/srg/ - Shadowrun General

>hot babe
sold

>mr joi
whoa how did that appear in my post?
moot wtf

>already have one
Feels good, mang.

Honestly I think cancersticks' ship has sailed.

I mean, it ain't quite dank yet but it sure isn't hot either.

Rolled 65 (1d100)

How common are lone runners? Hotline Miami kinda person, "the guy to call if you want shit done" kinda thing who's fast and can adapt to many situations without needing backup, at least against small-ish targets.

rollin'

Why am I cursed to always come upon memes as they cease to be 'fresh'?

how is good old regular recism in shadowrun? Are people still mad at niggers when there are orcs to hate?

Racist shitlords are the same as ever. All the old racial prejudices still exist in Shadowrun, and many are worse due to new ethnic tensions. Plenty of intersectional troubles - an Afro-Carribean black Orc from Merseysprawl will get shit from Humanis for being an Orc, shit from white power skinheads for being black, and shit from southerners for being a dirty Scouser or a Manky cunt.

Native Americans are hated by just about everyone north of the Rio Grande.

What's the most recent seattle sourcebook?
The most recent I have is new seattle, and that's from third edition.

Well frankly I'd hate the cunts too after the Ghost War.

Anyway I'm rolling up a mage and someone in the group suggested I take a gun with me as well as my juju, is that how you guys do it? whats the benefit of that instead of going full magic?

The Seattle Sprawl Digital Box for 5e, or Seattle 2072 for 4e.

Drain makes combat-magic less practical than just using guns in a fight. It's handy if you want to get around armor or deal with spirits (and even then there's different ammo types for dealing with those problems, Stick and Shock is BULLLLLSHIIIIIIIT), but if you're facing normal meat targets then you're better off just using a gun. AoE combat spells are more reliable than rockets and grenades, but you still have to worry about Drain making you less effective or even knocking you out in exchange if you use enough Force to make the spell effective.

>Seattle Sprawl Digital Box
I forgot about that one, thanks

>>hot babe
>sold

That one has to be one of the better ones that can actually be played. I can totally see "simstar sends you to kill her brother so he doesn't tell people about her Glamour spirit pact" as a run at my table.

In addition to the practical part of (who didn't mention suppressing fire, the great advantage of Automatics as the category of choice for non-shooting experts), there is the added bonus that you won't be immediately ventilated by people who take Geek the Mage to heart.

Plus, guns always work no matter what the background count is. You don't need a huge diepool, but I want 8-10 as a secondary gunman.

As common as you want them to be, ultimately.
I'd guess freelancers would be about as common as teams, they just don't work the same type of jobs most of the time. Some work is simpler with only one set of footprints.

What in-game year is shadowrun returns?
I know it must be on the old matrix because we still have the shadowlands bbs board in-game (which I always found cooler than the new jackpoint, because it seemed like a place where the player characters runners could hang out while jackpoint seems more of an writers NPC only club)

Hmm alright then looks like I'm going to be picking up a gun to go with my fireballs and shit.

2050-ish I believe.

The supplement they wrote for it has the year at 2055.

If you go by the Jackpoint characters, somewhat common- guys like Clockwork and Man-of-Many-Names seem to prefer going it alone, although they are both super-prime-runner-level powerful. There's also some assassins, spies and thieves (like Mihoshi Oni and the guy from Assassin's Primer) who work alone because it's the kind of job you can do alone with enough planning.

Usually if you want shit done you just tell the fixer "I want shit done" and the fixer finds people who can do that. Unless they are very fucking good, that means multiple people. Even if they are very good, having backup or someone who can cover what you're not good at (Matrix, magic, whatever) is useful. Rather than being able to adapt without needing backup, a lone runner is a lot less adaptive than a team, because there's going to be a big hole somewhere in their capabilities.

>The supplement they wrote for it
what's the name of that supplement chummer? It sounds interesting

Its in the mediafire folder for 5th, just look for hong kong. It wasnt a bad read actually, had some nice info on the areas.

But, it seems to be a bit mixed up in one way. I dont know if it was written before the bonus campaign was released for the game but it has both Knight Errant and Kindly/ the Yellow Lotus occupying the city at the same time when the Lotus fled to Seattle after finding out KE were taking over security for the place.

>hong kong
neat
Might have a run there

Also, not every job involves or even benefits from multiple people. It's just assumed that the player characters' fixer is only vetting them jobs a team would or could do. Strictly speaking, pen-testing a data vault's Matrix security or body-guarding a sim starlet for a weekend can both be shadowruns, but neither of them necessarily require hiring a whole team.

>An escaped android hires the runners to get an androidhunter off her back, only the androidhunter is an android too (maybe?) and there’s a unicorn involved and a mega corporation and some robot puppets. The details depend on which version you want to play.
Top fucking kek

>and there’s a unicorn involved and a mega corporation

I love that this is perfectly plausible in shadowrun. Like, if it wasn't for the "robot puppets" it would come across as a perfectly reasonable run with a twist.

Not unknown, but not super common. The thing is that a guy who's alone doesn't have anyone to back him up or pull his ass out of the fire if something goes wrong. (And it always does). So that means that running solo has a higher mortality rate, AND it means that the corps that hire runners are more likely to spend a bit more on a team of runners than an individual lone wolf, even if he's really good. They usually care more about getting the job done than being stingy.

That said it's not too uncommon for a runner to be unaffiliated, but what that usually means is that they'll get grouped together with a bunch of others by a fixer who has a job, or get hired as a ringer/merc by a team who needs a bit more oomph for a specific job. A lot of folks prefer not having to particularly give a shit about the people they work with on an emotional level, so it's an alright way to pay the bills without having to settle down.

But the job market's pretty thin for someone who ONLY wants to work alone, and there's not a lot incentive to go that way. But there are some jobs that only really need one pair of boots on the ground, and hey. If nothing else, being alone makes you a more attractive hire to the corps that intend to permanently ensure the silence of their employees. Less cleanup, you know.

I know there are alternate character creation rules in one of the supplements, which do you guys prefer to use?

5e?
sum to ten is the best one. Karma is too much work, life packages or whatever the name of the other one adds too many worthless bookkeeping skills and shit to your character, and priority is too rigid.

I'm a fan of karmagen, but I like to micromanage.

Holy shit, all of these are amazing
>The runners must download an AI of Sherlock Holmes into a body to help them solve an assassination style murder, only to learn that the hit was ordered by Moriarty and they have been tricked into downloading his AI into a body, not Sherlock Holmes.
Glorious.

I think that was a Star Trek episode

It's funny because it's a Blade Runner reference.

I like Sum-to-10 from Run Faster, because it gives you the most flexibility.

It makes it much easier to build effective higher-priority metatypes like trolls, dwarves, and orks.

It's definitely offers the most min-max potential, though, which can be bad for some groups.

I ALWAYS forget about the unicorn dream. And the little origami thing Edward James Olmos makes.

>the unicorn dream

>The details depend on which version you want to play.

The dream doesn't show up in the theatrical cut, though the origami does. The dream shows up in some of the director's cuts.

Oh that explains it. I saw it at a buddy's house and I thought I just didn't remember.

Somebody needs to take the 'plot' of the Idea Spy stuff and make runs based off it.

it mentions that it was in the pdf, friend.
I just cut that bit out, because even if you've seen star trek or not, that would be a great run.

What's the lowest level of crime your character has ever done and got in trouble for?

I nearly blew a run when I fucking jaywalked earlier today. I shit you not. Thank fuck that my team can go loud at the drop of a hat.

Where do you run that people actually enforce jaywalking being a crime?

Where do you run that going loud is an appropriate response to a jaywalking charge?

Where do you run that a jaywalking charge is going to actually impact your ability to finish the job?

Where do you run that leaving your house isn't a criminal charge?

Somebody, somewhere, has to run a character that's minimal or even non-R (other than Fake SIN) in terms of gear.

Huh. Now I kinda want to see what I could make on those terms. Probably more electric than the Shocker.

>Probably more electric than the Shocker.

Presumably running while orc somewhere where KE had a quota to meet.

I felt that saying "more shocking than Electro" didn't sound as good, despite the Shocker not having electric powers.

And more electrifying than Electro sounds like some kinda bad wrestling promo line.

How about: "More electric than THE SHOCKMASTER?"

More electric than Zappy Dan the Magnet Man?

High CHA aspected magician (Shamanistic) that only does Summoning; and doubles up as Face. He talks, Spirit(s) lift.

Strictly spealing:
- R-rated because he's Awakened.
- R-rated gun just not to look like a mage, and even then you could go for a big Taser.

That's it. A nice suit (augmented with PPP's and forearm guards) as armor, a comlink and credsticks aren't R-rated. It'll also depends what extra tech gadgets you want to have with you.

>Where do you run that people actually enforce jaywalking being a crime?
So if it's an interstate or some other sort of high-speed thing where impacting a pedestrian would also cause significant harm and disruption to the traffic, then jaywalking is akin to trespassing and is fairly serious.

Or in a highly controlled environment like a power-mad totalitarian social-experiment levels of control, then anything that doesn't conform would be punished.

But more than likely it was a minor infraction that just caused his party to gain the ATTENTION of the cops. Such attention can then lead to scrutiny which leads to rolls which leads to calls for backup and "wait... do you have a license for that?"

So I figured that I could just cross the street cause nobody gives a shit.

But there was a cop watching. I think he saw me in my nice suit in a bad part of town and just assumed he'd get me on something. Well he did. I was carrying an SMG, APDS, two retro gas grenades, and a bunch of Deepweed, Bliss, and a ton of Novacoke.

The shit was a part of a deal. The drugs wasn't even mine, it was our clients. Drugs for info, and a possible double cross if we felt like it. So these guys see me, nice suit, dufflebag... it's my bad, I've shoulda been cautious.

So these cops come barreling down before I enter the place. I'm guessing they're thinking that it's gonna be an easy arrest of a guy with a fake SIN, illegal drugs and ammo. Our sam simply walked up and wasted the two cops with a suppressed Alpha.

Well, turns out it was a sting, and they thought that they could jump me, and then jump the other guys. SWAT team's sitting nearby and they watch our Orc snuff out two men like a Spetsnaz team...

... at the end of it all, we double-cross the guys without even pretending to do the job. Kicked in the door waving automatics and gunned everybody down. Took the gear. Rigger came up and we get into a twelve second gunfight with the cops before we peeled out and disappeared.

I had to ditch the SIN, too. Which sucks. Ended up blowing through the Bliss during the weekend with our combat guys for funsies.

15 dead and a weekend sky high. All because I jaywalked.

>wearing a nice suit in a slum

How much of that novacoke did you snort?

>Amarketing firm is conjuring the ghosts of dead relatives of consumers and using them to haunt their former family members to buy specific products.

Shit that's genius. I unironically love this idea.

High rated spirits are restricted / forbidden, too.

Slingshot + Pepper Punch Capsules. All legal.

Bound Spirits are. Not the one you summon in on the fly.

Makes me think that the guy has a golden mask.

Technically you can't get Force 4+ without needing another license, but even F3 can be useful in the right circumstances.

Other than that, have a small selection of cyberware, a bigger selection of bioware (seriously, most of the way towards a Gillette here... at least if I go ork or dwarf), and weapons consisting of electric stuff (shock glove or tasers), small melee weapons (clubs, knives), and non-grenade throwing stuff (harpoons, javelins, tomahawks).

Oh, and you can go for high custom cyerlimbs, but not enhanced ones, so it may not be a good buy.

> think he saw me in my nice suit in a bad part of town and just assumed he'd get me on something. .... I'm guessing they're thinking that it's gonna be an easy arrest of a guy with a fake SIN, illegal drugs and ammo.

>Well, turns out it was a sting, and they thought that they could jump me, and then jump the other guys. SWAT team's sitting nearby

Yeeeeeaaaah, those two things don't jive at all. It reeks of a DM deciding to retcon something in the background to try and punish a player for going overboard.

If it was a sting, they would have waited until you're there doing the trade. If this a dystopian future where they don't really give a shit about evidence, and they just want to grab you and your shit, then they'd lead with a swat black-bagging you and asking questions latter with no need of two street-beaters asking questions and a shakedown. If they know you're armed and dangerous, the "jump" is a fuck-ton less polite.

...Unless the cops were unaware of the swat right around the corner.

I would have been a lot more subtle.
>Ok, there's two dead cops in front of the warehouse where you're about to make a drug-deal. Do you casually ignore the corpses and their sqwaking radios and sit casually inside while the entire division comes and surrounds you or do you rush inside and tell the drug dealers that you just killed two cops and you should all probably leave? I'm sure they'll LOVE to hear that and it won't affect negotiations at all. Or better yet, how about you simple walk away and leave your drug dealer friend in a middle of a crime scene they don't know about. That'll teach 'em to deal with the likes of you.

>Somebody, somewhere, has to run a character that's minimal or even non-R (other than Fake SIN) in terms of gear.
I had some players play street urchins that could only get legit gear availability 2 or less, and nothing restricted or forbidden. They still managed a mugging pretty well.

What are prisons like in Shadowrun?

Thinking it would be a cool place to start a campaign.

I'll be frank, twelve year old troll comes at me with a combat knife, I'm giving up my money.

It depends on two things. One, who owns it. Two, is it meant to hold valuable people or not. First one tends to determine the general tenor of the place and what 'end' they may be going for. Second one will show you if you need to make disease resistance rolls or not, metaphorically speaking.

Go read up on IRL private prisons.
They're like that.
Except for the shit ment to hold superpowered evil mages or whatever, that crap is a whole nother story.

>What are prisons like in Shadowrun?
Do people still get lawyers?

Since the justice system(tm) and justice system lite for kids(tm) are private entities, do they care about evidence and laws, and meranda rights?

There must be a difference for the uppity up engineers and good working folk living in arcologies, right?

People do... if by people you mean SINners, like most of the setting does.

If you have a SIN and aren't in a situation where that's going to screw you over, you do have a case where others will care about evidence and laws, even if their skills aren't up to their enthusiasm.

Don't have a SIN or, worse, have a criminal SIN? Well, in that case you probably won't be beaten to death. As long as there's a few cases that are outstanding enough to pin on you, but not important enough to risk blowback when the actual criminal goes and does their dirty deeds again or nobody important is on the defense end.

I tried this for a game where the runners were coerced into working for the fed (in a setting where the government was still powerful). It didn't work out well, but that's because it's a difficult thing to GM without players feeling like it's an asspull or that they have no options at all.

Now presenting the Ares Redditor, the new handgun that shoots spiderman memes and downvotes your enemies out of existence.
grant me death

What a strange coincidence

In my campaign I have a johnson that calls himself "doctor moriarty" (I specifically didn't call him "professor" just to see which player noticed the mistake), who never meets face to face, only trough the matrix.

I was even going to make the twist that he was an AI
I must have watched the same episode of star trek as a kid, though i don't consciously remember.

Have you ever sent your players on (or been on) a perfectly legal run? Something the cops couldn't arrest you for, even if they knew you were doing it.
This doesn't mean the runners did it without breaking laws, just that the basic get in, do the thing, get out didn't need them to

We had our Johnson tell us to take care of his dog for a week while he was on vacation.

How'd that go?

>inb4 they got the dog addicted to novacoke

At first we were like "What the actual fuck?" He was seriously hiring a team of heavily armed murderhobos to walk his dog. In a calm suburban neighborhood. Naturally, we got VERY suspicious. We pulled out all the fucking stops on security.
>Our rigger had drones monitoring the neighborhood 24/7.
>Our decker wasn't sure how to do cybersecurity on a dog with no implants, so he spent most of the time panicking.
>Our face called in favors to get the local law enforcement to up patrols.
>Our street sam did the actual dog walking, with as many concealed weapons as she could carry.
>Nothing fucking happened

The whole thing was a test by the Johnson (and by extension, the GM - it was our first session) to see how we would handle ourselves. The decker was pissed, but we still got paid, so whatever.

Complete annihilation

Ahahaha what a dick.

One day, I want to run a game where one of the early lines is "To offset the advantage you'll get by knowing that you are supposed to be double-crossed, you will be given the location at the last moment and will be attacked at a random time."

Turn the stereotype of the Johnson's double-cross into a run parameter of its own that the group is aware of. (Medical will be given gratis.)

>Our decker wasn't sure how to do cybersecurity on a dog with no implants
The solution is obvious.

I'm adamant on the opinion that prisons in Shadowrun are much more likely to be trodes+personafix or VR+feeding tube than they are to be something we think of as traditional cellblocks-and-barbed-wire prisons. Then, unlike a traditional prison, where the security is focused on keeping people in, the security at such a holding facility would be focused on keeping motherfuckers out.

You're some mage, or a wired-up killer, or whatever? Enjoy spending the next 20 to life living in a VR jail cell or being some prison guard's cut rate bunraku doll, with trodes that lock onto your head like shackles. Better pray you have homies on the outside fixing to bust you out, because with less than 100 nuyen of tech it's now literally impossible for you to do it yourself.

I expect police holding cells for dangerous individuals to work the same way. You don't throw two interrogators into a cell with Bubba the Love Troll and hope nothing goes wrong. You put Bubba in a forced VR cell and interview him in Coldsim where he can't do shit. It's what they'd do for violent crazies instead of sedating them too.

Personafix and VR, both via trodes. That's the prison of the future.

The government is still powerful in some nations. The UCAS is still a powerful governmental entity with a huge standing army whose military contacts are what Ares lives or dies on. Not every country is UCAS-tier, obviously, but there are many countries that are still powerful entities with real intelligence agencies, law enforcement, militaries, and so forth.

Personafixes kill prisoners, omae. Anything longer than a year is a death sentence due to addiction rules.

Corps wouldn't bother keeping people fed for a year if they were going to be dead at the end of it.

"I hired the runners to look after my dog, and they cut off his nose to give him sniffer implants!"

"But how does he smell?!"

"Terrible!!!"

It takes a lot longer than a year for someone to die of Personafix addiction, even if they fail literally every roll. And even then, that's an obvious fix, with people who are showing signs of addiction or deterioration being left in coldsim for a month or three to dry out before going back into the 'general population.'

>implying law enforcement is going to watch for the technicality

How are you gonna arrest someone who hasn't yet summoned a spirit?
"You're under arrest for spirit summoning!"

"But I haven't even summoned them yet!"

And just like that, coldsim isolation becomes the best time to break out. I like it. Can you deliberately fail addiction rolls?

>How are you gonna arrest someone who hasn't yet summoned a spirit?
Are you doing that on purpose, or by accident?

No, I'm not talking about pre-empting the event.

If someone assenses your spirit as fuck-off-huge force, you're not going to get off with, "But it's only summoned!"

You only summon the spirit when shit goes sideways, omae. On the fly.

No, you can't deliberately fail addiction rolls, but you can fake addiction/burnout when given a medical checkup.

>summoning, but not binding, a huge spirit in advance
I don't get it.