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Spycraft new OOC thread
- Thread starter Game Control
- Start date
Game Control
First Post
Okay, the mess has started.
I might as well give you some thoughts. Read carefully, there are a lot these. And don't take anything personally! If something sounds insulting or demeaning, it's because I have yet to edit corectly. I just want to share observation.
A lots of these comments directly concern Luddite and Tokiwong. They may sound like critics, but I want you to know that I highly value their contribution to the game. They have both done much to advance the story.
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The mission can still be salvaged if you remember the objectives.
Find Balladur. If you can't, find what he was doing here.
Here's a clue; Balladur ain't in Binga anymore. He left as soon as he arranged the hit on Jeff Neilan. Confronting him is left for a future serial if you survive this one
. How could you have known this? You couldn't, but you could have guessed it. I feel I left a few clues; the fact that he knew that he had been spotted by Neilan and must have wanted to relocate as fast as possible, for example, is the most obvious. There also have been clues as to the method that he must have taken to leave the area secretly. Anyway that's not important right now.
I'm telling you this to make amend for the fact that some of your problems might come from your lack of familiarity with my MO. At least one of my P&P player is reading this and he picked up on most of the clues I left. This tells me that being used to my style has some importance.
Okay, so two persons will have info about the intents of Balladur: N'Gambe and Gournay. You know that Balladur met the captain from one of his soldiers. You know that Balladur met Gournay because of what Kim extracted from Lana. Remember: Gournay met ''an American with a German sounding name'' yesterday. Read about it in the Lion's Share thread. That's clearly Balladur under his Fuller alias.
Get at least one of them. Get him to talk. Get the hell out of here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why this mess?
1-Gournay is indeed linked to Balladur.
2-Being involved in something most likely illegal, he's somewhat paranoid. He didn't buy Luddite's story. He has a good sense motive skill as hinted by the fact that he's a good poker player. He also has a good enough Bluff that he didn't show his emotions to Luddite. He has +7 to Bluff and +6 to sense motive, for the record. I rolled better than Luddite in both skills during the interview. Secretly, of course. He was helped in his sense motive by the lack of credibility of Luddite's bluff. More on that later.
3-Luddite told Gournay that he had met Beaujolais. Gournay contacted Beaujolais. He easily learned that Luddite lied thoroughly to him.
4-Gournay called N'Gambe. Yeah, of course they're linked!
5-N'Gambe isn't stupid. He knows about the team that screwed his hit on Neilan. He knows that there likely is one Asian man in the team. That's the only info CPG sent back before being captured. He knows the assistant of the Red Cross envoy is Asian. He knows there are supposed to be more assistants. A few call suffice to discover you sleep at the goody lodge, are a group of 6 and use two jeeps. There happen to be 4 white boys with a jeep who were snooping around the barrack earlier today. At the time it was assumed they were looking for sex and drugs, like all the other white boys. But their behavior takes a more sinister hue to N'Gambe when he gets the call from Gournay.
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The Pizza Syndrome
The bluff skill is about sounding confident and sincere. But the lie itself is still most important. If it is hard to believe, a substantial bonus will be applied to sense motive. If it is impossible to believe, you're screwed.
Here is the Pizza story; I was running Shadowrun. The adventure was leading to a few bad guys in an apartment. A player with a good negotiation skill (the bluff of SR) decided to trick them.
He walked to the door and rang the bell. When the interphone asked what it was about he said: ''I'm the pizza guy, got a delivery for you''.
He then rolled his dice expectantly. I didn't care about the results, though. The bad guys in the apartment hadn't ordered a pizza! If at least they had taped the phone and waited for them to actually order something...
The moral; The skill ain't everything. If you walk up to me and try get on my good side by pretending to be a friend of my brother, you'll fail. You can give me a Robert de Niro caliber performance, you'll still fail. I don't have a brother. End of the story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does the Pizza Syndrome relate to this game? Thankfully, no one came up with Pizza caliber bluff!
There were still two bloopers:
Luddite; You hadn't met Beaujolais. Once you bluffed that you had, Gournay was one phone call away from finding out that you lied. And he did make that phone call...
Kim; You haven't been to Montreal. You shouldn't say to a Montreal native that you spent a lot of time in her city when that's not true.
Don't feel bad, just take notes. Remember that these are the sort of things I exploit.
Rules of thumb of a good lie:
1-Stay as close to the truth as possible.
2-If you have to invent something that is completely false, make sure that your target knows less about the subject than you do.
For example, if you know that the target lives in Montreal, you should pretend to live anywhere except in Montreal!
3-If you invent something, make sure it can't be easily verified.
This last rule only apply if you don't want the target to find out you lied in the immediate future. Sometime they only need to believe you for a few minutes. Sometime you actually want your target to verify your bluff!
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While I'm at it; Luddite said that Beaujolais warned him about how much of a card shark Gournay is. If you remember, I wrote once about how Beaujolais and Gournay sometime ran card scam together(in Atlantic City), pretending that they didn't know each other and then working together to rip off the other players, rounders style.
Well, the bottom line is that Beaujolais is unlikely to have warned anyone about his friend's skill at poker. It's not the sort of thing you do when you are a card shark yourself. That's why Gournay benefited from an additional +5 to his sense motive check.
Am I pushing it? Well, that's the sort of tiny detail I excel at.
The safe thing would have been to stick to a simple fact; You're not supposed to know about Gournay therefore you don't mention him until his name come up from an outside source.
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How to locate Gournay, then? Many tactics were possible. As a matter of fact, the tactic Luddite employed could have worked, but it depended on having a very good bluff skill.
The simplest thing to do was simply this: Gournay is French, a senior staffer and roughly 60. You knew these informations. It was enough to simply look him up in the camp. In fact, that's what I assumed you'd do and that's why I was pushing so hard for a visit of the tent area. During the ''interviews'' with the field personnel, it would have been easy enough to locate him. Then you could turn on the charm without ever having to do a risky bluff about having met a friend of his.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kalashnikov Syndrome
It comes from the same player who developed the Pizza Syndrome!
Once upon a time, a team of shadowrunners ran a very muscled black ops. Then it was evac time.
Two members of the team were crossing the border with false papers. They hoped to catch a train. One of the player doesn't wish to get rid of his AK-97 (futuristic AK-47). He wanted to hide it somehow and get it past the custom agents.
His logic: If things get ugly, I want my AK-97.
My logic: Things WILL get ugly. They will find the AK-97!
Can you figure out the moral?
It doesn't seriously apply to anything you've done yet. Just thought I'd share.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Focus
I must say I was suprised by the fact that Luddite was professor and Kim the assistant. It would have worked much better the other way around.
Anyway; why did you come in the MSF camp? For Gournay.
Your final objective is Balladur. By virtue of his possible link with Balladur, Gournay was your primary target in the camp.
Talking to Lana is nice and far from a waste of time. The tidbit about the American with the German name proves it. But the primary objective was Gournay. Kim should have made sure he was there for the chat with Gournay. Letting Luddite handling Gournay alone is similar to having Ronin focus on a minion while Kim is stuck with Captain N'Gambe during a fight. IMO at least.
Same for the bugs. Why bug the laboratory as a primary objective? I understand why Luddite wanted to bug the lab: that's where the TB is. It wasn't a bad idea at all. But it was secondary. Gournay was the primary target. You should have wanted to bug his office, his car, his bloody cell phone if it was humanly possible. Once this is done you can worry about the lab.
Sadly, your cover has been blown before you could bug anything.
What I mean is that you didn't make bad tactical decision in the camp, but you lost focus of what was most important. Or perhaps you never fully appreciated it.
Once Gournay was taken care of, all the other stuff you did (or wanted to do) would have been perfectly valid secondary objectives.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any of you keep informed about international news? There has been several scandals recently concerning humanitarian workers who abuse their position, exchanging their services and favors in exchange for various commodities, most notably sex.
There has even be a few reports of cases of pedophilia in refugee camp and other similar locale. Of course, honest humanitarians are not very fond of their crooked brethren.
Knowing this, do you now better understand Lana's reaction to Kim's sexual innuendos coupled with a comment about how he was here for more than work?
One more example of a situation where a skill check alone cannot salvage a bad premise. I'm not trying to say that Kim should have known better! I knew this was going to be quite obscure. But I must say that I found the qui pro quo quite funny!
As a matter of fact, this is the reason for Lana's disgust toward Gournay.
I'm just sharing this info so you understand what happened behind the scene.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any questions or opinions?
PS: I don't mean to put down anyone with this thread. I'm just sharing observations and opinions.
I might as well give you some thoughts. Read carefully, there are a lot these. And don't take anything personally! If something sounds insulting or demeaning, it's because I have yet to edit corectly. I just want to share observation.
A lots of these comments directly concern Luddite and Tokiwong. They may sound like critics, but I want you to know that I highly value their contribution to the game. They have both done much to advance the story.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mission can still be salvaged if you remember the objectives.
Find Balladur. If you can't, find what he was doing here.
Here's a clue; Balladur ain't in Binga anymore. He left as soon as he arranged the hit on Jeff Neilan. Confronting him is left for a future serial if you survive this one
. How could you have known this? You couldn't, but you could have guessed it. I feel I left a few clues; the fact that he knew that he had been spotted by Neilan and must have wanted to relocate as fast as possible, for example, is the most obvious. There also have been clues as to the method that he must have taken to leave the area secretly. Anyway that's not important right now. I'm telling you this to make amend for the fact that some of your problems might come from your lack of familiarity with my MO. At least one of my P&P player is reading this and he picked up on most of the clues I left. This tells me that being used to my style has some importance.
Okay, so two persons will have info about the intents of Balladur: N'Gambe and Gournay. You know that Balladur met the captain from one of his soldiers. You know that Balladur met Gournay because of what Kim extracted from Lana. Remember: Gournay met ''an American with a German sounding name'' yesterday. Read about it in the Lion's Share thread. That's clearly Balladur under his Fuller alias.
Get at least one of them. Get him to talk. Get the hell out of here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why this mess?
1-Gournay is indeed linked to Balladur.
2-Being involved in something most likely illegal, he's somewhat paranoid. He didn't buy Luddite's story. He has a good sense motive skill as hinted by the fact that he's a good poker player. He also has a good enough Bluff that he didn't show his emotions to Luddite. He has +7 to Bluff and +6 to sense motive, for the record. I rolled better than Luddite in both skills during the interview. Secretly, of course. He was helped in his sense motive by the lack of credibility of Luddite's bluff. More on that later.
3-Luddite told Gournay that he had met Beaujolais. Gournay contacted Beaujolais. He easily learned that Luddite lied thoroughly to him.
4-Gournay called N'Gambe. Yeah, of course they're linked!
5-N'Gambe isn't stupid. He knows about the team that screwed his hit on Neilan. He knows that there likely is one Asian man in the team. That's the only info CPG sent back before being captured. He knows the assistant of the Red Cross envoy is Asian. He knows there are supposed to be more assistants. A few call suffice to discover you sleep at the goody lodge, are a group of 6 and use two jeeps. There happen to be 4 white boys with a jeep who were snooping around the barrack earlier today. At the time it was assumed they were looking for sex and drugs, like all the other white boys. But their behavior takes a more sinister hue to N'Gambe when he gets the call from Gournay.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Pizza Syndrome
The bluff skill is about sounding confident and sincere. But the lie itself is still most important. If it is hard to believe, a substantial bonus will be applied to sense motive. If it is impossible to believe, you're screwed.
Here is the Pizza story; I was running Shadowrun. The adventure was leading to a few bad guys in an apartment. A player with a good negotiation skill (the bluff of SR) decided to trick them.
He walked to the door and rang the bell. When the interphone asked what it was about he said: ''I'm the pizza guy, got a delivery for you''.
He then rolled his dice expectantly. I didn't care about the results, though. The bad guys in the apartment hadn't ordered a pizza! If at least they had taped the phone and waited for them to actually order something...
The moral; The skill ain't everything. If you walk up to me and try get on my good side by pretending to be a friend of my brother, you'll fail. You can give me a Robert de Niro caliber performance, you'll still fail. I don't have a brother. End of the story.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does the Pizza Syndrome relate to this game? Thankfully, no one came up with Pizza caliber bluff!
There were still two bloopers:
Luddite; You hadn't met Beaujolais. Once you bluffed that you had, Gournay was one phone call away from finding out that you lied. And he did make that phone call...
Kim; You haven't been to Montreal. You shouldn't say to a Montreal native that you spent a lot of time in her city when that's not true.
Don't feel bad, just take notes. Remember that these are the sort of things I exploit.
Rules of thumb of a good lie:
1-Stay as close to the truth as possible.
2-If you have to invent something that is completely false, make sure that your target knows less about the subject than you do.
For example, if you know that the target lives in Montreal, you should pretend to live anywhere except in Montreal!
3-If you invent something, make sure it can't be easily verified.
This last rule only apply if you don't want the target to find out you lied in the immediate future. Sometime they only need to believe you for a few minutes. Sometime you actually want your target to verify your bluff!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
While I'm at it; Luddite said that Beaujolais warned him about how much of a card shark Gournay is. If you remember, I wrote once about how Beaujolais and Gournay sometime ran card scam together(in Atlantic City), pretending that they didn't know each other and then working together to rip off the other players, rounders style.
Well, the bottom line is that Beaujolais is unlikely to have warned anyone about his friend's skill at poker. It's not the sort of thing you do when you are a card shark yourself. That's why Gournay benefited from an additional +5 to his sense motive check.
Am I pushing it? Well, that's the sort of tiny detail I excel at.
The safe thing would have been to stick to a simple fact; You're not supposed to know about Gournay therefore you don't mention him until his name come up from an outside source.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to locate Gournay, then? Many tactics were possible. As a matter of fact, the tactic Luddite employed could have worked, but it depended on having a very good bluff skill.
The simplest thing to do was simply this: Gournay is French, a senior staffer and roughly 60. You knew these informations. It was enough to simply look him up in the camp. In fact, that's what I assumed you'd do and that's why I was pushing so hard for a visit of the tent area. During the ''interviews'' with the field personnel, it would have been easy enough to locate him. Then you could turn on the charm without ever having to do a risky bluff about having met a friend of his.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kalashnikov Syndrome
It comes from the same player who developed the Pizza Syndrome!
Once upon a time, a team of shadowrunners ran a very muscled black ops. Then it was evac time.
Two members of the team were crossing the border with false papers. They hoped to catch a train. One of the player doesn't wish to get rid of his AK-97 (futuristic AK-47). He wanted to hide it somehow and get it past the custom agents.
His logic: If things get ugly, I want my AK-97.
My logic: Things WILL get ugly. They will find the AK-97!
Can you figure out the moral?
It doesn't seriously apply to anything you've done yet. Just thought I'd share.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Focus
I must say I was suprised by the fact that Luddite was professor and Kim the assistant. It would have worked much better the other way around.
Anyway; why did you come in the MSF camp? For Gournay.
Your final objective is Balladur. By virtue of his possible link with Balladur, Gournay was your primary target in the camp.
Talking to Lana is nice and far from a waste of time. The tidbit about the American with the German name proves it. But the primary objective was Gournay. Kim should have made sure he was there for the chat with Gournay. Letting Luddite handling Gournay alone is similar to having Ronin focus on a minion while Kim is stuck with Captain N'Gambe during a fight. IMO at least.
Same for the bugs. Why bug the laboratory as a primary objective? I understand why Luddite wanted to bug the lab: that's where the TB is. It wasn't a bad idea at all. But it was secondary. Gournay was the primary target. You should have wanted to bug his office, his car, his bloody cell phone if it was humanly possible. Once this is done you can worry about the lab.
Sadly, your cover has been blown before you could bug anything.
What I mean is that you didn't make bad tactical decision in the camp, but you lost focus of what was most important. Or perhaps you never fully appreciated it.
Once Gournay was taken care of, all the other stuff you did (or wanted to do) would have been perfectly valid secondary objectives.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any of you keep informed about international news? There has been several scandals recently concerning humanitarian workers who abuse their position, exchanging their services and favors in exchange for various commodities, most notably sex.
There has even be a few reports of cases of pedophilia in refugee camp and other similar locale. Of course, honest humanitarians are not very fond of their crooked brethren.
Knowing this, do you now better understand Lana's reaction to Kim's sexual innuendos coupled with a comment about how he was here for more than work?
One more example of a situation where a skill check alone cannot salvage a bad premise. I'm not trying to say that Kim should have known better! I knew this was going to be quite obscure. But I must say that I found the qui pro quo quite funny!
As a matter of fact, this is the reason for Lana's disgust toward Gournay.
I'm just sharing this info so you understand what happened behind the scene.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any questions or opinions?
PS: I don't mean to put down anyone with this thread. I'm just sharing observations and opinions.
Last edited:
I think I will at least put down what I was thinking on a few points, but not realy to start an argument.
Well I had a few ideas about this. Hopefully I was going to make my cover meeting with Beaujolais seem quick and impromtu. I though I mention that we meet breifly in the halls while between other meetings. The idea is something that would of been vague and poossilbey easily forgoten
Also I was hoping on doing something to intercept any communication between Beaujolais and Gournay. Hence asking for computer access. I was hopping to set something up to intercept email. I was hoping on the 7 hour time difference to that Beaujolais would not respond so quickly, either by answering a call at 2 in the morning or checking his email in the moring.
Once again I was hoping for a little more time to act.
Now that I think of it, I should of forged the E-Mail to say the meeting happened. If only to add another 24 hours to the lie.
This was my gamble that he would of. Or encourage that I should play him so I could get fleeced. The comment "Loose your shirt" was supposed to be one of those, "He is not that good, just thinks he is." So could of come up in casual conversation. Not that he was a card shark.
This I agree, mostly, we lost focus. I was trying to get Lana to mention Gournay. As for the local cover. It is easy for my character to play a math geek. However smart enough to know the limits of his own socail skills. He had a more "human" assistant to speak english. (as it were) Also there is the age thing. It was next to little bluff for my character to be teaching. Kim's chacter age would still put him graduate or a post-doc program. But not at a professorship, unless he was realy good.
Once again. Time. I though I would of had more. Bugging the Lab was my secondary objective. I thought I had some time before confronting Gournay. I was hoping on catching some "Questionable" actions by Gournay, (or even others) and then use that as an excuse to drag Gournay away.
This is where we could of used a third B&E or at least "stealthy" person in the group. Heck, even Kareem acting as The driver could of played the greese monkey and be left alone to wonder the camp a bit.
Now, lets see if Gournay is going to be around at all after this incident.
-Luddite
Well I had a few ideas about this. Hopefully I was going to make my cover meeting with Beaujolais seem quick and impromtu. I though I mention that we meet breifly in the halls while between other meetings. The idea is something that would of been vague and poossilbey easily forgoten
Also I was hoping on doing something to intercept any communication between Beaujolais and Gournay. Hence asking for computer access. I was hopping to set something up to intercept email. I was hoping on the 7 hour time difference to that Beaujolais would not respond so quickly, either by answering a call at 2 in the morning or checking his email in the moring.
Once again I was hoping for a little more time to act.
Now that I think of it, I should of forged the E-Mail to say the meeting happened. If only to add another 24 hours to the lie.
This was my gamble that he would of. Or encourage that I should play him so I could get fleeced. The comment "Loose your shirt" was supposed to be one of those, "He is not that good, just thinks he is." So could of come up in casual conversation. Not that he was a card shark.
This I agree, mostly, we lost focus. I was trying to get Lana to mention Gournay. As for the local cover. It is easy for my character to play a math geek. However smart enough to know the limits of his own socail skills. He had a more "human" assistant to speak english. (as it were) Also there is the age thing. It was next to little bluff for my character to be teaching. Kim's chacter age would still put him graduate or a post-doc program. But not at a professorship, unless he was realy good.
Once again. Time. I though I would of had more. Bugging the Lab was my secondary objective. I thought I had some time before confronting Gournay. I was hoping on catching some "Questionable" actions by Gournay, (or even others) and then use that as an excuse to drag Gournay away.
This is where we could of used a third B&E or at least "stealthy" person in the group. Heck, even Kareem acting as The driver could of played the greese monkey and be left alone to wonder the camp a bit.
Now, lets see if Gournay is going to be around at all after this incident.
-Luddite
Okay, this is what I would like to do after our little combat at MSF. If there is a serious flaw, let me know.
First off, Lana will suspect/know that we are not just ordinary Red Cross workers. So we should present ourselves as people who think there is a lot more going on with this TB Epidemic and Gournay is the key.
Hopefully she will be able to summon Gournay to her office where we can question him. My guess is that we can show that Gournay called N'Gambe (I have the phone numbers from CPG) and that N'Gambe called the guards. The numbers should be similar.
in otherwords : Number the Gournayed called == Number that called the Guards on us.
Now if Gournay has fled durring the shooting then we have two options. Go and chase him, since he would not have much time since the gun shots to get to his car and leave.
Or get Lana's permission to search his office.
Or both. After dispaching these two guards, Kim should run to the Jeep, (since he either has the keys or they are in the Jeep) and make sure Gournay does not go far. Luddite will stay back and talk to Lana to get into Gournay's office.
My question is how much "bluff" is saying something like :
"Okay we are not realy from the Red Cross. Who we are from is best kept unknown to you, for now. We are investigating this strain of TB, and we think there may be some criminal activity around it. However we don't have any proof, just speculation. Hence the undercover job. The main thing we are here to get to the bottom of the TB Epidemic (True). And we think Dr. Gournay may be tied to this in some way (also True)."
My hope is to play on Lana's desire to figure out this TB problem.
So Considering our current dispossion with Lana, and the events, is this possible for my character.
Or would it be better if I gave chace to Gournay, and have Kim do the talking, and seaching of office.
-Luddite
First off, Lana will suspect/know that we are not just ordinary Red Cross workers. So we should present ourselves as people who think there is a lot more going on with this TB Epidemic and Gournay is the key.
Hopefully she will be able to summon Gournay to her office where we can question him. My guess is that we can show that Gournay called N'Gambe (I have the phone numbers from CPG) and that N'Gambe called the guards. The numbers should be similar.
in otherwords : Number the Gournayed called == Number that called the Guards on us.
Now if Gournay has fled durring the shooting then we have two options. Go and chase him, since he would not have much time since the gun shots to get to his car and leave.
Or get Lana's permission to search his office.
Or both. After dispaching these two guards, Kim should run to the Jeep, (since he either has the keys or they are in the Jeep) and make sure Gournay does not go far. Luddite will stay back and talk to Lana to get into Gournay's office.
My question is how much "bluff" is saying something like :
"Okay we are not realy from the Red Cross. Who we are from is best kept unknown to you, for now. We are investigating this strain of TB, and we think there may be some criminal activity around it. However we don't have any proof, just speculation. Hence the undercover job. The main thing we are here to get to the bottom of the TB Epidemic (True). And we think Dr. Gournay may be tied to this in some way (also True)."
My hope is to play on Lana's desire to figure out this TB problem.
So Considering our current dispossion with Lana, and the events, is this possible for my character.
Or would it be better if I gave chace to Gournay, and have Kim do the talking, and seaching of office.
-Luddite
Game Control
First Post
That's not bad thinking. Here was the rub;
You under evaluated Gournay's response to the coincidence; Balladur met him yesterday, you meet him today and claim to come from his friend who is the third wheel in the triangle.
More importantly, he made a successful sense motive check. As a result he phoned his friend with his Cell Phone to get an immediate answer, no matter the 7 hour time zone difference.
Beaujolais do not meet so many person that he'd forget he talked to someone about Gournay and poker just yesterday.
Gournay is paranoid, he would have checked anyway, but if you had made a successful bluff check, he would have e-mailed him instead. This would have given you more time, probably until tomorrow morning.
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The +5 bonus to sense motive; In retrospect, you are right! I was too harsh. Overall, you didn't behave like someone who had been really warned away from playing poker with Gournay. Hey, you were willing to play a game.
If it makes you feel any better, you failed the Bluff check fair and square, the +5 to sense motive didn't influence the result.
I'll give such matter more thoughts next time, thanks for pointing it out.
You know, in P&P you probably could have mentionned these sort of things before making the check. I think in the future, when you are working on these kind of assumption you probably should talk about them in OOC. I'm not omniscient and sometime I just don't think about all the angles of a situation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
About Kim: I didn't mean he should pretend to be a professor! He is indeed too young. I just meant that he should be pretending to be in charge while you pretend to be his assistant. Think about Lana; she's young and in charge. Kim could have held a similar position at the Red Cross.
Heck, his idea of being a priest linked to the Red Cross wasn't half bad. Just wacky enough to be the sort of thing a superspy would do. And exactly the sort of things that make for a good story!
I must say I was a little disapointed when it didn't happen. Of course I didn't show it; the wonders of internet.
You under evaluated Gournay's response to the coincidence; Balladur met him yesterday, you meet him today and claim to come from his friend who is the third wheel in the triangle.
More importantly, he made a successful sense motive check. As a result he phoned his friend with his Cell Phone to get an immediate answer, no matter the 7 hour time zone difference.
Beaujolais do not meet so many person that he'd forget he talked to someone about Gournay and poker just yesterday.
Gournay is paranoid, he would have checked anyway, but if you had made a successful bluff check, he would have e-mailed him instead. This would have given you more time, probably until tomorrow morning.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The +5 bonus to sense motive; In retrospect, you are right! I was too harsh. Overall, you didn't behave like someone who had been really warned away from playing poker with Gournay. Hey, you were willing to play a game.
If it makes you feel any better, you failed the Bluff check fair and square, the +5 to sense motive didn't influence the result.
I'll give such matter more thoughts next time, thanks for pointing it out.
You know, in P&P you probably could have mentionned these sort of things before making the check. I think in the future, when you are working on these kind of assumption you probably should talk about them in OOC. I'm not omniscient and sometime I just don't think about all the angles of a situation.
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About Kim: I didn't mean he should pretend to be a professor! He is indeed too young. I just meant that he should be pretending to be in charge while you pretend to be his assistant. Think about Lana; she's young and in charge. Kim could have held a similar position at the Red Cross.
Heck, his idea of being a priest linked to the Red Cross wasn't half bad. Just wacky enough to be the sort of thing a superspy would do. And exactly the sort of things that make for a good story!
I must say I was a little disapointed when it didn't happen. Of course I didn't show it; the wonders of internet.
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Game Control
First Post
Luddite said:
This is not even Bluffing! No lie that I can see.
This calls for the diplomacy skill; you are trying to get Lana's help. It can be done.
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Game Control
First Post
Luddite; Do you have a pistol? You could use your last 1/2 to draw it.
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Kareem_Amirr
First Post
My thoughts:
I thought we WERE doing a decent job of finding Balladur. I at least figured it would take a couple of days, so no real sense hurrying as fast as possible. We were reconoitering the barracks to make a raid at night, and Luddite was trying to milk Gournay for information. Also, this is a spy game, where things are supposed to go wrong.
Hell, I'm having fun, although Kareem thinks there should be more carchases, gunfights, and explosions.
I thought we WERE doing a decent job of finding Balladur. I at least figured it would take a couple of days, so no real sense hurrying as fast as possible. We were reconoitering the barracks to make a raid at night, and Luddite was trying to milk Gournay for information. Also, this is a spy game, where things are supposed to go wrong.
Hell, I'm having fun, although Kareem thinks there should be more carchases, gunfights, and explosions.
Game Control
First Post
As a rule of thumb you can be sure that it will never take a couple of days to achieve an objective.
If you are not making fast progress, be certain that I'm working overtime to find a plausible way to make your life... entertaining.
That's metagaming knowledge, but you are welcome to base your planning on it!
If you are not making fast progress, be certain that I'm working overtime to find a plausible way to make your life... entertaining.
That's metagaming knowledge, but you are welcome to base your planning on it!
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