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Hong Kong is pretty stingy with the money, if you want a fully-cybered character, you won't be able to afford some of the top-tier weapons until pretty drat late in the game. I first found Shadowrun in it's 2nd edition, and have followed it since, however I've never gotten a chance to actually play the tabletop. Both times I actually got into an online game with the roll20 site, the campaigns crashed before they even started, once on the same day it was scheduled to start, GM never even explained why. I've played through HK and DF, haven't actually tried SR yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing you go through this.
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Apr 27, 2017 02:26
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:In this and Dragonfall, I didn't find cyberware to be that great when I played. In Honk Kong, though, I found something I really, really liked. Thank god someone does this besides me. I've always found the cyberware in all the games to be pretty effective, but I've always had a really hard time getting into playing any of the magical paths so that makes the decision really easy for me. Rabidredneck posted:
It's really hard to go back to SR after the other two but I reconciled it by describing SR as more of a noir story than a party based rpg to people. RudeCat fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Apr 27, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 03:34
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Do grenades follow the Chunky Salsa rules or do they just do their damage once to everything in the blast radius?
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Apr 27, 2017 04:14
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Glazius posted:Do grenades follow the Chunky Salsa rules or do they just do their damage once to everything in the blast radius? They damage everything in their radius, the most useful ones are incendiaries that do damage + DoT and concussion which do ap damage, and can shut down a whole group for a turn.
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Apr 27, 2017 04:17
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HK had the two moderately non-obvious must haves. Enough so that I felt the need to write them up in the before-I-play wiki.
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Apr 27, 2017 04:58
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Kanfy posted:I'm not kidding when I say these guys would be in more danger pouring their morning coffee than in front of our weapon. The annoyingly hard-to-see red color for some of these combat texts was thankfully changed after this game. The obvious answer is that Renraku did it's research. On you, and assumed that anyone desperate enough to run with you had to be of similar competency. 
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Apr 27, 2017 05:45
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UnwiseTrout posted:I've always found the cyberware in all the games to be pretty effective, but I've always had a really hard time getting into playing any of the magical paths so that makes the decision really easy for me.
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Apr 27, 2017 08:12
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Thanks for pointing out the spell cooldown increase from cyberware. I said I'd explain the mechanics, but I never said I'd do it accurately.Cathode Raymond posted:Getting Hong Kong cyberware is rough though because the game is super stingey with money. Not sure if the extended cut corrected this or not. Nope, money's just real tight over there. It's especially harsh on shamans because summoning fetishes cost an absolute fortune and you can barely keep your spells up to date with the money you get. Keeshhound posted:The obvious answer is that Renraku did it's research. On you, and assumed that anyone desperate enough to run with you had to be of similar competency. Incredibly rude, but also fair. Joke was ultimately on them though, seeing as they didn't include getting murdered by a small puddle in their calculations. It is a bit weird how they leave custom characters without any personalized gear for the initial bit though, especially since they clearly do have a system in place for it.
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Apr 27, 2017 08:26
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I started a fresh game inspired by this LP, going the decker-with-drones route; typically I play Mages, so it's a nice change. In my intro battle the spirit quit on me in round 2 and hosed off, but Sam really held his own there. I think that Pro Mage Strategy, in my experience, isn't what might be expected - a giant grab bag of spells. Instead it works best to find a particular type of spell and specialize in it so that you can always afford the most up-to-date version, then double-dip into a second type (confusion-type spells with a smattering of firebolts and fireballs so that I can burn things while waiting for the cooldown on confusion, for instance). By focusing you save a lot of cash that can then go into those oh-so-critical medkits and trauma patches (especially important since you're a mage and therefore scrawny). Even in the stingy-as-hell Hong Kong I was usually swimming in medkits by endgame because I wasn't always jonesing for the shiniest new gun or cyber.
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Apr 27, 2017 10:51
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There's a really cool power strategy for mages (until they fixed it - in DF or HK, I forget which) but I'll get to that when we actually see the spell in question. On another note, it may be of interest to play the Dead Man's Switch campaign in the Dragonfall Director's Cut version of the game - you can do this, and it's much improved over the original version of the engine. Yes it gets a bit confusing that each campaign module also had an updated version of the game engine, but eh. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=343908392
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Apr 27, 2017 17:11
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Psion posted:On another note, it may be of interest to play the Dead Man's Switch campaign in the Dragonfall Director's Cut version of the game - you can do this, and it's much improved over the original version of the engine. Yes it gets a bit confusing that each campaign module also had an updated version of the game engine, but eh. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=343908392 Yeah, I was considering using that myself but ultimately ended up going vanilla both to give the authentic experience and to minimize any potential issues. It's probably what you should go with otherwise. Also I have to say, you don't quite realize the chattiness of some NPCs until you go through the dialogue manually. Might have to end up dedicating the entirety of the next update to the initial investigation setup after all.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:23
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Glazius posted:Do grenades follow the Chunky Salsa rules or do they just do their damage once to everything in the blast radius? the red stuff is blood not salsa. a reasonable mistake to make
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Apr 27, 2017 18:58
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I'll second Prime for a drone name. Though I'd kinda also like to see Hello World.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:09
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Yeah, there are several ranks of drones (C, B, A, S-rank), both combat and support (though it only goes up to A-rank), so multiple names can be used. We could save Prime for a later rank.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:17
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LightWarden posted:Yeah, there are several ranks of drones (C, B, A, S-rank), both combat and support (though it only goes up to A-rank), so multiple names can be used. We could save Prime for a later rank. Sure, or I can throw the names in a figurative hat and see what comes out whenever there's a new drone. Alternatively we can go with "Prime 2.0" or something like that. Update should be soon. I can say right now that this kinda pace isn't going to hold up, but I had some extra spare time and this one had almost no manual cropping or precise screenshot timing due to all the dialogue so it wasn't as much work.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:40
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What's your name? Murphy, sir
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Apr 27, 2017 20:03
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mandatory lesbian posted:the red stuff is blood not salsa. a reasonable mistake to make The Chunky Salsa rule refers to the tendency of the tabletop ruled grenades to render creatures into it when you use a grenade in an enclosed area. You're ”supposed" to calculate the force of the blast being reflected by any surface it doesn't destroy and dealing (reduced) damage on each pass. It's a lot of needless math, imo. Easier to say that a grenade in a small solid room kills people dead.
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Apr 27, 2017 20:38
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Part 04 - The Chop Shop Stop Landing on the Sea-Tac airport and heading off to the infamously crime-ridden Redmond Barrens in order to investigate the fate of a murdered man is a surprisingly popular pastime in the Shadowrun universe. Death and Bleach is also the name of my goth anime club, by the way. We're pretty cool. .jpg)  Y'know, for a body part chop shop called "Organ Grinders" located in what is probably the worst part of town, this place is surprisingly tidy. Also as little of any use as we had in the flashback, now we literally have nothing outside the clothes on our back. Someone here better have at least a zip gun for us or things'll get hairy in the slums.  Understandable when visiting a cheap morgue, distressing when visiting a cheap dentist. Might as well go say hello to what one would assume is the coroner over there.   Sorry, didn't expect any visitors at this hour. And some rear end in a top hat at corporate took my receptionist. What can I do for you, ma'am?Someone using the word "rear end in a top hat" is weirdly refreshing amongst all this drekking and fragging.  Are you the coroner? I'm John Dresden, the Organ Grinders Branch Manager here. So yeah, that makes me this franchise area's coroner, too. And you are? Amazon. I'm here about Sam Watts. [His grin fades.] And what makes you think I know anything about that? Sam had a locator chip embedded in his skull. I followed it here. I see. Well, you're right, he's here. Not too many people know about the murder yet, though... the press haven't caught wind of it yet, what with it being all the way out here in the Barrens. So who told you he was dead?Now we could immediately spill the beans about the entire 100k deal to this complete stranger, but as jolly as he appears to be, that seems like a real dumb move. Let's be at least a little more vague. Sam's digital ghost. When his heart stopped, I got sent a recorded message asking me to bring his killer to justice. Guess he had a hunch.[The dwarf raises his eyebrows, a smile wiping the suspicion from his face.] A dead man's switch, eh? Fascinating! I was working on him earlier. He's over here.We follow him to a small side room behind the pair of curtains.  Poor Sam, you seemed like a decent enough guy. At least whoever killed you was nice enough not to dump your body into the ocean or something. I hate underwater levels. He's my second Emerald City Ripper victim. The third one was downtown. Ripper, huh? I guess the classics never go out of style. [He sighs.] Not my title. That's what the Seattle press insists on calling the killer. All I know is that like the original Jack, our Ripper knows how to handle a scalpel. But this one's even more twisted... he or she always removes an internal organ from the victim. Delicious. A trophy hunter. What was it? Watts' liver was cleanly cut out.Hey, what do you call someone with no liver? A deader! Haha get it, because How about the other lucky contestants? The first victim's heart was missing, and the third had the spleen removed.  An ork calls Dresden back to the main room, leaving us alone with Sam and a defenseless Basic Medkit which we snatch from the nearby tray. As you can probably guess, the open palm icon indicates things you can operate or manipulate in some way. Let's see if we can find any clues from the body.  [Next to Sam are several plastic envelopes containing the evidence found on his body. You can examine evidence through the bag without spoiling it.] Well that's convenient enough. First off there's a business card.  Huh, did Sam have an interest in sewing? Then again that could just as well be the brothel he was talking about. Next up is an unsecured credstick which we immediately slot for 300Ą, completely disregarding the previous notion of not tampering with the evidence. Stealing from the dead has never been so convenient! After that there's a purple shirt.  Lovely. Finally, there's a handwritten note of some kind, because in Shadowrun those apparently still exist in 2054.  At least we have a name to work with, although it's hard to tell what her relationship with Sam was beyond the fact that they were at least somewhat close, apparently had had some kind of a disagreement, and were going to meet somewhere. That's all we can do here, so let's head back to see who's visiting.   So this new Ripper vic, Watts... name's familiar. Didn't his mother kill herself a while back?[The coroner frowns.] So you insisted at the time. [He chortles.] C'mon, she offed herself... I had it on very good authority. Now let's go, Dresden - give me something to work with here. This Ripper case is my ticket to a Lieutenant's badge.I can already tell we're dealing with the force's finest here. I've already posted everything I know. The killer stuns the target with a combination of drugs and magic, then removes a single internal organ while they're still alive. The perpetrator is most likely right-handed, with a slim hand that knows its way around a scalpel. Has a decent understanding of human and metahuman anatomy, too. So... I'm looking for a whacked-out surgeon? Not necessarily. I don't know any surgeons who still use scalpels, anymore. These days it's all done with computer-controlled lasers. Could be anyone from a military field surgeon to an antique medicine aficionado. You're no drat help, dwarf.[The Lone Star detective finally notices you. You note his superhuman powers of observation.] Even the in-game description's getting all sassy. The Lone Star Security Services is, to put it briefly, the private security and policing firm in North America and handle most law enforcement and security work amongst other things. It goes without saying that even the police are a literal corporation in Shadowrun. Who the hell 're you?With a Strength check of 4 we could tell him off and call him "Lumpy" but alas, all that time spent on the internet and playing with drones has left Amazon with the muscles of a toddler. I'm new in town. You the welcoming committee? If you're new in town, then let me be the first to tell you that I run the show. If you get in my way, you'll end up back here on a slab. [He looks back at the dwarf.] Dresden, get me more. I am putting someone in a cell or a box THIS week and claiming my promotion!The meathead detective walks away, but it doesn't take a gambling man to bet that he'll come back to get in our way in the future.  Well, he didn't really seem like my type. [He cocks his head to one side.] Be straight with me. You really gonna work for the dead man? Sam was there when I needed him. I'm going to return the favor.Plus we're jobless, friendless, broke and had literally nothing else to do aside from counting days until we got kicked out of our figurative trash can into a literal one. Fascinating again! Detective McKlusky isn't interested in anything but Detective McKlusky. He'd convict his own mother if it meant another 10 nuyen a week in his paycheck. Plus, he's on the take.[Dresden pauses, considering.] You have honor, after a fashion. I try to honor the dead in my work, so we have that in common. What can I do to help you?There's a variety of topics we can ask him about now. Like I said in the first update, dialogue is a big part of these games and this guy's particularly chatty since we need to get the basics set up. McKlusky's on the take? Who's paying to hold his leash? I don't know, but someone with some major pull has been looking out for McKlusky's career. And wallet. And what was that he said about Sam's mother? The official report is that she committed suicide about a year ago. Aren't you the "official" in that sentence? My name's on the report, but my actual findings left some... doubts. I can't say that it wasn't suicide, but there were unusual bruises on her upper arms, and she didn't use her dominant hand to pull the trigger. I was told to drop it, so I dropped it.Hey yeah, now that I think about it I bet Sam surgically extracted his own liver as well. Case closed, hand us our hundred grand. What are organs worth these days, anyway? Who still uses scalpels? Doctors still learn how to use them in their first year of medical school - as do coroners - but neither profession uses them much any more. It's possible some of the slimier chop shops still use scalpels, I suppose, but I wouldn't know where to look. Have you heard of the Seamstresses Union? It's a nearby club in the Barrens that attracts lowlifes. You'd probably like it.Wow, wait, what, did we just get burned? Me, I'm not really the going-out type. Always too much to be done around here. Plus, the dead are just easier to get along with. Okay, then I just need to know one more thing. Where was Sam killed?[Dresden looks up at you intently for a moment before speaking.] You know, I might be able to do you one better. Why don't you poke around those body lockers in the back and see if you can find anything... useful.Ah come on now, we've been here long enough already. Just spill the beans so that we can get moving. Do you know where the murder site is or not? Goddamnit fine okay, but for that you can say goodbye to the rest of your medical supplies. It's not like dead people have any use for revival items anyway.  Our chat with Dresden awarded us with 2 Karma as well. Unlike in most games, Karma is primarily received from advancing the plot and resolving situations rather than from killing. "Resolving situations" and "killing" are not mutually exclusive though, not by a long shot.  This better be worth it. Man, what if Dresden's the killer and this is all some kinda sick joke where it turns out that he murdered Sam right here and there's just gonna be a pile of organs in the locker and he'll knock us out and take our nose or something [The cold storage locker is labeled "John Doe" but the internal thermostat is set to 21 degrees celsius.] Wait, that's room temperature. What kinda cold storage is this even supposed to be?  Oh look there was a fresh corpse in the corpse locker, you're such a loving funnyman Dresden. How is this supposed to  ...The hell? Concept art: The Morgue 
Kanfy fucked around with this message at 13:53 on May 24, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 20:43
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Nice place for a nap, but the place is a bit dead.UnwiseTrout posted:The Chunky Salsa rule refers to the tendency of the tabletop ruled grenades to render creatures into it when you use a grenade in an enclosed area. You're ”supposed" to calculate the force of the blast being reflected by any surface it doesn't destroy and dealing (reduced) damage on each pass. It's a lot of needless math, imo. Easier to say that a grenade in a small solid room kills people dead. Poil fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Apr 27, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 20:44
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It wouldn't be Shadowrun if there weren't actively-detrimental rules minutia.
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Apr 27, 2017 21:09
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This Armitage guy, what a joker.
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Apr 27, 2017 21:15
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PMush Perfect posted:It wouldn't be Shadowrun if there weren't actively-detrimental rules minutia. A lot of the early rules were easily abused. Remember the rules for DMSO? Here's a funny story about what happens when some inventive players discover it's joys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPM7I49fj8
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Apr 27, 2017 21:33
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Ze Pollack posted:This Armitage guy, what a joker. Yeah, he really holds the spirit of a jester.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:41
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Kanfy posted:Yeah, he really holds the spirit of a jester.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:48
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Get back in the cold storage locker. You're dead, Armitage.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:50
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Man, that Armitage guy sure does look familiar.
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Apr 27, 2017 23:05
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Liver. From a drunk. So I'm guessing "organ repo man" or possibly "ritual-chasing wackaloon"
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Apr 28, 2017 00:16
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PMush Perfect posted:It wouldn't be Shadowrun if there weren't actively-detrimental rules minutia.
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Apr 28, 2017 00:35
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MagusofStars posted:Serious question from someone who's never played the tabletop: If the rules are as hosed as everyone is saying, how do people play? Do you just SWAG a bunch of stuff or is there some commonly accepted set of homebrew house rules that fix stuff?
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Apr 28, 2017 00:39
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MagusofStars posted:Serious question from someone who's never played the tabletop: If the rules are as hosed as everyone is saying, how do people play? Do you just SWAG a bunch of stuff or is there some commonly accepted set of homebrew house rules that fix stuff? I can only speak for myself, and haven't played TT Shadowrun in about 15 years. The core rules were a bit cumbersome, but not unplayably so. The main thing in the system was it was designed to only be played with D6's, most rolls were to reach a target number in which case that dice would be counted as a success, and actions succeed or failed to varying degrees depending on total number of success rolled. Modifiers typically raised or lowered either the number of dice rolled or the target number. The game had a bunch of spergy rules for minor or obscure things, such as calculating the number of times that a concussive shockwave from a grenade bounces off walls and hits the target again, but those kinds of things are pretty easy to pretend that they don't exist if your playgroup is even remotely chill.
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Apr 28, 2017 00:45
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Kanfy posted:Update should be soon. I can say right now that this kinda pace isn't going to hold up, but I had some extra spare time and this one had almost no manual cropping or precise screenshot timing due to all the dialogue so it wasn't as much work. You might want to consider recording your gameplay with OBS or something, using lossless settings, if your computer can handle it. It makes getting the exact frame you want trivial, and you can do up some GIFs too if you feel the urge.
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Apr 28, 2017 01:24
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MagusofStars posted:Serious question from someone who's never played the tabletop: If the rules are as hosed as everyone is saying, how do people play? Do you just SWAG a bunch of stuff or is there some commonly accepted set of homebrew house rules that fix stuff? Just to add to what others have said, the rules aren't as bad as they're made out to be so much so much as each of the main three ways of interacting with the gameworld (physical, technological, and magical) are different from each other. They still use the basic method of rolling a dice pool and calculating successes but each one has at least a slightly different set of rules to abide by, although magical and physical tend to be fairly similar. Decking/Hacking in particular can cause issues, since that can really almost be an entirely separate game all by itself. One thing I *like* about this in play is that once everybody at the table is running on all cylinders with their characters it really is like a team of experts coming together to deal with problems, with each member of the team having their area of expertise that they focus in. However, it can be a really steep hill to climb to get there. There's also the fact that the layouts and editing, at least for the current edition, is pretty poor and makes learning the system kind of a bear.
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Apr 28, 2017 01:57
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MagusofStars posted:Serious question from someone who's never played the tabletop: If the rules are as hosed as everyone is saying, how do people play? Do you just SWAG a bunch of stuff or is there some commonly accepted set of homebrew house rules that fix stuff? With the older rules you just kinda rolled with it (and filed off the rough edges on the fly). Now you can play the setting with another system or just file the rough edges off on the fly. But it has D&D syndrome to some extent - some people just play how they think the rules should work rather than how they actually work and wouldn't know the difference.
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Apr 28, 2017 04:02
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This looks like fun, and it reminds me rhat I've got Dragonfall sitting around about 30 minutes into the game. Worth waiting this thread out to see how it goes before playing?
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Apr 28, 2017 04:25
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I'd suggest maybe playing it yourself first since this LP just started DMS and there's no established timetable. Plus if you already have it you might as well play it and see what choices you make so you can compare it to others.
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Apr 28, 2017 04:30
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One thing I miss from previous editions were cyberdeck construction and modification rules. It got really interesting when cranial cyberdecks were introduced, but 4th and 5th just boiled everything down to "Have a commlink? Good to go!" I liked the rules for messing around the guts of your cyberdeck to squeeze just a little more performance out of it. One of the splatbooks had rules for designing and coding your own software, complete with software design suites to help build your perfect program. The 4th and 5th edition rules do the job, but you just dont get the feel of being the guy who custom built everything. Rabidredneck fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 04:41
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Rabidredneck posted:One thing I miss from previous editions were cyberdeck construction and modification rules. It got really interesting when cranial cyberdecks were introduced, but 4th and 5th just bioled everything down to "Have a commlink? Good to go!" I liked the rules for messing around the guts of your cyberdeck to squeeze just a little more performance out of it. One of the splatbooks had rules for designing and coding your own software, complete with software design suites to help build your perfect program. This is pretty much the one thing that keeps me from just porting the setting of Shadowrun over to some other, simpler, system. I really like being able to tinker with the fine bits of a character.
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Apr 28, 2017 05:25
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I would also like to give a special mention one of the most mocked parts of 2nd edition rules, The Skill Web. The idea behind The Skill Web was that experience in some skills were transferable to other similar skills. So for example, you want to shoot a rifle, but your character doesn't have the skill firearms:rifle. No problem, you have a high skill level in firearms:pistol, and since the two skills are similar, you can use your pistol skill in place of a rifle skill with a small penalty modifier. The Skill Web was a large chart of every skill in the game connected but lines and dots. For every step you move on the skill web the modifier increased. This means that any skill can potentially be substituted for any other skill if you take a large enough penalty. It is very difficult, but completely possible to use your same skill in pistols to, for example, land a helicopter.
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Apr 28, 2017 05:39
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I dont know posted:I would also like to give a special mention one of the most mocked parts of 2nd edition rules, The Skill Web. The idea behind The Skill Web was that experience in some skills were transferable to other similar skills. So for example, you want to shoot a rifle, but your character doesn't have the skill firearms:rifle. No problem, you have a high skill level in firearms:pistol, and since the two skills are similar, you can use your pistol skill in place of a rifle skill with a small penalty modifier. The Skill Web was a large chart of every skill in the game connected but lines and dots. For every step you move on the skill web the modifier increased. This means that any skill can potentially be substituted for any other skill if you take a large enough penalty. It is very difficult, but completely possible to use your same skill in pistols to, for example, land a helicopter. That's like 4/5s of a good idea! It reminds me a lot of GURPS allowing you to substitute weapon skills for (similar) weapons. Could you figure out the optimum starting point and then make an adept with a ridiculous level in that skill and just default your way through a game?
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Apr 28, 2017 05:50
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I dont know posted:I would also like to give a special mention one of the most mocked parts of 2nd edition rules, The Skill Web. The idea behind The Skill Web was that experience in some skills were transferable to other similar skills. So for example, you want to shoot a rifle, but your character doesn't have the skill firearms:rifle. No problem, you have a high skill level in firearms:pistol, and since the two skills are similar, you can use your pistol skill in place of a rifle skill with a small penalty modifier. The Skill Web was a large chart of every skill in the game connected but lines and dots. For every step you move on the skill web the modifier increased. This means that any skill can potentially be substituted for any other skill if you take a large enough penalty. It is very difficult, but completely possible to use your same skill in pistols to, for example, land a helicopter. Ahhhh, the skill web. The seed of a good idea, extrapolated out to the point where it long since ceases to be a good idea.
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Apr 28, 2017 05:53
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