/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Astral projections (and spirits that are not manifested) move at regular speeds.

Quick question:
What happens when you rig into a bike while you ride it? Do you fall over or is your body conscious enough to keep balance?

Also CFD hasn't happened yet and is going to be mostly confined to Boston, and play much more like "28 Days Later" than "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

Depends if you have been belted in or there is something else keeping you locked to the bike. You are fully unconscious and would fall off nothing is supporting you.

The rigger interface for a bike will include a couple of straps to keep the pilot's body in saddle.

Talked about them all last thread, fish-for-brains.

Isn't this the same character from the CRB that is a rigger?

What, you think all orks look alike or something?

Dat's racist.

No. The only thing they have in common is being orc ladies with yellow buttons.

So, throw all my stuff into my car, park my car in a shipping container bound for Central America and.....then what? Say in the container and live off canned soup or might wandering around the ship to stave off boredom not be an entirely terrible idea?

>stave off boredom

That's what VR is for, omae.

>wandering around the ship to stave off boredom

Depends how much you want the ships security to shoot you. All ships have security; even if it's all drones, there's way too many dangerous paracritters and pirates in the Seven Seas of the Sixth World, canonically shipping fleets on land and sea are armed like Mad Max convoys.

Just slot some BTLs (don't bitch out and use only simchips) and make sure to come out of it every so often to work out your body and eat real food. Also make sure to pay off some crew members to cover for your container and pretend they've checked it out.

There are rules for taking physical actions while in VR. You're not catatonic in VR, you can still move with effort, and certainly hold on to things and balance.

Was the purple leggings probably

Ssh, don't pay attention to the fact that I've been on an Exalted binge recently. I'll grab PDFs when they drop, and keep an eye on the usual sources for them.

Stave off the boredom using Tutorsofts to train up a bunch of skills while in VR.

I'm anticipating a Human Revolution: the Fall style hiccup.

We live in an alt-canon Shadowrun universe:

* Everything is breaking down right as the end of the kali yuga approaches in 2025
* Everyone magically inclined I know is going crazy right now
* Meme magick just elected a president
* Native Americans are super visible right now antagonizing the future dictatorial regime of America
* The Trump regime is not only a highly plausible catalyst for megacorps but he was also considered inherently ridiculous by every thinking person, demonstrating that our universe is poorly written, like Shadowrun. He represents a massive discontinuity which seems to suggest he exists solely, from a narrative perspective, to justify a sudden swerve in national trends into more interesting/cyberpunk territory.
* Drones => riggers. Quantum computing => paradigm shift in hacking.
* Extreme right wing sentiment is spontaneously bizarrely ascendant, justifying Humanis, Alamo 20,000, the Night of Rage, etc. Again, a sudden discontinuity demonstrative of bad writing.
* Space technology has sudden massive upsurges coupled with private investment, which includes the EM Drive, a technology that literally works despite DEFYING THE LAWS OF OUR UNIVERSE. Again, evidence of bad writing. This would facilitate the Zurich-Orbital, travel to mars, suborbital travel, etc.

Better bring a chemical toilet with you. And noseplugs. If you're gonna kill time in VR the whole time, you might as well also bring a catheter or a hookup for your cyberdong

much easier. But it's slow as shit. Expect a couple month's journey.

You're honestly better off diassembling your weapons for the -important- mods, bringing those with you when you leave, all carefully disguised, and then buying new versions of the base weapons else where.

You can also hire smugglers if you absolutely have too. But if you're crossing major international borders and not rushed for time, then the cargo ship method is the best.

Hell, if you're moving out of seattle to lay low. Bribe the cargoship captain, pretend to be a laborer on it for the duration, keep your shit stowed in water tight cases in the bilges where fucking NO ONE is going to go looking, better yet, find a cargoship captain who does smuggling (aka: all of them), get access to their actual smuggling holds where you'll be sure that if the ship is inspected nothing will be grabbed.

Just make sure to keep at least ONE PIECE hidden someplace appropriately easy to access. Piracy is a thing again.

>* Space technology has sudden massive upsurges coupled with private investment, which includes the EM Drive, a technology that literally works despite DEFYING THE LAWS OF OUR UNIVERSE. Again, evidence of bad writing. This would facilitate the Zurich-Orbital, travel to mars, suborbital travel, etc.
actually I think that might be more evidence that we're living in CthulhuTech in which case the writing isn't just bad but terribad to the point of nothing is going to be coherent for the next century or so.

Asked this in a previous thread and never got much feedback, but it's been bugging me more and more as I try to build characters:

So. According to the fluff over the years, corporations find mages an understandably invaluable asset. The aggressiveness of corporate scouting tactics are practically used in-universe as a justification for why Shadowrunners run into such a small fraction of the population at such a disproportionate rate: we know that it's almost impossible to live publicly as a mage without corporations trying to acquire you (via extraction, if necessary), so most mages who want to live on their own terms go off the grids and inevitably end up in the shadows.

We also know that corporations are willing to put up with a lot more shit from their mage employees than their average wageslaves, if only because keeping them placated keeps them under the corporate thumb.

But how does a corporation react if a mage decides they want to leave? There's so many "ex-wage mages" in the shadows who allegedly got fed up with their corporate masters and split, but they seem like the one type of employee on the same level as high level researchers on the "find-them-and-get-their-ass-back-here" scale. Presumably a Renraku or an Aztechnology isn't going to let one of their most hotly contested assets walk out the door or retire, so shouldn't almost every ex-wage mage runner have the Wanted quality? Shouldn't the parent corporation be using biological samples to track you down with ritual magic near constantly?

That depends if the resources used to track down and eliminate/re-acquire that mage exceed the resources needed to recruit a new mage.

I mean, definitely, if you are a top-level corp mage with sensitive info, there is going to be a death squad after you the moment you step out of the corp. For a good example, see what happens to Locke in Shadowrun Storytime.

This actually raises a good point: what happens to a corporate citizen, mage or security or otherwise, who just goes "fuck it, I quit" one day and walks offsite? What happens to the odd guy for whom all the cultural programming and corporate mantras fails?

Is there a way to make sure that guy doesn't just sign up with another corp, or try to start a private business somewhere in the UCAS proper?

What kind of attribute spread is good for a Technomancer?

>corporate citizen
>walks offsite

Well for starters he becomes SINless, which might not help him find a new job or start a business. To avoid that, he must find a new job BEFORE quitting. And that's where the age-old art of The Extraction comes in.

The other mages would just control thoughts into making the mage stay. Or threaten his loved ones. Or impose a Geas on him. Or, if he won't be turned, then he's killed so that the other corps don't get him.

>what happens to a corporate citizen, mage or security or otherwise, who just goes "fuck it, I quit" one day and walks offsite?

They get arrested for breach of contract and put into a labour camp. Wageslave is not an inaccurate term- they have literally signed away all their rights as an independent entity for decades.

There are some people who retire from corporate life, but not many- you don't get a pension, you likely have the majority of your wealth in corpscrip which means you're still in their economic ecosystem but without employee discounts, and it's unlikely you have any information or training that would make you really valuable to another corp. You could sign up for another wageslave job (unless you have a noncompete clause that extends after your term of service ends, which is possible), or you could start and independent business like the Talismonger's Association did, but cases of that going well are few and far between.

Really depends on how you want to play him. Generally speaking, you want to boost Mental Attributes, but which one(s) will depend on whether you want to be a Spritemaster or rather try to do things by yourself in virtuaspace.

Spritemaster.

In that case, you want to have RES 6, max out LOG and (max-1) in WIL (this depends on your metatype).

This will allow you to have the biggest dicepool possible for Compiling/Registering and resisting Fading, and a potential 'stable' of LOG registered Sprites + 1 compiled on the fly.

needs CHA as well.

No he doesn't become SINless, he becomes a SINner who loses the protections a corporate SIN gives him and then has to basically hoof it.

That said, it -is- possible to get out. You can change your citizenry to a national index, then open up a new business as an entrepreneur. Mid to low level guys can get away with that. High Level Folks have to do some serious politicing and usually spin off an entirely new AA corp in the process.

Given what's going on with the headcases as well, it's obvious various corporations have a -legal- transfer system between entities where they probably debrief you, strip you of your access codes specifically, have you sign a fuckton of legal agreements saying what you're not going to tell your new boss (which your new boss will MOSTLY respect due to them having the same agreements and you probably not being worth a corporate court case), etc.

It's more tedious, keeps you in the system, and probably marks you as 'never ever going to advance higher up' in the system of any corp (where as if you're extracted your loyalty is already assured by various secondary mechanisms, or you volunteered for it, so they'll let you advance through the corporate structure a little more slowly than a born and raised in-house wageslave).

I also imagine it varies by the corp. Nobody is leaving Aztechnology or SK (since everyone and everything in SK is a part of a dragon's goddamn horde) without an Extraction, but EVO and Horizon probably are better about it, and Renraku has straight up shown that they're willing to let folks leave them as long as they are upfront and honorable about it.

Honestly is it weird to me that Renraku is slowly turning into the least dickass corp if only because they seem to actually obey their own rules of honor? I mean, sure. Don't go and fuck with them, it's always personal to them. But from what I recall Renraku is up there with Ares in terms of 'we're probably not going to pull a double cross on you"

Well shoot. What am I supposed to do about other stats (like reaction, body, etc) ?

>you will never demand that a computer grant you access and have it actually work
>your compiler will never build a program based on your intent and not your instructions
>you will never politely ask netcat's toaster for all of its juicy secrets
why even live

Presumably you hire someone who has those stats to use them for you, or get fucked out of your mind on drugs to compensate for not having them.

Which one can I get away with dropping to one?

STR is probably the least hampering, even if it will hamper you somewhat to only have STR 1.

You really don't care about physical stats as they do not help you in any way for the Matrix.

I'd suggest dumping everything for max everything else.

If you have no reason to use melee weapons and aren't stacking armor pieces, is probably a go. There are ways to mitigate recoil for firearms (like not building any recoil in the first place) and someone in your group is almost guaranteed to be able to crowbar open doors or wall panels or whatever you need STR for.

You're a hacker, not a streetsam.

Alright.
So what do I do about skills that aren't tasking-related? Do I need things like Computer at all?

All cracking and electronics skills are useful, you can use your sprites to do teamwork tests all the time for big dice bonuses.

>team discovers cute little technomancer orc girl being used as a test subject at a corporate base
>we're on an unrelated data grab but we rescue her anyway because we're nice people at heart like that
>can't come up with a decent person to ha d her off to
>take her in like the dysfunctional family of misfits we ares
>Later on, we accidentally get implicated in some serious shit involving shadow spirits and a jetliner full of Japanese tourists
>Our fixer sells us out to the corps to avoid taking the heat for it
>We're forced to disband and go underground
>Wuestion arises over who gets to look after adorable surrogate ork child
>My street shaman has a kind of heartfelt pseudo-big-brother thing going on with her so they decide she should stay with me
>Game timejumps fotward and picks up two years and a half later
>Apparently orc genetics mean that at the ripe age of fucking twelve-and-a-half our cute surrogate orc daughter has the body of an eighteen year old and also wants to fuck me

Why has our GM done this

I mean I get that apparently according to the lore this is a thing (??) but it still feels all kinds of uncomfortable

Never ask an orc how old they are.
It sucks realizing you just shot a 260 pound 12 year old.

As stated above the usual decker skills are always good, but give some special love to Software so you can thread puppeteer and randomly switch enemy deckers into AR or make their decks format themselves while they're distracted by your sprites (and make your GM consider killing himself)

Well orcs and elves don't mature at the same rate but I see where you're coming from.

If it's really weird, ask your GM if he can make her of legal age. Doesn't change much.

Don't worry, nobody in the sixth world will give a single fuck.

>Purple leggings
>Short shorts
>Ork
>Smiley face buttons
>Goggles
>Mohawk/Faux-hawk
They might not be the same character, but they certainly could be twins.

>but they certainly could be twins.

Or get tips from the same fashion blog.

What kind of tradition what a devotee of Aphrodite be? In terms of abilities they're closest to a black mage, but that manipulative prick mindset doesn't really mesh with what I have in mind which is more of a party mage.

Great Mother?

Seductress is the obvious choice

Oh already got that, I'm try to settle on a tradition, I kinda want to go with Cha tradition for obvious reasons, but none of them reasons but none of them really fit, I'm leaning towards Goddess Wiccan but it's an int tradition.

>When I am in controll while channeling my reactions are enhanced by the spirit but I'm still trusting my own guts, am I not? So the base initiative should be my enhanced reaction plus my own intuition.
>What do the dice represent? I'd say both your reflexes and your capability of quick thinking, so the amount of dice should be the median of both the channeler's and the spirit's dice
No. Fucking hell. The Channeling rules follow the Possession rules except where explicitly stated otherwise, and you're way over-thinking this.

When using Channeling, you use the spirit's initiative dice, not your own.

This is some fucking basic shit.

Great Mother would be more Hera/Demeter than Aphrodite.

How do I build the best human(or vaguely human) whipmaster with a possible radical prejudice against vampires I can be?

Street Witch

Be an adept, get exotic melee weapon (monowhip) with six ranks in it, three ranks of Improved Reflexes and three levels of Improved ability (monowhip) and critical strike (monowhip). Prioritise Agi Rea and Int. Everything else is open to choice.

Given recent discussions, I'd suggest mono garrotte over mono whip. Seems to be the better weapon, provided you can eat the called shot penalty.

Alternatively, get a small enough drone, attach it to your arm, mount either mono weapon and let it attack instead. You don't even need the exotic skill at that point.

Okay, see thing is though, a mono-garrotte is a garotte, not a whp. user's question related to how to make the best whip wielding character they could with the obvious intent to make Simon Belmont. The Garrotte may or may not be better, but it isn't an answer to the question.

At first I thought it handy to be able to customize my armor with kits, have a dozen pockets to whip out useful gear. However as I go on I can't actually imagine a situation where I couldn't just leave this stuff in a vehicle. I want another opinion: Is the capacity it takes up better spent on armor enhancements or is there a real advantage to having kits on your person? Logically a runner could just strap on a backpack to hold gear like this, right?

Since you're already taken gear access arguably the built in kits are redundant as you could just purchase the kits separately and have them be in your Gear Access as it's basically pouches and pockets to hold your stuff already.

I really need to take an edit pass some of my posts. That is one horrible run on sentence.

Hey, asking here because google wasn't helpful

Is there a Chummer 4th with the late-end of the edition books/split 5th&4th books/german content available in the sourcebook library?

Gun heaven 3, bullets and bandages, body+tech, german arsenal with the new clothing styles, etc?

I thought i had the latest version,(v 490 off the website) but i'm wondering if there's a branch or updated sourcefile library somewhere.

How do you guys feel about a cyberzombie who went nuts in a way that makes him devote himself to being FABULOUS?
I'd say he was fabulous enough to sing songs about it while fighting, but I am literally unable to do songs.

YMMV.

I'd take the pic on R&G p103 as a mono garrotte, which means it's quite long and isn't entirely restricted to sneaking up behind someone to strangle them / remove their head. Think Johnny Mnemonic.

youtube.com/watch?v=DeO_vuhMM9o

Okay, even if you can use it as a whip - which I'll give you makes sense, it's still going to require restricted gear to acquire is less accurate because it lacks the wireless bonus lacks the reach for a potential extra dice or two and requires you to invest fairly heavily strength to get the same base damage output and the GM would be within their rights to insist you learn the exotic melee weapon: monowhip skill for it to use it like that anyway. If you're making a stealth character who whips on the side your proposal is valid, but for user's original question which was how to be a human whip based character, I still think straight monowhip will turn out better.

I am so excited that our group is finally back in shadowrun. Thing is our setting moved to Russia, moscow and compared to so many other areas in shadowrun, it seems there is so little information about the going ons in Russia or the state of things. There are small bits here and there, references to a few crime gangs, talk of Evo Corp putting their base of operations there but its hard finding much information other than that. Now it does let us kind of have more flexibility, rather gives the gm much more to make it their own, is there something were missing here?

Is it viable to make a street sam specializing in heavy weapons instead of automatics?

A street sam is more a template. You just change what skills they use and what cybernetics/bioware etc you want to get that result.
Probably if your using heavy weapons, also in a capacity where you can lug them about in the street, in addition to putting more points into str, getting mods like muscle augmentation, muscle toners, etc would be very helpful. But the idea is very easy to do, youve just left it very vague for what you want to do and how you would want it handled.

Basically a street sam with a minigun or a gauss rifle or whatever, instead of an ares alpha. You know the type I'm talking about.

Just about everything is viable in some way despite what shadowspergs will tell you.

Ehhhh. There aren't enough reasons to specialise in heavy weapons to make it more viable than specialising in automatics. Also, miniguns are awful. Aside from that, you can make the concept work easily enough.
Not that I'm aware of. Generally shouldn't be super hard, most of that content didn't have anything that required mechanical adjustment.

Heck all a 'street samurai' is is a generic catch all term for a combat focused runner who often uses cyberware/bio ware, gear and enhancements to get the job done.

See this image, that could easily be a russian ork street sami, who perhaps used to be a soldier in russia who got disillusioned after his squad died and felt personally responsible... as well as possibly being given a medal for his injuries and discharged. Then rather than live life there, felt he needed to go out and seek redemption, and purpose and his war never truely was over. So he got all cybered up to repair himself and took his russian pride to wherever your setting is and put himself to work in the shadow community.

Easily could be built with a runner who puts alot of points in his str and body as well as some agi for accuracy. Cybered up and augmented. Wearing heavy armor and carrying a 'big big' gun.

>because of the clandestine nature of shadowrunning, you will never be able to use the big guns

I want to be a tesla trooper so bad. Possibly replace the zappers with gauss weaponry if no good enough zappers are found.

But it will never happen.

Why do so many people prefer muscle toner and augmentation to muscle replacement when muscle replacement is so much cheaper and more effective?

Thing is, the concept is really as easy to build as any other, but the biggest issues are in equipment. Not only do you have to invest more money in character creation to get the gear, you need liscenses, or ways around the heavier restrictions. Often riggers get such weapons easier but its not exactly hard, just requires the investments in character creation.

The other downside is the limits it puts on your character. Not all shadowrun is combat, heck even when it is doesn't often require over the top force (your group really dictates this) but when you have so much in such a weapon, when it can't be brought to bare your often lacking and more restricted in what you can do.

Like its a bit difficult to just walk about the street with a minigun on your back. Or go talk to a client in a nightclub. Or meet with a detective investigating a case.

Point is just be aware of the challenges and unless you really really want to make a very linear character, have other ideas for what kind of person they are when the gun has to be put away.

>muh essence

Why must Wired Reflexes be so prohibitively expensive compared to Synaptic Boosters?

see:

To be fair, I come from more of 4e, in fact our group still uses 4e instead of 5th. So we aren't always as used to the changes. Also with alot of our group, and character concepts often we prefer more discrete modifications. For example its rare someone in our group unless the character has a distinct need for it for the character concept, to have obvious cyberlimb replacements.

Fuck it, cram-snorting it is.

Muscle Replacement eats tons of Essence, and gun-users don't need a STR boost, so toner is usually recommended first.

It's not the worst call for someone who uses drugs for Initiative instead of 'ware, but it still severely limits your augmentation options.

Both of these questions sound like they're from the same person, who has no idea how Essence works; the whole reason Cyberware reduces your Essence so much is because you're shoving metal bits into your body and/or replacing parts of your body with metal, thus removing the base that keeps your soul attached.
Bioware, on the other hand, is lab-grown, and made of organic parts, so it costs less essence.

Think of it this way; if you have a poster stapled to a plywood wall, but then you cut out part of the wall and replace it with metal, you're gonna have to resort to tape to keep the bit of the poster stuck in place. If you replace it with another piece of wood, however, you're gonna have to re-staple it, but it's gonna be just as easy to make it stick.

Also not every group or player is as interested in 'min maxing' or really interested in number crunch efficiency. Perhaps for your concept one way fits better and sometimes you might make the 'less efficient' choice for the benefit of the character.

Similar concept a lot to revolvers as sidearms in games like this. Unless its a magnum like a Ruger Super Warhawk, statistically there are far better heavy pistol options than say the cavalier deputy, or even the lighter options, but sometimes one fits a character concept much better. Besides, how often do you really get in situations where 6 shots aren't enough, or where you can't justify the time to reload vs having a 15-17 round magazine.

Basically what I'm saying, are there better more efficient stat/money/built wise for alot of things, yes. Does it matter as much if you have interesting character reasons for the choices, not so much.

I have no clue why you say that, considering I'm the second person and my big reason whining about wired reflexes is how prohibitively expensive it is essence-wise.

>will never get to hook into a building's water supply and use high power water jets to cut people in half
>will never be able to hook into power supply to tesla people to ash
I am so sad

Try shadows of Europe or Asia. They have a lot of good information on obscure places. Also try pulling from the real world. Sure the world has changed, but it can give you a good feel for the place.

>describes what its like on the oceans of shadowrun
>makes me think of piracy
>thoughts turn to piracy in the caribbean
>wonder what my city is like in the sixth world
> lmao the everglades somehow survived and are a great source for reagents assuming you arent killed by gator shamans
mfw when its just as much of a shithole as it is now only with a sprinkling of cyberpunk

Anyone done runs with a team of pirates?

What does the first post even have to do with what you are saying? They are asking why people don't take it, not why it hurts your "precious soul".