/srg/ Shadowrun General - Short, Squat, and Full of 'Ware

I'd think doing a run and only getting a laser gun or whatever would be difficult enough.
And yeah, it'll probably be F.
>broken
Well don't make it absurdly good. But like, it's no fun when you get a super fancy prototype laser assault cannon but you'd be better off with an ares alpha.

Hence 'roughly'.

What's the closest we've got to a main battle tank gun?

4e main battle tank guns?

You're generally better off using the Alpha most of the time, because it is a top-tier weapon. If the homebrew laser cannon is just "the Alpha, but better" as some idiot was suggesting last thread, that's no good.

Honestly he'd be better off using some existing weapon, giving it a couple of mods as integral parts, and presenting it all as an Ares product. Good and unique, but not something that is the greatest thing since sliced soybread.

> "For you, a prototype Ares Alpha Tactical. Same firepower, with integral suppression for the discerning operator. Not even Firewatch has them yet"

> "And for you, an Ares Light Fire '76. It's like the LF75, but it comes in a cool stars and stripes paintjob. It's built strong like America, so it can even survive a misfire of Ares Firecracker™ brand explosive munitions, and keep shooting."

> "And for the rigger, a set of wireless-enabled fuzzy dice for his Roadmaster"

If the ares alpha is better, then what's the point? Why bother getting a silly prototype weapon if something you can get during chargen is better?

This Johnson also happens to work for the VP of Marketing for Ares and is offering an exclusive opportunity to beta test the new Ares Thunderstruck. Runners get the guns and a deal on accessories, but are contractually obliged to be witnessed using them X times per month to drum up hype in the community prior to the release. I'd let them test with longarms and automatics at a penalty so more players can get in on extremely ill-advised fun.

Possibly:

- The alpha is illegal as all hell, this one might be *almost* as good as the alpha, but you can actually carry it without going to jail

- Getting strange stuff that's obviously from Ares' reject bin of failed prototypes and poor sellers is inherently kinda funny

- It's way more fun to shoot Mr.Johnson after he betrays you with a gun that he himself gave you instead of an off-the-shelf Alpha

- The Alpha doesn't come with that sweet stars and stripes paintjob

>- The alpha is illegal as all hell, this one might be *almost* as good as the alpha, but you can actually carry it without going to jail
Oh yay, I sure do love something that can be replaced by an alpha and a duffel bag
>Getting strange stuff that's obviously from Ares' reject bin of failed prototypes and poor sellers is inherently kinda funny
If this was paranoia and there was no expectation of reward for your actions, perhaps. But it isn't. This is a game where gear is the main method of character advancement for 50% of players. So yeah, getting stupid bullshit instead of a reward isn't really worth it.
>It's way more fun to shoot Mr.Johnson after he betrays you with a gun that he himself gave you instead of an off-the-shelf Alpha
not really
>The Alpha doesn't come with that sweet stars and stripes paintjob
Oh yeah, that's a great reward. Fluff. Hey, another great idea! Instead of giving karma for the run, change the color of the mage's spells.

>getting stupid bullshit instead of a reward isn't really worth it.

It's not "instead of" it's "in addition to". user made it clear in his original post that there was still going to be cash in hand, he was just going to add some cool firepower to the mix so that it would be memorable.

But I understand that you hate the idea that some people might like the idea that they have a unique piece of tech no one else does, something just for their character, instead of doing the proper thing and having a spreadsheet to determine the perfect gun and use that exclusively. After all, gear is a main method of character advancement. Choices in gear should never be used as a chance to explore a character's personality or give them on opportunity to roleplay with a good and interesting weapon, it must be mathed out to the extreme to determine the optimal path from which they cannot deviate.

Well dwarves exist in a lot of different fantasies. Where as the SR version of trolls only exist in in their own fantasy. Plus because of the nature of the company and the inconsistency with art, no on has a base to draw on.

There is no way that a unreleased prototype would ever be regarded as anything other than forbidden.

It should have some meaningful bonus, maybe not raw damage, but it should do something cool; like it's got a next gen smartlink which can fire special "smart" bullets that are essentially micro gyro-jet rounds that can curve making them harder to dodge/enabling otherwise impossible trick-shots.
Or may it's got a hook up to an Ares private sat-net that allows it to claim wireless bonuses while remaining virtually undetectable on the matrix since it's talking directly to Ares' system and bypassing the wider net.

>Choices in gear should never be used as a chance to explore a character's personality or give them on opportunity to roleplay with a good and interesting weapon, it must be mathed out to the extreme to determine the optimal path from which they cannot deviate.
Yeah, see, here's the issue. I hate having to chose between the cool path and the optimal path. Preferably, the cool path should also be optimal. I shouldn't have to think "Do I want to have a laser cannon, or do I want to not suck?"

The thing you're missing is that when this started in the earlier thread user was looking for suggestions for material reward from a Ares Johson and I suggested that they'd have to go off book to give them something worthwhile, the party in question already has pretty optimised weapons. So I suggested prototypes, and making it a recurring plot hook, like Ares is now using the PCs to field test the weapons and the could lead to future goods and missions. However for that to work, the weapons have to be worth the players time otherwise they'll toss them in the corner and when Ares call again go, nah fuck those guys they gypped us. You gotta bait a hook if you want it to catch the fish.

>a slower speed
Not even. They still have the same Run speed calculations as everyone else, they just gain fewer meters-per-hit on Run tests, which were already a joke.

Yeah, I fucking love dwarves - I always have to resist the urge to play one.

It's because they're easily given the least attention and pagecount of any of the metatypes. When a writer wants to talk about people who are charming and have an accepted place in society, they talk about elves. When a writer wants to talk about people who are strong or poor, they talk about orks. When a writer wants to talk about people who are outcastes in a world that isn't sized for them, they talk about trolls.

Which leaves dwarves with no space to exploit, since they have an accepted place in society, are strong, and are in a world that isn't sized for them.

It's a damn shame - I'd love for the writers to give them a more prominent role.

But honestly, I feel like that's true in general. Dwarves tend to be regularly forgotten in any fantasy setting - though at least in those they have prominently-featured underground dwarf kingdoms as 'here be dwarves' segments to guarantee at least some attention.

Everyone has been talking about how the Johnson can give out tech as unique rewards for a run. But what about the wizard? What can the Johnson be offering so they don't get shafted.

>Rare reagents
>Access to corporate libraries for training purposes
>Synthetic awakened drugs
>Unique telesma

Worst case scenario they can sell the item on and convert the nuyen into karma.

Given the context is specifically Ares, possibly add New combat spell formulae to that list as they field test them for effectiveness.

Refined reagents and a combat related advanced alchemy formula?

Well, more likely the formula and then selling those reagents, possibly in large and unrefined amounts.

Unlike most of normal alchemy, advanced alchemy has some fun things in it.

Hi, I'm looking for documents, pdf or otherwise, which compile useful lore in a condensed format. I'd be interested in anything like the Sixth World Almanac, but what I really want to have at hand is all the little stuff that exists in the world : gun brands and what they're known for in-setting, the aspect and effect of cybernetics, etc.

I won't need any mechanics stuff, but want the game to really feel like Shadowrun by making the effort of using all the in-setting brand names and other stuff like that.

Weapon Foci. Or still just guns. Wizards in Shadowrun should still know how to shoot.

there is another thread I think you got the previous thread wrong

Big fucking troll tits.

I don't know what cultural shift has made everyone decide to portray female trolls as hot but I hope it keeps going forever.

I don't. It's stupid to talk about how trolls are viewed as monsters when they're all BBWs with horns. I don't know if the artists just can't be bothered to read about dermal growths, if the SR vidya's limitations made all the trolls look more human and the artists are going off of that, or what, but it's stupid.

>it's the vidyas fault
The tabletop art has been doing a lot more to reinforce the idea that trolls still look fundamentally human beneath their various troll features than the vidyas ever did. Eiger excluded, most of the troll portraits in the games look jacked compared to current tabletop art.

What's causing it is more likely people wanting their trolls to actually look like people instead of looking like bears with horns, because the latter works against having the nuance required to play around with your character as a person, rather than having literally everything defined in context of either being in opposition to or support of troll stereotypes.

That and the fact that grunge and punk are so far out of style that people don't even remember them anymore.

I know, right?

I just mean that due to technical limitations/art style, the trolls of the vidya are a lot less craggy, and that smoothskinned idea might have been carried back over by artists for the tabletop.

>my inhuman character doesn't look human
>now I can't play him with nuance, only playing to or against stereotypes

Are all your dwarves Flint Fireforge or Pikel?

The true reason trolls are being beautified:
They do not have troll regen, sopeople subtly file them closer to ogre or giant than troll.
Over the course of years, the mental reclassification gets stronger as it reaches critical mass.

It's unfortunate that people are just going to assume that's what trolls look like, but I think there's meant to be a sharp uptake in trogs & reduction surgery.

shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Orks

McKlusky was an Ork, you trog.

Nah, they're just making everything less cartoonishly inhuman - so that you can see the human being behind the tusks and the horns and such, rather than them being so far outside of that they're just their metatype.

Reduction surgeries actually remove goblin features outright - shaving off horns, removing tusks, rounding ears, and so on.

That said, basic corrections - for symmetry and such - might be as common in the Sixth World as braces and other orthodontics are in our time. The sort of minor corrections you make when a child is young for comfort and appearance, and which remain 'corrected' as they grow into adults. Where you're still obviously an ork or a troll or whatever, but seemingly-naturally on the somewhat more attractive side.

that's an ork mate.

So, at what point do Megacorps stop being corporations, and become Dispersed Mercantile and Oligarchical nations unto themselves? AA?AAA?

AA is when they gain extraterritoriality and the ability to issue SINs - so AA.

At that point, they're legally nations - specifically, profit-motivated nations with 100% socialized industries. Their employee-citizens even pay them a percent of their income to their employer as taxes.

It's all of the worst parts of communism and capitalism combined into a single truly awful megacorporate model.

Also, interestingly, there's more than one direction to reach that destination. Singapore, for example, privatized the entire citystate into a single AA megacorp, going from nationstate->corporate state, instead of corporation->corporate state. The Mafia, on the other hand, purchased the entire nation of Sicily, and thus holds unofficial AA status, with the ability to issue SINs, have nation-scale pseudo-legitimate banking, and even official armed forces and treaty recognition.

Hey, yekka? Jack of All Trades Master of None is incorrectly applying itself to Knowledge skills, making the first level of every Knowledge skill cost 0 karma.

What are some games you would like to play but never will?
Id like to play in a game that features a money hungry cyber ronin and a scumbag priest trying to do jobs and scam people in the neo-sengoku period.

Itll never happen.

>What are some games you would like to play but never will?
Most of the games I'd like to play but never will are truly filthy lewd fetish games.

But aside from that? I'd love to play an LA-based celebrity runner game where the crew keeps getting into increasingly serious runs that they have to figure out how to scrub into watchable programming.

If I put an Armored Jacket on an Anthrodrone, does that stack with its natural drone Armor?

>If I put an Armored Jacket on an Anthrodrone, does that stack with its natural drone Armor?
Explicitly not. It either gets its natural armor or its worn armor. It says as much in Rigger 5.0 - though it was easy to miss, since it was in a different section from the anthropomorphic drones themselves, for some stupid reason.

In the campaign I'm doing with my girlfriend, we're using the Life Module system of character creation from Run Faster. Run Faster only provides UCAS, CAS, NAN and Tir as nationalities. I've found life module options in Data Trails and Chrome Flesh, but can't find anything adding new nationality options. I'm mainly looking for a Japanese nationality choice for a Primerunner I'm making for the campaign.

>they're just making everything less cartoonishly inhuman
>so that you can see the human being behind the tusks and the horns and such, rather than them being so far outside of that they're just their metatype
I don't buy it. Check Chrome Flesh for support it's being pushed in setting, and that reduction is being used by corps as a means of bringing trog facial structures into line with others as more easily recognisable by biometric security.

I love dwarves so much, but often lament the comparative lack of content for them in Shadowrun. Other than ham-handedly homebrewing some fluff that brings them out of their "red headed step child" status, I don't know what do to about it.

Can you give me a page on that? I'm trying to find it for reference.

So, question about Ghouls, changelings and the magic resource on the priority table.

Infected and Changelings get 1 point magic per default, but do they add the magic resource number to their existing magic at chargen, or does the magic priority overwrite it ?

(so on priority D they would have 2 magic like everyone else)

Overwritten.

>Changelings
You mean Metasapients and Shapeshifters.

>You mean Metasapients and Shapeshifters.
You mean pets pretending to be people

No.

so matrix combat started. With two almost new people. 20 minutes have passed and the one with highest initiative haven't even acted yet.This is gonna take about 40 years to end.

I'm fully aware of its place in Chrome Flesh. Regardless, it's something that removes features outright. For cases where people are just made more symmetrical and prettier while still being recognizably orkish/trollish, though, you're just going to be talking about minor cosmetic touch-ups.

Not that guy, but it's not an official rule - one of the devs said so on a forum, but that it never got listed in the book. By RAW - rather than word of god - they stack. By word of god - rather than RAW - they don't.

Pick your preference.

please provide this RAW stating they do stack

>please provide this RAW stating they do stack
That's not how this works. Unless something says they don't stack, they do stack - same as the way worn armor stacks with a troll's dermal armor or a street samurai's armored cyberlimbs. You don't have to prove a negative, only a positive.

As for the dev explaining how it's actually supposed to work, well, here you go:
reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/4mtu4o/can_humanoid_drones_wear_regular_armor/d3z5k6w/

Show them this:

Is there anything in any of the books that gives a good idea of what a Zero-Zone should be like?
At the moment I've just got a building patrolled by Roto-Drones, with a few Gun Turrets outside each door(set up as per the first example the book gives), the rigger controlling all of that sitting in a mostly-secure room in the building that puts him within 100 meters of most of them, and a chokepoint hallway with a security mage and some caged hellhounds, set to be released by a motion sensor.

I'm not sure if maybe this is too much, or if I should remove the rigger(and assume he's just handling it all from somewhere close but outside the zero-zone) and mage(and just let them deal with the hellhounds alone, without the mage's support).

Run Faster (provisional) Errata now lets Karmagen to put 235 Karma into Nuyen, a maximum of 470k Nuyen, and Karmagen gets the free Knowledge and Contact points just as Priority/Sum-to-ten.

forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=9i97jfdhts1d0972d3lpi1rs47&topic=24596.30

>Regardless, it's something that removes features outright
Here's the thing.

... You're wrong.

>troll reduction involves a multi-stage process of dermal-plate removal, tusk reduction, hair removal, symmetrical re-balancing, and a host of other little tweaks

Tusk reduction. No horn alteration. Symmetrical balancing. Dermal calcifications grow back or are only superficially removed. (after all, it doesn't remove troll natural armour)
That's Troll Reduction, nigs.

More than that, you're pushing the topic down a non-issue. Does not even matter which it is, so long as the corps are pushing reduced trog features and altering trogs for easier biometric security recognition. Which they are. And unless you ignore it or haven't been exposed to it, that's what the art shows us.

I think Vietnam is trying to do the singapore thing, altho 100% of the stock in the megacorp is currently owned by the goverment, so I'm not sure if it counts.

Make one yourself then.
I think that's good.

Not that guy, but listen.

Most orks/trolls can't afford 15k nuyen of Troll Reduction, because that's a fucking lot of money.

Period.

That's three months of Middle Class rent/mortgage, food, car payments, insurance, and so on - and believe you me, most of these orks/trolls ain't middle class, so that's an even more extreme investment to be made.

So when you see orks/trolls that are on the good looking side? They're almost always either just naturally towards the more-attractive side of ork/troll appearance (because they do have a range/spectrum just like any other metatype, where some are prettier/uglier than the median), or they're people who got 500 nuyen of minor cosmetic surgery, or both. There will be some who drop literally tens of thousands of nuyen on serious overhauls, but that's going to be way, way far from the majority.

And the cheaper Metatype Reduction (which still costs 6,000 goddamn nuyen, well outside of what your typical ork can drop on cosmetic surgery) explicitly involves:
>tusk removal, body hair is lasered off for good, bone deposits and hard plates cut away

What's more, Troll Reduction's second level (25k nuyen, yeah right) further explicitly goes all the way to full horn, tusk, and so forth removal:
>Renraku even introduced a second level of the process that pretty much turns a troll into a giant human.

You're not just wrong, you're the type of wrong where you had to read through every sentence disagreeing with you in order to pick out only the sentences that - out of context - could support your claim. That makes you dishonest too - intellectually dishonest, if it wasn't intentional.

Trolls are getting sexy because the unstable first transformations are now stable. Also they fuck a lot of humans.

...

>I think that's good.
Great.

Now I'm just trying to decide if I should homebrew up an Ares weapon they could all get some use out of(all but 1 of them has points in Automatics, only half of them have points in Longarms, so I'd probably go with an Automatic weapon of some sort), or just give them each 1 gun and then a credstick with whatever's left from the total reward and then tell them there's a gun shop down the street that's been told to fill their orders without questioning their SINs.

The latter seems a bit better to me, because then they each get their own new gun, and they can customize it to their heart's content.
Plus, its their first run for Ares, and I kinda doubt Ares would just give a group of newbies a handful of prototypes to test out.

Spirits and wards are the main purpose of using mages for security, and are more wide-spread because a single mage can create multiple wards and bound spirits and doesn't even need to stay at the place. Any location worth having an actual mage present would also have those two as well.

>Also they fuck a lot of humans.

That raises an interesting point. If one or more of your parents are not the same metatype as you, do you pick up their traits? Is there some troll with a leaner face and elf ears because he had elf parents? What about genetics not tied to metatype; would the human kid of a koborokuru and a white girl be mixed Asian/Caucasian, or pure white? And are there now trolls that look more trolly because they're 'breeding true' with other trolls, pushing their human ancestry farther up the family tree?

The open answer is no.
The secret answer is yes.
That is why after a few generations of using humans as "breeders", they now have human features.

Hey, chummers.

Is there a book in any edition that gives rules for runs in the wilderness? I've found a bunch of fluff and stats for critters but I can't find anything else.

>If one or more of your parents are not the same metatype as you, do you pick up their traits?
Probably only slightly. Keep in mind that ork traits are super dominant over non-Goblinoid traits, so it's much more likely to find a pretty ork than a fanged elf, if that sort of thing manifests at all.

>What about genetics not tied to metatype; would the human kid of a koborokuru and a white girl be mixed Asian/Caucasian, or pure white?
Mixed. People of non-human metatypes are still visibly of their ethnic group. You have black, asian, white, and so forth dwarves, orks, whatever.

>And are there now trolls that look more trolly because they're 'breeding true' with other trolls, pushing their human ancestry farther up the family tree?
Certainly could be.

Give them some mods for their current weapons (or a brand new gun from a book if one of them is eyeing something already, Ares having gathered info on them and trawled their Matrix search history), and the gun shop is enough for the first run. Save up the big special prototypes for later on, but tease them to keep them interested.

This is how corps get pet runners.

I'd go with the latter. Prototypes are if ares really likes you.

Somewhat related, do all children of human/whatever become nonhuman? Or do they all, or do some of them only?

Genetics is a lottery in the sixth world.

Most of them become non-human metavariants, because those are dominant genes (and in cases of goblin/non-goblin, usually goblin), but there can still be human kids. A human child of an orc/human pair is rare, but not unheard of.

>Somewhat related, do all children of human/whatever become nonhuman?
It depends on the combination.

Ork/human results in an ork more than 90% of the time - ork genetics are super dominant.

That's less true when you start looking at stuff like elves or dwarves or whatever.

And, on top of that, basically nobody is 100% one metatype, genetically, but they only express as one or the other. In the same way that two mixed-race humans can produce children that look really black, or really white, sometimes two orks will have their genetics line up where the kid gets none of the dominant ork genes, and ends up a human or an elf or something.

Shit's weird. There aren't any pure races.

>More than that, you're pushing the topic down a non-issue. Does not even matter which it is, so long as the corps are pushing reduced trog features and altering trogs for easier biometric security recognition. Which they are. And unless you ignore it or haven't been exposed to it, that's what the art shows us.

Fuck, dude. I get that people stop reading after the first sentence, but this is embarrassing to read.

Can't replicate it.

Your runners are invited to a gala/ball, all of them will attend

What happens?
for those with no group: what would your character concept do?

>Party face and his girlfriend (former Sammy of the Team) try to enjoy themselves and pick up some girls
>Long-arms specialist/possible infiltrator just stands around silently
>TM NPC tries to get him to socialize
>Ork Sammy goes straight to the bar

Are they invited for run-related reasons, or just for the party?

Either way ends in bloodshed, but we need to figure out if it happens because the sammy is on K-10 or just drunk on the open bar.

My Sam would be waiting anxiously on the toilet for all hell to break lose (which will always ALWAYS happen), with a disassembled assaultrifle stashed in the two large smuggling compartments in his legs.

I kinda love you right now

>Face/Infil would fit right in.
>Phys.Ad would not have a clue what to do, being a farmboy and all.
>Rigger would look the buffoon and raid the buffet.
>Chairmaster and Killtroll would obviously ruin everything five minutes in.
>Face/Decker would try to fit, but his views on the world would not.
>Technomancer would try to strike down the corporate overlords, be ready for anything.

Mr smog would go in his bane mask and as nice a suit as he can. He would blow smoke on fat cats and chortly.
Crustaceonancer would go wearing scraps, posibly from a suit, and spend his time picking through the buffet.
Murderbot would go in a sprayed on suit, and act gregarious, friendly, and social. he wouldnt be liked much since like 4/5th ofhis stories are about killing all humans.

Decker would fit right the fuck in(Dryad, high charisma) and be an entertaining part of the affair.
Infiltrator would probably fit in, but avoid notice most of the evening.
Adept would run around flirting with chicks and breaking shit on accident, then making jokes about how he's too good at partying.
The troll would stick out like a sore thumb.

>Decker would fit right the fuck in(Dryad, high charisma) and be an entertaining part of the affair.
Man, I need to see more social engineer deckers. Social infiltrators who also Deck and Face. Social engineering is such a classic part of the real-world hacker package, it's crazy that Deckers are normally played as strictly software-side.

The advantages of being given access to internal systems by walking straight through the front door alone is mind-blowing, and that's before even taking into account the benefit of doing shit like conning people out of their account information to gain legitimate access to certain parts of a Host.

>ITT: trogs who can't read good, or do other stuff good, too

Also;
>which still costs 6,000 goddamn nuyen, well outside of what your typical ork can drop on cosmetic surgery
Which is why the Japs (others, too, but gotta dig at the nips first) make it available in instalments and heavily subsidise reduction surgery for wage-trogs.

>> For those on a budget, you can buy the procedure as six treatments of only a thousand nuyen each. Your health insurance covers it if you’re in a Japanacorp, and several other corporations also cover it.
> OrkCE0

>Social engineering is such a classic part of the real-world hacker package, it's crazy that Deckers are normally played as strictly software-side.

Because deckers aren't real hackers. They're the boogeymen of the 80's come to life; masters of arcane processes that are taking over every aspect of life, who can turn your existence upside down from their bedroom.

Social engineering is fun and the practical way to get into secure systems in the real world, but it's not what deckers are. If you need a con artist, that's a different archetype; in the movie he'll be Brad Pitt, while the decker is Chris O'Dowd.

Current party:
My character gets along with everyone or pisses everyone off. Either or.
The satyr definately pisses everyone off.
No clue for mystic adept
The decker shoots up in the bathroom and falls unconcious.
Planned party for next campaign:
Doom mage makes an ass of himself, possibly rips open his dress shirt to reveal bomb vest. Hostage situation unfolds from there.

>Social engineering is fun and the practical way to get into secure systems in the real world, but it's not what deckers are. If you need a con artist, that's a different archetype; in the movie he'll be Brad Pitt, while the decker is Chris O'Dowd.
There's no reason you can't be both. Talk your way past the front desk, con John Wageslave into giving you full access to his terminal, and then using all of that to crack into a host. Then have one build off of the other - give yourself a fake AR security badge and open doors for you, bluff people into not questioning it, and so on.

Even as Shadowrun is set up, decking (especially AR decking) and Face stuff complement each other fantastically - in every way except attribute overlap.

>in every way except attribute overlap.
Yes, hello? This is the Technomancer. I've got you covered.