update XI - drat This drat Dam Update XII - Rise From Your Grave Update XIII - Tea Cups That Are Flying, On Maps Mystifying Update XIV - Once More Unto The Breach TheMcD fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 02:36
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Update I - Let's Play God Well, here we are. Of course, there's no title screen for this or anything...  ...we just load a mod from the new game menu.  Now, I've played through every mainline game in the series on Very Hard before and made it without major hair pulling, but since the thread will have control over who I will be playing and how they will react to the world, I'm kicking it down to Hard.  For the sake of those that are reading this as their first contact with HBS's Shadowrun games (and if so: Why?), I'll go over the options we need for character creation. To start off, we pick our gender. Male or female, no stat differences. Easy.  Next, we have our choice of race. There are a total of five races - here's how they shape up: Human: Starts with +3 Karma (which are basically experience points you spend on stats). They have a maximum of 9 in all stats. Elf: Starts with a +1 to Charisma. They have a maximum of 12 for Charisma, 11 for Quickness, 9 for the rest. Dwarf: Starts with a +1 to Willpower. They have a maximum of 12 for Strength, 11 for Body and Willpower, 9 for the rest. Ork: Starts with a +1 to Body. They have a maximum of 14 for Body, 12 for Strength, 9 for Quickness and Willpower, 8 for Charisma and Intelligence. Troll: Starts with a +1 to Body and a +1 to Strength. They have a maximum of 17 for Body, 15 for Strength, 9 for Willpower, 8 for Quickness, 6 for Charisma and Intelligence.  Next, we pick an archetype. We could completely create our character from scratch, but it's easier to just go with an archetype and some guidelines on what to focus on. Here's the choices: Street Samurai: "Freelance operatives who follow a code of street honor and learned in the ways of the traditional samurai warrior." Your basic Fighter analogue, likes to either cut people up or shoot people up. Mage: "Their spells reflect a pure balance of the mana-sphere and cover a wide range of magical effects." Basically a Wizard, can cast spells - attack, buffs, debuffs, healing, they can do it all depending on what they focus on. Decker: "By projecting their minds into the electronic world, deckers can find secrets others keep hidden away." Hackers, essentially. They have a specific part of the game they excel at, and beyond that they usually can kinda sorta shoot a gun and that's about it. Note - the Workshop page for this mod advises against playing a pure Decker. Shaman: "Shamans' relationships with their totems allow them to summon spirits and command them to do their bidding." These guys are basically Summoners. They do have some other spells, and they have a specific totem that gives them particular spells, but their bread and butter is summoning. Rigger: "Riggers use cybertech to jack their mind into and control small robot-like vehicles called drones." Engineer-types, these guys hide far away from the shooty action and instead pilot robots to do stuff for them. Physical Adept: "Adepts are magically-active characters who focus their magic internally to develop to their utmost potential." This is your Monk. The PhysAd is a close combat character that uses magic to give himself stronger defenses and allow him to punch people to bits.  Next is character customization. This mainly involves the portrait, the actual customization is rather barebones. For the portrait, there are some options. You can either give me a general idea how the character looks and I'll find a portrait, you can look yourself if you have the games (the "\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\" folders contain "art\portraits" folders that have all the images ready for you to look at), or if you want to, you can give me an image and I can probably turn it into a basic portrait that should be servicable enough, though it might clash with the other portraits.  After that, we have stats. In addition to the archetype, you can give me some general guidance on how to develop the character. Should they focus on something in particular? Should they add another main branch of stats to their arsenal and sorta multi-class? If you're unsure, you can always ask for help if the kind of character you have in mind is workable. Anyway, here are the main stats and what they generally do. Body: Your defense, basically. Gives you more HP, too. Quickness: Your ranged combat stat. Adds to your chance to hit with ranged weapons and increases your chance to not get hit by enemy physical attacks. Substats: Ranged Combat (substats Pistol, SMG, Shotgun, Rifle), Dodge. Strength: Melee combat stat. Adds to your chance to hit with melee weapons and increases your grenade throwing range. Substats: Close Combat (substats Melee Weapons, Unarmed), Throwing Weapons. Intelligence: Your Decking/Rigging stat. Boosts your succes with those things. Substats: Biotech (which improves your healing with medkits), Decking (substat ESP Control, which improves things that are basically computer summons), Drone Control (substat Drone Combat). Willpower: Your magic stat. Boosts your chance to hit with magic attacks and increases your chance to not get hit by enemy magical attacks. Substats: Spellcasting (for the Mage's spells), Chi Casting (for the PhysAd's spells). Charisma: Party face / summoner stat. Helps controlling your summoned spirits, and also grants you Etiquettes which unlock additional conversation options. It's generally useful for any character to put at least some points in Charisma for some Etiquettes, even if they don't put any points in the substats. Substats: Spirit Summoning (substat: Spirit Control), Conjuring (for the Shaman's spells).  Here's the available Etiquettes, since you're asked to pick after picking your stats. If you think your character would have particular ones, just add that.  Finally, we need a name. Don't make it too long - the streetname is more about being a sort of nickname you're known under rather than a given name with a first and a last name. Well, not quite finally, because there is one more thing I want - character motivation. To quote Yahtzee Croshaw, this is a role playing game, so let's motherfucking role play! What is your character like? How do they generally react to adversity? What are they in this racket for? I don't just want to play this the way I usually do, kind of winging it and not really paying much attention to my character's ideology, so let's change that for this LP. You tell me how to play! So, to recap what I need from you: - Name - Gender - Race - Archetype - Character Look - Stat Focuses and Etiquettes - Character Motivation To note, I'll be fairly occupied this upcoming week, so you can take your time with character creation, maybe combine forces to workshop something, feel free to get creative. And to close, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Either I or somebody else will surely be able to answer. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jul 29, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 02:36
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Huh. I haven't played any of the mod campaigns, so this should be interesting. Now to scrounge up a surly Dwarven Street Sam and see what cool stuff other people come up with. 
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Jul 21, 2019 02:48
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When I get home I'm totally suggesting we do Kami from The Closer.
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Jul 21, 2019 02:51
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Name: Decker Cain - Gender: Male - Race: Troll - Archetype: Decker - Character Look: Go for one of the ones with a goofy headpiece - Stat Focuses and Etiquettes: int, quickness, with enough strength for big guns. Academic etiquette. - Character Motivation: gently caress racism. And the notion that nerds can't be minigun wielding 80s action movie badasses.
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Jul 21, 2019 02:55
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If this is the campaign I think it is the dev gets better as the game progresses and it's really cool to see him evolve as a designer as you play.
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Jul 21, 2019 03:18
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Oh, this'll be interesting. I installed this a while back, but never got around to starting it. I don't really have a strong idea to suggest yet, though!
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Jul 21, 2019 03:21
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I am a horrible person: - Name: Kami - Gender: Female - Race: Human - Archetype: Mage - Character Look:  - Stat Focuses and Etiquettes: Willpower focus, academic etiquette - Character Motivation: spread the word of sabrmetrics! 
iospace fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jul 21, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 04:51
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Oh man do I love Shadowrun! I would already be dumping lore except I don't know what year the mod is set in and I'm way more familiar with 2nd and 3rd edition than 4th and 5th.iospace posted:I am a horrible person: I was going to suggest something else but this is too good. Throw in Academic Etiquette for good measure.
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Jul 21, 2019 05:49
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CirclMastr posted:Oh man do I love Shadowrun! I would already be dumping lore except I don't know what year the mod is set in and I'm way more familiar with 2nd and 3rd edition than 4th and 5th. Done
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Jul 21, 2019 06:27
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: Alternately- - Name: Monaka - Gender: Female - Race: Elf - Archetype: Mage - Character Look: McD's avatar - Stat Focuses and Etiquettes: Charisma, Corporate - Character Motivation: 
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Jul 21, 2019 06:30
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person:
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Jul 21, 2019 06:51
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: 
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Jul 21, 2019 08:07
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We gotta have Sabermagics!
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Jul 21, 2019 08:10
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Kami should do as she planned and smash oppressive power structures with math. That way she can be properly punk in this dark future of #brands created by Twitter monetizing its services. No more trying to purge the trolls though. That's Humanis Policlub and those fuckers need a face-full of weaponized statistics.
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Jul 21, 2019 08:48
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As an aside, I personally think the reason that Harebrained doesn't have Calfree in any of their games is because Calfree is honestly kind of boring; it's a really, really standard cyberpunk zone. Germany / Seattle / HK are all weird and not touched upon as much so I think they opted for those cities for uniqueness' sake.
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Jul 21, 2019 09:11
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Say I'd like to play along - are the mods connected, do you import your character? e: Hell, I don't even remember if Shadowrun allows that. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jul 21, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 09:17
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anilEhilated posted:Say I'd like to play along - are the mods connected, do you import your character? Technically, you could, but there's very little connectivity between them all- the games will treat your dude/ette as separate entities. In any case, I forgot to mention in my vote that I just want to say gently caress YOU TheMcD I WANTED TO LP THIS but good luck anyway!
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Jul 21, 2019 09:40
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Oh hey, these mods. I started playing the first one the other, uh, month, and haven't gotten back to it. Maybe I'll play along with you, compare notes about alternate paths we take.
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Jul 21, 2019 11:57
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kvx687 posted:Alternately- I've actually done that before.  I found Rigger to be more appropriate, though.
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Jul 21, 2019 12:02
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: Let's go
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Jul 21, 2019 13:51
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: This, except saber+magic says Adept to me
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Jul 21, 2019 15:57
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: I feel like this is a reference I do not understand to an LP I didn't read, but it looks good and so I endorse it. edit: VVV Yeah, I figured it was probably that one. I saw it when it went up, but never read past the first couple posts to where it presumably went insane. Vavrek fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jul 21, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 20:53
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theMcD just lp'd a baseball game in which you free a party member from a Japanese porn game It's worth a look
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Jul 21, 2019 20:55
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is there a character class which isn't filled by party members in this?
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Jul 21, 2019 21:16
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:is there a character class which isn't filled by party members in this? I don't believe so, but I admit, it's been a while I played this. We should just be able to do whatever and I'll be able to deal. EDIT: Also, I've decided to try and make a portrait file already, since I can see the writing on the wall, just to see if I can make it look halfway decent.  Still, I'll give this until about Friday, when I'll have enough time to start working on the next update proper, so if you have a different idea, you can definitely still give it a shot. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jul 21, 2019 |
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Jul 21, 2019 21:19
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Go Shaman, I've never managed to get the bastards to work as anything more than healers so it'd be great to see competent spirit handling.
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Jul 21, 2019 22:17
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: is there any other choice except this
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Jul 21, 2019 23:43
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iospace posted:I am a horrible person: You are, but this is an excellent idea. Also yay! Finally in on the ground floor of an LP where I can contribute to chargen! Even if it's agreeing with someone else's post.
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Jul 22, 2019 03:33
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:is there any other choice except this Having her be an Adept instead. Really, any mystic class can work with the concept.
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Jul 22, 2019 06:08
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Shaman is a good support skillset but it's really hard to love compared to how silly powerful sorcery is in DF comparatively (same with Qi, which I recall taking a massive investment just to be sort of functional). Spell slots are probably a bigger issue than karma to mix and match them though.Grapplejack posted:As an aside, I personally think the reason that Harebrained doesn't have Calfree in any of their games is because Calfree is honestly kind of boring; it's a really, really standard cyberpunk zone. Germany / Seattle / HK are all weird and not touched upon as much so I think they opted for those cities for uniqueness' sake. It's going to be interesting to see if they ever do another game which city they pick; of the big ones (ignoring Chicago), if it's a new city Tokyo, NYC and San Fran all have the same issue (typical cyberpunk metros) but I'm not sure it's purely a con; of course they could do something oddball like Rio Paulo. Also an Antumbra ----> Calfree in Chains megacampaign is cool to see Cirion's evolution over the years.
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Jul 22, 2019 09:42
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Ooh, this does look good. Are there any other good mod campaigns out there?
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Jul 22, 2019 10:15
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NewMars posted:Ooh, this does look good. Are there any other good mod campaigns out there? Mercurial gets pretty high praise (as do all of Cirion's post Antumbra mods). The DMS port for Hong Kong is an okay retread but doesn't add much (companions, two runs which are nice but don't really fix DMS' main issue) and is kinda janky. Besides Mercurial there's a bunch that seem promising from their reception but that I'm not sure how recommendable they really are. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Jul 22, 2019 |
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Jul 22, 2019 11:28
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Agnosticnixie posted:It's going to be interesting to see if they ever do another game which city they pick; of the big ones (ignoring Chicago), if it's a new city Tokyo, NYC and San Fran all have the same issue (typical cyberpunk metros) but I'm not sure it's purely a con; of course they could do something oddball like Rio Paulo. Well, Seattle is the default SR setting, so of course the original game is set there, and Germany/Berlin was always a large secondary market for the game, so I understood why the second was there as well. A game set in Rio Paulo/Metropole in Amazonia would be interesting and not something that I really expect. I don’t see any way to see a game in Neo-Tokyo without the protag being locked into being a Japanese national, otherwise the Imperial Japanese security would be all over your rear end (although playing a clueless gaijin humping a katana on their hip along trying to imitate all the other wageslaves would be fun). I think a campaign in San Fran or LA, depending on the time period in question (during Saito’s occupation or right after he was ousted in the case of SF; just after the Twins and playing Aztech against Pueblo for control of the city and the formation of Horizon for LA), would be viable stories, though probably need some work. Also, Manhattan post quake would be a unique campaign as well, what with all the MDC poo poo going on, as well as dealing with NYPD, Inc security and omnipresent surveillance trying to make yourself into a celeb runner or something like that.
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Jul 22, 2019 16:42
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EponymousMrYar posted:Having her be an Adept instead. Yeah, Adepts are flippin awesome. Plus, maybe we can get her a baseball bat.
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Jul 22, 2019 17:18
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I've never played any of the mods, so I'm down for this.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:25
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Yeah, I like the idea of an Adept just because I've never seen one and have no idea what they do.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:33
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Yeah, I'm not going to bother submitting a character since it seems the thread already knows what they want to do, but I'll definitely back it being an Adept. 
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Jul 22, 2019 18:35
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OK, so it looks like CalFree will soon find itself home to Kaminari Saito - sabermetrician, feminist, Cubs fan and generally a person you don't want to gently caress with - and only now have I realized that going by only "Kami" is probably a really good idea, given that her last name might cause some issues in CalFree in particular. But yeah, it seems like the question of her class is still open. So, let's look at the three options that would be appropriate for a Sabermagician: Mage Pro: We can throw fireballs 'n' poo poo, which is baseball-appropriate. Probably the most all-around versatile class, since mages have access to all sorts of stuff with spells. Con: Our spells are our bread and butter. Probably shouldn't get any cyberware, as losing Essence weakens our core tools. Kanfy is already playing a mage in the Dragonfall LP. PhysAd Pro: We can beat the poo poo out of people. We could get a baseball bat, which is appropriate. Magic is more of an additional help than a core feature, so decking out in cyberware is possible and is probably appropriate given that Kami doesn't have a too negative view of PEDs / steroids. Con: Not too much magic going on, which might not fit too well. Shaman Pro: Easy Etiquettes, since we're definitely going to be leveling Charisma up. Summons wouldn't be affected by cyberware, so we can get some of it. Kami already prays to Baseba'al, which could probably be considered a Totem. Con: I've never really played one before. I mean, I'm sure I can make it work, but I just don't have any experience playing that class - I played every other one, just not it. All three are possible options, so you can figure something out over the next days. EDIT: For convenience's sake, I will only count votes from this post on out, as it's not 100% clear if everybody that quoted the Kami post is completely on board with a mage or would prefer another class. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jul 22, 2019 |
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Jul 22, 2019 21:39
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Throwing my vote behind Mage.
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Jul 22, 2019 21:51
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