/srg/ Shadowrun General

Brakhaven's not a dragon, omae.
>master1200
fucking STOP IT

>Mixed up Brackhaven and Brackhaus

I'll return to where I belong.

That's fucking retarded

Aren't we all working for dragons to begin with?

Everything's controlled by dragons, that means that even our employers are acting exactly as a dragon would like them to act, right?

Not all of the megacorps are controlled by dragons.
Or at least that's what they want you to believe.

In our hometown of Seattle we helped them solve a 15 year old cold case when we stumbled across key evidence on a run and gave the cops an anonymous tip (also we pumped the perpetrator full of explosive rounds, but that was part of the run anyways). In Hong Kong we freed some children bound to be sold into slavery, told the cops where they could pick them up and take credit for them, and boy did they ever milk all the PR out of that they could. So far, all our interactions with law enforcement have been limited to giving anonymous tips and getting hired by a Mr.Johnson who's a cop and quite frankly I would prefer it to stay that way if possible.

To be fair, Saeder-Krupp is the only one owned and controlled ENTIRELY by a dragon.

Some things are controlled by immortal elves.

Would you ever run with a ghoul? Let alone a ghoul who doesn't try too hard to keep you uninfected?

How do I roleplay low Essence? Like 0.2 Essence?

>would you run with a ghoul
depends on the character but most likely not except under extreme circumstances
>doesn't try too hard to keep you uninfected
Unless they were my partners like lifelong friend since childhood before ghoulification they are getting a bullet between the eyes.

It's not a man, it's one of the weird metaplanar creatures (which is in HS). IIRC, it's one of the 'friendly' ones that basically travels around the multiverse learning stories and hanging out.

All ghouls are to be shot on sight, no exceptions, along with all other Infected.

No.

Low essence can mean anything at all.

It varies between person to person and some can deal with it better than others. A few examples of very very very low essence are:
>An extreme lack of empathy for others and inability to relate with everyday problems
>Superiority complexes where you perceive yourself to be better than others because on almost every objective metric you are
>A lack of self preservation or "self" at all in extreme cases

That sounds nice. Maybe I should stop playing thrill gangers.

So, did this actually happen, or is this just a joke?

Essence doesn't have an effect on one's personality persay, but if you have that low an Essence you're statistically likely to be a violent sociopath.

If they were making a conscious effort to not go full feral, then I'd probably let them tag along. If they were shifty, then not without a cranial bomb.

It tends to be a little vague as to what exactly low essence does to you between editions, but the general gist is that low-essence people are generally disconnected from others (ranging from problems empathising and understanding social cues to outright sociopathy) and have trouble keeping their emotions in check. Some of them are very impulsive and quick to emote, while others are disturbingly stoic and disassociative.

...

>Superiority complexes where you perceive yourself to be better than others because on almost every objective metric you are
That's something just about any shadowrunner can get, regardless of their essence level.

>persay,
per se

Brackhaven isn't a dragon
It seems everybody from our initial Johnson to the governor of Seattle to the UCAS FBI want the commlink of the fuck that we got hired to bump off (who happens to be the head of the Seattle housing department)

My streetsam has 0.02 essence and he's still got his original dick.

Damned phonetics.

Are you committed to completing the run by the books and maintaining a spotless reputation?If not, time to get them all in the same room (virtual or physical) and start a bidding war.

There are intentionally no hard-and-fast rules for it.
Low Essence doesn't necessarily mean you get cyberpsychosis, it just ups the risk - some people get cyberpsychosis from having a single limb replaced, while others can go for ages at Essence 0.02 without any issues.
It depends on personality and circumstances, really.
The things likely to trigger the "dead inside" kind of cyberpsychosis include losing friends and family, doing a ton of combat drugs, committing some fucked-up crime and not feeling as instinctually guilty as one should, spending too much time "on the job" and having previous issues with rejection or addictive behavior.
The things likely to trigger the "violent, heartless psychopath" kind are witnessing brutal violence, having to perpetrate brutal violence, running out of meaningful obstacles and enemies because of that neat cybershotgun, suddenly having massively increased physical potential and the like.
The former is generally induced by feeling different from normal humans and being acutely aware of the hormonal changes induced by surgery, and the second is generally induced by the social and legal consequences that kept one from doing what one wanted falling away under the power that cybernetics bring.

Yeah. Adepts can easily be vulnerable to Superhuman Psychosis as well.

I got Brackhaven mixed up with Brackhaus.
Brackhaven's still a dick, though. I wouldn't be giving him anything unless our whole team was Humanis sympathizers.

Depends on if he means Kenneth or Karl.

They're both pretty anti-meta, Karl's just much more explicit about it from what I remember.

Humanis doesn't look at the big picture. It's a sad day when Russia's the only one with a racism system that makes sense.

How many elves are immortal?

Too many.

There's a handful that survived from the 4th World. Ehran the Scribe, Harlequin, Aithne Oakforest, a couple other Princes of Tir Tairngire.

I guess now you count in all the weirdos from the Tir na nOg elf otherworld metaplane thing.

To be clear, I just mean doesn't wear a full hazmat suit at all times, not that he actively tries to bite you or spit in your drink.

Fair enough, the character I was thinking of making was pretty close to a ghoul before turning, so the whole thing was actually pretty natural for him.

There are, at most, like two dozen from the 4th world that survived to this one.

That said, I think all elves in general have the potential to live forever or at least several hundred years.

Drek. We're screwed

No, I'm pretty sure Immortal Elves are basically a separate species from normal Elves, that resulted from an Elf having kids with a Dragon.
(This is why Dragons tend to avoid having kids with Metahumans.)

Wireless is dumb, death to all who use wireless

...

Wireless isn't all bad; it's good for when social conventions and other such bullshit circumstances demand that you leave your armored up Ares Roadmaster, and you need it for drones. That said, I still maintain my position that anyone who removes the manual controls from their ride is an idiot.

>anyone who removes the manual controls from their ride is an idiot.
This. It's important to at least have the option of letting other people drive the party van, in case you're indisposed. Especially if that someone happens to be the sammy with a decent driving stat.

Bit of a tangent, but it's pretty easy to turn a sammy into a decent backup driver. Just take his already-jacked-up reflexes that are probably 7 or 8, put one point in pilot ground, and get a specialization in wheeled vehicles. Most of the time you want the sammy away from the wheel so he can shoot people during inevitable car-chases, but it's a bit of insurance in case the rigger gets KO'd or you want to move two vehicles at once.

Need pictures of drones.

Those wouldn't happen to be based off Rumble Robots, would they?

My bff is a Mutaqua and we got along just fine until he started shedding on my floor and the Triads tried to kill us in my high rise apartment in my cozy AA neighborhood.

I miss that place.

What kind?

Any really, I just don't have very many saved.

...

>he's still talking about it
Good god man, you really need to catch that blood mage and get back home.

I've had that apartment for over a year. I was rolling in dough man, almost half a million. I was getting ready to buy it off. I was attached to it.

Now I gotta be a drug farmers in the NAN and set up organ leggers in Hong Kong just to get out of rock bottom.

...

...

We made copies of the commlinks and gave one to everyone. Mostly worked and we netted a cool 750k out of it for a three man team.

Has anyone else noticed that some of the conversations we have could pass for Jackpoint commentary/shitposting with little to no editing? Seriously, a CGL writer could lurk in /srg/ and get plenty of material without having to flex a creative muscle.

Check Little Mac's next work and see if you can spot discussion of Roboschlong, the cyberzombie made entirely of cyberdicks.

It's my only chance to get into the books.

Oh, there's already a reference to that in Chrome Flesh:
> I could tell you about a guy I know named Mr. Porcupine, but you can probably connect the dots on this one.
> Stone

Also, it's less Jackpoint and more Shadowlands. The Jackpointers are too cool for school, but the discussions in the older editions were literally anonymous shitposting with more namefags than average.

So Jackpoint is like the Reddit to Shadowland's Veeky Forums?

>that pic
oh the cringe

More like Shadowlands was literally based off of old BBSes, which is what 2ch is, and what Veeky Forums basically is, but with images.

I can absolutely see a 2070's corpgirl walking around in her 800¥ Zöe jeans, wearing some cosmetic bioware for her night out (Daddy will pay to have to replaced in a couple months when it's out of fashion) and singing Mercurial songs that have come back into fashion for a hot picosecond.

There's a severe lack of pictures of people just going about their average lives.

>I can absolutely see a 2070's corpgirl walking around in her 800¥ Zöe jeans, wearing some cosmetic bioware for her night out (Daddy will pay to have to replaced in a couple months when it's out of fashion) and singing Mercurial songs that have come back into fashion for a hot picosecond.
I can just feel the contempt building up in my heart.

I just came to the realization that I don't have any SR PDFs and my computer got trashed in transit during a move. Thanks /srg/ for being there!

actually on topic, anybody have any good suggestions for making a streets level ghoul character?

Okay /srg/ i have a sorta problem.

At this point i'm sure that my GM is
A). a sadist and
B). is targeting me

I'm a part of the group since half a year (the groups is around a year old) and my characters died 4 times so far, all where deckers of some sort.

The rigger and steet sam still enjoy their first PC's.

Also the death have been either some sort of plotwist asspull
>Suprise attack ! / They were waiting for a chance to betray you.

or interpreting the rules in the most unfavourable way when it comes to me.

TL;DR GM's a sadist and need to create the most unkillable character by RAW (since that the only thing he listens to)

So how does one pull that off ? Burnout adept ? Drone swarm Rigger ? Smite [Anything] Mage ?

What are the most optimised characters out there ?

If he wants you dead, you're dead. Talk it out with him and see if your feelings are justified.

But Jackpoint is much more like Reddit in comparison because it's got a Rep Score and other dumb community crap like that, right?

have you tried talking to him

Ghouls generally form their own street gangs and communities, usually in the sewer and shit. Maybe you're a bread winner for a couple of other ghouls who don't have marketable skills in the slums or have started to go feral but you pity them? You could also be a former member of a ghoul gang who left because you didn't agree with some part of them. There's a lot of options, because they're basically like an extreme minority or modern lepers, but with enhanced strength.

One thing to pay attention to though is that ghouls have a price on their head in most places, and stupid gutter grime is going to be more prejudiced against you than regular people who are already pretty prejudiced. So keep your head down and try not to draw too much attention to yourself.

Are there things Ghouls are innately good at? I don't expect this to be a very flashy game, considering the description given to me was "We're going to be playing a some street thugs." So I would wager my resources are going to be next to nothing.

Ghouls are fantastic for making a corpse disappear.

Savagely beating people. Finding things in the dark. Making people not want to touch things.

I'm new to Shadowrun and I have trouble understanding the importance of fake SINs and credsticks for shadowrunners in a world where digital currency is commonplace.

Certified credsticks "carry funds certified by one of the financial powers of the world", so presumably a bank. I assume one must have an account in a bank to carry money in its name. So you have to make that account with a fake SIN, which the credstick is directly connected to?

Also, don't banks thoroughly check the SINs of their customers? It would be pretty easy to figure out that a Shadowrunner is not actually working as a cashier in a grocery store.

I feel like I'm missing some crucial part of the picture. If almost everything is based on digital transactions, then banks, and thus the governments and corps, constantly monitor the cash flow, which in turn leaves very little space for anonymity.

>Also, don't banks thoroughly check the SINs of their customers?
That's assuming your "bank" of choice is a legitimate, legal financial institution.

Credsticks are anonymous. While the money in them is theoretically trackable, there's no actual way of telling who's the one moving the money around or for what.

>That's assuming your "bank" of choice is a legitimate, legal financial institution.

The rulebook says "The bigger the bank, the more stable the money stored on the credstick, so most people like to use sticks certifed by the biggest bank there is, the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaftsbank." So I guess it has to be seen as a legal financial institution by someone, presumably the corps?

So the money on credstick isn't associated with a bank account or doesn't require a bank account at all?

Has anyone ever run a game that's just a Lone Star squad going about their daily business? Maybe bumping into the same Shadowrunners so often that they actually start to recognize them?

>Maybe bumping into the same Shadowrunners so often that they actually start to recognize them?
Now that's just asking for one of the PCs to go full Captain Ahab on one of the runners.

I have a question about hacking and rigging when you're playing an adept

Is there a way to make a decker who doesn't have implants?

I think I remember some piece of hardware like interface headbands and gloves from 4e. what would be the pro and con of using that instead of the usual datajack and implanted commlink?

I think you can do it with trodes, but the question you should really be asking is "can I use Adept powers in the Matrix"?

The only mechanical advantage of the Datajack is the free noise reduction. Otherwise Trodes works the same, without the free universal connection cord. You don't need touchlink gloves if you have Trodes or a Datajack, those provide DNI.

Adepts make very strong AR Hackers.

The character concept I was looking for didn't focus that much on being in the matrix. Or using adept powers at least.

The main focus was to use adept powers to boost mental attributes and skills like programming, hacking, pilot and gunner. Get them maxed out for cheap. Then get that one power that lets you multitask like crazy so I can perform a bunch of background actions like building programs and hacking stuff at the same time I'm operating a couple drones.

The concept of the character would be of a guy who works in an office where nobody knows he has adept powers. Acquire an illegal Otomo anthropoforme drone and outfit it to look like a human. Send the Otomo as a proxi to run with the party while his meat body is peacefully at his desk pretending to work like everyone else.

Nobody in the Sixth World goes by without being known as awakened. Schools test for magic potential so that they can be snatched up by Corps and Govts. If you were raised on the streets, being able to shoot fire is a way of protecting yourself, or you get recruited into a wiz gang.

Everyone will know the Otomo drone is a drone, device icons will fuck you over. If you're running silent 100% of the time, that's another bad sign.

>So the money on credstick isn't associated with a bank account or doesn't require a bank account at all?

Read the core book, page 442. It's cold hard cash. 100% anonymous and totally untraceable. It's popular with crooks such as shadowrunners for that very reason.

Go with the FBI.
They're the law, but the sort of criminal investigations they do tend to overlook runners in general because they aren't "big fish" type criminals, and it never hurts to have an in with the Federal government of the UCAS.
But mostly, because fuck Brakhaven.

You know how in SR you are rebelling against The Man but can't actually kill him?
Well Brakhaven is The Man and you CAN kill him because he's not a big enough fish for anyone to miss him too much after a year or two.

, The low Essence problem affects your Social Limit so there is a mild disconnect to some degree.
That said, the penalty is not so severe that a good suit or having high Charisma can't fairly easily overcome it, so it's more like "if you're only as Charismatic as the average human being and have average to weak social skills will anyone notice the difference".

That said at below 1 Essence you are increasingly likely to suffer from cyberpsychosis or or superhuman delusions or any number of other mental problems.

Oh, you're running Splintered State.
Go work for Bull then; he's paying the least money but he's the most "good guy" of the options in addition to being an excellent ally, even if I really hate his writer.

A handful.
They all know each other and none of them get along, even when they DO get along, much like the dragons.

>Nobody in the Sixth World goes by without being known as awakened
Well the character was already supposed to work for a corp at game start so I guess that solves the issue also even though he is supposed to be awakened, having adept powers that only serves to let you max out a couple skills wouldn't pass as that much of a deal, right?

>Everyone will know the Otomo drone is a drone
Then what's the point of making a metahuman looking drone if anybody and their brother can figure out it's a drone with a quick scan?

Isn't there a way to camouflage the thing by giving it a fake icon through maxed out programming skills or fake sin?

About 700 years at the oldest actually.
Dwarves around 500.