Judge Dredd - IC

[Hemnon]

Mega-City One.... what a Drokkhole!
That's what most would think if they hadn't grown up and lived such a life since in such a place since they were born.

Ya'll are living within just one of many Blocks - massive stratoscrapters that contains a whole citiy's worth of people if one were to compare to the old days before the Judges System, the Mega Cities, etc. 99% or more of people in such blocks never end up leaving it and never have a need to since every need is covered in such places, from whole floors being nothing but shopping malls, entertainment areas (the lawful kind), not to mention actual living areas ranging from ratty one-room apartments with shared kitchen and bathing areas - all the way up to full on luxury apartments the size of potentially whole floors up near the top of a block, a place for only the rich and noteworthy people.
The block all of you live in is called Thot Boward Block and is located in Sector 176 - which is located in the south-western edge of MegWest (West-side of Mega-City One). It's quite the unremarkable block in a sea of equally not-worth-noting blocks. 6th floor is where each of you live, the most basic of basics in terms of living space.
However being recent arrivals (or block natives for a few of you), the local Just Toast gang had taken you all in and ensured living quarters within the block, making your own little gang an affiliate to the bigger one.

Big Billy Bob (A Mob Enforcer) is your contact person for that Gang and he told the three of you yesterday that the higher-ups are seeking a way to get access to the Block's Cit-Def armouries. Of course those higher-ups wants to remain beyond notice of the Law, so they are pushing the work on the mooks of lesser-affiliated gangs. That's not really anything new of course, that's just the norm Here in the year of 2099.

---------------------------

It's finally the day, the day each of you get to do some actual work for one of the bigwig gangs of the block! Big Billy Bob will be arriving at the regular meeting place with some information on what's wanted from the 3 of you - Time to suit up and get ready, 3B (Big Billy Bob) Will be there any moment now... Oh and it'd be a good idea to keep an eye out for any Block Judges of course.... usually there's not many more than a few of those in any block, but it's always when you DON'T expect a Block Judge or some random Street Judge, that they suddenly appear and start waving around those scary guns of theirs.


(please introduce your characters. you're already at the meeting place, specifically kept vague, of course)

[Batcathat]

Art sighed deeply. Going back to gang work was hardly a step in the right direction and once you'd spent some time in the lap of high society, the dirty alleys seemed so much dirtier by comparison. Still... it was better – marginally better – than running short cons on the poor just to stay alive.

Habitually, he corrected the already perfect knot of his tie. Dressing as he did in a neighborhood like this was frankly stupid but Art couldn't help himself, the suit was quite literally all that remained of his past.

He knew little of the people he would be working with and even less of the job itself. Far from ideal but with most people he had ever worked with in the past wanting him dead for one reason or the other, there wasn't really much choice in the matter. He sighed once more.

[Justanotherhero]

The most important thing right now is to not look scared. I mean nobody, will know that you have not pulled off anything like this if you just keep calm and... sweat was building on Ivan`s forehead and shirt when he entered the meeting area and attempted to very much not suspiciously look around 360 degrees which ended up looking well a bit suspicious.

A man in his early twenties wearing a wide hoodie and baggy pants that made him look bigger and tougher than he really was. At least that was the idea.

[SquirrelWizard]

Batty leaned against the wall, arms crossed, as she studied the room, plotting points of escape, points of entry, and noting what could be easily palmable. It was just her, the monkey and the weirdo against the city. Not great odds, but she wasn't sure if getting hitched to the Just Toast gang was exactly the best idea. Brilliant in the sense that they'd have muscle to back them up... assuming 3B thought they were worth it. Not so hot in that, in her opinion, most gangs tended to be aggressively territorial and liberal with violence. Sure, knocking over the Block's Cit-Def Armouries could be lucrative but in her gut she knew that when the Just Toast gang got ahold of those weapons it was going to end up with a Judge breathing down her neck.

She was not known to be impatient but there were many things she could be doing with her time; with a muffled sigh from behind her mask she said, "So are we doing this or did Bob just want us to hang around to brighten up the place?"

[Hemnon]

Just as Emily (Batty) voiced those words, a big overmuscled brute-looking man entered from a small side-door that none of you had noticed beyond casually-glanced-at. That was Big Billy Bob indeed, along with a couple of truely-looking musclebrains as support.

"Like a trio of spugwits like yourselves can brighten up any place. A drokkin' monkeyboy, a freak and a spazz-brainer!" Bob voiced out in a very rude and harsh tone, knowing very well that you three couldn't really do much about it - the pains of being a lesser-gang affiliate.

"Anyways, enough with the pleasantries - here!" He barked and threw a small envelope at you three, not really caring if any of them actually managed to catch it.
"In this envelope are three names. These three people each holds access to a geneprint key that can unlock the Warfare Lockout of the bigger hardware that the Cit-Def folk usually don't have access to... ya know, unless it's wartime. GET THOSE KEYS. Then bring them to Elevator B3-9a and go to the floor mentioned in the envelope. Your payment will be due upon delivery. Got it?" Big Billy Bob said and looked positively BORED and wishing he wasn't here in these lower levels of the block.

[Batcathat]

Art rolled his eyes and held back a snappy but suicidal comeback. Was it really that difficult to remember the difference between apes and monkeys?

He caught the thrown envelope. "I assume our benevolent employers prefer if the theft isn't obvious right away?" He paused and weighed the envelope in his hand, as if it could tell anything about the difficulty of the task it contained. "How much time do we have?"

[Hemnon]

Bob narrowed his eyes at Art, giving him a sort of 'overmuscled piggyface' expression... And then he just looked away and checked his wristwatch.
"Well it's 10 minutes past 11pm...... so that means you have 7 days minus 10 minutes to have delivered the three keys. Both yes and no to your first question - if you get the key stealthily and no fuzz is raised, you can take your time with each.... if you make a drokk'd up mess of it, then you have until a Judge shows up and blows your heads off.... Or you go past scheduled timelimit as said before, and WE blow your heads off instead for being useless spug'eads and curry some Judge favor by taking out a terror cell..." Yes it was clear that if you lot fail this, you get to take the wrap and either a long sentence in an Isocube or executed for resisting arrest/running into Bob and his associates after the timelimit is up.

"Alright now get to it, I'm already bored looking at all of your ugly faces... especially you monkeyboy. All you need to know beyond this is in the envelope." Big Billy Bob said and turned around and left, his two thugs looking evil-eyed at the three of you for a second before they also leave you in that little Regular Meeting Place.

Clock's Ticking.... 11pm in a week is the timelimit. You can go about it However you all wish to approach it.

[SquirrelWizard]

Emily just listened, her disdain hidden by the mask she wore. "Three heists in seven days, that's not a lot of time." She sighed before glancing over at the rest of her crew, "what do we know of the marks?"

[Batcathat]

Art nodded, he didn't enjoy rushing things but Billy didn't seem open to negotiation. "Indeed." He opened the envelope and looked around for a table. The alley was remarkably tableless and a trashcan by the wall seemed like the least disgusting equivalent, so he spread out the contents of the envelope on top of it, careful not to let the trashcan touch neither his skin nor his clothes.

He waved at the other to come closer as he started studying the pads. "Anyone have any suggestions?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

In case you didn't notice, Hemnon posted some info about stuff in the envelope in the OOC-thread.

[Justanotherhero]

Walking to the trash can and still obviously a little bit uncomfortable with the situation Ivan looked at the material provided.

" I can check if I can find out how close these apartments are to one another? And how big they are if maybe other people are living there to?
Maybe if we observe them and know the routes between the homes we could move from one apartment to the next and do it in one day with a plan?"

Ivan looked like something was in his mind after looking at the three pictures, he looked the other two in the eye but decided to say nothing.

[Batcathat]

Art nodded. "Observing them a little is a good idea, regardless of what method we choose." He looked down at the pads, as if that could gain some insight into the minds of the targets. "Personally, I suggest we just ask them nicely for what we need." He paused and looked up at his accomplices. "They are holding the keys for Cit-Def, right? So we show up in uniform, shout about the immediate danger. No time to think about anything but doing their patriotic duty and hand everything over."

[SquirrelWizard]

"That might be a hard sell," Emily added. "Even if it worked, it might lead to alerting the others that something is up. Not to mention that it would kind of give away what we were after and I doubt the judges will be idle while the keys to the armory are being nabbed. Look, it might be better to stage a burglary with as little to do with Cit-Def as possible. Do we know what these keys look like? Maybe we could swap them out for fakes?"

She motioned for the others to come closer, she didn't want to speak loud enough to be overheard by any recording devices in the room and whispered, "Look, do we really want Big Bill to get a hold of these guns?"

[Batcathat]

"If they believe we're legit, we might convince them to keep quiet. I doubt the same is true if the catch us breaking into their homes. We could visit them all and get what we want in an hour, after that it's Big Billy's problem what the Judges do. The marks won't even know they've been had until the real Cit-Def come knocking." But of course the burglar was going to suggest a burglary, just as the con man suggested a con. Hopefully their third partner wasn't an explosives expert.

He shrugged at her final question. "What's one more maniac with big guns in this city? He'll just find some like-minded morons and they'll all blow the hell out of each other."

[Justanotherhero]

Ivan looked at his two comrades.
"I think that might actually work a lot better... then..."
Ivan looked at them.
"Who says that.. that might even really work. That might work really, really great for us."
Ivan looked at the two with questions in his eyes... And decided to go all in trust wise...
Whispering with some fear in his voice and very, very quietly:

:"I think you are right that Big Bill is the wrong guy to have sort of power. But we could... Well, not me.. But... What if we make money not once, but... you know more than once? I mean it wouldn`t have to happen now, but later... Like when some people try to access Cit-Def. And with a warning all our plans would work out? And nobody would complain because everybody knows we conned that poor guy. Even the you know who..."

Ivan paused..
He was thinking about taking Big Bills money for two keys and warning the judge by using Arts very good idea!
So they can wait for Big Bill when he tries to steal the guns.

"And we could Burglar one in the night and directly afterwards in the early morning Con the other? Since he was publicly conned everybody would know about...even people that should not know about ."

[SquirrelWizard]

"Morons with guns tend to use them liberally." Emily said softly, "And we'd likely be caught in the crossfire and I dont see Big Bill as being particularly broke up if some rando frags us. We gotta look out for number ourselves." She glanced over Ivan and added, "Getting paid twice would be nice, but its no good if the Judges just toss our asses into the clink. Hell, might end up in the same drokkin prison as Bill and that will probably be a short experience."

She took the envelope from Art and gave the contents a glance. "I dont think that any one avenue is going to work here. We need to combine our efforts. Sure, I could, in theory, sneak into their residences to get the goods, but there is a lot of things that could go pearshaped. Its why I like to take my time, scope out a mark before making a move. We'll need information on what their residences are like, who is in them, what kinds of security they might have. Might also need to look into how to create a distraction to keep eyes off of us, like sparking a block riot."

[Batcathat]

"My point exactly", Art replied, subconsciously scratching the large scar hidden by his shirt, a memory from the last time a gang questioned his loyalties. "And screwing over the psycho that hired us doesn't seem like a great way of looking out for number one." He sighed. "Let's just steal the damn things and figure out what to do with them afterwards."

"More information sounds good. Why don't we all put our respective skills to use and see what sort of information we can talk, sneak or hack our way into?"

[Hemnon]

Timeskip moments ahoy!!!

------------------------
Feel free to roll for things you wanna do. You can only do one thing per day. So observing a target's daily doings would be one thing to do - you can use any sort of skill use that you want for it, be it hacking stuff to observe them via security cameras, stalking the target, etc. etc.
If you wanna do something else like learn security systems for their living quarters, do it however you feel is feasible with a roll for it.

Once there's only one day left you all MUST do the actual key and biometrics-data stealing. The more successes you've head with each target, the easier it'll be to get a hold of it all. Potentially enough successes might even result in no need for further rolls, etc.

Feel free to do a minor blurb of 'what my character is doing' and then roll in the same post. Unless any of you seriously screw up something, you won't actually be noted unless you do something silly like trying to hack into the Block Judges' sub-sector house or some such silliness.

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So for now Day 1 of 7: What will you do?
Target 1 - Meckwell Dalton [No Data Gained]
Target 2 - Basil Tarque [No Data Gained]
Target 3 - Tilda Swingdon [No Data Gained]

[Justanotherhero]

Ivan figures that he will need local camera control at some point t starting with the first person on the list he starts looking for cameras that cover the persons house and attempts to hack his way into those cameras. For now just to observe.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I declare a exploding roll for that day and will roll my hacking pool:
[roll0]

[Justanotherhero]

Spoiler: Actual roll

Show

Still exploding from the trait young.
(3d6)[1][3][6](10)

[Justanotherhero]

If I understood the trait correctly one die can be added because one was a 6.

(1d6)[6](6)

[Justanotherhero]

Wow i did not expect the dice gods to be so merciful.

(1d6)[5](5)


21 in total if I count correctly.

[Hemnon]

Hacking is a minor extended action, so if you got three or more 6s naturally rolled, then you automatically get 2 'successes', and need 3 to succeed. You did NOT get three 6s rolled tho, so you currently have 1 success.
So please roll once more. since you get to roll every 1-minute.
The Difficulty is Routine, so the TN is 10.
You're currently trying to Patch the Abstract Analogue Kernel in order to gain access to the old, rundown security system within the Block (specifically just the floor of importance, not full system-wide access).
If you gain 3 failures before succeeding, you get a trace put on ya and you can expect Judges to arrive...

[Batcathat]

"...and then he said 'no, I am the slaw', see?"

Everyone around the table erupted in laughter and Art joined them in a convincing but utterly joyless way. Puns were such a... plebeian form of humor.

"That reminds me of something funny that happened the other day. I met...what's her name? Tilda Pingborn? She lives 'round here."

"Tilda Swingdon?", suggested one of his new friends.

"Right. Her. So anyway..."

---

Art spends the first day visiting various establishments close to Tilda Swingdon, getting to know people and attempting to find out as much about her as possible while not actually meeting her. Her habits, her social life, her interests — whatever people are willing to share Art is trying to find out.

Since he's mostly doing this by drinking with and befriending the locals, could I use carousing for this? It's such an odd skill to have that it'd be funny if it's the first one I use, but if it doesn't fit we can just say I'm using bluffing or just a general charisma check, either way it's 3d6.

(3d6)[3][2][4](9)

[Hemnon]

"...and then he said 'no, I am the slaw', see?"

Everyone around the table erupted in laughter and Art joined them in a convincing but utterly joyless way. Puns were such a... plebeian form of humor.

"That reminds me of something funny that happened the other day. I met...what's her name? Tilda Pingborn? She lives 'round here."

"Tilda Swingdon?", suggested one of his new friends.

"Right. Her. So anyway..."

---

Art spends the first day visiting various establishments close to Tilda Swingdon, getting to know people and attempting to find out as much about her as possible while not actually meeting her. Her habits, her social life, her interests — whatever people are willing to share Art is trying to find out.

Since he's mostly doing this by drinking with and befriending the locals, could I use carousing for this? It's such an odd skill to have that it'd be funny if it's the first one I use, but if it doesn't fit we can just say I'm using bluffing or just a general charisma check, either way it's 3d6.

[roll0]

It's not enough to succeed. the TN is 10. So to succeed you either need to activate an Exploit or use a LUC die to add to the dice roll. Are you simply doing some Charismatic fasttalking here or some actual charming? cuz someone with the Charmed Condition TWICE will obey any command or request you make as long as it isn't lifethreatening to themselves or going against their nature. Aka. you can't ask for 40.000 creds and just expect getting it, or for that matter expect a Judge to let you get off from having done something criminal. However, getting some info from some synthi-hol slinging barowner or store clerk... well, in that case it'd be much easier.

[Batcathat]

However, getting some info from some synthi-hol slinging barowner or store clerk... well, in that case it'd be much easier.

Yes, something along these lines. Art is basically just trying to get a general picture (and maybe a useful fact or two) of Swingdon.

As for my less than stellar roll, I don't think any of my exploits can help (though I might be overlooking something). I was about to say that adding a LUC dice seemed like a waste for a relatively insignificant action but I checked your rule post and it says the LUC pool replenishes every game day? Is that true even when we're fast-forwarding like this? If it does, I might as well add a dice since this will be my only day one action, if it doesn't I'll probably just take the failure.

[Hemnon]

Yes, something along these lines. Art is basically just trying to get a general picture (and maybe a useful fact or two) of Swingdon.

As for my less than stellar roll, I don't think any of my exploits can help (though I might be overlooking something). I was about to say that adding a LUC dice seemed like a waste for a relatively insignificant action but I checked your rule post and it says the LUC pool replenishes every game day? Is that true even when we're fast-forwarding like this? If it does, I might as well add a dice since this will be my only day one action, if it doesn't I'll probably just take the failure.

At the start of each game day yes, and you also get a once-a-day free replenishment via a 5 minutes of calm. As well as if you have an Exploit that allows more of these replenishments (although only once a day can an exploit be used to add an additional replenishment. You cannot use 2 or more exploits to gain the effect).

And yes even when fast forwarding. Some actions are extended actions after all that required larger minute intervals or hours of time through more than 1 roll, hence why LUC might be used more often even in these sorts of moments.

[Batcathat]

And I can add a LUC die after I've already rolled? I'm assuming yes since otherwise why bring it up. If that's the case: (1d6)[5]

[Hemnon]

And I can add a LUC die after I've already rolled? I'm assuming yes since otherwise why bring it up. If that's the case: [roll0]

Yes. Certain Exploits also allow you to roll to add AFTER the fact. although such is always stated. LUC dice can always be rolled afterwards to add a little of that 'woops I got that suspicious stare.... but then the joke I made fit right in and no one recalls me actually fishing for information about someone'.

That gives you a successful Basic-Info advantage for Tilda. It'll overall make it easier to succeed the final 'heist'.

Still waiting for justanotherhero to keep on rolling cuz it's an extended roll for his character we still need to finish.

[Justanotherhero]

Under those conditions I will add a Luc dice to my next Hacking Dice Pool.
I hope this allows me to go to 4d6 ?

(4d6)[5][3][4][3](15)

[Justanotherhero]

I think I need one more success to make it work?

If that is the case I will use another Luc in my third minute extended roll:

(4d6)[4][2][4][1](11)