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Lemniscate Blue posted: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 16:04
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The most important part to remember with Shadowrun, and any other system, is that if you and your group are having fun you're doing it right. 
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Aug 2, 2017 18:03
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Lemniscate Blue posted:As of when I stopped following I don't think anyone had deliberately made one yet though. IIRC they've gotten as far as figuring out what sort of systems are more likely to have AI spontaneously arise and how to maximize those chances, but it's still far from a sure thing.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:57
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What I've noticed is that punching up doesn't workk, the Vice-manager of presidential vice-sales you punched is just gonna fire his whole team and start over, and thus instead of punching up one, you've punched sideways 100 times.
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Aug 3, 2017 02:56
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Siegkrow posted:What I've noticed is that punching up doesn't workk, the Vice-manager of presidential vice-sales you punched is just gonna fire his whole team and start over, and thus instead of punching up one, you've punched sideways 100 times. That's why you got to roll a phys-adept and put your power points towards a high level of Killing Hands. Of course punching up will be disappointing if you don't build your character around it.
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Aug 3, 2017 03:39
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Blood Magic question: there a reason you can't just sacrifice chickens or something? I am reminded of Dragon Age where all the NPC blood mages were crazy into sacrifice and demons and your PC blood mage just kinda cast from HP and dropped a giant fuckoff instant win spell. Dark, sure, but not evil.
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Aug 3, 2017 05:33
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I dont know posted:That's why you got to roll a phys-adept and put your power points towards a high level of Killing Hands. Of course punching up will be disappointing if you don't build your character around it. I remember fondly how punching could get ludicrously strong in 3rd ed the higher your strength was due to how the damage system worked. 10D troll adept punches of doooooom? Thank you very much. For comparison, while not quite as good as a panther assault cannon, it's definitely getting to that point. mauman fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 05:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Blood Magic question: there a reason you can't just sacrifice chickens or something? You can use animals, but it takes three times as much blood spilled to get the same level of power. Blood magic is fueled by both pain and fear, and sapient sacrifices give you more. You can use your own blood, but nobody learns blood magic so they can hurt themselves. It's pretty horrible.
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Aug 3, 2017 06:00
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wiegieman posted:You can use animals, but it takes three times as much blood spilled to get the same level of power. Blood magic is fueled by both pain and fear, and sapient sacrifices give you more. You can use your own blood, but nobody learns blood magic so they can hurt themselves. The clear solution is to create Shadowrunner Bob's Premium Burger Market and Blood Magic Joint. You can sacrifice the cow for power, then you can sell it as food for a profit.
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Aug 3, 2017 06:26
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MJ12 posted:The clear solution is to create Shadowrunner Bob's Premium Burger Market and Blood Magic Joint. You can sacrifice the cow for power, then you can sell it as food for a profit. Aztechnology sells a lot of meat. They also sell a lot of people, in auctions.
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Aug 3, 2017 06:29
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To think, the people sold as chattel are the lucky ones. Sometimes, anyway.
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Aug 3, 2017 10:06
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Blood magic also exists in Earthdawn and it's presented as dark, but not necessarily bad. There is a variant of it that's unambigously evil - sacrificing other beings - but there are plenty of options available for the players that mostly involve hurting themselves. You can straight out cut yourself to improve your magic, buy an amulet that gives you powers in exchange for a small wound you can never heal, or swear oaths with blood that will brand you as a traitor if you break them. Yes, you could misuse it - an entire subrace of elves tried to use blood magic to protect themselves from the Horrors and it kinda worked, but changed them into psychopaths constantly wracked by physical pain. Was blood magic in Shadowrun always portrayed as unambigously bad, or did this happen after SR and ED split?
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Aug 3, 2017 10:17
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Gantolandon posted:Blood magic also exists in Earthdawn and it's presented as dark, but not necessarily bad. There is a variant of it that's unambigously evil - sacrificing other beings - but there are plenty of options available for the players that mostly involve hurting themselves. You can straight out cut yourself to improve your magic, buy an amulet that gives you powers in exchange for a small wound you can never heal, or swear oaths with blood that will brand you as a traitor if you break them. Yes, you could misuse it - an entire subrace of elves tried to use blood magic to protect themselves from the Horrors and it kinda worked, but changed them into psychopaths constantly wracked by physical pain. Pretty sure Bloodmagic has always been one of the off limits things similar to toxic shamans. There is an implication that it is not just bad, but damaging to the user in some fundamental and deeply wrong way.
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Aug 3, 2017 17:01
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MJ12 posted:The clear solution is to create Shadowrunner Bob's Premium Burger Market and Blood Magic Joint. You can sacrifice the cow for power, then you can sell it as food for a profit. why do you think there is a Stuffer Shack in the heart of even the most hideously poor neighborhoods in Seattle. Vertical Integration, baby!
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Aug 3, 2017 18:03
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So what are Toxic Shamans and why are they bad?
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Aug 3, 2017 20:04
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Toxic Shamans follow pollution and radiation spirits, basically they're like the bad guys from Captain Planet dialed up to Insanity, especially the Radiation ones who actually even live in radioactive zones like Glow City.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:07
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Totem spirits (in general) are the embodiment of a certain archetype; for instance Dog is very loyal and protective of his friends, Rat is an urban survivor and thief, and so on. Totems are drawn to spiritually magic folks that match their personalities, so a shaman whose totem is Dog will more than likely be very loyal and protective of his friends even before being approached by the totem. Knowing that, imagine what the spiritual embodiment of toxic waste is like. Then imagine the types of people who'd draw that spirit's attention.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:13
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Evil Mastermind posted:Totem spirits (in general) are the embodiment of a certain archetype; for instance Dog is very loyal and protective of his friends, Rat is an urban survivor and thief, and so on. Totems are drawn to spiritually magic folks that match their personalities, so a shaman whose totem is Dog will more than likely be very loyal and protective of his friends even before being approached by the totem. Animals, madmen all. 
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Aug 3, 2017 20:16
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OAquinas posted:Animals, madmen all.
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Aug 3, 2017 20:19
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Evil Mastermind posted:Totem spirits (in general) are the embodiment of a certain archetype; for instance Dog is very loyal and protective of his friends, Rat is an urban survivor and thief, and so on. Totems are drawn to spiritually magic folks that match their personalities, so a shaman whose totem is Dog will more than likely be very loyal and protective of his friends even before being approached by the totem. Additionally, a lot of toxic shaman start as a different type of totem and when they go toxic they twist their original totems ideals into it's evil mirror version. So a toxic dog shaman would seek to betray and destroy those who trust him/her the most. Evil Mastermind posted:And here we see a runner blowing an Infiltration skill test. These things happen when you treat charisma as a dump stat. I dont know fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 21:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:And here we see a runner blowing an Infiltration skill test. "I was told this was a costume party! Jesus, Chad from accounting got me again. Classic Chad"
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Aug 3, 2017 22:11
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One final note I should mention. In the version I've played it described essence to be like humanity. Less essence means to be less human. That said that only counts in the game. I've family with a pace maker/life support and acquaintances with artificial limbs due to life screwing them. Trying to convince people that they should be less than human because of circumstances is a good way to start fights in real life. On another much more funner note here are some really stupid shadow runners. http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html
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Aug 4, 2017 02:09
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One of my beefs with the game is that in 4E at least the rules outcomes didn't really support playing a cromed up dude. In the setting you get blown away if you get spring so you want to be sneaky/in the shadows The problem was basically if stealth was the solution it was better to go bioware because then you were not obviously a murder blender short of someone running blood tests on you. Makes infiltration and disguise a lot easier. Plus the various social augs were bioware. Putting on tons of chrome was thematic, but didn't really help you because if you could wander around being obviously dodgy, the rigger could send in a flock of LMG drones that cost less than the Sammies enhanced reflexes. Even ignoring that the low profile bio Sammie could just put on body armor and pick up a gun. The mechanics didn't support the desired outcomes in a bunch of places and it was quite intrusive. You could make a quite mechanically good hacker by taping a bunch of commlinks together and running the autonomous agent hacking programs on them. The game had weird rules to try and stop you doing that (copy protection!) but then immediately included rules to let you write your own programs or disable copy protection. And you could do this accidentally because the flavor text of the wireless internet emphasized everyone could get hacked, you need protection!! What's protection? Oh this handy agent thing... So the best hacker was a pile of mini agent smiths standing on top of each other wearing a trench coat supported by the best combat option: a fleet of low rent R2D2s with LMGs duct tapped to their head. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 02:56
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Yeah the rules are very schizophrenic about whether you should play pink mohawk and open doors by driving a truck through the entrance and wreck the the place with your custom neon grenade launcher with an underbarrel chainsaw (because bayonets are for sissies) or if it's all mirrorshades and no one can ever notice you were even there. The decker rules are much better in 5th edition, not great but better. The rules are also a bit weird but often you can tell it's for balance, or at least the writer's attempt at it. Attempting too much realism and the game will just bog down in sperging and arguing. Trust me. It's better to just suspend your disbelief a little and try and ignore it. Evil Mastermind posted:Totem spirits (in general) are the embodiment of a certain archetype; for instance Dog is very loyal and protective of his friends, Rat is an urban survivor and thief, and so on. Totems are drawn to spiritually magic folks that match their personalities, so a shaman whose totem is Dog will more than likely be very loyal and protective of his friends even before being approached by the totem.
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Aug 4, 2017 11:51
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Poil posted:Yeah the rules are very schizophrenic about whether you should play pink mohawk and open doors by driving a truck through the entrance and wreck the the place with your custom neon grenade launcher with an underbarrel chainsaw (because bayonets are for sissies) or if it's all mirrorshades and no one can ever notice you were even there. So, for those who played the tabletop game, which did your gaming group lean towards? Mine was hard pink mohawk, to the point where mirrorshades stuff, whenever introduced in a game, felt like a dick GM trying to screw us over. I get now that these are just two different play styles, but I never saw anything fun about being paranoid about your bullet casings or whatever. (I guess we weren't supposed to shoot at all...)
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Aug 4, 2017 12:33
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GunnerJ posted:So, for those who played the tabletop game, which did your gaming group lean towards? Mine was hard pink mohawk, to the point where mirrorshades stuff, whenever introduced in a game, felt like a dick GM trying to screw us over. I get now that these are just two different play styles, but I never saw anything fun about being paranoid about your bullet casings or whatever. (I guess we weren't supposed to shoot at all...) We went way more mirrorshades, for the most part, but we also spent a good chunk of the campaign exploring the politics of the Ork Underground in relation to Seattle and the Corps, so our game probably wasn't typical.
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Aug 4, 2017 17:30
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GunnerJ posted:So, for those who played the tabletop game, which did your gaming group lean towards? Mine was hard pink mohawk, to the point where mirrorshades stuff, whenever introduced in a game, felt like a dick GM trying to screw us over. I get now that these are just two different play styles, but I never saw anything fun about being paranoid about your bullet casings or whatever. (I guess we weren't supposed to shoot at all...) Both, fire is pretty great for solving opsec concerns when you kicked down the door with a custom katana with a blinking LED stripe along the length of the blade in one hand and a hello kitty grenade launcher in the other. The best part of opsec paranoia is solving those issues by impersonating other teams and / or leaving random blood samples and fake evidence after firefights.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:13
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I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:18
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal. That character was literally a GM's (or at least developer's) pet cool NPC so they can do whatever the gently caress they like.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:26
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal. Absolutely nothing is stopping them from doing it. If they want to play cyber super powers then more power to them. Arguably at that point you're no longer playing Shadowrun but who cares if everybody is having fun.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:37
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Keep in mind that, while an interesting and fun character, he was also an absolute monster that could effortlessly be slotted into a campaign as the big bad.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:39
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal. The character in question didn't have any essence to lose. They were literally born without a soul. So you could do that, if your group wanted to.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:44
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Cool, thanks for the info. I agree he could have been a fun enemy and was honestly surprised when I learned his full story. What makes it even better is my PC is a no intelligence, no charisma troll adept who is utterly worthless at everything but punching things really, really hard. When Raster says "I've really enjoyed our talks, Punchy" I was thinking to myself - My character just shambles down into this dude's den/workshop, asks meandering questions, doesn't understand a tenth of the answers, then loses interest and wanders off to find someone to punch. Not the most believable of friendships.
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Aug 4, 2017 19:58
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wiegieman posted:The character in question didn't have any essence to lose. They were literally born without a soul. So you could do that, if your group wanted to.
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Aug 4, 2017 20:08
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I was thinking to myself - My character just shambles down into this dude's den/workshop, asks meandering questions, doesn't understand a tenth of the answers, then loses interest and wanders off to find someone to punch. Not the most believable of friendships. Friendships can be based on a lot of things. Sometimes people just appreciate having someone around who lets them prattle on on topics that they're enthusiastic about. Personally I think it was a missed opportunity to not have the player character stumble into a discussion between him and the other basement dweller; they're both easily the most scholarly and ethically flexible members of the team, so I assume they'd at least swap ideas from time to time. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 20:15
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It took me the longest time to figure out where the other basement dweller hung out. After I couldn't find them initially I just assumed they went off to get 'dinner' in between runs. Agreed, they were both really well written characters. Hell, the writing overall was really good.
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Aug 4, 2017 22:10
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SR Hong Kong is the best written of all the three, but Dragonfall is also really good.
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Aug 4, 2017 22:12
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I have a question about essence loss. A character in one of the later games Racter, the half-chrome psychopath in SR: Hong Kong found a way around the typical essence loss effects. What's stopping a TT group from announcing 'We're like that guy, we can have all the chrome no problem'? The character in question was pretty interesting but could be a one-of-a-kind deal. You could bypass the social aspect of essence loss by not being the social guy, if you're uncouth with poor charisma it doesn't matter how much you're made of metal, you just don't like talking. The rule of 6 (hit 0 and RIP) still applies though. Also a lot of GMs don't think of essence beyond "Still got 0.1, yeah you're cool." e: the social penalty is a 5e thing. Losing essence reduces your social limit which can be a problem if you're chucking 20 dice at negotiation but can't get more than 4 hits maximum.
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Aug 4, 2017 22:29
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wiegieman posted:SR Hong Kong is the best written of all the three, but Dragonfall is also really good. I'd say Dragonfall has the best overall plot but Hong Kong has the most engaging companions and gameplay.
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Aug 4, 2017 23:39
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Necroskowitz posted:I'd say Dragonfall has the best overall plot but Hong Kong has the most engaging companions and gameplay. I lean towards Hong Kong, just because it's story places you in direct conflict with the corrupt systems of the corporate government, and as has been established, I am the biggest punk nerd. Also for the ending.
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Aug 5, 2017 01:51
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