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Put together a group for 5th edition Shadowrun this weekend. Most of us haven't played since the '90s/2nd edition and one person has never played an RPG before ever. Probably going to be a glorious cluster gently caress so I'm preemptively low-balling expectations on the first run, telling everyone it will be a slow game and a learning process. I'm also playing a former DocWagon mage who is absolutely opposed to killing people with his magic, among a group of people who will most certainly go full pink mohawk. Doing that half because I like the concept of a DocWagon mage and half because I want to at least introduce the concept of 'not murder everything everywhere all the time' for what I fully expect to happen, namely us to play a few games to learn the system and then completely reroll everything once we're comfortable enough.
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Nov 5, 2015 19:05
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Morpheus posted:Actually this is sort of what's going to happen...only it's going to be a dragon. I had planned to introduce him to the story later, but given the events that have occurred he really has no choice but to intercede, to use the runners as pawns a little earlier than he had planned, in exchange for the slate being wiped clean, or at least in exchange for them being hidden from the law. Leave the book open to the part where it says never make a deal with a dragon, and specifically inform them of that in-game somehow, just so they know exactly how much poo poo they've gotten themselves in and how much they're going to regret taking this particular salvation offer. Not that they have a choice but hey they should feel like they've dug themselves into some major poo poo.
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Nov 5, 2015 20:39
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SumYungGui posted:Put together a group for 5th edition Shadowrun this weekend. Most of us haven't played since the '90s/2nd edition and one person has never played an RPG before ever. Probably going to be a glorious cluster gently caress so I'm preemptively low-balling expectations on the first run, telling everyone it will be a slow game and a learning process. Trip report, wasn't actually a cluster gently caress. Really slow while everyone learned mechanics and had to check dice pool totals for every action, every time since there's no familiarity but not a terrible game-learning first session. Big surprise of the night was that our decker's matrix initiative, being crazy high compared to everyone else's, seemed to give him so many initiative passes that the really lovely action efficiency of decking was mitigated. Turned out to not be much of a problem so far and many an elevator, cyber eye etc. was hacked.
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Nov 9, 2015 21:19
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I guess I'm just  enough that the rules of 5th edition don't bother me.* To be fair the editing is a total clust-astroph-uck and a half composed of eleven pounds of bullshit stuffed in a ten pound bag, absolutely no excuses given there. I cut my nerd teeth on AD&D and 2nd edition Shadowrun so 5th, mechanically speaking, seems comparatively easy to get the hang of. Few cheat sheets with reminders and precompiled numbers relevant to my character and I'm good to go. May be saying more about myself than the 5th edition rules. I "grew up" in RPGs ignoring the book's precise rules on exactly what number should be used when eating a cheese sandwich under a full moon on the third Tuesday of the month, so reading it all to get an overall feeling for things then just winging it as far as the exact numbers used is how I've always done things. *Exceptions do exist. Looking at you, grenade rules.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:56
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Mendrian posted:SR 5 doesn't actually have a concealability stat; it has a table with examples on which the Squirt does not appear. This is one of the dumbest loving things they did when it comes to gear porn and I have absolutely no clue why. Variable concealability was one of the major factors in deciding between weapons but welp, let's just throw that right the gently caress out the window because *farts*
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Dec 20, 2015 03:26
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean, it does have concealability, it just covers types, not each individual weapon. Exotic Weapons don't have a type, so they're in a weird hole there. The squirt being listed in their groupings or not wouldn't matter if they had not made the stupendously retarded decision to remove individual weapon concealability ratings. Making it per weapon type was just an unmitigated negative decision in my mind and representative of their extremely schizophrenic approach to publishing 5th edition. "Simplify" all the weapons by stripping out one of the major factors in differentiation within a weapon class, and then leave in all the other absurdly number crunchy poo poo that doesn't contribute anything positive, or is actually a massive drawback? (looking at you grenade blast reflection)
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Dec 20, 2015 17:57
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Rockopolis posted:Missile Mastery Motorcycle Adept? GM "So wait, does the motorcycle shoot missiles or is the motorcycle shot like a missile?" Player: "Yes"
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Dec 23, 2015 21:02
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I'll admit, mechanically speaking, they did a good job with the new dice rolling system but I've never been a super big fan of this die hard D6-only approach. I'm biased by white wolf's D10 system and I'll freely admit that. D6-only has always sucked in my opinion.
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Dec 30, 2015 03:31
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Best quote from tonight's game, "Did you remember the elf? poo poo, no. Who remembered the elf? Oh whatever we still have the dwarf in your trunk."
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Jan 4, 2016 05:50
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Poil posted:In DnD you meet a mysterious stranger at a place which serves alcohol, travel to a heavily guarded building to retrieve/kill something and then makeout with an elven princess. In SR you meet a mysterious stranger at a place which serves alcohol, travel to a heavily guarded building to retrieve/kill something and then makeout with an elven hooker. It seems pretty much the same to me, just more advanced tech. If your GM has the imagination of a gold fish, I guess? Last D&D run I did we were the rebuilt servants of a "goddess" sent out to found a salvation religion in her name promising a cure to the horrible disease that was slowly decaying the population that was left alive on the continent. Turned out the goddess was a batshit insane caretaker AI for the colony ship that crashed generations ago, the disease was native ecology being slightly incompatible and her solution was to put everyone back into cryosleep forever. Still played it as straight D&D, the characters only ever really understood she was powerful, from somewhere else and her goal was to put everyone to sleep forever to "save" them, just had a genuinely different story and I don't think we went into a bar once.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:59
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I wouldn't think it would be too hard to imagine that in the setting of Shadowrun a safety system such as not arming to discharge until they're near a small RFID tag embedded in the launcher would be out of the question if your GM wants to be a poo poo head. The larger issue at that point would be your GM being a poo poo head. Unless you rolled a critical glitch, then yeah all bets are off and that would honestly be something I would expect to happen.
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Jan 12, 2016 00:35
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All we got from the story of Shadowrun was lovely megacorporations buying and selling governments and all the big data violations of privacy. gently caress that I want my dragon president and DNI matrix.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:57
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Magic fingers. Magic fingers for Everything. I'm kinda doing it now actually. My guys a mage who found out he was q mage by throwing a temper tantrum as a kid which resulted in him casting a flame thrower spell he couldn't control and burning off his hand. Now I have a force 1 focus sustaining magic fingers and he convinces everyone he's a germophobe so they don't question his gloves.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:51
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Liquid Communism posted:This is a terrible discovery you will make. It is vastly more profitable to be an auto thief than a Shadowrunner, if you GM is using the book's suggested payouts. When I'm GMing, I pay out quite a bit higher, but also make lifestyle costs more important so at the end of the day the PCs gather spending money at about the same rate. It cuts down on them stealing everything that isn't nailed down. I've always taken the approach that anything stolen like that would end up reported and they'd have to sell it to a fence to get maaaaybe 1/4 the listed price, though I'm intrigued how you manage the carrot end of that problem over the stick. What do you do to make lifestyle costs more important?
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Feb 17, 2016 06:56
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Geek the mage first; but if there's an elf, weeellll.......
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Mar 22, 2016 00:17
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Mystic Mongol posted:If there's one thing Shadowrun desperately needs, it's huge mechanical inspiration. I read that as you shouldn't hope for inspiration for their project based on Shadowrun mechanics but instead Shadowrun style and feel.
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Apr 17, 2016 01:37
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I've never had the Johnson himself betray the players without a pretty good plot-based reason. "lol he's out to screw you" has never been enough motivation in my mind for him to tarnish his reputation and complicate his life as a go-between and organizer depending in large part on contacts and reputation. Now the clients who set the whole thing up? Whole different story. Players need to do their footwork to make sure the Megacorp behind it all isn't trying to screw everyone involved or that the jilted ex-lover isn't trying to actually murder the person the players were hired to find and pin it on the runners etc. That to me has always been written off by everyone else as 'Welp, those runners weren't paranoid enough. Mr. Johnson did his job of connecting people and organizing payments, they just died to Terminal Stupid'
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Apr 25, 2016 22:40
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Gonna throw my $0.02 behind not getting wrapped up in the rules. There's 3.4 metric rear end-tons of rules to be overloaded with complexity (looking at you addiction table), rules that are bizarrely to hilariously unworkable (cars traveling at 95% of the speed of light with an elemental anyone?) and there's rules that are actively detrimental to game play (grenades). Get the basics of it and ballpark everything else so it's all fun.
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Apr 28, 2016 18:29
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Mikedawson posted:Hey, I was thinking of doing a campaign with my friends, but I've never been a GM before, and outside of some of them having played the Shadowrun Returns games, none of them are familiar with SR5 proper. What's some advice I can receive for being a GM, and for helping new players get into the game? Be really flexible with a lot of the rules and play to have a fun game. If you bog yourself down looking for and playing by all the rules you're going to find out two things. 1) 5th edition book was organized by poo poo-flinging monkeys 2) Those same monkeys apparently did the rules editing. Tactical nuclear strike level damage from a frag grenade. Cars that travel at high percentages of the speed of light. Technomancers. Be familiar with the rules but not slavishly devoted to them and play the setting, not the mechanics.
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Jun 15, 2016 19:45
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I've found that creative and adaptive targeting helps this a lot. Shoot the mage and the sneaky infiltrator guys once or twice to rough them up a bit then proceed to have your NPCs start hammering away at the shotgun cyber troll for the rest of the fight. Switch between stun and physical damage on the same target because reasons. I also tend to do a lot of rolling behind a GM screen and will sometimes completely ignore an absurd number of successes I managed to get shooting at the first two guys.
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Jun 16, 2016 22:30
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Anyone use any good initiative tracker programs for 5th edition? I see a ton of apps for my phone but many of them charge a fee and it seems they're all android/iphone apps which I'm not really interested in using my phone just for initiative tracking. I already use my laptop to keep the .pdf version of the rulebook up because gently caress the lovely binding on my physical copy and I'd like to have a little window on the laptop keeping track of initiative.
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Jul 4, 2016 07:48
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I already have chummer on my laptop for stat referencing of NPCs, really trying to avoid android/iphone apps. Don't want to set up my phone when I have everything else on my laptop then be swapping back and forth between my phone's tiny screen and everything else already set up on my laptop.
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Jul 4, 2016 17:08
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Nothing else seemed to do what I want so I made my own. If you see any problems with it or improvements that could be made feedback would be appreciated. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l7eg4ol9zw8shlj/AAAW3ftvEG56frgzehbF0nYva?dl=0
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Jul 6, 2016 02:22
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Poil posted:Have they released any actual rules for animals beyond the tiny amount in the core book yet? Sounds like a perfect representation of a reactionary bureaucracy passing knee-jerk legislation in response to public outcry to me. Though I highly doubt the " " " "editing" " " " team of SR5 had the broad vision required for that to be the reason it exists the way it does.
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Aug 23, 2016 01:45
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:I was reading through Emerald Shadows in the Seattle box set and got a couple of fun ideas. One idea would be running vanguard for an important shipment and disrupting some highway biker gangs Mad Max style so the shipment could slip through and the other was basically The Purge, since apparently the Halloweeners gang just goes completely nuts every Halloween in Redmond, probably have players defending the client through the madness. Straight out combat missions in Shadowrun can take an experienced group to make enjoyable. It's a lot more palatable trying to digest SR5's loving abysmal editing and beyond nonsensical rules when there's things to distract you from them. More traditional games have narrative pacing to give you time to wrap your head around that stuff after every encounter leads to questions like "What the gently caress kind of roll should I be using for hack on the fly?" Once people have played a few times and understand what they're doing without scratching their heads while trying to hunt down the rules in a bewildering rulebook (Pro Tip:  and Ctrl + F) things can go a lot smoother. Getting there isn't easy though.
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Aug 27, 2016 04:03
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So one of the players in my game wants a hellhound pet. I'm not immediately inclined to say no because as long as someone isn't blatantly power gaming or just being dumb (see also: the player who was unhappy because they couldn't be a dragon as a player character) I try to let them do whatever they want and deal with the consequences. I have no idea how to make this approach work with a hellhound pet in Shadowrun. Going to be expensive and hard to get are my first thoughts, maybe require a high lifestyle payment separately just for the pet as well? Maybe a karma cost for bonding so it's closer to buying a new spell than just a gun? The rules for animals in SR5 are about as well fleshed out as a runway model so I have no idea how it would work day to day, while out on a 'run and as a part of a character.
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Aug 29, 2016 05:54
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A Light Grift posted:Good calls, Liquid and 40 Proof. I forgot all about those mission tables in the back of the rule book. I read the beast front to back a couple of months ago and most of it seems to have just faded out of my brain. Some page markers sound like a good investment along with one or two copies of that alpha ware book for the players to consult. I didn't feel particularly bad about going for since I own the physical copy and Ctrl+F is seriously the only way to begin to deal with 5th editions beyond lovely editing. When a question comes up in a game I can find things so, so much faster that way. It has really cut down on my use of the "Well I think it goes this way so roll dice, I'll write it down and figure it out later" fall back. Now I get to rely instead a lot more on, "gently caress me, what were they thinking with that rule? We're not gonna do it that way"
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Sep 13, 2016 17:14
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Poil posted:It looks fine to me except that you've misspelled reagents. Seconding the love for magic fingers. If you've got some creativity you can do some crazy stuff with it. Bad guys roll up with a van, open the side and point a vehicle mounted fully automatic cannon in your face? Close the door. Guard standing in your way that you want to sneak past or get the jump on? Tap him on the other shoulder. "Boy we sure could use the keys to this cell hanging on the far side of the hallway" Please, you got that.
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Sep 19, 2016 17:54
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Think about it this way. How many actions would it take for a decker to actually brick your wired reflexes? Then what would be the impact of losing an initiative bonus versus them spending the same number of actions shooting you in the face?
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Sep 30, 2016 20:29
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Poil posted:Hmmm, you can install a cybereye in the back of your head. But wouldn't it be a lot cheaper and more convenient to just buy a micro camera, stick it on a headband of the same color and wear it facing backwards? Then you can just get a picture in picture on your image link and use it like a rear view mirror. Assuming you were to go the craziness route of a cyber eye in the back of your head I'd imagine a cyber eye comes with the nerve tissue and visual processing center hookup to allow you to, eventually after probably a really weird few weeks, be able to process the third field of vision "naturally".
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Oct 6, 2016 17:02
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I actually have a semi-rehearsed spiel for introducing people to Shadowrun. Turns out magic was real it just runs on a multi-thousand year cycle. When it came back the people that had been elves and trolls all along were more than a little bit surprised to be turning into elves and trolls. Now people don't care if you're Asian or Latino, that guy over there is 8 feet tall and can wrap his hands around your head. So now spells and rituals work, which the native american tribes found to be quite useful when they took over former parts of the United States with the magical equivelant of low yield nuclear strikes until people left them alone to form their own country. In the world that exists today the OTHER guy on the street may not be 8 feet tall but he could throw a lightning bolt through your chest, summon a water spirit, or punch you with a fist of magic that came from his tattoos. Also a dragon was president. Technology didn't stop while this was going on, for good and bad. Limbs, organs, eyes and so on now have synthetic replacements available at your doctor's office if you get injured or crippled and if you have enough money you can be armed and armored while naked and punch the guy with his hands around your head into the next room. The internet has become such a part of life now that virtual reality is, like, so last century. People plug the internet directly into their brain and cruise through the data streams in their head to hack the naked punchy guy's personal network, taking the time and place of the meeting they need to ambush from him while he's distracted by an 8 foot troll. Global megacorporations are now of such absurd size that they can buy and sell governments, or just ARE the government. Since outright warfare isn't profitable they hire people like you to do dirty work like finding that meeting place and ambushing it for them while having plausible deniability about you even existing, much less working for them.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:46
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Stanley Goodspeed posted:Okay just making sure there wasn't an appendix poorly sorted in somewhere or errata, because dang that's some pretty sparse content relative to being a magic man or a samurai or whatever Don't say that too loud or you'll get the technomancer treatment.
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Oct 18, 2016 21:11
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Stanley Goodspeed posted:Yeah I feel like someone playtested the normal grenade rules and was just like "yep this is solid" and never read the rest. I am in no way willing to give that benefit of doubt. Grenade rules are like the first thing house ruled at the group I play with because holy balls the damage values you can get are obscene. Chunky Salsa joke is at this point a part of the fabric of Shadowrun but maybe put it in a story fluff quote on the page, not give players hand held low-yield nuclear warheads ok?
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Oct 26, 2016 21:04
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ShineDog posted:I kind of need to know about trollerskates and rkv bikes because this is new to me. Take a motorcycle. Accelerate using the goofy speed classification rules in the vehicle section, and remember that bikes have a low body rating. Have an air spirit use their movement power, which takes net successes after the body of the vehicle resists and multiplies the goofy speed classification number of a bike. Extrapolate the speed classification table far, far beyond what is listed because you've broken the table to an absurd degree and figure out what percent of C you're aiming for.
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Oct 27, 2016 18:25
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I've always played it more as "what level of security would this organization pay for, and how much resistance to the players makes sense/is fun?". In my runs a single apartment building might not even be a host itself because security isn't a huge focus of that kind of business, whatever management company runs the conglomeration of apartments could have a single host for all of their apartment complexes to be on. If you're going after a corporation's secret research the building will be on it's own host and the targeted system might even be on it's own if I want the element of obstacles to be overcome to be on that level. ...that being said my current team has no decker at all because nobody wants to do that role since it kinda sucks in practice so I've had to get a little creative and abstract away some of that stuff.
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Nov 30, 2016 17:23
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I leave the between run pacing problem up to the players decision. If they want to spend three months faffing about I'll gladly hold off on Johnson offering them the job until they're ready. They just get to pay life style costs for every month and then training costs or bribe costs to get gear for everything they want to do in the mean time. Money will make their decision for them eventually, it's up to them how they want to balance that out between runs. Unless I have a good plot reason for being evil. My next run is going go involve someone they dicked over in the past for a lot of money going after them for revenge so it's going to happen when I want it to and they won't get paid for it beyond staying alive to run the shadows and get some scratch next time.
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Nov 30, 2016 19:01
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Gort posted:It looks like it was a half-formed idea the writers had that never actually got finalised, Kinda long for a thread title sadly.
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Jan 8, 2017 22:10
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Liquid Communism posted:It'd be amazing how much more goodwill Catalyst would have if they could manage a bare minimum of acting like an actual company, with things like advertising upcoming products, releasing them in a timely manner, and proofing and playtesting their books before they go to press. It wouldn't even be that expensive. Make a public contest to get to be invited to be a tester and people would crawl over broken glass to get the opportunity. Feedback, playtesting and proof reading would be done for them by some random freakishly obsessed grognard, guarantee it.
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Jan 10, 2017 10:16
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Nobody in my group wanted to be a decker, for which I truly don't blame them and I was frankly happy to avoid entirely, so I kinda kludged it with an NPC. Through a series of unfortunate events they managed to stumble into a cult and partially break the summoning ritual they were performing. The techno-spirit that the cultists had been attempting to summon and bind ended up being a free spirit that will help the players with general information that would take a decker to find for a cut of the run's payout, or more active hacking and matrix combat in exchange for some karma. It lets me basically abstract away all of the decker rules because holy god are they a cluster gently caress at times. He's also a convenient source of information that helps move the game along at points where I feel I've failed in story telling by not making a range of options present themselves to the players.
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May 21, 2017 08:42
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"ShineDog" posted:Unless it's comically mismanaged, it should be doing passably well. Shadowrun is so comically mismanaged I would have to have an excel sheet, flow charts and some good, solid thinking time to figure out if Games Workshop had hosed up Warhammer 40,000 more or not.
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Jun 10, 2017 11:47
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