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Brand name dropping to add setting detail and reinforce themes of corporate hegemony is a cyberpunk trope going back to Neuromancer.
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May 24, 2017 12:24
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DGM_2 posted:Bingo. And for bonus points, she's yelling at Iolo to get out of his own shop. I'm thinking her Christmas bonus might be a bit small this year.
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May 24, 2017 13:10
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Whybird posted:She's married to Iolo. I'd imagine she's used to things being disappointingly small. Um, no. Gwenneth - the one doing the yelling - is Iolo's employee. Gwenno is his wife. As for the Iolo hate, I'm guessing you've read Nakar's work?
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May 24, 2017 14:01
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Kanfy posted:Nearly everything in the game itself is labeled similarly. We have DocWagon Trauma Kits, Aztechnology Cyberlegs, Renraku Kraftwerk-1 cyberdecks, Fichetti Frag Grenades... Don't forget the ol' Shadowrun standby pistol, the Ares Predator. Any self respecting Runner should never leave their squat without it. I forget which model the one in the game is, probably the Predator 2 because it kinda looks like the Robocop gun.
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May 24, 2017 14:51
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GhostStalker posted:Don't forget the ol' Shadowrun standby pistol, the Ares Predator. Any self respecting Runner should never leave their squat without it. I forget which model the one in the game is, probably the Predator 2 because it kinda looks like the Robocop gun. Ares Macrotechnology: This Summer's Action Flicks Were Brought To You By Our Small Arms Marketing Department.
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May 24, 2017 15:50
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GhostStalker posted:Don't forget the ol' Shadowrun standby pistol, the Ares Predator. Any self respecting Runner should never leave their squat without it. I forget which model the one in the game is, probably the Predator 2 because it kinda looks like the Robocop gun. Returns takes place during the "second edition" portion of the timeline, so it'd be a Pred II. The Predator version is always the same as the edition you're in.
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May 24, 2017 15:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:Returns takes place during the "second edition" portion of the timeline, so it'd be a Pred II. The Predator version is always the same as the edition you're in. Makes sense. I forgot to check the armory section when I paged through the Shadowrun 5th Ed core book, so I hadn't noticed that they'd upgraded to the Predator 5 yet. I was only familiar with using a Predator 4 (smartlinked, natch) as a sidearm on my 4th Ed Street Sam alongside my modded M23 and a Colt Government 2066 as a secondary backup, and used a Pred 3 for the same role when I played 3rd. Guess Ares Arms needs all the good will and publicity it can get after the Excalibur debacle at the end of 4th. Speaking of mods, I wish this game had a weapon modding system like tabletop, allowing you to stuff extras into your weapons besides just smartlinks. But I guess that's way too much granular detail for people unfamiliar with the system and probably quite a bit of work for something a bunch of players would never bother with. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 17:26 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 17:21
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DGM_2 posted:Um, no. Gwenneth - the one doing the yelling - is Iolo's employee. Gwenno is his wife. Man, my lack of Ultima lore is showing. And yeah, I think Nakar's LPs were one of the things that got me to register.
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May 24, 2017 17:24
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The Predator is kinda silly since it's, as far as I know, always the best choice for a handgun regardless of edition.GhostStalker posted:Speaking of mods, I wish this game had a weapon modding system like tabletop, allowing you to stuff extras into your weapons besides just smartlinks. But I guess that's way too much granular detail for people unfamiliar with the system and probably quite a bit of work for something a bunch of players would never bother with.  Spending far too much time pouring over the books just for a single gun is quite fun. What upgrades to get for it? What ammunition to use? If it's a shotgun or rifle is it better to go for the bayonet or the monofilament chainsaw? Underbarrel bola thrower? Underbarrel grenade launcher? Underbarrel flamethrower (yes, you can mount that on a flamethrower)? There's just too much awesome stuff.
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May 24, 2017 19:38
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Poil posted:The Predator is kinda silly since it's, as far as I know, always the best choice for a handgun regardless of edition. In 5 it isn't. There's a published adventure partially based around it: Ares Small Arms is horrified to discover that they are definitively bottom of the rankings at this season's self defense expos, and a series of Ares-on-Ares shadowruns follow as the execs involved make desperate bids to shift the blame.
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May 24, 2017 20:32
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Ze Pollack posted:In 5 it isn't. There's a published adventure partially based around it: Ares Small Arms is horrified to discover that they are definitively bottom of the rankings at this season's self defense expos, and a series of Ares-on-Ares shadowruns follow as the execs involved make desperate bids to shift the blame. Guess the bad press from the Excalibur debacle hasn't blown over just yet...
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May 24, 2017 20:37
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Ze Pollack posted:In 5 it isn't. There's a published adventure partially based around it: Ares Small Arms is horrified to discover that they are definitively bottom of the rankings at this season's self defense expos, and a series of Ares-on-Ares shadowruns follow as the execs involved make desperate bids to shift the blame. I bet in the end all the runners just successfully hack the databases and everyone involved is blamed.
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May 24, 2017 20:38
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IBlameRoadSuess posted:I bet in the end all the runners just successfully hack the databases and everyone involved is blamed. As per ancient and honorable Shadowrun tradition, my group came to the conclusion we'd make more money faking our own deaths and selling the information to the highest non-Ares bidder. So, yeah, sort of.
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May 24, 2017 20:57
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GhostStalker posted:Guess the bad press from the Excalibur debacle hasn't blown over just yet... Hey, if Renkaru can recover from "oops we accidentally created an insane AI that killed a bunch of our own people, almost destroyed the Matrix, and was part of a literal almost-the-end-of-the-world scenario", Ares can sure as hell bounce back from Excalibur.
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May 24, 2017 21:10
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Ze Pollack posted:In 5 it isn't. There's a published adventure partially based around it: Ares Small Arms is horrified to discover that they are definitively bottom of the rankings at this season's self defense expos, and a series of Ares-on-Ares shadowruns follow as the execs involved make desperate bids to shift the blame. 
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May 24, 2017 21:23
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I always enjoyed the Corp names in front of everything. It shows that branding has gotten so out of control you just brand things without thinking about it, because it's part of the language at that point. It's a fun part of one of the other cyber-punk games I play, The Sprawl, at the beginning you create the corporations that are interested in your characters for one reason or another. "Fisher Price & Wesson" was one of our best.
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May 24, 2017 21:48
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Ze Pollack posted:In 5 it isn't. There's a published adventure partially based around it: Ares Small Arms is horrified to discover that they are definitively bottom of the rankings at this season's self defense expos, and a series of Ares-on-Ares shadowruns follow as the execs involved make desperate bids to shift the blame.
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May 24, 2017 23:20
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PMush Perfect posted:From all the reviews I've seen, you just made that adventure sound way more fun than it actually is. That's all on the reviewers. Making an adventure fun is almost all on the GM. And I say that as a GM. Part of being a good GM is taking an adventure and spinning it in a direction that leads to your players having the most fun. Not that I've ever played Shadowrun tabletop. I want to, but man those rules. 
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May 25, 2017 00:37
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Condoleezza Nice! posted:That's all on the reviewers. Making an adventure fun is almost all on the GM. And I say that as a GM. Part of being a good GM is taking an adventure and spinning it in a direction that leads to your players having the most fun. I've made like three characters in Shadowrun and I still have no loving idea how that character creation works. Using online character generators just makes it more confusing because half the time the ones I found didn't even follow the rules 
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May 25, 2017 01:01
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So what was the Excalibur debacle from SR4?
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May 25, 2017 01:09
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Condoleezza Nice! posted:Not that I've ever played Shadowrun tabletop.  This isn't my first GMing rodeo. Shadowrun is a game that does not work well with being A) directly antagonistic between players and GM, or B) expecting the players to be murderhobos. C.Y.A. does both of those things.
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May 25, 2017 01:33
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Snorb posted:So what was the Excalibur debacle from SR4? The Excalibur was supposed to be a cutting edge manatech (tech involving magic) assault rifle from proven market leader Ares Arms that was released in the last plot book before the switchover to SR5. Ares did their usual marketing campaign, and it was supposed to be the final word in weapons technology. Corp security forces, armies, mercs, runners, and criminal organizations bought them by the caseload, buying into the hype. However, they were literal pieces of hot garbage. Some weapons wouldn't fire when the trigger was pulled electronically, it shorted out smartlink systems, mags would fall out of the gun during a firefight and you'd be unable to reload it since the gun's inbuilt computer still thought it was loaded and wouldn't accept another mag, its explosive rounds would detonate in the barrel or even the mag when fired, it would get so hot that it's welds would melt the weapon into slag, etc. There was a chance to literally kill its user whenever they fired it. It was rushed through QA since Ares wanted the bump to its bottom line that its sales would bring. Runs involving extracting product leads to other Corps didn't help, and the project was behind schedule in the first place. So Ares puts out all these defective guns, and they have to take all these returns on them because of Ares Arms policies to legit buyers. They had so many returns of the thing that they literally ET'd the defective weapons, burying them in the desert. Ares had to take a massive writedown on the losses from the gun, tarnishing Ares Arms' reputation as the premiere weapons manufacturers in the Sixth World and losing tons of rep in the shadow community. Additional hits to the company (data getting out that they were experimenting on bug spirits, death of an important board member in suspicious circumstances with rumors related to said research on bug spirits, etc) almost made it lose AAA megacorp status and push it out of the Big Ten, but they held on, just barely. Remember, Ares is effectively GM with fingers in a lot of additional pies (security, media, financial, the privatized remains of NASA, now branded AresSpace, etc), and weapons is one of it's biggest profit sectors. All in all, Ares took a major hit. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 01:50 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 01:40
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Awww, Ares was the Corp I hated the least 
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May 25, 2017 01:45
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Ares were probably the "good guys" for as much as that could be said of any corp. That is to say they weren't going to ritually sacrifice your bloodline or end your employment by literally having you for a snack.
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May 25, 2017 02:05
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DeathChicken posted:Ares were probably the "good guys" for as much as that could be said of any corp. That is to say they weren't going to ritually sacrifice your bloodline or end your employment by literally having you for a snack. They also have the "mom, apple pie, and baseball" feel of old America (or UCAS now) attached to their marketing and branding going for them, since they're supposed to be an outgrowth of GM and based in Detroit, after all. Still, they aren't the premiere weapons manufacturing and security focused megacorp for nothing. And the less said about the poo poo they were doing with insect spirits, the better, even if cleaning up Bug City was mostly their deal as well.
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May 25, 2017 02:19
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GhostStalker posted:They also have the "mom, apple pie, and baseball" feel of old America (or UCAS now) attached to their marketing and branding going for them, since they're supposed to be an outgrowth of GM and based in Detroit, after all. To be fair not all corps would bother to clean up their own mess
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May 25, 2017 02:29
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Insect spirits will invade wherever they can, Chicago is just where they managed to make it stick. In the 4th world they would take over an isolated village before being purged by adventurers (and remember, literally everyone in Earthdawn was a mage, they just differed in how they did their magic) but in the dense cities of 6th world where magic is rare and expensive that's not gonna happen. Fighting insect spirits without magic is not something you will survive, and with so many hosts around there's a lot of them.
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May 25, 2017 02:35
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PMush Perfect posted:From all the reviews I've seen, you just made that adventure sound way more fun than it actually is. My GM is pretty good at deciding "no, this is stupid, we are doing this my way" when a published adventure does not live up to snuff. Your Game Will Vary.
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May 25, 2017 03:03
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Danaru posted:To be fair not all corps would bother to clean up their own mess True, they'd just get their in house media subsidiary to spin such a mess in a way as to be favorable to them. Like the goddamn Azzies, so much so that most SINners still think they were justified wrt the Amazonia War and Sirrugh Yes, I have a hate boner for them, like any other Runner in the know would. Only problem is that most people in the Sixth World aren't in the know and the corps want to keep it that way. Also, I am still pissed off that it was mentioned that apparently the Azzies bought and renamed the Brooklyn Bridge in one of the fluff books that covered Manhattan.
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May 25, 2017 03:11
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Ze Pollack posted:My GM is pretty good at deciding "no, this is stupid, we are doing this my way" when a published adventure does not live up to snuff. Your Game Will Vary.
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May 25, 2017 03:29
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Condoleezza Nice! posted:Not that I've ever played Shadowrun tabletop. I want to, but man those rules. Tell me about it. I just started a 4e campaign tonight and I'd forgotten how many steps there are to loving everything.
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May 25, 2017 03:43
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Condoleezza Nice! posted:That's all on the reviewers. Making an adventure fun is almost all on the GM. And I say that as a GM. Part of being a good GM is taking an adventure and spinning it in a direction that leads to your players having the most fun. I might be given an evil eye here, but as I agree that Shadowrun rules tend to be a bit over complicated I tried something to make it simpler on a new group that I GM'ed With a little bit of tweaking, D20 Modern does a fine job of simulating Shadowrun since D20 Modern has a slew of optional rules to implement mystical elements (basically porting D&D magic/psionics). It worked very well. Almost too well annoyingly enough. Next time I played normal Shadowrun I almost thought I would have preferred the other system. mauman fucked around with this message at 06:20 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 06:18
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I honestly don't find the Shadowrun combat rules that onerous. You roll your attack, they roll their defense, you'll probably hit and then they roll their armor. As long as you know what those pools are ahead of time it's just a couple rolls.
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May 25, 2017 07:20
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wiegieman posted:I honestly don't find the Shadowrun combat rules that onerous. You roll your attack, they roll their defense, you'll probably hit and then they roll their armor. As long as you know what those pools are ahead of time it's just a couple rolls. I don't think Shadowrun running normally is as much an issue as it is the game grinding down into a halt when you run into one of the (numerous) edge cases like grenades, spell interactions, spirits etc. where trying to decipher the atrociously edited rulebooks is gonna eat up your time.
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May 25, 2017 07:30
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Bushmeister posted:I don't think Shadowrun running normally is as much an issue as it is the game grinding down into a halt when you run into one of the (numerous) edge cases like grenades, spell interactions, spirits etc. where trying to decipher the atrociously edited rulebooks is gonna eat up your time. Exactly. And then you also have to factor in Decker combat on top of gunplay, magic, edge, grenades, etc. One of the most consistent problems with the Shadowrun rulebooks has been horrific editing. If they even solved that, a lot of people would perk an ear and look into getting the books.
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May 25, 2017 11:05
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The hell are insect spirits? Can someone elaborate on those and why they're bad?
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May 25, 2017 13:32
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mauman posted:I might be given an evil eye here, but as I agree that Shadowrun rules tend to be a bit over complicated I tried something to make it simpler on a new group that I GM'ed I'm just going to say I believe you, but also that 'This game works better in d20 Modern' is the most damning indictment of a game system I've ever read.
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May 25, 2017 13:35
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Lynneth posted:The hell are insect spirits? Can someone elaborate on those and why they're bad? They're basically astral entity invaders from another plane of existence that take the form of insects. They possess people and body horror warp them into insectile forms. The fun part is that it's possible they're only invading our reality to escape from something worse.
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May 25, 2017 13:36
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Lynneth posted:The hell are insect spirits? Can someone elaborate on those and why they're bad? Astral locusts.
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May 25, 2017 13:38
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 13:41 |
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I set fairly simple spoiler rules about discussing things happening after this game takes place and we're starting to drift pretty far beyond them at this point, let's rein it in a little.
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May 25, 2017 13:53
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