Ragged Edge PC Choices

Re 007

My apologies, I misread the post. I had thought the game was an online game. It would be a bit of trouble to get over there to game since I live in Louisiana.

Should you ever wish to engage in an online game please drop a post so I can send you a job application as resident telepath.



R Arceneaux
 
Players in my Cold Equations/Ragged Edge campaign :

A Minbari Scientist out on a long-term mission to study human sociology
A Minbari Warrior...who must serve as "body guard" to the Minbari scientist
A Centauri diplomat from a minor Noble House...(and he's the sleeper ! :P )
A Russian rogue who lived most of his life in the Martian underground...but who's actually a P3 telepath dodging Psi-Corp
A french agent who has noble roots...enjoys good wine...gets along very well with the Centauri

The Campaign up to now went rather well but I must admit I had to tweak a lot of numbers, for instance the "salary" proposed by Automn Shipping was way off in my opinion (and in my players opinion mostly).

We don't have a chance to play often...so we're still in Scenario 3...and this one is a bit weird and the players find it a bit odd ("a training camp ? What for ? We're professionals !") So I'll be glad when this one's over...

P.S.: Regarding "players that shouldn't play under influence...some of us aren't teens or kids, we play to have fun after a long week of work and taking care of our kids and we might have wine or other alcohol or ahem whatever...even the GM ! (and yes, we are still able to play even though sometimes we forgot some rules...but having fun is more important than sticking strictly to the rules IMHO...)
 
I think the "under the influence" thing is aimed at people who show up notably drunk/impaired, not having a glass of wine with an evening of gaming. Drunk gamers are never good, but a little social drinking isn't a problem, so long as everyone can handle it. But as a general rule of thumb, drinking tends to be a bad idea among most gamer groups. Individual cases where everyone's cool and there's no potential for drama, misunderstandings, or other problems though, should work well. IMHO anyway.

And as for the training camp...I think it's SUPPOSED to confuse your players. No matter their profession, they are working, ostensibly, for a shipping company, so why are they being taught stealth, breaking and entering, cryptography, starfighter combat, wilderness survival, escape and evasion, etc, etc. So yeah, players who are paying attention should realize they are at spy school and wonder why it's necessary. :D
 
Gabriel_Luna said:
Individual cases where everyone's cool and there's no potential for drama, misunderstandings, or other problems though, should work well. IMHO anyway.

That's our case : no one ever gets drunk to the point where they can become annoying so that's why I never had to impose such restriction on my players. (they actually asked me to wait 1 or 2 hours before starting to drink...:) I complied !)

Gabriel_Luna said:
And as for the training camp...I think it's SUPPOSED to confuse your players. No matter their profession, they are working, ostensibly, for a shipping company, so why are they being taught stealth, breaking and entering, cryptography, starfighter combat, wilderness survival, escape and evasion, etc, etc. So yeah, players who are paying attention should realize they are at spy school and wonder why it's necessary. :D

Well, we just finished the 2nd scenario (sorry, I said the 3rd in my last post but I meant the 2nd...) and they pretty much got the message ! :)
One of my player barely survived the encounter with Bishop One (who succeded in executing Daniel Moa...) But Serena survived...boy, was she in for a hell of an interrogation !
 
We are playing a play by e-mail game on Yahoo if you are interested.

So far we've had 3 or 4 NPC teeps turn up dead.

Also, I'm in Pensacola, FL.

Sidney
sidneykuhn@cox.net

R Arceneaux said:
Re 007

My apologies, I misread the post. I had thought the game was an online game. It would be a bit of trouble to get over there to game since I live in Louisiana.

Should you ever wish to engage in an online game please drop a post so I can send you a job application as resident telepath.



R Arceneaux
 
Interesting ..

I will scan my character sheet and send it to you asap.

Interestng "We are playing a play by e-mail game on Yahoo if you are interested.

So far we've had 3 or 4 NPC teeps turn up dead. "

In reference to the dead teeps...

A lot of players do not bother to read all the stuff in the Telepath rules. If they would do so, they would see that every telepath over a certain teep level (3rd or 4th I believe/no book with me right now) must by the rules be informed of any instance when their lives will be threatened if the bad guy is within a certain distance. The higher the teep level the greater the chance of actually IDing the bad guy(s) or at least being able to tell where the treat will come from if I remember correctly. A Speidy Sense so to speak, like spiderman. Lol perhaps if more people knew this they would play telepaths.

Which is one of the reason I selected a telepah and sacrificed a lot of skill points to be able to get said character up to a telepath rate of 9. I liked the edge that the manditory spidey sense gave my character. ;) It gives the character the edge to at least make the first move before the bad guys can even act. A great Initiative Bonus so to speak, lol.

I will email you my character sheet just as soon as I can get it scanned in.

Later

R Arceneaux.
 
That is ammusing... not sure if a player can use it at 1st level (as they said they could in my game last night) but it is not as useful as it might sound...

Only warning is a tingle of something bad about to happen... no idea what

First tingle - guy rounds courner and shoots in their direction...

Second tingle - different guy throws granade at their feet...

Now in both instances they ducked for safety...

Third tingle - Insane Drazi cab drive on earth colony... his driving just set their sense off constantly until he actually crashed...

Now back to the game talk..

My group is in War of the Queens adventure. They have reached Proxima (after numerous side adventures) and while most things are fairly easy to do, they have been warned to stay away from this investigation...

So they decide to talk to the "expert" directly, at his office, and being the only visible non-humans on planet (left human guarding ship) they went to the uni and started demanding answers to those difficult questions...

Now at this stage, they have made themselves well known to the authorities, and the centauri of the group is flagged to be watched at all times.

So the people not wanting them to succeed were quite aware of their meeting and it ended in a firefight...

They got the crystal, but no idea of its importance. No other information was gathered at that time...

Now if they had of sent the human or just the minbari, it might have gone a little better... :)

Just an update on how my players are doing.
 
Re Elf...

I looked it up in the Faith Manages Rules section. See pg 122 under "Danger Sense"

Per the description the ability known as Danger Sense is not based on character level but rather Telepathic Level. You must be a 7 or higher to use it. It is based entirely on telepathic level and not player level. It is a free action enabling the player to make any other actions they have as well--such as a hearing check to hear the whine of a PPG starting up to identify the direction if not the person.

The DC is a 20 but if you put max ranks and take feats that enhance telepathy skill checks you can boost the skill check bounus up to 7 even at first level. And a 13 is not very difficult to get unless one has trulty cursed dice.

However in order to use the skill, in addition to the P rating required, you have to "learned to use this ability". Meaning of course you have to be Psy Corps trianed or some other type of Official Training.



Now the problem as I see the practical world is that if a Telepath makes a Telepath check suddenly in a scene the other characters are going to know that there is is a danger. And I know that players say they do not play off of information BUT WE ALL KNOW....

If the GM is running a game with a telepath, I suggest that he initiate a code word and ask for some other kind of check. Both he and the telepath will know that the check to make is in reality a Danger Sense Check. None of the other characters need not know the true nature of the check. If done properly none of the other player characters will act on acquired knoledge outside of game.
 
The problem with a code word is that once the other PCs put together that you say this one thing, there's a roll, and then the telepath has a premonition of danger they'll figure it out.

I recommend you flip it around: have the GM make the check. Keep a note behind your screen or in your notes on what your teep's total bonus to the check is. Then don't announce anything in advance, simply ask for initiative rolls. The teep isn't surprised, so he gets to act freely, the rest of the party is stuck for the first round. By the rules in the book, that's all danger sense does: prevents the telepath from being surprised. It might mean that he can shout "look out!" as his first free action in combat, but it shouldn't allow the group to prepare much in advance. This doesn't take house rules into account though where it's a little looser and gives them a little more advance warning. In that instance I still advocate a secret roll and perhaps a note passed or something to that effect.

Plus, secret rolls are fun and make the PCs veeery nervous.
 
I deal with this in other systems by asking for danger sense equivalent checks followed by spot checks at various points, passing blank notes, mkaing private checks and asking for skill level in XY or Z etc etc

My players now understand that relying on 'XXX took a sixth sense' check to be the worst possible way to predict itrouble (except of course for the player who did detect something successfully) and the metagaming stops. I think it was the 'everyone went paranoid and pulled weapons in a crowded but perfectly innocent bar when player Y rolled the dice' incident that made the point.

Take a leaf out of Paranoia - use your 'Nothing Happens' table regularly.
 
Last guy, G guy and M guy....

First, the last guy...

Your post assumes that my character will want to warn those in his party. This assumtpion could get get your character killed if the person playing the telepath is a loyal Zelot of Psy Corps and a very high telepath.

I point out to you the episode "The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father" in which the Psy Cop trainee under the tutilage of a trained respected Psy Cop deliberately murdered a human non telepath by spacing him while he was drugged.

OR how Lyta deliberately turned on Bab 5 command at the end and even threatened to kill Gerabaldi if he misused her funds which he was holding for safe keeping--looked at a light bulb and telepathly broke it from across the room and smiled.

OR how that blond telepath who was a Psy Corps mole was willing to squeel on the Bab 5 crew even if it meant they would be killed.

OR Lytas story while she and the doctor were on Mars and Lyta pointed put that horror dream seed in the mind of the serial killer of telepaths to torture him for the rest of his life.

OR even alien telepaths--when Vir was mentally forcefully probed by a telepath from Centari Prime to pull out secretes he whould not willingly state. See the episode "Rock and a Hard Place"

Telepaths are basicly cold blooded people many of whome will kill human non telepaths because they are simply expendable.

Having stated this as historical background, my character will be a Psy Corps traind high level telepath whose job is to scout for rogue telepaths under the guise of beautyful female liason between Psy Corps and Earth Forces whever she is assigned. Her real job will be quite different in reality. She will have absolutely nothing against any human non telepath if it gets her task acomplished--just as the telepaths on the Bab 5 Television Series.

So I just might NOT want to warn the party members at all. Rather I just might want to eliminate them one by one by simply doing absolutely nothing at all.

Re The G guy and M person....

I will take both of yall together. First off other than the above reference to the historical background of telepathic mentality and philosophy, I would not even remotely permit any GM to roll my saves for me. You see I have and will insist on using my lucky dice. They are definately NOT shaved or altered by myself or anyone else to my knoledge in any way shape or form. They are D20s and others that for some reason the mold and the plastic did not meche into a statisticly fair dice. They are factory flawed dice that for some reason when rolled in my favorite ceranic cerial bowl will roll a 13 or higher 75% of the time guaranteed.

I also have a dozen or so D6 dice also equally lucky that I use to create my characters. Thus far very few characters have had adjustments in the negatives.

This is NOT cheating because the dice have NOT been altered by mankind but are a result of mere manufacturing flaw. A flaw I gladly use in my favor. Hence I always insist on rolling my own rolls in my lucky cerial bowl.

And the rule book does not specificly state that manufacturing flaws are illegal. I know because I looked.

Sometimes its good to be a rules lawyer.

OHHH before I forget I think it was the M guy who sited a case where there was a successful warning check made by a telepath but implied that the GM deliberately did not allow the successful finding of danger of some type. You might point out to them that the rules as specificly stated require some type of danger finding where there is a successful Danger Check.

The thing you have to ask yourelf when a GM does such a thing: they did not deliberately break the rules to harm my character (THIS time). BUT will he do it next time (to MY character) because I do not suite his story line. I would begin to worry about the character of the GM and their intentions when rules are deliberately broken for the mere purpose of meeting a story line or schedule (as in wrastling). There is always that famous saying at the end of every game:To Be Continued. A good GM knows how to work "Around" the decisions of the players and still eventually reach a desired goal (eventually). Players need the freedom to act as they wish to act (within bounds per the rules) yet still (eventually) end up where they are destined to go.

Being a good GM is difficult because players (like myself ;)) are sometimes problematic. It is the Good GMs who take whatever the players do or say and act out and manipulate it to lead them to a desired place and circumstance (eventually).

Play with the good GMs and avoid the bad GMs

Dont forget your lucky dice and killer cerial bowl either. ;)
 
thedarkelf007 said:
My group is in War of the Queens adventure. They have reached Proxima (after numerous side adventures) and while most things are fairly easy to do, they have been warned to stay away from this investigation...

Ah! We just finished that one, very, very fun.

Our GM is running a team of two Centauri (Agent/Trader, and Telepath/Soldier) and two Earthers (Scientist and Soldier) through Ragged Edge, next session this Sunday.

On Proxima, we took the 'Hide in Plain Sight" approach, with the Centauri male buying Uni souvenir clothes, camera, insisting loudly on a tour of campus, escorted by the longsuffering others. Let stereotypes work for you, and people will see what they expect to see!

One bit of advice, is to assign areas of expertise for Influence, so that others might assist you, but each of you has one big area to shine in-- so one of us has Criminal, one has EarthMil, one CentaurEcon, one IPX as major areas of Influence. When it's time fo rthe climax of the campaign, you might just need to be able to make that DC 30-40 check. :D
 
R Arceneaux said:
I will take both of yall together. First off other than the above reference to the historical background of telepathic mentality and philosophy, I would not even remotely permit any GM to roll my saves for me.

Private dice rolls is not me making saves for players but either asking for a d20 roll but not saying what its for and recording the info or taking the player away from the others and having them make the rolls so the player knows what going on but the others cannot metagame based on the dice rolls.

You see I have and will insist on using my lucky dice. They are definately NOT shaved or altered by myself or anyone else to my knoledge in any way shape or form. They are D20s and others that for some reason the mold and the plastic did not meche into a statisticly fair dice. They are factory flawed dice that for some reason when rolled in my favorite ceranic cerial bowl will roll a 13 or higher 75% of the time guaranteed.
This is NOT cheating because the dice have NOT been altered by mankind but are a result of mere manufacturing flaw. A flaw I gladly use in my favor. Hence I always insist on rolling my own rolls in my lucky cerial bowl.
And the rule book does not specificly state that manufacturing flaws are illegal. I know because I looked.
Sometimes its good to be a rules lawyer.

I REALLY hope you are joking here.

OHHH before I forget I think it was the M guy who sited a case where there was a successful warning check made by a telepath but implied that the GM deliberately did not allow the successful finding of danger of some type. You might point out to them that the rules as specificly stated require some type of danger finding where there is a successful Danger Check.

I implied no such thing. You have misunderstood my point which was simply a discussion of how to go about avoiding metagaming from players because they hear or see a roll specific to special abilities of an individual character being made and react to it, in this specific case and in general. If the Telepath made the roll successfully thenthey would get whatever benefit it gave (and if there was no danger would know after a successful roll that there was no danger from where they can go all PsyCop knowing if they wish). However there are ways to eliminate the ability of the other players to end up having their characters react to the special rolls (intentionally or not).
 
Re M guy....

Your point 1...this is pracitcal only in isolated circumstances. Howeve in Bab 5 we both know that exposure to physical danger is all to frequent and that it is impractical to pull people away from the table to make rolls out of sight and sound in every circumstance. Players are not stupid. Sooner or later they will figure out that every time the player is pulled away from the game something is comming their way/prepare to clear the decks for firefight.

How do you stop it difficult in theory, probably impossible in reality.

Your point 2...No I was not joking. IF you read the rules and regs they state that YOU cannot alter dice or use dice that have deliberately been ALTERED by others aka loaded dice. HOWEVER if a molding flaw that occurs in manufacture of dice results in dice that statisticly roll high more often than not that is not SPECIFICLY SITED in the rules and regs. Hence there is no official rule against using dice specificly stating that the manufacture by accident makes and ends of to be statisticly bias toward certain numbers.

As long as a player does NOT physically themselves alter the dice or "Knowingly" use dice physically altered after manufacture aka loaded dice then the dice as far as they are concerned are entirely legal.

So no I was not joking.

My method for creating characters. Get two blocks of those small D6 dice and roll them all. Take out the 6s. Then take the 6s and the others and roll again. Remove the 6s that rolled 4 or less and replace them with all the 6s that rolled on the larger pile of dice. Do this 4 times and you will end up with 6 or 7 dice that are statisticly flawed to 6s and 5s.

And since our GMs allow one to reroll character creation dice 3 times (you have to take all the new numbers) if you cherrypick the high rollers you will create a power character 75% or more of the time.

So NO I was not joking.

Your point 3...Hiding the fact. I think I already covered that in my statement that players are not stupid. You as a GM cannot deny the fact that if you consistantly pull a player away from the table every time the poop hit spam that it will not be picked up by all as meaning trouble is on the way.

If everytime before every dangerous event a player gets pulled away and that player takes defensive actions by their own words (not yours) then it becomes pretty evident that it is time to become defenisve themselves.

And too there is the point of fact that I as a character just might give my fellow players a subtle hint or high sign to take action or more likely get ready for a Royal Rumble. We players do talk among ourselves when the GM is not around you know. We have a vested interest in keeping our characters from becomming prematurely deceast.


However to end this conversation on a cheery positive note, because I have to go to work, I am truly glad that you do not deny a character a power or ability specificly stated in the core rule book, as some GMs from what I about do using so called house rules. Fairness and Balance are not the goals or end game of every RPG. Sometimes the end game is purely, who is wise enough to read the core rules front to back to spot the loopholes. And all core rules do have loopholes. Some more than others but they all have loopholes. All ya got to do is find them and not be scared to use them to your advantage.

May your day be prosperous
May your lucky dice roll your way

R Arceneaux
 
R Arceneaux said:
Re M guy....

Your point 1...this is pracitcal only in isolated circumstances. Howeve in Bab 5 we both know that exposure to physical danger is all to frequent and that it is impractical to pull people away from the table to make rolls out of sight and sound in every circumstance. Players are not stupid. Sooner or later they will figure out that every time the player is pulled away from the game something is comming their way/prepare to clear the decks for firefight.

How do you stop it difficult in theory, probably impossible in reality.

Since the only game effect of Danger Sense is to prevent the Teep from being Surprised (i.e., allowing the teep a standard action in the surprise round), it's quite easy to control. The other players either make the rolls on their own not to be surprised, or they don't. If they don't, they don't get to act. Simple. Easy.

Your point 2...No I was not joking. IF you read the rules and regs they state that YOU cannot alter dice or use dice that have deliberately been ALTERED by others aka loaded dice. HOWEVER if a molding flaw that occurs in manufacture of dice results in dice that statisticly roll high more often than not that is not SPECIFICLY SITED in the rules and regs. Hence there is no official rule against using dice specificly stating that the manufacture by accident makes and ends of to be statisticly bias toward certain numbers.

woof.
Sorry, I could never bring myself to do this. If I did this, I would consider that I was cheating. If a player did this at my table, I'd ask him to swap dice or leave. That may just be me.
A common 40K player's response to "the rules don't say I can't" is "and the rules don't say I can't hit your minis with a sledge, either."
 
Giavonn said:
woof.
Sorry, I could never bring myself to do this. If I did this, I would consider that I was cheating. If a player did this at my table, I'd ask him to swap dice or leave. That may just be me.
A common 40K player's response to "the rules don't say I can't" is "and the rules don't say I can't hit your minis with a sledge, either."

Same for me : I would definitely not allow you to do this in my game...I doubt that you would find any respectable GM that would allow you to do this...

Personnally, some consider me as being a "radical" GM since I create my PCs and assign them to my players...why you may ask ? Balance, balance and balance. I do not envy the GMs that are stuck with most players being P12 telepaths...the only telepath in my party is P3...and is not even a telepath class !

If I had let my players choose, I would probably have 2 technomages, 2 telepath rangers and whatever! (a Vorlon :D )

I find having Rangers or Technomages work for Automn Shipping not very credible...
 
Giavonn said:
A common 40K player's response to "the rules don't say I can't" is "and the rules don't say I can't hit your minis with a sledge, either."

I'd have to take the opposite approach. My credo to deal with any imbalance from power gaming is "If you can do it, they can do it." If a PC finds a loophole that makes them unstoppable, well it's in the rules. Someday some enemy NPC will also have found that loophole and exploited it. You'd be amazed at how quickly PCs self-regulate themselves when they discover that the GM has no qualms about using their own tricks somewhere down the line, and using them better. For example, when it was argued in a game that there were no rules against stacking multiple bulletproof vests to gain extra health levels of protection, I just nodded and smiled and let them have it. Next combat, the enemy had picked up on the trick and were all decked out just like them, though they had more resources so they did have more vests and better quality...My players never tried it again.

So in this instance I'd simply say that there are no rules requiring everyone to roll their own dice, or in fact not to roll the same die, and force everyone, PCs, NPCs and GM alike to use the "lucky" dice. Good for the goose, and all that...I bet after a few criticals from the bad guys because of the lucky die, things would go back to random dice for everyone, which is the point of using dice in the first place.

I also suspect this is a flammable topic of discussion, so we ought to move back to discussing the pros and cons of Danger Sense pretty soon, lest this thread catch fire. Or at least make sure everyone walks as softly as possible so this doesn't get out of hand.
 
Its not flamable at all/not really.

Its strictly a matter of the rules. Nothing more nothing less. If the rules state the requirements and a character meets them then discussion becomes irrelevant. The character either meets the criteria or they do not.

If they do then they get the benefits GM has no option.

If theydo not then they do not get the beneifts player should not whine.

Personal opinion becomes irrelevant when the the core rules state a specific skill or ability and the criteria for said skill or ability.


As to the lucky Dice, please do feel free not to use the Lucky dice principle if you personally do not wish to. I do because there is no rule that says I cannot. I am an amateur rules lawyer. I roll my dice for all to see, quite openly, even rolling in plane sight on the table for everyone to observe that I did not lie when I stated what the die results are. Everyone is free to pick up and examine my dice to check for any loading or shaving. But if it makes you feel better I do on the very rare occasion role a critical failure--bad hair day. AND just to make sure to cover my heini on this event, IF IT IS AVAILABLE, I take what I call the 'better lucky than good' ability that allows me to reroll once per game session a roll / manditory taking the 2nd roll at the very earliest opportunity. What are the odds of rolling two 1s in a row even on cursed dice. Pretty long

As to 40 K I never played the game--too expensive for little bitty plastic miniatures.


As to flames, heat is not required at all. Of the two philosophy basis/ Power play or Balance Building / both are equally valid and both are equally legal. Flame and heat are not required. Just pick your side and have fun. As far as I am concerned we are all just sittin down sippin coffet, munchin cookies and flappin the gums speaking whatever crosses our mind on any given topic.

For general information...Specialization is usally the common mode in our games because we normally/virtually always run at least 6 players per game/sometimes more if guests sit in. The larger number of players permits specialization--one person goes big on flying, one person goes big on repairs (general ship/computer etc), a couple specialize in military attacks/weapons and such and one specializes in capital ship weaponry. Its a Team Effort with each having their job to do and all sharing in the battle booty after the battle. All take general PPG proficiency of course so as to act as fire support and utility fighter should the need arise.
 
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