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In 4e you could not only buy a cheap commlink, you could buy an 'agent' to live in it performing all your decker needs.
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Oct 11, 2023 06:57
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 21:50 |
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That’s true. I should have said every edition that had cyberdecks. In 1-3, making a replacement deck was both not really affordable, and would really involve all the other characters taking a vacation if you were using the deck building rules. You pretty much treated them like old school DnD wizard spellbooks. If You hosed with them you were pretty much a dick GM. Well, except for the ICE that screwed them. Those were fair game.
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Oct 11, 2023 07:28
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Conversely killing one or two on site deckers in a run is basically "We take 8 months off on a beach" money, so it had it's upsides too.
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Oct 11, 2023 11:02
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Mulva posted:Conversely killing one or two on site deckers in a run is basically "We take 8 months off on a beach" money, so it had it's upsides too. Ew like a real decker would ever use someone else's deck.
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Oct 11, 2023 11:13
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You strip it for parts, pirate-copy the software, and sell to what must be an existing market for the whole pricing scheme to make sense or even exist to begin with, and then retire with your 7-figure annual profits. …but then, none of the deck building cost calculations ever made any sense in an inherently illegal and underground setting.
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Oct 11, 2023 11:38
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I remember when the first combat Laser was introduced our DM didn't allow it not because it was too good, but because you could resell it for too much.
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Oct 11, 2023 12:18
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I did eventually half-baked tell my players all corpo cyberdecks were loaded with self-destruct burn out software as mild justification but out-of-game GM-fiat told them it was a balance decision because the values would make 'running just not make sense. I did let them think about running a chop shop but heavily implied the reputation they garnered would lead them to bad places as that one seemed in-game self correcting.
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Oct 11, 2023 12:30
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2E was funny in the opposite direction as well, where riggers could quite trivially and cheaply build and maintain vehicles that would shrug off anything up to and including anti-vehicle missiles — anything handheld just did nothing to them. Slap a rotary autocannon on top and it would also cut a swath through anything statted up in the source books, including light tanks. Sure, they couldn't go to lightspeed and melt the entire continent in a shower of gamma rays like in later editions, but it still required a bit of GM fiat to keep the worst excesses out. Part of that was that the early rules were direct transplants from 1E, where the damage staging system was very different and didn't scale with weapon power levels the same way. Consequently, high armour values were far more effective than the rules assumed they'd be, and the cost and availability didn't balance that out.
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Oct 11, 2023 12:56
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The Lone Badger posted:Ew like a real decker would ever use someone else's deck. It's just a deck move.
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Oct 11, 2023 15:32
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Tippis posted:2E was funny in the opposite direction as well, where riggers could quite trivially and cheaply build and maintain vehicles that would shrug off anything up to and including anti-vehicle missiles — anything handheld just did nothing to them. Slap a rotary autocannon on top and it would also cut a swath through anything statted up in the source books, including light tanks. Sure, they couldn't go to lightspeed and melt the entire continent in a shower of gamma rays like in later editions… Goddamn if that isn’t one of the best OOC rule breakdowns to read, though!
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Oct 11, 2023 16:24
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bird food bathtub posted:I did eventually half-baked tell my players all corpo cyberdecks were loaded with self-destruct burn out software as mild justification but out-of-game GM-fiat told them it was a balance decision because the values would make 'running just not make sense. I did let them think about running a chop shop but heavily implied the reputation they garnered would lead them to bad places as that one seemed in-game self correcting. Same. My hand wavey explanation was that decks couldn't be made not to "scream home" when in use or wind up bricked. A similar issue came up when the unearthed arcana book came out for 5e, and everything had rent-a-mage prices. You can be a shadowrunner, or you can just get, like, a real mage job and fund your group.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:02
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One of the editions (4e?) let initiated mages make absurd incomes doing alchemy to make orichalcum to sell.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:13
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If a player wants to be a Corp mage and make easy money, they wouldn't be shadowrunners in the first place! A perfect way for a mage player to leave the campaign, and after a big score of cyber decks and such a perfect place to have a time jump to "Well poo poo, the money is all gone time to go back to work" If getting rich is a characters only ambition, sometimes the get a happy ending.
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Oct 12, 2023 12:07
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Lord_Hambrose posted:If a player wants to be a Corp mage and make easy money, they wouldn't be shadowrunners in the first place! Or time-skip to the corpo ninjas kicking down their door. Whichever happens first.
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Oct 12, 2023 12:16
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Lord_Hambrose posted:If a player wants to be a Corp mage and make easy money, they wouldn't be shadowrunners in the first place! This is still a pet peeve of mine with characters. Like why would you choose a job where 99.99% of people end their career in a body bag over a cushy corp job, like you gotta have some kinda thing that makes you unemployable no matter how small.
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Oct 12, 2023 14:48
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Sometimes it felt like SR ate itself with some of its options. Like the Day Job perk. Who in their right mind would take it as it runs counter to all the themes of being a shadowrunner, but regardless it was a reliable way to make cash. In a game I was in long ago a fellow player based his entire concept around his day job and we jabbed at him constantly because he was making more money pushing papers than shadowrunning.
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Oct 12, 2023 15:18
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imo it's not really a matter options so much as unresolved tensions and not really thinking its premise/economy through - i.e. if Shadowrunning is as laughably non-lucrative as some of the source material wants it to be then there isn't a reason anyone would do it as it's presented, much less people as skilled/well-resourced as a Shadowrunner PC is that holds true regardless of why they're ostensibly unemployable or not interested in traditional employment, because frankly most of those reasons are either quite resolvable or would point you towards a quite different means of supporting yourself Shadowrunning doesn't need to be all about the filthy lucre, but on some level it does need to compare favorably with much-lower-risk freelance crime or holding down a McJob, or you're going to have even ideological characters who exclusively want to Hood it up asking why they're not just doing one of those things while engaging in a bit of terrorism in their off hours or w/e
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Oct 13, 2023 00:34
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"Part-time shadowrunners" could be a campaign concept. They get together on saturdays and holidays to relive the old days before they settled down and got stable jobs. "Sorry I can't hit that Aztech facility with you saturday, I have to take Susie to practice. I'll zend a drone."
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Oct 13, 2023 01:11
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Alot of the advantages/disadvantages were brainstormed by one person and never really play tested. There were perks in 5e that let players start with some nutty stuff. Oh, but they’re allergic to something or other that you will forget after a few games. The Lone Badger posted:One of the editions (4e?) let initiated mages make absurd incomes doing alchemy to make orichalcum to sell. I know 5e added availability to orichalcum components, so RAW you could just make a ton at home.
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Oct 13, 2023 02:20
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Shadowrunning is something mostly SINless do to survive, right? And you need a SIN to get gainfully employed in the noncriminal economy? Doesn't that mean getting a day job just isn't an option for most shadowrunners unless they're some kind of pervert hobbyist?
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Oct 13, 2023 02:22
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Mr. Lobe posted:Shadowrunning is something mostly SINless do to survive, right? And you need a SIN to get gainfully employed in the noncriminal economy? Doesn't that mean getting a day job just isn't an option for most shadowrunners unless they're some kind of pervert hobbyist? Which edition? In earlier you lost your sin to pursue shadowrunning. Later, some people never got sins. Later still, you could get a different sin based on what corp you worked for which kinda took a crap on you being tied to a single number.
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Oct 13, 2023 02:30
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The Lone Badger posted:"Part-time shadowrunners" could be a campaign concept. They get together on saturdays and holidays to relive the old days before they settled down and got stable jobs. A friend once suggested a campaign where all the PCs have the quality Global Fame. The party is a collection of celebrities who are known to be shadowrunners on the side. I responded that I would have my people talk to his people about scheduling the next run (my publicist has some ideas that might work out well for both of us). I really ought to look at earlier editions of Shadowrun. I started with 4th and have mostly played 5th (and have mostly played not that much Shadowrun).
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Oct 13, 2023 02:33
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Nalesh posted:This is still a pet peeve of mine with characters. Like why would you choose a job where 99.99% of people end their career in a body bag over a cushy corp job, like you gotta have some kinda thing that makes you unemployable no matter how small. I mean that's a problem that could apply to all games that has the cyberpunk merc archetype. Like sure it's the in the game world being a merc is viewed as sign of being the ultimate badass, even though objectively you're going to die in the ally 9 times out of 10. This fact make the case where being a merc being treated less as a glamours power fantasy stand out to me. Take Project Moon's Fixers for example. From what little we've seen in Libary of Runia story present's Fixers less as a power fantasy and more as dangerous job that only the most desperate people would take (one of the booked fixers basically states that it's better to just work in a store than becoming a fixer.). Also Cruelty squid which basically have you work for contract killer Uber which is the opposet of PUNK. [SPOLIER] although ironically this Game allow you to take down the whole system and the world with it. [/SPOLIER] Ghost Armor 1337 fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Oct 13, 2023 |
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Oct 13, 2023 03:43
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Noam Chomsky posted:I’m running a 5e game in January. I've been having fun playing it, in a campaign that's lasted a couple of years. One can get large die pools, but the inherent limits are a hard cap on how many successes you can roll... a weapon's Accuracy, a spell's Force or skills based on your stats. Even if you have 20 dice of Spellcasting, if you cast a Force 2 spell, you can only score 2 hits with it.
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Oct 13, 2023 05:47
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Mr. Lobe posted:Shadowrunning is something mostly SINless do to survive, right? And you need a SIN to get gainfully employed in the noncriminal economy? Doesn't that mean getting a day job just isn't an option for most shadowrunners unless they're some kind of pervert hobbyist? Well even putting aside the day job without a big payout it's kind of like why would anyone do this. You're SINless so normal employment isn't an option but there's ways to survive that probably make a lot more sense than somehow getting super cybered up and buying a shotgun with all that money you don't have and ripping off megacorp or something instead of like... I dunno, normal crimes? Why would someone be a shadowrunner unless it's a high risk high reward job?
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Oct 13, 2023 06:03
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Mr. Lobe posted:Shadowrunning is something mostly SINless do to survive, right? And you need a SIN to get gainfully employed in the noncriminal economy? Doesn't that mean getting a day job just isn't an option for most shadowrunners unless they're some kind of pervert hobbyist? At the skill level of most runners at chargen(especially any remotely optimized mage) it'd be extremely easy to get a job at a corp that can issue SINs. Hell, mages would have a SIN within hours by just going to literally any megacorp and saying "Hey I have 6 magic and am mostly mentally stable"
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Oct 13, 2023 06:37
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Glagha posted:Well even putting aside the day job without a big payout it's kind of like why would anyone do this. You're SINless so normal employment isn't an option but there's ways to survive that probably make a lot more sense than somehow getting super cybered up and buying a shotgun with all that money you don't have and ripping off megacorp or something instead of like... I dunno, normal crimes? Why would someone be a shadowrunner unless it's a high risk high reward job? yeah, I think the classic example is car theft - a runner team has all the skills and gear necessary to successfully boost pretty much any number of ford americars at much, much, much lower risk than even a milk-run (with different part of such an operation falling under the purview of the various shadowrunner archetypes), and they have (or can easily get) the contacts necessary to resell or part them out, and that works out to a decent chunk of change even if they're getting paid a tiny fraction of the value even in a world where every single megacorp and national government decides they're so biased against the SINless/criminal SINs that they aren't in the market for mages, incredibly skilled technical specialists, world-class salespeople, or security specialists that come with a few hundred thousand nuyen worth of heavy duty 'ware and psychological profiles right at the sweet spot of "team player" and "violent psychopath," you've really got to be offering something more than what a team can earn from independent low volume street crime (it also doesn't really make sense from the Johnson end - sure you want to keep costs down, but if you're hiring a group of specialized professional criminals to conduct delicate deniable operations on behalf of yourself or your megacorp you probably want to employ people who are competent enough to know their worth and not so utterly desperate that they'd accept payment terms that preclude loyalty, leave you vulnerable to being outbid by the savings of random schmucks working 9-to-5s, and which make blackmailing, kidnapping, or simply mugging you comparably remunerative)
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Oct 13, 2023 08:01
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Glagha posted:Well even putting aside the day job without a big payout it's kind of like why would anyone do this. You're SINless so normal employment isn't an option but there's ways to survive that probably make a lot more sense than somehow getting super cybered up and buying a shotgun with all that money you don't have and ripping off megacorp or something instead of like... I dunno, normal crimes? Why would someone be a shadowrunner unless it's a high risk high reward job?
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Oct 13, 2023 14:36
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One GM had us as an Ares backed team on retainer, but that's a really specific game tone.
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Oct 13, 2023 21:46
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As a sidetrack for a campaign set in Vladivostok we did one as corporate runners for Evo, but the entire team was SURGEd. Sadly it didn't last all that far, but I do remember the guy running the briefing was the chief from Danger 5.
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Oct 13, 2023 22:38
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Oh god, Year of the Comet was such a dumb and silly module. But at least it was only Fanpro-levels of dumb and silly, and thus a lot better than what came later on.
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Oct 13, 2023 22:46
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I usually solved the payout problem by mandating all new PCs be SINless, and by bumping the payouts by quite a bit. Need to break into a not super-heavily-guarded A/AA corp facility to steal a thing? 80kny, with a 10kny bonus for no fatalities. Need to smash up a gang HQ? 60kny, 20kny bonus for getting the leader of the gang and his four lieutenants. Wetwork? 100kny and up, and you'd better bet your rear end it's against someone very well protected. Going up against the AAA corps or equivalent doubles the average payout. Not all payouts would be in nuyen either: sometimes it'd be partially in corp scrip, sometimes in harder goods like shipments of firearms or equipment that the group would then have to sell on. The idea was that they'd be laying low after a lot of their runs, to throw off the heat - so payouts sometimes had to cover several months of lifestyle costs. The fact that it made things like augmentations/new cyberdecks/more vehicles possible if they played their cards right was a bonus.
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Oct 14, 2023 00:02
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I also bumped up payouts and gave them a lot of time between runs. Bit of a pain in the rear end for me but I would also calculate out time spent between runs for training skills, increasing stats, cyberware recovery, availability legwork etc. Let the players pick up neato stuff they wanted between runs and use the lifestyle costs clock ticking to get everyone back in the saddle for the next gig. And since lifestyle was something that there was a hefty habit of people ignoring I made a point of playing up the risks of low lifestyle and benefits of higher ones. Also used the rule somewhere allowing transfer between karma and cash since that balancing act sucked for me to try to get right for everyone at the table.
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Oct 14, 2023 00:44
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Oh yeah, the downtime for raising skills/attributes was pretty nuts, so I house ruled all of those. Tippis posted:Oh god, Year of the Comet was such a dumb and silly module. There were only so many times they could hear "Can I play an anime cat girl?" before they had to cave. Like you said, wasn't their worst idea, but it was much better than what came later. Never anime cay girls, not even once.
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Oct 14, 2023 02:44
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was going to say "and at least it wasn't yet another loving bodysnatcher-related metaplot event" (because the anime cat girls were what I also associate it with) but then remembered that was when the Sheddim first showed up so lmao
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Oct 14, 2023 03:31
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one stupid thing about SURGE is that in-world it's random, they could have easily made it surgery-ware and let people be what they want to be
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Oct 14, 2023 07:17
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They have those in later editions. Well, to some extent.
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Oct 14, 2023 08:06
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furry shadowrunners are a time honored tradition by god
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Oct 15, 2023 19:35
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Doctor Yiff posted:furry shadowrunners are a time honored tradition by god nah
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Oct 16, 2023 00:14
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 21:50 |
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Didn't we just get through discussing how shadowrunners need to be unemployable social outcasts for the economics to work?
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Oct 16, 2023 00:19
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