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Shadowrun is a game where you take crippling drug addictions to better build your character to shoot people in the face to earn more money to spend on drugs.
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Jul 10, 2009 00:44
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PierreTheMime posted:I cannot stress how important this is. You, as a GM, are not playing a game. You are telling a story that others throw their own bits into along the way. Whenever you GM, your game should flow and evolve. Never plan exactly how a game should go--have a beginning, cool bits to toss in, and an idea for an end. Gaming "by the book," especially in Shadowrun which is much more open-world than some of the fantasy games, is not a good way to go. I cannot tell you how many times players have killed or been killed by enemies behind the GM screen only to live because its more dramatic that way. I KNEW I KILLED THAT SNIPER ON THE BOAT! I'm in Pierre's game and yeah, he's been really good about this. Your group will ALWAYS surprise you and go in a direction you weren't expecting. Learning to roll with the punches and having a quick enough wit to say "Aha! He was a robot all along!" Are the best tools you can have as a Shadowrun GM. One of my favorite moments GMing Shadowrun is setting up a run, having a good idea how it's going to go, then watch as the team plans something completely off the wall. "The run is to kidnap this old man." "Well we're going to need a blimp." Then racing to re-write the adventure so it's still a challenge for everyone. God I love Shadowrun.
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Aug 3, 2009 04:32
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Hey, I'm running a game right now and it occurred to me that no information had ever been revealed about Dubai in the post awakened world. Does anyone know if any sourcebooks cover this?
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Aug 30, 2009 21:46
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Young Freud posted:Shadows of Asia or Target: Wastelands might have some data, but right now, it's an unknown. Checking the Middle East section of the Sixth World wiki, the United Arab Emirates has been absorbed into the Nation of Arabia. Given Dubai's current state and it's predicted future, it looks like Dubai could be a feral city in Shadowrun. I didn't even know the sixth world wiki existed, thank you!
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Aug 30, 2009 23:11
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Another plea for help, is there any book which goes into depth on the security or inner working of any large scale prison?
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Sep 14, 2009 16:48
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I've been reading through some threads on Dumpshock and the new Almanack and I have some questions about the larger story I was wondering if anyone knew more about. 1. Did they ever reveal who killed Dunkelzahn? 2. What was the final fate of Deus? There was an intriguing bit in the new corporate book on page 81 that suggested.... something? 3. Is that hideous magical rift from Dunk's carbombing still sitting in the middle of the street? 4. I remember reading about a small news agency that would get mysterious tips that were always 100% spot on. Things like "Go to the corner of 4th and Maple and set the camera to look at the east most corner of the building there, leave the camera on for 45 minutes." Who were they and whatever happened with them? 5. Are there any Shadowrun novels that are head and shoulders above the others? 6. I read through most of the sourcebooks but I tend not to read through adventures so I miss a lot of metaplot development. For instance, whatever became of Captain Chaos, Hatchetman or Harlequin? 7. Did we ever get any background on The Smiling Bandit? That's everything I can think of right now. Also, what did everyone think of the Almanack? I haven't been this in love with a sourcebook since Dunkelzahn's Will.
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Nov 3, 2010 21:01
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Bigass Moth posted:
I would urge you to reconsider. I'm loving it, there are so many good character and plot hooks in it and it's actually well written.
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Nov 4, 2010 03:15
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In a couple of weeks I'm going to start running a shadowrun game and I'm considering doing something with the Earthdawn stuff. I know Harlequin, the dragons and the horrors all show up in both games, was there anything else? Specifically I'm thinking of bringing the Passions and Mad Passions back, have one johnson who follows or has been possessed by a weak Passion who hires the runners to carry out hits on people strong with the other passions and taking "that power" for himself.
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Nov 4, 2010 18:02
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Bigass Moth posted:I wouldn't involve the Passions at all since they have no direct Shadowrun comparison and are more powerful than even the top great dragons or horrors. The runners would have more success against Verjigorm than against even the most scurblord Passion. I wouldn't be putting the runners against the Passions themselves but rather the followers or cultists, if you will. The sixth World wiki does an OK job of explaining them, did they survive the fifth world? I keep seeing the horrors referenced, did Harlequin and Frosty nip that in the bud or is that still a threat?
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Nov 4, 2010 18:15
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Gobbeldygook posted:Ancient History's website is the best resource you will find on this, by far. He's also friendly! Oh awesome! Thank you! Edit: Oh man, this site is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm going to draw on so much stuff from this. EDIT 2: Question for the group, what's your favorite Shadowrun conspiracy theory? Deus and his grand plans are still my favorites. FutureBoy fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Nov 4, 2010 |
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Nov 4, 2010 19:03
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One of my favorite Shadowruns ever was a bank heist. There was a fancy dress masquerade ball being held on the penthouse level of a bank HQ, the hacker stole an invitation, went in and mingled, let the runners in the back and they went downstairs to the vault while the hacker kept mingling and shutting stuff down and running hacks against the corp technomancer who was also at the party. It turned into a run and gun sort of thing for the hacker who could only log on for a few seconds before a sprite found him and he'd have to log off and find a new spot to hack without raising suspicions. Additionally the guy the hacker stole the invite from had a disgraced business partner at the same party who got drunk and tried to murder him on the balcony. Meanwhile the runners downstairs were piling gold, jewels, orichalcum and other precious things into sacks before security found them and hoping the hacker could log on long enough to start the elevators back up. The whole things ended with a firefight at the party and the team jumping as one off the balcony onto a waiting garbage truck. Good times.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:39
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I enjoy having background music playing when I run, tomorrow is the first game of my Shadowrun arc, what's some good non-intrusive background music to help set the mood?
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Nov 18, 2010 05:45
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Chrome Gnome posted:Find a bunch of really good soundtracks. That's exactly what they're for - adding drama without being too obtrusive. Hey thanks, these are all really good suggestions. I'll pick up the ones I don't already have.
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Nov 18, 2010 15:27
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Shockeh posted:Chipping in as a lazy GM who doesn't do it any more (because he's lazy after his old group went their seperate ways), I heartily recommend playing Ugress whilst playing. Anything with tonnes of samples really suits Shadowrun down to the ground, and really sets the tone. In terms of plots, just shamelessly plagarise everything. Just don't tell your players. Unless it's brought directly to their attention, you'll be amazed how they'll turn a blind eye to pretty much anything. I had a carbon copy of Kara Thrace from BSG wandering around with a different name, and not one ever noticed until long after when I pointed it out. In that same vein, we recently went through a run where we were fighting analogues of Superman and Batman. We knew exactly what was up but didn't care. The reasoning for their existence was sound and it was fun applying Shadowrun logic to Superman. Sometimes if you hang a lantern on the reference it can be just as fun. Second quick example: Star Wars game that stole pretty much everything from Dead Space.
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Nov 18, 2010 18:35
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This last thursday we had our first Shadowrun game of the new campaign. I'm an old pro but everyone else at the table was brand new to the world. It was an interesting experience. The players were a Murder Troll with 30 points of Addiction to Violence and Erased at 15 points, Another Troll rigger who was prejudiced, a human occult detective (she played the sample character out of the book), a human faceman who works for Horizon and is infiltrating the shadowrunning community for research, and a human technomancer-musician-son-of-a-mob-boss-hobo-drug-addict. The run was simplicity itself, I intended the first game to be an introduction to the rules and have a place for everyone to do their "thing." An armored truck was moving a single package from an Aztechnology holding facility to the Stuffer Shack HQ, the runners had to intercept the truck and retrieve the package. Tons of ways to accomplish this, lots of options. They did the legwork, found out which truck it was and when they were leaving but they didn't know what route it would be taking. They staked out two locations centrally located between supposed routes and sent a drone to watch the warehouse for the truck. The truck made the mistake of heading for the route closest to the murder troll. They hack the pilot program of the truck, wreck it, cause a traffic jam, Troll shoots out one window to the point of destroying a statistically significant portion of the truck and man inside. the faceman works the crowd into thinking this is a hit by Lonestar for whatever reason. Mage does some recon on the truck and summons and earth spirit for the getaway, troll kills second guy in another impressive hail of gunfire. Rigger jumps out of the team sedan, grabs the package and then everyone is off. Except the Murder Troll. He just kept shooting. He empties a belt into the intersection. I ask him how many belts he bought. "Eight." "How many did you bring?" "Eight." "ah." Now he had also taken Incompetent: Drive, so he gets in his little Jackrabbit and immediately drives straight into another car. The rigger sighs and takes control of the Jackrabbit for him. Cue a high speed chase that the Murder Troll is convinced he's doing really well at. So well in fact, that he decides this is a good time to take care of the cops. He shoots out a hole in his roof, stands up, and destroys a cop car with another hail of bullets. Rigger starts really freaking out and starts looking for safehouses. Troll takes this opportunity to kill the other cop chasing him and blow out one of the tires so that it careens into a restaurant. Rigger finds a safe house, pulls murder troll inside and tells him to stay there. The rest go complete the run. After a day, no records exist of the troll's spree aside from the memories of the victims, who think this is Lonestars fault. Thankfully the next mission isn't a learning mission and I can actually provide a challenge to these people.
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Nov 20, 2010 16:45
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Does anyone out there have any character concepts they've been itching to play but don't think they'll ever get to? I've been sitting on a few: Dr. Drake - A Docwagon worker that SURGED out and became a lizardman. He was immediately kidnapped by Docwagon and experimented on in an underground facility for years. He finally escaped and declared war on Docwagon and all it's partners and affiliates. What's most confusing are the frequent flashbacks he's been having of an age when Lizardmen were numerous and held sway over the land. Jimothy Blackheart - A big game hunter that fills his captured creatures full of ware then remote operates them. Not a lot of back story for him but I spent so long statting out a Cyber-Hyena and Cyber-Hawk that it would be a waste not to play him now. Also I love his name. Johnny Bingo - Evil Sherlock Holmes. Once a consultant on several Lone Star cases, he felt his abilities were being marginalized and set out to make the police respect him and his talents by committing crimes only he could have solved. Chester Grimm - A corp wage slave who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got capped by a shadowrunning team on their way out of his department. It should have been a non-lethal round but accidents happen and he was bleeding out from a rubber bullet. In his death throws he's visited by an apparition/hallucination of a grizzled cowboy who chastises him for going out in such a pussy way. In that moment he awakens into an adept who then takes up the western gunslinging ways, starting out with one point of magic and a fresh faced outlook on life and with each point of magic becoming more grizzled and full of grit. The last and first are ones I've been chomping at the bit to play. Anyone else have some unused concepts sitting around?
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Nov 28, 2010 23:00
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Today I run the second game for my new group. My normal group started playing SR when 3rd edition came out (I started playing halfway through 2nd) and they've been playing in this same world ever since. That's fifteen+ years of established continuity, johnsons, fixers, and old PCs turned evil walking around. The old group is still going but we've started this experiment where I run a totally fresh group through this world. These are five people who have never played Shadowrun before. As you may have gathered from my previous synopsis, they took to it pretty quickly. That game was meant to be a training session to get them used to the rules, this is the game where I pull out more of the stops. This is also the group that will be picking up a lot of the plot points dropped by the other group, so that'll be fun for everyone involved.
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Dec 2, 2010 20:45
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I don't think I could deal, emotionally, with this thread dying. So the game I've been running has been very dense with meta-plot, dealing with the fallout from the crash 2.0, Dunkelzahn's will, Horizon and even some far reaching stuff from Earthdawn. I've figured out how to tie the whole thing together into one massive showdown with the horrors that takes place over every level of accessible reality including the matrix. I've been trying to shake it all up by throwing dumb fluff runs at them every few sessions to keep it from getting too plodding and plot heavy. My favorite is one that springs from a plot run. In Big D's will he gives a Sasquatch a recording of himself singing a ballad of "a time before now" or some such thing that I've taken to mean the story of Earthdawn. He gives it to the Sasquatch because they can understand every language. Sasquatch then makes a deal with a media empire to turn it into a network pilot. The run is to steal the recording, which I assume will actually happen. After it does, the owner of the media empire (named "E") will be irritated but impressed with the runners and offer them two jobs to do in exchange for amnesty. They must travel to Russia and bring back genetic material from Hitler's corpse and then travel to a luxury airship and steal the piloting AI. Hitler gets cloned, the AI goes into a remade version of KITT and E has a new pilot to replace the old one: Master RACE! A thrilling hour long drama about Hitler competing in Rally racing and solving mysteries wherever he goes. I've been giggling like a madman for the past three months. Also the new WAR! pdf came out a week or so ago, has anyone checked it out yet?
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Dec 22, 2010 17:45
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Bigass Moth posted:Technomancers are terrible until you get hundreds of karma. Adept hackers outclass regular hackers immediately with the rules as written. They really screwed up the Matrix with 4th Ed. I'm a 4th ed matrix apologist. I love that they paradoxically slowed the internet down in the future so that everyone can play. We always shied away from Hackers in previous editions because no one wanted to stop the game with their little matrix side missions. BIOWARE QUESTION! Is there any way to expand the resevoir of webbing for the spinneret implant? Two doses from the wrist is simply not going to let me do anything a spider can.
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Jan 11, 2011 18:38
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A couple of questions: 1. Would Tony Stark be a hacker or a technomancer 2. unrelated question; do the rules for being a spider-adept exist in 4th ed.?
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Jan 13, 2011 21:24
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Bigass Moth posted:Yes and Yes. I want to expand a little on this as I am playing a ghoul with cybereyes and just had to look all this up. The astral sight is actually a direct product of your mind and not your eyes so that's mainly why it isn't affected. This means you can also shut your cybereyes off and still astrally perceive, or swap between the two if there's excessive smoke or what have you. My question: can you perceive things like fire or arcing electricity in the astral?
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Feb 16, 2011 17:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:SR4 did the same thing. There's no actual table, you just gotta sorta play it by ear. Yup, eventually the Cannon Companion or equivalent will come out and then you'll have some itemized options.
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Jul 17, 2013 01:27
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