Shadowing of the Running kind. [Shadowrun 4e]

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Shadowing of the Running kind. [Shadowrun 4e]

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dvorak: Sep 11, 2003; WARNING: Temporal rift detected!

Haha, not even a full 24h and it's already fully funded. Shadowrun fans are awesome.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:33

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 03:53

Ignite Memories: Feb 27, 2005

poo poo yes. Please continue your support, people, he'll do a mac release at 425,000.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:53

YOTC: Nov 18, 2005; Damn stupid newbie

pw pw pw posted:

poo poo yes. Please continue your support, people, he'll do a mac release at 425,000.

That will be like 15 minutes from now at the rate it's going.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 18:02

dvorak: Sep 11, 2003; WARNING: Temporal rift detected!

pw pw pw posted:

poo poo yes. Please continue your support, people, he'll do a mac release at 425,000.

Done and done.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 19:13

Ignite Memories: Feb 27, 2005

Hot drat. I cannot wait for this game.

Hell, it could be SNES shadowrun with a character creator and a level editor and I would still love it.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 20:08

Moto42: Jul 14, 2006

Keep throwing money at them. The SNES music was wonderfull and for a cool million we get more music and a better editor.

Speaking of cost of gasoline in Rowanda, I'm putting together a game IRL and want one of the themes to be "Seemingly worthless things _{(ie: the PCs)} rising to their full, awesome potential". I want to give them a list of about 20 or so street-names to choose for their characters, each of which ties into this theme of seeming worthless or having fallen from grace but having hidden potential.

The only ideas I have so far are:
*Phoenix - Rises from the ashes.
*Trash/Treasure - One man's trash is another man's treasure.
*Diamond - The diamond in the rough.

Any other ideas?

# ? Apr 7, 2012 08:29

Mystic Mongol: Jan 5, 2007; Your life's been thrown in disarray already--I wouldn't want you to feel pressured.; College Slice

Diamonds, Treasure, and the legendary symbol of rebirth... three handles that are seemingly worthless!

I'd suggest going full on punk... handles like "The Kid", "Lefty", "Cocky", "Big Ed", "Smokey", "Black & Decker", and "Turkey" all have a working-class sound to them, but they all made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

# ? Apr 7, 2012 19:18

Ivan Shitskin: Nov 29, 2002

Personally, I'd avoid drawing a too literal connection between their names/identities and their destinies. Think more "show" not "tell." If they're working class stiffs, then they should start that way.

You could also take and translate Mexican drug cartel nicknames from media reports. These are often used by pretty powerful bosses/paramilitary leaders, but who started as low-level drug traffickers, so their names have a working class sound and are even sometimes pretty ridiculous, like "El Brad Pitt." The head of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin Guzman (arguably the most powerful criminal lord on the planet and one of the world's richest men) goes by "Shorty."

Other Mexican drug lord nicknames: Nacho, Ant, Strawberry, Crutches, Z-3, Barbie, Smurf, Bunny Commander, Fatty, Oyster. They'll even be given feminine names at first, before you prove your mettle. They'll also use several different nicknames that change over time, making capture and prosecution more difficult for the authorities.

# ? Apr 7, 2012 20:26

Moto42: Jul 14, 2006

Meh, I just thought it would be a bit of interesting flavor and wasn't planning on chaining them to the list.
I like the drug cartel nicknames idea, it'll be my go-to for when I need a name for some important thug.

# ? Apr 8, 2012 23:03

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

You could also go through the American Mafia's Underworld Nicknames list and find some stuff that's appropriate.

Nothing like "Lord High Executioner", which was Albert Anastasia of Murder Incorporated's nickname. Never knew that Prohibition mobsters were fans of Gilbert & Sullivan.

# ? Apr 9, 2012 01:33

Solid Poopsnake: Mar 27, 2010; by Nyc_Tattoo; Nap Ghost

I never really liked the idea of Shadowrunners operating under self-assigned nicknames. For some reason, it reminds me of BBSing teenagers, and that just doesn't smack of a serious criminal community to me. Now, there's nothing wrong with a nickname being associated with their reputation, such as "oh, yeah, they call him 'the Butcher', real bloodthirsty type". But if I'm hiring deniable assets for a paramilitary raid and the guy sitting across from me introduces himself as "The Butcher" or "Turkey" or "DarkSith2057", I'm going to have some pretty serious reservations about hiring the dude.

Generally speaking, when playing runners, my group and I tend to operate under the primary identities used when on the job or associated with elements of said job. Of course, I generally like to use crazy layers of assorted fake IDs, with at least three layers associated with each major facet of life (beyond my actual, born ID). But that's just me, and maybe other players wouldn't be as into tracking/making up that sort of thing.

Solid Poopsnake fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Apr 12, 2012

# ? Apr 12, 2012 00:50

Misandu: Feb 28, 2008; STOP.
Hammer Time.

Geekkake posted:

I never really liked the idea of Shadowrunners operating under self-assigned nicknames. For some reason, it reminds me of BBSing teenagers, and that just doesn't smack of a serious criminal community to me. Now, there's nothing wrong with a nickname being associated with their reputation, such as "oh, yeah, they call him 'the Butcher', real bloodthirsty type". But if I'm hiring deniable assets for a paramilitary raid and the guy sitting across from me introduces himself as "The Butcher" or "Turkey" or "DarkSith2057", I'm going to have some pretty serious reservations about hiring the dude.

Generally speaking, when playing runners, my group and I tend to operate under the primary identities used when on the job or associated with elements of said job. Of course, I generally like to use crazy layers of assorted fake IDs, with at least three layers associated with each major facet of life (beyond my actual, born ID). But that's just me, and maybe other players wouldn't be as into tracking/making up that sort of thing.

I always got the impression that a lot of Runners DID start out as BBSing teenagers.

# ? Apr 13, 2012 00:50

Solid Poopsnake: Mar 27, 2010; by Nyc_Tattoo; Nap Ghost

Misandu posted:

I always got the impression that a lot of Runners DID start out as BBSing teenagers.

Well, certainly the 2050 deckers. But the 2072 hackers?

Facebook.

# ? Apr 13, 2012 03:27

PunkBoy: Aug 22, 2008; You wanna get through this?

Random question: What were the big metaplot events in 4e? I know there was Emergeance and then the Ghost Cartels, but I can't think of any other big things going on in the universe. I assume whatever was planned was scrapped when the writer issues came up, but I wonder if there were any ideas of what was to come.

# ? Apr 16, 2012 07:48

InfiniteJesters: Jan 26, 2012

PunkBoy posted:

Random question: What were the big metaplot events in 4e? I know there was Emergeance and then the Ghost Cartels, but I can't think of any other big things going on in the universe. I assume whatever was planned was scrapped when the writer issues came up, but I wonder if there were any ideas of what was to come.

Writer issues? What happened? Last time I really played Shadowrun was 3E and that was years ago.

# ? Apr 16, 2012 08:23

Gobbeldygook: May 13, 2009; Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!

InfiniteJesters posted:

Writer issues? What happened? Last time I really played Shadowrun was 3E and that was years ago.

Catalyst's owner, Lorne Coleman, decided to spend all of the money on ale, whores, and a mansion. No-one got paid for a very long time and a lot of long-time Shadowrun writers quit.

Here's a quote from Bobby "Ancient History" Derie. The take-away point is that most metaplots don't get very far because of the high turnover among both writers and developers.

quote:

There's a bit of truth to that, and has been for some time. I can't speak for Battletech, but for SR at least a major issue was the turnover in lead developers and the loss of established freelancers; the former are responsible for planning out the metaplot and the latter are the ones that actually drive it.

I basically came in at the very, very end of the old edition, when the new edition was already being written. I don't know if Rob had an explicit master three-year plan for the metaplot, but I know they had an ambitious planned-out schedule of books (that slipped fairly quickly) and a vision for how he wanted the game to be, at least in style and attitude. Peter Taylor had a more concrete plan - or at least, had more opportunity during his tenure to plot out storylines and books - so much so that I would argue it was still his basic bookplan being followed for most of the products under John Dunn and Jason Hardy. By the end, things were very bad - I think I've mentioned that the reason I argued so strongly for Harlequin's Gambit is because the artifact storyline, as plotted, didn't actually have a conclusion, and there was very little plotting going on in the freelancer chats beyond the next book.

Still, there were a few of us freelancers who - simply because we were writing everything, collaborating on almost all of the books, discussing what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it - were driving all of the details of the metaplot, even if we had to adapt it to the book schedule. It was definitely ascended fanboy time, and I was probably one of the worst offenders in that regard. I had a hand or grimy finger in drat near every SR book that came out for five years, whether I got paid for it or not, and I used the opportunity to write about the organizations and characters that interested me, tied my pieces together between books and tied a lot of that together with old, old stuff from earlier editions...and sometimes that was cool, and sometimes that was bad, and sometimes I actively fought against metaplot from on high or developed by other writers. The same is true, of course, for other freelancers, several of whom had far longer tenures than I did.

I think the amount of investment I had in what I wrote was probably a major source of friction when things got bad on the development side of things. When we were writing Sixth World Almanac - and ye gods we knew that was a pile of poo poo even in development - they installed a glorified factchecker to go behind me and second-guess a lot of stuff I wrote. We...did not get along well. I liked the new freelancers at first, but some of their ideas and their overall knowledge of the setting was generally pretty poor. Then there were the outright insult-projects. It's really hard sometimes to let go of something when you've spent a lot of time and energy working on it.

# ? Apr 16, 2012 12:51

SerCypher: May 10, 2006; Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...; Fun Shoe

Hey This might not be the right spot but I had a couple of rules questions that I was hoping to get some input on.

If someone has a DocWagon Contract of Gold or higher, and they activate their bracelet, will docwagon just come and do firstaid on them? If so is there any sort of guidelines of what sort of rating the DocWagon personnel have for the check?

Also, If someone with multiple initiative passes surprises someone, do they get to use all of their passes before the other person can respond?

# ? Apr 17, 2012 03:26

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Yes, they will. However, 'activating' is a wide concept. The bracelet has a bio-monitor, so if your vitals do something that said "help, I'm being hosed up and might die" such as sustain a lot of physical damage or (most often used as a rule of thumb) lose all your physical condition and go into overbleed.

I don't know if there are guidelines per se, but I think one of the contact lists (in runners companion or maybe contacts and adventures) include a docwagon paramedic.

I'm a GM, and here's what I think about the situation: If you have a Gold contract they wouldn't send a complete clown, so I'm figuring the dedicated paramedic on the team would have (at the very least) Logic 3 and First Aid/Medicine 2, possibly higher scores and/or specializations.

Other than that, standard rules apply: If you're in a fight they send a High Threat Response team, and if they come later than their guarenteed response time, bringing you back from the dead is free!

And no, the rules specifically state they may only take advantage of surprise in the first pass, unless I'm sorely mistaken.

# ? Apr 17, 2012 17:21

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

DocWagon is one of my favorite things in SR.

For actual rules it depends on the situation, for high drama moments of 'we're pinned down, quick, shoot me in the ribs so my beacon goes off as under heavy stress!' or 'aw poo poo we did it but now Jerry's bleeding out we need help fast!' DocWagon is kinda our deus ex machina where they do whatever they need to in the scene.

For more normal situations we use a rule of thumb that higher grade means better doctors so we wind up using about what Tias said.

# ? Apr 17, 2012 20:13

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Glitterbomber posted:

DocWagon is one of my favorite things in SR.

For actual rules it depends on the situation, for high drama moments of 'we're pinned down, quick, shoot me in the ribs so my beacon goes off as under heavy stress!' or 'aw poo poo we did it but now Jerry's bleeding out we need help fast!' DocWagon is kinda our deus ex machina where they do whatever they need to in the scene.

For more normal situations we use a rule of thumb that higher grade means better doctors so we wind up using about what Tias said.

You know, I've been trying to find out where the armed ambulance trope of DocWagon came from. I know that RTG's Cyberpunk had Trauma Team (and their competitors, REO Meatwagon) which did the same thing. I know that the Hardwired supplement for Cyberpunk even makes a joke about the trope...

Walter Jon Williams posted:

Heavily-armed parameds who wade into firefights to rescue wounded clients? Not bloody likely. Ambulances, if they show up at all, will happily stay out of range until the fight is over, then charge everyone through the nose for their services. A lot of ambulance companies are owned by thirdmen, and
they�ve gotta pay for their mansions, armored limosines, and showgirls somehow.

So, where did this idea spawn from? I don't recall it coming up in any of the Gibson trilogy. Is it a game-specific concept?

# ? Apr 17, 2012 21:11

Moto42: Jul 14, 2006

I bet some playtester came up with it in the early days of either SR or Cyberpunk as a get rich scheme for his character.

# ? Apr 17, 2012 21:17

SerCypher: May 10, 2006; Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...; Fun Shoe

I feel like the whole doc-wagon thing is a mechanic to let the team live in situations where otherwise it would be a TPK. If the whole team has doc-wagon contracts you can just have them wake up in a hospital.

Tias posted:

Other than that, standard rules apply: If you're in a fight they send a High Threat Response team, and if they come later than their guarenteed response time, bringing you back from the dead is free!

How can DocWagon bring you back from the dead? I was under the impression you couldn't do that (easily) in shadowrun.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 03:58

tokenbrownguy: Apr 1, 2010

Don't they take mind scans and really, really invasive tissue samples so they can clone you?

# ? Apr 18, 2012 05:06

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

SerCypher posted:

How can DocWagon bring you back from the dead? I was under the impression you couldn't do that (easily) in shadowrun.

Presumably the same way we can get somebody who's got a gaping chest wound, no heartbeat, and isn't breathing up and around again, only with better tech to do it with. I don't think they've got braintapes and poo poo, though, so if you sustain irreparable cranial trauma or something you're out of luck. Clones though, yeah, if you've got a high grade enough contract they'll keep a braindead clone of you on hand for organ transplants.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 06:00

Moto42: Jul 14, 2006

If you want braintapes; you'll either need to cut a deal with a dragon or come to the Eclipse Phase thread.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 08:49

dirtycajun: Aug 27, 2004; SUCKING DICKS AND SQUEEZING TITTIES

I feel like that armed paramedic trope came from crazy fuckers like my medic preceptor from when I was training to become a paramedic. He at one time kicked me out of the ambulance with some gear to treat a patient while he chased the guy who stabbed my patient down with an ambulance and pinned him to a wall, with the ambulance.

Tactical medics are all hosed in the head.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 09:22

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

SerCypher posted:

I feel like the whole doc-wagon thing is a mechanic to let the team live in situations where otherwise it would be a TPK. If the whole team has doc-wagon contracts you can just have them wake up in a hospital.

How can DocWagon bring you back from the dead? I was under the impression you couldn't do that (easily) in shadowrun.

Well, when you're in damage overflow, you're technically dying. Someone stabilizing you when you're about to lose your last overflox box is technically bringing you back from the brink of death - akin to having CPR restore your heartbeat or suchlike.

Also, I just realized you asked how many dice the paramedic would roll to heal, and that means including their medkit. Seeing as the costs aren't prohibitive for a good medkit, I would assume their ambulances carry at least rating 4 medkits.

In that case, using my example from before, the roll would have a dice pool of at least 9, assuming Logic 3+FA/Med 2+Medkit Rating 4, but probably higher.

dirtycajun posted:

I feel like that armed paramedic trope came from crazy fuckers like my medic preceptor from when I was training to become a paramedic. He at one time kicked me out of the ambulance with some gear to treat a patient while he chased the guy who stabbed my patient down with an ambulance and pinned him to a wall, with the ambulance.

Tactical medics are all hosed in the head.

Whoah, you can not not tell me more stories about that guy, or at least link to someplace you do!

# ? Apr 18, 2012 14:21

dirtycajun: Aug 27, 2004; SUCKING DICKS AND SQUEEZING TITTIES

Tias posted:

Whoah, you can not not tell me more stories about that guy, or at least link to someplace you do!

I may write a thread someday. The sad fact is I am not a very good story teller when it comes to writing things and it is the reason why I have never posted about the crazier stuff that has happened around me like the paramedic stuff or the 50 or so worst gaming experiences that hand down would put that thread to shame. I think I need to hire a writer for these to embellish them properly.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 21:29

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

I believe the person experiencing something will probably always be the best to tell of it, what you need is probably practice. That said, I'd be glad to give you some pointers - telling me about it is reward enough

But we're getting a bit off track, here.. Can people here who've GM'ed tell about how it went down when Docwagon/Crashcart have appeared in their games? It may give SerCypher and the rest of us some inspiration.

# ? Apr 18, 2012 21:42

SerCypher: May 10, 2006; Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...; Fun Shoe

Tias posted:

But we're getting a bit off track, here.. Can people here who've GM'ed tell about how it went down when Docwagon/Crashcart have appeared in their games? It may give SerCypher and the rest of us some inspiration.

I am sort of out of practice GMing, I used to run lots of shadowrun a few years ago. The wierd thing is though, I can't ever remember any of my old groups ever needing to use DocWagon. Everyone had at least 9-10 armor, so usually it was all just stun damage. This game though I am playing with people with no experience, and using default characters from the book, pretty much all of which have lined coats.

If one of us, or them (depending on who was GMing), took physical damage, something was going very wrong.

SerCypher fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Apr 19, 2012

# ? Apr 19, 2012 01:45

Blooshoo: May 15, 2004; I'm a newbie

I'm looking to try Shadowrun(and other pnp games)out, but the PnP in my area either isn't very vocal or doesn't exist so much. Is there a website or resource for that? Or barring that a goon irc group to meet and play with people via irc or other means?

# ? Apr 19, 2012 03:14

SerCypher: May 10, 2006; Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...; Fun Shoe

Blooshoo posted:

I'm looking to try Shadowrun(and other pnp games)out, but the PnP in my area either isn't very vocal or doesn't exist so much. Is there a website or resource for that? Or barring that a goon irc group to meet and play with people via irc or other means?

I would love to play shadowrun by any method.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 03:18

Blooshoo: May 15, 2004; I'm a newbie

SerCypher posted:

I would love to play shadowrun by any method.

Well are you offering to run a irc game ! you got the experience! I feel like a lot of goons would be interested in playing it

# ? Apr 19, 2012 03:27

dvorak: Sep 11, 2003; WARNING: Temporal rift detected!

Yeah I'm really interested in playing in an online Shadowrun game. There's a couple FLGS in my area but no one plays Shadowrun or wants to, far as I can tell.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 04:49

burnishedfume: Mar 8, 2011; You really are a louse...

Never played it before, but the game over on Kickstarter got me curious. I'd love to play if you guys don't mind a noobie.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 04:50

Blooshoo: May 15, 2004; I'm a newbie

If no one else takes the reigns I'll try to get a game going on irc next month. Have to acquire all the stuff. I imagine it'd be better for someone who knows what the heck they are doing to run the game but beggars and choosers and all that. Any of you guys who are interested in it hit me up on aim (blooshooirl) or pop on over to the irc #shadowrun on synirc and we can try to lock this thing down.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 04:59

dvorak: Sep 11, 2003; WARNING: Temporal rift detected!

I know we won't be able to use this in the next couple months even, but I saw this in the 4E thread and had to share it here. http://roll20.net/

Rules agnostic virtual tabletop. Looks like they're even going to add Shadowrun-based tools to it. Very cool.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 05:03

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

I'm going to attempt GM'ing an IRC game later this year, and have (I think) 3 players, room for one or two if you can handle me noobing out and the pace lagging slightly

# ? Apr 19, 2012 07:30

Grey Hunter: Oct 17, 2007; Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets

I have an ultimate licence for the Fantasy Grounds 2 client. - that means anyone who downloads the light client could connect to me and play for free.

The free Shadowrun module looks pretty bare bones, but it should be workable. it counts sucesses and glitches up for you automatically.

Setting up the characters would take a little time, but nothing crazy.

I'm GMT+1 (Dam BST!), and willing to GM a game if enough people are interested. Skill levels of the players need not be high, I'm dam rusty myself.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 07:40

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 03:53

SerCypher: May 10, 2006; Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...; Fun Shoe

Grey Hunter posted:

I have an ultimate licence for the Fantasy Grounds 2 client. - that means anyone who downloads the light client could connect to me and play for free.

The free Shadowrun module looks pretty bare bones, but it should be workable. it counts sucesses and glitches up for you automatically.

Setting up the characters would take a little time, but nothing crazy.

I'm GMT+1 (Dam BST!), and willing to GM a game if enough people are interested. Skill levels of the players need not be high, I'm dam rusty myself.

I have basically no experience doing games online, but I would love to try one. That's the only thing stopping me from GMing one myself, I have no real idea of where even to begin.

So yeah I'm all on board if you decide to do one.

# ? Apr 19, 2012 13:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Shadowing of the Running kind. [Shadowrun 4e]

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