/srg/ Shadowrun General- Down Down Down To Goblin Town Edition

Don't mind me. Shhh.

Does anyone know where to find good succinct description of the Shadowrun setting I can shove at my players so that I don't have to force them to read the setting information in the rulebook until their eyes bleed? I want to help them get some character concepts in mind without violating players union laws in the process.

D&D in a futuristic capitalist wasteland.

How would you feel if you found out that one of your teammates has attached rail mounted shotguns to all of your swords, knives, and knuckledusters?

shadowruntabletop.com/missions/background/

Ditch anyone that's too much for.

what a shotty thing to do to someone

i'd respond by attaching bayonets to each of his firearms (even the pistols, bows, and heavy weapons).

And thus, the prank war began.

>window
>in the middle of the building
>not even connected to a wall

>in response to the bayonetting of his guns, he attaches guns to all of your every day objects
>you do the same
>soon, it requires high level gymnastics rolls to escape from the house of blades/house of guns.

In the 2010s-2030s, civilization basically collapsed globally. VITAS killed 25% of the population. Then after the Great Ghost Dance war the USA crumbled, new nation states rose from it's ashes.

Corporations got extraterritorial status and took over. Huge regions on the interiors of multiple continents were abandoned, cities were razed, and population losses left vast swathes of uninhabited urban decay.

Magic returned to the world, some people goblinized, some people started being born as elves and dwarves, and a new disease HMHVV is turning people into ghouls and vampires.

The Matrix replaced the internet and is totally pervasive throughout all daily life.

Shadowrun is set during a time after the various apocalypses, where the world is building itself into something new, on the ashes and rubble of what used to be. You are a Shadowrunner, and you are a deniable asset for hire in the wild west of the new power politics.

It turns out that people don't go all Mad Max when the world collapses. They figure out how to survive and rebuild. And someone always gets rich on the opportunities that present themselves in such situations.
You can also throw in stuff like Deus/Matrix crash 2.0, Aztlan-Amazon war, Shedim, Chicago has been nuked, NYC leveled by earthquake and is now MDC ect but I'd stick to the main points. They can figure the rest out.

>run goes bad
>you escape to your Puyallup safehouse
>you seal the door, activate the wards, and prepare to hide out for a few weeks until the heat dies down
>you pull the cord for the lightswitch, your finger catches on a Agent Special's trigger
>in the muzzle flash you take in everything
>your burner commlink is taped to a gun
>your ruthenium polymer cloak is woven through guns
>your soyrations each have a bullet embedded within
>your trid station is replaced with a flashlight and gun shadow puppets
>the timed lock on the hatch doesn't open for two weeks

I am going to lose my sides if this continues, anons

youtube.com/watch?v=0rIgIVKVbrw

Shadowrun explained by the creator of rick and morty

>you get hungry after not eating for an entire day
>go to drawer for utensil for soup
>see pic related

oh my god

>you wake up in a streetdoc's clinic
>your sides have been replaced with guns
>you must spend thousands of nuyen getting new sides that won't set off every alarm in the city when you walk around
>bladeguy refuses to apologize
>you go on a dramatic run
>you get pinned down by corpsec with bladeguy
>he's bleeding out
>it's only a few seconds until the assault cannon comes to bear and shreds you both
>he looks at you
>"I'm sorry"
>presses failsafe button on his commlink
>your sides open up
>concealed implanted guns fall out

>having yet not adjusted to this new blade/gun world, your instincts kick in and you reach for some gauze

new runner here, i'm having trouble picturing how a DNI works.

You need a datajack, then you need to plug into things the things you wish to interact with? can it work wirelessly?

is there anyway to achieve a DNI without a datajack?

In 5E, your datajack has full wireless functionality, as well as a built in data cable for more secure connections (I think). The alternative is a 'trode net, which can be built in to a helmet or headband. It transmits the signal to your brain without the need for an implant.

I would watch this sitcom

Sweet, I've got my bearable length, my tl;dr and my audio. Thanks!

>running premade adventures
Nothing wrong with that.

>ywn get a Shadowrun sitcom
>ywn get a Shadowrun tv show or movie of any kind

Saturday Morning Shadowrun when

When a studio thinks that the wealth of potential stories in Shadowrun is worth the cost of licensing it (including not having control of the IP, which is a big thing for studios) and the fact that normies and even a lot of nerds think it's ridiculous and would dismiss it out of hand.

So when pigs freeze over.

It seems like a pretty good vehicle for cheesy urban fantasy shows. I feel like Syfy or CW would eat that shit up if they got a good (or "good") pitch

The problem with those shows is that they have no budget. They can get away with it on Lost Girl by having everyone look human and wear street clothes 95% of the time, and sprinkle in some CGI when they need to and the budget allows. Similarly, stuff like Farscape stays profitable by having a small cast and a contained set, where they can weight the budget towards the start (making the set and all the prosthetics) and keeping it minimal after that initial investment, recycling the same rubber masks every other cheap sci-fi show uses.

To do Shadowrun right you need a budget that accommodates heavy amounts of prosthetics and costuming to make orcs and trolls (the elves and dwarves would need a bit to, but not much, and the other metas are way beyond even thinking about), to do all the cyberware, and to come up with the future-street dress, plus all the money for doing magic CGI, plus money for doing any technological CGI like having AR ads or showing the hosts, plus a variety of sets that are more complicated than abandoned warehouses in Hamilton.

It would be either way beyond the budget of Syfy and CW, or incredibly limited in scope and cheap-looking. If I could I'd make a 6-8 episode miniseries with a $60 million budget, but I think that's why I don't run a studio.

So I wanted to run a runner idea pass some anons, an idea I had when I was drunk...which I still am.

So a young girl steps on a landmine, but a shitty one that some street punk set up. Or an IED hit her and her parents car or something. So now she has 4 cyberlimbs and other medical work. A small amount of essence left. Runs shadows to help pay for augments, doesn't care too much for human life, chance to kill fucking street scum for cash.

Can I pick up outspoken prejudice against gangers [specific group] negative quality?

I would say yes. Are you going to go with In Debt [some ludicrous high number] to represent cyberware bills?

That could be cool.

Not sure if Prejudice would count for gangers, I always thought it would be for Trolls or SR!Stormfront.

This is a good idea.

Maybe her family's car was hit a booster gang and that particular gang is the focus of her prejudice?

That's a good concept, and playing a loli is always commendable. Godspeed, user.

Yes? I'm not sure how much of a flaw that would be unless she lives and works in or next to the gang's turf, and could get her into trouble.

I'm more concerned that she's going to have to buy a lot of cyberlimb replacements as she grows up.

the prejudice can be broad (all gangars or whatever) or narrow (a particular gang), it just depends upon how much karma you want

Hormone treatment to stop growth, so that she doesn't outgrow her ware. Boom, permaloli.

>perma body = 2
>perma strength = 2

>I'm more concerned that she's going to have to buy a lot of cyberlimb replacements as she grows up.
Good character motivation. Has to earn enough to pay off the interest on current limbs and enough to get bigger versions.

Or trying to kill the person who holds her note to get out from under.

Datajack, Trodes, Implanted Commlink and Control Rig all have DNI.

Most of DNI/Wireless deals with that character's Personal Network. It's one of those things that should of been better explained and termed

I forgot that negative quality, does it give me actual nuyen or is it just plot point that the corps have me on some stupid high interest plan
Perhaps that could be covered in the horrid predatory Corp medical plan
I hadn't thought of being a loli just had that pic laying around.
Would the constant treatment be price worthy versus changing into the final limbs at 18-20 yrs old?

>Razorloli has increased to age 18
>Razorloli has evolved into Giant Razorloli!

They are probably able to do it permanently in the future. Depending on how young she is, she might end up needing 3-4 replacements for all her chrome, and that's a huge monetary investment. Maybe her parents made the decision for her, or maybe she made the decision herself out of desperation.

In Debt is in Run Faster- for every karma point, it's 5k nuyen. You owe all the money you borrowed, plus 50%, with that amount increasing 10% monthly until it's paid off.

That's bank robbery motivation.
Perhaps save up money from jobs until I have enough to fund our team to go steal a ton of incan Nazi gold bars that aztechnology has hidden in a vault somewhere.

>Running against the azzies
Really eager to lose the rest of your body, huh

In Debt leads to a lot of people looking for a big score. Just remember to pay your minimums before the legbreakers visit.

>If the character misses a monthly payment, which has to be at least the interest for the month, they take 1 box of Physical damage for every 20,000 nuyen they owe. This can’t be resisted and can’t be healed until they pay their minimum as their friendly neighborhood lender sent the appropriate message and then leans on them until they get their money.

Nice pic, needs more black and yellow tho :^)

Aww is baby scared that they are going to turn you into some kind of meat puppet.
How about you keep taking your safe jobs with your safe nuyen while we go out for a chance at that retirement score.

Or die horribly....chances are we will die horribly even if we play it safe. Might as well be foolish then

But you're not going to get to retire. You'll spend a year underground avoiding notice and letting the trail go cold, two more laundering the money safely, 8 months on a beach in the Caribbean League, then your heart gets ripped out with ritual magic.

The reason the Azzies have such a shit reputation is that they do not let things lie. At least Zero Zones end, the Azzies will hunt down and butcher anyone who has wronged them in the shadows, even if it takes a decade.

That part of the quality is fucking retarded. Nothing should ever happen without player input.

Just cover your tracks well, then.

That's why it's got to be the perfect heist.

And because no one in their right mind would even think about it, is why it would work

You had the input of choosing it. If you like your kneecaps, don't take the loan.

You do have player input. The player said that they wanted the quality, the player chose not to pay their premiums, the player pays the price.

It's like taking Extreme Common Allergies (Pollution) then complaining when you can't go outside without a hazmat suit.

You know what I meant. A player should always be given a chance to resist, no matter how much he or she is in debt. How the hell sre the legbreakers even going to find the runner?

No, they shouldn't, because players are smart and the GM has better things to do than spending session time devoted to hunting down the character. In Debt is a negative quality; "free nuyen, plus I get sessions devoted to my character outwitting the debt collectors" is a positive quality.

You take abstract damage to make the quality actually cost you and encourage you to pay your damn bills. If you don't like it, don't take the quality, and if you still want the money work out a payment scheme in game with the GM.

They took a material sample as part of the debt plan, and now have a wagemage toss magic at your blood if you don't cough up the cash
They built some kind of weirdass electroshock device into your body when you were on the table
Just make something up, it doesn't matter what.

You can resist ritual magic like normal. And ritual magic uses up the sample when it's cast.

Actually, gree nuyen and dedicated sessions to the character outwitting the debt collectors sounds about right. Same for the wanted quality.

>technicalities
Look, it's some kind of stupid azzie bullshit. This is why you shouldn't take loans from people who wear black cloaks. Do I have to think of everything?

I'd like to run it as the sharks show up to actually break your legs and do multiple boxes, but you resist either by fighting, running or your quick wit and make it out with only losing one. The sharks leave after because they art paid enough to deal with this

Now this is a better way to handle it.

Is there any dirt on Salish Shidhe? I can't find too much info on them, whatever I find are snippets here and there. They just seem to good, too eco friendly for the setting.

Also I heard through the grapevine that the group is going to try and renegotiate the run payment in the middle of the run. As the DM I want to give them advice and let them decide if they want to renegotiate or not, but what should I tell them>?

That's my point.

If you listen to System Mastery, they mention Wanted and equivalent qualities, and why they are bullshit. It's not a negative trait for the character, it's a positive trait for the player. Everyone wants to be the main character and get cool moments, and this quality is buying the spotlight.

It's basically a dare to the GM: "I got karma from this, which I spent on other things. Now you have two choices- either you don't pursue the quality, in which case I got free karma, or you do pursue it and I get to be the star of my own little spy thriller. And if you do use it, how far are you going to go? Are you going to pussy out and let me get out of it/reduce the pressure until it's just a little thing in the background (brought out now and then so I can have some limelight), or are you going to follow it through to the bitter end, have all our contacts turn against us for the bounty, and torpedo the game? After all, you're the one who says which NPCs would hear about the bounty, and whether or not they make a play for it. What are you going to do, GM? Are you going to let it slide, or are you going to be unfair and ruin the game over 10 karma?"

In Debt is the best way to handle it, because it gives you the intended advantage (the nuyen) for the established disadvantage (the extended cost and threat of damage) while avoiding the unintended advantage (the spotlight hog). It's a way to get some money- if you want to have a whole campaign based around paying back loan sharks, there's better ways of doing it than a 10-karma quality. might work as a way to play it out without the quality taking over the game, but trying to turn the mechanics into a piece of narrative for the players to twist is a shit idea.

Your advice should be, "You are criminals without steady legal employment, without the possibility of escaping from this life without significant money, and the only thing you have going for you are the references you can get from the people who hire you to do crimes. If you try and fuck over those people by welshing on a deal, you will not get good references, then you get no work, then you sell your holes in some Yak whorehouse to a Crimson Crush troll train gang bang."

You can make much more money by following through with the job, making sure you don't take work you don't think you can stomach, and working another day and the day after that, than you can by wringing out a few extra nuyen from this one job.

Eh the good part is you can have all the antagonists as human mooks especially if you go earlier in the timeline so you can save cash on metas. Make one of the mains a troll and have other trolls only when it matters for his plotline. Throw in some ugly CG and you have a pretty rocking Canadian/Syfy show. This is from a guy who unironically loves Dark Matter

There's nothing wrong with a player getting to be in a spotlight, just as long as he's not in the spotlight all the time. Player has wanted quality and wants to get rid of it? Fine, make him plan a hard run to get rid of the quality. And by hard I mean really fucking lethal. That way it's not free karma, since the player has to face death to get rif of the quality.

The other players can help, and will be the stars in later sessions.

What's a good explanation for a Nartaki to end up in Europe or America as a shadowrunner?

There isn't one. Your special snowflake a shit.

Did it only happen to indians who live in india or did it happen to expats too? (Sorta like how the irish everywhere were more likely to be elves.)
Your character could just be some random 3rd generation immigrant.

They're in the book, I need to figure out how to fenaggle them in somewhere. Like Sasquatch, or Naga.

Though, I was thinking about having a suit and tie wearing Naga would had been SURGEd to have arms being a Mr. Johnson at some point.

There's nothing wrong with the spotlight some of the time, (it's my preferred way to run games) but my point was that Wanted is a 'spotlight all the time' quality.

>The bounty should be worth at least 25,000 nuyen, enough to tempt even one’s own “friends.” The character should have to frequently deal with someone coming for them or finding out about the bounty and using it against them.

It restructures every relationship around that character (does this contact know about the bounty? Might they have found out, and are going to use our relationship to get to him? What about this Johnson, is this all an elaborate set-up? What about the dozens of other NPCs that populate the world we live in, who are almost by definition going to be other people in the shadows, doing their best to make ends meet, who would be tempted by this bounty?). And I doubt that any GM would allow someone to pay 10 karma and have the quality just evaporate; for internal consistency if nothing else, there's going to have to be something else that settles it, whether it's a lethal run or a big RP conversation with whoever is rich enough to spend at least 25,000¥ hunting the character down.

Huh, if people are mixed race do they display traits of both parents ethnicity if they turn out to be human?

If someone is, say, Half-Greek/Half-Japanese and became a Troll, would they display traits of both Satyr and Oni?

*ork

Sorry about that.

>They're in the book, I need to figure out how to fenaggle them in somewhere. Like Sasquatch, or Naga.

That's terrible reasoning. There's a ton of shit in the Shadowrun books, they cover the globe and a variety of different campaigns. You shouldn't try to work a Sasquatch into your Hong Kong corpsec game, or a Naga in the Rhine-Ruhr street scum campaign. Are you awake some nights because you can't find a place for xapiri thëpë in Chicago? Some things are clearly meant for certain settings, like an Indian metatype ending up in an Indian Union (or nearby area) campaign.

Traveling isn't exactly hard in Shadowrun, you know.

I've just never been part of a campaign set in India, and non of my group have ever expressed interest. I got really attached to them when I read about them, and it's just started to really bug me that they made it basically impossible to fit them in literally anywhere but India. They're cool, I like them, and I want to be able to play one at some point in the future, but just can't make it happen without seeming like some kind of turbo-Mary Sue.

If you explain to the goon who has to hold your gun for security reasons that your gun is cursed, and that it may try to escape so he has to watch it closely, would you effectively ruin his day?

He'd likely think you're full of shit, or keep a closer eye on -you-. Or pass it off to another goon he doesn't like very much.

Would it be possible to make an attractive troll for trideo? Something that allows them to not be typecast?

Always going to be one or the other, no in-between shit like in other RPGs.

this is fine.
Now I just need to find a gun that is cursed.

True, but it's unlikely that a metatype that seems to be generated at the Ganges, from Hindus, who are made Brahmin and worshipped as divine avatars, would end up doing B&E jobs for rent money halfway around the world. If you have the money to travel that distance, and that cultural cachet, you're not going to end up in the shadows.

Best reasoning for them is to show up in Southeast Asia, with the National SINner negative quality, on a religious/political mission while sneaking out to do good. It's hard to make centaurs work in the vast majority of campaigns, which are set in cities with their inconvenient stairs, or satyrs outside of Europe, or koborokuru outside of Japan. That's the breaks, there's plenty more metas in the sea.

Yes. Best case scenario, he stops you for a thorough assensing of your person and the weapon, because nobody wants to be the guy who brought in the cursed gun that turned everyone in the lobby into goo. Worst case scenario, he has to arrest you for possessing some illegal magic, and there goes his lunch break to paperwork instead of catching the combat biking highlights. You jerk.

That may be the breaks, but man is it a hard break.

Honestly, the most frustrating part might be the fact that India just doesn't feel very fleshed out in SR. I feel like it's part of the reason people I know feel reluctant to set stuff there. They can't lean on the sourcebooks for cultures they don't know as much about, like Germany or Mexico.

I thought all exotic metavariants had it rough one way or the other, asians especially. Haven't read much on Nartaki, though.

Japanacorp sponsored Metatype Reduction, availabile in cyberware and bioware. Please use as directed. /srg/ is not responsible for loss of respect caused by Metatype Reduction. Check out Chrome Flesh to learn more.

Sure, everybody's different. Not all trolls are the knurled snouty kind, some have much more subdued dermal deposits or smaller horns (EX: Eiger). And there's always cosmetic treatments that can make them that way.

I also hear that folks that are born trolls instead of goblinizing do look better. I guess the transformation is hard on a body.

Ultimately, you just need the CHA.

To put it into perspective, there are approximately 5000 Nartaki, almost all of them are in India, and only along the Ganges. They were almost universally stewarded away to live in temples forever.

There are 35000 Sasquatch.

At this point, I'm barely even sure why the put Nartaki in the rules at all, except to throw India/base human variants a bone.

>nofunallowed.trid