/srg/ Shadowrun General - BRRRRRRRRRRT

>wasn't there a fantasy game that used the Shadowrun system(attribute+skill=d6 pools), or a mechanically similar system?
Yes? d6 dice pools aren't an uncommon system type.

Have you given any thought to the fact that in the Sixth World, due to cybernetics, muscle replacement and bone lacing, the differences in potential physical performance between men and women become near-zero?
There are still poor people and those who eschew cybernetics and bioware alike, but Shadowrun fluff states pretty clearly that the middle class is huge and buys a shitton of megacorporate products. On top of that, it's common for corporations to both require and sponsor augmentations in order to keep the bottom line.
Due to this, it can be assumed that every woman who wants to can become a pro wrestler, soldier, security guard, truck mechanic, construction worker or whatever the fuck you have, at the same level of performance as men and for the same price (especially if going with the cheaper and more common cyberware instead of bioware). The employer is going to pay the operation in the most cases - and even if they don't, showing corporate loyalty by buying the corporation's products by yourself just to get hired is a great way to make an impression.
There have also likely been actual government and corporate initiatives put into action to make sure that social pressures don't become a barrier, because the fluff multiple times mentions that men and women are generally equal and that metatype-based discrimination is a lot more common than gender-based in the Sixth Age. A whole gender being unlikely to buy your expensive, niche 'ware is also bad for a corp.
Top this off with genetic tailoring to make sure that this fitness can both be passed down and maintained naturally, and you have a setting where the -4 STR cliché would logically follow to be nearly nonexistent.

What do you believe would be the logical repercussions of this, if you think they'd even be noticeable or significant? Do you think you could or should include it in a game, or is anything on this topic too likely to cause political shitfights and accusations of magical realm?

You have elves and orcs and wizards and robots and furries, who the fuck gives a shit about sexual dimorphism?

[triggered]
That's not an autocannon, that's a heavy machine gun
That weapon setup is particularly ridiculous (shitty accessories, EOTech right on top of the barrel shroud, nowhere to store the ammo belt, ignores recoil and center pof mass,can't quickchange barrel...

She would be better off with a recoilless weapon like a RMK 30 if she absolutely wants shoulder mounted automatic firepower.

Calm down /k/. Breathe... Everything's gonna be all-right...

...

I forgot to add that, going from earlier sourcebooks (because they're the only ones that have meat on them regarding culture and everyday life), people who have a fundamental dislike against cybernetics and bioware, especially to the point where they'd neglect getting it implanted when they could make a social and career-wise gain from it, are extremely rare.
You see a lot of characters in the /srg/ who point-blank eschew cybernetics and bioware, but these characters are either Awakened (disproportionately represented among PCs) or likewise rare outliers.
The people who understand that something differing from the real world doesn't mean that it suddenly doesn't contain any real-world conflicts or issues. Shadowrun is pretty explicitly social satire too, and uses elves/orcs/trolls/dwarves as a way to capture issues about racial, cultural and subcultural disputes without actually making the game into RaHoWa.
The less willing suspension of disbelief you have to use, the more fun the game gets. The more similarities to this world the game has, the more you have to work with and the more you can empathize with the characters.
If you don't pay attention to some kind of realism (which especially the older editions did a lot), the fantasy elements lose their punch. One of the big charm points about Shadowrun for me is that the detailed setting and reasonable realism allows me to empathize with the metahumans and portray them as something else than just racial caricatures.

...

I know I shouldn't let my /k/ autism transpire about Shadowrun of all things flechette rounds, but fuck, it couldn't have been more retarded if it tried.
Even infinity got it right, it can't be that hard.

>those pics
meh, it's your rifle, your money, do whatever you do with it. Paint it pink, saw it,...

>What do you believe would be the logical repercussions of this
Significantly less than the sociopolitical effects of trivially easy sex changes, which have been about for at least ten years in-setting.

Considering how easy and cheap those sex changes are, they're likely pushed much less by the corporations than pure performance-increasing 'ware.
They can't use it to increase productivity, so the corporations likely only keep the sex-change operations cheap to avoid getting in trouble, but you'd probably see "become as strong as a man while still maintaining your femininity" being pushed a lot more by corporations than straight-up sex changes.
The people who'd get sex changes, too, are limited to people with body image problems (founded or not), as well as hedonists and dilettantes with money to spend.
The cultural changes spurred on by easy sex-change operations might be great, but in the end they're too narrow and with too little profit opportunity for the corporations (or personal betterment opportunity for a private person) to be used commonly.
The practical changes caused by every woman in the First World being able to work the same jobs as men - and without compromises or quotas at that, since the employer is probably going to demand the augmentation anyway - are likely to be a lot wider-reaching, I think, especially with the kind of feminism that was popular around the time the game was written.

>So you could get one but no ammo
Get. The. Ammo. In. Game.

You don't need to start off with everything in chargen.

40¥ means it's [6 hours divided by net hits] delivery time, and for every further 10¥ you throw in, you get an extra die to roll. (12 dice max)

If you can't succeed with [Negotiation + Charisma + Bonuses + 12] vs 16 dice and get enough net hits to make it arrive in reasonable time for the first run, it's a sign. Shadows are not for you.

>Have you given any thought to the fact that in the Sixth World, due to cybernetics, muscle replacement and bone lacing, the differences in potential physical performance between men and women become near-zero?
Even more to the point, compare an ork woman to an elf man. Even in humans, while men are larger and stronger on average, most women are larger and stronger than the smaller/smallest of the men. Once you start adding things like dwarves, orks, and trolls to the mix, gender becomes a rapidly irrelevant factor compared to things like augmentation and metatype when it comes to physical performance.

On top of those factors, malnutrition is alive and well in the developed world in Shadowrun. The urban poor feed themselves with shitty processed foods, street meat, and the like, while wealthy wageslaves eat much higher-quality synthetic foods and even occasionally natural foods, having a much more balanced diet. The difference in size between a wealthy person and a poor person is already pronounced in modern America, but in Shadowrun it's probably as dramatic as the difference between a modern American and someone from a rice-farming shithole in Southeast Asia.

And that's not even getting into the differences in size and physical performance based on differences in access to antibiotics and vaccines.

So while male vs female is almost certainly still a factor in physical performance, it's likely trumped by all of those other categories first, and only becomes relevant when the individuals are otherwise identical on those sociological and biological axes.

>You don't need to start off with everything in chargen.
I can count on one hand the number of games I've been in that have survived past the first run. Shifting work schedules alone have ruined more games that I can count, and that's not even getting in to the outright unreliable people.

... yeah? This has been recognised since 1st edition. That's why there's loads of female street sams in canon, because with the right upbringing/'ware they're more than a match than most of their opposition.

This doesn't need to be some in depth study, it's pretty obvious.

Sure, but this isn't even "past the first run". It's "oh, you're done talking with the Johnson? The delivery guy is waiting for you."

Is there any way to make Boomerangs not suck?

I want to make The Rogues from Flash as a rival runner team

Availability 16? No, that takes time to run down. Maybe not a ton, but probably not before the end of the first run. In my experience, first runs are usually less 'spend a few days on legwork' and more 'get it done by the end of the night.'

>Is there any way to make Boomerangs not suck?
Are boomerangs even a weapon in 5e?

Because if not, just use a combination of tomahawks and aerodynamic grenades refluffed as boomerangs.

As stupid as it sounds, time to delivery is based on price only. Availability just sets the dicepool you roll against.

>As stupid as it sounds, time to delivery is based on price only.
I've got to say, you're right, that does sound pretty fucking stupid.

Shit, I didn't even check, I know they were a thing in 4e

>that does sound pretty fucking stupid.
Welcome to Shadowrun, friend.

Isn't there something on decreasing the Availability by spending more time and money looking for it?

'Up to 100 nuyen' still takes 6 hours, and if you're buying more than 100 nuyen of flamethrower fuel you start hitting the 24 hours category.

Availability is fixed. You can add dice to your dicepool by putting more money down and the harder you beat the availability roll, the faster you get the goods.

Either make do with two canisters or put more money down, omae, what can I say?

So I want to make a rigger that plays mission control. They sit outside with a sniper rifle on in the van, co-ordinate fly spies and other overwatch drones and send in say, a couple of bumblebees with the team that they control remotely. For remote controlling drones and using them to shoot is it gunnery+agility or gunnery+logic?

>what can I say?
That it's nowhere near as easy to get flamethrower fuel on your first run as "oh, you're done talking with the Johnson? The delivery guy is waiting for you."

Gunnery + Logic.

> Vehicle-mounted weapons are fired using Gunnery + Agility [Accuracy] for manual operation, like door guns on mounts, or Gunnery + Logic [Accuracy] for remote operated systems. A Complex Action is required for shooting weapons mounted on a vehicle in any firing mode.

Page 183, Core.

>They sit outside with a sniper rifle on in the van
you're lucky you're the drive because this is the only occupation where "sitting outside" is fucking acceptable

At least you said "the van" and not "on a rooftop a block away"

Make sure to use Hot sim

as for your actual question... good fucking question! I can't remember.

same rules for hot sim?

Well its not like I'm gonna leave the team hanging. I'm gonna give the higher strength team members those gun turrets in R5 to carry as well so if shit goes down they just put them down in a corridor, I jump in and cover them.

>for remote operated systems
That's pretty explicit, yeah.

You're going to get made worthless by the first Faraday Caged laboratory that your team crosses into.

Thats what recon is for.
>oh shit this place is faraday caged
>alright then time to get my shotgun out

>assuming GMs aren't going to throw in unexpected twists
>assuming that farday cages, jammers, and EM-blocking paint aren't going to be increasingly common occurrences
>assuming buildings constructed with metal girders aren't going to have crazy Noise penalties for anyone trying to remotely operate from outside

Are sporting rifles still Long Guns in 5e? if they are, you could just invest in one skill and use a sporting rifle instead of a sniper and have equal ranks in shotgun and raifu

It's the 16 dice of the fuel cannister vs your however many dice. Unless you purposefully fucked your negotiation dice pool, you can spend 160¥ or less and likely get a few net hits to divide those six hours - more if you spend edge. That means you can order before leaving for the meeting, and get your flamethrower ammo within a very short timeframe.

>spend 160¥
That increases the base duration to 24 hours.

>sporting rifles
>5e
Sporting rifles got consolidated into sniper rifles in 5e. It's just that some are Restricted and some are Forbidden.

The gear cost is still 40¥. You're paying 120¥ extra to make finding a seller easier.

>You're paying 120¥ extra to make finding a seller easier.
At which point you exceed 100 nuyen, and the base duration increases to 24 hours.

The gear cost is still 40¥.
>GEAR COST: Up to 100¥
>DELIVERY TIME: 6 hours

Can 5e Machine Sprites run Diagnostics to assist an autonomous Pilot?
Can 5e Machine Sprites remote control a drone? Jump-in a drone?
Is there a Sprite with the Pilot skill?

If you're spending 160 nuyen on something, it costs more than 100 nuyen. The chart isn't for what the base goods' market value is, it's for what you're spending for them. For what they cost.

Are you really this retarded, or are you 'just pretending?'

40 Nuyen spent on the ammo itself.
120 Nuyen spent tracking down the seller. Obviously there is 2 transactions here user.

The money you spend on gaining dice in the negotiation test is not the price of the gear. It's money spent to find a willing seller. Hence, the gear price is 40¥.

Think about it for a second. You call your fixer, say you need a fuel cannister ASAP, and are willing to throw money at the situation to make it happen. By your read, so long as you offer 60¥ extra or less, then your fixer can get a seller in under 6 hours. When you get to 70¥ extra, they say, "Woah, hold up, all this extra cash for the seller is going to make it take a full day."

That's retarded.

Speaking of augmentation,

Are all soldiers, both mundane and awakened, required to take government-mandated augmentations, i.e. DNI datajacks, Cybereyes, Cyberlimbs with toolkits and internal weapons, etc etc.

Not all, but iirc there are programs which 'encourage' it greatly via offering them at subsidized cost (which you pay in full if you ever LEAVE of course)

As for awakened, Awakened of any kind are too valuable and rare to damage by forcing or even allowing them to get 'ware unless it's life saving/necessary

While Essence isn't incredibly well-documented, it's still known that too many augmentations take their toll on magical potential, so the Awakened soldiers would probably only be mandated to have a datajack and implanted comms systems to let them know and hear the same things as their augmented counterparts. They'd usually be doing actual casting remotely through mage goggles or coming in when the situation is properly scoped out and when the augmented forces are in position, to avoid losing an Awakened soldier or worse yet having them kidnapped.
The UCAS Army, as far as I remember, offers subsidized cyberware, which as said has to be paid in full if you ever leave. It's technically not obligatory, but in order to be able to refuse it and still be hired, you have to have a consistently higher performance than augmented soldiers as well as have a reason to not get cybernetics (Sensitive System, for example).

>As for awakened, Awakened of any kind are too valuable and rare to damage by forcing or even allowing them to get 'ware unless it's life saving/necessary
It's weird how much of a 180 this perspective is on early Shadowrun, and even modern Shadowrun on the subject of implanted commlinks, cyber eyes, cybersuites, etc.

>you have to have a consistently higher performance than augmented soldiers
Which is basically impossible unless you're awakened anyway, or some kind of fucking prime runner tier DMPC

>Are all soldiers, both mundane and awakened, required to take government-mandated augmentations, i.e. DNI datajacks, Cybereyes, Cyberlimbs with toolkits and internal weapons, etc etc.
Hell no. Standard-issue implants are subsidized and available, and some are mandatory for mundanes, but no military on Earth is stupid enough to force an Awakened soldier to damage their own Essence. The options are there if they choose to opt in, but nobody's going to make the combat Adept or the medic Mage get a set of cybereyes.

Well 'ware is so ubiquitous anyone refusing to get it is seen as some kind of wierdo luddite, but when you're a wierdo luddite who can read minds and fart lightning people are willing to look beyond your eccentricities

Fuck, being a conjurer must be the best goddamn racket, your skills are so in demand that your employment is basically ubiquitous in any place with security over 'Low' and you never have to place yourself in personal danger unless you're a drekk head and lose control of your spirits

Look at the earlier editions' sample characters.
Essence isn't understood as well in-setting as it is in this thread, and you don't have an index of Essence costs.
To add to that, it's basically impossible for an Awakened operative to pull their load and not be a risk unless they have access to the same senses and information that everyone else has - which means that even Awakened likely have a datajack, internal comms and some kind of sensory augmentation.
4e and 5e often forget that Awakened aren't seen as well in-setting as the freelancers see them, and as such you end up with a setting in which Essence is canonically ill-understood and where Awakened are usually seen as potential mind-control criminals, but where the Awakened canon characters still get special treatment that amounts to metagaming.
If you have a position of responsibility, which being a mage is, no corporation is going to make you into a time bomb by avoiding giving you the capability to interface with the rest of the team and letting you do the job on your own without the help of the Corporation.
That's one of the fundamental principles of cyberpunk - that you have an illusion of choice but not much more. The corporations tell you what you want to hear, but if you aren't doing what they want, they'll find a way to shaft you, even if it just entails ignoring you.

Sure, but OTOH the original mage archetype was a burnout. The perspective on absolute preservation of magic is just different.

It's also the most stifling and controlled environment you could ever expect to be placed in. Official material doesn't call it a gilded cage for nothing. You have next to no say in your own life.

>naive corp kid mage who just wants to be free so they burn themselves

fuck, next character concept GET

Too bad nobody with two ny of sense to rub together ever, ever works with a fallen SINner

>Essence isn't understood as well in-setting as it is in this thread, and you don't have an index of Essence costs.
It absolutely is. They even have it charted. There's fluff in Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong with the street doc character on some of that.

>To add to that, it's basically impossible for an Awakened operative to pull their load and not be a risk unless they have access to the same senses and information that everyone else has - which means that even Awakened likely have a datajack, internal comms and some kind of sensory augmentation.
Horseshit. They have trodes and a simrig in their helmet, and that's fine. Most Awakened have too low of a Magic score to risk even a single point of Essence loss. Your typical military Mage or Adept isn't some Magic 6 savant, they're a Magic 2-3 utility guy.

>4e and 5e often forget that Awakened aren't seen as well in-setting as the freelancers see them, and as such you end up with a setting in which Essence is canonically ill-understood and where Awakened are usually seen as potential mind-control criminals, but where the Awakened canon characters still get special treatment that amounts to metagaming.
That's an outdated understanding of the setting. Even as early as late 2e magic was becoming much more understood in the setting, and by the time 4e rolled around you had a universal theory and a comprehensive understanding of magic starting to come out of MIT&T.

You literally don't know what you're talking about.

>naive corp kid mage who just wants to be free so they burn themselves
Oh shit, that's a pretty neat concept for a Burnout Adept.

>cool cyberpunk setting
>magic shit ruins everything
There is not enough booze on Earth to get me over that. Fucking mages.

You know, you did such a good job in being so brainwashed by a company that doesn't know the fluff of the game it's currently handling that I'm just going to leave you to your delusions.
You'll sperg all over me anyway, so this is win-win.

Yeah, I mean...at this point there are a heap of magical academies. Tir Na Nog's multiple ones, MIT&T etc.

Fuck off.

>which means that even Awakened likely have a datajack, internal comms and some kind of sensory augmentation.

...Sensory Augs and Coms can be built into Helmets, Datajacks can be simulated with Trodes and AR gloves, maybe a sub vocal mic on top. All that is much cheaper and can be reused by other people rather than paying a Mage to go under a knife and getting those fancy eyes bricked by the enemy dick ass decker.

>anything other than muh 1e isn't real Shadowrun

I... I meant they burned their SIN, but yeah that could work.
>YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO DAD
>gets shitload of ware
>w-why does everything taste 'grey'
>what do you mean my services are no longer required

FUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Can mages even CAST with cyber eyes?

I feel like that should be a "No" seeing as they can't even cast via electronic range finders

Not That user, but a hard reset back to 2050s with logical wireless, functional (non-handwavium) Matrix, and advancing tech eras would be better than what we're getting now.

>I... I meant they burned their SIN
Oh, that's much less interesting.

>as long as I'm Awakened, the corps will never let me out of my gilded cage
>being a wizard is great, but I've been born into slavery
>to free myself, I have to do the magical equivalent of chewing off my own leg

Leaving you with a Magic 0 Burnout's Way Adept 'wared to the gills.

>Can mages even CAST with cyber eyes?
Explicitly yes. Cybernetics count as your own bodyparts for all magical purposes once they've been incorporated into your Essence.

They can as it's wired into their natural sight.

I don't remember if it was 3 or 4e but they can, the DNI aspect of it makes it count as natural vision even with the essence loss.

Yup.

>Can mages even CAST with cyber eyes?
Not only yes, but they're consistently one of the recommendations for a mage willing to take an Essence hit. Expanded sensory channels makes getting line of sight on a magical target a lot easier.

Okie dokie

S'dumb though

>Cyber- or bioware visual enhancements that have been paid for with Essence count as natural.

Welcome to CGLrun, in which ignorant freelancers and snide rules lawyers pick apart the intended mood, genre and logic of the setting because it makes them feel intelligent and gives them an excuse as to why their self-inserts don't have to follow in-setting norms and precedents.
If the setting worked on perfect logic, it wouldn't be Shadowrun, and in fact it would be a very boring setting to play in. If corporations prioritize employee safety over company safety, and if they avoid actively trying to shackle people to the company through obligatory augments, they've shown themselves to be common-sensical and safety-focused to the degree where they wouldn't be competitive in-setting.
Nice strawman.
Try 3e at one point. You might not be used to playing complete, edited and relatively balanced games, but as soon as you get it into your head that you're not playing "what I'd do in the real world if I had magical powers" but are actually trying to roleplay a character in a setting different from this world, it'll get fun.
I don't understand how you manage to convince yourself you're doing any kind of roleplaying. It baffles me that you can play a boardgame with a thin coat of fluff and claim you're trying to imagine another world with different rules and norms.

Oh, fuck off, you whiny bitch.

Nice projection.
Do you honestly think I'm "whining", or is it just a way for you to convince yourself you're not wrong for getting mad?
This is a fucking conversation on Veeky Forums. If you still honestly think that someone who's trying to explain something to you is "mad" because they don't type like a Facebook user, you have a lot to learn here.
Thanks for reminding me that there are still people as thin-skinned as you out there. It gives an old retired career shitposter like me a reason to keep on posting.

Magic in Shadowrun is as known in the general populace as much as quantum mechanics is in real life. It's pretty easy to get the basics as long as you've had a decent (and open) education, but actually mastering it requires time in an accredited university or teaching by someone who's already way ahead of the curve.

Most people who have a decent standard education are brought up in the corps, or nations under the corp's thumbs. They don't want people actually understanding magic since it's hard to control, so they have a more-or-less comic book understanding of it ("mutations work like in the x-men, right?").

The majority of people DON'T have a formal education at all. The poor, SINless, etc. It's a matter of luck whether they know anything about it unless they witness it themselves or get a mentor. As far as they know 'Essence' means a person's soul and that's about it.

But those people who were fortunate to go to university, or study under a master? They know everything that's been rediscovered in the 6th world and made 'public'. These are the bozo's who know everything the reader knows about Essence, if not precise values.

>Shadowrun isn't like 1e anymore, watch me cry about it and shit on all four of the editions since then
>everyone else is the one with the problem, not me
>you're all wrong because anything other than 1e isn't muh pure Shadowrun experience

What a fucking faggot.

If you can imagine all that from my posts, you need to become a screenwriter.
Just imagine all you could do with that overflowing imagination.
>06:19
>08:00
Either you're samefagging or there are two of you. The latter is by far the most depressing prospect.

This is some premium autism here.

>those times
>being a Kiwi
Enjoy your government of hippies, 'back in my day' faggots, and communists.

Your entire argument is 'I don't like anything published later than 2e Core, so everything else is wrong.'

Ah. I must have made my point poorly, my remarks about Sensory augs and what not being able to be built into things that aren't cyber wasn't me trying say that Corps were prioritizing their employees, merely that it is cheaper and more cost effective to have that gear that you can hand out as needed. Hell just wipe off the blood and spray some frebreeze and the next grunt won't know it's not new.

This allows the company mages to keep their Magic as high as possible while also providing a common Baseline among all troops, which leaves Cyber as a option for people who need replacement limbs/organs/whatever but also keeps cyber as a sort of 'luxury' item that the wage slaves can strive to obtain in order to raise their status in a company.

1E put a lot of work behind the setting, based on extrapolating real stuff. It showed an impressive amount of work, or at least academic knowledge.
The latter editions, I'm not so sure.

Not just a lot of work, but a lot of work done by different people who can communicate and not step on each others toes.

1e was the edition that brought us such idiocy as the Great Ghost Dance, NANs, and other geopolitical retardation that's made Shadowrun's setting a laughingstock ever since. Your fixation on it is pure nostalgia.

The people behind the SOX were well versed in geopolitics.
Of course the setting is a potpourri of cyberpunk and fantasy, it's gonna have ridiculous elements.