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Ze Pollack posted:Didn't say unbelievably rich and powerful. Just said comfortable. Mike The Middle Manager who dabbles in shadowrunning on the side because his life feels empty is probably a decent character concept too! But you want to play him, you gotta get him fired first. Game requires a certain ground level of powerlessness in order to function. OK, but if the question is "what do you do to survive" then "be <someone>" isn't really comparable to "do <something>".
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Aug 1, 2017 16:26
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Keeshhound posted:It kind of comes down to my idiot ramblings about punk as a literary tradition. Punk requires that it's "heros" always be fighting something bigger than them, no matter how morally compromised they might be. Blood magic, within the shadowrun universe is fundamentally an expression of power over someone else; the ability (and deliberate intent) to use their life to fuel your ambitions. If you engage in it you're making the deliberate choice to stop punching at the powerful, and join them in eating the weak. They weren't idiot ramblings! But I'm not really sure that I agree that "blood magic" is incompatible with "punching up." I mean it requires that you kill or harm someone in order to further your objective, but Shadowrunners do that all the time.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:29
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Yeah, what's stopping you from kidnapping some Assistant Executive Vice President of Marketing for use in your unspeakable ritual magic instead of some random junkie you found in an alley?
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Aug 1, 2017 16:43
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GunnerJ posted:They weren't idiot ramblings! But I'm not really sure that I agree that "blood magic" is incompatible with "punching up." I mean it requires that you kill or harm someone in order to further your objective, but Shadowrunners do that all the time. I think the key difference is that blood magic involves the commodification of human life in a way that typical runner violence doesn't. Punk doesn't have a problem with violence as a whole (it frankly encourages it), but you're supposed to be committing it for a good reason. A runner might have to kill someone, bit it's that specific person, and for specific, personal causes. A blood mage, by the setting's rules and lore, foesn't really care who they're killing; a bum with the right characteristics is going to be just as usable to them as any else. There's also the issue of how the two view violence; a runner will kill someone on a run if the situation necessitates it, but the type of character that the rules are trying to encourage should look at combat as an unfortunate complication. Not even necessarily out of a moral aversion to killing; it's an impediment to the smooth operation of the run. Put another way, a runner can conceivably function without violence; most obviously by having a really smooth run. A blood mage can't do anything without killing someone. Violence is soemthing for a runner to overcome, but it's the foundation of the blood mage's art.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:00
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I can see blood magic being something in the game, but it should be treated as a an addiction that A) has the potential to blow up big in the party's face, and B) should really be used to drive home how bad it is suppose to be in-universe. I think what makes it different from the "grenade in an enclosed room" style violence is that blood magic isn't just sticking a knife in a person, it's suppose to be very visceral, very personal, and in the end, very disturbing to everyone involved.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:06
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"And you learned this blood magic where, exactly, Blood Mage Original Character Donut Steel?" "...so the rest of the team really isn't okay with every run going loud and every corp in the nearest thousand miles hunting us down to the fullest extent possible due to your magic, bye ok" Somebody more familiar with the current ruleset let me know if I'm wrong but from what I know blood magic exists in universe and has rules for it, so if a GM chooses to allow a player to use it they can - but there's also strong reasons (thematically, pragmatically, etc) why it'd be a horribly bad choice for any runner except under truly unusual circumstances. That's fine. The GM has control, as they should. The setting informs that control, as it should. remember this isn't 40k. horrific mass human sacrifice isn't par for the course for the players.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:19
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Well it's extremely illegal in practically the whole world and carries an absolutely massive stigma with it.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:33
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Psion posted:"And you learned this blood magic where, exactly, Blood Mage Original Character Donut Steel?" Being implausible or impractical isn't really the same thing as "the GM takes your character sheet away."
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Aug 1, 2017 17:34
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Poil posted:Well it's extremely illegal in practically the whole world and carries an absolutely massive stigma with it. Right, which means that first question - where did you learn it - is going to sink 99.9999% of potential blood mage runner ideas. Which is fine. I don't consider it inherently bad that things exist in a setting which are effectively off-limits to the players. After all, you're not a megacorp, you're fighting against them. The entire point is that they have toys you don't, but you have grit and dice and statrolls they don't.  GunnerJ posted:Being implausible or impractical isn't really the same thing as "the GM takes your character sheet away." Please note the use of the word can in that post. And also the rest of the posts expanding on why blood magic shouldn't show on your character sheet in the first place, regardless of whether or not a GM does things to a player. It was also an unsourced claim so for all I know they misinterpreted the rulebook. But what's not being misinterpreted is that blood magic is Very Much A Bad Thing. like, I don't know, you seem really hung up making sure players can just go out and commit magical atrocities, which really doesn't fit what SR is about and is also weird. Psion fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 17:35
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Psion posted:Please note the use of the word can in that post. And also the rest of the posts expanding on why blood magic shouldn't show on your character sheet in the first place, regardless of whether or not a GM does things to a player. It was also an unsourced claim so for all I know they misinterpreted the rulebook. But what's not being misinterpreted is that blood magic is Very Much A Bad Thing. I'm not really hung up on anything other than this particular interpretation of the rules in principle, which as you say might be wrong. So if I'm giving the impression that I am deeply invested in players of a TT game I haven't played in 13 years being able to dabble in blood magic I'll stop talking about it.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:47
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You could be a former Aztechnology mage. Or learned from one in exchange for less-than-pleasant work. Perhaps you saved the life of one and he taught you as thanks. It can work fine if you're running an "evil" campaign or if the character is trying to hide it but worked with the GM to set up a really desperate situation when it's the most survivable solution or if your opponents are even worse than that. Maybe have some code on how you use it, such as only willing subjects (it could happen) or enemies.
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Aug 1, 2017 17:47
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It could also be in the books so when the GM wants to make an NPC baddie they can do it with the proper stats and mechanics.
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Aug 1, 2017 18:39
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True but it does specifically say that it's available for players too.
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Aug 1, 2017 18:47
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GunnerJ posted:I'm not really hung up on anything other than this particular interpretation of the rules in principle Fair enough. Like anything TT, a good GM can make it work so I figure if a rule is dumb, a GM can just say "nahhhhh"
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Aug 1, 2017 20:25
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Poil posted:True but it does specifically say that it's available for players too. Ah, the ol' White Wolf Trujah caveat.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:34
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citybeatnik posted:Ah, the ol' White Wolf Trujah caveat. Oh god. Not that. You are a bad person and I hope you feel bad.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:55
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Let's keep our tabletop games with multiple feuding factions of fanboys and built up edition wars separate, thanks.
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Aug 1, 2017 21:16
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wiegieman posted:Let's keep our tabletop games with multiple feuding factions of fanboys and built up edition wars separate, thanks. That's every TT game with more than 1 edition
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Aug 1, 2017 21:37
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Aside from being undead what's so bad about cyberzombies?
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Aug 2, 2017 00:41
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White Coke posted:Aside from being undead what's so bad about cyberzombies? Essence is a measure of how well your soul fits into your body. In universe, it's why people get phantom limb sensations, and it's why you don't lose essence when you lose a hand but do lose essence when you replace it with chrome your soul doesn't recognize. You normally die at 0 essence, unless someone lashes your agonized soul to your protesting flesh with black magic and condemns you to a life of torture.
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Aug 2, 2017 00:48
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White Coke posted:Aside from being undead what's so bad about cyberzombies? As I understand it, it involves the body getting chromed up past the point where the soul would just bail, then ritually binding that soul to what is effectively a corpse. Edit: Yeah, what wiegieman said.
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Aug 2, 2017 00:49
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wiegieman posted:Essence is a measure of how well your soul fits into your body. In universe, it's why people get phantom limb sensations, and it's why you don't lose essence when you lose a hand but do lose essence when you replace it with chrome your soul doesn't recognize. This concept always seemed thematically cool as hell, but kinda makes you wonder why not just build a robot. ETA: My favorite part of it is that it's not just magic keeping the whole shambling thing running. They get a special bit of cyberware to periodically dredge up memories to trick the psyche into thinking it still has a reason to be invested in this world.
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Aug 2, 2017 01:09
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GunnerJ posted:This concept always seemed thematically cool as hell, but kinda makes you wonder why not just build a robot. Yeah, that part is cool. I still remember one of the chapter fiction story talking about Hatchetman.
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Aug 2, 2017 01:53
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wiegieman posted:You normally die at 0 essence, unless someone lashes your agonized soul to your protesting flesh with black magic and condemns you to a life of torture. So a cyberzombie retains all of its knowledge and intelligence, but is enslaved to obey whomever has trapped it soul in its body? Does a cyber zombie become more powerful at lower essence levels?
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Aug 2, 2017 02:08
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GunnerJ posted:Yeah, I guess I just don't remember anything like this in the game rules, but then again I last played Shadowrun TT in 2004 when it was still 3rd edition so It's the same concept behind D&D groups that play good/neutral campaigns and state that "if you turn evil you become an npc" or Star wars where "if you get enough dark side points you become an npc". Blood magic and it's ilk are things that are 100% not meant for heroes (or anti-heroes, in Shadowrun's case). That being said, if you're playing a campaign where you're supposed to be giant bastards (evil campaign or darkside campaign or whatever), then it's sometimes fun to experiment with the forbidden systems. I've played a cyberzombie before for instance. Same group also had a blood mage - who was my handler (read - master) for my work (read - slavery).
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Aug 2, 2017 02:18
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Essence also gives you a hard limit on just how many upgrades you can get via mechanization. Damage resistance, strength upgrades, so on and so forth. Without the limits you essentially can become a terminator.
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Aug 2, 2017 04:37
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Kinfolk910 posted:Essence also gives you a hard limit on just how many upgrades you can get via mechanization. Damage resistance, strength upgrades, so on and so forth. Without the limits you essentially can become a terminator. Any Street Sam without fractional Essence is not properly making use of their potential. I think my first character had like 0.2 Essence left or something like that when I (or more properly, my GM who was walking me through the process) was done with character creation. My second, built my myself, was at like 0.3. Chrome gets real expensive, soul (and money) wise. Dermal plating, cyber eyes, a data jack, retractable hand blades, smartlink, bone lacing, wired reflexes, it all adds up. Sure, you could go for Alphaware models for lesser Essence costs, but they're considerably more expensive in nuyen. If you need more Essence cost reduction, Beta and Deltaware are available, but those tend to only be installed in high end clinics and be restricted as all hell, not to mention super expensive, so you better have a good backstory for why your character has so much high end ware in you at character creation. There's also second hand ware available if you need it cheap and don't care about Essence costs, since installing cheap chrome scavenged from a dude who didn't need it anymore is gonna hurt your soul a lot worse than a fresh install. This is before Bioware was a big thing too, which is more organic, so less costly on Essence, but more expensive in nuyen, especially if it has to be personally cultured for you. I think it was 4th Ed where they added the rule that the Essence cost of either cyber or bioware was halved depending on which you had less of, which let you cram in more stuff into your body as well. I think this game has some bioware, but still counts as cyber costs wise. And I don't think you can go below 1 Essence either. I don't like how this series in general handles cyber with paper doll slots, so I can't double up on say, dermal plating plus bone lacing or something like that, for increased soak and body, or install some of the better pieces of bioware because they go in a slot I already have some chrome in. I mean, I understand why they did it like that, but I still don't like it.
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Aug 2, 2017 05:24
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Evil party runs, while cool in theory, are frustrating to play with or DM strictly for the reason that they almost always devolve into backstabbing mass murderfests that end up making the players IRL mad at each other
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Aug 2, 2017 05:27
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GhostStalker posted:I think this game has some bioware, but still counts as cyber costs wise. And I don't think you can go below 1 Essence either. I don't like how this series in general handles cyber with paper doll slots, so I can't double up on say, dermal plating plus bone lacing or something like that, for increased soak and body, or install some of the better pieces of bioware because they go in a slot I already have some chrome in. I mean, I understand why they did it like that, but I still don't like it. Bioware is not in this game. That's the sequels you're thinking of Also at .01 essence you're more or less a robot - still coherent but SERIOUSLY stunted emotionally.
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Aug 2, 2017 05:28
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Kinfolk910 posted:Essence also gives you a hard limit on just how many upgrades you can get via mechanization. Damage resistance, strength upgrades, so on and so forth. Without the limits you essentially can become a terminator. Sounds fun. Although like Gunner J asked: why not just make a robot? Are there intelligent robots in Shadowrun?
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Aug 2, 2017 05:28
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mauman posted:Bioware is not in this game. I stand corrected. My bad. White Coke posted:Sounds fun. Although like Gunner J asked: why not just make a robot? Are there intelligent robots in Shadowrun? I think drones are about it, but they need the input of a rigger to properly function to the best of their ability. There are intelligent agent programs that can run autonomous drones without much input from a rigger, but drones will always perform better if there's an actual metahuman piloting them. There are also AIs that are around, but they tend to either be murderous (Deus, who tried to upload himself to become a literal God in the Machine in both the Renraku Arcology and Second Matrix Crash incidents, forming much of the metaplot for 3rd Ed) or really reclusive because they really don't want a megacorp capturing and experimenting on them, like has happened before (again, Renraku). I think the current metaplot for 5th Ed involves the Crash Fragmentation Virus, which somehow distributes an AI over a bunch of infected metahumans and is the new big threat? I dunno, I haven't kept up with that plot point. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 05:29
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White Coke posted:Sounds fun. Although like Gunner J asked: why not just make a robot? Are there intelligent robots in Shadowrun? Because almost every attempt at A.I. in this series has ended in disaster. As such everybody (U.N., governments, even the freaking corporate court) has banned A.I. research. Hasn't stopped certain corps, but like I said, disaster. There are drones if you're talking about dumb-dumb robots, but they don't have the same capacity of function as someone with intelligence. Weed Wolf posted:Evil party runs, while cool in theory, are frustrating to play with or DM strictly for the reason that they almost always devolve into backstabbing mass murderfests that end up making the players IRL mad at each other Agreed for the most part. The campaign I mentioned though worked pretty well, because we weren't playing actual shadowrunners. We were Aztech "assets", so we had seriously good reason to work well with each other. Didn't stop us from dying horribly (and frankly we probably deserved it), but we didn't die due to backstabbing. mauman fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 05:31
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White Coke posted:So a cyberzombie retains all of its knowledge and intelligence, but is enslaved to obey whomever has trapped it soul in its body? Does a cyber zombie become more powerful at lower essence levels? Hypothetically, a cyberzombie doesn't have to be enslaved to anyone. Functionally speaking, anyone who is stupid enough not to install failsafes in a cyberzombie deserves what they have coming to them. See, there's this thing called Essence. It's one of the few stats that in-universe has been scientifically measured... admittedly through extremely ugly forms of trial and error. Every piece of cyberware drops your essence by a certain amount, with unpleasant results for dedicated magic-users. Essence describes how closely your soul corresponds to your body. And fairly early on in cyberware research, people started to notice cyberpsychosis. As you had more cyberware installed, you tended to get more distant, more reserved, until past a certain point of augmentation you went on a murderous rampage, a suicidal rampage, or most often both of the above. Extensive psychiatric therapy could delay this. But not prevent it. Once a certain percentage of your body was metal, you were a dead man walking. It took some mages being brought onboard the project(s) for people to discover just how literal that assessment was. It took some amazing developments in healing magic, pharmacology, and psychology to discover just how surmountable an issue that could be. Doctors will admit, if pushed, that yes: the will to live is something that matters in a patient's survival chances. Past Essence Zero, mages will confirm: that will is gone. The soul is detached from the body. And in its place is a horrific void. They can staple a facsimile of your soul back onto your body, but the void will remain, and absent regular arcane treatment, it will one day eat your soul and you will finally, blessedly die. Unfortunately for cybermancy test subjects the world over, this astral void is part of what makes cyberzombies so dangerous; magic directed at them, whether hostile or beneficial, unless boosted to obscene heights is going to flat out fail. Fortunately for the world at large, this also puts a hard limit on how powerful a cyberzombie can be made; at a certain level of negative essence, the rituals required to keep body and soul remotely connected will stop working. This soul-death-but-not-really manifests in a number of ways. First and foremost, the cyberzombie develops an exciting suite of psychoses that require regular chemical and talking-to-an-expert treatment in order to not blossom into full on murder-suicide rampage. Imagine gender dysphoria, add phantom limb syndrome, throw in every possible flavor of suicidal ideation, and then multiply by several thousand. Cyberzombie brains are 30% Prozac by volume as of moment one, and that's just to keep them at a "not -suicidally- depressed" baseline. Second, it turns out that absent that undefinable will-to-live, the organic components of the cyberzombie are going to start engaging in a turf war between aggressive tissue necrosis and several dozen different flavors of cancer. Third, as the howling void they have in place of an astral presence grows stronger, it is going to start attracting the REALLY BAD kind of spirit to trash anything nearby. There are workarounds for these problems. It's amazing what weapons researchers can come up with in the name of creating a commando who could take on a magic-supported armored column and concievably win. A number have been put into field testing. And yet with all the powers of megacorporate weapons research in play, the Shadowrun universe has yet to see a cyberzombie that lasted more than a year before failing a combat trial or "failing a combat trial." You could, of course, try building a robot. There have been AIs built in the Shadowrun universe! They have, unfortunately, been a crapshoot. To the tune of "there is a reason why we are currently on Internet Three, Internet One and Internet Two did not die clean"
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Aug 2, 2017 05:33
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It turns out that AI is really, really hard. And when you screw it up, there are a lot of casualties. The whole city of Boston in more recent developments.
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Aug 2, 2017 06:16
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mauman posted:I've played a cyberzombie before for instance. Same group also had a blood mage - who was my handler (read - master) for my work (read - slavery). Don't get me wrong, the group can do whatever they agree on, but I understand the rules forbidding it.
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Aug 2, 2017 06:53
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wiegieman posted:It turns out that AI is really, really hard. And when you screw it up, there are a lot of casualties. The whole city of Boston in more recent developments. Crash Fragmentation Virus ahoy! Boston is now the next Chicago. I take it that Lockdown wasn't the end of that plot point and there'll be more setting books concerning it later? Also, was it confirmed that NeoNET was effectively behind the research that caused this latest incident? Isn't there a Great Dragon infected and trapped in the city as well? I wanna say it was Celadyr. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 06:57
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Ze Pollack posted:There are workarounds for these problems. It's amazing what weapons researchers can come up with in the name of creating a commando who could take on a magic-supported armored column and concievably win. A number have been put into field testing. And yet with all the powers of megacorporate weapons research in play, the Shadowrun universe has yet to see a cyberzombie that lasted more than a year before failing a combat trial or "failing a combat trial." As I recall, as of Shadowrun 4E, at least one corp has managed to break the one-decade practical limit on cyberzombies. Of course, at this point, Gammaware has become a theoretical thing, and Adapsin too, which means you could staple on 4 cybernetic limbs, a cybernetic torso, a cybernetic skull, and a huge variety of organ replacements, and still have enough 'you-ness' to keep the soul attached. In theory. You'd also cost about 12 million nuyen, but them's the breaks. Given what cybermancy requires I think it might still be cheaper to do this than to be a cyberzombie.
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Aug 2, 2017 07:16
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Fat Samurai posted:At this point, it seems to me that the "punk" part of cyberpunk is gone. It's difficult to sell out any harder. Wasn't a standard campaign. We decided to try being with the corps for once and figured "if we're going to be the "bad guys" let's be the worst of the worst (Aztec)". It was the Shadowrun equivalent of a D&D game where everybody decided to be monsters. It was fun to try it once, but I'd probably not do it again.
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Aug 2, 2017 11:37
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GhostStalker posted:There are also AIs that are around, but they tend to either be murderous (Deus, who tried to upload himself to become a literal God in the Machine in both the Renraku Arcology and Second Matrix Crash incidents, forming much of the metaplot for 3rd Ed) or really reclusive because they really don't want a megacorp capturing and experimenting on them, like has happened before (again, Renraku).
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Aug 2, 2017 15:18
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's explicitly stated in one of the books that nobody actually knows how to make an AI yet. The three or so that have popped up have created pretty much spontaneously. After the second Crash (which I believe was part of the 4th edition timeline) a number of other "Digital Intelligences" began to pop up, so they're much more common now. As of when I stopped following I don't think anyone had deliberately made one yet though.
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Aug 2, 2017 15:38
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