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When private individuals have problems, they call in the shadowrunners. When entire nations have problems, they call in paramilitary forces. That's where the Red Fangs come in. Your squad has been chosen to respond to a state of emergency in Aztlan, a sudden surge in the appearance of magical monsters and assault cases associated with their arrival. All of this activity appears to be centered on a mysterious ancient pyramid that is unidentifiable in origin. Your briefing raised more questions than answers about this temple, indicating that this might not have been the first time it has appeared and caused chaos in the surrounding area. Satellite imagery is inconclusive, due to the organic and ever changing nature of the Awakened rain forest. Local legends claim that frightful beasts have attacked from the forests even before the Awakening, perhaps even as early as the 19th century. And in every case there is always mention of a mysterious and foreboding temple, the one common element.

Normally such an event might lead to the evacuation and quarantine of the area - it isn't a very important or resource rich location. But apparently Aztlan is willing to pay enormous amounts of money to have this threat dealt with, once and for all. Naturally, your superiors haven't told you everything, but one things has been made abundantly clear to you and everyone else in the operation: One week. You have a little over one week to accomplish your mission. You don't know why, or what happens at the end of the week, but it's been drilled into your head: you either accomplish your goal within one week or you won't come home at all.

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Intro:
This is going to be a different sort of game. You will be playing as members of Charlie Squad in a mercenary unit, the Red Fangs. Your mission will take place in the Yucatan Peninsula. Because of this, much of the standard focus of shadowrunning games will not apply. You will not need Contacts, you cannot take certain negative qualities that will not come into play due to the setting (like codeblock, elf poser, scorched, sensitive neural structure, SINner, bad rep, dayjob, distinctive style, wanted, enemy, dependents, evil twin, hung out to dry, in debt, and many others).

Disclaimer:
This game is for mature players only. There will be violence, gore, and swearing. If you are not old enough or mature enough to deal with this, please do not apply or read the thread. This doesn't mean every post is going to be a list of curse words and grotesque descriptions, but considering this site is PG or PG-13 I figured I would throw this up here so you can consider yourself warned.

This game will be very tough. You will have to use your mind to stay alive, and even then expect to die. I'm not going to make sure you lose, but I'm warning you from the start that this game will be difficult and you'll have to play smart to survive. You need to alter your perception of success for this game, grading how long you manage not to die as degrees of winning, rather than relying on finishing the mission to consider yourself successful. Please understand that I would love nothing more than to have all the characters make it and accomplish all obvious and secret objectives. But take this bit of advice: don't develop backstories for your character's extended family.

Hints:
On that note, it would be unfair of me to send you into the game with no idea of what you will be facing. Too bad, I'm going to do it anyway. But I will give you some hints on what you might want to consider when building a character. You will not need Matrix or hacking skills. This mission will take place in an ancient temple so you won't be facing any maglock doors, security hackers, enemy riggers, etc. Think about ancient temples you've seen in movies and on television, and what sort of skills you might need if put into that kind of location. I know that's vague, but consider it when you think about leaving your Athletics skill group at 0 or think about putting points in Forgery or Pilot Anthroform. An unfortunate side effect of venturing into an area of astral instability is that it has an extremely high background count, and it will be in full effect in the game. And finally, there will be combat. Make sure you can deal with it, and try not to rely on any one strategy too much.

Player selection process:
You must be able to post at least once a day in this game. I understand that some things come up, but you darn sure better have built up a buffer zone on other days if you expect to go a day without posting at all. I'm not going to have this game stall out because a player only feels like posting once every three or four days. This game is not first-come, first-serve. I reserve the right to deny any applicant for any arbitrary reason I choose. If that offends you, don't apply. I am looking for three to four players for this game. I may go up to five but I prefer to keep it at a maximum of four. This game is not for new players. I already started (and will certainly continue!) that game. Players in this game are expected to know the mechanics and not need any assistance. Now, everyone forgets the rules and that's perfectly fine, but I expect anyone applying this game to be able to read and own the books, and thus should be not only able but willing to check the rules if they forget anything. I'm not going to be spelling things out or giving out hints during play.

Character creation guidelines:
This game will be using the karma character generation system. This is an exception to the above note that the players are expected to know the rules, as many players have likely never used the karma generation system. It's very simple: you get an amount of karma and you buy everything just like you were leveling your character up from scratch. It can be found in Runner's Companion on page 41. For this character, you will have 900 Karma to spend. Please note that attributes cost new level x 5, not new level x 3 as incorrectly stated in Runner's Companion. All other costs are the same. If at any point you are unsure of something's cost, simply take the BP amount and multiply it by 2 (for things like metatype and qualities). There is a limit of 70 Karma for qualities, and you must use the races from the core book, no metavariants from Runner's Companion, no exceptions. You can spend up to 150 Karma on gear, 1 Karma buys 2,500 nuyen, and there are no limits on availability. You can spend a maximum of 600 Karma on physical/mental attributes minus your metatype cost in Karma (i.e. twice the BP cost).

I'd like to take a piece of this. What're the restrictions on gear?

I could try rebuilding a demo expert for this one. Though it would take me a while since I've never played around with the karma system.

No restrictions on gear.

A demolitions expert might come in handy, but I'll give you the same advice I told Book in chat: If you're going to be using explosives in an ancient temple, you better make sure you're darn good at it.

Don't worry about taking a while learning the karma gen system. If it turns out to be too much of a hassle we can just go back to the regular system.

Fortunately I know what I'm doing with demo experts

Dunno what I'm making yet. Got about twelve ideas. I'll get the books out tonight and start cranking up a character; It'll gimme a chance to see what everyone else is making too.

i'm also tentatively in...grunt character with a twist...i'll work out some details

BTW just a question, but why is it 600 minus BP cost X2 for racial type in your case? The book lists it as 1/2 starting + BPcost X2 max on attributes. Though it winds up being pretty close (A troll at 900 karma could spend 450 + 80 Karma in the book system (530 karma) vs 520 in the system the way you have it set.

Is it just to focus things more on humans or?

The reason I set it that way is because the karma gen system from Runner's Companion uses the erroneous costs for improving attributes with karma. I adjusted the ratio and stats to include the corrected prices.

It doesn't have to do with making humans more appealing, but it does make you pay more for the extended maximums that the other metatypes provide. Which makes sense to me, considering you get those bonuses for free under the standard BP build system.

BTW, touch confused since it says 'proceed with character generation as normal' etc. But seems to indicate that you do anything but and actually have to buy all your knowledge skills vs getting free knowledge points based on your Int and Log? Am I incorrect in believing that you do NOT get said free points as you would under the BP system?

Correct, you are incorrect about not getting free points.

You still get a number of free knowledge/language points equal to (Logic + Intuition) x 3. Remember that you can always increase your knowledge skills beyond your free skill points by spending Karma.

Here are some other notes to think about for character creation: You don't need a vehicle, lifestyle, or starting nuyen.

And I highly recommend discussing more what roles your characters will be playing. It's important you work together, and communication is key for that. Just a thought.

Well for my own point I've focused in demolitions and heavy weapons, throwing in some knowledge skills around the awakened, structural engineering (specialty of demolishing said structures) and so on.

I've debated picking up chemistry but given the sort of game thrown together I'm thinking it's likely not worth it.

I'm picking up the Leadership qualities, myself. Solid machine gunner, solid athlete, and lots of gut checks, morale boosters, and tactics. Since we'll have a demo, in the form of Kesslan, and quite a bit of fire support, I figured we're going to need someone to glue it all together into a cohesive unit.

Character is up. 'Bishop'

Background to come later on today.

https://shadowrunonline.rpg-board.net/characters-f10/misterbook-s-newb-sauce-t327.htm#7903

Background up. View at pleasure.

Okay, here's a note that might be easily missed: In character creation, level 1 for skills costs 4 Karma, not 2 Karma. In the same way, level 1 for skill groups costs 10 Karma, not 5 Karma.

So long as Durandana has no objections, I'll throw in with the Benevolent and Wise God-Emperor Sankis.

https://shadowrunonline.rpg-board.net/characters-f10/boombaby-s-characters-t341.htm#7921

My character is also up....History is a bit weak, but my muse has left me for the day

Still making a few tweaks to the sheet skill wise. Once that's done I just need to sort out cybernetics and gear though I don't expect that to take me long at all. I'll try to get it done in the next day or two.

Stats posted: http://www.shadowrunonlinepbp.com/characters-f10/vanya-s-devil-s-characters-t311.htm
I'll probably tweak him a bit. Gotta see if I can fit in some skill in Engraving. (What? He's Sankis!)
Background forthcoming.

Background posted with the sheet.

OK due to reasons stated elsewhere the sheet build was put off for a little while. I've still not had a chance to work on it.

Don't worry, I'm busy too. Been doing Humans vs. Zombies (as stated elsewhere) all week, so I'm either busy running around campus or too exhausted when I've made it back to my room to really post.

So yeah, you've got a while.

And just so you know, I have my laptop and my squad is currently holed up waiting for the email to come about the third mission. Here's hoping that mission goes well and we make it another day.

Hrm... I'm going to put this on hold.

Not canceled, mind you, but it is going to be placed on hold for now. I'm considering the possibility of continuing Loose Ends if everybody (who's actively playing) wants to, and I am worried a bit that GMing two games will mean the quality of both suffers some, and I'd rather not risk it.

To those of you who've made characters for it, don't worry. I'm sure I'll play this game at some point because I have a bunch of material made up for it (in spite of losing all my notes once due to a computer crash... darn you notepad for not having auto-recovery!!!). In fact, I may end up doing this campaign as soon as Loose Ends finishes, which I don't expect to take too long (you guys are fast ).

Hopefully you guys are okay waiting, and it will give the players and me some more time to work on and review things. The game isn't going anywhere, I just don't want to bite off more than I can chew, so that once I do start it, it'll be as good as it deserves to be.