/srg/ - Shadowrun General

Oh yeah.

Back in the day, I used to have multiple safehouses filled with disposable AKs, armored jackets, chem suits, and 200 Seven-7 grenades split between them. They were rigged to light on fire if anybody that wasn't I or the team got in.

I build for my character's gimmick first, essentials second. Not everyone needs to have auto injectors and grapple guns.

>made a shopping list out of a character
There are some sins there. Here's some a few tips to avoid antagonizing your GM.
-Don't flaunt your character's stats at the GM or anyone else. Game statistics are behind-the-scenes info. Have some class, focus on the lore.
-Don't make it seem like game statistics are more important to you than the events of the game.
-Unless they're somehow controversial, don't talk about your planned upgrades or game-statistical advancement decisions until the time comes to carry them out.
-Act respectfully at all times OOC. Don't brag about how great your character is, or how 'oh-so-broken' he'll be once he initiates or gets this armor or whatever. It just makes you look like a jackass.
-Avoid denigrating people when you can. People tend to have a hard time following your advice when you call them names.

Also, instead of presenting your GM with your shopping list, just use it as a reference and acquire each item individually and in-character (i.e. "While reviewing his ammo, Jack is struck by his paucity of options for less-lethal takedowns, and decides to look for a gun shop where he can pick up stick-n-shock ammunition for his shotgun"). Remember that your character is wasting time, money, and energy to get it, so be prepared to give coherent in-character explanations for why your character is buying all this crap ("he thinks a grapple gun might be useful for escaping buildings"). Have scenarios in mind where each item would come in handy. This shouldn't be hard, but it will help.

I love the fact that Shadowrun doesn't judge you.

It doesn't care how you earn that karma, if its good karma (Feeding the homeless) or bad karma (poisoning a trog's water supply), it all spends the same.

Chummer, you just listed two positive acts.

Throwing syringe, R&G 184

>When the darts strike a target, they inject any liquid they contain into the target. If the syringe does not penetrate the armor and the liquid is not contact vector, the target is not affected by the liquid (see Injection Darts, p. 434, SR5).

Injection Darts, SR5

>For use with dart guns of various types, like the Parashield pistol and rifle. Each injection dart carries a single dose of a drug or toxin (sold separately). The effect of the dart depends on the drug payload, but to successfully deliver that payload, the attack with the dart must get at least one net hit against an unarmored target or three net hits against a target with armor. This is an injection vector toxin attack.

Alright, so, what the fuck happens if it is a contact vector toxin? Injection Dart seems to imply it ONLY works with Injection vector toxins. Fine, sure, that kinda of logic makes sense to me, to a degree.

But then the Throwing Syringe brings up CONTACT vector, and specifically calls them out if they DON'T penetrate the armor. So, what, can injection darts only be injection vector, but throwing syringes can be injection or contact, and if you get less than 3 net hits (but assuming at least 1 net hit, meaning you didn't miss entirely) it still applies contact vector toxins?

>I love the fact that Shadowrun doesn't judge you.
You are beginning to see the light. Roleplaying game systems can do so much more when they cast aside their preoccupation with evaluating and systematizing characters' objective moral standing.

Well, technically Shadowrun does judge you in a pretty amusing way. If you put together two runs and the only difference was that one was in support of human trafficking and the other was in opposition, the Good Guys would end the day with more karma while the Bad Guys would end the day with more cash. So a cyberjunkie sam should probably just be doing wetwork and terrorism all day long to ignore karma in favor of rolling around in cash to build himself stronger, better, faster.

Ive been wanting to give my players the opportunity to initiate/submerge during character creation. However, Im not sure how to do that fairly. I feel like only making them pay the 13 karma might be too little, but I cant find any houserules. Any advice chummers?

I mean... you're not entirely wrong. But at least they don't do shit like make you have negative karma for being an asshole. You still get karma.

Its not really too little because character creation is the only opportunity for them to acquire positive qualities at base values, and to upgrade attributes and skills without time constraints. So, if they wanna initiate once? Sure, that's 13 karma of their 'base' 25, leaving them with only 12 karma left in order to get more skills and/or attributes.

If they want to initiate again, that would be 16 karma, which means they're sitting at -4 and need to have some negative qualities JUST for that. they COULD initiate a 3rd time, but that would bring their net total karma spent to 48. with a starting karma of 25, and only able to acquire up to 25 karma from positive qualities, this could result with them having at least 23 karma in negative qualities, with 0 positive qualities to speak of at all.

Then, once game time starts, they have to earn DOUBLE the karma to get any of those super handy positive qualities, and if they want to make ANY further progression: 22 karma to initiate again, all those negatives that come with attributes and skill improvements, and even then, while they DO have a +3 to their maximum magic, they don't get an actual increase to their magic score.

So, yeah, initiation has potential, but at most they'll most likely be selecting only 1 initiation/submersion, which would let them build for a specific gimmick from character creation, rather than awkwardly being a 'generalist' as they do nothing but build karma to become a geomancer, or a channeler, or a blood mage.

Just assume it's an oversight on the darts, or some freelancer running their mouth beyond their knowledge of the rules with the syringe.

It is less than 8¥ per injection dart, tho.

Yeah. It just means you're looking at less karma and more money for being an asshole. Cold Hearted Bastard.

This is true.

Though Throwing Syringe does damage, -2 AP, and could be argued to be recoverable and reusable.

Also, it has an Availability of 40¥ and a cost of 1500¥

Hey Yekka. Do you think You'll ever make an option to where someone could change the availability limit after a character has started? Like, you can change your priority selection after you start the character, but not the Availability.

Let me correct:

it has a Recoil Compensation of 6F, Availability 40¥, and a cost of 1500¥

I don't know if that's really judging them. It's more like bonus karma is a sort of consolation for doing less-lucrative things that make the group feel like the PCs aren't the bad guys.

Team Good-Guy is getting 4 more karma per run than Team Terrorist. Even if the good guys completely fuck up and accomplish absolutely nothing, they will get a minimum of 4 karma just for taking the job and surviving (Team Terrorist gets 0 in that case). That karma can go a long way to diversifying their skills, picking up spells and qualities, and generally making a more adaptable and dynamic team.

For the cyber-psycho getting more money for doing terrible things? This fits with both the theme of selling ones' humanity for cash, and also potential market dynamics: If qualified runner groups are not willing to do a job (say, because it would weigh on their conscience), then it's likely that Johnsons may need to adjust their price upward to convince them to accept. Unscrupulous runners also can quickly find themselves low on a crucial metric: The GM's opinion of him. There are countless ways this can lead to the undoing of any shadowrun character.

I'll let you think on that and decide which value should be ignored ...

Or, I could just give the GM my fucking list out of character between sessions, a brief write up of why and where, pay the toll and make my rolls, then be ready to rock next session without wasting precious game time.

Oh, I know which is supposed to be ignored.

Its just another mildly entertaining editing error from CGL, like a Stinger than has a reach of 6, or tusks doing 10,000¥ damage

>Unless they're somehow controversial, don't talk about your planned upgrades or game-statistical advancement decisions until the time comes to carry them out.
>Act respectfully at all times OOC. Don't brag about how great your character is, or how 'oh-so-broken' he'll be once he initiates or gets this armor or whatever. It just makes you look like a jackass.
>Avoid denigrating people when you can. People tend to have a hard time following your advice when you call them names.
Jesus christ, you sound like a miserable fuck. Especially for street sams, practically all of your advise is bullshit since any sam worth his salt is constantly striving to get better and more effective, and they do that almost exclusively through purchases. And you're talking about a setting in which walking from the pizzeria to the bar down the block is a barrage of advertisements that are tweaked specifically for your latest shopping and Matrix history. I'm buying a better sniper rifle because I started cheap to save cash that I now have, and while I'm seeing the arms dealer I'm gonna buy a box of Ex-Ex and a crate of APDS for my shotgun. I'm upgrading my suite of cyberware with some boosts to what's in my cyberarm, and I'll probably look to get some tremor reducers to boost my aim while I'm talking to that contact.

Every piece of gear on a character sheet doesn't have to have a chapter written about it. I mean, fuck, why wouldn't a street sam has a shopping list himself or a build-path to turn himself into the perfect weapon.

Awkward with the current method, but it shouldn't be a big problem to fix.

I can get behind "Don't be a cunt" but not talking about how you plan to improve a character? Not having those "fuck yeah" moments when you crush something your character is designed to excel at? That sounds like a shitty group.

Seriously. Especially since 7 out of 10 street samurai run the shadows to make the nuyen to push themselves further. Like, there's a reason that these characters don't retire and not all of them are dramatic emotional backstories or broken individuals. Some of them just want that fat paycheck to buy that betaware move-by-wire system they saw advertised a few weeks back because they could be that much more effective at their job.

Thank you so much for the in depth response. Hopefully this Knight Errant campaign will go smoothly.

While on the subject of campaigns. Has anybody ever ran an alternative type of campaign before? Working for the corps, police force, Doc Wagon, ect?

How did it go?

There are essentials that I make a priority whenever I'm building my character's kit. Black market shopping can be a pain in the ass and trying to get simple things through legit channels is even worse considering the rules on fake SINs.

Seconding. That is crucial information for the GM running the game and the players/characters who are on the same team. Everyone involved benefits when they know what you are capable of and what you plan on being capable of later. Of course I'm not condoning that rollplayer whose character is nothing more than a dicepool and a cock as long as his initiative passes, but its okay to be excited by the aspect of progression. Loot and experience are exciting rewards both in and out of character in almost any game.

Currently playing a globe-trotting game as the fist of a mysterious benefactor who's basically a baby Spinrad. We've since realized that we are a much better merc crew than shadowrunners, so one group that plays on opposite weeks is his scalpel while we're his fist. It's fun enough, but it can get kind of dull in the sense that we're constantly moving and never putting down roots anywhere. Laos one week, rural China the next, then Chicago, then Denver, etc. We get to see an absolutely nutty amount of the world and we're all prime runners at this point, but it just feels so detached since we're always on the move.

They are fun in their own way, and depending on the nature of the game they can be a very similar to a standard game involving criminals. Playing as a HTR team can be interesting if you don't mind a largely combat oriented game. Same for DocWagon too. Being a team unit who goes into warzones and scenes of natural disasters for extractions is fun. There is no shortage of shit that a DocWagon crew can be forced to put up with. Fires, earthquakes, riots, enemy shadowrunners... The list goes on. One day I want to try my hand at a campaign centered around one of the many combat sports leagues in the Sixth World. Instead of a party of runners, the characters could be players on an Urban Brawl team, or the underdogs in the latest season of Desert Wars. Or maybe even some sort of televised arena tactical combat sport like XCrawl. Stuff that forces characters into the spotlight, where they have to deal with fame, glory, and sponsors along with earning money and keeping their head on their shoulders.

Eventually I just started doing my own book-keeping and autistically counting the shots every person was making, so I could know the lulls in battle between suppressing fires and when to charge. My GM got pissy for me 'metagaming'.

If you want 'enjoying the spoils of your success' to have an unobtrusive representation in-game, make a line straight for a high-quality lifestyle. The rest is descriptive fluff.

Eh, I never really play characters that know what to save for or how to actually spend their money. The only vacation they ever really get is when they're dragged by the rest of the team to a tropical place for a little R&R before some big run.

What are some practical things that a corporation would actually want in every worker?
I'm thinking stuff like that sleep reducing bioware.

I'm trying to come up with like, a functional prototype transhuman. One corps would actually want to use for workers.

Tremor Reducer (maybe Elastic Joints) to allow wageslaves to remain in the same or cramped positions for lengthy periods of time.

Nephritic Screen to reduce the need for decent pollution filters and disease control. (appropriate geneware tolerance if necessary)

Mnemonic Enhancer if they want generally smarter wageslaves, but a skilljack and knowsoft network would do just as well.

Anything else?

Sleep Regulator.

How much money would you actually need to be making on a yearly basis to afford all the lionization and essence repair treatments you would need to be immortal?

Note, at least some of your productive time must be taken up doing these procedures.

Implanted commlink.
Mnemonic Enhancer.
Sleep Regulator.
Narco.
Nephriric Screen.
Clean Metabolism.

That'll get you a corp drone that can work all day, without forgetting anything, and can take a number of performance-boosting drugs, such as Cram. And if they get addicted to corp-supplied drugs? Bonus!
Skillwires are also good if they need a wide skillset.

No more than 150k a year I imagine, if the treatments are sufficiently spaced out. That's assuming a high lifestyle, which would give you the contacts/membership to qualify for the treatments.
Unlike Damian Knight, who apparently undergoes Leonization every couple of years for no damned reason.

...

Damn, that's it? Is 150k really hard to get to in Shadowrun?

It depends. I mean, if you live like a squatter, are miserly with your bullets, and don't get badly hurt, you can make 150k yen pretty easily. But getting 150k annually with nothing going wrong or needing some other big expense paid off? That's harder to do.

...

So I guess everything is cheaper in the future?

What the fuck? No it costs millions of Yen for Leonization treatments not to mention you have to take 4 months to even complete the treatment.

You know an artist fucked up when a troll is the hottest girl in an image

>Lone Star rifle used to kill orcs

>troll
>not the dwarf
Shit taste, chummer

>Not having those "fuck yeah" moments when you crush something your character is designed to excel at?

That's not what I was trying to say.

Celebrating the events of the game (i.e. "I blasted that guy's head off while blindfolded!") is great and should be encouraged. That's a big part of the joy of roleplaying.

What I'm talking about is excessive boasting about a character's stats in a vacuum. It's one thing to mention at some point that you have a diepool of 20, that's great. What I'm warning against is people continuing to shout about their numbers long after everyone already knows, because it can annoy people and give the impression you care more about numbers than the game.

Sorry I am not into fat tumblrinas thiccfaggot.

>that dwarf
>fat
Is everything bigger than pure bones fat for you?

The dwarf's mouth is too big.

Different guy here, but I've had too many Tumblrina friends who went for the same look.
That's not chub - those are rolls. Anyone who's that thick around the breasts and hips is going to have some horrible, fleshy, skin-cheese-building rolls worthy of a toxic spirit.

>turn himself into the perfect weapon
user you're referring to here. That's an acceptable response. If the dream of becoming the perfect weapon is what gets your runner out of bed in the morning, then there's no reason not to mention that. That's lore and should be discussed and celebrated.

You don't need a chapter written about every piece of gear. The idea is to mitigate GM-butthurt by having an idea in your mind of why your character is getting it, to keep your GM under the impression that you care about the story and not just bumping up your numbers. The in-character reason will often be the same reason why you want it OOC ("it lets me kill people better", "it helps me find people so I can kill them"), and that's fine.

Many GMs will be perfectly happy to take a shopping list and let you roll availability down the list to buy your crap. At that's fantastic. My advice was for an user who found this was not the case at his table, and who attracted his GM's ire upon presentation of a shopping list.

2,000,000/150,000=13.3
If you are Leonizing more often than once every 14 years you got fucking issues, chummer.

Ahh, I see the confusion. I meant 150,000 nuyen ON TOP of a high lifestyle, which is 10,000 per month. So 120,000+150,000=270,000 nuyen per year.
Of course that's just for the Leonization treatment given in Chrome Flesh. There are 2 other Leonization methods, one cheaper and one FAR more expensive. Neither have made the jump to 5th ed yet, but they exist in canon.

>all the lionization and essence repair treatments you would need to be immortal?
Leonization is a genetic restoration technique. Revitalization cannot restore essence lost to genetic restoration techniques.

As per the rules in Chrome Flesh, it seems to me that one can't recover essence from leonization. That means you get a maximum of 5, since the 6th would bring you down to essence 0.

Damian Knight has done far more than 5 treatments and he isn't dead.

The specific treatment Damian Knight probably uses isn't in the 5th ed books.
There are 3 types, Leonization A, B, and C. The fluff on Damian Knight was written back when all 3 versions had rules. CGL has only given us the rules for B so far in 5th.

We all know that those sorts of people don't have to follow game mechanics.

You don't have to worry about it, it was an anecdote and I've found far better GMs since.

I always liked the idea of a character out of their time thanks to leonization.

Had a concept for a face, a guy who was from the 1950's, came from old money. Family all used to be politicians. Then there was the crash, there was the overtaking of the megacorporations, and at this point, money drives the world more than people.

He hates it. He hates it so much. He runs because his goal is to overthrow the megacorporations. He wants to bring them back under the thumb of the people, with politics. He wishes to reunite America.

He'd have Contacts and Knowledge Skills out the ass, and can face with the best of them. Some anachronistic jokes to be made, such as calling people insults that only make sense in the 60's or something, but overall, he'd be the guy who could get ahold of anyone anywhere and get anything done.

Unfortunately, I made this concept a couple years ago and now it sounds like he's trump.

>implying Trump wouldn't want to run his own megacorp

Alright. that's fair. I was more talking about "make america great again" but you bring up a fair point.

How do everybody's runners live? All together in a den or base of some kind, or do they mostly do their own thing outside of work? Are there particular haunts they like to frequent, or do they just drift where the work takes them?

>trump
>hating corpocracy and wanting to overthrow it

are you 12?

It's fun watching the group's decker slide into the shadows. Everyone else was SINless and knew each other, at least tangentially, from the slums. He was just an average wageslave who wanted to make money so his children would have better options in life than he did. Now he tells the wife he joined a jai alai league so he has an excuse to go to shitty bars and talk with people who know what it's like to risk your life and soul for cash.

again. 'Make america great again' part. obviously trump would be doing his best to be apart of the mega corporations.

It depends. Some are literally hobos with shotguns, othres spend their pay on luxury penthouses. And all in between.

My last group is still pretty local but last downrun
>Decker goes to her classes for shits and giggles then retires for a night of Mazes and Minstrels with her friends
>Combat Mage tours the korean district looking for booze, brawls and a girl to spend the night with
>Infiltrator takes attends to his herb garden

>Decker gets a call from a druid working with her fixer. He needs some security shut down for a car theft. She winds up that girl fiddling on her phone during the session. Tries to balance Ar and realspace to do crime and play the game.

>Combat mage finds a bar in a stipmall with a bare knuckle boxing in place of karaoke. Wins some fight but gets his ass kicked by a razorgirl. He ends up taking her home.

>Infiltrator has a nice night at home.

The next day
>Decker spends run money going shopping for anime figures and doujin. Explores some esoteric sides of town for the good stuff.

>Combat mage microwaves the razor girl some breakfast. Does some fishing off the side of his houseboat. Gets a call from Infiltrator and answers it in front of the girl.

>Infiltrator takes a shift at a diner. Brings his personal herbs and spices to work to give those soyburgers an extra kick. A pair of weirdo dwarves in snakeskin jumpsuits try to pay for their meal in rubies. He pockets the rubies and cuts out early, follows them back to a boarding house. He calls up the team.

So, how hard would it be to actually disable someone's cyberlimbs? The party has a challenging foe that is heavily cybered and the decker is wanting to know if he could disable him by hacking his limbs.

I... actually don't know shit about that. How hard is it to hack someone's cyberlimbs?

My street sam is currently taking a month off to take a vacation with her waifu to attend a wedding and maybe do some side jobs in Seattle. It'll be her first time in the UCAS and she is sort of excited to see what the West is like.

Not hard, DR on basic cyber ware is 2. You'll need to beat whatever it's slaved to, so the guy's comlink or his decker's. Unless you can get a direct connection.

So... Lube grenades, myomeric data cable snaking straight to the dome?

Does /srg/ ever have difficulty making 'normal PCs'?

I always want to make weird, bonkers characters, like a burnout drug dealer/poison expert, or a mage who thinks he's a comic book superhero, or a decker who has spent so much time gaming that he's forgotten which world is the real one, and thinks that the real life is just a super immersive simulator that he wants to get on the leader boards of.

Pretty much impossible if he isn't an idiot.
There is literally no reason to run Vanilla Cyberlimbs with WiFi Active.

Okay... so you can run your cyberlimb additions (Such as the implanted gun, or radar or something) without the whole limb going wireless?

>Does /srg/ ever have difficulty making 'normal PCs'?

Not really. Even my most out there concepts are rooted in a down-to-earth mentality, or at least a down-to-earth origin. Exploring a character's humanity is half the fun of a cyberpunk setting.

What's your favorite way to make pocket change? I like using spirits to cause mischief for mundanes and than offering to exorcise them for a reasonable price.

Would that work in a setting so magically-self-aware? You'd have to target really ignorant Barrens-folk and hope that the vids haven't ruined their idea of how magic works.

That's the thing. Most mundane have no idea how magic and spirits really work. Just like most people no nothing about automotives so mechanics can easily fleece their customers.

>read Shadowrun Storytime
>really fucking want to play SR now

Ok chummers, what edition should I get? I've heard 4th is best?

5th is the only one you'll find

Realtalk? 5th edition is the newest, and while it has GOD AWFUL editing, it is also the most recent, and the one most people play from what I understand. I play 5e, and despite some of the issues with getting started and understanding the rules, me and my friends have a lot of fun.

There are a lot of things that 4e apparently does better, namely its decking/hacking. But 4e is FAR from perfect and that is the cold hard truth.

I never hear anything about 3e, and apparently 2e is the last time shadowrun was good from a flavor perspective.

In my opinion, your best bet is to probably go 5e if you're trying to gather a group, because its the new hotness. Otherwise, find a group and play what they're playing.

And don't buy any of the books. ANY of the books. CGL doesn't deserve your money. You can find all of the books that you need in the pastebin in the OP

>AR
>UMT
>Technomancers
>No Deckers
4e is garbage and you should feel bad for even suggesting to play it.

5th is best for new players. 4th is good for reading up on relevant lore.

So in a previous thread I presented an idea for a player character who at certain points manifests a strong, second personality that seems to break the 4th wall and treat the game as a game, going as far as to communicate with players, not characters.

This apparently offended people for some reason.

So I gotta ask chums, do you think this simply cannot be done well? Is it better for such a character to be an antagonist, as it can easily create a singularity and hijack the plot? Anybody actually have poor experience with this sort of idea, or do you just have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the concept? Does anybody know of such a scenario executed well in an rpg?

I'm asking because the concept genuinely fascinates me and I believe Shadowrun is perfect for this sort sort of scenario with its cyberpunkish element but often more whimsically comedic approach to the actual runs.

>le deadpool rip-off
Fuck off

See now this, this is entirely unhelpful. Do you even know why you yourself instinctively dislike the idea? Can you put it into words or have you reverted into a caveman mate?

I can understand a visceral and instinctive reaction, but it would be healthier for you yourself in the long run if you'd put some thought into where those stem from and what do they mean.

Don't be a faggot about it and you'd probably be fine, I guess.

You asked what people thought about it in the last thread and everybody told you it sucked.

The idea sucks, and you're a dong-drooling smegma-slurping turbo-fag.