Good grief. Running battle up an entire skyscraper, and we're still standing. Barely, but it still counts.

If truce is the order of the day, Peter will come up and help with the negotiations.

Gatac

Let me know how you want the negotiations to go down. You pretty much have the upper hand, but the guards are still clad in armor and have automatic weapons, so don't go into the negotiations thinking you're getting a free interrogation.

You've got the girl, which gives you a big bargaining chip as they would no doubt like to have her back in one piece.

All in all, the negotiations could go very good or very bad depending on how you play it. Discuss it amongst yourselves and come up with a final answer. I'll leave the final answer posting duties up to Gatac as he's the one that went all batshit.

Well, I'm backing down as soon as everything is secure. I'm not spoiling for nastiness, but I had to get the point across. Fuck with us, everybody loses.

Since Peter's good in Diplomacy, I figure we can come to an amenable solution. One that involves a minimum amount of violence.

Gatac

I move we get the pilot and copilot out of the chopper and we simply leave with the girl. If they don't like it, we can gun them down with the Blackhawk's machine guns.

I think that ascertaining the identity of the girl we've knocked out and are about to snatch is a good idea. We don't want an angry local big-time player coming after us and we certainly don't want to pull a The Big Hit manuver and snatch someone that's important to our organization and potentially kill them by accident. Also, there might be a reward involved.

As for right now...how many of them are there? Because we could theoretically fit everyone into the chopper, have Artis fly us somewhere safe (if he can fly the chopper), and then let them go once we figure out what the hell is going on and get reunited.

(Edited by Punkey at 8:49 pm on June 8, 2005)

I say we grab the girl and one of those guys (preferably the leader) and get into the chopper, then get him to tell us what's going on. If he talks, cool. If he doesn't, well...God loves, Man kills.

Gatac

Quote:

Quote: from Gatac on 6:45 am on June 9, 2005
I say we grab the girl and one of those guys (preferably the leader) and get into the chopper, then get him to tell us what's going on. If he talks, cool. If he doesn't, well...God loves, Man kills.

Gatac

Is that your final answer?

I'm not hearing objections.

Gatac

Let's get the trigger-happy pilots the hell out of my chopper.

Let's not let on to the fact that although we have a fairly good idea whose kid it is, we don't really know for sure. Let's get some info out of this guy first before we display our incompetence. That may be Moten's thing, I don't know. But let's keep some things in mind:
1. He does not get to make demands.
2. If he gives us lip, he loses body parts. No, wait - the kid loses body parts. Or gets tased. He remains pristine, and any punishment is doled out to the girl.

All that effort to set up the team, and the best Samantha can hire for guards are rag dolls (prop them up and they fall right over).

Quote:

Quote: from fanchergw on 1:12 pm on June 9, 2005
All that effort to set up the team, and the best Samantha can hire for guards are rag dolls (prop them up and they fall right over).

It boils down to quality over quantity. I can't fault the guys for playing cautiously and virtually outfoxing every obstacle put in front of them.

The trouble is that ADS has been playing in my games far too long to not anticipate what I'm going to do.

This game has sharpened our collective paranoia quite a bit.

I feel validated in that whenever we extend the hand of friendship to a character, we get backstabbed at once. (RE: Ilyanna.)

Gatac

Gatac, as I recall, Jacque didn't do anything to hurt the group.

Dieter, it seemed to me less like a situation of ADS anticipating problems and more one of the antagonists being too weak. The PC's average 8th level; 1st or 2nd level opponents just aren't going to be any kind of threat. The same applies to those Spetznaz that Team B ran into. Neither group seemed to be able to hit the broad side of a barn, and pretty much all of them went down in one shot.

I guess what I'm getting at is: in my opinion, scarier threats make for a more fun game and pushovers get boring really fast. Of course, other players may see it differently.

My 2 cents (or less, due to inflation).

(Edited by fanchergw at 10:35 am on June 9, 2005)

Quote:

Gatac, as I recall, Jacque didn't do anything to hurt the group.

Exception proves the rule.

Gatac

Back to OOC-type stuff. I carried over Gordon's last post in the new Campaign Comments 2 thread.

Artis- VP:11/68, WP:8/12
Moten- VP:56/58, WP:Full
Ayumi- VP:35/80, WP:4/12
Peter- VP:2/48, WP:Full

Aside from Moten (Punkey doesn't post as regularly as some, and I am glad his PC didn't get hosed as badly without him to defend himself), I consider Team A's condition after the battle to be "barely hanging on". Any number of factors could have taken me out; Peter was screwed from the start, and even 35 VP doesn't mean jack when the bad guys all have assault rifles.

We've been screwed on every single mission, whether through false information, particularly tough combats (re: Deckers, re: house in Venice), or otherwise. When the thread's title is "Paybacks", I have to think that the bad guys are paying us back, not the other way around.

I am, however, having a great time RPing Artis' gradual mental deterioration. He would've never taken an 8-year old hostage when he started.

"OMG, Ilyanna's a spy!"
"No shit!"



(Edited by Punkey at 10:00 am on June 9, 2005)

Quote:

Jess, you need to tell them that they have to ditch everything they've acquired since they went dark. I mean everything.

Ooh... Artis and Ayumi vs. Peter and Moten. Tag-team super-spy cage match. This should be fun!

Quote:

Quote: from fanchergw on 3:26 pm on June 9, 2005

Quote:

Jess, you need to tell them that they have to ditch everything they've acquired since they went dark. I mean everything.

Ooh... Artis and Ayumi vs. Peter and Moten. Tag-team super-spy cage match. This should be fun!

That's a rather harsh interpretation of the order, but I did leave it ambiguous.

Shit.