/srg/ Shadowrun General - Ethics, Codes, & Other Jokes Edition

I don't know if there are Gorilla shifters. Reading this, it sounds like the species is extinct outside of zoos and genebanks.

Salem Wiccans- Not even once.

There's still that -1 penalty on all active tests for 3 weeks, which depending on how often the group runs could span several jobs. Not crippling, but a nice niggling reminder of what you've lost.

I've actually made a couple of Gorilla-shifter characters, although both games died pretty fast.

One was Silverback, an ex-military guerrilla (yes, it's a dumb joke) who got into Shadowrunning after retirement got boring. He used the Bear shifter stats, with a few modifications, such as being able to use properly adapted weapons while shifted. Because a gorilla with an Assault Cannon is awesome.

The second is worse, and the game still might happen. A laboratory ape who was genetically modified as part of an experiment, but ended up awakening as a shiffter and used their newfound intelligence to escape. They got into running to get the money to get by, and took a name from another oddly coloured digital ape... Bonzi.

It could literally be anything. Music is a method, not a specific spell. It's like blood: you can use blood to do a lot of different things. So it is with music.

>The_great_ghost_rave.trid
OR
>90s.btl

I kinda prefer 80s.btl.

Which if you don't know, is this. youtu.be/V67OOERTOEo

Yesteryears_Sprawls.btl
youtube.com/watch?v=l-GrF87b82Q

Well, to not spam to much:
How exactly are BTLs made? What level of equipment and expertise would one need to make them?
And, are there "soft" BTLs, the kind you Slot if you just want a relaxed evening without the addiction part?

Fellow Elves, I have a problem. I believe a mon-keigh in my runner team has almost stumbled onto our system for controlling the lesser metas.

He's been going on rants about the Elven conspiracy for months, but he has found proof. Upon checking it over, he has indeed found some left by a careless member of our society. Unfortunately, I found this out after he posted all this on the Matrix before could remove him and killing him now would be suspicious.

Any recommendations?

>How exactly are BTLs made? What level of equipment and expertise would one need to make them?

All you need is a simrig implant with the security features removed; any halfway competent cybertechnician could do that in an hour.

And 'soft' BTLs are just simsense. The whole point of BTLs is that they are hot simchips, ones that have all the inhibitors removed.

Conspiracy? You mean all those hard-right Tir nationalists shitposting on the Matrix and using those old wargame memes?

You're both delusional drekheads.

>How exactly are BTLs made?
You start from a simsense recording, and then you edit them heavily, way past what the human brains normally receives as imput.

>What level of equipment and expertise would one need to make them?
Not a lot.

>And, are there "soft" BTLs?
Legal level simsense chips. But those are still addictive. Just much less so.

Yeah, I recommend you go jump into Lake Vasa and play around with the Acids. I mean, "mon-keigh"? You're clearly a poseur who has never been within 100 feet of an elf, but tried to learn about them from a pre-Crash Mongolian breakfast cereal fan board.

Its good if you are running in the islands where you are going have have rep as a trusted runner. Pair it with traits that capitalizes on that like Code of Honor

A standard BTL is made with a simrig and a cold-sim or legal hot-sim enabled device recording in a DNI setup. If you want it real good, then you'll also want cybered sensory organs with good levels of sensory enhancement.

You'd want some computer skills to do the editing and probably a simsense knowledge skill. Similar setup to the recording, but probably at a workstation.

And there's legal strength simsense, which probably includes the proto-BTL stuff. It's still addictive, just less so. On the level of Longhaul.

BTLs are made by setting up an "actor" with special sense recording gear (Which basically incorporates Image link, audio link, touch link, olfactory link, taste link, emotion link, and nerve impulse link, all with the safety features turned off, delete as appropriate) doing whatever the BTL does, and then often edited to be more extreme and sometimes edited to be even more addictive than normal.
"Soft" BTLs are still addictive, but they're more high functioning. Stuff like a chip that generates an intense emotional response but doesn't otherwise affect your ability to function, like being *really* happy all the time. If you want something that isn't addictive, then you want regular simsense with the safety features still turned on.

I've got no morals. I just do thing to get money in the edgiest way possible, like CGL wants every runner to do.

AI_showing_off.trid
youtube.com/watch?v=LWt9pu-HAdw

In 5e, how well do the non-core "Race" options for Characters (SURGE, Meta-Variants, AI) work, both mechanics wise and fluff wise?

?

I don't do Missions, but it seems like the modules are generally geared towards presenting you with a moral choice, and chiding you for being immoral. Not to mention the JackPoint characters, who react to people who treat running as a job to be emotionally detached from as pariahs, and are generally the biggest bleeding hearts this side of cyberTumblr.

>What lines don't you cross?
My character doesn't hurt kids probably. Bad for image. Also doesn't kill fans, also bad for image.

>Metasapient Gorilla Tank builds when?
IIRC shapechanging into an orangutan and using heavy weapons is p. viable.

You're better off ignoring them entirely.

Hey... So my group really wanted to play shadowrun and nominated me to run it. We picked up 20th anniversary edition cheap, I've been doing okay as a new GM but that's because my players have resolved most things without combat.

I am trying to get combats working well, and they just kind of fall flat. Does anyone out there have a let's play or anything that shows someone else running combat for 4th ed? I haven't been able to find anything and I think it would help a lot.

Looking at the GitHub releases, it looks like there might be a new official Chummer release soon. I for one am all in on the HYPE.

Can I get a chip that's just "Dopamine rush" or "New Romance" or "Physically incapable of giving fucks?"

Mood BTL, Mood BTL, and either a personafix or a more unusual and obscure BTL.

Pg. 413 Core has a list of different types of BTLs. Short answer is yes, they're called moodchips, and are the most common ones on the market; most people don't want to fully experience combat or crazy pornography turned up to 11, but everyone can use a pick-me-up that gets them through the day.

Yekka's said that they're reworking the whole skills system on the backend, along with some other changes, and they're also going to put in the Howling Shadows stuff (or at least start it).

That should at least give you both nitch skills in exchange for the worst drawback of any mentor.

So the legal mood chips are probably as common as Zoloft or Prozac, right? I think I'm gonna have my characters involved with a bad batch that makes normal trophy wives and wageslaves and stuff flip their shit. Thanks.

Its apparently not an uncommon method of treating Depression to be prescribed a BTL strength moodchip.

Are there still Fair Use Laws in 2077? Have they gone the way that Sony seems to want them to go- You can get 'Fair Use' permission in return for an 'administrative fee'? It seems like copyright law would be entirely designed around corps protecting themselves from each other, with no regard for civilians or other people who want to consume, reproduce, or take inspiration from corp-owned media.

eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/youtubes-copyright-robots-help-sony-shake-down-bluegrass-educators

youtube.com/watch?v=ji8g-t3tWCo

A lot of stuff is released in proprietary formats and will either only run using certain equipment unaided or will get you thrown in jail and your bank accounts drained dry for even trying to share with people.

It's more likely that there are special "fair use" licences from certain media producers. Stuff that basically boils down to "You can use this as long as [You credit us for it/you pay this fee/you don't mention these subjects/you promote our products]"

I'm going to assume the RIAA has soldiers that hunt down and kill anyone who they don't like.

So, can a dwarf or human knock up a troll in the setting? Are there half species in this? asking because I wanted to have a henpecked manlett dad dwarf and an overbearing Jewish troll mom as characters for my underage Decker who shadowruns after school and constantly gets calls on his comlink involving the mom nagging him in front of people he was trying to be cool around.
If I can get GM ok this is going to be great.

>So, can a dwarf or human knock up a troll in the setting?
Yes.

>Are there half species in this?
No.

> I wanted to have a henpecked manlett dad dwarf and an overbearing Jewish troll mom as characters for my underage Decker
100% possible.

Yes metatypes can breed with each other but there are no half-breeds. It's either going to be a dwarf or a troll or a human from that kind of union. We've said this I don't know how many times.

You can have parents of two different metatypes, but you'll come out as one or the other (Or very rarely as another metatype). Troll and orc metagenes are pretty overpowering though, so if one of your parents is a troll, you are almost certainly also a troll.

In SR Hong Kong there is a guy named Reliable Matthew who uses pharma-grade mood chips to treat his depression, so presumably they are common antidepressants

Welcome to /srg/, where we answer the same questions over and over from people who can't be bothered to type 'breeding shadowrun' into Google. Pretty soon we're going to have "How do I plan a run" guy and "What spells are good for mages" girl to round out the party.

The 'other metatype' would be human, and even that is vanishingly rare. I've never heard of, say, a troll and a dwarf having an elf. Even in human+nonhuman pairings, the kid is almost always the nonhuman.

> I've never heard of, say, a troll and a dwarf having an elf.

It's a one-in-a-million fluke, but it's possible.

>implying typing in 'breeding shadowrun' wouldn't just get you metric tons of catgirl and cyberloli impreg porn

What do guns shoot? Do I need to buy the holster? Can I take "two left feet" as a flaw?

>cyberloli impreg porn
Sign me up!

"Feelgood" outcome of your jobs awards you with better karma by the rules, while being coldhearted usually means better pay. Since the first thing every single GM does is multiply CGL's suggested nuyen payouts exponentially on top of letting the runners loot and then sell billion nuyen equipment and relics, not being a bleeding heart tumblrite makes you a suboptimal runner in the long term.

I'm not touching the reddit link but everything else looks legit.

I don't know what you've been searching that would lead that to be your results, but the first page responses I get are pages directly relevant that question- the Shadowrun subreddit, the official forum, Dumpshock, the wiki, and stackexchange, beat me to the screenshot.

Maybe use incognito to collect your porn?

Not if you are an Awakened character who has more use for karma than nuyen, and not if the whole group is in on the same runs, gets the same payback in karma and nuyen, and keeps working together. You won't be 'suboptimal', because you're not trying to out-compete some other group of runners in a cash race. The group stays at approximately equal footing.

In practice my GM ends up giving out the same amount of karma no matter what the job is.

Also, the Jackpoint characters are terrible Shadowrunners. I suspect they spend more time posting on Jackpoint about how runners SHOULD act than they do actually 'running.

I give the same amount of karma no matter how "feel good" the run is, then afterwards the group nominates each other for some extra karma, which is generally:
>1 karma to someone for exceptional roleplay
>1 karma to someone who solved an issue by "thinking outside the box" or being clever
>1 karma for someone having the right skill at the right time when you usually wouldn't need it (for example, having artisan(cooking) to make a poisoned meal)
It's nice because it gives people incentive to RP and not just smash everything while also keeping the party roughly balanced since a few extra karma isn't that big a deal.

>literally 4channers shitposting instead of going outside
It all makes sense.

So kinda like /srg/ poster, no?

//Freiburg represent//

I do something similar, except for the nomination part. It's a lot easier as the GM to hand out rewards as seems appropriate, and cook up something else for a player who gets consistently overshadowed (like an RP scene between that player and his family).

No. A big hunk of /srg/ hasn't read the books and has no idea what they're speaking about.

Jackpointers at least ran the shadows/did something relevant before being allowed to shitpost.

>it's actually done on purpose

Funny you say that, I just came across this bit in Howling Shadows:
>Zippy Toetag is established as an organ snatcher of little importance dating one of the special correspondents
>Zippy Toetag posts

>Oh for fuck’s sake, are we letting everyone in here now?!
>Clockwork
>Since I know how much it pisses you off, I might just do that.
>Slamm-0!

The JackPoint mods are bigger cucks than moot, and it seems like access to this 'super secure special elite shadowrunner site' is about as hard to get as a Something Awful account.

>This is a dirty world, and we do a dirty job. What lines don't you cross? What do you sacrifice for to stay human?
He hates shadowrunning and does his best to keep things strictly non-lethal and not to put people in danger if they aren't already involved.
For example, one of our plans to blackmail a wageslave into breaking some encryption for us was to kidnap his mother, my character was 100% against that and we had to go with a less pragmatic plan instead as a result. He was really good at killing shit (14P unarmed) but almost always used stun gloves because hey, security guards are doing their jobs, just like him.

Isn't Clockwork the guy everybody hates and the reason why JackPoint crew looks like a tumblr circlejerk?

Jackpoint kinda went to shit when FastJack disappeared. Shame too, because Ol' Jack was one of my favorites. Something about an old guy from the 1990s who still keeps 'running really appeals to me.

You realize that unarmed attacks do Stun damage unless you're an adept with Killing Hands or have cybernetic limbs, right?

Also, if he hates shadowrunning so much, why doesn't he just join a corporation and go straight?

If he's doing 14 damage unarmed, chances are it isn't stun. Especially if he's not a troll or something.

>unless you're an adept with Killing Hands or have cybernetic limbs, right?
Or bone density, which he had.
He was a former Aztlantian pit fighter, loaded up to the gills with combat bioware.
Couldn't easily go straight due to being an illegal immigrant/no SIN.

>Couldn't easily go straight due to being an illegal immigrant/no SIN.

Buy a good fake, use that to get by until you get a real one. The UCAS hands them out like candy.

What's with all the SINless in UCAS, then?

Yes and yes, but it seems like they are scaling that back.

Between Howling Shadows and Rigger 5.0., they are saying more and more that Clockwork at least has more practical knowledge than most other people on there; there may be some people with specialties, and he doesn't know shit about magic, but when it comes to general running strategies and equipment, he's one of the best informed and most capable runners out there. And when CFD started, Clockwork was the one who found out what was wrong before anyone else.

It's really on the social issues that you see problems and circlejerking. Everyone else on the board is so fucking accommodating that when he says things like "technomancers are up to some weird shit, they're working with evil AI and have attempted at least one global holocaust," and "Ghouls and other Infected are a cancer on metahumanity that need to be exterminated," the reaction is immediate hate, which is very jarring when you just read a section all about how technomancers love breaking the rules of the Matrix and commune with inhuman AI, or how vampires constantly have to restrain themselves to prevent a massacre. They also added shit like him personally threatening other members (can't remember the details, he tried to sell Netcat and her kid to a corp or something) which makes it incredible that they still associate with him.

It would be a lot less jarring if JackPoint wasn't so dominated by touchy-feelies, or if there were other people who voice the same opinions and be the first ones to say, "Puck literally worked for Deus, he can't be trusted."

There's only one admin I love.

Alright, now how does he get said corp job, walk into the local Lone Star office and say "I am a murder machine, make me a security officer pls"?
He's got no credentials he can reference, nobody to vouch for him, a con pool of 4 and a negotiation of 2.
There's more to "working for a corp" than being good at what you do.

Some people choose to live outside the system for whatever reason. Either they don't trust the Man, man, or they like to stay hidden.

Do you have a face in the party? Ask him to have people vouch for you, even if these people are just him in disguise or people he's bribed into singing your praises. Alternatively, you can do genuine good works; ideally, mix those in with the fakes so your resume isn't a complete fabrication.

Do you have a decker in the party? Have him forge your credentials and ID.

Fake it until you make it. It's a lot of effort, but the question he has to ask himself is this: How badly do you want out? How far will you go to leave the game?

user is talking out of his ass. The 14th Amendment to the UCAS Constitution registered every citizen, and the new non-SINners were 'probationary citizens' with very limited rights. To get from probationary to full citizen requires an act of Congress, which did not happen once from the Amendment being signed into law until the day Big D got the nod. Even today (2077) it's exceedingly rare.

The entire point of the SIN system is that it's almost impossible to get a legitimate SIN through any means, like Immigration on steroids. It's far easier for someone to live in a million-nuyen mansion for the rest of their life than it is to get a SIN.

Has immigration policy changed in the 75ish years or something? Cuz IRL you basically don't get to be a citizen unless you were born here or go through an absurd amount of red tape. Plus, I highly doubt a shadowrunner would count as a person of "a person of good moral character."

This desu. Jobs are one part being legal and one part knowing people.

He might be able to get a shit job as a meter-maid or a food salesman, but if you want to get a paying job that'll actually get you out of the Barrens or wherever you are you'll need to work your contacts first. And that's not something most SiNless have.

Work the shadows until he gets an offer for working for a corp exclusively. Explain to the Johnson making the offer, privately mind you, about what he would really like to do in the corp. See if they will let him get an actual SIN to go with it.

>Not to mention the JackPoint characters, who react to people who treat running as a job to be emotionally detached from as pariahs, and are generally the biggest bleeding hearts this side of cyberTumblr.
That hasn't been true for ages. Don't mistake the writers having the Jackpointers expouse progressive views on egalitarianism in the hacker community or AI pronouns for the Jackpointers being good guys. The first through third edition Shadowlands BBS cast was full of neo-anarchists, gangers, and the SINless frequently talking about leaking corporate data to the public or using runner funds and resources keep corporate presence and drugs out of their neighborhoods.

Yes, Clockwork is considered a bastard for starting beef with his fellow runners and Rigger X is an asshole for selling out his team with cartoonish frequency. But those are marks of unprofessionalism that compound shit like Clockwork being a racist - remember, Haze is an actual, literal serial rapist who nobody on Jackpoint really seems to mind, and that's because he gets the job done and provides the forums with useful information.

Admittedly this has been reversed a bit in fifth edition, but you have to remember that near the end of 4E writers were openly stating on the dumpshock forums that, circa 2070, the running community should be jaded enough from never really making a difference that everyone heroic should either have left or gotten killed. Horizon, the Draco Foundation, and Hestaby all turned out to have secret evil agendas specifically because the 4E writers explicitly didn't want there to be any good guys for runners to be able to work for. 5E has changed that back a bit, but if you're familiar with the tone of 3E you'd see how mercenary the running community of the modern game is compared to the older editions.

Sadly the game fell apart before the party got especially "close" enough for random personal favors like that, our team was also close to 100% broke due to flubbing a few jobs in a row so the face/team probably wouln't have been too keen on spending time money and resources to lose their main "muscle".

This was essentially the plan, but moreso use shadowrunning as a stopgap to keep him and his daughter afloat until he got enough cash to have enough financial security to run a bakery. If given the option to sell out to a corp, I'm not sure how he would have reacted, since most of the time if they're getting you a SIN, you can't simply walk out the door easy.

Help, Veeky Forums! We're going up against incubi, which are awakened paracritter squids that use illusion magic, and our mage has zero ranks in counterspell.

How do we stop our minds from being fucked?

LOG/WIL boosting drugs, try Psyche, that gives +1 LOG and +1 WIL, IIRC.

Mana Static is one trick. Spirit aid's another. Drones and fire-safeties on smartguns.

FAB.

When magic is being a bitch, the answer is always FAB.

Willpower boosting drugs.

I read the older editions, and liked them because Shadowlands was a neo-anarchist playground. I could cheer on Berlin because it was a pipe dream, but at least it was fighting back and trying to make a difference.

I can't remember the last time the new crop of JackPoint ever did something like that (maybe the New Mexico raid where FastJack got infected?). It's all talk, no action. They didn't get cynical so much as they stopped trying to do anything, but were happy to sit around and tell others how they were wrong. I had forgotten about Haze, though.

It's worth noting that there was a blurb in one of the second edition books that mentioned the process of applying for a SIN required proving that your parents were legal citizens of either the UCAS or another nation on the national SIN registry. I don't know if that ever comes up in the newer books, but it basically means that the SINless are subject to the Grandfather Clause from Hell in a lot of ways and it explains why the SINless populations in places like the Barrens just keep growing.

They do give you a Criminal SIN if you're SINless and arrested for a felony though, since that's how they keep you in the system and make sure you're serving your time.

If someone with a criminal SIN had a kid after they were put in the system the child would be filed in the National SIN Registry as a normal SINner. It seems like if you or your wife was pregnant and you were were desperate to give your future kid a shot at a better life than you, you could get arrested for murder or armed robbery on purpose to make sure your kid was in the system legally when they're born.

>filename

That's the whole point of generals, so they don't shit up the catalog.

>It's all talk, no action.
Shadowrunners are all talk, no action.
The country is serious trouble. We don't win anymore. We don't beat Aztlan in trade, we can't do anything right. Our military has to be strengthened, our vets have to be taken care of. We have to end the corporate court, and we have to make our country great again, and I will do that.
Look at our country, filled with SINless and ghouls. Just recently I heard that Ares moved one of their weapons manufacturing plants to Aztlan, you know what I'm going to do about that? I will never fire another Ares Predator in my life, my whole life!
We are going to make the UCAS great again.

I would imagine there is a clause for that under law to stop illegals from being grandfathered in via crime.

There was also the Crash of 64, which deleted the records of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Efforts were made to reintegrate them, but a lot of people in edge situations fell into the cracks.

Come to think of it, that's a neat idea for a runner- someone who lost their SIN in '64, but is convinced that it was not an accident but the actions of his mysterious but powerful enemies. Now he's out to find out who did this to him and get vengeance.

>Prejudice: Technomancers (Outspoken)

In the end, he finds out he caused the crash by somehow accidentally aiding deus

An older runner character I made lost his SIN in crash 2.0, which only reinforced his distrust of modern tech (He was ~65 or so) and "the system".

>Just recently I heard that Ares moved one of their weapons manufacturing plants to Aztlan

Shoulda said CAS t.b.h.f.a.m. There's a big thing in Market Panic about how Ares might be moving it's headquarters to St. Louis, or even Atlanta.

But I'll vote for you over that do-nothing Colloton any day

Maybe Erased? Refluff it as his history got erased without his permission, but now he's lying low to avoid ending up "back on their radar".

Erased paired with Paranoia could be a good representation of it.

I've thought of making a module where the PCs are hired by a leonized Trump to help him in a hostile takeover of Ares, to make Ares great again.

Who gives a shit about the clapistanians? Let them fuck each other up.

Thanks, everyone. I'll pack drugs for everyone to get a bit of a boost, and will summon some spirits to help out.

How does FAB help here? Does it block illusion spells if the creatures can still physically see you?