/srg/ - Shadowrun General

>Drug Edition
>What drugs do you take?

None, you fragging degenerates.

But have you tried Blue Blitz though? It'll make you shit your pants if you do too much of it.

Someone should make a Shadowrun version of the political compass with the Black - Pink and Trenchcoat - Mohawk axis.
Then when people ask that chart can simply be linked.

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It happens in-universe, but everyone who knows how to/has the ability is already powerful via other means.
Also it's kind of dangerous. It involves you dying after all.

I'll take "Posters I'm glad stopped namefagging" for $500.

That's a retarded Ship of Theseus, user. Otherwise why can't I just enchant the screen of my deck (a pane of glass has a low OR) and have the whole thing be magic? Or just go around enchanting random river stones and duct-taping them to whatever I want?

The clear RAI is holistic. Blade, grip, whatever; they're all part of the sword, and the weapon focus is the sword.

>Where would corps keep their most dangerous testing facilities?

Canonically, Antarctica is lousy with black sites. Lots and lots of space, no need for most people to go most places, and it's mostly still 'international' land. You can build a facility and no one will ever know, except possibly other black sites that pick up a t-bird soaring to places unknown, and the paranoid survivalists eating penguin meat.

Space is also good. Long lines of sight, no unscheduled traffic, no pesky mana screwing up your experiments, excellent quarantine...

Until we get that space elevator going, it's hard to ship test subjects up.

GMs, how do you guys remember all the rules for the game? It seems very difficult to remain 100% within the rules as a GM or even as a player without adlibbing a few things.

Cheat sheets. Get the hayek sheets from the pastebin and put your screen to use. Make the players learn their own subsystems instead of expecting you to spoonfeed everything and double-check their math every time.

then make it up if you can't remember

>rules
rules are actually pretty easy
Roll (Attribute1+Skill+Modifiers)d6 or (Attribute1+Attribute2+Modifiers)d6, count how many dice are 5 or 6, if in 5e you limit this to the relevant Limit, and if you have more or equal than what you need then you succeed. Then count 1s and if more than half your dice are 1s you get a complication.
what's hard to remember are a) order of rules and b) modifiers.
For the first you have cheat sheets like said that tell you what to roll and when. For modifiers I simply have made a big picture in GIMP with all the tables copypasted onto it.

And generally it's fine to fudge rules. Just tell them to roll whatever seems fitting for that situation, make a rough guess how hard this is and decide based on the result.
Generally a dice pool gets on average a third in hits (so a pool of 15 dice usually gets 5 hits), a normal person rolls ~6 dice, an expert rolls ~12 dice and each +- 3 modified dice change the result by +-1

Also: Which edition?

Thanks for the responses. Edition is 5e, and I'm a very green GM and the only edition I've played as a player has been 4e, so I'm still reading the rulebook to make sure I have everything down.

In that case:
In the OP Mediafire are the Hayek Sheets
PDF related is a flowchart for the 5e matrix
Chummer5 is in the OP. It's a godsend. One of the developers posts here as yekka

If you have questions, ask here. If you want advice to a character, print it to PDF (Either through Chummer's build in function or through a PDF printer) and post it here

Yeah, I've known about Chummer and my players are using that for their sheets, it's amazing. I have the Hayek Sheets too now, This makes things far easier to keep track of.

>forever gm
>rest of the group too lazy and too bad at gming for me to switch
>want to get into shadowrun as a player after playing the games
>mfw

Do you think they'd make it to space before the horrors decide to fuck Earth up?

What's your favorite playstyle from the games? I personally love mystic adepts in them so I can heal myself just after the guy I'm punching shoots me with his shotgun. Cybered up gunslinging decker is a second-favorite.

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Shit, I just figured it out. The way I'm going to do a tutorial level if I ever run Shadowrun again. A fucking 80s montage. Do a series of brief scenes/vignettes representing the dozens of chump runs that the crew did before getting their first good one, each one introducing a new mechanic or major setting concept. By the end of it, the crew has a single real run worth of money and karma, and if they didn't know each other before they definitely have stories now.

>Until
It's been up for years, omae.

I like playing shamans usually but in Hong Kong i played a fully augmented punchy adept

Generally i like solving situations the talky way
>playing fallout homebrew
>things happen
>people go to place
>place offers them a tour
>i give tour
>afterwards they're just silent
??
>conflict happens
>one of three things happens
>1 they say some real 4th wall breaking stupid shit
>2 they shoot without saying anything
>3 they shoot and then realize they're outnumbered to run away and whine that stuff is too hard

I pity you. Have you ever tried being part of an online game?

Yea i think thats what im going to do
The worst part is i really put a lot of work into the fallout game and two out of the four players are just really boring. I have to engage them multiple times for them to speak up and when they do they don't do the most basic in character roleplaying

Is it a bad idea to use drugs for initiative boosts until I can save up the money for wired 2?

Depends on the rest of your build
there are successful builds that only use drugs for initiative but they take some Bioware and Geneware to reduce the damage from it

Let's I don't have any of that and have 7 dice to resist, how long could my character go before jazz completely ruined their life?

I have a hardon for bio/geneware street sams, but I finally bit the bullet and accepted that only mages do all the face/lore combination that I want. I wish CGL didn't hate 'ware so much.

If you don't use edge on the addiction test? 3 weeks for the spiral to burnout to begin.

If you only use it one week and then don't use it for 2 weeks you only have to meet a threshold of 1
If you use it for two consecutive weeks and then don't use it for a week then the threshold is 2
Both of these are manageable with a dice pool of 7. If you bump it to 8 you may be allowed to buy hits.
You do get a problem if you use it for three weeks straight, in which case you need to meet a threshold of 3, which you could only reliably make with edge.

Question: How much do you need for Wired 2? Do you already have Wired 1?

>How much do you need for Wired 2?
and just to clarify:
How much money do currently have?

>Do you already have wired 1?
Nah, I'm trying to make a decker/backup sammy and I don't have the nuyen to buy both the deck I want and some initiative boosters at chargen.
I'm still in chargen but I only have about 3k left.

>decker/backup sammy
chummer, that won't work. Both those archetypes are money sinks. Get yourself an Arm of God and put down suppressive fire if needed

>3k left
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Chummer, you should be happy just getting 50k together. Unless your GM pays like Monty Hall and/or lets you take and sell all enemy decks you will most likely never upgrade anything

As an adept I wish that too. I loved the dynamic Sam and adept had in 4e, felt like they both had pros and cons

Hey, chummers.

Looking to play a decker for the first time. What are some deadly noob-traps I should look out for when building one not to be a detriment to my team?

>Both those archetypes are money sinks
I'm not really concerned about upgrading myself with lots of ware, like I said it's a backup sammy, we already have a full samurai, I'm just interested in being halfway decent in a fight. Plus I've pretty much bought all the chrome I already want, the only exception being some form of initiative boost.

Get yourself Prescription Grade Jazz. It's double the price per dose, but lowers the Addiction Threshold by 1. That way, as long as you go a few weeks between using Jazz each time, you'll never even have to make the test.

Don't fuck around with that street-grade shit.

First noob trap is playing a decker. But you were smart enough not to be a technomancer, so at least there is hope.

Don't worry about getting the best deck possible. You only need 1 or 2 good array attributes if you have Quick Config or Perfect Time and switch when needed. Consider modding a commlink into a pseudo-deck and taking the money you saved and buying a Cyberarm of Death instead.
Don't underestimate the utility of having a couple of utility drones to give you flexibility. A spy drone for scouting/signal boost can save your arse. Same goes for a gundrone to watch over you when hotsimming.
BURST FIRE. FULL AUTO. Your bread and butter when not hatefucking the Matrix.
Grab a point in First Aid and a good medkit, you have the Logic to be a secondary medic for almost no cost.
Mnemonic Enhancer 3. Pump up those rookie knowledge numbers, a decker that does his legwork is a great team asset.

Thanks for the quick and concise run-down!

>Prescription Grade Jazz
Is that in chummer or should I just make a note of it?

>Is that in chummer
Unforunately not. You'll have to just buy double the normal amount of Jazz, make a note, and then delete half of it when you go to career mode.

The rules for it are in the drugs chapter of Chrome Flesh.

So, normally, Jazz is Addiction Threshold 3, and Addiction Rating 8. That means you only make an Addiction Test once every 3 weeks, so if you go the full three weeks following your use of Jazz, it hits 0 right before you make the test - meaning you have to use it a second time in that period to even make the test.

If it's prescription-grade, that gives you wiggle room. It drops the Addiction Threshold down to 2, which means you can use it a second time in the following week (for example, three days later, in Part 2 of the run you were already on) and still have it drop to 0 by the end of the three weeks.

Always get Prescription Grade for your combat drugs. It's just plain safer.

The Renraku Tsurugi is more than enough for Deckers until they hit prime status. It's cheap (ha) enough to to grab Wired Reflexes 2, or Synaptic Boosters 2 if you want to be full poverty mode except for two huge ticket items.

In most cases it'll be easier to start off with your initiative, and in career mode buy your muscle toners and cybereyes and cybercocks. It's a lot tougher in career mode to save up a full 130-200k nuyen than it is to save up chunks of 20 to 60k.

Got it, thanks omae!

One more thing. With Prescription Grade, that means it only takes 2 weeks of sobriety before you're safe to use again. Once your Threshold hits 0, the whole process gets reset to the beginning - you don't have to finish waiting out the 3.

So, if you're doing one run every 2 weeks (which is a little on the excessively frequent side, but if your GM doesn't pay a lot per-run it might be necessary), you're safe to keep using your Jazz for one fight per run.

An auto-injector and a biomonitor would really help you out there, though, as well as the Narco genemod and a Nephritic Screen, in that order, as soon as you can afford them.

So, I presume most people migrated to 5e.
What are your impressions of it?
I disliked the flavour reasons for everything becoming wireless, wireless bonuses (I think a particularly bad example was a telescopic rod opening faster if it had wireless enabled) and the overwatch stuff irked me.
But that was years ago, did additional books smooth things over? Did Karma gen come in and save the day? Did technology stop taking steps backwards?
Or should I continue being a old fogey and stick to 4e?

Thanks in advance for any info. Unfortunately I don't have the time I did in my younger days to read every book without reason

>Once your Threshold hits 0, the whole process gets reset to the beginning - you don't have to finish waiting out the 3.
I'm pretty sure it only resets after the three weeks, not just when the threshold reaches 0
So if you had something like Cram (Rating 4, Threshold 3) you need a test every 7 weeks after taking it. If you wait three weeks without taking it your threshold would reach 0 but you'd still have 4 weeks left. If you then don't take it for two weeks and then take it you have a threshold of 1 to make.

>But that was years ago, did additional books smooth things over?
not really
>Did Karma gen come in and save the day?
nope
>Did technology stop taking steps backwards?
Pffff, not a chance

>I'm pretty sure it only resets after the three weeks, not just when the threshold reaches 0
I'm pretty sure you're not right.

>The clock on this keeps ticking even if you skip a week, but every week you go without indulging reduces the Addiction Threshold by 1 (it returns to normal when you use again). If the threshold hits 0, you’re off the hook until you use the substance again.
>you're off the hook

But hey, that wording's just barely ambiguous enough that you should probably confirm one way or the other with your GM, just in case he's reading it the other way.

Why is CGL so bad at writing rules?

>So, I presume most people migrated to 5e.
Yes.

>What are your impressions of it?
It mostly plays better than 4e, and while it has some retarded content it's neither as common nor as terrible as 4e at its worst.

>I disliked the flavour reasons for everything becoming wireless, wireless bonuses (I think a particularly bad example was a telescopic rod opening faster if it had wireless enabled) and the overwatch stuff irked me.
It doesn't open faster, it just takes less physical actions on your part because you're telling it to open with a thought instead of pulling it open by hand. But aight, you do you, fampai.

>But that was years ago, did additional books smooth things over?
Smooth what things over? Additional books have included fewer and fewer wireless bonuses, if that's what you mean.

>Did Karma gen come in and save the day?
Karmagen has always been and will always be the worst form of chargen, because of how badly it punishes having high Attributes/Skills compared to investing directly in things like 'ware.

>Did technology stop taking steps backwards?
Yes. It hasn't taken any steps forward, but it stayed stationary after the first step back. It does, however, have Rigger 5.0, which has been a huge step in the right direction, especially compared to the garbage that was trying to be a Rigger in 4e.

>Or should I continue being a old fogey and stick to 4e?
Yeah, probably. It sounds like you're the type of person who's more looking to sling shit and stick to their oldies than actually try the new stuff out. You've clearly got biases, so if you try to get into 5e now, all you'll be doing is confirming your biases with anything you find and ignoring the good shit.

It sounds like you've already made up your mind on whether you like it based on some minor gripes from the very start of the edition without having even played it.

>Why is CGL so bad at writing rules?
Because they don't pay their freelancers and don't even have editors - especially right at the beginning of 5e, even if that's less true lately.

>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

We are at the point where even shitty /tg homebrewing is better than the drek CGL excreets from its syphilitic anus.

>What drugs do you take?
One of my players made drug grenades, although I don't think he realizes that one dose of zen, dispersed over a whole room isn't going to be nearly powerful enough to ruin anyone's day.

Eh, I dunno. They're really hit and miss. Some stuff is great, like Rigger 5.0, while other stuff is the Complete Trog.

Chemical grenades apply the entire effect of the drug to anyone in the radius. That's regardless of whether it's Pepper Punch, Kamikaze, or Zen.

Yes, you can use that to dose your entire crew with the effects of Kamikaze for the cost of only 1 dose.

That said, Zen only causes -2 Reaction and -1 to physical actions as a penalty. That's a good combat penalty, but it's not like it causes even Disorientation or Nausea. Most folks will be fine.

If he really wanted to ruin people's day, he'd get Novacoke Grenades. Aside from cocaine grenades being the most 80s bullshit ever, anyone on Jazz (like security guards) would suffer an immediate Overdose due to both drugs modifying Reaction.

>killing people with the power of cocaine
The greatest weapon known to man.

No, there's a mass driver at Kilimanjaro. The elevator was supposed to be built in South America, but the dragon civil war delayed it.

>double-barrelled grenade launcher
>two chemgrenades each loaded with different reagents
>guaranteed overdose

No, they were both completed.

Do those exist? I know there's the semi-auto GL for burst fire, but we don't have the ridiculous gun mod rules from 4e that let you built a holdout with assault cannon power.

The Panama Skyhook was delayed in Hazard Pay, and mentioned in Market Panic as one of the things S-K didn't do because Lofwyr was busy. Where does it say it's finished?

>gun mod rules from 4e that let you built a holdout with assault cannon power.
how?

>Consider this: orks breed faster than any other metahumans. We reach sexual maturity around age 10. Ork pregnancies last an average of just over six months, and women give birth to anywhere between four and eight children at a time (as a friend of mine once said, "any ork that doesn't have brothers and sisters wasn't born an ork"). The reason there aren't a lot more orks is because infant mortality is huge compared to that of humans, elves, and dwarves. Why? Simple: a lot of orks are either SINless or belong to low-income families. In addition to not being able to get proper medical care (even some mainstream hospitals haven't adapted to the idea that there are five different subraces of humanity now), they have to deal with poor living conditions. Those include exposure to toxic contaminants. Birth defects and miscarriages are up among ork populations every fragging year, and since an ork "generation" can be as short as 10-15 years (instead of 20-30 for humans) the genetic problems snowball much faster. Just another reason why people (read: humans) aren't so worried about pollution. After all, it's "only orks" who are suffering, right?
>Tuskadero
I like 3e's handling of ork problems a lot better than CGL's dumpster fire of a book.

...

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>four and eight children
>eight children

>captcha: riverview riverside

I've got to assume that orks have both a much lower birth weight than normal humans, and that ork women are built... thicker.

>women give birth to anywhere between four and eight children at a time
I wonder what the rate of fraternal vs identical is, and how often there's mixed paternity.

>inb4 children of the trough

>captcha: road gemeinde("commune")
Yeah, captcha, that's what I meant

More "yo mamma such a slut y'all got eight dads."

There is a form of beauty in that idea, that i can not put into words.

Thanks to CGLs addiction rules and my autistic GM, none. I mean no form of possible addiction AT ALL, no VR, coffe, synthbeer, you name it.
Going by CGL's addiction rules anybody who takes ADHD medicamentation or had painkillers for a difficulty surgery would turn into a drug crazed fiend withing 2 to 3 months.

>Going by CGL's addiction rules anybody who takes ADHD medicamentation or had painkillers for a difficulty surgery would turn into a drug crazed fiend withing 2 to 3 months.
Only if you have truly terrible Willpower and Body/Logic. The mild stuff is so easy to no fail on that you can just buy 1 hit with 4 dice and be fine.

It's only the Addiction Threshold 2+ stuff that you start needing 8+ dice.

Jazz, all the way.

OH SHIT I'M FEELING IT

...

How do I convince the players to get into a strange car during the evacuation period of the run?
I need an excuse to get them locked in a car driven by a speed freak AI.

Why do you want them to be locked in there?

They're followed by lots of corporate security and always end up where the car is
Choice is to go in or to fight off a shitton of guys

because I extract great, great enjoyment from recreating crazy taxi.

How cautious are your players?
How will this affect them? Will it be a high action chase that ultimately leaves them better off (such as getting the chase off them)? Or will it be something that will affect them negatively, leaving them off worse than if they hadn't taken it?

Guys
should I make a frank-horrigan PC, or make a frank horrigan/enclave BBEG?

Porque no los dos? Have your PC have survived an experimental supersoldier program, and have the BBEGs be exactly said program.

the chase will be off of them.
Though, that sort of depends on how much they freak out.

You dont
"How do I force my players to do x" is the worst shit ever
The AI may exist in the world and the players may get into it.

youtube.com/watch?v=T-2FkSlShqo

You make it an attractive option instead of a trap.

And you still leave them the choice of trying to get away without it.

Inserting references and stuff like that is alright. But you're trying to shoehorn the players into a situation they have no control over purely for your own pleasure.

As a forever GM take my advice and just don't. If the only person who gains anything from it is yourself and it does nothing to further any plot, character development or is in no way relevant to the mission, then don't force it upon the players.

>Groups' Forever GM for D&D tries to DM Shadowrun
>Has no fucking idea what he's doing
>I take over despite my only GMing experience being fucking up D&D
>Games go okay and get better
>D&D Stops because of flaky players
>No other players want to GM Shadowrun because it's a clusterfuck of a system only I understand
>I am now stuck as the forever GM of the system I would rather be playing

iktfb

I feel you.
Rotating GMs should be the gold standard everybody adheres to