Milk Runs

Ain't no such thing as a milk run, chummer

OP's mother.

>>55066847
Assisting the local PD/private sec with something they can't handle.

It's a pretty good setup for a bunch of things.

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>>55070601
Related to this, my group has gone after bail jumpers for quick cash. Get a fake SIN with a bounty hunter permit and do a little legwork. Sometimes it turns into a fight, but if you can catch the guy in his doss while he's asleep, it's usually pretty straightforward.

>>55070797
Really no reason not to get on local enforcement's good side if you're doing runs in the area.

Unless you're an elite super-crypto unit, but then you don't have milk runs anyway.

All they had to do was bust into a low-security office building and trash a funky tech-chair. What could possibly go wrong?

>>55066847
Literally fetching the Johnson milk.
Actual, real milk.
And almost nowhere stocks it.
Especially at this time of night.
He's waiting between flights you see, and wants some cereal.

Mission is best when the Johnson is obviously someone important, like Johnny Spinrad.

>>55071722
I had to do a literal milk run as part of a magic initiation.
I was confused ic and ooc when the wizard thanked me for it, gave me a5 nuyen tip and a pat on the head. I don't expect appreciation for the little things in that game.

>>55070797
i want to fugg that roll girl

I've never played Shadowrun before.

I've played a lot of D&D and Pathfinder, though.

Where should I start if I want to get into Shadowrun? Do I have to be a fan of cyberpunk to enjoy Shadowrun or can I be a "normie"?

>>55066847
>Creating a fake bank job for rich kids.
>Stopping a new club from opening.

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>Playing a "cyberpunk" game that isn't a dystopia
Why even bother with Shadowrun?

>>55074190
You say that like SR's non-dystpic setting is the best reason not to play it. Rather than, say...
>Flawed central mechanics.
>Everything way to complicated.
>Terrible in-world lingo.
>game-within-a-game cyberstuff for no good reason.
>Overreliance on derived statistics.

>>55074233
>Not really
>Not really
>Not really
>So?
>So?
The best reason not to play Shadowrun is its setting anon. The system, while not the best, isn't unusable.

>>55074190
But it is a dystopia. Corporations freely use and abuse everything, there are multiple massive disasters that have completely fucked everything, the few places that aren't ecologically fucked are instead ruled by iron fisted governments that would qualify as eco-terrorists if they weren't in charge. All the magic did was add more ways for things to be fucked.

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>>55074269
>A stable middle class exists
>Countries are stable and generally have acceptable amounts of liberty
>The worst thing a corporation will do to the average citizen is look at what nude movies you watch
Yeah real dystopic my dude

>>55074314
>a stable corporate wage slave class exists
>countries are stable, but in a cold war. Their liberties are polite fictions at best
>the worst thing a corporation will do to the average citizen is have them shot for trespassing or keep them as an employee who lives in corporate housing, is paid in corporate scrip that can't be easily transferred to other currencies or used for anything outside of the corporate store, gets one week of unpaid vacation a year, can't leave corporate property without permission, and might be subject to random tests and experiments

>>55074314
A stable rich class exists. There is no middle class outside of a very tiny corporate employee class. Countries are only stable because the corporations want them to be. If they try anything funny, they get crushed by economic and military clout. As for what the corporations will do to the average person, that's the same in almost all settings. It's what they do to the legally-not-a-person class that matters.

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>>55074357
>>55074380
>Stability
>Middle class
>Order
Again not dystopic. It's low-key bad, maybe, but no where near what is expected for the genre. Making corporations be governments was a mistake for the setting.

>>55074439
Literally every cyberpunk setting has stability and order for corporate slave-citizens. That's normal.

>>55074446
Except that one he posted, but even that has a stable rich class of planners.

>>55074446
No they don't. See previous pic related.

>>55074486
Most of the genre does. Sheeple get to be stable, anyone who wants to be free probably doesn't count as a person legally anyway.

>>55073611
Me bottom right

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>>55074446
For the higher-ups, not for the disposable working class. Until you hit executive status, you're living in a shitty barracks in a slummy area, or the streets. The rest of the world is violent to you; sure your job may not be, but those cyberpsychos who blast Run DMC outside of your cube apartment are.

>>55074498
That's only Shadowrun. Even the tiny middle classes experience urban disorder.

>>55074255
Magic and it's hilariously awful implementation is what always gets me. In one way or another , the setting's always been unapologetic in the fact that mages have already won everything, forever. Being an elven mage is so disgustingly good for you it beggars belief. Magicrun indeed.

>>55074669
Considering they make nuclear weapons not work, but gave magic users volcanoes and dragons, I'm inclined to agree.

How cool would it have been if that Shasta bitch got 500kt of pain when she forced California to hand over its land to elves.

>>55074233
The game-within-a-game cyberstuff is the absolute worst. Things like Neuromancer, Johnny Mnemonic, and Snow Crash were what got me interested in Shadowrun and it turns out that its so divorced from the rest of the group (or forces splitting the GM's attention, slowing down the game).

I can't even about 5e's wireless bonuses stuff, which has no in-setting explanation.

>>55074568
Read some Gibson for Christ's sake.

>>55074815
Gibson never really focused outside of the main characters. His worldbuilding was weak overall.

>>55074854
That doesn't mean it wasn't genre defining.

>>55074871
It kicked off the genre, but aside from the memes of it being the first I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.

>>55074255
>Yes
>Yes
>Yes
>its bad
>its bad

See how easy it is to counter non-arguments with other non-arguments.

>>55074728
Id be fine with it if it werent a whole thing on its own. If it were just a boiled down abstraction with programs as utility objects in the cyber world. That'd be just dandy.

>>55075180

>two word non-arguements are inferior to 3 word non-arguements

>>55075232
Fine.

Dice pools achieve nothing over simple target rolls, other than having a broader curve overall, which in a task with defined success only increases the likelihood of drastic failure.

Having 3 stats for comlinks, and 10 different types of 9mm pistols does not enhance the game.

"Null" is not easier to say than "no", and is harder to pronounce quickly in a sentence.

You didnt refute the other stuff, so I dont have to make an argument.

>>55067339

/thread

>>55075315
Dice pools typically make it easier for a GM not to fudge target numbers.

Style over substance, products are everything, names matter. You need fifty billion pistols not only for stat variety, but because it's the style of cyberpunk.

I'll give you that null is stupid as fuck. Nuh sounds better as the logical cyberpunk evolution of "no," I think.

Maybe you should consider playing PbtA instead of an actual RPG system.

>>55074439
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia

Shut the fuck up with your made up definitions.

Shadowrun is a shitty as fuck place to live. The only fun is to roleplay a Runner.

>>55075180

>The guy is right, let me attack his argument style instead of defend my shit

>>55075361
PbtA has its own problems to be sure, but Shadowrun is a fucking mess.

Shadowrun could be vastly improved with abstractions rather than simulationist specifics. I agree that the corporation of shit is critical, but you could just as easily have one pistol with a randomly generated name. It would have zero effect on gameplay and make the rulebook several pages shorter.

>>55075406
You're late to the show, idiot.

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>>55075383
Woaaah look at that I can look up definitions too xdd

>>55075418
Go to bed Andrew

>>55075418

>OH FUCK HE CAME BACK WITH ACTUAL DETAILS
>I NEED TO DOUBLE DOWN ON MY OPINIONS
>SHIT I DIDN'T EXPECT THEM TO ACTUALLY THINK

>>55071722
the pbp campaign started with a similar mission. And all the players had a reaction along the lines of "...motherfucker..."

>>55075426

>I'm getting my ass kicked from all fronts
>better lash out where I can

>>55075383
>Shadowrun is a shitty as fuck place to live
I'd rather live in its universe than in 2020's, When Gravity Fails, Hardwired, Cyberworld, Cyberspace, Bubblegum Crisis... The only cyberpunk setting I can think of that is nicer than Shadowrun's is Ghost in the Shell and that's post-cyberpunk. Shadowrun was always the lightest cyberpunk setting out there.

>>55075448

Hey, your definition also supports the same argument! Awesome.

>>55075451
Get a life. One of those is subjective, another I countered, the last one he agreed with me on.

>>55075495
>totalitarian governments
>cataclysmic decline in society
>societies in advanced state of collapse or disintegration
None of these define Shadowrun.

>>55075472
>I didnt read the thread, better start trolling.

>>55075418

>. I agree that the corporation of shit is critical, but you could just as easily have one pistol with a randomly generated name
>One pistol
>Randomly generated name
>Just go ahead and suck the entire soul out of the game
>Who cares about ties to the setting?

>>55073611
Cyberpunk and fantasy are the biggest parts of it, but it can be just as much fun if you like mob and heist movies and true crime stories and police corruption. In my own games, my players routine spent the first half meeting the Johnson, planning the perfect crime, roleplaying with contacts, and scoring any gear they need. Then they'd spend the third quarter executing the perfect crime, then the fourth escaping when things go awry and collecting their pay.

One tough part of it is the mage being off on astral recon, and the hacker hacking computers, but my players just used that as time to smoke some pot and plan the next moves for their characters.

>>55075488

>There are worse places to live
>magically means Shadowrun is a nice place to live

>>55075535
What is the soul of the game, and how does having specific names for specific items take that away? Surely you dont believe that every character has encyclopedic knowledge of all the equipment in the game.

>>55075515

>Dystopias are often characterized
>Dystopias are often
>often

>>55075572
It's pretty damn tame compared to everything else. It's baby's first cyberpunk world.

>>55075572
Its broadly a better place to live than the world today. Sure things are a bit less clean but at least there are ways to solve problems. Nothing in Shadowrun is intractable.

>>55075575

> Surely you dont believe that every character has encyclopedic knowledge of all the equipment in the game.

Dude, if you are just going to start saying random shit that has nothing to do with your conversation then you are going to be alone for a very long time.

>>55074716
Dunkelzahn caught the wrath on that when he ran for President, but even I admit that was kind of a goofy bit of metaplot.

>>55075605
All of Shadowrun's metaplot is goofy.

>>55075588

>>55075572

>>55074854
>>55074892
Neuromancer was a rough first effort, but I think his style started hitting its stride in Count Zero. His "Bridge Trilogy" was nearly all worldbuilding.

>>55075620
Baby's
First
Cyberpunk

>>55075599
The relevance of the connection between names and items is diagetic, so the only people it should matter to is the characters. If you changed the name of a company in shadowrun it wouldnt change the game.

>>55075591

>I have not read the Shadowrun book

>>55075645
I'll openly admit I did not care much for Neuromancer at all, and it kind of ruined Gibson's cyberpunk for me.

Though I LOVED the Blue Ant trilogy when I was in highschool.

>>55075651

Thanks for admitting you are wrong.

>>55075659
>so the only people it should matter to is the characters
>I don't actually roleplay

>>55075690
What are you even talking about? Actually try forming complete thoughts.

>>55074314
>>55074357
I've always wondered why these settings dont try to be realistic about their dystopia like
>85% homeless and rising from the rise os robot workforces
>Homeless basicslly nonpeople and can't buy or find resources, thousands die every day
>corps copyrighting and sue hunting for everything, down to smells and colours perceived by the naked eye
>You could just as well live in a glass house with a megaphone. Everything you say, do and feel is recorded
>Doomsday clock moved to 12 seconds to midnight because every fuck with enough money can buy a nuke

>>55075752
That sounds about right.

>>55075752
Dystopias change with every decade. One decade's vision of a dark future is no less valid than another's.

>>55075741

>I cannot comprehend the players caring about weapon names

>>55075752
>85% homeless and rising from the rise os robot workforces
That wouldn't be very realistic. If the number of homeless starts climbing like that, you're going to have revolution in your hands very, very quickly. And your soldiers are probably going to join in.

>>55075795
Explain it to me then. What does having specific names bound to specific guns add? Unless all the players have memorized the different minute stat differences between every weapon the names arnt useful for recall of weapon stats.

>>55075786

This. Dystopias reflect the modern world more than the future.

>>55075752
That kind of dystopia wouldn't last very long.

The economics just don't add up. You'd either have the rich rapidedly become poor and/or the end of the world, or end up with enclaves of "wealthy" individuals waited on by robots in some kind of quasi post scarcity and the entire rest of the world is abandoned.

A world where 85% of people are homeless would last for less than half a decade at best.

>>55075799
You could have large corporate hostels where people can wait to do day labor and consume anti-depressant starch gruel.

I think you've got a point though: in a world with 85% homelessness there's not going to be a body that would collect that data and present it that way.

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>>55075752
Pic related is the realest most dystopic dystopia prove me wrong

>>55075820
Very few fictitious worlds accurately reflect the future though.

>>55075813

>It's not useful for weapons in-game to have names that tie into lore
>I don't roleplay

>>55075849
Because the future is nigh-impossible to predict. Even Transhuman Space, the setting that had the hottest futurists around and extreme amounts of research hasn't predicted the future correctly.

>>55075832
Thats not a dystopia, its more of a non-topia. Its the difference between tyranny and anarchy.

>>55075863
Why cant randomly generated names tie into lore?

>>55075849

Sure?

>>55075315
>Dice pools achieve nothing over simple target rolls
They improve consistency for skilled characters, something sorely lacking systems that use a single die and a target number.

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>>55075874
>Implying anarchy can't be a topia
The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine would like to talk to you

>>55075896

>random

>>55075829
Where would the money to pay for this stuff come from? If it's already some kind of post-scarcity where the rich don't actually need any amount of human labor to extract raw materials and make them into their luxury goods, then why even bother with poor people at all? You could either exterminate them or fuck off to some space habitat.

If they still need some human work force to maintain standard of living, then the fact that the majority of people are now living hand to mouth means that their wealth would rapidedly become non existent besides what they physically have. It would become some kind of futuristic feudalism.

>>55075911
They can, but since they flatten out the distribution they make really strange situations like 9mm piercing tank armor possible under certain conditions. While thats obviously hyperbolic, you can end up with many more common examples that dont quite gronk as being plausible. Im not suggesting that single-die is superior, but once you clear six dice the distribution is so wide you cant really get consistent performance out of it.

>>55075917
>Anarchy
>Army

I believe these are mutually exclusive

>>55075967
For starters, it would be worth having people working to keep them from rebelling, and even if you're post-scarcity its still nice to have people do things, especially highly selective tasks like sorting, and curation. While that may sound narrow there are tons of tasks in which those two subtasks are critical.

>>55075896
Not having established things, with differentiating stats makes it seem like the naming is just useless. Your Dickrecker 5060 Anime Edition being the same as your friend's Cockdestroyer 6050 China Edition makes them seem a lot less special and matter a lot less.

>>55075977
Don't even fucking get me started on Shadowrun tanks. Their armour should all be multiplied by 5 and their weapon's damage multiplied by 5. As it stands, a fucking 120mm Rheinmetall does the same damage as a man portable 20mm rifle.

>>55075949
Sausage.

>>55076035

Good doggy.

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>>55076004
Dude don't ask me ask Ukraine (Or the Spanish CNT-FAI).

>>55076020
But at the same time there will only be a handful of these named and crafted items worth taking. If anything, having generated names makes your item more special because it is part of such a massive hypothetical product-space that its unique. On a roleplay level it realizes the corporate consumerist culture better than just a list.

>>55076012
But even those types of tasks are rapidedly being computerized with machine learning.

Having them working literally pointless menial labor just to keep them from rebelling would become a pointless waste of resources pretty quickly if you have complete control of any military force.

>>55076081
Thats only true if you make assumptions about the rate of machine learning. Computers today are certainly more empowered when it comes to visual sorting, but there's no telling if there's a ceiling. For purposes of fiction you could just cap it off. If we all played accurate portrayals of the future we'd all be miserable playing T2000

>>55076061
Not necessarily. Even if PCs don't take them, give them to NPCs for flavour and variety. And I know for a fact that when I play a cyberpunk game I always go for the coolest weapons, not necessarily the best.

The stats make it, it gives variety and makes picking one thing over another actually worthwhile. It provides fluff and crunch, and often guns will have specific quirks to them outside of just the statline (Okay maybe not for Shadowrun but for a lot of other cyberpunk systems).

Having just a small choice of Light, Medium, Heavy Pistols ruins another great thing about cyberpunk settings; SHOPPING

>>55076132
Piss off I love T2k.

>>55076159
For me the shopping is a waste of time, at the end of the day you'll make it work. What you need is a workable hammer, not one with port and starboard attachments.

Besides, in a realistic dystonia you shouldnt be shopping through the book, you should take what you can get from your local hoarder.

>>55076220
>Realistic
>Dystopia
Nice meme

Anyways you sound like you're really unfun to play cyberpunk with.

>>55076249
I enjoy the setting, but there are next to no cyberpunk settings that arnt a mess of lists and bullshit.

Also: we just got done talking about realism in dystpic settings. Come on.

>>55076272
Nowhere did anyone say realism is inherent to dystopic settings, because it's not. Cyberpunk settings are not sustainable in a realistic world.

Also again you're really unfun to play cyberpunk with if you don't like all the details and shopping. You're bad at ball games.

>>55076249
Weekly terrorist attacks, attempts to suppress any wrong-think on a national level, less privacy than ever before... yup, not realistic at all.

>>55076310
What makes minutiae and shopping intrinsic to cyberpunk?

>>55076324
Our world hasn't been a dystopia since the dark ages, and that was only for Europe.

Also terrorist attacks have always happened near weekly; we're just seeing them in different places now.

Society changes. That doesn't make it a miserable dystopia, that makes it different. Now if everyone was homeless and every government was a junta and Nicaraguans roamed the streets then maybe it would be different.

>>55076354
Consumerism, and STYLE. Style style style. Style, style. Style style style style style style STYLE style. Style!

Think about how much detail every cyberpunk novel goes in to about the guns, decks, chrome, whatever. It's shit like that which gives the genre its flavour, its focus on small details.

>>55076324
>>55076370
Also, while the "West" may be in a bit of a dip at the moment, the rest of the world is actively getting better. It's evening out, if anything.

>>55076404
Why do those details need to be nailed down though. If you buy a Tokyotek P91 Protector and the name was randomly generated, how does that make it any less stylish than something chosen from a list?

>>55076476
For one, you didn't pick it, it was randomly generated. Two, if it's from the list it has stat variations which makes it in the very least FEEL different. Also, it will likely have a short paragraph about it in the listing.

Or maybe you'd like your players to write up their own paragraph for it, and name it, and make everything for you because you like that horrible fucking "Cooperative Storytelling" bullshit.

>>55076504
If you're a good GM you should be able to make fluff shit like that up on the fly.

>>55076476
>>55075896
>>55075949

>>55076519

>I've never run a game

>>55076546
Wrong again bucko. Ive ran 3 one-shots this month alone, and more campaigns than Id care to count.

>>55076519
Sure, and I can, but having established things in a setting is nice and gives a better feel for the world.

>>55076556

>What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

>>55076595
Sure, and in such a system you'd use established companies etc to flesh out the world and add established movers and shakers to play with in different scenarios. None of that necessitates specific item names.

>>55076654

>companies just make random shit

>>55076654
But then you miss out on iconic items. You just don't get it.

>>55076683
Do they not? Want me to show you the current list of intel processors? A catalog of 9mm pistols? Off brand cellphones?

>>55076686
So style just means memes? "Ive heard of that so its awesome!".

By the sound of it I dont get it, at least not the way you do. Im not sure Id want to either.

>Thread asks for shadowrun Milk runs
>Turns into an argument about whether shadowrun is grimdark enough

I'm still designing my first shadowrun campaign, but I'm planning on putting the players through a few milk runs to get us all familiar with the rules:

>Steal a truck full of steak so an ork can have a community cook out
>Track down a deadbeat husband and get a woman's lifesavings back (woman had to bring their kids to the Johnson meet because no babysitter, one precocious girl asks the shadowrunners a million questions, the other whines and cries she wants to go home)

>>55071722
This is hilarious and I'm stealing it

>Johnson wants Shadowrunners to get him a pizza
>"Pizza tastes better when it's delivered by shadowrunners"
>Must come from a specific pizza place
>Players must move the pizza from the other side of Seattle
>Must arrive in 30 mins

>>55067339
You could be hired to beat up a college nerd or something. Bonus for you if you grab some milk for me on the way back.

>>55079281
Any good GM would make that guy a senator's son or something.

Ive always wanted to have a run where a guy hires the runners to extract himself from somekind of shitty contract to his comm carrier or something. Basically finding his contract for itunes & destroying it.

Milk run: The Johnson wants actual milk from an actual cow, that was milked by hand. He insists he can taste the difference.

Hard mode: It has to be from a non-genetically-modified cow.

>>55079750
Sounds great

>Guy didn't read the terms & conditions
>Agreed to pay his comm carrier a flat portion of his income forever

>>55079754
>Dante Must Die mode: He wants milk from an especially dangerous paracritter.
How do you milk a Juggernaut? carefully, omae.

>>55079844
Exactly. Then RP him as some really wealthy, but generally shitty kinda hipster guy. I dont know why but i picture the dude as an elf with multiple piercings, gauged ears, a beard & a beanie

>>55078449
That sounds great for a street scum game

>>55076753

>Intel makes 9mm

>>55080319
Where do you find rules for street scum?

>>55076768

>I've never played a roleplaying game

>>55080351
IIRC, the changes for the priority values are on a sidebar on the first page of the Character Creation chapter

>>55080367
yeah yeah.

>>55066847
Some Shirt's got a training assault course that need trialling.

clime the wall
jump the gap
shoot the target
ect...


a few "accidents" occur

the accidents are caused by a rival team sent to sabotage the place

the place is damaged in the ensuing fire fight

the Shirt is unhappy,
the rival team is unhappy,
both employers are unhappy,

they all agree the party is to blame

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>>55066847
The milk runs are the ones that happen off camera that the characters occasionally reference to improvise some backstory and reinforce party/crew cohesion at the table. If its a "camera on" run that we bother to actually play through, it's going to be an interesting one.

Now some might argue that therefore if the run looks easy, and we're playing it, the players know that there's more to it, which could lead to metagaming. I would argue in response that this type of metagaming is actually helpful in getting RL first world middle class suburbanites into the paranoid mindset of Shadowrunners.

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>>55066847
ok, so funny story. I'd never heard of food fight until years later. The first DM to introduce the game threw us into an convenience store, and a fight broke out, but having read through it, it wasn't the same thing.

But when I started DMing I of course made a convenience store introduction.

I called it SnackAttack. There a couple having drama in the front. Eventually some gang-bangers burst in through the glass windows and rob the place. ...For like 10 minutes. I drop plenty of clues to the players and let them roll knowledge checks, but never come right out and say it. Anyway, they're all actors and it's a "true life"(tm) drama show about these two teens "from the hood". At the first sign of physical damage, the ganger-actors yell "scattercat" and run for their lives. The lead actress gets pissy and bitches you out while a producer runs in and grabs her trying to save her life from the madmen you are. There's an opportunity to become a minor TV celebrity as an extra on the show.

So far every group has always had the reaction of "gangers waving guns at me? I shoot them". It's supposed to be a lesson about appropriate responses and threat levels.

Anyway, it's a total milk-run that can be solved by simple restraint and there are no real combatants. (Other than you). Even the cops show up late as they're paid to ignore alerts from the area for a bit.

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>>55066847
Name: Tough enough?
-one shot Milk run
-Dirty slums
-Antagonizing some gangers, slightly
MAP: Need to hack together an alley, a door, and a big room. That's it.
PITCH: "This minor crime boss needs some muscle. Big guys, STR or BOD > 4"

MEET: I said I wanted big guys, what is this, the petite party? Eh, you though, you'll do. We get out of the car, we walk up to the door. There will be some goons there, you bust their heads. Kick in the door, look tough. And I mean TOUGH, I want the hounds to curl up and whimper. Hell, the rafters and floorboards should be shitting their pants. I go in, have a nice chat, and we leave. and Hey! No blood unless I give the word. You got that? We ain't starting a war here, we're just having a nice chat.
Pay: 500Y a pop for the big guys. What? No, why would I pay your scrawny elf ass anything? Put a steak in front of you and I'd bet money on the steak.
-You can negotiate to ease the stat limit. Straight up negotiate, each hit eases the requirement by 1. He rolls 8dp, it's kind of his job. If he beats you, take 10% off the pay.
Mission:
-So this is essentially several intimidation checks to keep the gangers from simply shooting you all.
-If there's noise with the goons at the door, someone will take a shot when the door bursts open. Vinny REA+INT=4, when he gets a free action, will ask "Joey, it's me Vinny. Why the unpleasantries? I'm just here to chat!", and joey will hold back his boys.
-If the players, you know, shoot back, then It Is ON and there's a full firefight. Vinny curses you idiots, flees, and you don't get paid.
-If any of you actually take lead and bleed, Vinny will give a $100 bonus and congradulate you for keeping your wits.

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Name: Apple-pie
-One shot Milk run
-Common
-MAP: use the occult bookstore
PITCH: Triads need some muscle. Sounds like protectioneering. Money upfront, go thrash a store and tell the owners "this was preventable." They handed me the money, all 500Y, woo. No meet.
Simple job, you go into the shop of a late-night mom&pop store. She hides in the back calling lonestar, who take 20 minutes to show up. You need to spend ~30 actions to toss the place. With 2 passes by 3 guys that's 5 rounds or just under a minute.
-No catch. Sure, it's illegal and mom&pop will file whatever they have on you, but by and large this is easy money. Bad Karma for sure though.
-They do have some brand new security cameras, glassbreak alarms, motion detectors, and a central comm to process it all. The alarms are off during business hours of course, and the cameras are misconfiguration so they're not recording.

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Name: Infestation
-Edge of barrens
-Super-simple one shot
-Straight combat
NEED: get some rat stats, get map
MAP:
PITCH: So you're chilling in a new pad. You just got some stuff moved in and one of you starts to toke up. WHEN SUDDENLY, Make a perception test (you hear the squealing of rats, like, a lot. And it's loud.)
PREMISE: You're all part of a gang that recently had to find a new location. Hive-mind awakened rat-king doesn't like neighbors, freaks out when one of you lights up a smoke (or activates the cameras/doors/generator/comp), and sends the hoard at you.

The place is boarded up, two-story. It's not delapidated, and poking your head around inside it looks dry with some tattered furniture. Dusty. Abandoned for years.

>>55083821
Nice.

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Name: pickapockofposies
-One shot
-Common->Dumps
PITCH: Pick-pocket snatches mcguffin and hides in ganger-land. They don't like you. Go fetch.
PREMISE: You're couriering a package after a run. You did some shenanigans and have a suitcase that needs to be dropped off to the johnson or you don't get paid. You don't particularly know what's inside, but it's probably [plot centric, figure it out. Like, a super-plague, pure gold, fancy cyber-eyes, contact lenses to fake retina's of a Corp CEO, whatever]. The Johnson really doesn't want you to open it. You're traveling by [plane|train|bus|plot appropriate vehicle] arranged by the johnson and have a layover in Denver. The Johnson is nice and even has lunch on the itinerary with some discretionary funds provided. You grab a bite to eat.
Someone probably should have been paying closer attention, but a dirty kid rushes in, grabs the suitcase, and throws/slides it under a fence/wall/partition where another kid grabs it. The first kid runs (but you probably grab him), the second kid runs through a pre-established path of FUCK-YOU-BIG-PEOPLE. It gets him through a tiny-ass hole in a serious wall that divides two sections of town. He's now in the dirty-dumps. Ganger lands. But you, being the smart runners you are, have a tag on the suitcase and can track it with ease.
Walking around the wall requires going through a security checkpoint. The guards casually don't want to let you pass, and when you manage to convince them, they advise that you go armed and armored. "Those punks regularly take pot-shots at us. Most traffic to this [port] is through the south-side, which is a lot safer."
1/2

>>55083918
So you go and head into ganger land. Immediately there are cat-calls. You're out of place. Some youths throw stuff. Eventually a crowd with similar colors challenges you when you want into a building. They're antagonistic.
If you simply "disperse" them, and you can most certainly hand their ass to them, then a rival gang of tougher punks walks into the building while you're inside and takes over brutally. "Thanks you", but they want what you're here for. Fight your way in and fight your way out. Talk and bribe you way in and it'll crumble eventually and they'll jump you. Stealthing your way in is perfectly legit, but there are a LOT of fucking people in there.
The mice have a small cubby under the stairs on the third floor where they're trying to prybar the suitcase open.

Hackers: You have to defend the digital locks. Some of the mice have basic hacking, but you face MAJOR static and a faulty connection to the suitcase itself.

Remember, you start in C (or even B) territory. A transport terminal for people with cash. You're traveling. No assault rifles, no mil-spec armor. Just what you can conceal.
2/2

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Name: Crazy Eddie McFixerkins
-A number of one shot jobs
-Affluent to Bourgeoisie
-Biggest issue is that most of this is in civilized lands, a problem if you're sinless
PREMISE: Introduce them to a fixer mid-game. A real friendly guy. Asks if they'd be interested in any gigs he has. He's an wannabe fixer catering to the wealthy and prestigious and generally clueless. This is sort of a meta-mission. They're kinda like fake missions. I mean, they pay, there's struggle, have risk, sometimes a twist, sometimes opportunity. But all in all he's a wannabe fixer and these are bad jobs.
Name: A middle classer wants his neighbor's dog killed.
PITCH: I got some wetworks for you. The target is a K-9 unit patrolling the defensive perimeter of a facility in the Elmwood district. You in?
CATCH: The neighbor is constantly watching and has his dog chipped. YES, a docwagon competitor services pets. Lonestar is REALLY quick to respond, this is B turf. But the cop is honestly bored about responding to pissy neighbors.
Name: Rival vegan grocery stores pay to drench the other in meat products
PITCH: Sounds like some corporations declared war. You boys ready for a stealth assault that'll knock out an entire corp's inventory?
MEET: At a B class coffee shop. A pair of middle aged ladies are at a table. One's nervous, the other is angry. "'Spirit of Nepal' The store on 13th and Hickory is despicable. We want you to drench the place with animal byproducts." The nervous one tokes up. "we want it everywhere, in the freezers, on the shelves, in the back room. We want them to need a shovel. We can offer you 500Y"
CATCH: The owner is a magician, he does the whole "astral tracking" thing, presses charges if he can, and sends a spirit to attack you if he can't.


1/3

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>>55083955
Name: A panicking corporate hound needs a dead hooker to disappear. NOW.
PITCH: Oh boy, wow, yeah, I've got them on the line right now. yeah, yeah... I know, Shut up Jimmy! ...Friends, compatriots, listen, I got the real deal on the other line. A Johnson needs a body to disappear. Real money to be had. But it has to be NOW!
The John is out in an Affluent hotel, completely freaking out. She's ODed and dead dead in the tub.
CATCH: The hooker's union will investigate. This is a lesson in covering your trails. If caught, the check bounces and the john is kicked out by his wife, exiled from the corporation, and is a penniless drifter.
Opportunity: blackmail the john for the rest of his days.
Name: Grannies cat is stuck in a tree. No, seriously. Yes it pays. ...30Y
Stop calling me Mrs. Johnson, for the last time I'm Mrs. Robertson!
Opportunity: Free tea and cookies.
Name: Nosy Neighbors
PITCH: You up for some corporate espionage? A Johnson wants to know whose moving in next door to his code shop. This is on the shady end of town, so you may want to pack some heat.
PREMISE: Someone gets you to investigate a company that rented out a store in a C area. It's a prime runner group that's prepping for an assault on an armored shipment. They are not happy with the attention. But they're willing to bribe you into silence.
Name: Beat up the bully by the skatepark. 200Y. Rich boys...
PITCH: The johnson needs some muscle to rough up a meathead that's encroaching on his turf.
CATCH: Nothing really, but you're starting a scuffle in affluent society and you're SINless
Name: Clear out vagrants from the sewers
PITCH: Hey, here's one you might be interested in, the johnson wants you to evict some loafers the hard way.
CATCH: This is the same job as Evicted Moles, but pays a better rate.
2/3

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>>55083966
Name: Play bodyguard to a wannabe trid-star as he goes to some award ceremony, and fake a rabid fan attack, draw blood, let him kick your ass.
PITCH: Any of you actors?
CATCHes: a real hit is placed on him at the same time; a fellow action hero tries to protect him, stealing the glory; the wannabe actor is unaware and reacts badly; The star is "loved" by some and the rabid one gains notoriety;
Name: Dad calls the super-cops
PITCH: This ones urgent fellas, I've got a kidnapping in progress. The johnsons on the line and doesn't trust lonestar.
CATCH: The girl doesn't want to go back and calls lonestar when you show up. Her boyfriend has a taser.
Name: Dad calls the matrix police
PITCH: I got a hacker gig yo! You guys have a leet hacker, right? He wants to meet you in a chat room. 500Y!
MEET: These boys are abusing my daughter! They are RUINING her life. Well they dun gooffed, I want you to run a backtrace, and make them pay. CONSEQUENCES WILL NEVER BE THE SAME! Here's her accessID and password.
CATCH: So she gave out her pass, and hundreds of people have accessed her comm. The information is already out. Browsing the matrix reveals that she's whiny and emo, some videos, some porn, and yeah, lots of people bullying her. Inside, there's programs in there acting as backdoors, webcam hacks, and some commentary by the people playing around there.

3/3

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>>55083976
Name: Yeah, I know a guy, er, girl
PITCH: Johnson needs a face to smooth things over with an associate of his. I know the target, someone of a female persuasion would work best. Big ticket item here. The meet is just prior to the gig.
CATCH: Eddy's nerdy friend needs an escort to not gag while he takes her out on a date, and then to an Ares weapons trade-show afterwards to impress his Ex. Yeah, he's a junior engineer on a new Surface-to-Air missile. Min 4 CHA, needs to make a passable attempt at nerdy conversation. His Ex is also an engineer who will take it personally and hunt you down to the ends of the earth. And he really is willing to pay. A grand. Remember that Eddy sells it as a meet the johnson and face-gig. The nerdy friend thinks it's a dating service.

4/3

>>55083985
>>55083976
>>55083966
>>55083955
Crazy Eddie McFixerkins is supposed to be inter-mission comic relief of non-missions. Play them fast and loose. It's a gag.

In-game, it's essentially fixer SPAM and to that extent I set up a fake gmail account and sent these pitches to people mid session.

But any one of these could turn serious if the players fuck up an ID check or their fake SIN gets tagged and the cops start asking questions. Remember that the cops in the Affluent area are glorified mall rent-a-cops, and don't even get guns. Your type aren't even supposed to be able to GET into the gated communities.

...oh yeah, btw:

AAA: MegaCorporate turf, federal buildings, military bases.
A: Affluent. Smaller corporations or subsidies, arcologies, high society.
B: Bourgeoisie. Upper-class, professionals, polite society.
C: Common Folk. Middle-class America, Greasy spoons, mom&pop shops, rarer and rarer each year.
D: Dirty Slums. Gang-turf, lots of excess people with nothing to do. The SINless don't get above this level.
E: Edge of Barrens. The down-and-outers, the desperate, or those that enjoy the liberty of the fringe.
F: Fuck-you barren part of the Barrens, Wilderness. Mostly, there's no one here. It's abandoned buildings and leftovers from a more prosperous and populous age. Lots of empty suburbs and burned out buildings. Specifically in Seattle, this is a section of town that no-one pays the cops to patrol, and officials have given up on it. The law here is entirely what you can make it.

>>55076519
This. Detailed fluff is alright in source books, I guess? but honestly? Fuck it. Whatever.

I play cyberpunk and shadowrun for exploring the sociopolitical clusterfuck which is near-future corporate-rule anarchy dystopia and operating in the urban jungle. All the fucking details in the toys is cute and all and probably makes some sob's dick hard, but it's just meaningless fluff to me.

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Name: The Dumps
-One shot Milk run
-Edge of barrens
-Non-mission. There's no combat here. It's more or less a red herring.
PITCH: "Alright, ALRIGHT! Just lay off... aheh, hey guys. I've got a job for you. Some friendly bikers have a proposition. Uh, could you accept this one for me? We're in the [whatnot] bar in Commonland. Meeting NOW sounds like a good idea."
MEET: The johnson is a group of go-gangers. They're re-selling a job to you, as they don't want to fuck with Aztlan, but they try not to let on to that. As you enter, they let go of your fixer, who thanks you on the way out. Most of the bikers glare at you angrily but one is sitting at a table. He's more serious and cool than the rest and he acts as the johnson: "The job is simple; bust into a distribution center of Aztlan, steal some trucks. All 4 semi-trucks and trailers. Drive them through the barrens. Lose any tails you may have picked up. There's this big sewer system on the edge. Put the payload down into the sewers. We'll pick it up later once the heat is off. Drive the trucks back to our pad and collect your payment."
-So they're skimming 3K off the top, and paying you 7K for the job.
-Aztlan hired them, and has the distribution center more or less open to robbery.
-the trucks hold barrels of radioactive waste that have been infected with astral bacteria. You're looking at magical industrial waste. It is hot hot hot with radiation, toxicity, and mad mojo.
-There are 4 truck trailers with barrels and boxes full of the stuff, unloading it will take at least an hour.
-The only catch is if you ever open the barrels then you'll probably catch a bad awakened bug, get in contact with toxins, and/or catch a bad dose of radiation.
-The FOUR SEMI-TRUCKS are worth a lot of money. The go-gangers have laid claim to them, but Aztlan comes and eventually reclaims them all. Politely at first, then "fuck you, gimme the trucks or you'll wake up a leper".

>>55074233
>You say that like SR's non-dystpic setting is the best reason not to play it. Rather than, say...
But it IS a dystopia. Corporate rule, for-profit cops, a section of town that's completely lawless and disregarded.

>>Flawed central mechanics.
eh, the dicepool thing is fine. Add two stats or whatever and roll that many dice. It's ok.

>>Everything way to complicated.
Yep.

>>Terrible in-world lingo.
Oh yeah. Fucking "johnsons", matrix, deck, pan, smartlink, accessID, SIN. We HAVE the Internet, just call it the Internet. There's no fucking point to making up your own super-internet.

>>game-within-a-game cyberstuff for no good reason.
Yep. They've struggled with this in every fucking edition. I think it's a fundemental problem with any cyberpunk RPG though.

>>Overreliance on derived statistics.
meh, that's a pretty minor complaint.

No, shadowrun sucks because it has fucking ELVES and DRAGONS. The source authors wank themselves to the idea they're making a living breathing world like people actually give two shits about their OC's that pop up all over the place in their source books. And the mechanics suck-ass because the game was made by dreaming art majors rather than anyone with any bit of math-sense or the skill to do some game modeling. Or heaven forbid run some statistics on the damn thing.

>>55084465
>But it IS a dystopia. Corporate rule, for-profit cops, a section of town that's completely lawless and disregarded.
As I mentioned later, it's Baby's first dystopia. It's the lightest, comfiest dystopia out there.

>>55075799
>>55075828
Well, this time the dystopia will reach the rich too.
Also for more awful societal changes: robot soldiers can hold down an armed people easily.

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Why is it that every Shadowrun thread pissy neckbeards come out of the woodwork to grace us with their shitty opinions? It's not enough that they don't like the game, the NEED to let everyone know they are having badwrongfun.

>>55088675
Because Shadowrun is the only "Cyberpunk" game that's widely available and I'm salty as fuck I can't find anything else.

>>55088889
Cry about it somewhere else. Besides Cyberpunk 2020 exists.

>>55088981
No one plays it though.

>>55088675
Is that why I never see shadowrun threads? Recently I've been playing the shadowrun RPGs (If that's the correct term, I dunno what you'd really call them) and it's got me interested in the TTRPG, and I realized there are so few threads about the game besides the general.

>>55088889
You can also get a pdf of Cyberspace, which is fantastic btw

>>55089084
Cyberspace has a really cool cyberware system and that's about it. Its setting is really lackluster and almost hilarious in some places (Constantly alluding to alien abductions, America annexing Ontario, etc). And by god all those charts.

>>55089069
The mashup of cyberpunk and fantasy elements can be at times "schizophrenic" for a lack of a better word and this tends to alienate alot of people who either want pure fantasy or pure cyberpunk.

Also while the core mechanics of the game are solid, the actual rules are a tangled mess, combined with the poor editing of the rule books leaves the game with a high barrier of entry.

Still if you enjoyed the CRPGs I would still recommend you give it a try, but you'll have to find a GM who already knows what they're doing, otherwise you'll spend the entire session thumbing through the rulebooks.

>>55089121
GURPS exists, make your own setting. Or don't I don't really care, just stop shitting up /tg/ please.

>>55089153
No Shadowrun is the cause of all my misery

>>55089201
>Shadowrun is the cause of all my misery
No that would be autism. Fortunately there is a cure. I'm prescribing you 9mm of lead taken intra-craneously.

>>55071722
>Literally fetching the Johnson milk.
The Johnson wants you to milk her?

>>55089418
Sounds magical.

>>55088675
Because while the game DOES suck, we still play it. Because it's the most popular, it's what our friends are invested in, and/or it sucks less then the alternatives.

I've been meaning to give interface zero a try.

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I once had a tourist want to tour the dangerous gangscape of anarchist Berlin, so she hired Shadowrunners for it.

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>>55090553
>I've been meaning to give interface zero a try.
NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOO