/srg/ - Shadowrun General

You and that other user sound like people who sweat the mechanics too much. Taking a mainly gamist approach to SR is a bad idea.

What book do you turn to most often in your Shadowrun arsenal for inspiration?

Arsenal?
I don't really get what you mean with inspiration user.
Sourcebooks or do you mean generally books?
Inspiration for what? Runs, Characters, Plot Elements?

I was just taking about basic stuff. As a GM, you have so much to keep track of in contacts and personalities, floor plans street layouts, etc. As a player, you're constantly shuffling handfuls of dice and trying to figure out how you want your character to progress, item shopping, run planning, etc. I love the game but it's a pain in the ass to play.

Out of the Shadowrun sourcebooks, I'd say the Sixth World Almanac.

Out of books in general, this may seem weird but it's an old anthropology book from the 1920s called The Golden Bough. It's an incredibly rich source of magic traditions from around the world, and the snooty manner of the author is a hilarious bonus.

Any book.

But those are pretty much all the things I like. :^)

I don't bother with extensive maps though. I've found they're usually unnecessary and the game flows better without it. Combat ranges are abstract, and the kind of mirrorshades shenanigans that require precise positioning and timing are rare enough that I can sketch a map by hand if and when it comes up.

Why on earth do people use melee weapons in Shadowrun? Seems very foolish with all the advancement that would have taken place involving firearms.
Just pump them full of lead.

1. Armour protection has increased.
2. The means of augmenting the speed and physical strength of melee fighters have increased.
3. A lot of fighting takes place in close quarters.
4. Small melee weapons aren't illegal and are more easily concealable than large, powerful firearms.

Gonna ask again since I didn't get an answer last thread

I have a question. Since there are three variants of chargen, BPgen, Karmagen and Priority but some do not enable you to play certain characters (mainly Priority saying you can't be an AI, Infected, or Free Spirit). Would it be okay to have a game where different players used different chargen options or is that unwise?

It suggests ABCDE for Priority, 750 Karma and 400 BP all lead to 'typical Shadowrunners' but how different can the end result be for each? Basically, what does each one do better or worse then the others?

Also, how do I balance out magic for a low-level game so they don't out perform literally everyone? Limit on magic stat at chargen? Someone also suggested banning anything over 6F and 8R (Permits can allow up to the normal 12R at chargen) but I'm not sure if I want to do that.

the gun is still superior

AFAIR they have different costs for metas
think about it, in BPgen or priority getting a Troll's STR from 5 to 8 costs the same as getting an elf's AGI from 1 to 4. In Karmagen however it costs much more for the troll to increase his STR than for the elf/dwarf/human to increase the AGI

Using different chargen methods results in different power levels, IIRC BP and Priority will create more powerful characters than Karmagen. Karmagen allows for more rounded characters at the expense of specialization.

Balancing out magic is best done by limiting the magic stat to a maximum of 4. Or, forcing your players to pick Aspected Magician or Adept only.

My adept punches as hard as an anti-materiel rifle.

Well I guess that empty, unbacked assertion sure told me.

Hey /srtg/ Faces!

What's the stickiest situation you've ever had to talk your way out of?

Also, for gms, have you ever given your faces real opportunities to flex their social muscles? Tell me about them and how they went!

...

That is a metaphoric sword, not the kind the person above was talking about.

(Incidentally, Trolls with good reach weapons are basically doing high RoF attacks with each strike. And possibly with better damage. So can others, but Trolls get by with less reach and higher damage.)

Adding to what everyone said, some religious groups are not going to like awakened folk. Witchcraft and all that.

To be fair to the holy rollers, magic is pretty fucking scary and destructive.

An adept is magical.
Why would a normal person use melee weapons during a run?

Coked out? Cybered up? It's their style and they'll slice you in twain if you judge them for it?

Concealable and quiet.

Soldiers still use bayonets and they don't even have the advantage of magic, cybergear or bullet-resistant armour.

Wouldn't they be a minority though?
I think it has been mentioned that the Pope gave his okay for magic.

Pope also said it's fine to be gay and that atheists can to heaven. Pope says a bunch of things.

Hey /srg/,
My friend recently started up a Shadowrun game. We ran a kind of practice run to (begin to) get the hang of the system on Saturday and worked on character creation some. So, like 8 hours of fucking around with it later, I have pic related. Gear is in link related. The basic idea behind the character is he takes jobs that fuck over corps, and while he's in there fucking them up for pay he nabs secret info and releases it publicly, or just blows the building up. I didn't try to min max really but let me know if this just looks completely downright retarded please.

Priority A was skills. B was resources. C attributes. D metatype. E magic or resonance.

pastebin.com/p5PUadQZ

>What's the stickiest situation you've ever had to talk your way out of?
Convincing my fellow runners that i am indeed a worthwhile asset for the team to have because i didn't succeed with a single social roll during the run.
It was something rather simple, just a step above a milk run: Find some small-time crook, apprehend him, question him as a side-mission for our fixer and hand him over to the client.
We had a general idea where he was, but during the legwork phase i flubbed my rolls, scaring the neighbors and drawing that out. Then, when we had his address, i spooked his Girlfriend, leading to a chase.
After the Rigger and Muscle caught him it was my turn to question him, and we as a team decided that he might be more talkative if we pretended to be from a certain gang we knew he had problems with. So i was trying to disguise myself (he hadn't seen me at this point), but i had a glitch for the Street-Knowledge check to know more about the gang and didn't succeed in the disguise (or maybe impersonation, it has been some time), so i was basicly a stereotypical cholo. But things only went downhill from there: I had another glitch, this time in an intimidation check and when i actually hit him i did no damage after soak. I remember that i spend at least two edge over this whole encounter, to no avail.
Anyway, after this failed our prisoner was so unimpressed by us (me) that we decided to just hand him over to the client. The Client hinted that there might be a bonus for a job done quickly (check), cleanly (check) and without harming the prisoner (check), so i was sent forth to talk to him and get some extra dough. Unfortunately i didn't succeed in any roll during our meeting so we got like 100¥ extra and a free meal at the fancy restaurant we were meeting in.
In the end the other bitched and moaned IC for a bit, but glossed over it because it was just so much bad luck. Not a single success with my social roll, all of which have a dice pool of 10+.

Yes, and I would think that a lot of the normal-everyday sort of people would listen to him.

Sorry if this has been asked a million times before. I'm new to the game.

What is the difference between a Decker and a Technomancer? They both interact with the Matrix through different mediums but do they ultimately serve the same purpose to a crew? And Sprites are just proxy hackers to insulate the Technomancer the way conventional tools insulate the Decker? Are they just different fluff versions of the same Archetype?

I'm interested in that twin sister. What' hr name?

Theyre both hackers.
Deckers do it by good hardware and skill.
Technos do it by skill and resonance. No one knows were resonance really comes from or how it works. It just does.
Deckers can do things the matrix engineers never intended the matrix to do. Technos do things that the matrix engineers can't make happen even if they wanted to.

Basically yes. They have the same job but do it in different ways.

They have a different role narratively. Deckers are commonplace parts of everyday life in the Sixth world. Technomancers are extremely rare, mistrusted by many, and the megacorps are actively hunting for them to experiment on them.

Karmagen in Chummer is only letting me put 50 karma towards nuyen, rather than max 200. When I go to check options, it crashes. Did I fuck something up somewhere?

Deckers and Technomancers are both Hackers, and they both break the laws of the Matrix in order to do their job.

The difference is that Deckers use Cyberdecks and other tools to access and muck about, and Technomancers are born with connection to Resonance, a force that allows them to connect to the Matrix naturally. Deckers have to follow the basic rules of the Matrix, but Technomancers can ignore the rules of the Matrix at times (think Neo).

Shit. Did you eventually not suck? Were the dice kind to you?

Going beyond 50 is a Paywall feature.

>Soldiers still use bayonets and they don't even have the advantage of magic, cybergear or bullet-resistant armour.
Not really. Bayonets are hardly ever used in combat, and when they are, it's typically as a last resort weapon. No soldier in their right mind uses a bayonet as a primary weapon.

How do you mean?

>building an Awakened runner costs 4.99 a month

Its a joke chummer.

Oh thank god...I was worried for a minute. Been not paying attention to SR stuff for a few monthes.

In the sixth world they really kind of want to, considering that paracritters, adepts, and trolls exists, and you take nasty penalties for having someone up in your grill when trying to shoot.

Damnit I told you guys not to mention the subscription features yet, that's supposed to be a patreon exclusive.
Are you using the latest nightly? I briefly broke it, should be fixed in 182.13 or whatever it's up to now.

He doesn't care. He just wants to do his "b-b-b-b-b-b-but muh operator!" thing as if there are no differences between SR and real life.

Actually a grunt probably wants a combat monosaw bayonet or a shock bayonet, since they probably won't have the strength to really get the job done with a normal, sharp bit of metal.

I'm building a Hacker in 5e and I'm clueless on what kind of specializations I should take for Electronic Warfare, Cybercombat, and Hacking, any help?

Adepts maybe, but typically in a war you'd want adepts who specialize in shooting, since the invention of automatic weapons really just ruined the whole "Run up and stab 'em" approach. Trolls would be used to carry assault cannons and heavy machineguns. Warfare occurs at around 300 meters for most of the time, and it's not going to be any different in Shadowrun. If anything, warfare will be conducted further away due to improved weapon accuracy and smartguns, as well as better recon techniques.

No, I'm not even the same guy. I'm just saying, that if the physics and whatever in Shadowrun worked as if they did in real life (In the sense of how the human body can take damage, the range of combat, strategy, tactics, whatever) then melee wouldn't be viable.

BUT

Because it's a game, and bullets aren't nearly as lethal and incapacitating as they are in real life, and one is able to move relatively great distances before the other can react, yes, Melee is viable, because it is a game. That's fine, I don't care about that, I'm just stating that it's a weird game-world dissonance, as no doubt there wouldn't be a single military in Shadowrun that fielded melee focused infantry divisions.

Shadowrun isn't a game of 'open warfare', though.

I'm aware, I was just responding to the user's claim of bayonets, trolls, and adepts being used en masse for melee.

Even then, in close quarters, a gun typically does a bit better, because the 21 foot rule is a myth. The 21 foot rule only applies if the person with the gun has it holstered and is not in a combat ready state. If they have their weapon in hand, have good combat reflexes, or aren't back against the wall, typically they'll get the first shot off.

But hey, again, the system does it different, and that's A-Okay. People like their rule of cool melee.

>Why would a normal person use melee weapons during a run?

1) Stun batons and monowhips are really good even for those without supernatural strength.
2) Melee weapons, are, in general, silent, whereas guns are not
3) Many runs will have engagements at distances where the range of firearms is a minimal, or nonexistent benefit
4) Some locations (Tokyo) have a strong anti-firearms bias, where it is considered 'polite' to settle things with blades rather than guns. Not doing so marks you as a dishonorable foreigner.
5) Orks, trolls, and dwarves can be extremely strong even without any augmentations, which makes melee weapons very deadly in their hands.

>bayonets, trolls, and adepts being used en masse for melee

Nobody ever said that, though?

>In the sixth world they really kind of want to, considering that paracritters, adepts, and trolls exists, and you take nasty penalties for having someone up in your grill when trying to shoot.
Implied it.

...there's a pretty big gap between 'soldiers will want melee weapons to deal with occasional but very nasty melee threats' and 'There will be dedicated close-quarters squads'

I thought it sounded like you were saying that melee was more viable in Shadowrun for military applications than it is in modern day. Guess I read it wrong then, sorry.

I am a dishonorable foreigner. I'm a dirty, loud, and brash Irishman with a really nice, really old gun.

>"polite" to settle things with blades
>mfw

Can anyone explain this sentence in the Core Book?

>Agents use the Matrix attributes of the device they run on, and their rating (up to 6) for attributes.

Which is it?

Yes.

My street doc character was able to form a lasting friendship with an organlegger middle manager guy by going "toe-to-toe" with him in a body part pun off.

Have fun getting dressed up in frilly schoolgirl outfits and publicly violated by the Yakuza!

The Agent's limits are based on what the deck it's running on has at the moment and so can't double dip if, say, you've got Toolbox active.

So if you have Data Processing 5 and make it a 6 with toolbox, the Agent uses Data Processing 6. It can't take the deck's 6 and use it's Toolbox to have a 7 for Reboot Device.

But if you have Biofeedback running, it is used on attacks and (attack) defenses for both you and your Agent.

rating 3 deck with 4 sleeze = agent has 4 sleeze and its cha/log/int/wil are 3

Then Mr. Florentine will have those Yakuza boys turned into Playbeings™. Cobra Force® does not take kindly to abuse of its agents.

Of course, my FAL is enough to keep most slant eyed fucks away.

>Shooting gooks with a FAL
>Not an M16A1

Cyberpunk 2020.

Japs are nips, not gooks. If anything, I should be using a BAR. But hey, an FAL and short-shorts will do just fine

I've heard people call Japs gooks. You know, Nuke the Gook?
youtube.com/watch?v=DPtJYhn7SlI

>Implying your allies have more sway than the Yakuza in Neo-Tokyo
>Implying that you can get away with being an Ettiquette-0 Cha-2 runner with no social sense
>Implying that any gunfire in one of the most crowded sprawls in the world won't rip through multiple walls and kill tons of civilians
>Implying using automatic weapon won't be analogous with a terrorist act

I'd say the setting is also very... Well, there's a lot of stupid shit in it.

>Cobra Force
>the multi-billion dollar corp that liberated both Rhodesia and South Africa
>the largest producer of porn in the world
>the corp the singlehandedly stopped the slave trade in Night City
>implying the muscle needs good cha
I leave the talking to Mr. Florentine and Mr. Jacobs. Vanguard, Umbuku, and I are here in case a zipperhead gets cocky.

>Night City
Are we in the same setting here?

>not having your CP2020 characters and Shadowrun characters crossover
>not having wacky antics

Is there magic for catholics, or other religious groups in SR? Not familiar with the game, but I know the Indians get magic from their old faith.

how do I make my street sam dual natured long enough to punch a ghost?

Read Street Magic or Street Grimoire

Martial Arts all provide a technique that can allow a mundane to damage astral beings. However, its pretty shit.

Hm. Is there a less shit version, or do I have to go with the shit one?

If it's not over 7 force, you could also go and use Stick-n-Shock or ADPS ammo. It won't be great, but it's technically always available.

There's also some tricks involving Astral Gateway, and possibly some drugs. Definitely something using Advanced Alchemy.

I think theres a Drug that forces a person to astrally project, or a Magician can do it as a metamagic. Become the ghost and fight him in his element.

Short answer: Yes.
Longer Answer: Yes, but not all magic is faith magic.

drugs might be my best option for punching a ghost.
Can I also cut a ghost with a sword or hit him with a bat full of nails, under such drugs?

Magic has this lame "all are welcome because if we didn't they'd bitch about it" mentality with magic that essentially boils down to "if you believe in it hard enough then you can draw mana from it". Every belief system (including long dead religions, cults, science, and every minute iteration on traditional christianity, even "new" religions like the Path of the Wheel or Zoroastrianism) can have a person summoning spirits and throwing fireballs for believing in it and as such every one of those systems now has an increased presence in the world.

It's so ridiculous that certain magic theorists (mainly the Hermetics which are basically science wizards) have concluded that it might as well all be bullshit because 10% of the population can throw fireballs and summon spirits that happen to be part of their faith and generally do what they're told and from that you might be able to surmise that it's all just in the head of the mage who's casting and that we're just warping reality around us for whatever reason.

That theory becomes harder to argue for once aspects of magical life like Free Spirits, pre-Awakening Spirits, and the Seelie and Unseelie Court show up though...

I feel like that theory still holds, because wizards over six whole ages must have made a FUCKTON OF SPIRITS

No he said "in Germany" so I think he's talking about ze German version of SR (the one with the elf furries and shit). CP2020 is even weirder when it comes to mechanics, mostly because of how old it is.

>Magic has this lame "all are welcome because if we didn't they'd bitch about it" mentality
I don't think it's lame. It's chaotic as hell and adds some mysticism while still giving players the opportunity to be fedora tipping spellcasters.

If that's true why aren't there also a bunch of Horrors skull fucking the populace (both magically and literally) everywhere?

For drugs, I'm not sure.

For advanced alchemy, with the right preparation, it can not only do that but give you a flaming sword or acid-ified nailbat with some other choices.

I understand why it was done because if I followed Christianity and I found out that in 2012 a big dragon did an interview and said "Yeah christianity is bullshit, it's all about the native spirit tribes y'all been oppressing for years" I'd be pretty bummed.

But still personally I just wish they'd been a bit more daring and been like "Yeah the Celtics had it right"

That's great, because the proper way to attack a dignified spirit is with the mangiest nailbat you can find.

>2012 In March, in Vatican City, a Papal Bull is issued confirming Pope John Paul IV's position against metahumans and further denouncing all things magical as "unholy and ungodly by their very nature."

I have bad news for you!

That viewpoint didn't get reversed on until 2024.

CP2020 is way easier to learn than SR m80

Would you work for a Johnson looking to capitalize on the cop killing trend after a bunch of police officers have been killing your kind even when they are unarmed? He wants you to shoot up a popo perimeter so his company can get top coverage of the massacre and make millions off dead cops.