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Rockopolis posted:
Come up with two or three really good concepts with strong backstories and just adjust for the game. It may help doing it when there are no games recruiting since you can let things stew a bit without worries of a deadline. Most of my new character concepts are made without a game in mind, then I adjust to the setting. Several of the characters I've submitted for games have backgrounds and/or character sheets that were from other failed games. Half-Pint, my sub for Martello's game has 90% of the same background(just location shifted from Seattle to NYC) as Half-Pint from Shadowrun:Vengance from last year? just dropped him to 300 BP and rebuilt accordingly. I straight up said, I was reusing Half-Pint because he is perfect for the setting. I do make new characters and backgrounds but some of my existing backgrounds I really like so why toss it out just because the original game fell apart at the first encounter.
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Apr 17, 2013 05:03
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Nyaa posted:I wish more GM these days would run a Shadowrun setting that isn't about a group of criminals working infinite side quests for Mr.Johnson for money. Last time I GMd SR, my players ran a small private investigation business.
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Apr 17, 2013 07:15
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Nyaa posted:I wish more GM these days would run a Shadowrun setting that isn't about a group of criminals working infinite side quests for Mr.Johnson for money. Isn't it kind of the appeal though? A game where you're not really playing as the good guys or the bad guys, but working on the grey lines of society. I mean, it's got roots in the whole noire genre, so the whole anti-hero thing seems to fit the setting like a glove.
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Apr 17, 2013 07:53
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Mordaedil posted:Isn't it kind of the appeal though? A game where you're not really playing as the good guys or the bad guys, but working on the grey lines of society. It can be, but you can run a lot more then that. Besides, the problem is that a vague amount of SR4's fluff doesn't even point to grey lines, but rather amoral sociopathic mercenaries who are ice cold inside and don't have a single iota of passion, just mirrored sunglasses and scowls.
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Apr 17, 2013 08:19
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Thanks for the advice. Guess I'll keep plinking away at it. I get the weirdest idea fragments sometime.  Had anyone ever done D&D with a Shadowrun style? Ebberon? It seems perfect for the Drow in the Forgotten Realms. They already wear mirrorshades to go on surface raids and they're filed with insanely ruthless feuding great houses, and a crushingly oppressed underclass. Probably would use the D&D system, but you could probably call it Menzoberrunzan 
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Apr 17, 2013 15:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:Besides, the problem is that a vague amount of SR4's fluff doesn't even point to grey lines, but rather amoral sociopathic mercenaries who are ice cold inside and don't have a single iota of passion, just mirrored sunglasses and scowls. Perfect for roleplaying! 
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Apr 17, 2013 15:04
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I am actually dead inside, also I am actually made entirely of mirrorshades. I would also say that plenty of people have and continue to play D&D as Shadowrun. I mean, D&D is a game about (among other things, yes yes) invading secure facilities, dealing with the guards, and escaping with loot. Or extracting high-value hostages from their current dungeon of residence. Or cleaning up ghoul infestations. Meanwhile you steal everything that isn't nailed down, obsess over your gear, and spellcasters break everything. And something something psychic combat is like decking.
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Apr 17, 2013 15:16
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We've talked a little about form-fitting body armor around here. I'm wondering what people's opinions on it are. As a player, obviously I'd love to have it, but as a GM I'm not so thrilled about my players walking around like foot-mobile juggernauts. Even with More Lethal Combat, +2 DV and no Physical-Stun damage conversion, a guy wearing an Armored Jacket on top of a Form-Fitting Full Body Suit has Ballistic Armor of 14. Basically I'm trying to decide whether I should allow it or not in my NYC Metro street scum game. I'm leaning towards no.
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Apr 17, 2013 16:14
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I think one solution was to houserule that it doesn't stack with normal armor. You can wear it with non-armored clothing to full effect, but putting it under additional armor doesn't give you any added benefit.
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Apr 17, 2013 16:33
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That's not a bad solution, but the entire point of Form-Fitting Body Armor is that it does stack. A Full-Body Suit costs 1.6k and has 6/2 armor, and that's with a hood and little booties. Contrast an Armor Vest, which says that it's "designed to be worn under regular clothing without displaying any bulk." Costs 600, has 6/4 armor. Hm. Maybe, short of removing it, you could apply the rule for Encumbrance to armor protection. If you're wearing FFBA with another piece of armor, it stacks, but only half (round down) its value. A guy with a Lined Coat and an inconspicuous Half-Body Suit would have 8/4 armor with the coat on, 4/1 with it off.
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Apr 17, 2013 17:47
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Nyaa posted:I wish more GM these days would run a Shadowrun setting that isn't about a group of criminals working infinite side quests for Mr.Johnson for money. I prefer to let the players drive the story and do pretty much whatever they want. Then they have more fun because they're not being pushed or pulled a certain way by me. If you want to steer players away from being ice cold criminals, make their actions have consequences. Make it obvious that their life of hardcore crime will eventually lead to an early death or worse. Make their karma come back around on them and have them lose things or people they care about. Maybe then their quest becomes one of vengeance against a particular corp or corp executive or something. Then they're at least doing some good even if it's for selfish reasons.
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Apr 17, 2013 17:51
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Martello posted:We've talked a little about form-fitting body armor around here. I'm wondering what people's opinions on it are. As a player, obviously I'd love to have it, but as a GM I'm not so thrilled about my players walking around like foot-mobile juggernauts. Even with More Lethal Combat, +2 DV and no Physical-Stun damage conversion, a guy wearing an Armored Jacket on top of a Form-Fitting Full Body Suit has Ballistic Armor of 14. It's stupid and broken, but if it's in the game you basically have to use it. As written it is a thin body suit more or less that provides pretty good armor that stacks, but when you get down to it, how can it logistically provide nearly the same armor rating as an Armored Vest which is not listed as being form-fitting. Like, every armor on the planet should be made out of the magical FFBA material.
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Apr 17, 2013 18:36
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Bigass Moth posted:It's stupid and broken, but if it's in the game you basically have to use it. As written it is a thin body suit more or less that provides pretty good armor that stacks, but when you get down to it, how can it logistically provide nearly the same armor rating as an Armored Vest which is not listed as being form-fitting. Like, every armor on the planet should be made out of the magical FFBA material. This is because Shadowrun wants to have an abstract relationship with armor where you aren't using some locational damage system, you just have armor ratings and handwave it as some abstract process...and then the guys who write the gear section want to do things like Form-Fitting Body Armor, modular armor components, and all this other poo poo that would be more at home in system with locational damage. Also Shadowrun's armor system has always been kind of dumb and broken on a fundamental level in pretty much every edition.
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Apr 17, 2013 19:12
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Mordaedil posted:Isn't it kind of the appeal though? A game where you're not really playing as the good guys or the bad guys, but working on the grey lines of society. quote:I prefer to let the players drive the story and do pretty much whatever they want. quote:Last time I GMd SR, my players ran a small private investigation business.  I remember a gm punish us with reduced karma reward because we decide to make a good choice and let the guy we suppose to capture go... then the failure of the mission leads to a series of bad luck for our team... it was terrible. We lost more karma overall than we gain from that mission. Nyaa fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 19:36
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Martello posted:We've talked a little about form-fitting body armor around here. I'm wondering what people's opinions on it are. As a player, obviously I'd love to have it, but as a GM I'm not so thrilled about my players walking around like foot-mobile juggernauts. Even with More Lethal Combat, +2 DV and no Physical-Stun damage conversion, a guy wearing an Armored Jacket on top of a Form-Fitting Full Body Suit has Ballistic Armor of 14. I'd say disallow it. Having to throw APDS rounds at the party hacker just to have a chance of hurting him gets old fast.
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Apr 17, 2013 19:59
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Nyaa posted:Oh, okay. I guess I just had really bad luck finding a gm with your kind of setting then. I had joined like 5-6 game and all of them are like "Meet Johnson, do criminal side quest, get money." Just purely being bad guy and boring. Play with better people.  Seriously though, have you tried running your own game? If you tell your players up-front that you'd like them to put their heads together to determine a common goal besides "grind mafia quests for money and upgrade our gear" they'll probably do it. You could even tell your players straight-up that you'd like to run a game where not everyone is a hardened criminal. You as the GM have a certain amount of unspoken influence over the players because while the players make all the important choices, ultimately the GM determines what those choices are in the first place.
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Apr 17, 2013 20:01
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Minorities posted:Seriously though, have you tried running your own game?  and without violence.Unless you think gm having his own player character is a good idea.
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Apr 17, 2013 20:45
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One of the earlier source books... 3rd edition player's guide, maybe? had suggestions for alternate campaign ideas. Aside from the obvious (Special Ops, Mercs) there were a few I thought seemed surprisingly fun. The two that stick out were playing as reporters, or playing as DocWagon employees. Both had surprisingly simple uses for the major Shadowrun roles, you'd just end up with a bit fewer combat types per group, although both have good reason to run around with a cybered up "security consultant." Otherwise you still need riggers to drive the van and drones to scout (or capture video) mages to do their magic poo poo and heal for DocWagon, hackers to follow up leads, get access to secure zones, and disable hostile defenses, B&E types to sneak up to clients or lift evidence, etc.
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Apr 17, 2013 20:52
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Playing as DocWagon would actually be pretty cool. I think there might be some hooks/seeds for that in a 4e sourcebook somewhere but I wouldn't swear to it. Corporate Guide is all about playing as corporate assets. War is about being mercs of course (or soldiers I suppose), and I think there are a few other sourcebooks that suggest ideas for playing something other than a runner.
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Apr 17, 2013 21:01
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Nyaa posted:I would prefer to be the one playing than gming, but yes I did run a diplomatic mission where the players manage to resolve the incident with Well in my current game I didn't let anyone be hackers (mostly to save time and keep things flowing during runs) and I'm planning on handling hacking through NPC hackers assigned to the team whenever they need them. I'm coming up with a bunch of different one-off NPC hackers for the players to have with them for just one mission each and they're a lot of fun to make up. Some of them will be really cool and some of them are designed to troll the party. There's nothing wrong with the GM having a character as long as it doesn't have too much unspoken influence over the actions and decisions of the party. Elephant Ambush fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 21:11
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Random thought: A technomancer with no CFs, or skills in any Electronics or Cracking group skills seems... more or less about as capable as any technomancer. Take a technoshaman with, say, 8 Charisma, 6 Resonance, 4 Compiling, 6 Registering (Machine Spirits), and... basically, anything that the full technomancer can thread at rating R for fading R, you can compile a sprite for for fading 1dR - or register for ahead of time for 1d2R, and with the occasional useful sprite powers. World-spanning google-fu, cracking into stuff with sprites that will suppress any alarm from anything they do for three combat turns (i.e. several IPs after they've done their job and left), hacking brains with psychotropic Blackout, tracking what anyone anywhere is doing in the Matrix, MurderThoughts(tm) controlling a swarm of drones around you, the works. Sure, you pay in that you're going to be spending all of your free time registering sprites. No, seriously, at six hours per registering session and no reason not to get to your cap of eight registered sprites, and a hell of a lot of service expenditure when you use sprites for everything, your character is basically going to have a full-time job in meditating about the mysteries of the Matrix. Better invest into coffee and some decent security (if you can get a pad with In Tune where you will be safe while registering, you've won the game). Some things like the brain-hacking won't be as awesomely flexible as threading, in fact Unwired pg. 154 says that putting program options in sprite CFs at all is subject to GM approval... but, eh, close enough. Take Computer Illiterate just to really hammer it in - you're this guy who technically could understand Matrix stuff perfectly well, it's just that the only way you've ever needed to interact with it is by having your sprite friends go around do stuff for you. It could really help a PBP game with posters in disparate time zones flow, too - you just instruct your sprites to do stuff, and the GM does the rolls or just makes up something reasonable behind the scenes, maybe plays them as having a bit of a personality. e: Mind you, they wouldn't be very interesting in the Matrix when they don't actually have to go anywhere. But that's why it's awesome that the build is so cheap. Unlike full TMs you can actually afford a couple of points of Reaction and Agility already at the start. Submerge into Biowire (it takes a Threading test to emulate a skillwire, but only one test, and then you can take it as a CF for one karma per rating point - ergo, shooty and infiltratey and athleticsy skills on the cheap!) and Acceleration. You'll rapidly approach being good enough at surviving to just come along on runs physically without having to worry too much. Duke of Straylight fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Apr 18, 2013 |
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Apr 18, 2013 00:34
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I don't entirely see the point. The two big things technomancers have over Hackers is that 1) they can thread the CFs they know to amazing heights, and 2) They have a built in versatility on everything involving the Matrix, at the cost of being essentially worthless outside of the Matrix. This build gives that up in order to be a hacker but really bad at it. I mean, you're essentially using the sprites as one-shot programs, except you don't get to add anything to it. In return, you're really heavily restricted on 'ware and you spent a bunch of karma on things that could've normally been bought with pure nuyen.
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Apr 18, 2013 01:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:I don't entirely see the point. The two big things technomancers have over Hackers is that 1) they can thread the CFs they know to amazing heights, and 2) They have a built in versatility on everything involving the Matrix, at the cost of being essentially worthless outside of the Matrix. If anyone in any of my games ever make a technomancer, I'm kinda tempted to turn them into Internet Jedis, since their other advantages are so few.
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Apr 18, 2013 09:07
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What, like with Biowire and Acceleration?
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Apr 18, 2013 23:49
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New blog post about SR5 Adept. They now get a thing call "qi foci" that boost adept power similar to the way other foci lift up spellcasting abilities. Nothing specific about how it work, but the foci can take the form of traditional objects (rings, necklaces, and so forth), but they could also be tattoos. 
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Apr 19, 2013 04:10
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I thought you could always have a tattoo as a focus? Well, "always" as in in SR4 because that's the only one I know anything about. It just never was a very good idea because foci have to be intact to actually work, and depending on your GM getting a cut on your skin could instantly mean no more focus.
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Apr 19, 2013 04:23
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That's why hard core mages get their bones etched. Or a tooth compartment I guess.
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Apr 19, 2013 04:27
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Gastrolith focus, aids your digestion and your Control Mob spell.
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Apr 19, 2013 06:37
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Rockopolis posted:What, like with Biowire and Acceleration? More like they just focus a little and technology bends to their will. I've been kinda curious because a few of my players have kinda gotten this into my head here, but what would the rules require to basically make the Terminator or Adam Jensen? I looked at making a complete human cyberware, but I'd end up at -.25 essence. And apparently it doesn't outright replace organs or replace the skull etc. I dunno, ideas?
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Apr 19, 2013 08:12
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Deltaware, for lower essence cost bits... a cybertorso, four cyberlimbs, and a cyberskull clock in at 6.25 essence. If you bought all six at ten times cost (...why?) you'd get them for essence 3.125. If, however, you want to just cram some poor guy so full of cyberware he forgets he's human, that's making a cyberzombie. This is way more Robocop than Jensen... Jensen was human and struggled with the detachment the parts gave him. Robocop forgot his name and wandered about following orders and being controlled through induced memories, before eventually breaking free and going nuts on his creators. The complete rules for that are in Augmentation, but here's the short version: It costs millions, it lets you lower the essence of a human below 0, and that makes them super dead but the soul is tricked into sticking around by an IMS, an Induced Memory Simulator, which plays back clips of the patient's life whenever their attention wavers. Which means one moment they think they're having their sixth birthday, the next they're standing in a room covered in bits. Are they the bits of enemies of the corporation? Who knows! But fighting a Cyberzombie head on is borderline suicide (they're naturally magically resistant dual creatures, too) and the best way to deal with them is probably to buy them that bicycle they always wanted as a kid and then leg it as they scream in rage at their body now too big to go chasing after the ice cream truck.
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Apr 19, 2013 09:17
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Mystic Mongol posted:Gastrolith focus, aids your digestion and your Control Mob spell. The increase in power to Toxic Cloud is incredible.
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Apr 19, 2013 11:54
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Rockopolis posted:That's why hard core mages get their bones etched. Or a tooth compartment I guess. Doesn't a tooth compartment cost essence?
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Apr 19, 2013 12:39
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Poil posted:Doesn't a tooth compartment cost essence? Nope. So you can get 32 false teeth, each filled with a shot of delicious K10.
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Apr 19, 2013 12:48
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That's pretty useful. Although I suspect a lot of gms wouldn't approve of it.
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Apr 19, 2013 13:24
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Mordaedil posted:More like they just focus a little and technology bends to their will. Here's something for a start, using Biocompatability(Cyberware) and all Deltaware: code:
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Apr 19, 2013 15:15
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That looks really awesome! Thanks! But now to fit this in with the rest... Well, I guess he's gonna have to work to buy himself out of debt, huh?
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Apr 19, 2013 16:23
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No, no ... you said The Terminator (I am assuming Arnold) or Adam Jensen. Adam doesn't have a cybertorso or cyberskull. He's just got full limbs. Not even sure if the guy has cybereyes (the HUD is on his implant mirrorshades). For a T-800, you want the Mimic upgrade for a drone: a covering of synthetic living tissue designed to make it appear to be a living creature. I once tried to do a similar thing with a character who was incredibly aug'd up. I realized that Titanium Bone Lacing, Muscle Replacement, and Orthoskin worked a bit better together for the concept than cyberlimbs. There are also rules, somewhere in Augmentation I believe, for making a brain-in-a-vat that is connected to a drone. This is different from the rules for staying around below 0 Essence.
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Apr 19, 2013 16:51
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Vavrek posted:No, no ... you said The Terminator (I am assuming Arnold) or Adam Jensen. Adam doesn't have a cybertorso or cyberskull. He's just got full limbs. Not even sure if the guy has cybereyes (the HUD is on his implant mirrorshades). Yep, that's cyborgs. You can plug the CCU (cranial containment unit) into whatever drone you want and be all set. Basically it turns you into a permanent rigger.
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Apr 19, 2013 17:07
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Piell posted:Yep, that's cyborgs. You can plug the CCU (cranial containment unit) into whatever drone you want and be all set. Basically it turns you into a permanent rigger. Problem being that you need to use a child's brain. An adult brain can't handle it and the mind breaks down in no time flat.
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Apr 19, 2013 18:26
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Lazy Bear posted:Problem being that you need to use a child's brain. An adult brain can't handle it and the mind breaks down in no time flat. You don't have to use a child's brain. Augmentation Page 162 posted:A transplanted adult brain retains access to all of the skills learned in its meat body. Consequently, the adult brain transfers all of its Active, Knowledge, and Language skills to its cyborg existence. Unfortunately, such brains also have a lifetime of learned physical behaviors associated with their meat bodies—meaning they incur a –1 dice pool modifier to non-skillwire based Combat, Physical, Social, and some Technical skills (those based on physical rather than mental activity). As with the other brain types, an adult brain cannot learn new Active skills to a value higher than the rating of its drone’s skillwires (5), but it may advance pre-existing skills beyond this level. Adult brains also have a harder time adapting to the unstable environment of a CCU. As a consequence, these brains receive a –2 dice pool penalty to the monthly Sanity Tests.
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Apr 19, 2013 18:49
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