/srg/ Shadowrun General - Nuclear Families

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>Shoot straight
>Conserve ammo
>Do not buy CGL books
>And never, ever cut a deal with a dragon

Duck and Cover Edition
Where did your runner learn the ropes?
Did they teach him/her the dangers of improper protection?

In this part of the SOX update chronicles, I have two parts (after my long absence).
We have a little piece on the Administrative Council, and we have some words on the bordering countries of the SOX.

docs.google.com/document/d/1tbh7C7YIiPgfFuJcgpoeRk0qP0vPM7i5tlhRtlVESDU/edit#

Next time, we look at the natives of the SOX in greater detail.

what is this? translation of the french book?

Are the bounties on toxic shamans/ blood mages from Dunkelzahn's will still valid?

Yes, it is. It's still ongoing.

What french book? Is it good?

Hey omae, my bad for the late responses - ran a session last night.

>So is there no mechanical part of the character to speak of at the moment? We're talking pure fluff?

Mechanically, the character is focused on stealth. He's a physical adept who uses a katana in close quarters.

>I'd talk with the player about why the character broke with Aztechnology in the first place.

The background is that a mysterious contact was the one who broke him out of the facility. But background wise, he was definitely abused and the mental manipulation wasn't enough.

>Ask them what they loved about their house, who their favourite person was at the facility, and what lesson that they were explicitly taught there that they still hold close to themselves. Start with what they love, then work out how it turned into something else.

That's a really good idea, I never even thought to ask things like that. Looks like I still have a long way to go to becoming a good GM!

>Fuck that. The entire point of Shadowrun, IMO, is testing the morals of characters in the face of an amoral world. It's about putting them into a place where they ask themselves, "Is this worth it?"

The funny thing is that this came up last night when I realized I was wrong about the character's motivations. For one, he refuses to hurt innocent people and this almost caused the group to reject last night's mission until they found a peaceful alternative. It might sound too basic, but he also refuses to harm women since he never really truly had a mother.

The French 4e sourcebook on the SOX. I think it has a lot of interesting stuff in it, which is why I an translating it for you chummers.

Can you toss the scan somewhere, and specify parts you haven't touched? I might be interested.

I actually shelled out money on this, so I'm waiting on an user to unfrag it. As soon as he gets back to me, I'd be happy to put it up and put it in the pastebin.

cool. Vous cailloux, anonyme.

Ah, you don't have scans, then. Whelp. Can't help you then.

>Tfw from the Saarland.

Hello fellow glow-people!

Should I take the Mentor's Mask ability on an Awakened Sniper? It feels like it might be useful, the PP and Drain, but screw me over a lot. Thoughts?

Would you fuck a dragon?

Anybody got an open slot for a 5e game? Been trying to find one for a while now and all the ones I've found either play every other week or it's one of those large groups with 20+ people and multiple GMs.

I guess we all would like to play.

>Pls adopt.

What happened to the LFG thread? Haven't been on Veeky Forums in a while.

I actually think it was kicked off the board for some reason a couple months ago.

didn't you already post it here once? Because i think i have it from here.

If so, i shall refrain from reposting it, to avoid getting the Copyright-Hitsquad on your butt.

Alright, chummers, one final time before I just go ahead and lock this shit in. Reposting the paladin from last thread.

Created more or less purely because I stumbled across Holy Text, Empathic Healing, and Adept Healer. Just a standard framework, though I might be slotting him into a Prime Runner game with all of the karma and nuyen that entails. Though I think he'd work out decent enough even without going straight to Prime Runner. The main things to toss onto him is a juicy weapon focus claymore, some hardened milspec armor, and some betaware bioware -- upgrading the Orthoskin since our DM allows you to upgrade grades, some muscle toner, some muscle augmentation. Just enough to clean out that one essence or maybe two after getting an Initiate grade or two.

Last thread had the discussion of Riposte MA technique and Riposte Adept power, and I will probably end up getting both just because they each work better for certain situations. The MA technique is good for when you want to instantly toss some dice at mooks, while the Adept power can be used to potentially throw a mountain of dice back on an elite target.

Just wondering if you folks had any final picking apart of the character before finalizing the build.

Shit, I'm retarded.

Dafuq? That's retarded.

Yeah, I did, but I'm retarded and it still had all the watermarks and shit.

The world is so small when you're living next to a nuclear power plant, eh?

Shit, no. I'm wrong. I was thinking of something else. They're still allowed, there just doesn't appear to be one up right now.

Y E S

Can't say anything about crunch.

Mostly worried about fluff here. Which christian denomination is he a part of?

Or is he a hardcore djihadi? Both sound hard to run with.

German Catholic Church, member of the Teutonic Order. Fought on the battlefields of Poland during the uprising, betrayed by Polish Catholics who were attempting to stay neutral and ended up as a cast-off mercenary paladin in a rag-tag team of misfit mercs.

Yes, please shut down cattenom.
i don't want to blow up.

Wtf.

Need to read up on that.

same

Shadows of Europe 3E.

Yes, though the DIMR updated the prices recently.

Thank you, will read that up.
Sadly I lost my teutonic feels guys.

>Lets built it close to the germs so THEY can blow up, and those semi germs at our border as well.

Noice. What's the current going rate? My team are about to take a quick hop over the CAS/Azzie border and I have a bunch of narcojet rounds and space for a body in the trunk, maybe 2 if I really pack em in there

>current going rate

Barring some multi-Level initiates of very high Levels:

You can make more an easier money just by popping some ghouls.

It isn't all entirely canon, but constructed out of the bones of what we had. A resurgent Teutonic Order seems a natural fit with the splintering of the German Catholic Church as they became a militant theocracy with a murderboner for metas and mages. Given the proximity to Poland and the historic significance of the region to the Teutonic Order, I figured that it wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to have some crusaders slip over the border with the Polish army-turned-mercenaries that heralded the Martyr's Uprising.

Crusading against the corporate oppression of S-K as well as the soulless forces of the metahuman-accepting Russian occupiers, it seems a perfect place for a Teuton to fight and bleed. And given that the Polish Catholics are still loyal to Rome and explicitly are mentioned to be trying to stay neutral between the nationalists and the occupiers to attempt to get the situation resolved peacefully, it doesn't seem too difficult to imagine that they might betray the bloodthirsty Germans who barged into their country eager to cut down Russian and corporate swine.

Hoo boy, so like those Templar splitt offs from the order of St Sylvester?

I prefer smaller to bigger homespun stuff, but that fits in as an insurgence group.
Similar to some catholics in Aztlan.

Check the archives for gamefinder threads.

Basically. If the Order of St. Sylvester gets literal Templars, why not give the racist German theocrats the Teutons?

>current going rate
GMs can now comfortably sic multiple blood mages against the party without fear of them retiring from collecting the bounties.
Heck, your mage may actually be using some life magic on the side to help his buddies out.

Makes sense. Besides, Westphalia has to have some sort of a military to enforce its sovereignty, so I could definitely see them using the Teutonic Order as precisely that.

It's not a free-for-all. There's a list of specific targets that the DIMR is offering money for, just like most institutions offering bounties. You can't walk into Aztlan, bop a passing Path of the Sun priest on the head, drive back to Boston, dump the guy on the doorstep, and expect to get paid.

If they have no Notoriety, they aren't worth squat. If you don't have objective proof that they practised blood magic, they aren't worth squat. They have to actually be criminal mages, which most Aztlaner magicians are not.

The DIMR doesn't want the hassle of a constant stream of fuckwits trying to abduct random Mexicans and leaving the Institute holding the bag, needing to prove that they are blood mages and dealing with the Aztlaner government over the abductions.

>You can make more an easier money just by popping some ghouls.
If those ghouls work for Aztechnology and get in our way we might consider it

which book is that from?

>. You can't walk into Aztlan, bop a passing Path of the Sun priest on the head, drive back to Boston, dump the guy on the doorstep, and expect to get paid.
Eh we were going over there to bop some azzies on the head anyway, was just curious if we could pick up some extra cred on the side while we were at it.

Forbidden Arcana, which also reintroduces Life Magic from Earthdawn.

been away from Veeky Forums for a long while, how many times has the spanking new soy meme showed up in these threads

Not really that much, probably because everybody in the setting eats soy.

>spanking new soy meme
wow, they made burgers, fries, cake and alcohol from soy. And now even soy memes? Are they at least less expensive than normal memes?

I have yet to see the fact that everyone in the Sixth World is a soy boy be brought up in one of these generals. Course now it's only a matter of time since you opened pandora's box of shitposting.

I prefer more agressive mentors than Scripture desu.

Is Maelstrom and Oblivion still active?

>Are they at least less expensive than normal memes?
Synthetic processed memes are cheap. Authentic fresh memes are a luxury product like real steak.

It's true. You gotta know a guy to get the really dank stuff unless you're living the highlife.

Who would you need to kill to get the Wanted quality at 50,000 nuyen, chummers?

So I was wondering if anyone could tell me about Mentor Spirits, fluff-wise?

Do Mentor Spirits take the form of a specific, sapient individual spirit, with its own wants and needs, that for some reason has a fondness or affinity for an awakened character and wants to lend them its power, share its expertise or simply wants to socialize? Or is it more of a nebulous, unknown prescence, sublty compelling people to take actions they may not normally take, in exchange for power? Are they both? Neither?

Can a Mentor Spirit physically manifest and become perceptible, or even tangible to a mundane? Are Mentor Spirits capable of using spirit powers, or attacking? How strong would they be?

Yes is the answer to every question.

Mentor Spirits do what they want, when they want. They don't follow the rules that normal spirits do. They might appear only in dreams, offering cryptic riddles, or they might walk into your university class as a wolf and tell you to follow them into the woods to learn some real magic. They can neither be summoned nor banished, they use other spirits as go-betweens if they choose to, and they can do whatever the fuck they want. They are not going to manifest and fight you, though they might manifest and kick the shit out of you if that's the relationship - their Force is X, where X is a value that doesn't matter because they do whatever they choose to do.

>because they do whatever they choose to do.

It might be more accurate to say that they do whatever the GM decides they do/the plot demands.

If you want to go to that level, literally everything that every character does is explicitly done or allowed at the GM's dictates. It's not more accurate, just more pedantic to acknowledge the meta of playing a tabletop game.

I disagree. Saying that a mentor spirit does whatever it chooses to do presents an image of near omnipotence, which isn't really the case. If a shaman were to ask their mentor for help the mentor could just as readily reply "I can't" as "I won't", depending on the situation. We've never seen a mentor manifest and punch a dragon, so we can't really say that they could and saying that they couldn't is just as valid/invalid.

I assume mentor spirits are Passions from Earthdawn.

I figure Mentor Spirits are ideas. They don't have the substance to actually do anything, so they inspire and instruct mortals, who go on to act on the Mentor Spirit's interests. The Mentor Spirit remains indestructible, immortal, and far reaching so long as its teachings are honored.

We have seen that, though. Secrets of Power, Spider gets part of it's power freed and almost takes over the world. Only stopped because of the direct intervention of Dog, his follower Twist, Howling Coyote and his patron, and various other forces.

A fully powered mentor spirit has no problem materializing and punching a dragon (Grandmother is just an avatar of Spider and is all but unstoppable).

Not really. Passions were much broader and more individualized beings, with multiple things under their purview, and they interacted with mundanes. Totems/Mentor Spirits are much more focused on singular concepts, and give out bonuses to their Awakened followers.

They might be the same thing in the minds of the original devs, but they are not the same in practise and will likely never be thanks to division of copyright.

>will likely never be thanks to division of copyright.
Didn't stop Simon Andrews from being a Changeling who looks and acts a lot like a certain race from Earthdawn, and it won't stop Mentor Spirits from being Passions if they feel like it.

Particularly since both Passions and Horrors have already shown up in Shadowrun (don't forget to thank Harlequin) so they can do it.

Well, Wise Warrior or Dragonslayer are nice too, but I picked Holy Text mostly just for the Empathic Healing and the Mentor's Mask. Can't be a paladin if you can't Lay on Hands.

Word.

Man, going full Deus Vult should be fun.

I had such a nice picture of some Street Gang from 2000AD Night Zero in knight gear. Bucket helms and Morningstars but also standard dystopian future gear.

Lost it.

So is each Mentor spirit the same entity? For example, if two people at opposite ends of the globe both follow the Dog, do they follow the exact same entity, or merely similar ones?

It's complicated. Arguably the answer is yes, given how Dog is explicitly made equivalent to Loyalty and Friendship and it says to pick a name and style for him that fits your tradition. But that might be a simplification to make the game work; to quote the core book,
>Some say that mentor spirits are merely forces of nature. Some say that they are entities in their own right, guiding their chosen Awakened like loving parents. Some say that there is no single Bear or Eagle spirit, but that there are many such spirits who are called the same name by ignorant mortals.

I can't think of a case in the fiction where two different magicians, from different traditions, were brought together by a mentor spirit whom they both recognized as the same entity in different guises. Stuff like the NAN and the Path of the Wheel mention that initiatory rights and lodges where everyone follows the same mentor spirit acknowledge the same entity, but whether that's because there is really just a Sioux Thunderbird spirit that only talks to his Lakota shamans is unknowable.

Guys, is there a point taking Martial Art with clinch if you're a troll adept stuffed with bioware who punch stuff for 22P -4AP? I start to think that it's better to pick Karate or Capoeira and enjoy the combo of Kick Attack, Kip-up and Sweep.

Also, are two extra dice from Shark Mentor spirit worth going Berserk? I think dopadrine in autoinjector would fix this problem, but...

>trying to cheat your mentor spirit
Sure omae, let me know how long it takes you to finally lose your grip on the astral.

>worth going Berserk

You say that like going berserk is a bad thing, chummer.

What sort of 'ware would be used to fix someone who took a combat axe to the spine? Just regular bone-lacing? Or is there something better in other books that I haven't gotten to?

Move by Wire is the classic fix for the nervous system, though the Seimens Cyberspine is the new hotness.

Bone lacing is a full-body reinforcement, and they can just replace a few damaged vertebrates if there's no need for such an invasive procedure.

>Not filling your autoinjector with K-10 for more glory to your mentor spirit.

Not the other mentor spirit question guy but,

I'm fluffing my Shark totem as one of Hunger/Violence who actually shows up as a feral, half-glowing street dog & tells my recently awakened Nice Guy to kill his enemies, show no mercy, & abandon his family

gonna spend most of the game in denial thinking it's Dog instead, or worried he's going insane and it's a toxic/corrupted Dog

I have a black magician PC in my game. Should I have a mentor spirit approach them at some point that tries to preach kindness and generosity at them?

That sounds hilarious.
>Dude why did you throw that guy in a meat grinder we needed to interrogate him
>Don't blame me dog told me to do it

:D

he's also the social infiltrator face, shit's gon get real messy real fast :D

Do they have a mentor spirit already?

In any case, it'd probably make for some interesting RP.

>Where did your runner learn the ropes?
>Did they teach him/her the dangers of improper protection?

My street samurai grew up in a Renraku enclave and received almost all of her training from her Sensei, a semi-retired Red Samurai. She learned the art of kenjutsu, learned how to shoot a gun, and how to channel her adept powers. She also the worth of a good set of armor as well as military tactics as appropriate for her placement in Renraku's Security Department and would have learned more if she had completed her training and initiation into the Red Samurai division. But she got "washed out" before she could get that far.

Anybody important enough to warrant a bounty, really. You don't even have to murder anybody sometimes. Sometimes you just need to piss somebody off that they are willing to shell out cred for you being in cuffs or a pine box. Bounties aren't just instituted by the criminal justice system. Crime bosses, slumlords, corps, and even celebrities will have 50knY worth of beef with something or somebody.

>Bounties aren't just instituted by the criminal justice system.

Oh, I know. I just don't really have any sort of....let's go with "baseline" for the type of person that sort of bounty would be on for someone killed.

There isn't really a baseline though. Just make it up. Maybe you killed the mob bosses favorite son and 50000 nuyen is enough to ensure that every two-bit ganger and bounty hunter looking for a quick payday will make your life a living hell. Maybe you killed some nameless corporate employees during a run and the corp has issued that bounty to show the world "what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass". Get creative. There are no hard lines on this kind of stuff.

Don't worry, omae. My Russian cybercultist with .005 Essence is also the party's Face. Even though he literally doesn't have a face and instead just has a briefcase filled with synthskin masks. I think the messiest he's ever gotten was either ripping out a man's heart and eating it in front of the Johnsons that had just been ambushed while howling about the fact that Ammut hungers for the souls of the unjust or tying a corporate manager to a baby grand piano and hurling him out of the back end of a T-bird from a couple thousand feet above ground.

Just slip into the pure animal magnetism, dive deeply into the false lives that are your own, and let the cattle flock around the wolf. It makes them all that much easier to bleed and to slaughter. Show them the weakness of their flesh as you flense their whimpering bodies, exulting in the chorus of celebration of the myraid identities that have been gifted to you by the oneness of the Singularity. We are all one soul, returning to the purity of chrome and Matrix from the prison of the flesh.

>50knY worth of beef with something
Ah yes, rare is the opportunity you get paid by Mr Johnson to top-deck a corp rival's golden penthouse toilet.

Any good Shadowrun podcasts out there? I've been listening to pic related and it seems decent so far

And to answer the thread questions from my likely soon-to-be-retired character's PoV >Where did your runner learn the ropes
As far as surviving, that was learned at the age of 14 when his rural hometown in Russia was victim to an EVO experiment gone wrong that left the area filthy with HMHVV III. Eight years were spent squatting among the ruins of his home, though for a couple of years, he had his uncle's guidance to help him along. Then he got sick and had to be killed, the disease was claiming him. After living like a semi-feral animal, he got hauled back to Vladivostok like a an animal by the Vory that had been given salvage rights to the town in return for providing security for the humanitarian aid moving in. Adopted as a modern-day Tarzan by the Vory Pakhan, he was filled to the gills with cyberware and trained from being a feral dog into a loyal hound. Taught to play the violin, to discuss the finer points of Russian literature, and to eviscerate those who were disloyal to the Colonel. Born out of scavenging for a living, he was sharpened into a weapon by as the pet project of a bored Vory leader.

The extensive level of cyberware coupled with his own PTSD, however, proved to be a difficulty that made Alexei more trouble than he was worth. He was loyal, yes, but fundamentally broken. Hours upon hours spent playing the same violin concerto to an empty room, night-terrors that left his well-furnished room torn asunder by hand and razor. The empty periods in the middle of discussing Yesenin's poetry, minutes crawling back before the human-looking thing replied as though there'd been no pause.

>Did they teach him/her the dangers of improper protection
From his uncle, he learned caution and environmental protection. From the Vory, he was given a body of chrome and titanium that transformed the weak body of a man into the purity of machine. Strap on an armored suit and longcoat, and he fights with the reckless mania of an "elf" with 40 soak.

Neo-Anarchist Podcast is a good one for history of the world. His CFD episode should be mandatory listening, given how few people on /srg/ seem to actually know what the fuck it's about.

Crit Squad is top-tier campaign, well produced. Currently on season break after everyone finally got their shit un-pushed-in.

Any good Shadowrun text resources out there? I don't like listening to podcasts.

2D storytime.

Thanks chummer

In terms of what? rulebooks? novels?

Yes, besides that. 2D Storytime and the CLUE files are all are funny to read, but I'd like something newer, you know?

In terms of podcast-like elements. Stories and other things in a text only format.

>Stories and other things in a text only format.
So a novel then? Some of the shadowrun books are decent if a bit pulpy. Start off with Never Deal with a Dragon

No no, I mean stories like storytimes. Things that let me experience Shadowrun from a player's perspective.

Greentext

Then I honestly don't know what to tell you other than looking through forums for storytimes

Those Japanese replays are pretty close to what you want. They're JP-only, though.

Yeah, that's about right. I guess it's a good thing I'm learning 日本語 but I've got a long way to go in terms of understanding complicated stuff.

>typing nihongo in kanju instead of just saying "I'm learning Japanese"
I know this is a Mongolian throat-singing forum, but jesus, dude. Control the weeb inside you. And stop calling 'watching a lot of dank anime' language lessons.

Good thing I'm not, memestar. I use Anki and I purview a lot of resources (yes, including VNs). Watching anime without subs is just a fragment of what learning a language has to offer.