/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Well, we have a genki catgirl changeling as our ninja/show mascot, so that might well be doable.

kek

Yeah, we're doing some real dumb shit in that game. Trip to Istanbul sounds good, I know that various people have extracurricular stuff planned because everything we do is ludicrous bullshit.

On the subject of Istanbul, anyone know how Turkey doing in Shadowrun? Is it moderately sensible, or was the fluff on Turkey written by the same people who thought Saudi Arabia would be unhappy about a dragon torching Iran?

Thing you should know about Istanbul is that its actually not called that anymore. Some time after the second Euro war they became in independent city state with corporate help. Its back to being called Constantinople.

The 10000 Daggers have a big presence in the city. Its where I'm DMing my campaign. If you want to know more about Turkey I would recommend Shadows of Asia.

Why the hell would the capital of a nation secede from a nation?
And why would they go back to using a name that died out way before the govt started calling it istanbul?

Istanbul isn't the capital of Turkey, Ankara is.

>And why would they go back to using a name that died out way before the govt started calling it istanbul?

Why did every Amerindian immediately slap on a feathered headdress and war paint when the Awakening happened? Why did vast swathes of Africa get dominated by stereotypical tribes? Why did England bring back the fucking Lord Protector?

Because Shadowrun is second only to Rifts in dumb regressive behaviour by every ethnic group under the sun.

*reads*
Shit. Guess I'm as bad as the assholes still calling it constantinople.

The player referenced in here. Taking a trip to Delphi sounds like it could be blazingly hilarious.

I, at least, can't find much about Greece in the 4e books that I have. Any suggestions for what to look in for more Grecian info?

Shadows of europe, at a random guess.

Last I checked a dragon called Aden lives there or rules it or something.

One silly campaign idea. Runners are Fables. For those who don't know, basically Disney characters living among normal people by using glamours. How would you run campaign like that?

I think the reason why this could make sense is because after the second Euro War there was a lot of hate towards the the countries that started the war. Think Germany after ww2. Wanting to separate themselves from that isn't too far of a stretch I think.

Plus on a corpate side they have the opertunity to take advantage of this and install a government that benefits them.

State of the Art and Shadows of Europe were the last places Hellas got a good looking-at.

Whatever happened to that comic anyway?

I heard of it when it was first getting announced and thought it looked cool as shit, but then it seemed to have disappeared and I never heard from it again

Did it's six issue run, collection is out now. Google 'nameless comic' and you get all relevant info in about 3 seconds.

Is it any good?

If you're into the whole occult horror/graphic violence stuff, pretty good.

Shadows of Europe from 3e? 'Cause I didn't see anything like that in the 4e file storage, and just want to make sure.

Yes. SoE 3e, and SOTA 2073 from 4e.

Thx chum

Has any of you or your players play a terrorist/freedom fighter? Do you guys have any stories of this? I'm looking for ideas.

Slow general is slow. Did half of /srg/ an hero?

overwatch maybe? Also finals season.

Overwatch has been out for a couple weeks, though. I can see finals getting in the way. Damn education.

Recon during the days, chummer. Gotta keep up with contacts, scout out buildings, all that good stuff.
Plus some of us have day jobs.

If you want to make yourself useful, I need a name for a pair of spirits collectively known as the 'Demolition Twins'

Finished my finales today

What tradition?

I'm going to say Heckle and Jeckle regardless

Some custom stuff. Heavy leans towards shamanism though; with humans instead of beasts though.
They're girls

In that case Heckle and Jeckle
You called my bluff, I had to do it or I'd loose street cred
Wendy and Go

how do i add more E.Y.E. into my shadowrun campaign?

Mysads with some 'ware?

We just get really weird with our Knight Errant campaign.

Why are Biospikes from Hard Target so much shit? Only implant weapon that doesn't get any AP (not counting calluses, but those sorta dont count). Hell, even biospikes maxed with BDA only do equal to calluses on top of maxed BDA. for like 4 times the essence and 10 times the nuyen.

I suppose because it's supposed to be the most discreet implant weapon possible (even calluses would be noticed before it), but it's still poorly balanced. You're much better off spending the money (or karma equivalent) on martial arts.

How are martial arts anyway? Our troll decker likes to punch things in the face a lot, and our group is relatively new to the game, so much so that we have only really just used the gear from other books and not bothered with any of the extra rules.

>You gain brouzouf

Most characters can do without, but if you really spend a lot of time up close then it's handy. For a decker or infiltrator, something like Finishing Move is very handy in niche situations- if you manage to get the drop on someone, you can hit him twice before he gets the chance to respond, which might be the difference between walking away and getting your codeslinging ass chopped off. Goes double for trolls, who usually have great physical limits without trying, so they can do some challenging techniques without worrying.

That does sound useful, again if said troll was anywhere near slightly sneaky. Our group should just look into actually learning the stealth skill and not rely on my characters silver tongue and the wage slave decker's mad hacking skills to break in.

I don't understand the reference to those last two

I hear a lot of things about spirits being sentient, but not a lot on how they think. Can they understand emotions? Do they feel emotions? Hate? Love? I'm guess it varies based on the spirit you summon.

Your legs are OK

Depends on the spirit.

Basically how spirits think, and why they think the way they do, is a matter for theological/philosophical discussion. Is a hermetic Spirit of Fire really different from a Zoroastrian Spirit of Fire- do they both come from the same metaplane but are shaped by the summoner's perceptions, is the former just personifying elemental forces while the latter really is an angelic figure sent from heaven? Would the latter refuse to murder a child on moral grounds while the former (being an amoral anthropomorphic personification) would dutifully have an orphan BBQ? And for the Zoroastrian spirit, is it really the spirit objecting, or is it the summoner's ideas of what the spirit would and would not do that influence it's willingness to perform that service?

So you have spirits that seem very close to human in their mindset (especially mentor spirits), and you have spirits that are utterly alien in their inner workings, and there's no telling what the relationship between those two extremes is, let alone what the truth really is. Solipsism is hard enough with meatbags.

Just a couple names for dangerous female spirits. Wendy and Go. Wendy & Go. Wendy&Go. WendyGo? Get it.

How is an infiltrator supposed to get past security dogs?

What does it mean to be an aging street sammy?
What morals would he embody?

There are spells (5) and cigarettes (4) to block scent detection.

Hey srg, help me clarify matrix icons? Specifically using them to locate people/targets in real world.

Does an icon correlate to its location in meatspace or is it more of a general thing? Say I detect three commlink icons w matrix perception in a room - would I be able to tell where in the room they are precisely? Could I stick an ARO on them to tag their location to my team? If so, would it move in real time to track targets through walls/cover? And would I need marks for any step in this?

Thanks in advance!

>Does an icon correlate to its location in meatspace or is it more of a general thing?
Icons are general direction and faded by signal strength. No location, unless they are a specific kind of icon - an AR Object (ARO / Arrow). Which you mentioned, already, and sound like you know how they work.

Otherwise you need a radio signal / bug scanner, or to mark & track the relevant icon(s).

Thanks, that's v helpful! Will look into the radio scanner stuff

As someone coming from 4th edition, is an internal router as important as I think it is?

Or should I hand my PAN to the team matrix guru and let them handle that end, and keep my .75 ESS?

>cigarettes
Having a lit cig while trying to sneak seems counterproductive.

That's probably because you're making assumptions about how they work. Be a chummer, not a chump.

You mask your scent. Alternatively, you poison the dogs.

To determine a persona's/icon's physical location, you need to use the "Trace Icon" action.

Mostly useless. The only really interesting use is for a character with the Wired Reflexes/Reaction Enhancers combo that for some reason has no Smartlink.

So it's just my knee-jerk reaction to all the old bonuses being "wireless" now? cool. I'll deal

It is poorly implemented in any case. A common houserule is to allow to take the router for some capacity in a limb instead of the (ridiculously high) essence cost.

It must be the lack of cybercatgirls. I'll attempt to remedy the situation.

In case you still don't get what user's going for:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

If they're an adept, then Traceless Walk gives a -2 penalty to being tracked by scent. Could give drugged meat a shot as well, there's plenty of ingestion toxins out there.

If you have a high-grade commlink or a decker worth his salt, then you can protect your cyber well enough by making a PAN and slaving your devices to a device with better security.

It can be a good way for a GM to say "no, fuck you" when a player decker wants to hack an important enemy street sam, but that seems kind of needlessly antagonistic to me.

Yep. Accept it as a game decision to help make decking combat relevant. Weird in fluff, nice in practice is the way I see it.

It's not that weird in fluff if you start from the "Everything must be connected forever to sustain the Matrix as a whole" shtick.

If, by design, a device will be online all the time it is in use; then solving any compatibility issues between different devices through an external application (held on the comlink or the cloud or anywhere on the Matrix, who cares, everything's online anyway) "translating" the data feeds is both cheaper, easier to maintain and update and (in the case of cyberware) less invasive than hardwiring everything together.

The problem is that the Internal Router, i.e. the option to actually hardwire everything together, is simply way too expensive. That it'd cost a little essence because you have a couple extra data cables running under your skin, sure. But not a whopping 0,75 point out of the 6 you have available.

It's roughly akin to the old internal router tech. 3e, iirc, but I only read it - never played with it.
Shouldn't surprise anyone; 5e is the edition where the tech advancement went wibbly wobbly under the assault of CFD. Nanite-etched internal wires went the way of the dodo.

Where would you put it? Closer to .5 or .25?

If you look at it from the perspective of "this 'ware shuts off one of your major counters" it's reasonable, but since it's really "this 'ware lets you keep a minor bonus while your wireless is off" it's overcosted.

The most important wireless bonus is probably Reaction Enhancers + Wired Reflexes, and if you don't have that combo it's definitely not worth it. The Availability is low enough that you might be able to get it at betaware without too much trouble.

Because magic?

CFD

I'd put it at .2. WR+RE combo is already expensive enough as it is in both nuyen and essence.

Smartlink still needs an external connection to the Matrix at large to grant the +2 dice. Other bonuses are rather situational.

r8 my character. He's a decker/face built within the limits of sum to ten. It's not perfect. Also I'm not sure why all the knowledge skills are linked to LOG. They say street/academic/professional/interest in Chummer, so they shouldn't be all linked to LOG.

A couple of suggestions:
- Remove the points in Forgery, put them in Armorer and Demolitions instead. Your group will FUCKING GRADE A+ LOVE YOU if you can set a breaching charge or handload them a mag of bullets with more oomph for when SHTF.
- Your cyberarm is a waste of nuyen as it is. I assume you are planning to load it out with gimmicks later, but it might be better to save up more and get a customised base model.
- You are horribly slow in meatspace. I would suggest dropping the arm and get (Alphaware) Boosted Reflexes from Chrome Flesh instead, to boost your init to 8+2d6. This will ensure you have 2 passes except on the shittiest roll, and have enough to spare for a dodge on a decent one.
- Another possibility to boost your initiative is pharma-/designer-grade Cram, to be taken when the run starts. With your Body of 2, it will last you eight hours, which should be more than enough. With 10 dice in LOG + WIL and an addiction treshold of 2 thanks to the better grade of drugs, it should be hard to succeed on the addiction tests.
- You have a fake SIN but no license. You need at least one for your deck, one for your gun and a driver license to be kosher in 99% of the cases. (You'd normally need one for the smartlink in your eye as well, but okay.)

All in all, though, it's a pretty solid character.

>it should be hard to succeed on the addiction tests.

It SHOULDN'T be hard, sorry.

I'm new to shadowrun and scared of posting. I just draw and read what other people have to say.

Shitpost

Mean to put in a question mark after that. What the heck is the CFD?

Nanotech retcon, basically.

Cognitive Fragmentation Disorder.

Officially: whatever it is that corrupts nanomachines and makes them suborn a meatbag to serve as body for an AI; with the combo being both superhuman and batshit insane.

Read: no transhumanism in SR, nanomachines had to be cranked down with extreme prejudice

Disease from 5e. Transmittable through every body fluid and cyber. Basically nanites that overwrite your brain and use you to produce more. Was AFAIK an excuse to shift the tech back a lot.

It's a nanotech software virus that thinks it's people. It uses nanites and nanite-based products to be the next bodysnatcher invasion, while destabilising corporations in a wave of panic and social collapse that players recognised with about as much clarity as a random Tuesday.

It's the reason Shadowrun is not bordering on Eclipse Phase, in short.

And, I suppose, in another sense it's why EP has just been pushed back a little.

youtube.com/watch?v=NJIjNs_s2NI

What the fuck.

This would be a great contact.

>Son, I was running before your mum was even born! Now shaddup an listen to your granny!

I made a 3D model of one of my runners.

Is that one of the Ice Climbers?

Yes.

So I had an idea, but I have questions.

What, exactly, could a charismatic Nartaki with her own small cult in India do or need to do with shady business across her country of origin and across southeast Asia, and not have to tamper with Hindu teachings? I figured a lot of political and religious rivalry, but I'm not sure if that's filled with intrigue enough.

Second, say an Untouchable of the Hindu castes manages to become a Nartaki. Does the belief of them being touched by Gods change the Untouchable's status immensely, or do the Brahmin caste act more reserved towards that possibility? Might be a key development here in this character.

EVO comes up with weird cyber that doesn't tank your magic as you install it, so fills some of its adepts with it and sends them to blacklisted combat zones. The team grabs more and more of it, when suddenly the side effects start kicking in.

> the cyberware was demons all along!

So, i might want to run a game that's very pink mohawk and also kinda "low-level"-ish.
What is the best way to achieve this in 5e?
Sum to 9 (or 8), reduced Karma (how low?) or just strict GM control?
I want runners who are hired to break into some AAA secret weapons lab but not so down that they have to resort to robbing the local stuffer shack. The kinds of runner who have potential, but who have yet to prove themselves.

Sum-to-8 is your best bet. The only consequence is that you'll probably end up with a lot of humans with perhaps the token elf.

I'd say street scum + street level, with the bonus that spending karma happens first.

What are some good extra material for a 5e game? We're tossing some names around, but so far have only decided on Street Grimoire.