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Old 03-04-2017, 02:41 PM   #71
Icelander
 
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Default Re: Crash Into Me

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Various characters of mine have been reading along from the back of my head. None of those guys are as humane as Taylor, but the last of them gave up on O'Toole when he tried to use the lizard-woman to fool the guards and then used his powers to hide after that failed.
Of course, within the context of the story so far, Taylor has no way to know about O'Toole's moral transgressions.

Assuming both survive, there are ways to remedy that, of course. Taylor has Body Language at 21, Detect Lie at 20 and Psychology (Applied) at 14, with a conditional +2 bonus under most circumstances (and sometimes +3) for Empathy (Hypersensory). And if Taylor ever goes through these tunnels, he has Tracking at skill 23.

On the other hand, Taylor would most likely give O'Toole the benefit of the doubt as regards his motives. First firefight, hopeless situation, pitch darkness, understandable panic, being cut off, etc. Taylor would never assume such monumental malice from anyone without compelling evidence that rules out simple human frailty in a terrible situation, one, moreover, that O'Toole never should have had to face without protection from Taylor.

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Just call him "Toole", I'm sure his ancestors have disowned him.
If he's got any watching him from beyond, they sure have. And, of course, his daddy (whether that's really Raul Vargas or not) left his momma before he even knew he'd sired a son, let alone that the son would turn out somebody who'd be a disappointment even for a sociopathic murdering drug baron. At least Vargas enjoys his villainy with a little style, even managing to be oddly charming in his unapologetically flamboyant Magnificent Bastard way.

O'Toole is the AT&T of people, indiscriminately spreading soulless villainy by rote without even the miniscule justification of increasing happiness in the world by enjoying it himself.

His player seems to be enjoying himself, at least. :-)
Which I guess is the really important thing.

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
I've a few character that wold blanch at his casual disregard for fellow humans and a few who think he just isn't casual enough.
Keep in mind that O'Toole does not have any traits like Callous, Compulsive Lying, Cowardice, Delusion (Solipsism), Loner, Low Empathy, Sadism, Selfish, Squeamish or Trickster on his character sheet. He's fully capable of feeling emotions or humane instincts. He's just using his Will 15 to elect not to act accordingly, because he believes he can get away with it.

O'Toole does have Impulsive (SC 12) and Self-Centered as a Quirk, but both were added in play as part of minor adjustments to the character, during the first session when O'Toole's player started to make character-establishing decisions in play, the first at his own insistence and the second at the unanimous vote of everyone else, on the theory that his character sheet should at least in some way reflect the way the character behaved.

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Sounds like there's a fair chance of deaths when Tyrrell hears about this scene. If he doesn't have a stroke or heart attack himself, he may well kill someone.
Oh, he'll go spare. Absolutely ballistic.

Tactically, of course, dear lil' Cherry Bell took a situation where three guards and two other armed men were surrendering, rendering them safe, no longer threats and giving us access to their weapons, as well as any information they had about the tactical situation, location of the jammer, possible sites for hostages, hidden ambushes, etc., and changed it into one where Warden Tyrrell still has these men and their guns, we know little more than we did before and they'll eventually report about us being still in the barracks.

But I somehow doubt Warden Tyrrell will see the silver lining here. Especially as Taylor made his his skill check using Psychology (Applied) as an Influence skill to goad Tyrrell into rash and stupid action by 10, when he was speaking to him from the barracks intercom in post #46 ' What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate'.

I don't know what Tyrrell rolled in the Quick Contest, but considering his evident Obsession for Cherry Bell (probably good for a Will penalty) and the flood of incoherent profanity that followed from Tyrrell as an answer, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that he is suffering from some penalties to his IQ and Tactics when he comes up with his response.
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Old 03-05-2017, 04:28 AM   #72
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Default The Spy Who Loved Himself

As soon as the two guards have gone back down the side tunnel, O'Toole slowly lowers himself down to the gore-spattered floor of the charnel room. He feels the beginnings of a headache coming on, but his breathing is slow and regular. With an effort of will, O'Toole avoids thinking about the blood and rotting flesh all around him, controlling his nausea enough to allow him to wait in the close, foul-smelling room until he feels absolutely safe.

Out in the main corridor, voices are discussing what to do. The man addressed as Warden Tyrrell is agitated and irrationally angry, loudly demanding that the others split up and find him his Queen. Many of the others, including a man named Vaughn, are urging him to return to the main complex, as someone named Tucker requires immediate medical attention.

Vaughn: "We've got no way to treat him here. Supplies aside, this kind of injury requires more know-how than I got. The boy will die if we don't get him to a doctor right away. Burns like that are nasty. And Gordon would never forgive me if I let his boy die here."
Warden Tyrrell: "Then you take him back and the rest of you can find my Queen!"
Arden: "It'll take two just to carry the boy back. Three more, minimum, to carry the wounded traitor and wheel that ---hole Berrocal back. Unless you don't want them interrogated. And that doesn't leave any for security, from the Monster, from lizards, from rats or worse. Sir, it's just the six of us here ambulatory, including you."
Warden Tyrrell: "We can shoot the prisoners and Vaughn can take the Tucker boy back. The two of you can carry him. Leaves the three of us to search here. Randall should be in the barracks upstairs with his team on a coffee run, we can call him down here too."
Arden: "Sure. But sir, do we know that the Queen was ever here?"
[silence]
Warden Tyrrell: "----! She could be anywhere, with these fools trying to draw our attention to the one place she isn't!"
Arden: "Ayup. If you don't mind my saying so, sir, I think shooting the prisoners is a mistake. Get them someplace we can talk to them separately. I bet we'll learn whether she was ever really here and maybe even where she went."
Warden Tyrrell: "Oh, they'll tell us all right. Knights, we're going back. Quickly and then we'll round up enough knights to lock the barracks and this place down tight."

O'Toole only heard the last exchange faintly as the guards had passed the side tunnel and while he can hear that the Warden keeps talking as the guards walk south, he's too far away by now to make out what he says. All O'Toole can tell is that he's angry about some "hillbilly, redneck ----", but O'Toole can't figure out whether said hillbilly redneck is someone they've already killed or captured or if they're still looking for him. As the noises of the guards recede, O'Toole has time to think about what to do next. Considering that the guards seemed to feel that roaming these halls was unsafe in small groups, O'Toole isn't eager to explore them alone. And according to the Warden, the barracks are occupied with guards.

At least the Coast Guard would be coming now. All O'Toole had to do was remain hidden. But not in this nasty little room, with its rotting body parts and gag-inducing stench. Also, it would probably be awkward to explain if the Coast Guard found him here. Better to be somewhere where he could claim to be trying to help the other DHS men. Hell, if it wasn't too risky, maybe he could even see where the guards stashed them and call it in when he had radio contact again. That way, even if Townsend got sore about things, looking at the bigger picture, anyone could see that O'Toole had done the right thing.

As O'Toole moved down the side tunnel, he heard very faint gasping in front of him. Shining his Blackberry in that direction, he can see a crumbled human form lying in the tunnel in front of him, about ten feet from the main corridor. There is a trail of blood behind it and it's trying pathetically to crawl deeper into the side tunnel. In the light, O'Toole can tell that this is the woman he sent out to the lights. She turns her face toward him and tries to say something, but only blood comes out at first. She wipes some from her mouth and starts again.

Woman: "You... you said... friends."
O'Toole: "...Yeah... I must have been wrong."
Woman: "Help me. Please."

Putting on plastic evidence gloves, O'Toole moves closer, using his fingertips to lift the rags away from the bloody stomach of the woman. He can see bad wounds in front and from the blood in back, he suspects that there are exit wounds too. His eyes narrow in surprise as he can see that the wounds in front look like they'e been healing for a day or two and the skin around them seems to be developing the same disfiguring skin condition that he notices on the face and other areas of the woman. The wounded woman racks with painful coughs and spits something out. O'Toole does a double take when he sees that it is a small deformed metal object. He starts backing away.

Woman: "Don't leave me!"
O'Toole [while backing away]: "Just going for help. You just wait right here. Someone will be along to rescue you presently. Everything is going to be all right."
Woman [crying]: "I'm so scared... It hurts."
O'Toole: "Don't worry. Paramedics will be here before you know."
Woman: "Really? ...Thank you, thank you! God bless you!"

O'Toole walks away, not looking back at the woman. Then he sets out in pursuit of the guards, taking care to remain far enough back to avoid detection. As they passed through the tunnels, O'Toole recognised the route as the one he'd taken earlier from the G Wing cellars. The guards weren't talking much anymore and O'Toole was following the far away glimpses of light from their flashlights, remaining at all times out of direct line of sight. Finally, he can hear them opening the blast doors to the cellars of G Wing. The keychain O'Toole took from Reyes doesn't have keys for the cellar doors, so those are probably only given to team leaders or something, but that's of minor importance. Picking the lock wasn't too hard, anyway. O'Toole makes sure to wait until he's sure that the guards ahead have left the cellar before doing so, however.

Emerging into the cellars of G Wing, O'Toole can see that not much has changed since he was here last. The supply closet is still closed and O'Toole wonders if the three guards they stashed there are still in there. Moving next to the closet, O'Toole starts feeling around with mental tendrils in there. He doesn't find any bodies, but on the floor are some cut ropes, cords and strings. As he does, O'Toole can hear voices on an upper floor.

Guard Mike Seward: "Did you hear that?"
Guard Marty Simpson: "Not again with that. There's no one coming from the tunnels."
Seward: "Then what was that sound from the cellar?"
Simpson: "Nerves. Just nerves."
Seward: "You know the traitors could have keys. It's one ----ing floor."
Simpson: "The lizards don't. Or the rats."
Seward: "Unless they got the key from the traitors."
Simpson: "Even for you, that's paranoid."
Seward: "The Shadow Government and lizard people are trying to kill us, but you think the idea of them picking up a key is far-fetched?"
Simpson [groaning]: "Right. We'll check out your damned door."

As the two guards walk down the stairs, O'Toole sprints back to the still open blast door. He goes through it, into the tunnels, finding an abandoned room close by to hide in. He didn't close the door behind him and once he's found a hiding place he's happy with, he can hear the guards loudly arguing about the open door. Eventually, they walk through it, one of them with a shotgun held in front of him and the other with a rifle. O'Toole focuses his will on the door after they've walked a few steps beyond it. It slams with a heavy thud. Both guards jump in fright.

Simpson: "Jumping Jeebus!"
Seward: "----! They're trying to lock us in the tunnels!"

The guards run toward the blast door and eventually manage to get it open again with their key. They quickly enter G Wing again, shouting for support, saying that the traitors were just there and probably went running for the ground floor.

After waiting a decent interval, O'Toole decides to creep inside again. This time, he opens the blast doors with infinite slowness and is gratified to hear little or no noise. Trying to find out if the guards are still there, O'Toole focuses his mental energy on lifting himself under the stairs, taking a look through. Two guards walk down the stairs, looking for him, but don't see him levitating under their feet, looking at them through the steps. Finally, they go back up. O'Toole lets himself glide back down and catches his breath. His head is pounding and his nose is bleeding. He reaches for some painkillers from the medikit that former Green Beret convict, Chase Taylor, made them take from the guard barracks. Without anything to wash them down with, O'Toole manages to swallow several aspirin, some ibuprofin and a couple of Tylenol.

O'Toole can hear guards shouting one floor above, calling for a full sweep of G Wing. Before guards arrive, O'Toole has found a corridor that leads west, toward the unused wings. Bleeding from the nose, O'Toole half-runs the length of the corridor, just managing to duck into a stairwell on the other side before anyone sees him. O'Toole is now in the stairwell of C Wing now and he can see that it is certainly abandoned. Appparently there is no money for maintanance or sweeping in the abandoned wings. There's a flickering light from an 'Exit' sign, but no overhead lights.
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Old 03-05-2017, 08:24 AM   #73
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Default Re: Project Jade Serenity [Supers/Technothriller]

Your GM is pretty good at "intense." A little more cuing as to which posts describe simultaneous events would make it even better.
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Old 03-05-2017, 11:15 AM   #74
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Default Re: Project Jade Serenity [Supers/Technothriller]

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Your GM is pretty good at "intense." A little more cuing as to which posts describe simultaneous events would make it even better.
I'm sure he'd be glad to hear any compliments. As he reads this thread* and this is, I think, his first ambitious GURPS campaign (as opposed to short scenario), all y'all don't be shy, please, in mentioning anything you happen to like. :-)

Criticism is also welcome, if nothing else because my job as Assistant GM for Plausibility and Worldbuilding involves providing support and advice between sessions and help patch up anything that might otherwise become a plot-hole or an actual Idiot Plot.

I'm more than willing to try to provide better context as regards timing issues, but I'm afraid that there are some constraints on my descriptive abilities at work. I'm obviously not an omniscient narrator. I know some stuff my character doesn't, but there are other things I don't have a clue about.

In regard to time, specifically, Chase Taylor doesn't have a watch or even a cell phone, so the only way he knows the exact time is when he is able to ask someone. Danny O'Toole has two phones and a watch, but he hasn't exactly been checking them constantly. And even if he did, I haven't been informed of what the time was at each incident in O'Toole's Anti-Heroes Jouney. Granted, Dr. Anderson has Absolute Timing, but he has no idea what O'Toole is doing.

Add to that the fact that last session, O'Toole's player was not present and only did some chatting with the GM over Skype. I am precisely as ignorant of what happened to O'Toole after post #72 'The Spy Who Loved Himself' as Taylor is.

So I'm basically guessing at points of synchronisation between the timelines of separated PCs. The margin of error ranges from a few seconds either way, when there is a sound carrying between them that Taylor can hear and interpret, up to fifteen minutes or so, when both parties have been involved in long scenes where I'm not certain how much time passed.

22:35. I'm certain that Taylor's intercom conversation with Warden Tyrrell in post #46 'What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate' ended at this time.

22:40 to 22:45 or thereabouts, the flashbang went off in the tunnels, as O'Toole the Tool telekinetically pulled the pin in post #55 'The Sound of Silence', which was simultaneous with post #59 'Don't They Know It's the End of the World?' for Taylor in the dining hall of the barracks.

22:47-22:50 is the time of the two rifle shots in the tunnels in post #63 'You Think You're Gonna Live Your Life Alone - In Darkness - And Seclusion'.

22:47-22:50 or so is the current time, in the write-up (but not in play) for Dr. Anderson, Cherry Bell and Chase Taylor in the barracks, after the events of post #69 'Crash Into Me'.

22:50-22:55 or so is the time of the conversation O'Toole hears between Warden Tyrrell and his men in the tunnels in post #72 'The Spy Who Loved Himself'.

*Well, hopefully, unless he gave up after the first few pages.
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Old 03-05-2017, 11:16 AM   #75
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Without anything to wash them down with, O'Toole manages to swallow several aspirin, some ibuprofin and a couple of Tylenol.
Mixing NSAIDs? Well at least Toole deserves what's coming.
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Old 03-05-2017, 11:37 AM   #76
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Note that the total amount of ibuprofen and aspirin he took wasn't a dangerously high dosage or anything. Combined, he took pretty much the exact equivalent of the dosage that I was taking for my gimpy elbows* at the time of the session, which in my case was 800 mg ibuprofen and 1,000 mg Tylenol.

O'Toole just took 648 mg of Tylenol, 405 mg of aspirin and 400 mg ibuprofen. Combined, these reduce his penalties from Severe Pain from -4 to -2, see Bio-Tech.

I'll grant that for a small fraction of patients, it might have side-effects and in the very long term, there are deleritious effects to the stomach lining, but compared to adventuring risks, the odds of anything with game effects resulting from this dose is so miniscule as to not require a roll on a 3d.

I mean, I took 2,400-3,200 mg of ibuprofen per day for months after the accident and there were no side-effects that would matter in GURPS.**

As it happens, O'Toole has HT 14 and Resistant to Poison +3, so he's among the least likely human beings in the world to suffer any inconvenient drug interactions or side-effects.

*Broke both last year, haven't had surgery and joints are still damaged, with at least one of them full of splinters.
**Very occasional minor stomach trouble which may result from diet or may result from NSAID side-effects are not worth even a -1 to any GURPS Attribute. And yes, this was on doctors' advice, to reduce swelling around inflammed joints that made diagnosis of the damage difficult and limited my ability to do physical therapy.
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Old 03-05-2017, 12:08 PM   #77
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Note that the total amount of ibuprofen and aspirin he took wasn't a dangerously high dosage or anything.
Granted, but as it looks his pain is caused by his power usage and he's in the "Use powers = Kewl" category, I expect more powers and more drug usage.

Maybe eventually his liver or kidneys will fail before he can really hurt an innocent (lizard girl looks like she'll survive relative unscathed, just not unscaled).


Quote:
As it happens, O'Toole has HT 14 and Resistant to Poison +3, so he's among the least likely human beings in the world to suffer any inconvenient drug interactions or side-effects.
Dang it. Way to take away our hopes. What's next J.R.R. Martin? Gonna kill off our favorite characters?

:P
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Old 03-05-2017, 12:09 PM   #78
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22:47-22:50 is the time of the two rifle shots in the tunnels in post #63 'You Think You're Gonna Live Your Life Alone - In Darkness - And Seclusion'.

22:47-22:50 or so is the current time, in the write-up (but not in play) for Dr. Anderson, Cherry Bell and Chase Taylor in the barracks, after the events of post #69 'Crash Into Me'.
OK, so either the two rifle shots weren't heard in the barracks -- which is a bit surprising given Taylor's apparent Per -- or they haven't quite happened yet on that timeline. I have not looked at the character sheets, as I find it more fun learning about the characters from events.
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Old 03-05-2017, 01:18 PM   #79
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Granted, but as it looks his pain is caused by his power usage and he's in the "Use powers = Kewl" category, I expect more powers and more drug usage.
Oh, certainly. There's even a pill container of Vicodin tablets in O'Toole's first aid kit. He may or may not have taken some by this time, as neither Taylor nor I have any idea what he's doing.

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Maybe eventually his liver or kidneys will fail before he can really hurt an innocent (lizard girl looks like she'll survive relative unscathed, just not unscaled).
'Lizard girl' is so severely malnourished that she would be rushed to an ER just for that. More serious problems are her dehydration, massive head trauma (preexisting) and, oh, the two bullet wounds to the torso, at least one of which collapsed a lung.

Even if she has some form of extremely powerful biological regeneration, what stored energy or raw materials is she going to use to rebuild enough of her inner organs to survive?

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Dang it. Way to take away our hopes. What's next J.R.R. Martin? Gonna kill off our favorite characters?

:P
I guess that depends on who people's favourite characters are.

As a player, I'll be having Taylor try very, very hard to keep everyone alive. Well, maybe almost everyone. This isn't an actual spoiler so much as it is commentary on previous chapters, but I'm hiding it if some people are averse to anything which might suggest anything, inadvertently or otherwise:
Spoiler:  


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OK, so either the two rifle shots weren't heard in the barracks -- which is a bit surprising given Taylor's apparent Per -- or they haven't quite happened yet on that timeline. I have not looked at the character sheets, as I find it more fun learning about the characters from events.
Ah. Well, at the time of the kiss in the dining hall, Taylor was suffering a -10 penalty to any unrelated actions, due to Cherry Bell's use of Sex Appeal as an Influence skill against a PC (with a hefty bonus for various things). Add a -2 to -4 as a generic penalty to Per for being occupied with other things and Taylor might have been just a teensy bit lost.

I mean, he had no way of knowing whether guards were about to burst in any second or not. And he completely ignored even basic security, risking his life and the lives of other people under his protection. He forgot every single thing he learned in his training and military service. Went against moral arguments against any kind of sexualised contact with Sherilyn under the circumstances, which are based on some very strong beliefs of his.

Taylor did a very, very stupid thing. Anything powerful enough to make him capable of what he did is probably capable of making him ignore a herd of elephants throwing a Roll Tide tailgate party next to him.

That being said, now, the timeline also works out if you assume that the scene cut from the dining hall happened just before the shots were fired in the tunnels.

Either is plausible, really. I guess you'll have to wait for the next post to find out which.
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Old 03-05-2017, 01:44 PM   #80
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Even if she has some form of extremely powerful biological regeneration, what stored energy or raw materials is she going to use to rebuild enough of her inner organs to survive?
There is a room full of meat like right there.


Whether she is one of the cannibals or was next on the menu, I'm not sure. It sounds like she was next on the menu... but ...
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