/srg/ Shadowrun General - Road Trip Edition

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>Shoot straight
>Conserve synthfuel
>And never, ever cut a deal with a dragon

Hit the road, JackPoint! Go get your group of layabouts, fuel up the cars, and go for a drive. See the beauty of the wild buffalo herds of the Sioux Nation, marvel at the forests of Quebec, be blinded by the light reflected off of Phoenix. When was the last time you really went on a road trip in the Sixth World, chummers?

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Reposting for more feedback/ideas:
Due to massive public outcry after decades of corporate interference in Argentinian politics, the current prime minister of Argentina has been thrown out of office after information was published about him taking bribes from multiple corporations, to the detriment of the public. An election is taking place, however multiple factions have decided to take the future of Argentina into their own hands. An ultra-nationalist faction comprising most of the military headed by a veteran general who seeks to make Argentina independent from corps again took control of most of the southern portion of northern Argentina, and attempted to storm the capital. Loyalist forces held their own, and the coup wasn't as clean as the military would have liked, fighting is still fierce in Buenos Ares. In the north, in the greater Rosario area, which has long been a haven for Democracia Siempre, a pro-democratic rebel group who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the election, and have used the chaos caused by the military coup to take territory for themselves, also getting involved in the fighting in the capital.
Government forces are cut off in the capital, and are quickly falling to the combined assaults of the rebels and military. Farther north, numerous divisions have stayed loyal and with international and corporate court support, formed a general front line with the rebels. There's currently fighting in Cordoba, however loyalist forces backed by heavy Aztechnology support have fought the rebels to a standstill.
Currently, there's been no direct international intervention, but many corporations have sent materiel to support government forces, and intervention from Aztlan, Amazonia, or both is not out of the question if things don't resolve quickly.

The players will be members of the military, a corporate security team, rebels, or whatever they choose.
What do you guys think about this as a campaign?

>Alan Moore becomes a Street Shaman

It sounds rad as fuck dude.

Damn that's some perfect rigger art.

My players are being smuggled by boat into Quebec during the next session. For 3 days, they'll be living inside of Luxury Amenities Rover 2072 inside of a shipping container designed to smuggle people into.

I guess that counts?

>When was the last time you really went on a road trip in the Sixth World, chummers?

We went to the far south-east of the SSC earlier. It was fun. Did the whole roadtrip angle, with an old, beat up Volkswagen bus, and even stopped at a hole in the wall restaurant and required body checks in order to not suffer indigestion from the greasy real food.

Problem: one of my players is very good at killing anything in the astral. It's his raison d'etre. He's gone toe to toe with F6 and F7 spirits and come out on top (not necessarily unscathed).

How do I challenge him, astrally? (or any player for that matter) I can't step the level of the spirits up, or else it quickly turns into a one hit KO kind of deal. Mages die pretty fast, having an even smaller condition monitor. Multiple small spirits might work? BG count aspected magicians and spirits too? That wouldnt come up too often though. What else can I do to spice things up?

Background count aspected spirits come up plenty. If a spirit hangs around and uses its powers in an area long enough, that's enough to give it a small 1-3 point background count, which greatly shifts power. This can easily happen with a corporate building that has relatively constant astral security.

Also multiple smaller spirits would work as well; it's much easier for the average mage to summon 3 force 3 spirits rather than a force 6 one anyways, so they should be encountering this more often than not.

The same thing you do in any other combat - make defeating the opponent not the main objective. For example, let's say your samurai is an unstoppable killing machine? Your don't just keep throwing more and bigger enemies at him. You give him an object or person whose safety takes a higher priority than 'winning' the fight. You give him a slowly-closing door or counting-down panel and a bunch of mooks blocking the way that he needs to get past one way or another before it's too late. You give him weird terms and conditions like the Johnson requiring that not only must no guards die, then must all be incapacitated without even taking serious injuries.

And you do the same thing with Astral threats. Weird complications and side factors that take priority above and beyond the binary win/lose state. Because after all, when it comes to the basic pass/fail of someone's main niche, it's fair to assume they're going to reliably succeed at that aspect of it without any real challenge.

My DM wants to set our upcoming came in the CAS. Specifically, Jackson, MS. I don't know how "period correct" she's going to be with the setting, but I'm sure she'll nail the flavor. Thing is, I decided my character is a Japanese ninja adept who might have a displaced Yakuza connection, but international groups and companies seem like they'd be shunned with the Confederate American States. Is there much fluff in this region of North America, for Shadowrun?

I've never made a melee focused character before. I'm doing it more for flavour than utility to be honest.

How do I make them not suck once the bullets fly? In my experience, if you dont get the drop, you get dropped. I'm basically looking for ways to get out of sight, take detours, and close the gap? What can I do about multiple combatants, since I'm sure Jim's buddy is going to whip around and spray where Jim is a gurgling mess?

>How do I make them not suck once the bullets fly?
Movement speed. The only way that melee doesn't suck is being able to close the distance to your opponent before they can start shooting. Maximum Agility, maximum Run, any multipliers or bonuses you can get ahold of. But once you are that fast, it becomes a genuinely solid option.

>What can I do about multiple combatants
Melee already lets you split your dice pool to attack multiple targets with a single swing.

Skimmers are a swordsman's best friend, it helps you close the distance and maneuver around twice as good. The physical limit penalty is ignored when swinging a bat or a sword because you use the weapon's accuracy instead.

Take advantage of your high strength by taking points in Throwing Weapons, grenades and/or throwing knives.

>What can I do about multiple combatants
If there are multiple opponents in your melee range, you can split your pool. Otherwise, hitting a bunch of people isn't really your job. Your group figures out who the mage is and you geek the fuck out him with your Claymore.

What's the quality for being an escaped clone?

I suppose it is too much to hope they were letting people keep the prototype playtest copies of Anarchy at Gencon, huh?

I'm a shadowrun demo tech.
It's releasing soon. relax.

But I'm too excited to relax!

Apparently you could buy a copy for $5. It's only the core mechanics and character samples, nothing for character creation or advancement.
It's literally called escaped clone. Doesn't exist in 5th.

There's that engineered metahuman in chrome trails though.

Are you talking about the Prototype Transhuman Quality or the Bag of Organs Life Module from Chrome Flesh.

How soon is "Soon".

We arn't given concrete dates, sadly.

I'm losing hope that Super Brawl Sunday exists on the internet. A friend even petittioned [spoilers]reddit[/spoilers] and they couldn't find it either. My dreams are shattered.

oh my god do i try

I couldn't even get a copy from the guy that wrote it. To be fair, it's not a super great adventure anyway. The mini-runs were okay at best, and the urban brawl segment at the end was stupidly complex.

Any news on a Technomancy 5e splat?

Perfect time is one of your most important qualities because it let's you charge and still make multiple attacks or called shots.

Reach is crucial if you want to make multiple attacks per pass, because the Def penalty caused by reach applies to each target fully. If you attack twice, each point of reach is worth two attack dice and it gets more extreme if you try for even more attacks.

They don't tell us about new splats.

It's in the works still, unless Mac's been let go.

In playtesting, last I heard. Rumour-mill suggests the next year is going to be purely splats.

This had best not be my GM
I swear to god if you just turned SRG into a spoiler after you have been constantly saying "I want to tell you but I want to keep it a surprise" I will end you

You could use Wanted, Prototype Transhuman, and maybe some other qualities to fill everything in.

I need help chummers. When my players are planning on taking an approach to a situation they all come up with separate plans and no one can agree on anything.

The problem is that it slows down the pace to an absolute crawl. They just spent an hour and a half just talking about how they should take out 2 guards. Am I overloading them with options? How can I keep things rolling when this happens?

Do they do this during legwork or during the run proper?

Call for a democratic vote.

Everyone votes (except you obviously) and if it ties you flip a coin; best 3 out of 5 usually works.

This happens every once in awhile, especially when you get players that have extremely rigid moralities on their characters (like a "No Women, No Children" or a No-Kill Policy), and when it does, the best thing to do is put it to a vote by going clockwise at the table or top of the list/skype/whatever if it's online.

This kinda sucks, especially if you have the rigid morality folks because a lot of the negative qualities surrounding that are like "you HAVE to stop them user or lose karma!" or even "take a -1 to your dicepool for fucking everything!" or even worse for Pacifist where it makes you lose fucking attribute points when something doesn't go their way.

But despite that, it has never once failed for me - you probably need slightly more mature players for it to work, however.

Now you don't need to do it immediately - usually I let everyone argue over something for like 5 minutes if it's for something unimportant. If it is something important, give them a 1 minute time limit before I FORCE them to vote. If they don't vote, then they lose say on what happens. Makes the players think on their toes for shit.

If it gets really bad and shit goes to blows in character, either timeout the session and let everyone get some air, assert yourself as the GM, or just let it happen. My personal favorite is when two of my players had their characters get into a fist-fight just to clear the tension between the two.

Now if it becomes a full blown out-of-character argument, you got bigger problems on your hand. Generally speaking, make sure everybody has had something to eat so they aren't bitchy. If you're getting around a table - order a pizza or something. If not, then I dunno shit they can take care of themselves can't they?

Hope this works for you.

Sounds good
Also this is probably the biggest writeup anything in South Am that isn't Aztlan, Amazonia, Caracas or Bogota has had, period.

>no backups or anything
Professionalism just rolls off CGL like water from a duck's back, doesn't it?

Uhm... Nope, not your GM, honest.

I'm so thankful that you tried, yekka, it means a lot! Thank you!

It usually only happens during the run. Its not that everyone has moralities or that they are arguing, I think now its because there are just too many unknown variables. I think what I need to do is spend more time defining those variables and what they can and cant do. Stopping everyone to take votes though is still a good idea if it happens despite this. Thanks guys.

So I want to buy a dalmatian to load up with a grenade launcher so when things get hairy it can launch to provide bombing cover.

Problem is I cant fit it into the van with the rest of the team and my two roto drones taking up space.

How long can a Dalmatian fly before it needs to refuel? I'm thinking just have it launch from home and tail us to the run and back.

Rigger 5.0 pg.31 provides a general guideline:
>Vehicles operating normally can function for six hours before needing refueling/recharging/whatever

Then there are mods/... that can increase that.

It's not super comforting, but Missions have always run as essentially developer-approved homebrew.

I'm a bit confused with RCC's. If I have a control rig in my skull can I access the RCC wirelessly by thought or do I need to be with it to manually input commands?

I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out if I need to sit in the van or if I can go in alongside my metal babies, trusting the autosofts until I need to think more complex commands at them. It would be a bit weird carrying an RCC in with me.

RCC are wireless and the Rig gives you a DNI. You can operate it all from your brain sitting in a van.

I still suggest you get a datajack for the noise reduction though.

Sitting in a Van or not*

Alright sweet, I want to get out and shoot things as well sometimes so thats a load off my mind.

> I have a control rig in my skull can I access the RCC wirelessly by thought or do I need to be with it to manually input commands?

Wirelessly? Yes and no. If all you want to do is send commands to your drones, then yes, you can do it wirelessly, or plugging in the cable coming from your control rig into the RCC but sticking to AR.

If you ever want to "jump in" into one of your drones, then you must plug into the RCC and go to Hot-sim VR. That means your body goes limp. (Or if your GM is generous, you can shut out the RAS override without it creating additional problems and one of your teammates can lead you along by the hand.)

If I hacked into a car, and got 3 marks on it, can I order it to run over someone? I mean, cars do have a pilot rating.
Or do I have to take control?

and what actions would it use?
Basically, I want to order a car to run over a guard while I shoot the other guard with my ares alpha

>If I hacked into a car, and got 3 marks on it, can I order it to run over someone?
Yes.

What actions would it use?
Control Device to make the Vehicle perform a Ram test (rules for Ramming are on pg. 203 in core)

>I want to order a car to run over a guard while I shoot the other guard with my ares alpha

That, on the other hand, will not be possible. Ramming is a Complex action, so you'll have to wait for your next initiative pass to shoot the other guard. (Or alternatively, if your vehicle is fast enough, try to run both over.)

>Ramming is a Complex action
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
There are so many subsystems in shadowrun I always forget a few rules. Thanks for the info chummer

Is there a 'physics' tradition, /srg/?
I'm sure I remember something about it, but I can't find it now

Are novels worth checking out?

Not most of them, no.

Hey, SRG, would your call my character a street samurai or a rigger?

He has a control rig, reaction enhancers, and wired reflexes. Maxed out Pilot and Automatics. But the dude doesn't have any drones, just a tricked-out car.

I envisioned him as a getaway driver, wheelman, and driving-combat expert, who shoots it out on foot where his car can't fit.

Would you call him a street samurai who's really good at driving, or a rigger with a limited done selection and a combat focus?

Is there a better scan of the 1e Universal Brotherhood book set floating about? The one in the trove is trash.

I don't know, if he is a street samurai who's really good at driving. And I don't know, if he is a rigger with a limited done selection and a combat focus. But what I do know, is, that he has a very particular set of skills, skills he has acquired over a very long career.

Are they sailing down the St. Lawrence? Do they have time to stop for lobster rolls in the Maritimes?

Street samurai.

Go read Shadows of North America. There are plenty of foreign megacorps in the CAS (amazingly, they are not all racist stereotypes).

you can play your Ryu Hayabusa knockoff some other game, try to do something with a bit more fitting flavour

Are there any ways to make a machine pistol/heavy pistol more concealable other than a concealed carry holster?

As opposed to... Putting our SR6?

And they'd better still be planning on getting that errata out the door sharpish. A year to start fixing this is too damn long.

If they want to push Anarchy, they need to push books that are easily compatible with it. They're making a big deal about the conversion being exclusively from 5th ed content to Anarchy's ruleset so there's none of Gun H(e)aven's bullshit with duplicate statlines, but splat books are easily consumed by both game lines. With the more rules-oriented freelancers working on Goodman's Errata Squad, it makes sense to focus on the relatively simple splats.

Hermetics are sciency.

There's the Psionic tradition in shadow spells if you meant 'psychic'.

Are there still fisheries in the maritimes, or is it all aquaculture? Anyways, reminder that maritime lobster is always the tastiest lobster:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#Grading
TLDR: the tastiness of a lobster is inversely proportionate to how far you can ship it.

I see. I didn't understand that you meant 'splat' as 'fluff-only book'.

At least we'll get more Shadows in Focus. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Asamando book, given the renewed emphasis on Infected, but I hope for one in Warlords China. That's an underserved market.

Hide it inside a cyberarm.

There's still every form of human food-acquisition, just less. You can still get free-range grass-feed beef, wild game, and ethically-sourced fish. It's just that, statistically, you're probably opting for the affordable soy and krill options instead.

Speaking of which, I want to give people an idea of how not-actually-extreme Shadowrun's food future is.

So, I work in the deli/bakery/bistro of a major US supermarket chain. That means I get to read the ingredient labels of the shit we sell before it's prepared. We have a medium-end roast beef which has corn whey, corn protein, and corn byproduct listed in three different places to keep 'corn' from being its #1 or #2 ingredient; this way, corn protein is only its #3. It's also full of red food dye to make it look pink, which all leeches to one side over time, turning that one side scarlet and the other side gray.

The raw chicken we use for fried chicken is "up to 14% soy solution." The ground beef patties are, by weight, mostly seaweed (carrageenan - the same filler we use in diapers, because it can hold up to 20 times its weight in absorbed water), water, soy oil for fat content, and 'mechanically separated' beef, with a healthy heap of MSG to trick your mouth into thinking it's still eating meat.

The bakery has cellulose fillers (fine-ground sawdust) with silicon-based additives to keep their 'flour' dry enough to still be poured as a major component in all breads cooked on-site.

Our ham salad arrives to us in vacuum-sealed plastic tubes that we squeeze into the serving containers, and consists mainly of synthetic gelatin.

And don't even get me started on the 'coffee' we brew.

This is the quality of food that probably 90% of Americans eat as their dietary staples. A nutritionally-balanced 3d-printed soy-and-krill-byproduct burger doesn't sound super appetizing to me, but it does sound better than that shit.

Don't have enough essence left to do that. I take it there aren't weapon mods I can take, then?

>There's still every form of human food-acquisition, just less. You can still get free-range grass-feed beef, wild game, and ethically-sourced fish. It's just that, statistically, you're probably opting for the affordable soy and krill options instead.
Yeah, but I think you'd still spring for the real thing if you roll into an area where it's available for 1/10th the usual price, especially if your a shadowrunner with more money than the average wageslave anyways.

There is at least 1 gun that can be disassembled into ordinary looking objects, I think it is in Run Faster.

Why does everyone say it's Soy? They made it pretty clear in Shadowtech that most food is cultured myco-protein.

Because soy is a lot easier to write. Also, it's not 'most of it' that's mycoprotein- both that and soy are mentioned as common bases, but I don't think they've said that one is overwhelmingly more common than the other.

>All the rivers are poisoned by various hazardous materials
>The soil has been destroyed by acid raid
I am willing to bet that, at least in North America, 99.9% of the "real" food is grown or raised in hydroponics or some sort of food arcology.

>Why does everyone say it's Soy?
>2e, 1992
Because that shit was written literally a quarter of a fucking century ago and we've been using 'soy' this and 'soy' that every since.

The Shiwase Puzzler is basically the golden gun, yeah.

Pic related says otherwise

>MFW can't even hunt and fish for own food and have to hand over my hard-earned nuyen to the corps just for basic sustenance

Not so. It's mentioned that the NAN are huge food producers, with massive fields of grains tended by drones. It used to be owned by an Amerind company, but Horizon bought out the Sioux Nation crops during troubled times.

Speaking of, I was wondering what the food situation is in Amazonia. Azzies are embargoed, so no Stuffer Shacks. Also, flora and fauna are more than thriving. So, I wonder how I could fluff the food for my players.

I was thinking of having the Brazilian tradition of humongous farms be kind of over. With smaller cities being provided by A rank local corps and native co-ops, having a larger amount of "real" food. Whereas the situation in Metropole would be more dependent on exports of soy and mycoprotein-based foods from A and AA corps unaffiliated with Aztec.

I also want to say those grains tend to be extremely genetically altered to the point that it would give the hippies that wrote Shadowrun a heart attack. I specifically remember reading something about how America now sucks for food production because of dreadful environmental conditions.

Or maybe I'm thinking of a different setting altogether and just get similar things mixed up.

>cropduster drones
Oh boy, I can only begin to imagine what these could do in the hands of a skilled rigger.
>spray crowd with chemical attack
>spray target with UV-visible chemical to make him easier to track
>spray area with gasoline to enable arson

They probably still grow most of their stuff, afair the only part of Br that's really off limits is the Amazon basin itself.

>I specifically remember reading something about how America now sucks for food production because of dreadful environmental conditions.
That sounds more like Cyberpunk 2020 to me. The interior of America is depopulated mainly because of paracritters, magical threats, plagues, and people fleeing the NAN as fast as possible. Ecologically it's pretty intact, though.

Maybe I am thinking of that. Who knows. I've said this in a thread before, but I tend to get the two mixed up from time to time, just by the virtue that they're in the same genre and occasionally have similarities.

I wouldn't be surprised if large parts of the NAN and Texas were utterly fucked for agro mainly because people IRL are already starting to figure out we are possibly destroying the Ogalala aquifer and the Shadowrun world has probably already destroyed most of it if not all. Only Algonquin-Manitou and the northern part of Sioux probably have workable Agland at tis point.

>assuming the Awakening didn't replenish the aquifers
>assuming the writers knew anything about that

>assuming the Awakening didn't replenish the aquifers
How would that work, exactly?

Magic, chummer.

>implying the NAN and CAS wouldn't just drain them again
It's made pretty clear that behind the propaganda the NAN is just as cutthroat as UCAS, just with slightly different looking bosses.

>Quebec is it's own nation in the Sixth World
I bet there was a stinking Bloc Quebecois faggot on the original dev squad.

Shadowrun Quebec is hilarious, though. Their buying power and import situation is so fucked that people illegally smuggle in foodstuffs and make decent money on it.

>that anglo butthurt
It's because Gibson did it, and the BQ wasn't a thing when 1st edition was published.

What? You mean they're not making a killing exporting maple syrup to the rest of the world?

>I bet there was a stinking Bloc Quebecois faggot on the original dev squad.
Shadowrun balkanizes at every possible opportunity. If it gets a chance to split something into two smaller countries, it takes it. It's very anti-cultural-integration.

They get a great deal on police work. And by that I mean, they hooked up nationwide with Lone Star and since Lone Star doesn't hardly hire people who speak French, they just send all the problem officers to Quebec as a punitive duty and do what they can to keep the police force running with some kind of consistency.

A rapid look tells me that Quebec's maple syrup (which FWIW is almost 75% of world production) is worth around a billion. It's probably not making a big dent.

Mfw my philosophy professor from last semester playtested 1E in high school

I told him how Shadowrun is now run by a corrupt company and he had a good laugh
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ew\\\\\\\\\2

>1e was playtested
Okay what

>tfw my city sank into the ocean
>tfw house prices in vancouver probably didn't go down by the 2050s