/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Is it unreasonable to demand that your players don't play a decker/technomancer/whatever so you can just handwave this bullshit instead of juggling practically two to three separate games

I'm wishing I had, now.

Or at least just have an NPC decker.

Demand seems a little strong, but not entirely unjustified. If someone really wanted to play a nerd I would try to make the effort. Probably.

Should your GM make a big deal out of what lifestyle you have?

Sure every decent runner can stay a lowlife, but should upgrade to a high or even medium lifestyle come with some perks?

i am aroused by the titty and awwed by the kitty

Doesn't a lifestyle higher than low attract attention considering most Shadowrunners are SINless?

Fake SIN, omae. Make yourself a fake civilian life, do some extremely illegal SIN-switching so you always have one identity that's an upstanding and unassuming citizen.

It's worth it if you want to actually walk the streets and go shopping, instead of living in the slums and eating food grown in port-a-potties. Report all your income as private commission work, security, etc, so nobody asks questions. You can even throw some money into licenses, if you want or need the convenience.

I recommend that they play some kind of hybrid on-site decker. I don't want to see anyone sitting the whole run at home and getting fat.

In that case, yo soy Estrella Heliodoro, I am the son of Catholic Aztlan immigrants. I run a dojo for the mystically gifted(Adepts, Mages, and Mystic Adepts) with an entry fee of 500 nuyen. Most of my money comes from mysterious magic supporting benefactors and not from totally illegal activities. Mock me for my feminine name and I will break your nose.

As a GM, so I always try to simulate a living world.

After a long run, some runner could find a invitation to a cocktail party hosted by your new nice neighbors at his door, some other could find his shithole even emptier then before.

Fantastic cover, omae. Hopefully you're not settling somewhere that assigns what amounts to magical parole officers to monitor awakened citizens. Though, if you are, I'm sure your assigned officer will admire your contribution to local society.

Once your relationship with them has recovered after you broke your nose when they presumed you were a woman at the start of your first case meeting.

>How was I supposed to know, sarge? It says F on the birth certificate.

Oh, they'll warm up to me. I'll lure em into my fake personal chambers in the dojo and fuck their brains out.

>and stop posting like that

Stringing post links out lengthwise in a single line before moving down to the next line is a lot more space efficient then stacking post links 1 per line.

What kind of awakened are you?

Mystic Adept.

Remember to abuse the absolute fuck out of the fact that RAW doesn't actually outlaw overlap of the initiative boosting Adept power and the initiative boosting Mage spell.

Pump yourself the fuck up, chummer. Become the wind. Take six turns in a round.

>And the GM speaks with no energy in his voice and almost like he dislike even playing the game.

How do you even do that?

Monotone is one thing, but how do you sound like you hate running the game?
Or rather how and why would someone continue to gm if they hate the game?

Of course I abuse those two abilities. I run a dojo which means I am a fucking master.

>it stands for FIST, constable Ramirez, and no, don't ask

Anyone played a character who became more humane of a better person as they picked up ware and lost essence?

That's the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen, isn't it?

Sexcurity armor.

No, that's a meme, and a bad one.
You're not guaranteed to become less of a person as you lose essence. It's just how loose your 'soul' grips your flesh.

All low essence means is you're more likely to exhibit antisocial tendencies or other mental fuckups if you're already prone to them.

So does Azland religion call for human sacrifice or is that just a meme on Aztechnologies use of blood magic?

Hybrid decker is exactly what I don't want to be honest. Having an unconscious asshole around is the worst.

Pull up in a van 2 blocks away with all your tech shit hooked up and go into a coma back there so you have low noise and can do your matrix shit to help the others in meatspace while they do the run. Ideally both GM and decker are competent enough that they can run a lot of stuff in whispers on roll20 for example alongside the regular meat gameplay.

It's what I do for Navigator during warp travel in Rogue Trader. The other's don't know we just got this close to getting torn apart by a warp reef, they're just doing their "don't think of the demons, don't think of the demons" mantra while we hurl through warp.

????

This archived thread has interesting stances on essence and ware.

forums.dumpshock.com/lofiversion/index.php/t208.html

As for an example of a character gaining "humanity" as they chromed up; check out Grimshear's post dated something around "Aug 20 2003, 01:56 AM"

Increase Reflexes spell plus Adrenaline Boost Adept power.

Ah, yeah. Mystic might actually survive that drain. Gets you kind of low starting init until you get it up though, doesn't it?

Or the Increase Attribute (INT) spell. 4 more points you can grab there.

Drain soak Mystic Adepts were the real Street Samurai all along.

And yeah, but it's cheap enough to upgrade and useful enough to be worth it.

Would have to talk to the GM about the slightly nebulous "one free action when it's NOT your turn" thing CGL kinda sorta mentions but never really defines for good in its own paragraph for that adrenaline boost usage.

Why don't more corporations use blood magic?

It seems to work well for Aztechnology. There the biggest mega corp in the americas.

It's evil and your not supposed to do it but those don't seem to be causing them much of a problem.

It's no longer evil anyway. There's NICE blood magic now. But that probably actually makes it LESS likely for Corps to use it.

The dragons know that blood magic brings the horrors closer to appearing in the world so they discourage the use of it.

>seems to work for Aztechnology

Azzies are still recovering after their spat with Amazonia and Sirrurgh. None of the other corps want to tangle with any Great Dragons just yet.

I thought they killed sirrurg the destroyer, or maimed him badly enough that he had to be saved and hidden away by his peers

Yeah, they 'won'.

Are you familiar with the term 'pyrrhic victory'? Sirrurg smashed a lot of stuff, and the fight with Aztlan cost a fair amount of soldiers.

They're a triple A, so they aren't done in, but the Azzies have been quiet lately for good reason. They need to rebuild.

Azzies magic is not proper Blood Magic. Its 4th world death magic
.More like arested by Lofwyr and put in dragon jail

It's very fucking real omae.

Well, just gotta wait till we have nice insect spirits, cyberzombies and dragons.

The Azzies will come back stronger than ever. They will make the scalies their bitches figuratively and literally.

So I recently played through the three HBS games and really, really enjoyed it. I kinda want to run a campaign for my players but they're all fairly fresh meat who've never tried any system besides D&D 5e.

Is the game newcomer friendly? Which edition do you recommend? Are the netdecking rules still ridiculous and force you to divide up the party if someone tries to hack anything?

>space efficient
nobody cares about space efficiency, trogger.
we don't have a limit how long the page can get, just how many posts until it starts to die
and having them be in a row looks like shit

But user, Dunkelzahn was a nice dragon :^)

But I guess there's always hope it could be Saeletra.

Not exactly.

5E, despite the editing fuckups.

Yes.

>5E, despite the editing fuckups.
Is this just grammar mistakes or are some rules actually written down incorrectly?
>Yes.
Dammit.

It's more that some rules aren't actually written down at all.

Oh, shit. Is there a list of them or something?

It's more the need for you as a DM to make a call because CGL loves talking vaguely around shit in a sorta fluffy sorta way without actually putting down a RAW rule on the function they're hinting at or the mechanic they're describing, and a lot of "this is probably how those things are meant to interact" you have to do.

Oh, that's fine then. Cheers, I'll go look into the 5th edition later todsy then.

There's also the bit where they forgot to write that running out of Stun knocks you out in the Damage section, you have to infer it from the action of some of the gear. That's probably one of the worst ones.

You should probably be aware that 5e takes place significantly later in-universe than the HBS games. Like 20-odd years.

5e takes place in the 2070s, specifically. The latest books are placed in early to mid 2077.

In terms of what's different from the games:

Initiative is a giant arms race and you better compete.
So is armor but slightly less.
The only reason having to run is only the second worst thing that can happen to you in combat is because getting shot is so ludicrously lethal.
Action economy and modifiers despise melee combat.

And a personal note in terms of how the games translate,I found Shadowrun Returns to be a fairly good Shadowrun experience, and I found Dragonfall was a snowflake themepark trying to show off all the super high-tier and "special" things you have no business regularly (or at all) being around in a game of SR. When you not only get to decide the fate of a (probably toxic and/or deranged) dragon but being nice to them and letting them go seems like a solid option, you've done a shit job establishing the world of Shadowrun.

Oh, is the timejump significant? Like is the political/technological landscape entirely different?

Yeah, I kinda got the feeling while playing it that Dragonfall was way, way outside the norm in terms of what you do in the main plot.

Wireless is probably the most major technological change. It appears at the end of 3e, which is 2065 or so.

Oh, and the Universal Brotherhood have gotten fucked, I don't think they've been a major faction since 1e.

Very. Cognitive Fragmentation Disorder caused by nanites infect people and overwrite their personality with an AI's.

Megacorps have colonies on the ocean floor, in geo-synch orbit, on the Moon, and on Mars.

Chicago is slowly reclaimed from the insect spirits.

Wireless tech is making a big comeback.

All three games end up pretty high-tier. Getting sent on a mission by Lofwyr with Harlequin in back-up or preventing a Horror to get an early foot in the door isn't exactly 'run-of-the-mill' shadowrunning business either.

The technological landscape is the most different. "Hong Kong" hints at Augmented Reality slowly starting in the 2050, by the 2070's is the norm everywhere with the post Crash 2.0 Matrix.

Hoi, chummers, got a question.

In the "Welcome Back to Jackpoint, Chummer:" section of The Complete Trog (page 6), there's this snippet:

"> Detroit presents lavish incentive package to Ares to rebuild corp headquarters in the city; Ares response muted. Link"

So why is Detroit offering to rebuild Ares HQ? Hasn't the Ares HQ been there for ages? What a I missing here?

>Chicago is slowly reclaimed from the insect spirits.
Huh, so that was a big deal then? Felt like a weird incidental detail in Hong Kong, so I guess it makes sense that it was from the actual lore.

Also yikes at the AI shit, Jesus Christ.

Neat.

I might just use 2e/3e instead then. I like the idea of seeing how the universe evolves over time but I want to do a bit of a more low-tech campaign than that.

Unless there's a module/pre-made adventure for 5E that dials the clock back 20 years. Is there?

Just curious, for those of you who played them what builds did you go for in the HBS games?

>Returns: Troll unarmed adept with a splash of mage
>Dragonfall: Dwarven mage with a splash of shaman
>Hong Kong: Ork street samurai with a focus on cyberweapons and sniper rifles

T. Guy who doesn't know anything about wolves or dogs

There's a 2050 supplement for 4e, and the German version of that is for 5e.

>Returns: Gunslinging Elven Female Shaman
>Dragonfall: Male Human Mystic Adept
>Hong Kong: Super Badass Silvered Up Female Gunslinging Decker with an amazing cybernetic whip

The decker was my favorite.

ThisIf you don't show the downside of a low lifestyle, what's the motivation to aim higher? There's some mechanical penalties to things like recovery time, which gives you a nice opportunity to say things like 'You wake up to the sound of the autodoc's alarm and see the saline drip leaking. The filter on your cyberears tuned out the sound of gunfire from the gangs outside, but you can't stop stray bullets from coming through the tin siding. Guess you need to go shopping tomorrow."

Wolves are in some part the ancestors of dogs. The both of them can interbreed with one another and produce fertile offspring. They're basically the same goddamn thing except dogs are far more easily domesticated than wolves.

Return: Cybered-up Street Samurai
Dragonfall: Coyote Shaman/Pistoleer
HongKong: Shaolin Adept

Returns: Face/Decker
Dragonfall: Face/Decker
Hong Kong: Face/Decker

Ares is currently based in Detroit, but is being courted by the CAS to move south. This is basically the city trying to bribe them.

I felt the Telestrian and Harlequin involvement developed fairly organically and out of you simply being the guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time, not intimately connected with any of the stuff going on because of some stupid reason. Shit basically hit the fan to a level where people like them get involved and you'd done decent work before. It's not like you hadn't started fighting before they swooped in and they always are on the watch for insect spirits specifically because people need help against them.

Kind of different from being the people that by themselves free the super AI and the captured dragon because they're just special like that.

How boring.

First time was a heavily aug'ed elf decker wielding an assault rifle for all three games. Boost your charisma along with your shooting and decking skills, and everything goes like a charm every time.

I wonder if the people responsible for Bright ever drew inspiration from Shadowrun?

youtu.be/6EZCBSsBxko

I just bought the games, and I'm afraid of falling into this trap. I play supporting characters in tabletop, but I hate the idea I might miss something in a vidya

Its not actually a penalty to recovery time.

The way its set up is a GM is supposed to call for a fatigue roll at the start of every session that isn't immediately consecutive with the last to check how relaxing/recovering peoples lifestyle is.

You have to resist 6S stun and the DV lowers by 2 for each level of comfort your abode has, the default level for that is 3 on Medium lifestyle, meaning anyone lower has to resist stun damage. Though a Low lifestyle can put a point into Comforts to get it up to 3.

But since no one does those stupid fatigue rolls it really doesn't happen.

Look, i'm just saying that being able to get all extra decking paydata yourself appeals to my perfectionist side and charisma is important for being the leader of the group.

>trap
Careful chummer, i'll have you thrown out of my convention if you keep that up

Physically, psychologically and socially dogs and wolves are miles apart; even wild dog packs are very different than wolf packs.

It's written by Max Landis, he is a pop culture whore.

Combat Mage every time after scoping out the teams. In Returns I always made sure to hire deckers except the game literally forces them on you whenever you need them and even forces you to use the forced decker over one you might have yourself in some instances, so that was a bust.

Also the games pretty consistently give you a party that has everything but a conjuring mage in it, usually making the resident mage a Shaman/Summoning type. I think (Phys)Ad also wasn't super commonly represented. Though there is that one time you get Harlequin in Returns.

Just try a Street Sam for Returns, a mage or mystic adept is really good for Dragonfall and comes into play near the ending, and go for a cybered up commando in Hong Kong since all the really good cyber and bioware is in that game.

You don't even need that much money in Returns or Dragonfall.

Have fun starving when you're between jobs, chum.

Does Shadowrun count as "pop culture" though?

Or did he start with "wouldn't it be cool if we took Lord of the Rings and put it in the modern day?"

Not really, the team in Dragonfall are victims of circumstance as well. It could've just been some other group of Shadowrunners Vaulclair's brother would've hired but it ended up being you because of Monica's reputation for being a pretty big fish in a small pond.

Anyone freed APEX? Because APEX-Monica is a bitch.

>letting a killer AI into the matrix to fry deckers at will
NOPE

Can't stand killing her because of her last action before dying. On the brightside, it doesn't seem like she goes on to murder the world if you give her everything she wanted.

Tell me more

APEX and Feuerschwinge were shit they pulled out of lore remnants to put into the snowflake themepark that is Dragonfall to make it "SO EPIC BRUH". The fact Clockwork is still just Clockwork basically means you can forget about them ever reappearing or being relevant again.

cool story bro