/srg/ - Shadowrun General

>Going against ghouls as rookies

15k a pop is very well deserved for this.
Fucking ghouls are absolutely nasty if you use the infection rolls by the book (= don't even bother trying to pass that roll, except if you burn edge).
Thats really one of those cases where you just apply liberal amounts of grenades and keep flamethrowers on you for close encounters or alternatively monofilament Combat Chainsaws.

Reposting from prev. thread with couple tweaks:

"A mysterious man has been picking up urchins like you off the street, giving you strays a chance at life by setting up an orphanage that takes care of your needs. Now you've been handpicked to pay your dues in the name of your entire group. A man, going by Sikes, has introduced himself as your fixer. You will be running the shadows to keep a roof over your and all the other kids' heads."

What kind of character would you play in this setup? Assume Street Scum Sum-to-8

I would play f4g1n, face of the group. You wish to follow in sensei's footsteps and become a fixer.

Is anyone doing an online campaign? Im new to playing and I cant find anyone irl who is actually playing.

The ghouls weren't that strong basically I just took the basic gang member statline and applied the ghoul quality at them. Also they fought them in waves. First was 3 ghouls, then 2 ghouls + cyber ghoul and at last 2 ghouls + the shaman twins.

My players also had a good line up against them. Dex-based Streetsam/Thief, Adept-Sharpshooter, and a fire mage got the job pretty well done. No pun intended. Normally I would have done the run even a bit harder but since 2 of the 3 players had never played SR, I focused on teaching the rules and worldbuilding.

Look at runnerhub
Its full with awful People though and the local faglords that approve your Char seem to have a hateboner for Move-by-Wire.

Picking ghouls as a first run was my way to teach them not to mindlessly run into every enemy.

Is runnerhub really a recommended option, though? Living campaigns like that are totyally impersonal and don't really let you roleplay in between runs

Depends, is this after you've grown up a bit or are you still basically kids? because that's going to colour the concepts a bit.

I assumed they'd be the oldest when I read it. 13 to 15/16?

Forgot to drop a concept. I'd run a kid with a dog. Animal Empathy and Sprawl Tamer fit under Street Scum. Try to slip a bias for dogs of all kinds in there and have the kid's only social skill other than animal handling be intimidation.

Its better than nothing for some people.
Thats about it.

>13 to 16 y'old sum-to-8

Bit difficult to play a murderhobo with that, but oh well, I'll manage.
Its sorta shitty though, because you really can't justify much combat cyberware with this, so it'll be full magerun.

Troll animal handler.

Where do you guys usually find art to use for your characters?

Eh, that's the wrong mindset. I normally wouldn't go anywhere near critters, but street scum's about being kinda shitty to start. Going all in on magic would totally defeat the purpose of the campaign concept and make me look like a powergaming faggot.

Sure, but I'd push it younger if so. Goblinoid maturity kinda fucks with this concept, doesn't it?

Pornography, mostly

I make it but it's not always good.

I don't. I either rip off some animu bullshit for my character, or find some artwork that fits the setting.

I heard people commission artwork, and while I would do that, I would only do it for a character whom I've been with for a long time, like I've been playing with this fucker for a year at least.

Physically, sure - if that matters. Mentally, they still only have a finite amount of time to sort shit out. It's not like they hit puberty and start liking architecture, soft music, and watching the news.

All this talk of street urchin runners reminds me, how do SINless not all have the Uneducated quality? Aside from the people who lost their identities, how do they know how to do math or read? Do people just set up makeshift schools in the ghetto?

Home-schooling, omae.

Finally a good excuse to crack out my loli builds.

This

>how do SINless not all have the Uneducated quality?
Farm living? Uneducated. Isolated rural upbringing? Uneducated, Uncouth. Street urchin? Uneducated, Flashbacks, Paranoia.

If you're not taking it in Point Buy or Priority/Sum, that's on you. Life Modules make it clear - but also, you're often not playing a child or average person. You're playing someone who made it far enough to be a runner.

Khan academy on the public grid? Keep in mind that the general idea is that runners are people who had the personal drive or circumstances to rise above just being street trash or a wageslave, so it's not beyond the pale that you could pursue your own learning.

14yr old orks are supposed to be pretty much adult physically, so that's a possible option.
Thing is magic's hard to justify too, it's one of those things that tends to manifest around puberty and then take some time to train to control, so unless the GM in this scenario introduces some untrained magic logically the character/s has to be pubescent/post-pubescent, sorry

This is fair enough. I think my idea of a SINless street urchin doesn't allow for a smartphone, let alone some AR glasses or trodes, so that's why I can't picture it.

Couldn't you just fluff up a school of intuitive magic or something for a kid that developed it as a response to living on the streets? Just picking the right spells and a bit of fluff of how they cast makes all those problems go away. They don't need to be hermeticists.

You'd be amazed how interconnected homeless in big cities are. Lots of them have cheap flipphones and use phone trees to let each other know about threats and opportunities, and just to stay in touch.

Multiply that by a setting where 'urban tribe' is a canonical term for organized gangs of kids living in sprawls, and you stand a decent chance of being eaten by devilrats if you sleep alone in an abandoned place, and I see no problem with prepaid commlinks being the norm among even the lower third of the SINless underclass.

I draw it.

>I think my idea of a SINless street urchin doesn't allow for a smartphone
Electronics are cheap in the sixth world, provided you don't want anything cutting edge. Prepaid commlinks come in at 20¥ or 100¥.

>Even the most basic of them includes [...] micro trid-projectors, touchscreen displays, built in high-resolution digital video and still image cameras, image/text and RFID tag scanners, built-in GPS guidance systems, chip players, credstick readers, retractable earbuds, voice-access dialing, textto-speech and speech-to-text technologies, and a shock and water resistant case.

Yes, I can definitely see this now. I was mostly admitting to having a blindspot in how I imagined them. Poor people where I live definitely have smartphones, simply because when you can't really save money you have enough "disposable income" for "cheap" electronics.

Does anyone know where "Working for the People" or the "Working for the Man" come from on the chummers creator on the Karma and Nuyen tab after you create a character?

Does anyone have the picture that was used a whil back in a thread's OP, of a kid holding a knife, hiding around a corner with a dog as someone approaches?

I have figured it out myself, but for anyone interested

> It allows you to spend 2,000¥ at a time, up to 10,000¥ in exchange for 1 Karma each, with a max of 5 Karma per downtime. Or the reverse can be done at the same ratio, turning 1-5 Karma into 2-10k¥. They call it "Work for the People" when you donate your time and money and gain experience out of it. Or "Work for the Man" when you just work for a paycheck and a little part of your soul dies

Trolls live closer to human lifespans than ork ones.

Never think of basic electronics as luxury items, because they absolutely aren't. A cellphone is as much a vital part of someone's everyday items as shoes are, and that's doubly true in the Sixth World.

>Someone actually read the rules
Color me impressed. This isn't sarcasm, I am actually impressed.

What you're describing is basically a chaos mage, what I'm saying is even with that tradition it takes time to learn to that with the timer on it starting at puberty, mages don't come out of the womb casting spells so there's a limit to how young a mage character can be.A Mentor Spirit taking an interest in the character can get around the need for formal training but don't really negate the need for time and practice.

There's Mentor spirits too. Seems like Mentor + Chaos magic would work well enough.

>mages don't come out of the womb casting spells

The thing about SR is that spells all have to be learned via formulae. Being a magic-user at street level is quite difficult, because despite magic being an innate talent it requires a great deal of training to actually do anything. The only one I can think that could develop usable magic with no outside influence is if they were the classic Street Shaman who spoke to the spirits of the city, getting some conjuring skills and knowledge of collecting telesma, but no spells.

Of course Mentor Spirits can help (though iirc they don't directly teach spell formulae to followers), and there is always the local wizgang and their collection of bootleg grimoires.

Not sure if I'm just going senile or something, but this doesn't square with examples I remember of "mages who believe they're psychic" and such.

As of the current edition you can work spells out for yourself using the arcana skill, I mean the formulas have to come from somewhere right?

That's earlier edition stuff, where their weren't really psychics or a lot of traditions just Hermetic and Shamanic (vodou came along later, and wuxing) and there wasn't a formulaic set up to the traditions hermetic elementals and shamanic spirits worked totally differently.

For things like the Psionic tradition, it's a little different. By the laws of magic (which they refuse to acknowledge exist but are nevertheless bound by) you need formulae to learn spells. For them, they are more like mental exercises to focus the power of their mind in specific ways for specific effects.

True, but a kid off the street doesn't have the theoretical knowledge or practical experience to develop spells on their own, especially when it's a lot easier to just grab existing ones.

This just seems wrongheaded to me. The whole point of Shadowrun is that magic comes back to the world and shows us that those legends we thought were bullshit were actually just older than we thought. A self-taught young mage is totally in genre there. It's a bit special-snowflakey, but nothing says you've got to play your runner's magic exactly as the setting info dictates. That's why you get to make up your own school

Is there a pre-established AA or A corp that makes anime? I'm thinking of making some joke ads for in-setting anime, and don't really want to make my own corp up

If you're rated, you have money in something of everything.

The point of those old legends being brought back is because they're useful. The start of hermetics was literally, "Let's do some research and scientific experimentation, and see which stuff from which old books actually works." So you had thousands of very smart, magically capable people trying stuff out, with vast reserves of support staff and money to prop them up and get them going. Howling Coyote and his kind thrived because their institutional memories of ritual and magic were accurate enough to get them started without too much correction. Everyone starts from something, and somewhere.

This is why the Chaos tradition exists: It's for street rats with a dead tree copy of the MIT&T Manual to Practical Thaumaturgy (12th edition) that still has most of the pages, a 39-minute clip from a Schwartzkopf lecture on astral echoes, and the advice of the Shinto priest from two blocks over. They mix and match and create what is to themselves (if not others) a coherent worldview that lets them use magic. But they don't go from zero to 100.

I mean, that might be the more "accurate to the text" read on magic in shadowrun, but I always got the impression that traditions were bullshit. My take is they're the left-brain justifications for what you can randomly pull off, and have nothing to do with reality. You get more magic from delving inside your own conception of it. No amount of shared exercise is going to have a direct effect on that, only cause indirect changes in your own cognition.

...Which is literally Universal Magical Theory, the founding basis behind 4th and 5th edition magic and the reason why hermetics have mentor spirits now, among other things. Congrats, you avoided reading the books and still came to the same position that the writers did between 3e and 4e.

And anyways, that's still sidestepping the whole point. In UMT, traditions aren't bullshit in the sense that they are the strict rules that govern what you can capable of; they are still the founding principles upon which your magic is based. If you believe, down to your soul, that using magic to kill is wrong, you're never going to cast One Less Human. The Chaos Tradition is the kitchen sink of people who don't subscribe to any other recognized tradition.

It's also entirely debatable whether or not UMT is real;
certainly there are gaps that it cannot fill, like any scientific theory,
and in-universe the conversation carries on between academics and practitioners on both sides

I mean there's no point in arguing for how you'd interpret it but I am more on your side. The Traditions are ways in which mages lay a foundation for drawing out mana, in a way that they can actually comprehend. If someone discovers his magical abilities and experiments enough he'll eventually take small steps in learning how to control it. The progression of mages (arcana, formulae and all that jazz) is purely balance pieces. They help us play the game fair and square even though they don't always make sense. Like Essence.

>never actually played shadowrun
>theorycraft/powergame/shitpost on /srg/ (mostly shitpost)
>mfw i finally found a game

Feels good man. What should I play?

And like mass-produced hearing aids being pricier than tactical weapons. Shadowrun has a lot of gamisms

A hypocritical catholic troll named Hallelujah.

Look through every .chum5 you have, and see what still makes you feel excited.

Play a Chromed Out, .2 Essence Troll Street Sam named Teddy, who wears a tactical bear suit. Stack armor, Pain Editor. Become unstoppable.

> I understand the appeal of simple, elegant theories, but simplicity and elegance do not necessarily equal truth. Magic is huge, messy, and complicated. It is not any one simple thing. It is everything, nothing, and all points in between. We would do better to embrace its wondrous complexity than attempt to pare it into simplicity.
> Man-of-Many-Names

Troll animal handler.

Rabbi Goyschilitz, the Jewish Golemetricist. He lives with his mother, is fairly physically unimpressive and is straight out of nazi propaganda. Right down to the Protocols of Zion and the 'intensely sweet, unpleasant smell'.

Just don't tell them you're doing it. All your 'failings' will be written off as a first time roleplayer fucking around, and you can get away with murder. You'll have some fun doing it, get a feel for how it actually plays and have plenty of background personality quirks to touch on to flesh out your character. That way he'll feel more alive, you won't freak out so much and when you do play a 'real' character, you'll have a much better idea of how to do things.

Other than that, try a pizza guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nobody thought to get rid of him, and he's just doing what he's told because he's fucking terrified. That's always fun.

Fummo~

If I wanted a lone star character using a ruger thunderbolt, the easiest way to stat that would be just taking the savalette guardian and renaming it right?

God I loved that thing so fucking much. The fact that Sousuke actually convinced his employers to make a powersuit out of it after fending off a super security guard while wearing it was just amazing. Would love to actually hear someone playing a teddy bear suit wearing runner.

I think that rule is originally from Shadowrun Missions (the organized play they run at conventions).

>tactical bear suit
Cheers, omae, I've been looking for an excuse to post this art.

Either that or a Manhunter. Depends on whether or not you think burst fire is an integral part of the Thunderbolt experience.

>a pizza guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Shoulda known it was a bad day when your girlfriend woke up with you. Shoulda known delivering a pizza in the Barrens would be a problem. Shoulda known it was a bad idea to stop and try to find directions on your commlink. Now there's gunfire everywhere, 6 dudes in balaclavas are getting into your back seat yelling at you to drive, and you're a wanted fugitive.

Can you change casting traditions?

>try a pizza guy
Neal Stephenson pls.

How good, really, are automatics? I'm arming my face and I'm torn between pistols/longarms (for that delicious shotgun and concealability of pistols) or just straight automatics.

And to top it all off, you were covering a buddy's shift.

You weren't even supposed to be here today.

I don't think there's any hard rules for it, not even in Forbidden Arcana and it has hybrid traditions which is basically a product of exactly that kind of circumstance. Be careful about using FA as a reference though, as outside of the qualities it's got some pretty out there stuff, I basically regard it as a book of house rules so for my upcoming game, I said anything from it was a strict ask permission first kind of situation.

There are shot guns that can fire burst fire and even fully automatic so they can compete, main difference is automatics is one skill versus two, with a machine pistol supplying your concealable weapon and an assault rifle for heavy hitting/ sub-machinegun for suppression.

Less Hiro Protagonist, more whiny teenager. Imagine that crew.

Beef Cake, Troll Muscle Machine. 8 feet tall. 300kg. Fists that punch through bunker walls.
Tommy Two Fingers, Mafioso Face. So attractive and persuasive that he's been known to cause even men to pass out at 30 paces as blood leaves their brain. Some implants that allow him to literally grate cheese on his abs.
Sarah Tree-Star, Amerind Shaman. Mystic. Clever. Careful. Might actually be soul bound to some horrible extraplanar monstrosity.
Thomas Dipshit, Teenage Human Pizzaboy. Drives a beaten up Jackrabbit, dates a girl 4 years younger than he is, desperately needs a new pair of underwear.

So Rock from Black Lagoon but even less useful at the start?
>yfw pizza boy becomes a manipulative mastermind

I'm pretty sure that this being Shadowrun, he's going to have a career change to tactical ablative armour for the troll.

>terrified bitchboy
>not adrenaline junkie wimp awakening his latent vices

Hey Yekka with the latest nightly build you're getting crashes when selecting certain weapons like the ultimax carbine.

Hrm. Someone's been naughty with copypasta. Will be fixed for next nightly.

I'm preatty sure he put it together himself
Now equiping a SWAT team with this and busting yakuza hideout was the shit

Where do I find bioware on the Omae v2 character creator?

>offered a place in a one shot
>scenario: we are a team of runners tasked with retrieving some hardcopy blueprints from a safehouse
>minimal social interaction, high chance of combat should we choose going loud over stealth
>talk with the party and end up creating a former game tracker that joined the military and became a sniper
>basically Simo Hayha but with more tech implants
>party was fine with the concept
>GM was fine with the concept
>rest of the party was pretty standard (no deckers though) but geared towards combat (closest thing to a face we had was pretty much Michael Westen)
>meeting with the Johnson goes well and all our characters play nicely off each other
>go over the safehouse plans and pick a route to the objective that allows me to cover them from a nearby building
>we have fun coming up with a complicated plan to blame a third party for the job
>night hits and we move into position
>I ghost into my building, laying sensors and traps as I go
>set up in a position that allows me to see what I need to see
>the GM says I have a clear view
>meanwhile the rest of the team has been busy with their prep
>rigger sent in a spy drone and found the alarm systems and a light security force
>enough to give us a decent fight
>the alarm system was quickly bypassed from the outside and inside
>it's go time

1/2

2/2
>right before we executed the plan, the GM said I saw people rushing around on the inside placing things on the windows
>keep in mind we've detected no signs that they know we're there, or that anyone is even planning to steal their stuff at all
>all of the windows I'm facing go dark
>I wtf, the other players wtf because there was no warning from the drones before
>team breaches and encounters no resistance at first
>one of the street sams goes to a window
>GM says there is a covering stuck to it that won't come off
>combat blade doesn't even scratch it
>sam punches the window with all the fury of a enraged troll wearing armored gloves
>GM says it flexes, absorbing the impact and that the party should move on since even explosives were unlikely to break the windows
>party continues onwards after relaying the info to me
>I confirm and sit there, useless as the rest of the party plays the game
>each round I ask the GM if I see anything
>get paranoid and ask if my sensors spot anything in my area or there is any sign I've been detected
>nope
>the rest of the party clears the safehouse and retrieves the blueprint while I do nothing but banter with them over comms for two hours
>gather my gear and exfiltrate to meet the party at the rendezvous
>again, nothing happens
>meet with the Johnson to hand over the goods
>I'm kind of pissed off so I say I casually get closer to the Johnson
>detonate the decent amount of explosives that I made sure to mention I placed back into my pack
>GM flat out says they don't work
>won't give a reason why
>he finishes the meeting with the Johnson and we end the one shot
>other players message me later and say they'd love to play with me again
>say sure, if I actually get to do stuff next time
>ask what was up with the GM
>they claim they don't know and will get back to me in a few days with answers
>tempted to play no matter what because the group was good and the whole session was solidly put together even if that BS happened

user are you okay, are you okay, are okay user? You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a shit GM.

Holy shit this thing is lacking a ton of things. No bioware, no trodes for helmets, no way to buy skill groups with karma, no way to get ammo in large amounts.

Probably didn't prepare the opposition for a dedicated sniper character, and decided to balance out the run was to completely cut them out of the action instead of something logical, like increasing security presence.

Yeah, I was wondering why the GM didn't mention anything when I presented the character or any time after that. He ran the game smoothly and added a good deal of flavor that made the world feel alive so that's why I'm considering going back even if he acted like that.

A shit GM in a nutshell. Rather than handle the situation like an adult and simply say no the the sniper shtick or even better yet, adapt the scenario to deal with it, they decided to be a cunt.

Ha. I had a GM in a pbp game whose response to the unexpected was similar. You'd think the whole slow, textual nature of the game would mean more time to think their way around anything PC responses, but it generally meant the opposite. Posts would slow to a crawl as they doubled down on railroading.

Sometimes this went hand-in-hand with asking if you wanted to do something different. That didn't mean getting off the railroad or actually getting to do what you were being asked about - just that you could talk about trying to do something different IC, while the tracks looped back to the original direction.