My players recently came off a space station abandoned during the Fall with a number of artifacts and a wealth of data. In addition to scientific logs chronicling the exsurgent infection and cortical stacks, they collected more-or-less randomly some of the objects and files they ran across. I had some moderate difficulties working out what each of them might be worth, and figured it might be worth setting up a thread for collecting and brainstorming this sort of stuff.
-An antique rifle: This was the only piece of intentional loot I placed, I noted in its short description that it would be valuable to collectors. As the players asked about it, I developed it into an engraved 21st-century hunting rifle, commemorating or glorifying an event the sentinels didn't have the skills to recognize (A swarthy, bearded man in a turban, with text in the scrollwork around him: "We Got The Bastard"). Value: 40,000 credits from a hypercorp CEO on Mars, money delivered as soon as ComEx confirms the package is on a rocket. Or 100,000 credits from a Jovian military commander, money delivered when the package arrives in a few months. Or +3 @-rep and +1 f-rep for the whole party if the rifle is instead given to an anarchist performance art group that will ritualistically destroy it and send the performance to the CEO and commander.
-10-year-old banking information pulled off a corporate server: Firewall's forensic accountants can chase down which accounts still have money in them and shuffle it around for the sentinel team's benefit, resulting in one free Moderate-level purchase or 1500 credits in any given habitat or settlement. This will hopefully spur the sentinels to move around a bit if necessary.
-10-year-old science files pulled off a research server: Mostly out-of-date neuroscience (neuron formation in microgravity, expression of aborognosis (inability to discern weight) under conditions of changing gravity, clinical lycanthropy in neo-primates, a significant number of studies on how to use muses to deal with certain conditions relating to object recognition), although some of the first research on phantom body pain is archived, as well as a study on the now-extinct myotonia congenita (fainting goat syndrome). Also contain clinical trials on various forerunners of drugs on the market today. Worth 1 r-rep for the submitter, for filling holes in archives, but no salable or actionable info.
-Random corporate files, grabbed to fill storage space because no one had skills to recognize obvious paydata: Nothing of obvious use to the team directly at the time, but Firewall can make use of them to provide leverage to them or other teams. For example, if the morphs and egos in a pornography collection can be matched up, blackmail might be possible. Potential plot keys or i-rep fluctuations.
-A collection of home videos on physical storage chips, recovered by the amoral mad scientist hoping to ransom someone's memories back to them: Would cost 500 credits to track down, but the family is poor and only half-reinstantiated on Luna, they might be able to scrape together 100 credits as a reward.
-A homemade sentry bot (Gatecrashing) cobbled together by the survivor(s) on the station and hijacked by the party's AGI: Normal price is Expensive, but this one only has two weapon mounts and kinetic weaponry. Sentinels are offered 8,000, but can talk it up to around 12,000. Player actually traded straight up for a blueprint for the bot.
-A child's doll, collected by the Lost: No intrinsic value, and the Lost's player has said they're going to be keeping it, so a relicteur (Farcast blog) will offer to sew it up and repair the damage in exchange for a Trivial favor (Go get them some falafel or something).
So what sorts of things have you guys found/placed in areas where people can't easily complain about the player characters taking everything that's not nailed down?
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
All Things Shiny and Valuable
Mon, 2014-04-21 22:32
#1
All Things Shiny and Valuable
Tue, 2014-04-22 09:52
#2
Dareon wrote:My players
I'm not sure that's really worth @-Rep or f-Rep. At least, not a positive bump. Spitefully destroying an actual, surviving, minimum 130-year-old artifact of transhumanity's history just because you don't like the people who offered to buy it is going to offend and outrage a lot of people, even on the Circle-@ List.
I'd say that if they do that, the performance art group would be able to deliver the promised bumps, but then the deluge of pings from people all across the Solar System on the @-List should knock them down by 10 points. Maliciously destroying an historical artifact just to spite the guys who want it isn't cool, and broadly publicizing it in such a manner is going to backfire spectacularly.
You know what [i]would[/i] be worth some @-Rep? Donating it to Titan Autonomous University or some other Rimward institution which would be interested in caring for and displaying an historical artifact.
That's... A pretty nice grab, actually.
Hah. Nice. Not all loot is worth the carrying back - at least, financially. That guy could probably get a +1 c-rep boost for just giving the collection back.
Literally [i]anything[/i] that survived the Fall is worth money.
So a child's doll which survived the Fall of Earth would probably be worth about 15,000 credits or so. Sounds like a great deal on the part of that relicteur; convince the schmuck to leave it with him and go get falafel, and vanish into the wind with fifteen grand worth of highly portable wealth.
Does it count as "not easily able to complain" when the kleptomania is taking place at gunpoint?
My players pillaged a Triad hotel fronting for the Triad's black market and their black kettle in Chinatown in Elysium in my game. Among other things, they stole a CM, their blueprints, XP and narcoalgorithim libraries, and some jewelery off the folks in the most expensive suites.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
Sun, 2014-04-27 15:17
#3
I had my players find a truly
I had my players find a truly epic amount of loot going by my principle 'anything goes in EP'. I just let things play out I would normaly avoid in other rpgs, like letting the whole party get killed and stuff like this.
So they found a perfectly preserved capital warship filled with treasures rescued from the Fall:
- Great and classic simulspace adventures (a trip to the Galapagos islands with Charles Darwin, an intrigue at a French royal court (just very well made and thrilling), The Clearing (an extremely beautiful scene in a forest) , several pieces of entertainment media which were not completely available at the time of the Fall (10AF some of them are considered lost).
-Scientific DNA databases (again some are thought to have been lost)
-Some animals from the zoo of London (in stasis)
-Old statues and other archeologic treasures (Nike of Samothrake, Venus of Milo)
-Paintings (one very important one and others which are invaluable to collectors)
-A medium amount of a nanoswarm fuel air explosive weapon
-Several infectious nanovirii, all of which are known and easy to detect, except one which never was used and the plans for the effective part of the virus (payload can be changed in principle) The knowledge about this virus is preserved nowhere else.
-Important person: A Fall criminal, sleeved in Splicer: General Abdallah Osman al-Fadil (see Arenamontanus' page path of totality)
-10 Antimatter-(Cluster-)Bombs
-Weapon system for the use of Trigger under earth conditions (p. 324)
-10 armored containers with ego storage devices. The containers are sabotaged and can't be interfaced with. One is marked with spraypaint: „CORRUPTED - DEATH INSIDE“ They contain about 10.000 people according to the readable inscriptions from a habitat that is considered lost together with all inhabitants
-Fabricator material, of all kinds. Almost nothing missing. Pretty valuable.
Mon, 2014-04-28 18:35
#4
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Dareon
I would strongly disagree. The weapon in question is from one of the (from A.A. perspective) most obvious examples of a corrupt capitalist empire of the late pre-panopticon/early panopticon period. The event it commemorates is the assassination of an enemy leader. A giant, and public, "fuck you!' to both the hypercapitalist who wanted to own history, and the Jovian who wants to glorify the brutal policies of that era, could find some serious positive reception in A.A. society.
Tue, 2014-04-29 17:41
#5
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:I would
The assassination of a [i]massive parallel-murdering religious lunatic[/i] who made war on civilians.
And even then, it's still an historical artifact. You know what else is? The Enola Gay. You definitely won't be able to find enough people, even of a single opposed block of people (like anti-nuclear-armament activists) who would exhult you for destroying it as would denounce you for destroying a part of history, positive or otherwise.
Unquestionably and more directly responsible for [i]far[/i] more death than any single rifle, but still an artifact of history. Right-thinking people do not glory in the willful and malicious destruction of historical artifacts, whether or not they commemorate an event they disagree with.
So, no. There would be no @-Rep bump from such an act. Not any bump that wouldn't be immediately subsumed by the deluge of "fuck you, you crass assholes" pings for [i]destroying an actual surviving artifact of Earth[/i].
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
Wed, 2014-04-30 13:14
#6
All right thinking people...
All right thinking people...
Such as the Middle ages Italians, who stripped parts of the colosseum for building materials? To the gratitude of those who now had houses?
Or the people of East, and West, Berlin? Who decided against installing gates so they could preserve a major piece of 20th century history. Instead they tore that wall down. I guess they were condemned?
Or the Armistead family, giving away pieces of the original Star Spangled Banner to honored veterans? That event made the family very popular and praised.
Or possibly revolutionary France? Did they preserve the Bastille as an artifact of History? No. They tore that fortress to pieces. Surely this made the revolutionaries unpopular with the people? No? The historical significance of the site actually [b]added[/b] to the public approval for its destruction.
In short, either[list=a]
[*] Nowhere near all 'right thinking people' condemn such actions, or
[*] 'Right thinking people' are vastly outnumbered by 'wrong thinking people.'[/list]
Either way, historical evidence directly contradicts your claim that dings would outnumber pings from this performance piece.
Wed, 2014-04-30 17:18
#7
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:Such as
Not right-thinking, also predates the invention that "history" was something other than a gigantic bin of stuff that you can recycle.
First off, is this rifle somehow positing a practical problem to a habitat? No? Then the arguments there don't apply, because it's bloody not the same as a great mucking huge wall in the middle of a city, [i]obviously[/i].
Secondly, not all of the wall has been torn down. There are sections still standing in their original locations, as well as the odd watchtower, and even in some places where it was torn down, they've chosen to mark its location with a row of cobblestones.
And if they'd instead been cutting it up to ritually wipe their arses with it or burn it in protest of something or other? Apples and bathtubs; the events are without comparison.
And they were (again) living before the concept of "history" as something worthy of preservation; it certainly wasn't as if all of France had been wiped off the map, with most of her citizenry pushed into the sea (and only the lucky had boats,) and a few chunks of the Bastille were suddenly found in someone's sea chest a decade later. I imagine they'd be a bit gladder to see a part of French history, then, even if it did carry mixed messages.
Additionally, they were also living at the time when the Bastille was a Big Deal to them, [i]personally[/i], in and of its own right. A better analogy would be finding something that once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu, who lived the better part of a century and a half beforehand.
No, it doesn't, because, again: the notion that historical artifacts are worthy of preservation - and most definitely not things you ritually destroy because you don't like the people who made it or the people who want to preserve it - is a new thing. And ten years after the Fall of Earth, willfully destroying [b]anything[/b] which survived the Fall is going to be seen as a heinous act by almost everybody, no matter what it commemorated.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
Tue, 2014-05-06 13:32
#8
I disagree, obviously, since
I disagree, obviously, since the destruction and reward for such was my idea in the first place. However, you did raise a good point that at the very least not everyone would be sanguine about the public destruction of a pre-Fall artifact. The way I handled it (which would have been entirely in background and unrevealed to the players had they not been holding a concert with accompaniment by the performance art group) was that there was essentially an upvote war during the performance, which resulted in a smaller net gain of @-rep for Grape-Nuts Thrust Upon You (said performance art group) than the sentinels gained for throwing the concert. If the rifle's destruction on their stage affected the sentinels at all, it was not obvious and to a lesser extent than that suffered by the NPCs. There will be ripples through the rep networks, and possibly people recognizing the sentinels as being involved, but 90% of that will be in background.
I agree that your argument has merit, but my personal stance on the anarchists is that more of them would want to see Earth abandoned in favor of new horizons than would want to resettle and venerate the lost homeworld. And also that a lot, especially among the scum, would enjoy thumbing their noses at hypercorps and Jovians, even at the expense of a valuable piece of cultural heritage.
Sat, 2014-05-10 21:01
#9
Also, a thought occurred to
Also, a thought occurred to me. Relics.
An old idea that a piece of a historical artifact, or person, would be valuable itself.
When you are done breaking the rifle, slice the barrel into rings. Then put one ring each into a set of charm bracelets.
After you do that, Grape-Nuts Thrust Upon You hold a contest, open to any @-Rep member. To enter, write a testimonial as to why you love Grape-Nuts Thrust Upon You, and why you deserve one of the bracelets. 1 bracelet each, to the best 25 entries.
Hey look, tens of thousands of positive testimonials, along with many people sending pings because the contest seems cool. @-Rep gains through the roof.
Now a barrel will make far more than 25 rings. So the rest go to the GNTOY, the PCs, and various high @-rep and f-rep people who the group admire. more @-rep gains.