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Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people?  Is "everybody is a bad person, almost certainly including you" part of the appeal of the game? Because I thought the genre in general has moved more towards "things are bad but still possibly salvagable" as the prevailing mood.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:49
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Just take the fluff and play it in FATE. Or Apocalypse World. Hell, you could largely play it mechanically as-is in *World, you'd just need to refluff the odd bit (like maybe having TWO psychic maelstroms: the Matrix and the Mana world).
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Aug 8, 2013 23:15
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Zereth posted:Agreed, but making it so you do all that poo poo between the rigger ordering his drone around the corner and it arriving isn't going to help. Couldn't you simplify that set of 14 checks to, like, one or two, to make the times line up? Like, say... "I roll a check to breach and search the room (roll successful)" "Easy peasy for a hacker of your caliber!" "Now let's grab the data! (roll...half successful)" "Hmm, this is tricky. Two of the data files are child's play to disarm and copy. Looks like they went all out to secure number three, though! Your call--take two out of three and go home, try to mess around with three on the fly, or take the time you need to disarm it properly. Better hurry though, cause hey, rigger! Your dragonfly cam sees a KE rapid response team coming up the fire escape! They're lightly armed, but they ARE armed, and there's a lot of them! What do you do?" Or is that a different GM paradigm or something?
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Apr 17, 2014 16:43
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, FASA did a good job setting up what Deltaware meant with Hatchetman's story, but nothing much has really been done with it since, particularly with the shift away from traditional cyberpunk into transhumanist faffing about. I always got the impression in 4e that Catalyst would -really- have liked to get rid of Essence as a mechanic at all, to move away from the whole concept that cyberware is transgressive against the humanity of the subject which is a basic Shadowrun theme. Shadowrun has themes beyond "being a super-skilled punk in a corporatist dystopian future is cool"? And what's wrong with the idea of cyberware NOT being inherently "transgressive"? Full body cyborg hacker (preferably with pink hair and a taste for bad music) sounds pretty cool from where I'm standing.
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May 5, 2014 21:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:The Hatchetman quote that sorta stands out for me, after he went insane and began his killing spree, was something along the lines of "After I got the cybereyes, nothing looked real anymore. It was like the whole world was just a TV show." This feels weird to me, intuitively. I feel like I could substitute "cyber-eyes" with "corneal implant" or "laser eye surgery" and get an absurdity out the other end. I guess I should consider myself more of a post-cyberpunk sort of guy, then? Oh, and do heavily magic-alized characters get the Doctor Manhattan treatment going the other way? Like, "Each time I initiated, the rest of metahumanity looked more and more like little bugs" or something? Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 02:27 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 02:24
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TheAnomaly posted:...I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison to get a good idea of the Cyberpunk themes that all load into Shadowrun. I'll have to get on the other ones, but this one stuck out at me. I thought the theme of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was that AM, for all his power and hatred, was ultimately as trapped as his victims? He's got nothing left to do but throw "toys" against the wall in fits of rage, and even making one of his "toys" unbreakable doesn't do anything for his anger? Or is that just the theme of the game version? Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 04:40
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Sure, I can get behind that. "Everything tastes like bland tofu, so the few times I eat I try to enjoy the texture more than the taste" or "My mind's too wired up to actually 'sleep', so every night instead of sleeping I go immerse my body in a tank cybernetic cleaning/preservative/lubricating/whatever gel while my mind/soul goes for a matrix jaunt" are interesting ways to roll with that aspect...although being me, I'd probably add "but now I can read a guy's mind by shaking his hand with bare skin, so I got a fair trade."  It just feels weird that you have this one system, cybernetics, that has this stigma of "trading power for distancing dehumanization," a stance at least nominally supported by fluff (Hatchetman) and crunch (essence)...and then you have this OTHER system, magic, where gaining more and more power not only doesn't dehumanize you, but arguably makes you even MORE emphatic and connected to the world. Like, there's no "at [magical equivalent to essence 0] your PC attains the enlightenment of the universe. Why are they still shadowrunning? It feels like such a petty use of power. Retire your character as they recluse themselves to meditate on the state of the world and how it can be fixed, or perhaps seeks new worlds to start over." There's apparently nobody on Jackpoint or whatever saying "after a while, everybody's aura starts to look kinda the same." And LGD and Gort raise some very good points--not only does magical power theoretically progress indefinitely as long as you keep going, but it also lets you pull stuff that cybernetic powered people can't even begin to imitate. And because of adept powers, that doesn't go the other way round. It's kinda...I dunno...incongruous? I mean, cyber power and money power eventually corrupt absolutely, and magic power...doesn't? At least not in and of itself. Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 15:18 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 15:15
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That still doesn't explain why magic isn't treated the same way in-fluff or in-crunch, I don't think. For every street samurai who has his wired reflexes, you got a physical adept moving impossibly quickly using the equivalent adept power. For every decker who gets a deck and all the needed boosters implanted in his head, spends as much time as possible in cyberspace, and whines that the real world feels "slow", you have a mage who loves his totems and focuses, spends as much time as possible in the astral plane, and whines that the real world feels "mundane". This is probably my post-punky tendencies or my Mr. Rogers brainwashing coming to a head, but again--why is the former seen as distant and dehumanized, but the latter seen as perfectly human and natural? Or am I just beating my head against the wall and the dehumanizing effects of metal/plastic/vat grown enhancements are simply a sine qua non of the genre Shadowrun is trying to emulate, and they just didn't consider magic the same way?
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May 6, 2014 18:22
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ProfessorCirno posted:There's a few answers. That is a good answer! I hadn't considered that, thanks. ProfessorCirno posted:The next is that, at least in SR3, Magic DOES have a price. Having improper medical treatment, abusing your body with drugs, not following your totem's directives, being hit in the Astral - all these things lower your magic. That second to last one should be the most noticable. For example, it's stated that a Bear shaman cannot turn down someone who needs healing without a good reason for it. I distinctly remember reading rules in SR4 about how addiction to drugs was supposed to harm your essence (although not to the extent that cybernetics do), and I think there are also rules for decker integrity or something for attacks in cyberspace, but that's a fair point. ProfessorCirno posted:Next again...well, simply put, Magic usually isn't better. In SR4, while Mages were horrifying death machines due to vastly overpowered combat drain measures, SR5 mages are significantly weaker. In SR4, adepts are way weaker then sammies are, and in SR5, despite constant complaints about UNLIMITED UPGRADES, I've yet to see a compelling argument that paints adepts as stronger then sammies - and frankly I still rarely SEE adepts, because sammies are so much easier to create out the gate. 'Ware is almost always cheaper in essence then it's equal Adept power would be in PP - sometimes dramatically so. This feels more like the "ha ha Catalyst doesn't understand their own system" argument I've seen in this thread than "oh Catalyst actively tried to balance magic and tech." Especially since I remember that SR4 game that you, I, and some other guys played with Piell where Radioactive Bears' mage took out a whole gang of bikers at once while my guy cowered and got shot. Although that could have just been me making a bad PC. ProfessorCirno posted:Lastly, "doesn't use tech" tends to also be "can't use tech." Awakened characters likely aren't going to be getting the datajack (and if they do, well, there's your penalty right there!), and they certainly aren't going to get the Rigger set up. There's very little chance you can afford high magic, high resources for a deck, and any actual amount of usable skills or attributes.. They're low-tech characters in a high-tech world. Doesn't this just mean "mages can't get literally everything they want and potentially squeeze out the decker, the face, etc."? This seems more like a gameplay concession for other characters than a pure weakness of mages exclusively. A decker's resources probably goes more to his deck, same with his skillset, so there's not much chance of him taking up "other roles" by getting lots of weapons or Con. Again, though, that could just be biased by my own experiences.
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May 6, 2014 19:14
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Nyaa posted:What if the L6 contact is my dad and I am his beloved son? You say it like there's no absolute loyal contact in this world. Self-sacfrifice for a friend? Honor? Nah. I Am a contact NPC, I am destinated to betray the player when the GM feel like it. The first SR character I ever made had mom and dad as a contact. I'd thought it'd be cool/funny to have this obscenely skilled but utterly immature runner have the chance to call on Dad's van and maybe beat the heat by paying a visit. Isn't it listed in the book that Loyalty 6 contracts will never betray the character? They might be too busy to help (or is that the influence rating?) but they'll never actually turn on them? Actually, wait, you were in that game!
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May 20, 2014 17:26
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Ronwayne posted:The most important genetic indicator for criminal tendencies in the sixth world is a deadly allergy to silver/gold/etc. Is there any particular reason for this, or is this just the stereotypical "min-max" disadvantage?
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May 26, 2014 04:35
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Ronwayne posted:It is. I wonder what an SR campaign with minimal violence would be like (I'd actually like to play in one) Run a Cortex+ Leverage game in the SR setting and let's find out together.
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May 28, 2014 23:06
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Ronwayne posted:It is extremely annoying how many concepts which seem fun/interesting to play require Rule 0 fallacies to even be able to function effectively. What is a rule 0 fallacy?
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Sep 30, 2014 22:59
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ProfessorCirno posted:The thing with Shadowrun is that it actually DOES have way more then just AAA missions. As someone else mentioned, even if you're still just doing runs, there's lots of groups that can payroll you - political advocacy groups both diplomatic and militant, AA corps (who if anything would be more cutthroat), or even just wealthy individuals. You could get a job where a neighborhood has pitched in together and scrapped and saved to afford a single Runner team to desperately try to stop a corp from buying out all their land and throwing them to the street. Note to self, keep this in mind. It gives me the 
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Oct 17, 2014 00:02
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gyrobot posted:Not never attack, but centering contacts around offering combat support. This is what Alpha Protocol is for. Look up Steven Heck's subway minigun. Sniper support is also good, a-la Ilia the Sniper You Hired from Payday 2. Besides that, you can go with remote mine all-you-need-to-do-is-push-the-button dead drops, big rigs with their air brakes conveniently easy to subvert at the top of a hill overlooking the enemy position, even another lesser runner team running interference to get corporate troops away from whereever they're trying to hold and you're trying to get inside.
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Feb 9, 2015 16:49
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