Ok Guys. Something I've been thinking about quite regularly lately. The Redmonds and Their part in the game. We all know pc's as of lately don't want to regard, or fail to realize, the spirit of Redmond. So. I begin with a couple quotes from New Seattle.

The first, "Rating E areas are considered slums (Squatter and Street lifestyles). Yeah people live there, but they aren't "real" people (they don't have SINs, after all), so why make the effort? Lone Star does not assign patrols to such areas or make any effort to prevent crimes from happening. They will respond if the victim has a SIN and calls a complaint himself, or if the violence makes the headlines or threatens t o spill over into the more "Important" areas. When the Star does respond, it's at a very high level, usually including two Citymasters filled with twelve to fifteen officers in heavy armor, plus one rigger per vehicle to handle drones and Citymasters weapons, and at least two combat mages. Such a force is alwaus lead by an elite officer. The slums are an excellent place for detectives and undercover operatives to maintain contacts."

So. Given this quote, why does 1 shadowrunner feel they can take on the Redmonds by themselves? The calmness part of Redmond is Rated E, and the smallest part as well. The rest are rated Z areas, and I'm not going to bother quoting this. So, what do I suggest?

First, and probably most people will disagree, is to harasse the players. Yes Yes, I understand that picking fights isn't nice and players don't wanna deal with it. Fine, then they don't have to, if you can't handle the fire get out of it. For some reason, and you can ask yourself this, when there was PC's gangs and Admins who just bothered the hell out of people in Redmond, more people repected it, and more people used Redmond the way it is supposed to be used. We've gotten soft, and we need to change that. So I personally support Odin's idea of making a completely NPC gang. Not for the fact of just harrassing the players, but that should be a part of it.

Second, we should enforce the idea that it is best for players to conform and blend in to Redmond then rather try to go in there brute force. There is so much to redmond that brute force just won't cut it, as seen in the quote above. 1 shadowrunner is going to fail taking on a gang of sixteen to twenty bangers. If Lone Star won't do it with 24 to 30 guys, then we need to make sure Players understand that. Do this by looking at descriptions, and also make a post to the players warning them. Any vehicle worth more then 10K is gone in twenty four hours. Period, no if ands or butts about it. Consider this a warning to move all the vehicles above that price. If you are disconnected in a vehicle, then you are going to be thrown into a timestop in an OOC area until you log on.

Ok. So that my thoughts and ideas. Go cause hell We need to make sure Redmond is Respected as Redmond. Please think about the Idea of an NPC gang, I think we could use it very well to cause some trouble, as well as cause a use for plots and such.

Bremen.

Just a quick correction:? The District of Redmond has two different names it's known by.? ?'Touristville' and 'The barrens'.

Touristville (aka Redmond City) is the most 'civilized' zone.? It is a rating C security zone by Lone Star.? It has the districts last bastions of government....it is where the rich folk and wannabes (ie tourists) go when they want to slum it and pretend they are getting the authentic 'feel' of ghetto life.

The rest of the district is collectively known as 'The barrens' and are the lawless/near lawless slums you're talking about.? Avondale, Brain Haven, Hollywood, Kingsgate, Plastic Jungles, Purity, Sophocles, and Woodinville are all rating E zones....and Glow City and the rats nest are the rating Z zones (no mans land).

One of the problems that has always caused different interpretations of how our grid redmond should be viewed and played is that it has no rhyme/reason except to say that it's the redmond district.? No seperations.? In the New Seattle Grid we're looking to avoid that comfusion by clearly idenitifying where locations are.? As it stands now, there will be 7 in Touristville, and 7 in 'The barrens'.? Here's a sneak peak of whats in place atm:


*Hold shift and click to enlarge*

Even in a class C Rating Lonestar will respond with "Six to eight fully armored officers in an armored Citymaster with two patrol vehicles and one combat mage. Drones are sometimes used to reduce the risk of injury to officers."

Still pretty bad if Lonestar responds with that much force. And I know, most, if any, lonestar officers are cybered up as much as a typical good shadowrunner, but the numbers I think are what important here. We need to show the players (and yes, I've probably been guilty of it at one point or another in the last 8 years), that you as a shadowrunner ain't going to be able to survive if you stand out and become a target.

I'm going to point out something everybody knows. We have had, and to some extent still have, an admin/player trust problem. While I agree that the Barrens hasn't been taken nearly as seriously as it should be, if we're suddenly going to start taking cars and randomly pitching at players, there will be backlash. It's happened before.

If we plan to do this, I'm not sure just grabbing cars worth more than 10k is a particularly wise way to go about it. Some PCs have gone to lengths to put deadly countermeasures on their vehicles, for example. Throwing somebody in timestop because they were logged out in their car is also counterproductive.

The upshot of this is: is it fun for the players? That's the point, isn't it? We're trying to build a playerbase, not throw people out. And I fear that's how people would percieve such enforcement. Is it possible to enforce Barrens' scariness while still making it fun?

I think it's a fine line. But I also know when Players and admins where allowed to make the barrens a rough place to go, even for the most skilled, the player base in the barrens was larger, and the barrens where more widely used (hence all the now abondened buildings.) I mean, perhaps I'm jumping the gun in making that connection, but I think it is there. I also believe if we let them know and try and warn them as much as possible, and be flexable with it, players might take to it. And I understand that there is an admin-player trust issue, I completely see that, but at the same time we need to try and face the fact that you can "Please some people some of the time, but you can't please everyone every time" Those players that don't get the fact that the barrens are a tough spot need to learn, Ignorance, in my hummble opinion should not be an excuse after we've warned them, and showed them hundreds and hundreds of times. I also think we need to do it in faces, perhaps start out running NPC things at first, making streetwise/shadowland/rumor board post to let them know these things are going on non-player. Then perhaps start having shoot out's in bars again, perhaps have players there that get nicked, or at least witness it. Then as this continues we get further and further in to the grunge part of it all, and get PC's fully in once they establish that the barrens are what the barrens are. I would love to put together a meeting just to discuss this, and perhaps for a month or more depending have a couple admins focus just on this. Small at first, then grow larger is how we are going to do it.

Bremen.

I think with warning and posts and rumors and such it would be a fine idea. Could even be sort of a background, continuing campaign of sorts, no? I just wanted to remind people that sometimes jumping ahead, even if an idea is good, can result in more resistance than is good for us.

Wonder if a small resistance would be such a bad thing? Perhaps if we can convience and give the players the right way of doing it, it could actually lead to some good RP. I think one of the main things we need to do is show the players that as GM/Storytellers/RPA's/whatever we are called now, we aren't there to hurt or kill their PC's, mame and toture maybe, but none the less the only way we will take it as far as death is if they do something completely stupid, or the rule of 1 applies. But just because we need to do this, doesn't mean we cut everything out of game play in the redmonds that would annoy people and ruin RP. The game and Redmond has always worked better when that threat of dying was there. It made you think when your RPed out there, it made you try and understand what these people who live there have to go through just to get a meal in a day. People are murdered many many times a day for little Nuyen. If we show this first, like I discribed above, then slowly work in PC's, not killing them but harassing them possibly, then the only reason it wouldn't work is if he had a bunch of children players. My humble Opinion of course.

Hey all, first post and all, and certainly throwing myself in the deep end of this discussion.

I dunno what the best solution to making the Barrens how it really should be. I agree with the posts that talk about how Lone Star come into deal with the Barrens; armed to the teeth, en mass. I dont think a single runner should be able to come in and clean up shop.  And saying that one runner vs 15 gangers would end up in the death of the runner doesnt really seem to be the reality, at least not in the past.

I played a ganger back a few years ago. Mostly to make the Barrens a more rough place to be, cause they didnt seem all that rough. Runners parking their 200k cars in the parking lot of the local pub and heading on inside ... but the fact of the matter was that if a runner went up against me and my gang, it never turned up well for us. We hussled them for 'air tax' and they threatened us with their contacts, talking about how we had made our last mistake. I think in all the situations we went up against other players, it put us in a worse position as a gang. Didnt make it a harder place to be for the runners.

I hear the new MUX wont have Mafia or Yaks, or NPC/PC orgs. I think thats the way to go. Even though Im definately a ganger fo' life and I love playing that sort of roll, I support axing NPC/PC orgs. They dont work. The system we had in place for the NPCs of the Alts was haphazard at best. If players want to be part of gangs, I agree. Let them get other PCs to join them, and make the numbers that way. Of course, that does bring in the question ... whats a ganger doing with all the hardware that a runner could get straight out of chargen (cause I dont think you can limit them like you do in the rules, its a serious disadvantage that 'strength in numbers' doesnt fix).

So yeah, I guess some way to deal with it might be to make an NPC gang to slap and smash the runners about ... PC vs PC aint the way I dont think. Personally, I never found that part of being a ganger fun. Its long, tedious and boring to be in a TS being posed at by a runner Theme and mood is something that yeah, players can help with, but I think they need direction from something greater than themselves. Namely us. Course, that gives us another problem Storytellers having to work overtime to 'enforce' mood. And from the way Ive seen how things are set up codewise, its creating a more self medicating grid that doesnt need untold drudgework from the admins.

Dont spose I have any true answers here, just venting my spleen on a subject Im passionate about But I do like the idea of no more NPC/PC orgs. If people want to be badasses, then I think they should do it on their own merits.

Glad to be on board tho Hope this project gets finished. It seems not only a good thing for Seattle, but a good thing in MUXs in general. Theres a lot of good ideas here in the codebase to make this genre (textbased gaming) work far far better. Im enthusiastic

Damn. Ive taken a look at the grid plans, and Ive read the Seattle Sourcebook descriptions of some of those places. Do any of the players realise how BAD these places in the Barrens are? No power. One of them is the North Seattle Garbage Dump. Another one is a thriving community in contaminated lands.

Maybe half of the problem of the Barrens being rough can be fixed by good descs. But then the Barrens in the current Seattle grid back over on the old server doesnt really have any of the places we are putting down here. The old Barrens was a fairly ok place. Most of the Barrens in the new grid really is a hellhole ... I dont think the old grid really has any places as truely shitty as the new grid ... surely that'll be a help in making it more rough?

I would like to say cool and detailed desc would do the trick, but I doubt they will...Players ignore the descs most of the time once they've been there once, if that. My opinion of course. I think the way to create a mood is in Coded things like MADS when they have, or ride anything costly into the place. Of course, I think MADS get ignored a lot too, so perhaps that won't help. I think the serious answer is to just be ontop of it big time as staff.

I think that locations should have day/night descs in the very least ... and at least some views. We might not read a places desc after we have been there, but at least in my personal experience, thats cause Ive got the picture in my head. The desc is a good start to getting that picture in my head.  All the places Im gonna be involved in as a builder, Im gonna day/night desc them. I think places need their personal touches and attention. More work, yeah, but I think it will pay off.

Want an EG of how good desc works? Check out the Jackals Lantern descs Call me a stooge, but I think it was a good one. If I was going in there, Id know there was a major gang in control of it. I can FEEL them staring at me, ready to kick me down for a cheap, watery beer. Im hoping my descs are as good

Just an observation on the issue of descs: while it's true that over time people refer to them less and less, at first, they will be read. Especially given that this will be a totally new environment. They also give support to admin rulings on theme and situational issues. I'm a desc fan, though, so that's just my opinion.

Suggestion: Add in random emits that create the flavor.

Suggestion: Instead of attacking PCs to give them warning, attack NPCs by admins joining and running the @emit'ed scenes. +gmnote the player that they've been warned.  At two or three of these warnings, then attack the player and his stuff.

I think we're ignoring the fundamental issue here. We're all talking about how the staff should continually express the atmosphere of the Barrens to PCs, when the real question is, how do we get the PCs themselves to express the atmosphere to each other? The problem we always had in old Seattle was that it was a continual fight to constantly tell players how it is, while they ignore it. But to make it really stick, you need to have PCs interacting and reinforcing it without constant admin attention. I think descs are a big part of the answer, but I don't know the rest.

From what I've seen, and I know I'm a newb compared to you guys on other mushes, but the problem of people ignoring setting isn't exclusive to Seattle.  So it's not an isolated thing that we can change.  The most we can do is try to make it plain that this is the way it should be played.

Descs could do a part of it, News files or files here of what the atmosphere is like would give people something to work from and point out to those who are wearing armani and drinking champagne. 

I like Xander's idea of attacking NPCs first, though.    Hell, normal PCs could do that in their poses, too.  Of course you're always going to have the hero-complex guys who try to go save the gangers from the gangers.