The real Asuka; the only Asuka
- she/her
she/her, 29, low resolution brain goblin, prolonged Cinema-Media-Arts and Polisci undergrad, ongoing Gender Situation. Asuka for short, Asukapaper for long, and Jill for real
Discord ID: asukapaper (they took away the funny numbers, curses)
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So this is a bit of an aside about gm-initiated Night Markets. They are good. They make a lot of dopamine and stupid impulse purchases. The medtech basically reimbursed ten sessions worth of compensated pharmaceuticals at me and had me go to town. This, some body armour with a reduced stat penalty, and an external frame with interface plugs were the results. That’s a surfeit of items I was expecting in the endgame.
Though what happened was the gm sort of used the format over the RAW tables. We were quite established and making a lot of money, but running up on the limits of our purchasing power versus our access, so our options were exclusives in the 1k-5k range. We could have been very silly and bought a biosystem along with an fbc chassis, stipulated we pooled our funds together.
After the fixer haggled things down, I impulse bought the components for a Sanroo Hello Cutie for Vivi, which is kind of like a high spec manstopper-machine-pistol that’s hot pink and plays prerecorded soundbites through a chipmunk filter. I have no clue how tf the machine gun component will be of any use for her. After at least 2000eb in chipware, Vivi could fire the thing at a base of 13. With the gambling required on smg autofire, this isn’t close enough to stably interacting to reliably meeting its range table. I may have to give that thing to another PC, but nobody else can use autofire either. A Militech Perseus, a very heavy pistol that revs up for two attacks a round, was right there but I want for the flashiest most goofy weapon off the shelf because it required a dv 21 streetwise I was feeling manic enough to roll on and it sets off a chain reaction of Wadrobe and Style buffs that replace the need for an investment of six ranks at chargen. What a moment in dystopian crisis capitalism.
This will probably either be the end of a lot of anxious theorycrafting about Vivi, or the beginning of a even more intense ideation
For example, did you know that Maelstrom’s current leader, Warlock (though not their best combatant, that honour goes to Crusher and The Pit), has a handguns base of 15, an hp of 60, subdermal armour, and a pain editor. Vivi Vampira has, after buffs from drugs and gear quality, a handguns base of 14-15, an hp of 60, and subdermal armour. It is clear to me now that I need all her guns roundly at excellent quality, followed by a pain editor to make her about as good as an unhardened boss.
There’s no giving Vivi role abilities (thank god, the rulebook is black and white about Team Members never being subject to things like IP advancement), so thankfully Warlock has an edge in possessing solo 6, however that is a statistical gulph from a kinda mid helper npc and an unhardened boss statline bridged in a skip and a hop
I am posting this here because I think this validates my gm’s contempt towards me being a “combat monster,” but like still not in a way I appreciate. So far the campaign felt like I was getting my face raked on ashphalt for being good at the game, followed by me pushing towards progression to even the odds if not start gaining an advantage with kinds of prog you don’t often get in many games. It’s really exhausting on the whole. This session he wondered why I was terse at the start, and to me it’s no wonder, I’m always on the defensive, until I’m not because unfortunately I’m too stubborn and ingenious for my own good when I’m placed in a pinch, and then something gets engineered to put me back on that losing footing. All the while, I’m building up mechanical power that’s a self fulfilling prophecy as far as ultra minmaxing goes.
I’m just glad I don’t get to see him cranking about me on the Tal server anymore, but maybe I just have to get that off my chest. I’m not thrilled about that because last time I tried giving feedback he was so defensive and bereft of justification it bordered on misogynistic. I really just don’t have the heart to tell him that I’ve been masking that, which I know leads to flashes of anger that’s quite surprising to people (although, I’ve found anyone surprised by me being irritated or even mad tend to ignore how they treat me over long periods of time). On the other hand, this isn’t a supportive person. I’m here because I’m a player he’d “grade highly.” I’m resented because of that same hierarchical mindset.
In the least, I might want to talk to him about his worries that Chisato might dominate the game going forward, now she’s got gear that mitigates what were previously limits I set to balance her against the rest of the table.
… on the other hand, the campaign was never balanced to acknowledge how I tied my hands behind my back in places, so forget it… I might enjoy what I can enjoy from it while it lasts, and take some stomach breathing where I find it stressful. At this point I’m in 3-4 tables other than this one, three of them are for systems other than cyberpunk, and lemme tell you they’re a lot less stressful than the dynamics at play in cyberpunk. Too much pressure is put on the gm, and it can’t imagine the game as anything other than a hostile relationship between gm and player, so it takes so much more work to engender trust than other rulesets. I trust my GM more in my OSR table
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