[CYOA] Mutants: Uprising

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Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

E: Mediocre Teela Brown. Cats and knitting! Cats and knitting sound great

# ¿ Aug 23, 2015 21:30

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 22:15

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Ralith posted:

If they're not overwhelmingly anti-mutant themselves, tip off the local police either anonymously or not depending on whether we're on bad or good terms with them.

HBar posted:

E, but just the Nerf football. Squib may be a twerp, but he's a twerp who did the right thing by waking us.

And C.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 09:14

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Dasilodavi posted:

A.

What's so special about today, the Locos decide it's clobberin' time? Is it somebody's birthday? Anniversary? Cinco de Loco?

While you're working in that, see if you can find out what kind of force they're bringing. Any major weapons or intel they might have, we should know. If any mutants, young or old, are on the block we need to know first.

These seem like great questions. +1

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 22:12

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Haven't voted this cycle yet, thinking:

1. B, keep things calm.
2. Actually, what do we know about the Barrio Boneyard? They're a rival gang, yeah, but do they have any clear attitude about mutants? What's their policy on dealing with rivals? Does their turf border the Locos, at all?
3. A, per my vote on 1, which I wrote while pestering hollylolly on IRC.
4. E

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 19:23

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Theglavwen posted:

I just wanna go to disneyland.

Honestly, that might be a wise idea. Take the day off, let the shelter deal with their own problems.

Sadly, I've committed myself to the idea of the Brotherhood as a mutant protection and promotion organization, even for mutants who aren't part of our number.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 19:35

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Hrm. Geography question: How are Banyon Street, Locos Territory, and Boneyard Territory arranged?
What I'm thinking is: if the Locos are going to be 'sending a message', maybe we could bait them into overextending and being caught in some sort of pincer attack, with the Barrio Boneyard attacking on the other side, claiming some small amount of turf as a result. Depending on the economics of the situation, that might be appealing enough to the Boneyard folk.

My vote on 2: EF: Call the Barrio Boneyard from our encrypted cell phone, while driving to Disneyland.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 19:43

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Huh. Okay! That could work. I was imagining Banyon Street being on the opposite side of Locos territory, so that if they had any significant forces deployed there, it'd mean there were fewer people guarding the side bordering the Barrio Boneyard. We'd start poo poo on one side, but not enough to scare them off, and then the Boneyard would advance on the rear of Locos territory while it was vulnerable. It wouldn't be the a huge dramatic shift, just ... a small chipping away of land, territory/resources, from an anti-mutant gang.

With that map, it's more like convincing the Barrio Boneyard to expand by going head-on against a 15th Street Locos group at Banyon Street, with the promise that we would be there to help them out, possibly leading the charge, clearing the way for them (since we aren't interested in administration/governance).

The trouble is encouraging territorial expansion. It was a big thing back in the 1970s, 1980s, when all the pop culture about cities ruled by gangs was made, but a lot of that was the sky-high price of cocaine ...

(I actually don't know a ton about modern-day gangland operations.)

Footnote: Fun fact! One of the 85 different theories for why crime fell in the 1990s in the USA? Meth. Meth's cheap, and cut the bottom out of the cocaine market, dramatically reducing the profitability of gang-level drug trade, and thus removing a major incentive for controlling territory (monopoly on drug sales).

edit: Hrm. We called the police, right? And the leader of the Barrio Boneyard already has two strikes? Maybe we could engineer a coup of some kind, if the second-in-command wants a promotion.

Or, hell. This is complicated poo poo.

Changing my vote to pure Disneyland. Let the shelter sort itself out.

Vavrek fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Aug 26, 2015

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 22:20

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Outrail posted:

So you're saying we should become mutant method dealers?

I'm saying we should go to Disneyland and live a carefree life, because for all we know, ours will never end. We should learn how to not worry early, how to take life as it comes and not get bogged down with dreary, meaningless bullshit. Some people sit zazen. Jane goes to Disneyland.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2015 00:07

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Outrail posted:

Warehouse with huge windows? That's a security risk. The substation could be good for stealing juice but we're not mad scientists.

BD. Eel, start making some contacts while your on the inside. He did nothing wrong so won't get charged with poo poo. Concentrate on recruiting muties with combat and/or recon skillset /powers. And someone who can cook.

Actually, yeah. I was thinking of having Eel slip away, but making contacts is a good way to play the long game.

1. C: It can be one of our locations, need something more physically secure for an HQ. This place might have potential, with some extensive remodeling. Maybe if Billy's fine with grunt work, we could try digging a basement/bunker?

2. B, per Outrail. DF: Text Vigilante, start driving to Disneyland without telling anyone where you're going.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2015 19:38

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

I feel like being boring.

What are the Brotherhood's finances like? How are they arranged? Where do we get money, what do we spend money on?

# ¿ Aug 27, 2015 22:29

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Outrail posted:

Uh yeah. If Thom's Uzi idea dosen't work for some reason stare at the stupid Desert Eagle for a bit and slap Squib across the back of his head. Go down to the local army surplus store and pick up a slingshot and a bag of marbles. Then drag him away from his cartoons and spend a day in the desert making sure he can use his motherfucking RPG and bag of grenades without blowing his friends up.

This is a great idea.

In general, if we ever have decent downtime, we should go out into the desert and do training, testing, etc. Execute ideas we come up with brainstorming. If we're sufficiently successful, we could totally set up a terrorist training camp right here in the USA.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 20:28

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Can we express a priority ranking, rather than just a sole focus? I mean, those are all things I support (except for A & B being contradictory), but ACD are each more important to me than E, and if I squint I'm sure I could figure out a preference ranking for ACD (and whichever one's top gets my vote, if we're not doing rankings).

At the moment, tentatively voting D. C sounds great. A is ... too much for tonight. I want to find information leading to the stash, not grab it outright just now. That seems like an overreach.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 04:25

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Hooray for priorities!

DCAF: F per ElrondHubbard; E is not a focus at all. What happens, happens.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 20:01

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Tomn posted:

So, I've been doing some thinking. What is our goal? I don't mean this situation with the shelter, I mean our ultimate, final goal, the thing we're driving towards, the wish we'd spend if we happened to run across a benevolent genie. What are we working towards?

Well, from the OP, the organization we're part of characterizes itself like so:
quote:
A Brotherhood has formed, a series of underground cells of mutant freedom fighters who will stop at nothing to right the wrongs against their fellow mutants. To the Brotherhood mutants are the next step of human evolution, a step toward perfection or perhaps even perfection itself, while mundanes are the Neanderthals, doomed for extinction. Many call the Brotherhood a terror organization, but they insist that mutants have nothing to fear from them.

But the thing is, I dunno about you guys, but that seems a little...master racey to me. The humans and the subhumans. Don't worry too much about collateral, because the collateral doesn't matter - they're the discarded remnants of the past still clinging to life. We COULD do that, I suppose, and play it straight, but I don't think I've really got the stomach for it.

A more charitable interpretation might be "We don't care about mundanes one way or another, but since mutants are the next step of human evolution, we wish to protect them and shepherd them until they've gained enough critical mass to become the dominant species while the mundanes peacefully go extinct." I could get behind this, personally, though it'd take a little work to get into that headspace. The main thing to take away from such an interpretation, I think, is "We have a duty to protect mutants" - and that would be our primary goal if we go this route.

That description is part of why I was opposed to choosing Zombie, because I thought it was dumb. Evolution isn't something that happens in steps or stages, and Squib is not perfection. So, while I accept it as probably a common view in our organization, I think we ought to decide that Jane P. Zombie has a more nuanced view of the situation:

If you want to judge people, you have to judge people versus people, not huge groups versus other huge groups. There are certainly bright and wonderful mundanes, and Gifted who would be outshone by them. But say you take an example of some specific person, and then you compare that with the same person, except that they can levitate at-will. It's kind of hard to argue that the levitating guy is the worse of the pair, and the best course is to adopt some kind of "You can't judge people" position, because frankly, levitating sounds awesome.

As far as I'm thinking, our goal while mutants, gifted, whatever, are an oppressed or maligned minority group is to improve mutant rights and the public opinion of mutants, as well as taking the fight directly to those who oppose our existence or are otherwise hostile toward us. Ideally, we'll work to build our power and influence, both in terms of social connections, favors owed, money stashed away, etc., as well as a trained fighter corps. Given our description up there (which has its dumb contained to the middle sentence, really), which says "will stop at nothing to right the wrongs against their fellow mutants", it'd seem perfectly appropriate for us to use violence, engineer assassinations, be willing to take revenge out on individuals we feel have wronged us or the group we defend. However! We do not help our cause if we are well-known as terrible, murderous, awful people!

If the public opinion is against us, we need to work the public opinion as a whole. If questioned, we're concerned citizens. If pressed or assaulted, we're a paramilitary force with the ability to respond. If unnoticed, we're a terrorist spy network willing to use violence in untraceable ways to shift public discourse.

Also,

hollylolly posted:

There are cells in Arizona, Las Vegas, and Portland. You aren't aware of any of their current plans, though you do know that the Portland group has been very involved with the homeless population and getting them back on their feet. Well, the homeless population is declining, anyway.

This feels wrong. I don't think the homeless population in Portland is supposed to decline. My understanding of how things work is: Sometimes, because there are a lot of homeless people in Portland, people try to make the situation better, get the homeless off the streets. Then, because people are trying to help the homeless in Portland, more homeless people come here. That's always how I've heard it explained.

Maybe the Brotherhood chapter in Portland is eating the homeless. That would make sense.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 00:34

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 22:15

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Tomn posted:

Hmm. What do we think about this, guys? I mean, obviously it's not great for us and our merry band personally, but would it help mutants at large out? If we intend to fight it, what angle do we take?

"While obviously we applaud the anti-discrimination measure, we have concerns about its enforcement, given it was only passed as part of an overall anti-Novus piece of legislation. Yes, concern over the potential for crime is reasonable, as it is whether the potential perpetrator is baseline or not. Do we force, or even ask, martial artists to register themselves once they have undergone training? No dojo is legally obliged to teach caution and restraint along with their throws and incapacitation holds. But to permanently raise a person's threat rating on the basis of past offenses is not only a travesty of justice here, it is a sign, a symptom, of America's tragic mistreatment of those who, we are told, have done their time, have served their debt to society, already. The final provision in this rating system, of unusually threatening individuals, is exactly the kind of pretty words put in front of disgusting bigotry we have seen time and time again in this nation's history. Who here will be surprised when Caucasians seem less threatening, men more trustworthy, in the eyes of whatever unknown judges are assigning these ratings?"

ElrondHubbard posted:

I think it's just referring to the fact that having powers is objectively better than not having them. Gifted individuals are for all intents and purposes regular humans +. The idea isn't that we're morally better or anything, just it should be recognized that being gifted is desirable and we take pride in that. Given that the Brotherhood isn't monolithic, we can slowly gain influence and spread the message not to be a bunch of Nazis about it.

The idea of people having moral worth is one that doesn't make much sense to me, though it seems to be a common issue for many people, and I wanted to stake out my view for what Jane might think. Seems like you and I agree about how to think and act here, actually.

hollylolly posted:

I did go a little overboard with the "master race" vibe in the description of the Brotherhood. But since it's an organization without a single, unifying leader, some cells do feel this way, and others do not.

Hey! It works out. I kind of like the idea of us being a ruthlessly violent lieutenant or captain in a great big hodgepodge of zealous pro-mutant bigots; a ruthlessly violent captain who isn't bloodthirsty, a racist, or an idiot, just someone who wants to change the face of the world / mind of the people.

As a side note, I want to use a different non-pejorative term for Mutants each time I post, but I think I'll run out of ideas really fast. I encourage you all to try similarly.

edit: if we're ever a successful terrorist organization influencing public discourse and what gets said on TV, I want something like this scene to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuqvlMxfGA4
Really, I just want more people to watch that clip, because it's hilarious, and from a wonderful film.

Vavrek fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Aug 30, 2015

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 01:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > [CYOA] Mutants: Uprising