Little Places And Stuff

Here's some more worldbuilding!


The Devil's Den


The Devil's Den is a seedy heavy metal bar in Puyallup, not too far from Tarislar. The beer is strong, and the biggest known dude is a bartender named Ed-a human, perhaps in his late thirties or so-who resembles a thrash metaller whose ear is toward the ground often, and he sometimes has some rather nice tip-offs. (He's not a fixer, but he's part of a network that can sometimes put people in contact who are looking for jobs, or fixers themselves. He does know Spanky, the two being bartenders who sometimes show up at beer conventions.)  Ed chain smokes, has frizzy brown, long hair with a couple of grays lying around, a wiry but hard build(while you wouldn't call him a warrior or anything, more than one drunk has been tossed out onto the pavement by him, and he keeps a loaded Ruger under the bar), and dresses in too-tight jeans, sneakers, and ripped up t-shirts. Ed likes denim jackets when it gets cold. The Devil's Den specializes in thrash metal(including classic stuff from the old days), mostly cheaper beer and alcohol, greasy hot wings and Nukit burritos for bar food. It's metahuman friendly. You can go there with a certified credstick with a little on it and get trashed on the cheap if you don't mind the more stomach-churning stuff.


Torque


Torque is a bar on the outskirts of Redmond, seemingly a run-of-the-mill seedy bar with a theme of cars and driving, hence the name. However, several stories below ground, in a converted garage, it holds a more violent secret; a bloodsport pit is under here. Mostly not to the death actually(though they have their 'to the death' main attractions a couple times a week, most of these are high paying and high stakes and often end up in other bloodshed in the audience from losers), but definitely to the maiming. Cyber, bio, whatever is game(they occasionally have a mundane night a couple times a month-those fights tend to last longer and actually rake in some decent nuyen), and even occasionally a 'Man vs. Beast' night where they bring in a couple of hellhounds or something. (Their current hellhounds, Harker and Helsing, are undefeated; these nights are not regular, however. Once they even had a Greater Wolverine but after it killed the opponent and ripped up three spectators they tranq'd it, let it loose somewhere in the wilderness and never spoke of it again. It had made them too much money to kill without ceremony.)

Downfall, the giant goth elven adept who shows up in a lot of the fiction I do(and who IS a PC or an NPC depending if I'm running or GMing-I don't GMPC), is a regular fighter here and he basically kept himself afloat after he exiled himself from Tir with money earned from this place.

Torque sells your run of the mill crappy beer and bar food, with the occasional load of slightly better quality stuff that makes it in.


Some More House Rules


The Stuffer Shack Doesn't Give a Drek About Your ID

No, seriously. I don't care if it's a subsidary of Aztechnology. You can buy a Nukit burrito with a certified credstick. So long as it's real cred, they'll take it. They just want your money. They're not going to background check you for buying stuffers. If you want to run the type of game that ID checks you for using the toilet that's fine but I sorta prefer a looser method, so I started basically using the Twilightrun website's tips(or some of them) in my games. Big fake IDs are more needed for stuff like better lifestyle purchases and so on. Middle you'll probably want to run at least a 4, unless you get away with a Middle lifestyle in a slightly shabbier part of town(this IS possible, but remember the security things.) Or perhaps there's that big ol' Snohomish house that the murders happened in that might be haunted and it's technically middle but we just want to unload it.

High+ you'll definitely want to sport a hefty fake ID to get unless you tell me your character is using a legit SIN(which is fine), but of course be careful with that.

Stuff you need some sort of ID for: Buying weapons(not black market, of course), buying property Middle or above lifestyle(Low...sometimes, if it's in a good neighborhood but just like an unfurnished loft or something, GM discretion), flying legally, buying legal vehicles, etc.

Stuff you can get away with generic certified cred for: Low class tube riding(First-class needs an ID), Stuffer Shack, McHughs, Bucket-Burgers, Soybucks, and others of that ilk.

Generally, forged credsticks are a little more useful in these days because of how checking worked. It was a simple test of Credstick vs. Reader. Rating 4-5 systems are not stuff you run into without going to banks or law enforcement, or other places like that(using Sprawl Sites as the old reference point for this.) Most of the time, you'd be running into 1-3 rated system. I mean, if you can afford a nice level one by all means do it(R5's run about 25k in SR3, R4 is 16k, R3 is 9k, R2 is 4k and R1 1k), but keeping an R1/R2 and certified cred on hand should be enough for menial stuff. I personally suggest an R3 for basic use if you can afford it(if you rock 60k or higher depending on the character this should be well doable. Priority wise this would be about Priority C.) Get an R4 or 5 if you plan on doing anything a little bigger.


Split Dice Dual-Wielding


Inspired a couple of decades ago by Blackjack(great site), I had started using that then and still do.

For one, I cut out the Ambidexterity edge. It's superfluous with this.

So the way this works is this, first starting for melee:

If someone wants to attack twice with two weapons, they simply split their pool between the two weapons as they see fit. Splits are done after adding any bonus dice(personalized weapons, Enhanced Articulation, reflex recorders) and combat pool. You can give as many dice to one hand as you want; this can be used strategically, for example, to keep a mook off of your ass while you're trying to lay down pain on someone else.

Or you could choose to attack one person twice. Now why do this? You could make a choice; you could choose to take a couple of decent stabs at someone, or one good one. Now how Dodge was handled for this; the person rolled Dodge once. It was measured against the successes. If, say, they got 3 successes with one hand and only 1 with the other, and the rolled 2 dodge successes, the first attack would hit but the second would miss. But-this was a lucky roll. If your pool was split, say, five and five vs. a TN of 4, that means there's a much bigger chance of you not getting the necessary successes. If you rolled 1 hit on each hand, they'd have avoided it all. On the converse, if you rolled enough, they'd have to soak twice. Risk and reward, basically. You have a better chance of just taking one stab with one weapon(with a full 10 dice), but they'd only have to resist damage once. Pays your nuyen, takes your chances.

As for Reach, this can only be done with a Reach 1 weapon or less(yes, even for Trolls.) If you use two weapons of varying reach, you count the lesser reach when rolling IF it's against one target(since you need to close in.) Against two different targets, though, treat as normal(since you're holding the other one at bay with the longer reach.)


Example:


Asmodeus, lieutenant of Nocturnal Sin, is the token razorboy and is about to throw down with another cutter of a nearby gang, because the glam-rocker usually can't keep himself out of trouble. While Asmo usually has his spurs as his preferred method of slicin' and dicin', they agreed on a legit, West Side Story style knife fight. Asmo draws his Cougar Fineblade Long, a nice knife to use indeed. 

Right when the fight starts, the other guy realizes that Asmo is actually pretty damn dangerous from his movement(he's wired, has a cyberarm and a fair bit of 'ware), so another chummer jumps in. Well, no rules against that. Adramelek, Asmo's chummer, decides to toss Asmo his own Cougar Fineblade Long. This way, Asmo can stab at both of them. Asmo has an Edged Weapons of 4, Enhanced Articulation(he only has one cyberarm so he still gets the general full benefit), and a Combat Pool of 8(of which he can use up to four with.) Splitting is done after the pool, so after adding the combat pool, he has nine dice. He also has Wired Reflexes 2 so he goes first pretty easily. 

Asmo is no slouch at fighting(he also has an Unarmed Combat of 5 and a Cyber-Implant Weapons: Spurs of 5(7), so he can pretty quickly size up that his opponent's chummer is fairly scrubby. He can move somewhat, but he's no more than average(in fact, his Edged Weapons skill is only 2. He's more of a baseball bat guy.) Plus he can tell that he's unwired; he's a pretty bog standard gang member-he even only has a leather jacket(real, surprisingly, for 0/2 armor.) His actual opponent he can tell is pretty decent(though he can still tell he's better-I mean the drekhead did want to handicap Asmo by banning his spurs), and has slightly better armor; a secure jacket(3 Impact armor.) 

Asmo decides to split his die pool as follows; he's going to use six dice on the better opponent, and only three on the suckier one, more or less just to hold him off. Cougar Fineblades have no reach, but do Str+1 damage(9M, in his case, he's quite strong at 8, thanks to his cyberarm and muscle augmentation.) He's basically halfassing the other guy, mostly just trying to get him off-balance(read: blow his combat pool on dodging so he can't use it on attacking.) 

He rolls his two attacks: the first he gets 5,6,6,1,4,4; an incredibly lucky roll to be fair, 5 successes. On his second, he gets 5,5,2; still managing two. Asmo is doing really well. 

His opponents now get to roll Dodge(which is combat pool.) The better opponent has a Combat Pool of 7; he(well, the GM) decides to use four of it to try to save a little for a counterattack. He rolls 4,2,1 and 1, for only 1 success-but he still cuts down the successes by 1. He now gets to soak(vs. a TN of 5). His Body is a fairly spiffy 4, so he rolls those 4 dice(and the GM decides to use 2 of his remaining 3), for 1,5,1,4,5,3. He manages 2 successes, but Asmo still nets 2, which means he manages to shank the main guy for a Serious wound right off the bat. 

His chummer only has a Combat Pool of 5, being pretty bog standard. He uses three dice for a dodge attempt(saving 2 for an attack in SOME attempt to supplement it), and actually gets 2 hits! But...that's a tie, and they go in favor of the attacker. Nice try, but even Asmo's halfassed hand was enough to hit this guy. Still, he gets to roll soak; vs. a TN of 6, however, and his Body is only 3. the GM decides to use his last 2 combat pool dice in some attempt to help, and the 3,5,3,3,3 was not enough. He only takes a Moderate wound, though. 

The gangers realize they bit off too much and call it. They'll take the humiliation to live. Asmo takes their weapons and boots them in the ass out of there as they crawl off to find the gang's street doc they're shaking down for help. 

So as you see, there's a decent reason to use it vs. separate attackers, and it's cool to be able to actually pick how much you want to use. Against more equal opponents, someone might choose to equalize their dice.

For a quick run to use the 2 weapons on 1 person for:

After the fight, a rando runs in on Asmo, because he's drunk, pissed, chipped out, or some combination of the bunch. He's an ork, so probably has decent body(6, so actually average for an ork, but it's still tough.) He's also wearing a real leather jacket(0/2 armor.) He has a combat pool of 5(which Asmo doesn't know of course since combat pool doesn't exist in the world.) 

Asmo can now decide; attack once or twice. Attacking once with his all, or two swings. We'll do two examples of both. 

Attacking once with nine dice(a nice amount), vs. a TN of 4, Asmo gets 4,1,3,4,1,6,3,1,4, for a total of  4 successes. The GM decides to try to dodge with all of the combat pool to see if he can get lucky. 1,2,6,4,6. Well he doesn't dodge completely but he negates 3 of Asmo's successes. He now rolls his 6 dice vs. a TN of 6 to try to soak a little-6,1,5,4,2,6. Not enough to stage down(since Asmo still had a success), so he takes a Moderate wound for running in. 

Rewnding, Asmo decides instead to for two swings-using five dice with one hand and four with another. With his first roll, he gets 5,3,6,1 and 5, for a total of 4 hits(much luckier than before!) His second hand, he gets 6,4, 2, and 3, for 2 successes. 

The Ork only gets one Dodge roll. The GM decides to throw down all five combat pool dice again. He gets 6,3,2,6, and 1, for 2 successes. He doesn't dodge, as he tied, but he does negate successes from both hands(leaving 1 net 2 and 1 net 0.) He gets his resistance rolls, and this he gets to make two of. Had the GM saved combat pool, he could have added this to both. 2,1,6,4,3,3 for the first(negating 1 success), and 6,3,1,2,5,2 for the second. He can't stage down, and takes two moderate wounds, which add up to six boxes, and now he's Seriously wounded. 

Now this worked out great for Asmo this time, but had he have gotten unlucky with the successes(only, say, getting 1 each hand), the ork would have dodged completely. Even one more success would have negated the other hand and he'd have been net normal. 

I feel this rule makes dual-wielding more fun(and can make some opponents a little hairier, along with letting players feel badass sometimes ginsu-style), but it DOES mostly benefit more skilled players; someone with a Weapon skill of 3 is not likely going to want to dual-wield them. It also pretty much means that unless you're an Adept, you're going to want to put Combat Pool into the attack. And, of course, Reach 2+ weapons are out. I've seen it in action, and it's pretty sane all told, especially with how the Dodge rule works in SR3.

With Firearms, you can only have a Smartlink or Laser Sight count for one gun(yeah, even a laser sight is difficult to aim two of; you're focusing more on one thing.) You can only do this with Pistols, Machine Pistols or SMGs(yes, even Trolls.) The rule that uncompensated recoil for one gun counts toward the other sticks. The firearm rule is fairly good for laying down some basic cover fire with one hand while trying to plug someone with another. You can use different firing modes too; so you can use, say, your Ares Predator to try to mess someone up, and your Crusader MP to keep someone off your(or a teammate's) back.

Food Prices

For real food, I just rule of thumb that it's somewhere between 5-10 times the cost of soy. (A newer book has it at 5 to 20, but I like to imagine as time goes by more and more, that real stuff ends up getting even more scarce due to soy equivalents becoming even better; as in, there isn't as much of a need for real stuff.) So in the 2050s(or well, SR1 to 3 timeline), I like to have it around 5-10 times the cost.