/srg/ Shadowrun General - Welcome to the Hive

This seems like a frustrating way to fix something that could just be done with more thought out balancing.

Yes, but more specifically the Fovae. Forbidden Arcana hinted that they're actually far worse than anyone imagined. There might be more in Dark Terrors but I haven't read that yet.

>could just be done with more thought out balancing.
chummer, we're talking about CGL. If they could, they would.

This is the thought-out result. It's been a long time coming to bring an edge of danger back to magic use, and it makes playing a mage interesting again. They can't just declare that all spirits must be Force 6 or lower because the metagame demands it, there is a cause and effect.

I just don't really see how they could implement it in a way that wouldn't just become a pain in the ass for anyone interested in playing an awakened character. They could certainly do to make it harder to summon high force spirits/make high force spirits less gamebreakingly strong but altogether I feel like they could just make the numbers for mundane options better and tweak the rules for essence so burnouts aren't as good for a better result. Machine pistol + hand of god is very strong in this edition as a combat option for deckers/riggers/faces, bu raising the availability of machine pistols across the board because they were made illegal everywhere probably isn't a good way to balance out that option.

You can't just go up, though; simply making cyberware have bigger numbers isn't balancing, it's a race.

You pull back on the broken parts of mages by making spirits less OP and making the basic structure of background count core - you don't need to include alchera and fovae and all that, but just an outline of what BC is, how it accumulates, what it actually means to be aspected to a place.

You tweak cyberware by making suites and 'ware like the Siemens Cyberspine and Wired Reflexes/Reaction Enhancers more of a standard - pieces can be taken standalone, but you get escalating benefits for going all-in.

You rearrange deckers and technomancers so they fit the complementary roles they occupy in the fluff - deckers are good at straight-up hacking, technos have exclusive access to things like Puppeteer and Ninja Vanish as an Echo to play as 'things that break the rules of the Matrix'.

You improve the fiction by firing Hardy and putting AncientHistory in place as EIC.

>Police written on her ass
I so hope that artist is just stupid.

its the new "Juciy"

Have you considered he just didn't give a shit?

I just don't really understand how any of that requires magic to be fundamentally changed in setting. Background counts seem like they should be important already, but are poorly explained and not brought up as much as they seem like they ought to be. Spirits are the same way.

It's not exactly a fundamental change, so much as it is a continuation of a pattern. People thought they knew what was up, then dragons started showing up and buying stocks. Then they thought they knew what was up, then intergalactic bugs dressed up as ministers took over Chicago. Then they thought they knew what was up, then a space rock passed overhead and people grew four arms and beaks. Then they thought they knew what was up, and zombies attacked. Now they think they know what is up, but wild spirits are spreading and magic diseases are getting worse.

The rules of magic aren't changing, our understanding of them is. This isn't even a big shift in terms of new things happening, just the realization that we have less control over things happening than we thought. If there's nothing surprising about mana, the hermetics win.

plus this is all just continuing the pattern of mana getting everywhere and creating Earthdawn 2.0

What's the problem?

Fuck Earthdawn and fuck your ideas. You are either a shitty Shaman or more likely a buttblasted tin man.

Yeah no Shamanshitter. UMT has no discrepancies nor has it been disproven in any way.

>Shadowrun is a setting where everything has a consequence.
>Working for the corps is safe, but also slavery.
>Being SINless is freedom, but also squalor and danger.
>Cybering up is expensive and it eats at your soul, slowly turning you insane. But it's a shortcut to power... provided you make enough money and contacts that you can actually get the damned stuff.
>Magic showers you in nuyen and blowjobs, has no downsides, and offers the easiest path to power because you quickly become self-sufficient.

Magic, as currently implemented, breaks the setting in half.

No it does not you theorycrafting piece of shit. In practice magic is no more powerful than any other archetype. You have to go out of your way to powergame and even than its only high focus spirits that break the setting.

Catering to this market segment is what's killing SR.

High force spirits.
And low force spirits.
And mind-control spells.
And utility spells.
And rituals.
And astral projecting.
And a setting that reveres magic, where mages can essentially charge whatever they want for their services.
And multiple attempts to screw over not-mages, via nanopocalypse, multiple matrix crashes, insane augmentation prices, and ridiculous drone repair costs.

It seems as though you are trolling us.

>has 6 ranks in a skill, specialize in summoning, have a decent mentor spirit and a shaman tuxedo
>go out of your way to powergame
Lmao. If I put 6 ranks in longarms, specialize in sniper rifles, have Hawk Eye and a good sniper rifle, I can blow someone's head up. Meanwhile, the shaman can blow someone's head up or mindrape them or get a spirit to make them virtually invisible or sic a pack of feral dogs on him or force him to suffer a landslide of glitches. And that's just using spirits, not even touching magic.

>low force spirits
No not a problem
>rituals
Stop having a party of 5 mages
>mind control
No where near as bad as you think in actual play

The rest of your complaints are too stupid to reply to. Augmentation/rigger costs isn't the fault of mages dumbass.

I'll admit spirits are a problem. Regular magic isn't nearly as gamebreaking however.

Yeah. I honestly can't really stand regular magic because it just feels kinda lame, but I do go ahead and make sure I never take a single rank of Spellcasting when I make a magician. Spirits can solve pretty much anything non-Matrix related, so I can't imagine why I should be able to sling out manabolts and fireballs as well.

Low force spirits are actually pretty easy to abuse. Are they weaker? Sure, but it's also incredibly easy to have a stable of the little fuckers bound like Pokemon. You might just bind one big combat kaiju, but it takes no effort at all to bind a bunch of Force 2-4 spirits for utility. Even a basic Force 4 spirit using Concealment and Silence is a boon to any infiltration with the -4 Perception penalty granted to 4 members of your crew while also completely silencing everything inside of 4 meters. Including shit like Movement, Guard, Divination, sustaining spells, etc, low Force spirits can do wonders if abused. And since your summoning is slinging 12+ dice to summon them against their 2-4 Force, and then slinging 12+ dice to bind them against their 4-8 dice, you end up with shitloads of services.

No, seriously, are you new to the game or simply an idiot?

It's definitely both.
My working theory is they built a shit-tier magician and don't understand the rules, but the mundane players in the game are competent, resulting in the illusion of parity.

Have you considered reading? It's a wonderful way to find out that don't know something before telling everyone on an Uzbeki twine-twirling forum that you don't know something.

Forbidden Arcana, for the non-retarded.

Hoi chummers, what's going on with the big bad in your area? Who is he, who does he work for, what does he want, and how is he going about it?

>Shadowrun is a setting where everything has a consequence
Yeah, way to parrot a 5e tagline invented for 5e because it sounded catchy, not because they meant it or fucking cared.
The entire edition is a shiteating cash grab by their Actual Thief CEO to see how much of your fucking blood he can squeeze from a stone.

Do you have to take The Magician's Way in order to get the Nine Chakras metamagic ?

They want people who see her to know she's a police officer right away and they know that's where eyes will go first.

>Thinks it was invented as a tagline in 5th.
>Doesn't know it has existed since at least 2nd edition.

Whew, lad.

Just because some faggot unreliable narrator doesn't believe in UMT proves that it is false? Are you by any chance an Earther?

Is just being a gunman an alright role in 5e? I just got the rulebook for a game coming up in Jan, and I saw that there's a mystic adept gunslinger pregen in it so I assume so but that seems like a pretty narrow niche. Could I be a normal, non-magic or tech gunslinger who really is just that fucking good?

>Could I be a normal, non-magic or tech gunslinger who really is just that fucking good?

No. What you could do is not be a faggot and actually interact with the game's themes about man meeting magic and machine. Normal is not good enough, that's the whole reason razorboys rip out their nervous system and replace them with wires and computer parts

You could also twink out Edge, get Revels in Murder, and hope that's enough to carry you, but you are by no means normal.

Not that user, but as someone who’s been playing only since 3e that just makes it even more pathetic honestly.
It means rather then an excusable mistake coming from a cheapass piece of shit edition cash grab it’s instead an active falsehood that’s as old as the game’s earliest days and was ultimately never even remotely an accurate statement.
One is excusable, the other is just “was this system ever NOT shit”?
Well, if by “normal” you mean with cyberware then yeah, go for it.
If you mean normal with no cybernetics or augmentations of any kind, you should probably instead look for a higher quality cyberpunk system because SR really doesn’t work at that very well. Sorry.

>Doesn't know it has existed since at least 2nd edition.
source?

>Could I be a normal, non-magic or tech gunslinger who really is just that fucking good?

That's pretty much what an Adept IS. Someone who's talents have gone beyond the mundane into the magical.

It goes back to Shadowrun's Earthdawn roots where adepts were just 'What a PC is', as every PC was notable because their skills were so refined they could tap into magic through them. A swordsman didn't know some magic to help him sword better, he sworded so well that magic itself would flow through his blade.

>non-magic
>Adept

Yes, someone who is 'Just that fucking good' becomes magical in Shadowrun. I was explaining how you can't really do that and remain mundane, as you'll Youxia it up as an adept.

I think you missed the point of the post.

The Shadowrun system has always been shit, but we've been playing for the last 5 editions because the setting is *fun*. It's fun in a way that the settings of more popular systems just aren't.
At this point I think all Shadowrun fans who have been around since at least 3rd edition are resigned to the fact that the system mechanics will always be shit, but the setting offers enough that we find ways around it.

>thinking everything has a consequence is a modern invention
The concept that everything has a price and no-one gets out clean has literally been a part of the cyberpunk genre since the fucking Sprawl trilogy invented the goddamn genre. You moronic fuck.

you don't have to be an adept to be "Just that fucking good", just need high stats and skills.
Whether you can get both at CharGen is another question. But by itself you can have a total skillshot with 14 dice just by having him have AGI 6 and [WEAPON SKILL] 6 (APPLICABLE SPECIALIZATION)
and that's not counting qualities that can make you be better. You do not become an adept just because you are good. Either you are born as an Adept (just without it expressing itself) or you will never be one. You are not an adept because you are excellent, you are excellent because you are an adept

Wrong. Anyone can awaken into magical aptitude later in life.
There's nothing stopping you from spending 40 karma to become an adept after chargen.
Except, y'know, 40-fucking-karma.

Actually, ignore that. Misread your post.

Basically. We just play Shadowrun being of the shitty meme of a setting that it's devolved into. CGL may have been helping nosedive it into trash, but it's still the only Evolving World cyberpunk + magic setting in print, and it's now got decades of content plugged into that setting. It feels alive and fleshed-out, where its competition in the vein of cyberpunk games -- with or without magic attached -- just can't compete with.

Then again, the shitty rules are also a strong reason that I play one game of Shadowrun and one game of Shadowrun fluff imported into Sprawl. But whatever.

Explain how it's wrong then.

It's real annoying when someone talks shit all smugly and then proceeds to be too scared to actually let their opinion stand up to scrutiny. What's wrong with the theory?

It's real annoying when people who haven't read the books run their mouths, then refuse to read the books when they are told where to look. Forbidden Arcana, in several sections but most detailed p. 142-169.

tl;dr
>UMT says that all magic and magical phenomena are created by life on Earth, just shaped by the individual magician according to their tradition into the forms we recognize
>Magic users who accepted this stepped into different paradigms - hermetics summoned smarter spirits instead of elementals, shamans had spirits not tethered to the land, etc.
>this is at the very least incomplete, because it doesn't account for wild spirits and mentor spirits as entities separate from humanity (which they clearly are, with their own planes of existence and rules of conduct), naturally aspected mana, and similar phenomena that involve no human input, or any involvement of living terrestrial creatures
>we, the readers, know the last point is objectively true because we know about the Horrors and other far metaplanes that exist even when cut off from the world and unconnected through astral space, and return to the Earth when our own mana level rises to meet theirs and allow them entrance

>muh unreliable narrator
When two top magical reseachers (including one who independently discovered Horrors 70 years into the mana cycle) and an Immortal Elf say that UMT is flawed, you either accept that possibility or actively refuse to believe most anything in the books, because most of it but the barest details are told through narration, and not objective blocks of text. Even parts that aren't in Jackpoint commentary boxes are usually chapters that are explicitly written by someone in the universe and posted to Jackpoint.

I bet you believe ghosts are just spirits of man too.

You could try, but you'd need to do stuff like tweak the fuck out on drugs and take Revels in Murder to compete. You'd do alright for yourself, but you would also have to spend a lot of karma and nuyen and roleplaying over the course of a game to achieve/explain how you got that way.

Also, /srg/, Pink Mohawk or Black Trench Coat? Why?

>this is at the very least incomplete, because it doesn't account for wild spirits and mentor spirits as entities separate from humanity (which they clearly are, with their own planes of existence and rules of conduct), naturally aspected mana, and similar phenomena that involve no human input, or any involvement of living terrestrial creatures
Explained easily by just stating that metahuman consciousness resonates with far realms whether or not they're deliberately interfering.
>we, the readers, know the last point is objectively true because we know about the Horrors and other far metaplanes that exist even when cut off from the world and unconnected through astral space, and return to the Earth when our own mana level rises to meet theirs and allow them entrance
And this is only a factor depending on what your own personal headcanon is on the horrors, IE, irrelevant.

Wow, such gaping holes, it sure is difficult to patch over those oh-so-damning flaws.

Seriously though, with 10 seconds of >80IQ thought, neither of those points are any kind of issue to explain. Try again.

Somewhere in the middle, because both extremes are actually pretty retarded. Bonus points if you still manage to slide a little bit towards one side of the scale or the other based on region without it fully tipping over.

Nothing here disproves UMT other than it isn't fully complete. We don't know all the facts about evolution or gravity yet we still believe in them dumbass.
No spirits of man are just spirits shaped by human sapience.

>If you make shit up that is never stated and ignore parts of the setting you don't like, UMT is irrefutable!

I mean, sure, if you're playing by those rules.

> >80IQ

it shows

Gravity and evolution also aren't literal actual magic.

Humans aren't the only life on Earth idiot. Mentor spirits and other wild spirits were obviously formed by creatures that no longer exist.

>Right back at you!
Oh, fuck off. The only thing that can't be explained by UMT is the horrors, and that's only because we don't know exactly what the horrors are. With ANY explanation, it works though. They're aliens? Works. They're spirits? Works.

Was doing some homework earlier and was thinking in a mode where an X should have been present, climb out of my ass.

What does that have to do with anything brainlet?

A direct quote from the book sums it up better than I can.
>The core tenet of UMT is that all magic flows from the same source. That astral energies are formed by living beings, and all of us—hermetics, shamans, voodoo, psionics, whatever—draw our power from the same place. It’s wrong. There are other places. Deep in the metaplanes, not connected to us at all, not connected to astral space, full of inhuman things, inhuman shapes, inhuman thoughts. Magic can come from other sources.

It's like saying the theory of gravity works on the macro level because we know matter attracts matter, but then Steve throws a baseball up in the air and it gets stuck in midair. The most fundamental concept is wrong - there is still value in the observations, but the theory is untrue.

Already accounted for, if you could read.

>Explained easily by just stating that metahuman consciousness resonates with far realms whether or not they're deliberately interfering.
Except the whole point of the Horrors is that they're deliberately cut off from the world. The chasm is a metaphor for 'does not interact with the astral plane'. And yet they live, independent of the mana generated on Earth.

>They're aliens? Works.
No, because we know they're creatures of mana.

>They're spirits? Works.
No, because they don't follow the rules of spirits.

>because we know they're creatures of mana
from where?

Unreliable narrator son. Only thing I get is that UMT isn't perfected yet same as evolution and the same as Gravity or Quantum Mechanics. Once again Shamanfags are proven to be retards upset that they aren't special snowflakes

The disproof of UMT is that it assumes that magic is a byproduct of our metaplane/existence, and everything else is a reflection of it. This is cancelled out by, for example, the Seelie Court.
Summoning is in large part shaped by the biases of the summoner. You're not just summoning a fire spirit, you're summoning what you think a fire spirit should look like.

This is so fucking easily explainable that mana can develop from life on different planets are some shit. UMT isnt busted yet friend.

>Except the whole point of the Horrors is that they're deliberately cut off from the world. The chasm is a metaphor for 'does not interact with the astral plane'. And yet they live, independent of the mana generated on Earth.
Except we don't know what the fuck they are, so you're making shit up. As far as you know, they could easily just be exceptionally powerful spirits that lay dormant and then glut on mana when it comes back. IE, an awakened is to a dragon what a spirit is to a horror. Not complex.

The point of UMT is that it explains everything to some degree, so long as you have a basic perspective on how the actor it's functioning on works. The only reason the horrors can't be explained is that we don't know exactly what they are. If you're pretending to know exactly what they are, you are literally relying on headcanon bullshit, and that's a fact.

I think UMT, to presume that we could scientifically analyze something that exists to say fuck you to any law of science, is what actual snowflakes believe in.

Also, don't forget stuff like this from Forbidden Arcana.
>Known in various regions as Ba’al, Nergal, Dagon, Yam, Ktulu, Moloch, Ashtoreth, Kronus, or in
finite other names, these gods are altogether alien to metahumanity. Their goals, if any, are completely unfathomable, and the ends they desire are equally obtuse. What is known is that they desire followers and have granted power and guidance to those who have sufficient will to resist the madness that comes from interacting with these gods.
>Altogether alien to metahumanity

We can give spirits or astral beings names, but that doesn't even always mean spirits will bend to the shapes we think of.

Earthdawn lore, same place all info on the Horrors comes from. They exist only in mana-rich environments because they need mana the same way we need air. Dragons are in a similar boat, only needing less mana to survive.

My chummer, what are you saying? Are you saying that's not the core of UMT? Or that the metaplane Horrors exist in is connected to the Earth? Because both of those things are factually incorrect, in multiple books, from multiple sources.

Thank you, Chariots of the Gods, for providing an easy out for this user. No need to treat your theory like it's an actual scientific theory when that gets tricky, just blame unobserved aliens for the problems.

Just finished a two part run about insect spirits. They were split up a bit so its kinda fuzzy on the first part. We had a native american corpface, environmentalist elf decker, alchemist paranoid doctor, and I was a rich kid adept gun bunny. Doc out of most sessions so mainly just potions from him.

Part1
>meet with concerned citizen i.e. johnson about missing people in an area
>face has a conscience and johnson isn't a dick so he takes the job with low pay
>playing in SF area and spot is in Oakland's drekkiest of drekholes
>broken down office/apartment building with nothing working
>have to break down a concreteish wall enough to climb over
>1 str elf decker twiddles thumbs in my car cuse out of useful element
>tunnels in basement made of same concrete stuff
>Just me, my bow wielding stereotype friend, and plenty of glowsticks
>Weird sounds ahead reveal a man rubbing bump on wall and mustering semi-sexual things to himself.
>decide the best course of action is electro arrow and his head making contact with the wall
>turns out crazy insect shaman with chitin and high phys can't take 19 total stun over two rounds.
>montage of destroying egg pods and half insect people while decker tries to pull us up out of the hole.
>let johnson know bug removal costs extra
>no poison / mutations over the next few days so errything ok.

not bad for a first encounter with no real casters
cont.

>The core tenet of UMT is that all magic flows from the same source. That astral energies are formed by living beings, and all of us—hermetics, shamans, voodoo, psionics, whatever—draw our power from the same place. It’s wrong. There are other places. Deep in the metaplanes, not connected to us at all, not connected to astral space, full of inhuman things, inhuman shapes, inhuman thoughts. Magic can come from other sources.
If we know it exists, it must be observable. If it's observable, it's related to our reality somehow. If it's realated to our reality somehow, there must be interaction between us. Therefore, even if it's many degrees more separated from the physical plane than most metaplanes, UMT still works and whoever wrote that is dumb. Matter of fact, it could easily be spun to actually play into UMT's favor, because it would mean that the closer to the physical plane the more human it is, and the farther away, the more abstract and unhuman. Makes total and complete sense.

Can't remember if johnson was from same group or not for this.

Part 2
>johnson wants us to clear a small termite hole after hearing what we did
>we know drek about them other than APDS works
>"Do you know our friend ARES?"
>ARES sending full kill team soon and wants to extract scientists before that
>say no, face says yes cuse longer we wait the more people die
>buy all the combat drugs, ammo, tools I can think of
>see bug spray on shelf
>throw out old deodorant
>everyone says im dumb as hell, but I ain't dying over a 5 nuyen can of bug-be-gone
>compound has plenty of lock doors and turrets for decker to play with
>scientists behind door upstairs
>tell me go to down death hole to find more
>don't want to go down death hole again
>dead insect hybrids all over
>find guard who shotgunned himself in security room
>restate my point
>way to unlock down there & they'll reimburse some of my expenses
>well these "combat drugs" WERE burning a hole in my pocket
>drink cocktail and force a spiritual journey on Chief Insect Lure with it.
>find the baddest meanest bug hybrids we have come across
>Dances-with-Bugs goes down fast and turrets out of los
>adrenaline rush
>walk out of the hole with 2 stun left and scientists free.

6/10 haven't gotten pay for it, but will review again when package has arrived.

That’s not actually a core theme of Neuromancer or the Sprawl Trilogy though? Or even in the novels?

>tfw the doc you went to see misdiagnoses you with disassociated personality disorder and prescribes psychchips when you know those are just the whispers of the nascent singularity connecting you to other consciousnesses and you just wanted to get some p-fixes to help organize them
Who's that quack think he is? I think a 2 Logic cybercultist knows better than some fancy pants doctor.

BUT NO GUYS MAGIC

>t. someone who saw Johnny Mnemonic once and knows what Bob Gabsin is all about

We can effect the astral world, sure, but that doesn't mean we generate it or that without us it doesn't exist. Which is a central conceit of UMT.

The Astral world gets on just fine without us when we haven't generated enough mana for us to interact with it. The fact that far metaplanes get less human is precisely proof that the UMT is flawed.

>cybercultist
I need this for my next run and i didn't even knew it.

Awww, did I offend you?
Neuromancer is a straight crime thriller with no consistent “theme”. None of the characters WANT to get out, and the only ones who do or try are Armitage (who dies) and a AI digital ghost-clone of Case who goes off and lives a normal life while the actual Case goes off to replace his organs so he can keep doing drugs and committing crime, while Molly goes off to keep bodyguarding and killing people for cash.
Case never wants “out”, he wants BACK IN at with his nerves melted, and afterwords he wants back in while still being allowed to pop pills.

Also, the Johnny Mnemonic story is even lighter on meaning then that. Gibson’s real light on descriptors and metaphors during his The Sprawl phase, it’s just how he wrote back then.

>None of the characters WANT to get out, and the only ones who do or try are Armitage (who dies)
Be honest; Armitage doesn’t count, he’s not even a real guy.

Neat. Bug Spray and APDS are good, but have you heard of high explosives?

Wait, did Molly actually work as an assassin or just as a bodyguard?

It's a joy, though partying with nonbelievers can be a little tiresome for both parts. Somebody mentions almost any problem they are having, and Alexei's got his supplier dialing while suggesting some elective surgery. He's still mildly confused why the rest of the crew still eats. It's just cleaner and easier to use nutrition storage systems. Have a contact that leads a cell of cybercult terrorists out of Boston who may or may not have CFD. On a recent run, we ended up saving a bunch of pods of technomancer clones, and he came very close to mauling the tag-along Johnson who had them ferreted away to be given a chance at normalcy while he was insisting on turning them over to a cult cell. After all, artificial blood and flesh which could interface naturally with technology? That's the fuckin' virgin birth. The turning point of a purely synthetic life that can speak with machines even without knowing a word of audible speech.

If she wasn’t an assassin then she certainly didn’t mind taking jobs she implicitly knew would involve murder or have a high likelihood of potential murder.

>no mention of Bobby or Turner or Slick Henry
Ignorant pleb that hasn't read the full triology, or picking and choosing to make your case? And the point was never that people want to get out, but rather than life in a cyberpunk dystopia fucks you, one way or another, whether it's your fault or you're just some schmuck that gets in the way of people that never give a passing thought of your life and death.

Also stun weapons and fire, lots of it.
Would recommend insecticide gas grenade and don't cheap out on the gas masks.

Make your case, don’t dismiss his.
Use examples (no quotes needed, he’ll know if you’re lying if he’s read it) and quotes if you can.
Argue, don’t pander and dissmiss. You seems reasonably intelligent, so you ARE capable of making an actual point.

Who are you, the Veeky Forums police?

Was thinking about playing an actual cyberpunk since my recent character pretty much lost his reason to be witht he party with the leaving of another player and his partner.

Just some really nice ceramic plated digigrade legs, some muscle toner, stun stick and devil-may-care personality.
Bright red Mowhawk and all.

Eat cyberdong, fagblaster.

Thanks mom. Protip, being a condescending jackass is worse than being an openly arrogant dismissive jackass.