/srg/ - Shadowrun General

>inb4 Bright posting.

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>>54515381
>* Your Current Rep Score: 0 (120% Positive)

Anyone have a living link to the lewd Shadowrun discord channel?

>>54515381
How would you survive in da hood(the barrens)?

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>>54515415

Aside from having orcs and elves and guns in it, I'm not really sure it qualifies as "Shadowrun" enough to be used as a reference for Shadowrun inspiration.

What do you guys think? Here's the clip if anyone hasn't seen it yet:
https://youtu.be/6EZCBSsBxko

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>>54515465

>>54515456
https://yuki.la/tg/46645800#p46647247

>>54515330
We are in prime runner territory chummer.

Once we find out where which black site Saeder's using for their next leg of Changeling research/cloning and smash them up we're going to retire our characters. And maybe go into hiding for a bit because we will have pissed off two great dragons.

>>54515548
Real prime runners steal tires off unconscious villagers bodies.

>>54515603
We do tend to have our gigganigga troll drag bodies around to loot them later. Though aside from a brief run in Lagos to assist the Robert Mugabe University of Magic and Agricultural Studies get back a focus belonging to the late great shaman we haven't had many encounters with villagers

What's the stuff I don't want to miss if I make an adept?

>>54515910
usually your enemies

How good are Mystic Adepts?

>>54516010
Horrible. Go full Mage or full adept. A mystic adept is about as effective as a Mage with cyberware.

>>54516010
I guess they are ok. They are very karma hungry, that's for sure. You can build a good one if you really want to.

>>54515465
I'm not the only one who thinks Will Smith is a terrible actor, right? Right?? He just plays himself in literally everything he does. I might have watched this just for kicks if I didn't have to sit through another Will Smith film.

>>54516066
>about as effective as a Mage with cyberware.
so depending on the ware really effective?

>>54514453
>Also other racism has completely stopped. No one is racist against blacks or anything

Go read the Bigotry sidebar in the SR5core chargen. Racism is everywhere and none of it went away.

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Are there any canonical drawings on how the various metavariants look in the Shadowrun books ?

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>>54516164
Yes, all over the place. Whenever they are in art, it's canonical.

>>54516144
A lot of racism has gone away. It's a big thing in their parts to mention how Russians or Australians are still fifth world racist and isn't that odd.

>>54516085
>I'm not the only one who thinks Will Smith is a terrible actor, right? Right?? He just plays himself in literally everything he does. I might have watched this just for kicks if I didn't have to sit through another Will Smith film.

I think he's good for the right kind of movies. That is: action movies with comedy in them - great "super hero" fodder. Otherwise I agree he basically plays himself in all movies.

>>54516144
Example: Mos UCASians hate anyone from the NAN, for reasons ranging from "traitors" to "almost destroyed the continent"

>>54515651
>Robert Mugabe University of Magic and Agricultural Studies
kek

>>54515548
What's so valuable about a dress?

>>54516522
It's Armante! Next seasons Armante. It's not even out yet.

>>54516522
Women... women never change
The Romans waged war to gather egyptian wool for them. Spain built an empire from its womens lust for gold and pearls. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower to take Paris for its dresses.
But women never change.

>>54515910
Improved Reflexes. It's so astoundingly good for its prices that I wouldn't be surprised to see social adepts with multiple levels.

Aside from that, weapon foci. Weapon foci are the single best source of dice for melee in the game, and they stack with everything else too. Even a Magic 1, Essence 1 cyber adept can be rocking a Force 5 weapon focus for a +5 dice bonus on all of your attacks. Plus, even a Force 1 Weapon Focus Knife can easily stab a spirit to death.

If your dice pool gets so big that your Accuracy starts actually limiting you, pick up the Attune Item ritual. It'll boost the shit out of your Accuracy.

>>54516981
I forget, can you do called shots with melee weapons/unarmed?

>>54517031
Yes, except (obviously) the firearms-related ones.

>>54517031
By RAW, I don't think so, because there's an action cost for a called shot or something. If you houserule melee attacks to be Simple rather than Complex, though, then yes.

>>54516981
>Improved Reflexes

How many levels is most efficient? Or do i just want to max it out if i can?

>>54517058
"Called Shot" is a free action, omae.

>>54517092
Don't you have a limited number of free actions? Like 'perfect time' give an extra free action and what not.

>>54517084
At least 2 levels. The first is the worst - it costs 1.5 PP. Every level after that drops to 1 PP. I'd go for all three every time, though, unless there's something else that I MUST have.

>>54517104
One per initiative pass. Which means that unless you either must run to catch your target or you absolutely need to do something at the same time you swing your weapon, you'll be able to call a shot each time you attack since you can only attack once per IP.

>>54515465
Full script here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7h1yix9tlg1w6l/BRIGHT_1.pdf?dl=0

Spoilers: It's shit

>>54516981
>>54517136
Yeah, it's really not right calling Improved Reflexes "astoundingly good" as much as "absolutely necessary". Shadowrun Initiative is an arms race, and everyone that wants to do anything needs initiative. If you're an adept, that's Improved Reflexes and at least 2 ranks is the required opportunity cost of existence. It's worth noting that it also excludes other initiative bonuses from stacking with it in its description, but REA bonuses are fine.

If you'd like to dodge shit (and not be surprised) there's also Combat Sense, which is fairly cheap per level, but you'll find that in general Reflexes being so necessary will really limit what you can achieve with your PP during chargen.

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>>54517332
My sides

>>54517048
I personally find that the Location modifiers for Called Shots are heavily biased toward Firearms and make little to no sense in melee, aswell.

Hitting a guys forearms in melee is a -6? 90% of fighting styles will be blocking with them and taking half the blows on them in the first place. All the locations become seriusly messed up once you consider it from a melee perspective and you're already using a complex action for the privilege.

>>54517402
see
>>54515474

>>54517455
>you're already using a complex action for the privilege.
This is why I allowed my Physical adept to die. Close combat is just painfully unwanted by the system and makes barely any sense. Not only are you reduced to 1/4 of the maneuvers a ranged combatant has, but everything is also fuckslow while offering no tangible benefit.

>>54517525
Phys Adept that foregoes 'ware (and Adept Spell since you're already not mystical) also has a serious issue getting enough movement speed to really get into melee.

Thank god we got a double swim speed power, though.

>>54517561
It was my first character when going back into Shadowrun after I stopped shortly before 4th came out.

Concept was a crackerbarrel German Schwarzwald Troll proud of his German heritage with powers like the jumping one, wallrunning, intiative and such. I also put in killing hands for being a bit deadly.

I had high strength, high athletics group and everything you may want to bring in the pain. In the end, all I did was tank hits and down one enemy every two rounds while our shooty mcshootface brought the pain down on two to three in the same timeframe while also being able to do the majority of what I did with simple gear and cyberware.

Now I'm playing a Rigger, which allows me to do the shooty as well as being a credit to the team in more than "meatshield" function.

>>54517652
I assume a lot of your meatshield duties came from charging a guy, using a complex to down him, and then being stuck in the open with no cover and no movement left to get anywhere for your remaining initiative passes?

>>54517686
Pretty much. To be quite honest, noone at the table really knew how movement works - from what we read the movement rate / jogging rate was to be split over the course of a full round, but we never found out how, so we assumed we have to halve / third depending on how well I rolled on that initiative pass, which made for some very wonky numbers.

With running added to it we dealt with it as hits * 1m per initiative pass, but we were also rather unsure about this. And tanking the additional -2 on everything but rush attacks was a bitch.

>>54517763
Your movement is total for the entire combat turn, it's not split. You get that rate to spend as you see fit across all your initiative passes, but no more without sprinting, and if you went into running movement in your 1st IP, you're running in every consecutive one, even if you don't move in them, and have to spend a Free for running, and take the -2.

So if your rate is 12/24 you get to move a total of 12 before you're running, and then 24 before you have to use a complex to make a sprint test, in the entire combat turn, whether you have 1 pass or 4.

It's idiosyncratic because "faster" characters actually move "less" in that sense.

But if you spend your movement on charging a guy pass 1, you are not going anywhere until the entire combat turn is over.

>>54517823
Yeah, that was pretty much how we interpreted the rules, which pretty much meant that I would, even with three initiative passes in some turns, use my first complex to sprint, second complex to actually hit a guy at +2 and then try to throw an axe at someone during my third. Made for a very ineffective way of combat, especially considering I pretty much blocked the rest of my team from using useful stuff like chaotic world or supressive fire.

>>54517861
It's how blanket a lot of it is that's ridiculously stupid. The fact you spend a free on running, and you only get one free per turn, RAW means you are incapable of dropping items from your hands because you are running.

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>>54517887
One could always use a standard to do so if I understand the rules correctly, transforming a standard into a free, but as a close combatant you're already hard pressed for actions.

Well at least now I could revive my Troll idea as a hacker since they just became the best long-range hackers with The Total Nigger

>>54517946
The simple-to-free thing is a variant rule your GM can apply I believe, yes. I know some houserule that you can get multiple free out of it, or others just really consider the running free as incredibly minor and will let you do most things because running is so stupidly overpenalized, pushing the paradigm even more toward ranged. Sure you can mostly just attack once per turn with either, but that extra simple can be used for all kinds of shenanigans, even if just straight up gaining bonus dice on the attack you do do.

>>54517887
RAW also encourages the GM to allow combining free actions when it makes sense, i.e. running and dropping an item/yelling.

>>54517946
>That ork couple on the right

Holy shit they're hilarious. The woman neds some pearls to clutch to top it off

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>>54516085
Thought he was pretty good in Seven Pounds and Pursuit of Happiness myself

Also to be on topic; I might of blown past it, but does the new book mention anything about Fomorian trolls? I'm trying to make a parkor expert in a new game we're starting up soonish, and was hoping maybe they updated the rules a bit on 'em

>>54518069
Why make it Schwarzwald if you're not gonna have them wear traditional Schwarzwald costume?

>>54518086
I was talking about their expressions mostly, though I do find her hat a bit silly too.

>>54518076
No sorry, the book is about racism and how the Man is keeping trogs down.

>>54517861
Why is no one using skates
Not the implanted ones but actual skates
Cost 100 nuyen and increase your speed by 50%

>>54517402
That's actually kinda funny

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>>54518101
Because I couldn't find a source.

>>54518093
There's nothing silly about these peoples heritage, anon.

>>54518118
There is something silly about what's going on with the male ork's face and the woman's look of offended sensibilities though.

Also there's definitely something silly about that center hat.

>>54518076
>Fomorian trolls
Formorian trolls are HMHVII trolls. The smaller, less bony variant of trolls are called Formori. It's pretty great.

>>54518118
Chrome Flesh 88
Run Faster 254
Common Sense inside of you

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>>54518099
Really? That's it? How fucking retarded. You figure they'd at least remember things like Fomorian and Saytar's exist.
>mfw I bet there's some shitty BLM allegory too, if it's all about racism and The Man

>>54518172
It was inside of me all along?

>>54518172
Where is my spirit skates spell?

>>54518175
Iunno, I kinda stopped reading the Shadowtalk stuff when it had just devolved into Clockwork making somewhat xenophobicly biased but still grounded arguments about the dangers of headcases and technos and how he's simply taking a more cautious stance on the whole thing because the cards aren't down yet while Netcat yells at him (and everyone else) about how mean he is and how he has to be made to stop being so mean.

>>54518226
>>54518172
Honestly the Skate adept power should have given you movement speed on top of its actual function, even if they cost it higher.

Also always found it funny how Wall Running tells you you can't run over water "because you're magical - not miraculous" and then they just go "Oh and here's the miracle power".

>>54518118
>There's nothing silly about these peoples heritage, anon.
Anon, everything about them is silly
t. German

>>54518241
Stop being mean, anon. No bigots allowed.

>>54518276
It was sarcasm. Now let us make jokes about Bielefeld.
t. Also German

>>54518279
Netcat's not a trog. She's just the only person allowed to talk shit to a trog in that book. Notably she is also in a far more privileged (techno powers falling into her lap included) position than Clockwork.

Though I'm pretty sure anyone is more privileged than Clockwork.

>>54518285
>Bielefeld
Gibt's doch gar nicht!

>>54518226
Core Rulebook 399
Core Rulebook 300
Spirits All around you

>>54518310
>not making a spirits within joke

>>54518319
Thought about it
Decided to avoid the lynching this joke would cause

>>54518339
Don't worry, the FF community is too caught up in mobage wars to care.

>>54518307
As a Bielefelder, I dispute the notion

>>54518413
We ain't buying your corporate conspiracy.

>>54518175
>>mfw I bet there's some shitty BLM allegory too

Yeah, it's the Sons of Sauron. They're basically BLM now, even down to the "if you don't support them, you're an evil racist" undertone.

>>54518413
How is life on the payroll treating you, illuminati shill?

>>54518241
>the dangers of headcases

god damn it, i actually forgot that those existed till i read it.


But well, while clockwork tends to be kind of a dick, i think that his catious stance is well deserved when there are suddenly people which control the very fabric of the modern communication network.

>>54518099
what would the man gain from actively holding trogs down ?

>>54518693
Higher property values I guess.

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>>54518363
Don't be so sure anon.

>>54518693
buoyancy?

>>54519653
I don't think trolls float. To much bone and muscle.

>>54519935
Only one way to test, we find something that is muscular and bigger than a human and see if it floats. Like a cow

>>54518226
Spirits already go fast enough.

>>54520238
>go fast enough
I don't understand

What's the impact of playing the game without limits? They seem kind of pointless to me.

>>54520404
Well, some stuff like Knockdown or Subdual needs there to be a limit score to compare to at least, with the way the rules are structured.

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>>54520404
They're really only relevant to the most extreme minmaxers. I wouldn't worry about it.

>>54520404
>What's the impact of playing the game without Limits

You get retarded fringe-cases like People shooting up armored cars with hold-outs.

>>54520404

They prevent some dumb shenanigans.

>>54520404
Limits generally don't matter but exist for a reason, even outside the context of min-maxing. For example good limits are one of the only reason pistols have any reason to be used compared to machine pistols, and limits make dump stats worse.

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Why isn't there an option for Antenna Grill to be taken in horns? Or is that already a thing?

>>54520686
It's because someone took the hoodnigger stereotype too far, and made some ware that is OP and also makes no sense on the restrictions (needs to be outside the body? Perfect, cyberears are already a thing).

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>>54520686
Horns are too small.

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>>54520686
>>54520737
I'd let a player take it on whatever sort of external structure given they keep the implanted link/deck requirement. It'd probably still have an Orxploitation context though.

so real talk: That new trogg book, is it worth getting?

>inb4 don't give money to CGL

>>54520820
Even reddit is boycotting it.

>>54520820
No.

>>54520820
Just grab it from the pastebin and see for yourself.
Honestly i'm not getting whats up with all this hate.
Seems a lot of meming imho.
Its not a great book, but its also not turbobad.

>>54520820
The fluff is really bad. From a book like this, I want it to expand upon the stereotype, to show more of how Orks and Trolls differ from the basic presentations in the core book. Instead it actually becomes even more narrow - you're constantly browbeaten with thinly veiled HEY LOOK, TROGS ARE THE BLACK PEOPLE OF THIS SETTING, EVEN THOUGH BLACK PEOPLE STILL EXIST, BUT THEY'RE FIGHTIN' THA MAN N' SHEEEEIT allusions. And the mechanics are mostly just way too narrow to be much use unless you're specifically playing an all-Trog party.

>>54520947
I'm kinda down for the Black Forest Native quality. 22 karma for a package of knowing shit and some skill benefits. Very niche, but not a bad template if you're looking to give a quality like a Life Module

>>54521055
Its literally unusable in Priority Gen though.

The idea of 20 point qualities doesn't work unless the quality is comically beneficial.

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So you know those weird hairstyles that always show up in cyberpunk settings? Do you think that in the earliest iterations of it, the authors had some sense of the practicality of abstract fashion like that?

I'm talking about how facial recognition software is rendered blind by pic related, and whether or not that artists and authors had any idea that this could work

>>54521094
This is why Paths failed.

>>54521125
Adept Ways work but they are irritating because you can realistically only get them after chargen. So now they create a lore issue from their expense because someone CLEARLY following a path doesn't have a path.

>>54521123
Face recognition software is rendered blind by common $5 shades.

>>54521151
But five dollar shades are so unstylish, unlike crazy geometric hair and makeup.

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>>54515381
>>54513366
>>54513394
>>54513407
>>54513414
>>54514370

In regards to last thread, I'm the sexy GM.
https://discord.gg/5FsFce

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Hi I am stupid and a new GM.

Can someone give me a rundown between the 4 types of mage in 5e. I see that they are different in a few ways, but I can't seem to grasp why you would pick one over the other. 5e seems to just give a meaningless description of each.

>>54521610
>4 types of mage in 5e
???
Do you mean the different traditions? (Shaman, Hermetic, Druid, etc.)
Do you mean the different kinds of Awakened? (Mages, Adepts, Mystic Adepts, Aspected Mages)

>>54521641
>>54521610
I meant to say the different types of awakened

>>54521564
>when you kinda want to jump on that but you are in european time zone

>>54507011
>The intro reads like a BLM Facebook post after someone did a find and replace. Fuck, is that what punk is like these days? Our protests weren't this insufferable, were they?
They were even worse.

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>>54521660
>>54521610
Pic related
As for why you'd take them:
Adepts are extreme specialists, choosing to be good in one thing. But in that thing they can be extremely powerful (think 30 dice in the skill)
Mages are generalists, being able to take on most things, even if they are not as good in them as the adept is. Spells are very powerful, and Spirits even more so.
MysAdepts are good if you want a Mage with a few Adept powers.
Aspected Mages are bad

>>54517946
I'm happy someone is using my name for this book.

>>54522177
If the shoe fits....

>>54520759
That perspective is fucked and make them look like they grow from behind the head which is retarded, and also horns that big would strain your neck pretty fucking hard unless they were empty.

>>54521949
Way too many drawbacks and barely any advantages.

>>54521949
>Aspected Mages are bad
They're pretty decent as Conjurers, actually, especially with the new Mastery qualities.

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>>54514757
>>54514814
Too be fair, it is their first run, and many of them are first-time roleplayers.
So I'm going to have their fixer sit them down and give them a stern talking-to about appropriate application of force.

>>54523763
Also Overkill. Did you seriously need to have the entire team bust into the same single door to take down the same single guy? If there'd been a second guy around the corner behind them they'd be fucked and all caught in a single suppression or grenade because they couldn't trust one member to do his job and keep an eye out for the rest.

>>54523795
It was a indie jewelry store on the Seattle-Everett border, not a ganger compound. There was only the sec guard and the spider, who had already been black-hammered by the hacker. And the face was working crowd control in the showfloor.

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>>54523763
Have the investigation into that poor dwarf's death linger on and pose constant threat of discovery. When they finally get popped, have it be the Vory or KE that have been on that case since the get go.

>>54523911
Oh yeah, make it like the hobo you can accidentally shoot in the Bladerunner game that you hide the body of and it can come back to haunt you as blackmail or incrimination.

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>>54523763
NO, you need to be even more direct.

YOU, the GM

need to sit them down

and talk to them about the TONE of this game.

Tell them it's NOT Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim where it's pretty much expected that 90% of all problems are solved through lethal force.

Having them roleplay with a Johnson might seem more "flavorful" for the sake of roleplaying. BUT TRUST ME: Your players won't see it as anything more than being lectured by a "game cutscene".

YOU, the LIVING HUMAN BEING THEY ACKNOWLEDGE needs to be the one to deliver the news and then have a talk about gaming in the Shadowrun universe in general.

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>>54523763
If i may be so bold - don't give them too much of a stern talking to in-game or out-game for now. It is not Johnsons Job to babysit the runners or explain why he ain't working with them anymore, nor is it your job as a GM to tell them after their first run that they "did it wrong".

Use the system I posted in the last thread and use it as I do - keeping it away from the players eyes and ears. I run with two groups right now, one as foreverDM and one in a classic hot-seat switcharoo. Both play Shadowrun, both play vastly differently despite me not being the only player to overlap.

Note their tendencies down and shape your missions accordingly. Have the world react to them subtly by giving them better suited jobs for their approach but do not close down the other options in those missions until you have accrued a total of 5 in any directional reputation.

Once they fill those up, discuss it with them at the table. Ask them if you read them correctly that they want more doorkicking action and if you should remove options for sneaky stuff.

Such rounds can be tons of fun too, despite them breaking the lore.

>>54516164
I wanna fug that oni.

>>54516164
>Oni can be bright red, blue or orange
>only ever get drawn red

>>54516164
10/10 would smash ass

>>54523858
Man, these runners are brutal. Why would he BlackHammer the poor spider?

>>54524073
This is the correct way to do it. It is a role playing GAME. Not a job simulation to see their aptitude to be the kinda shadowrunners you want.

Applying heavy force is actually very established to be *A* correct way to run. There is a market for operators who can bring violence to the table to such a degree of skill that it becomes a scalpel, and with such a force that it will cut through anything, just as there is a market for ace conmen and grifters or a team of detectives.

Several standard job types *require* you to be very overt and violent, or encourage it to some degree, such as demo jobs, asset hits, assassination, and especially smokescreen and enforcement/intimidation. Sometimes the job is literally "Show these people why they are not safe to break investor confidence by breaking in, being as big and loud about it as you can, but otherwise preform a regular datasteal."

>>54524144
How does an indie jewelry store afford a spider? He probably was like a shared spider between several shops on that block that they jointly paid for security on their lil' grid.

>>54524172
>to such a degree of skill that it becomes a scalpel
I think the problem here is that the degree of skill applied here was cutting a steak with a spoon, not like a scalpel, and that's what he's trying to address.

>>54524211
Right, but at the same time, little nudges. Its ok for your runners to be cruel and brutal and when the stakes are low such a runner team may look at the situation and go "...We can literally just smash through this" and that is a valid way to play the game supported heavily by canon.

It isn't like law and order has the upper hand in cyberpunk and justice comes down swiftly upon those who abuse their power. That is literally the OPPOSITE of how cyberpunk settings are set up, shadowrun included.

>>54524073
How do people like you function? How do you go on with your life without talking to other humans?
What >>54524032 is 100% correct. Talk to them about the tone. This doesn't mean you're telling them that they can't shoot people ever, or even have to play a certain way. It means you fucking talk about it like adults, and discuss a solution everyone is happy with.

This bullshit that people say about changing things in game, having consequences like response teams etc. seems to scream that you've never played long term games with friends.
If you make drastic changes without warning, people are surprised and often upset. Or, you can just be a normal person and tell them, and all is well.

>>54524184
Poor little sap. Odds are he survived it but still. A good decker is a perfect gentleman, only using deadly force when strictly required. A very good decker never uses it at all.

>>54524271
It's the privilege of matrix combat, really. Once you remove all their access to devices they can use to engage with you, there is no reason to harm them any further. It is checkmate in a gentleman's game.

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How do you guys come up with runner names that don't sound super cheesy or retarded?

>>54524323
>don't sound super cheesy or retarded?
The point of Runner names in SR is to be super cheesy and retarded.

>>54524184
Its a Vory front, and the spider was at a discount package with the sec guard from Minutemen. Also since its a front, they need some kind of security to guard the secrets.

>>54524323
I don't. For example, my last character was a Decker with 1 charisma and a love of graphic design. His runner tag was "Ding" and he was a massive dork.

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>>54524262
>How do you go on with your life without talking to other humans?
I generally do, but the guy Gming this group literally just stated
>Too be fair, it is their first run, and many of them are first-time roleplayers.
and you just don't go down on newcomers. You wait and see for two or three rounds if this is a trend or if it is just them finding their footing in a new, exciting and unknown hobby. I clearly stated
>Once they fill those up, discuss it with them at the table.
but your reading comprehension seems to extend to two sentences at most. May I ask you in return how you go to life lacking such a required skill as a 30 seconds attention span? Such a rare condition must surely turn some heads.

>>54524323
think about what constitutes your character
appearance, mannerisms, general behavior, gear, etc.
Now try to insult them with that

>>54524323
Look up historical codenames and handles.

>>54524323
Go with the original inspiration for runner names: online handles.

A big problem with runnernames is they often are mononyms intended to be super meaningful, rather than just what the runner calls themselves online

Stuff like TheSmilingBandit or Slam-o! is better than "Raven" and "Ronin" and other super generic stuff.

>>54524323
Do I need to?
//THE MECHANIST

>>54524401
> \xxBigDickNoscope420xx/

>>54524401
Yeah a lot of the oldschool shadowtalker names are the best examples.

Even sort of stuck up ones like Orange Queen still perfectly fit that mold.

>>54524401
>not calling yourself xXxFeArDaReEpErxXx2058

>>54524323
Some are going to be cheesy, some are going to be no nonsese, it's a mixed bag.
Some can make next to no sense to other people who hear them, but make perfect sense to the character and their team.

I had a courier named "Sideways", so named because on her first job she was thrown out a window sideways and only had glass embedded in one side of her body.

>>54524426
>{XxXSeattleWeedXxX29mXxX}
come on dude, you know you have to include as much personal info in a runner name as possible

>>54521564

So are you looking to GM a game wher is sex a goal or thing worked toward, or simply a game where sex can happen but isn't something that does happen unless a character is looking for it to happen?

By the way, do we have stats for Slamm-O! ?

>>54524271
Prolly should've told that to the street sam
He put a shotgun in his mouth.

>>54524429
Given who The Orange Queen is, I'm not gonna be the one to tell her she's stuck up. Don't care if she's the friendliest one, insulting a Great Dragon would end poorly.

>>54520476
where is the ammo belt going? is she summoning them from another plane of existance?

>>54524548
Who put a shotgun in the mouth of whom?

>>54524524
Don't think so, at least not for 5e. he's human, isn't he? If so, he may show up in a 5e [his hometown] book but I wouldn't count on it.

>>54524614
I think its Denver?

>>54524610
Sammy put a shotgun in the mouth of a blackhammered spider I think?

>>54524594
Really high capacity fanny pack, worn on the ass.

>>54521564
Seconding >>54524513's question. I'm looking for Neuromancer lewd not Goldshire with Neon lewd.

>>54524653
Yeah.

How do you rule when it comes to what metahuman variant's have blood transfusion compatibility with what others?

As in "assuming blood type and rH factor are the same the transfusion should work fine".

I figure Dwarfs, Elfs, Humans, Orks, and Trolls are all compatible.

beings that don't spend their childhoods as humans are less likely to be transfusion compatible.

Pixies for instance may have markedly different blood chemistry and red blood cell structure to allow them to maintain the aerobic demands of flight.

>>54524682
>I'm looking for Neuromancer lewd not Goldshire with Neon lewd.

Not the anon you were asking but I don't know what either of those mean. Please explain.

Hey, I want to know about jarheads. Are there rules for cyberzombies and jarheads in Shadowrun 5?

>>54524830
>Metahumans are all human
>Metasapients are not
Never came up in our round though since Whitting blood is a thing.

>>54524887
No idea what a Jarhead is supposed to be, but cyberzombies are the same as always.

Rigger 5 has animal cyberzombies in the biodrone department if that interests you. same effects as with metahumanity - Attacks everything in sight, soul is gone.

>>54524830
Humans can take Elf blood but Elves cant take Human blood.

Orks & Trolls & Hobgoblins are compatible with each other but others can't take theirs, Orks can get by with Human blood though.

Dwarves & Gnomes are compatible with each other but not others.

>>54524984
Source?

>>54524996
The question was "how do you rule". That is how I rule.

>>54524323
I usually come up with a name that's snappy, usable in a callsign kind of context. I also try to avoid the cliches. Backstory for the name only comes about after the fact.

>Hagfish
>Orchid

Of course sometimes you gotta go ham

>bigDix69er

>>54524830
Type O(wen) makes this irrelevant.

>>54524866
Neuromancer lewd = sex is a thing, you might see boobs, infiltrate a stripjoint / cyberbrothel or bang the hot cyborg girl after the mission is done.

Goldshire lewd = The Mr. Johnson is a slutty loli vampire with 3 horsedicks sending you to fight The Wizzard himself.

>>54525020
Why houserule something so insignificant though? When does this ever come up?

>>54525058
Mitsuhama Johnsons do introduce themselves as Bunraku-san.........

>>54524961
Jarheads are full-body cyborgs.
Basically people who put their brain in a jar and install it onto a drone or a vehicle to have a completely mechanized body. Since there are some nice humanoid drones in Rigger 5.0, I thought a Jarhead would be nice.
There was specific cyberware for jarheads to function in 4e that I can't find anymore

>>54525068
Have you never had a runner injured enough to suffer Blood Loss?

>>54525068
>not draining all spare corpses of blood when selling their organs

>>54525068
Iunno. The guy just asked.

>>54525084
Unprofitable, since type O is a thing, cheap and you can get it everywhere.

>>54525083
Sure. Again, Whiting blood is a thing and widely available.

>>54525083
There's called shots for it.

>>54525123
its not MUCH profit but better than letting it sit there unsold. A penny saved is a penny earned.

>>54524830
>beings that don't spend their childhoods as humans are less likely to be transfusion compatible.
Elves/dwarves are born as elves/dwarves, and most orks/trolls in the present day were born as orks/trolls too, not goblinized.

>>54525162
Found the Tamanous fuck.

>>54525162
The only possible clients you could have for epitoped organs and blood in Shadowrun is ghouls. Just don't let anyone catch wind of that or you may find yourself hunted by everyone and their mothers.

>>54525237
what with all the hate against ghouls

some of them rotten bastards can be cool cats

>>54525293
Cool cats that eat metahuman corpses.

fresh metahuman corpses.

>>54525323

To be fair omae, it's the 6th. There's never a shortage of fresh metahuman corpses.

>>54525323
I know. They really help with cleaning up messes.

>>54525371
how much meat do you think a ghoul needs to live ?

And also I'm pretty sure that not all that fresh meat needs to be metahuman, just a sizeable part of it.

>>54525422
They don't need all that much metahuman meat, and not all that often if I remember right. They're easily capable of supplementing with other flesh.

>>54525366
>>54525371
Is this what we have devolved into? Some overgrown snakes end their nap time and suddenly its a-okay for people affected by a contagious disease to eat gran-grans corpse barely an hour after she passed away?

What`s next? "stop hating on Shedim, you bigot?" or how about #Notallbloodmages?

A line needs to be drawn, and that line is human decency. You may have had a good reason to shoot that security guy, but the least you can do is let his wife and her son hold a decent funeral.

What are some cool builds that you can do with trolls that aren't just bullet sponges? I'm sincerely curious, since I'd like to play one but not go the typical combat route.

>>54525516
Race in Sr isn't too critical unless you are really getting complex by mixing archtypes, or are making a decker, who are really screwed by both priority issues and MAD.

You can make a troll who is good at anything else, even facing, only losing 1-2 dice in the deal.

>>54525538
Any tips for a face troll? Doesn't matter if it's mundane or magical.

>>54525467
You're talking to a blood mage right now, sir.

>>54525516
>>54525553
Considering you'll be hard-pressed to get any decent amount of cash going at character creation as a Troll, magical is the way to go.

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>>54525566
Interesting. Mind telling me a bit more about how you came to choose that way of life? Can you show me on this doll where the bad uncle touched you?

>>54525625
I was never molested and I chose this way of life because it's the only magic my Aztlan neighbor knew and taught me.

>>54525592
Would it be better to go Adept, or a Magician boosting their stats?

>>54525553
Get tailored pheromones, have decent skill priority, have fun?

Faces are honestly the easiest role in the game to make because their generic boosting 'ware is cheap and easy to nab, to the point most faces you see are rolling just too many dice and really could do with investing into a secondary skill like combat.

With sum to 10 its downright child's play, where as with priority you need to make an early game sacrifice, which usually means either skills, edge and nuyen because their low values are the best low values to take, and you coast on the fact your baseline physical atts are so high that you are effectively already augmented for soak and just use drugs early as you build up.

You can also go low atts, and high skills or nuyen, which makes you have a better start, but plays less into a troll's strengths. However the difference in output for a role like face is so minor that it really doesn't matter and as long as you understand that you need to grab "the good stuff" of Berwick, Tailored pheromones, con, ettiquette, and negotiation, your fine.

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>>54525625
Stop the assuming bullshit.

Bloodmagic is a valid way for runners.
Its also not that hard to find blood Containers that nobody really misses in this Profession (eg gangers).

Speaking of which, i wonder if you can accumulate bloodmagic points by bleeding ghouls or cutting up Vampires.

>>54524513
>>54524866
>>54524682
anyone is welcome to hop in, it's more Nueromancer or Bladerunner lewd angled, but I'm not opposed to players getting frisky with the locals it's just not the center of it all, we're still in planning stages on exactly what we want to do.

>>54525664
This Anon is decieving you. Social adepts are only strong because they mix extremely well with 'ware. A pure social adept is weaker by far than someone who took high resources, but a human or elf with both high magic and resources is able to roll 30 dice on social tests while maintaining good combat tests.

This is not important. A troll face with 4 charisma, +3 from tailored pheromones, +2 from a suit, first impression, and 6 in their skill is packing 17 dice which is more than enough for almost any con, and you can improve further with specialties, metatype reduction, and ex-att if you really care. You are literally just 2 dice down on most faces, when faces are already rolling some odd 5 dice more than they strictly speaking need to get the job done, and the bigger challenge when making a face is making someone useful when you are not talking.

Most people are talking out their ass when they say samurai twiddle their thumbs in the car, because samurai are rolling legendary dicepools to skulk about, steal stuff, climb, and pick locks. The face role is the actually super shallow role and you need to be able to handle yourself in a dicey situation or you are a glorified fixer, but luckily the nuyen and skill investment for faces is literally 100k for the clothing and 'ware and 3 skills at 6, and your only using .6 out of your 6 essence, meaning you have plenty of room to get agility 'ware, reflex booters (or use drugs, if you aren't going nuyen A which many people, myself included, generally don't on trolls), and something like agile defender to both be a face and a bassass with a handgun.

>>54525073
should be in augmentation near the back of the book, might also be in arsenal.

>>54525780
Blood Magic attracts horrors faster than regular magic. You're essentially accelerating magical entropy.

>>54525467
Human decency ends when someone dies, because they stop having feelings to hurt. If it hurts your feelings, get your head screwed on straight because it doesn't and will never effect you.

>>54525821
I can work with that.

>>54525926
Door's open, if the link still works.

>>54525516
Assuming sumto10 / priority

>Mage
Trolls are actually rather good at performing magics. Resources E doesn't hurt you as much as some other "classes" when it comes to magics and any tradition not focusing on Charisma for Drain is going to be peachy since Trolls get no disadvantage for Willpower and you're only allowed one maxed-out stat at character creation anyways.

Your biggest advantage as a troll mage? You can still take a hit obviously, but you can also wield weaponry that most feeble mages can only dream of. You tank two points of recoil naturally, which is double that of a normal mage and with some work on your weapon you can mow down enemy lines with the best of them without ever resorting to your spells.

If you want to double-down on that, the Bear mentor-spirit gives you two more dice for tests to resist damage.

But may I suggest the lesser known Alligator Mentor spirit? It gives you two additional die for inimidation skill tests as well as conjuring tests for spirits of water or man. Combined with the beautiful tradition of Qabbala you gain the ability to very easily summon spirits to share a body with you, replacing your mental attributes with theirs. And since Qabbala accesses water for Illusion, you too can be a pretty pretty elf girl if you word your service requests right towards a water spirit.

>>54525467
Never said it was okay to infect people, but them being infected doesn't mean they stop being people omae. As long as the people they eat are already dead, what's it matter?

>>54525829
>>54525735
This is all great advice. Perhaps I'll get to play my female troll face after all, within the realm of possibility. What are decent secondary roles for a face?

>>54525888
>You're essentially accelerating magical entropy.

Not by any relevant amount though.


>>54525906
Excuse me, Mr Ghoul Sir, would you be interested in some social experiments, for science?
If yes, I'd like to meet with you for some evaluation talks.
Don't worry, i wont't take to much out of your time.

>>54525991
>Secondary roles for a face

Well, ware tends to fuck with your social dicepool so optimal roles are mage or adept.

But the only real difficult secondary role is streetsam.

>>54525906
not everyone was abandoned by his parents for being too ugly to nurse, you know. Most of us normal people will be missed and this extends to your victims too.

Only body i ever threw to the Ghouls was that of a Drake. I sure as hell didn't want anyone to be able to find out who ganked that bitch. And even then I made sure I had that whole ghoul cave rigged with explosives set to detonate as soon as I was sure that they had destroyed the evidence. it's mercy, really.

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>>54525997
>Not by any relevant amount though.
everyone says that.
>Yeah sure, I COULD reduce my entropic footprint, but I'm only just one person

Wake up sheeple. There's holes forming in the manasphere already.

>>54525991
Combat faces are extremely common. I honestly don't think your a good face unless you can throw down as the second best player in your party. Being good in a scrap is as cheap as taking cram or jazz, or having a low rating initiative implant, implanted muscle toner, and smartlink cybereyes and good soak, and either too pretty to hit or agile defender. Faces who don't splash combat to become the party's 'badass face' are generally rookies or extremely specialized builds because its such a no brainier beneficial move. As a bonus, good agility synergies with the face's palming skill, as well as unlocks stuff like lockpicking and sneaking if you want to flip flop between being a face and a full samurai down the road.

>>54526037
It literally doesn't, it affects social limit but hardly at all as long as you have remotely good charisma and willpower. Also social limit is the most easily boosted limit in the game, with the baseline social 'ware literally giving you more limit than you can lose from essence loss if you burnt out to .01 and then clothing giving you an extra 3 limit on top as if you needed more.

>>54526037
>But the only real difficult secondary role is streetsam


It isn't.
The penalty to your social limit with ware is small and compensated without any Problems through the +3/+4 with Pheromones+Clothing and if you go ressources a) and jug them around carefully, you can make both a competent face and a competent combatant.
Or just do it the other way round.

I had a Move-by-Wire Streetsam with a low 0.xx essence that made a decent backup face. 8 Dice before you add any Skill Levels is enough for many games.

>>54526106
Eat my knife, tinfoiler.

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>>54525966
>Jewish necromancer troll
oy vei, oy gevalt, mishigene mentshn

>>54526244
Good luck, I'm behind 12 drones with higher initiative basis than your max roll.

>>54526037
Please stop propagating this blatant falsehood. If you have more than 3 essence of 'ware, you will lose one point social limit. That's it. It's completely fucking inconsequential unless you actually take antipathy and cyberpsychosis/Super-human psychosis as negative qualities a ware base face is perfectly viable, tailored pheremones will more than offset it and Troll reduction can allow trolls to actually get stupid high charisma scores.

>>54526311
>Troll reduction
Don't you feel ashamed?

Truth though, social limit doesn't get fucked by cyberware to the point where I don't even use that bloated useless rule for my players.

>>54526348
It, like many limit mechanics, exists to make really extreme character design choices have extreme outcomes.

'ware hitting social limit doesn't matter UNLESS you have low charisma. Then playing a highly auged antisocial person gets *really* creepy really fast as your social limit drops to 2, meaning you can't branch out to be partially social which is very strong in shadowrun. It exists to force you to care about totally dumping a stat.

So just what kind of jobs does your DM give you in Shadowrun settings? Minor little things or big corporate related shit?

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>>54526422
Minor little things that turn out to be big corporate related shit and big corporate related shit that turns out to be just some execs personal minor little thing mostly.

Every now and then we also pick our own missions if we have accumulated enough wealth to afford the offtime, such as personal quests for crew members or deepthroating humanis.

>>54526394
I am aware of the idea behind it, but it doesn't really matter that my antipathy-spaghetti-rigger has a limit of 2 instead of 3. That rule is bloatware.

>>54526268
>higher initiative than my max roll

i somehow doubt this.
t. Burnout-Adept with Move-by-Wire 2 and Autoinjector with Accelerator and 4 Levels of adrenaline Boost..

>>54526585
>3 Levels

selffix

>>54525856
I meant in 5e.

>>54526585
>Blood-magic burnouts way adept with over 3 points of Cyberware
I concede. Should've known what type of player I'm talking to as soon as you said blood magic.

>>54526881
>Bull is an asshole
So what else is new?

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>>54526921

>>54526937
Oh boy an adventure is in the works! That's almost as good as another magic sourcebook!

>>54526881
>8 to 15k print runs selling out regularly
>Two big international licencing agreements
>Still can't manage the company to not rely on part-timers and interns

I love my hobby, but damn me if the creators are shit with money.

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>>54526881
I'll do you one better, yekka.

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>>54527051

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>>54527051
>Bull writing his DMPC snowflake qualities into official releases

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>>54527099
>>54527117
Surely Bull, an upstanding freelancer and veteran of the community, would *never* do something so personal in an official Shadowrun product
/sarcasm

>>54526394
And a face isn't going to have low charisma, so this is all irrelevant

>>54527168
Well, he's not wrong there. Goblinized folks do have human lifespans.

He's still a twat for making it a quality you have to buy though. It's not like it gives any gameplay advantages. Rarity taxes just to maintain snowflakey status are retarded.

But that's our Bull!
>laughtrack.wav

>>54526348
Actually, yes a little, but doesn't change the fact you can do it.

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>>54527168
And he didn't even give it to Bull after all

>>54527247
>inb4 that's not the 'real' Bull, but a poser

The backtracking should be amusing at least.

>>54527247
Their editing is atrocious. Same way that one of the characters in that used as a sample fresh runner had betaware.

>>54527323
Or the Technomancer with Registered Sprites and no Registering skill.
I don't even think its an editing issue, its a "we don't play the game we write for" issue. We don't play it either, but still.

>>54526881
Can someone do me a solid and find some good, reliable, and trustworthy information on the number of unique visitors to the shadowrun forums per month?

I want to correlate it with some info I have to get a better picture of something.

>>54527314
Wouldn't surprise me.

Fuck, just kill off every single current Jackpointer and replace them. It's really bad when you realise that the "joke" character /dev/grrrl is currently the best commenter.

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Need Some Advice here.

Is a roleplay heavy game possible? I mean not just with this system but any system? I have always liked Shadowrun's setting but the rules make it so I could never run a version with a group who would never read the books and just want to fuck around. The other GM in our group isn't doing very well, and just mostly makes shit up fee-form with some random setting from Drive-Thru RPG(Blades in the Dark).

How do you guys find groups that are both rules aware enough to not have to ask me how to make rolls every time it comes to an action, while also not making your character do lol so randum I KISS THE SHOPKEEPER LOL THEN I MURDER A SMALL CHILD LOL. Like I am not saying a no jokes or no extraordinary actions type game, but the whole just not even wanting to focus on any mission, and just seeing that as an obstacle to continue shitting around makes for a grueling experience as a DM. Its hard to play for more than 4 hours without a break because I either feel burned out by the fucking around or frustrated that I spent any effort on a campaign at all.

Is some online stuff the only option?

And is this something common or am I going about this wrong?

So let's think here. From the information provided we have these books coming:

Technomancer (lol)
Something with Toxic spirits
Something about hooding, maybe?
New Run and Gun

Out of these four, do you think ANY of them will provide new mechanics, or will they be just as shit as the Trog book was?

Who is the most pimpin dragon and why is it Perianwyr?

>>54527710

Well, it starts with having a group of good friends who aren't terrible people.

Other than that, yeah. It's online only.

I want lazy /pol/lacks who do it for free to stop writing 5e

>>54527717
I have a good reason to suspect that the new R&G book will be good, but nothing is guaranteed.

>>54525058
Definatly not looking for Golsbure lewd then.

>>54527742
BLM is more /leftypol/ than /pol/ack, but good try.

>>54527710
I've seen this happen so very often, sadly.

What I've found is that attitudes and roleplay ability increased a lot when we got into our thirties.

Here's my general tips on the matter that may or may not work.

>Don't go overboard with your mission complexity. Focus instead on offering varying approaches.
>Don't go crazy on NPC's - a single mission should introduce at best one memorable character and feature at most two recurring ones. These are hard caps.
>One the topic of NPC's - don't decide as a GM which ones you want to become group buddies, let the players do that.
>Use mannerisms and posture at the table, but stay away from voices if you can't be sure to make them at least somewhat realistic.
>Show world progression in session instead of building scenes for the players to watch the world. A Newsflash running while the characters are en-route between two scenes is more than enough.
>DON'T make everyone an asshole in the world. Stop it with the TUFF TROLL BOUNCERS and ARROGANT ELVEN JOHNSONS. People are professionals in the sixth as much as they are in the 5th, look at your colleagues for reference (unless you work at a shitty place)

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>>54525821
4e or 5e?
(I've not made the jump to the new edition at this point because it seems like a lot of stuff is going to need 3rd party replacements or improvements the publishing is going in 5e)

>>54527799
I don't know any more nuanced meaning to /pol/ack other then that it's a term for people who browse /pol/. The only other one I knew was /pol/tard.

I picked the one that wasn't already claimed by /b/.

So I know this discussion already kind of happened earlier in the thread. Talk to your players, make sure everyone understands the tone you're going for. Don't just send the KE after them and kill everyone because they're a little too trigger happy.

But what about positive reinforcement? Less fatalities is probably more convenient for everyone involved, so what if your fixer included a 10% or so bonus if you avoid killing on the job? I think that's the best of both worlds; incentive to act "proper" from an in-world point of view, without actually punishing the players for doing what they want to do.

10% doesn't sound like much but as a general rule I've found that the presence of a reward in the first place is more important than how big it is.

>>54528042
Not a bad idea, but I'd make sure to be upfront about it. Johnson says outright there's a bonus for no casualties or if you're not detected or whatever. But if they choose to opt out (not even try, not shit went south and they had to shoot people) multiple times then I wouldn't bother continuing.

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>>54528042
Cash is a dime a dozen from my experience. Players will adjust to more or less cash on the fly.

What I like to do is give "bonus rounds" and "repeat business"

The run I'm going to GM tomorrow for example goes like this

>Use Vikings attack on a clinic as cover to retrieve coma patient
>Drive coma patient across town to a Bunraku parlor

If the Characters manage to stay off-sensor for the run, Johnson will watch with them as he calls in Centurion to the Bunraku parlor and ask the characters to hand deliver the datastick with the recording to the local Eurocom offices. This "bonus round" comes with 500Y each and shows Johnsons trust in the players. Additionally, if they did REALLY well, Johnson will hand them a comcode to let him know when the team is free as a sign of faith.

So in total, they can do the run however they want and if the players leave the table smiling about their shooty round I'll be happy too. If they surpass my expectations I'll throw them a cookie and a favor.

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>>54527860
Not the anon who asked but...

>>Don't go overboard with your mission complexity. Focus instead on offering varying approaches.

Can you explain this more? I'm not sure what you mean by "focus instead on offering varying approaches"

Do you mean describe multiple ways of going about the situation like giving a multiple choice question or more describing a situation, answer questions that the players ask (requiring rolls for perception/knowledge/investigation/etc. as appropriate) and then let them figure out a plan amongst themselves, or something else?

>>Use mannerisms and posture at the table, but stay away from voices if you can't be sure to make them at least somewhat realistic

Do you have any suggestions for inspiring roleplaying to bringing NPCs to life more in a game without voice of the players and GM being able to see eachother?

I am running a game online with no voice. (In character and out of character+dice rolls are in separate text channels and roll20 is used for maps when appropriate.)

>>54528208
Don't offer too many roadblocks, instead offer different paths.

>>54528042
"Alright, I need you to retrieve the weapon prototype and its blueprints. The security guard posted near the lab door will give you the keycard if you tell him the phrase 'Big P wants his lead spitter.' There is a 20% bonus for not killing any of the Knight Errant security, they're just a bunch of rookies on their first contract."

>>54528208
Not the anon who said this but...

Its too easy to try to make a super complex mission impossible style run, where way too much shit is between the runners and the objective and there is no clear weaknesses in the defense to plan around, creating sessions were all anyone does is plan for 5 fucking hours in the most boring RPG experience ever.

Instead, you should try to imagine yourself as a middle management security director, who is given way too small a budget. You personally have skills and expertise that favor you towards certain types of security, but understand that you can supplement them with other things, but maybe can't do it well. If you go over your small budget (security does literally nothing to make corps money unless it stops someone and usually security doesn't have anyone to stop! That is why HTR teams exist) you get fired.

Now you do your best to make security, but due to gaps in knowledge and budget have to leave weaknesses in. Maybe your overdependant on drones and with few physical security guards its easy for someone to get in via hacking a fake ID or just taking out all the guards before they online drones. Maybe the facility has so many people that social engineering your way in is easy because most people don't know each other's faces. Maybe a lot of this is happening.

Make a realistic, a flawed security system, and let PCs explore those flaws. But don't make gaping holes. And do try to include telegraphed surprises PCs can react to.

Anybody interacted with the Draco foundation in their games?
>>54527799
>/leftypol/
Is that a liberal who things tublerite SJWs are cancer?

>>54528208
Sure
>Don't go overboard with your mission complexity. Focus instead on offering varying approaches.
Here's an example.

In a Proteus-Run I had my players do I had this vision of the players getting in via a submerged area of the building and triggering underwater defense drones.

Since that was my personally favored approach, I fosed on this, but made sure to have two other potential approaches ready.

>One of the security guards had a massive gambling debt with the groups fixer
>The whole base was scheduled for a "spring cleaning" with subcontractors being hired for this

Now, just to be safe I gave all three of these approaches timed variations to retcon in to improve or toughen the challenge on the fly.

>Drones
Option a) Players detect the nests or lay hands on the info otherwise - proceed as planned, drones would activate on underwater intrusion
Option b) Players don't find the drones - Switch the drones to be rigged to stop anything from escaping the facility and add marine paracritter research into a room
Option c) Players trigger the drones before even entering due to glitches or idiocy - switch the drones from attack drones to watcher drones and put the base on alert instead of pre-damaging my players

>Guard
option a) Players check in with their fixer and find out about that dude - proceed as planned
option b) Players get stuck inside - fixer calls em up and says he just found out they are running THIS facility and he knows a dude, but it'll cost em.
option c) Players lapse and storm a room I logically need to be guarded - Strung out guard lying on the floor

cont...

>>54526978
Mm. Way I hear it, the ebooks have had a historically low return on investment compared to the physical books. Costs are substantially reduced since you don't have to worry about printing/shipping costs, but the price per unit is also lower as people don't expect to be receiving the same level of product.
>>54527556
http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?action=stats
The 'most online' stats are likely the most useful you'll get, but you could scrape the daily stats. I need to have another look at our scraper, we used to use it to monitor when changes were made to the errata threads and such.

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>>54528208
>>54528406

>Spring cleaning
option a) Players get stuck in their preparation of the run - Drop the info through either the fixer, the Johnson or one of Johnsons associates
option b) The players do not need any help getting in - Drop the whole matter
option c) The players may need some assistance at some point of the run - Replace a few guards with Janitors that can ring an alarm but are generally meant to offer the players a simple disguising option

>Use mannerisms and posture at the table, but stay away from voices if you can't be sure to make them at least somewhat realistic

In text-only this becomes a bit more difficult, but if you have the option, don't shy away from fonts, italic or bold text and text coloring. Also, use pictures, but not "This is Johnson" but instead plop in a nice background image whenever they switch a Scene. Pic related could be just above "You enter into a calmer area of the barrens. While still ripe with the fragrances of the lesser side of life, the pathways you now wander are barely populated and exude a certain, rustic charm."

>>54528368
Thank you for the insight into designing security for business and municipal locations. This will come in handy.

Do you have any suggestions for how to design missions that more revolve around investigating in abandoned or large environments?

Do you have suggestions for missions that are battles or purge focused "destroy this group/thing(s) we made before they spread so that it doesn't spread and get traced back to us" or "x and his/her/it's minions are on the warpath, stop them before they finish burning down the whole neighborhood"
What do you mean by "social engineering your way in"?


What are telegraphed surprises?

>>54528453
Have you compared overall E-book sales from books that have hardcover versions to E-book only books? I have thought many times that getting a nice, well made, if short, E-book, more than the old gun haven stuff but less than what we are getting now, once every few months for 10 or 15 dollars would be neat. I actually prefer E-books.

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>>54526937
>Prefers Facebook or email to forums

I swear to god why is a tabletop game about cyberpunk and technology managed by motherfucking Luddites

>>54528453

Are you chummer man?
I hear about that program again and again when I go google diving for information and advice related to shadowrun.

Are you the first, or are you just one in a line of custodians of Chummer like the Dread Pirate Roberts?

>>54528519
Not that anon (man there's a lot of that going around here)

Social engineering is lying, conning or otherwise persuading your way into a setting, and gaining intel/access that way. Me convincing a guard that I dropped my invitation and Mr. J really wants to see me and would be furious if you turned me away, that's social engineering.

Telegraphed surprises are twists that have something hinting at them about to happen. Telegraphing refers to cues that tell you when something is going to happen, like when a boss in a video game winds up for a few seconds before a big attack, that's a telegraph.

>>54528519
>"destroy this group/thing(s) we made before they spread so that it doesn't spread and get traced back to us"
>Create plausible signs of tampering, should come easy to you guys
>Use these devices I provide you guys with to stop the spread, but make sure to hide them so we can claim it wasn't ever as bad as depicted
>Plant these things that create more spread in other areas around the city so we can claim this was more of a regional occurence

>"x and his/her/it's minions are on the warpath, stop them before they finish burning down the whole neighborhood"

>Offer an option to put that group into complete disarray with aerosols/bribes/magic FUN
>Have x be mostly stationary and the whole mob rely on his commands
>Have players be able to activate rivals of x and his gang to create overwhelming combined resistance

>>54528519

Shadowrun handles player separation well, which one would think would be good for an exploration focused game, but exploring an abandoned large environment can be very boring in SR unless you set it up very well. It is going to depend very much on how willing your PCs are to naratively split up, and your ability to paint beautiful brain pictures with your word brush.

Avoid the urge to place a lot of npc grunts in an area to have big fights unless you go out of your way to make it easy for them to all be taken out. Shadowrun combat is at its most fun when its fast either because the PCs trash or the target manages to skidoodle out of combat quick, big grindy fights suck, especially against lots of targets. However AOE effects in shadowrun are devastating and fun, so if anyone uses them, give them a grunt blob asking to die. The worst thing you can do is place some odd 15 grunts on a map, maneuver them so the party can't safely full auto or grenade them because someone is in the way because attacking lots of grunts and rolling lots of dodge tests isn't fun. Big grunt fights are about a lot of people going down very fast.

>>54528573 managed to go over social engineering and telegraphing before I could.

The reason telegraphing is so important in SR is because the default assumption is that the PCs are the aggressor, and the game heavily favors the aggressor and doesn't treat being aggressed upon "fairly" to keep the fun of ambushing alive for long campaigns and to favor clever play by runners. While a surprise moving into place is great, you need to make sure no trap is ever sprung before PCs can try to solve the problem, either by putting up clues ahead or making sure that the thing that totally comes out of left field doesn't come straight into someone's face so they can pull back and go "Guys we got a problem" over their comms. Never raise the alarm over something the runners literally couldn't react to, that destroy's player agency.

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>>54527051
>>54527099
>>54527168

This shit really rubs me the wrong way.

Assholes like this are able to get their fucking fanfiction-tier garbage-ass mary sue characters into official books for a mainline RPG product. They are able to get rules written specifically for them that are stupid and fuck over other players in an official capacity. They also get to waste pagespace spouting awful bullshit nobody cares about.

I'm sure he's not the only one. I bet all of them are like this.

>>54528690
They are not. Plenty of the freelancers are perfectly nice people if you talk to them and are fully aware of problems in the game line.

>>54528406
So have multiple contingency ideas for each approach you think they might use as a way to have a basis to react faster.
Makes good sense.
>>54528489
I like they way you described the place in the barrens. The image is a jarring because of the high percentage of "intact things" in that image doesn't feel like it should exist in a bombed out condemned urban wasteland, but I think I get what you are trying to say.

"If you have images that can convey an idea of an area, write your description and preface them with said image"

>>54528547
Online Forums are a much much older medium of communication than Facebook friend.

>>54528741
The barrens aren't mad max. They are areas of urban decay that official services have left.

Many parts of them, especially Redmond, are populated, and are either protected by gangs, street samurai, or are despoiled by raiding gangs like the Weenies on a constant basis.

>>54528778

Facebook is a poor communication medium. Email is a good communication medium, however it's private.

A forum that EXCLUSIVELY EXISTS TO DISCUSS YOUR PRODUCT is obviously what you should be using.

So my group decided to randomly roll mixes of archetypes and races for our next campaign and I got adept decker troll.

Is that even possible? How do I build this without being shit? Any variants of those core concepts and all splat books. Edition is 5e.

>>54528625
Ok that makes sense.
Thank you.

>>54528547
To be fair those forums have been a dumpster fire for years.
>>54528531
Not data I really have access to, unfortunately. The way I figure it though, if ebook sales were high, 'finding budget' for a guy to be responsible for it wouldn't be an issue.
>>54528566
Yar-har, mostly. Chummer 4 was originally developed by a guy called Keith Rudolph. Chummer 5 was templated from that code by Keith and then adopted by Adam Schmidt because Keith didn't play Shadowrun anymore (He actually stopped playing SR4 ages before this point as well, but felt obligated to keep developing it), but then abandoned shortly before Run Faster came out, if I'm remembering my timelines correctly. I forked the code in... mid-2014, I think? Since then it's been my project, with around half a dozen other contributors. The lion's share of the code is still Keith's original work, but I've tinkered with almost all of it at this point. >>54528730
I miss Little Mac, I hope she's okay.

>>54528852
Adept power improved ability for your hacking shit, adept spell Analyze Device, maybe, some ware to up your logic/exceptional attribute logic/genemod logic

You should be fine as an adept troll, just don't focus on being strong and you'll be good.

>>54528852
If you are using sum to 10 you will be ok. De-emphasize the traditional ideas of adeptness, be willing to take 'ware for example, and you can kinda scrape by with a cheap deck.

It is definitely the least favorable possible mix in the game beyond being forced to play a technomancer troll or ork.

I heard the karmagen rules are unreasonable for metatype pricing. Is that true? Has anyone houseruled a better set of prices?

Is making each one equal to the cost of increasing the stats as much as the minimums, plus a little extra, a reasonable patch?

>>54528641
Thanks for the advice on combat pacing and the utility of having enemies that are not tactically astute.

Knight errant or successful heavy combat runner team are going do everything they can to cover eachother and make the terrain work for them and against their foe as much as possible. This is a nightmare unless this is specifically supposed to be a life threatening and time consuming climactic or rising action encounter.

A bunch of gang bangers, barrens scavengers, or lonestar doughnut cops on the other hand are much more likely to behave in a way that makes them aoe fodder, and are more likely to just be in an open area, though the latter are probably going to call backup before going down.


Thank you for articulating these important points of the valence of aggression and how fragile things are when aggressed upon and what this means for not to taking agency from players or killing PCs in a way the players can't react to before it happpens.
>>54528641
>>54528573
Can you give me examples of telegraphed problems or surprises?


I understand how someone in a fist fight can telegraph a move since I've seen that happen, but I don't have much in the way of identified examples of telegraphed surprises in the games I've played. (I'm certain some of my GMs have used them but I wasn't thinking about "telegraphed surprises" at the time and so never identified and labeled examples before the game events were consigned to my memory.

>>54525422
They mention that the old requirement of 5% of your body weight a week went up, but not by how much. Just their general 'HMHVV is scary' metaplot.

>>54528780
Huh.
I mostly imagine barrens as mad max or mad max crammed into a labyrinth instead of open space.

I figured there were "worst ghettos on earth" and then the barrens were what was below that.

>>54529121
Sure. For example snipers in SR are a thing obviously police and corps use, but are rarely if ever fun to encounter as a surprise because by nature sniper attacks are designed to be balanced around what PCs want them to do, which is generally instakill because that is the fantasy of a sniper attack.

You can counter a sniper, but you can't do it unless the party knows they are there. But its hard to specifically sprinke clues in. Instead you gotta be flexible as a GM and work to make sure any method that might cause that secret to slip, does. Any remotely good perception test, any interrogation, any listening in on others, even matrix percieving the area and noticing a comms signal from a rooftop.

If your PCs are socially infiltrating a place, and they are pretending to be a specific type of person like a security executive, and want to throw a wrench in their plans by having the real one show up, have the PC notice and overhear talk about them showing up across the room so they have plenty of time to move away from the threat and plan again.

Or if there are ultrasound or motion sensors that force people to move slowly through an area or risk a gas attack, literally one of the most threatening things in the same, let the PC's ultrasound sensor that they almost certainly left in passive mode pick up that threat, so they know it is there and can plan around it in the future if new problems arise, even if they don't know EXACTLY what the ultrasound causes. As a bonus it causes them to want to investigate them.

>>54529184
Some parts of the barrens are relatively nice places to be. Some parts of the barrens are terrible. Redmond is mostly "urban decay and squatter communities." Puyallup is "Ash apocalypse wasteland with lots of scatted buildings, wild animals, and tiny pockets of squatters trying to not die."

>>54528806
I agree with everything you just said.

I just meant that Facebook was an innovation that came after Internet forums. I was nitpicking your use of the term Luddite.

I do agree that prioritizing Facebook over your product's forum(s) is very foolish.

>>54529184
There are worse ghettos than he barrens.

>>54529121
Not the same guy but when I think about a telegraphed surprised I have a good example from a game I recently ran.

The run was in full swing but the decker sounded a silent alarm with a slightly risky hack. He did manage to catch the communication between the system and the enforcement however, which provided him with the information that two teams were dispatched.

While making the getaway, the team encountered three security officers and, rather than get caught in a gunfight where the enemies had solid cover and could potential slow them down enough for something else to go wrong, they decided to bolt for a second exit. The team would have been surprised by the second set of security agents had one of them not remembered the "two teams" point from before. Leading to an alternative exit through the elevator shaft into the basement and away.

>>54528955

I'm glad that chummer is a thing that passes from custodian to custodian and is open to support and contributions from whoever.

It seems like a good thing that should continue.

>>54526881
>developer had to step out because of day job

No wonder SR's books are so shit, they're literally us with a DriveThru storefront account

>>54529121
An example of a telegraphed surprise could be, if there's say a heavily armed combat drone or crate of rocket launchers or something, let them find a note or voicemail or something to the effect of "Hey John, you put the wrong address on that shipment of anti-armour rockets, where should we send it to?". Like how Doom 3 foreshadows the chainsaw nearby by letting you find a PDA with somebody complaining about them.

>>54529211
How is a place with no law beyond local force and no utilizes beyond what can be stolen at great effort/risk assuming the opportunity even exists, that has mutants, ghouls, and dangerousness free spirits wondering around, not to mention unchecked pollution and dumped waste not be bottom of the barrel in cities?

>>54529340
Because at least some people sometimes use their force to protect a place rather than destroy it.

Also you can get utilities in the barrens. At least Redmond.

>>54522496
It's a troll she can probably lift half a ton with her neck muscles alone. Horns that size probably weigh about as much as a baby - 2 year old.

>>54529211
Please elaborate on the pecking order of bad places that exist where people live shadowrun.

>>54529239
Thank you for the example

>He did manage to catch the communication between the system and the enforcement however, which provided him with the information that two teams were dispatched.

Was this and example of something the PC found on their own initiative that helped telegraph the surprise or did you as the GM decide to throw that bone to the PC as a way to make sure the surprise was telegraphed?

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>>54520759

>>54529454
A little bit of a combination. The player was clever enough to trace the signal and from there caught the communication from where he pulled the info. I threw a bone in the sense that the communication very clearly stated an ETA and the number being immediately dispatched.

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>>54529522

>>54529608
How did he notice the silent alarm contacting the cops?

Was it only silent and meat space but quite prominent and noticeable in the system he was in?

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When the hacker/decker catches onto the fact that they fucked up.

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>>54529560

>>54529287

That makes sense. Thank you.

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>>54529635

>>54529692
Silent alarm is probably the wrong term. It was more of an automated "Hey, someone is snooping in our shit that isn't supposed to be, get over here and lock down the premises in the event that someone is trying something." Which technically was silent in meatspace but still registers as an outgoing communication.

The decker in that group was very prepared and was keeping an eye on any communications entering and leaving the network via an agent that he had planted before the run for information gathering on the best time to hit the location.

>>54516085
He's an okay actor because he can access dramatic reactions. An actor's job isn't necessarily to be someone else but to portray a character in a story. In the case of Will Smith he is usually called upon to portray the same character over and over again. He is being paid to be a consistent and inoffensive leading man. His job is to be a generic hero with a bit of sass.

A Will Smith which is delivering tear-jerking high drama and subtly is not a Will Smith the big boys are paying for.

There are few "Will Smith Films" mostly just films that happen to have Will Smith in them.

>>54529823
Ah. That helps put there events into much clearer frame of reference from the perspective of being and example of the use and implementation of a telegraphed surprise in a game.

>>54529864

Are there many examples of Will Smith playing against type? (I'm guessing this involves reaching outside his work in films)

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>>54529759

>>54529864

How do Will Smith and Tim Curry compare and contrast in terms of examples of actors that the boys who throw money around tend to hire to play similar or the same character?

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>>54529931

Thank you to all the Anons who contributed advice and examples in response to the questions I asked and for helping other anons.

This thread's auto-ing, if you're still around come on down >>54530213

>>54529915
Pursuit of Happyness has him play an unemployed, homeless father trying to give his son a decent life.

Hitch has him play a smooth talking pick-up artist that helps guys get chicks, but is basically emotionally dead when it comes to himself.

The man has range, its just that the studios found their niche for him, and are loathe to do anything that would be considered "risky" financially with him.

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>>54530276
/tg/: You don't even need the other boards anymore.

>>54530276
In other words he has suffered the most dreaded fate an actor can befall an actor, he has been typecast.

>>54527710
Probably
In my current game 3/5 of the people have no idea what is going and would not have any initiative in the runs. One those speaks only if he is ask to do something. Other is away half the time due to family constantly asking him to do stuff.
And the GM speaks with no energy in his voice and almost like he dislike even playing the game.
I'm slowly dying inside chummers
Send help....

>>54530496
At least he isn't charactercast like Leonard Nimoy or Mark Hamill were.

>>54528690
That is how Pathfinder happened. Homebrewers with industry connections/publishing jobs.

>>54530953
So much fucking this.

The only reason they rose to prominence was the bad reaction to 4e, leaving PathFinder to sweep the industry (at the time).