|
Get back in the cold storage locker. You're dead, Armitage.
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2017 22:50
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 22:00 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2017 00:45
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2017 05:39
|
|
|
Shoeless posted:-The shocks caused by magic returning to the world caused massive natural disasters such as earthquakes, killing tons of people. -Not to mention the dragon attacks.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2017 16:25
|
|
|
Honestly, etiquettes aren't really required and should probably be considered bonuses. I looked at them as a way flesh out the PC more than anything.
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2017 14:30
|
|
|
Gimmick Account posted:Yeah, Shadowrun lore outside of the few established hubs is really, really weak. When a character in Hong Kong mentioned the 'Alliance for Allah' - a supposed amalgamation of states in the Middle East, if you haven't deduced that - I cringed. Also, the same character later speaks about having worked 'out of an ice cave near Novosibersk' [sic] in the past... Novosibirsk, a city of 1.4 million people in 2017, lies on the West Siberian Plain, an area so hilariously flat and swampy that you probably would have to construct your own 'ice cave' above sea level if you really wanted one that badly. I assume a big part of the reason for setting a campaign in Berlin was that Shadowrun, and cyberpunk in general, was actually really popular in Germany in the late 80's early 90's. So much so that the company that originally licensed the books to translate and sell in Germany then struck a deal with FASA to write their own official German sourcebooks which were canon. There is Way more material in the setting about Berlin, than there is about the Confederation of American States (which is exactly what it sounds like).
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2017 23:57
|
|
|
Glazius posted:Hellhounds strike me as the sort of creature who like to be told they are a good boy by the kind of person who has a treat for a good boy. They are literally just awakened dogs. They behave like dogs, and like the same things that dogs do. They are very good boys (and girls).
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 03:32
|
|
|
BurningStone posted:Then my dog secretly wants to breath fire. Which is, now that I think of it, definitely possible. Sometimes she just sits, looking at me.... She is trying to will her metagenes, dormant since the last age of magic, to suddenly express. I would stock up on fresh zebra to keep her sweet if I was you. I remember in middle school having a book of premade campaigns that were all themed around paranormal animals. As part of one of the scenarios, the pc team breaks into a lab that specialized in selective breeding, that is patrolled by a pair of particularly powerful hell hounds, one the the companies bigger successes. Depending on how things shake out, it is possible for the team to stumble on the hellhound's personal area before running into the animals themselves. The area consisted two flame retardant dog beds and alot of badly burned chew toys, If the PC's steal any of their toys, the hellhounds go ballistic when they catch them. I dont know fucked around with this message at 04:56 on May 13, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 04:46
|
|
|
SIGSEGV posted:We're goons, dragon sized. Poil posted:I'm pretty sure that dragon sized would be big enough to take a bath in. A very sticky and unhygienic bath, but still. Exactly.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2017 01:28
|
|
|
Polaron posted:Do the games ever go into what life is like for an average, middle-class person in this world? Who are these corporations selling to aside from shadowrunners? The TT has gone into it a bit for background, but it's never been a big focus since the ennui of the middle class of the future isn't the most interesting part of the setting. Most of the middle class are basically owned by a mega corp. Their parents work for Corp A, they were born in a Corp A owned hospital, educated in a Corp A school, live in Corp A apartments, and socialized almost exclusively with other Corp A employees and families. Sure, they may buy competitors products or go clubbing downtown at times, but most of their life is spent in a carefully constructed bubble that is built to serve their employers needs. Think turn of the century Mine town with a bit of cult mixed in. Overall, they are reasonably comfortable and generally afraid of doing anything that endangers their position (to be fired by their corp is to lose everything they've ever known), but still aware they are in a cage.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2017 22:59
|
|
|
GhostStalker posted:I think there was a problem with my install of Hong Kong, because in the revamped Matrix, none of my avatars would make any kind of running animation when moving like they were supposed to, instead just floating a little above the ground in mid stride. Dunno if that was a glitch or just weird some graphical fuckup on my substandard off the shelf laptop I had the game on. I think it happened to me in Dragonfall too, but I forget. I could be wrong, but I believe that was an intentional design choice.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2017 03:15
|
|
|
Kanfy posted:In case someone likes their games non-steamy, you can get the Shadowrun trio for roughly If anyone is fence sitting, that's an insanely good value for some of the best RPG's (particularly the sequels) of the last few years.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2017 18:35
|
|
from Gog.com right now.
|
Glazius posted:Yeah, given how astral echoes work I wonder how all of Seattle hasn't already turned itself into a festering pit of murder-spite. If I remember correctly there are hints in the setting that the world has so much negative energy swirling around that existence is almost certainly doomed once ambient magic levels get high enough to allow in the horrors from deeper metaplanes. Though this was back when Shadowrun and Earthdawn were more closely connected (and owned by the same company).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2017 21:24
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:I'm not imagining the horrors emerging... That seems very much in line with the setting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2017 03:49
|
|
|
RedMagus posted:What's funny is all the talk about the world being so toxic that eventually horrors from outside come in and wipe everyone is pretty identical to what happens in a game of Dominions, from the LPs I've seen. Not really coincidence. Illwinter is pretty upfront about the fact that Dominions heavily Ze Pollack posted:You learn precisely what the gently caress in an intensely railroady official adventure. Extremely long story short: it's one of the pieces of ritual magic so old we have forgotten it's ritual magic: Sacrifice The King To Bring Back The Sun. At a moment that the hopes and dreams of an appreciable fraction of metahumanity were tied up in him, Dunkelzahn took the express route to the Astral Plane (Apply C4 directly to the forehead) and took all that hope with him, to be used as heavy weaponry against the incoming monstrosities. Do you know what adventure that was in? I thought they went into what happened in detail the novels, but deliberately left it vague/ambiguous in the sourcebooks/adventure modules to allow GMs to come up with their own things.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2017 01:56
|
|
|
Siegkrow posted:What I've noticed is that punching up doesn't workk, the Vice-manager of presidential vice-sales you punched is just gonna fire his whole team and start over, and thus instead of punching up one, you've punched sideways 100 times. That's why you got to roll a phys-adept and put your power points towards a high level of Killing Hands. Of course punching up will be disappointing if you don't build your character around it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2017 03:39
|
|
|
Gantolandon posted:Blood magic also exists in Earthdawn and it's presented as dark, but not necessarily bad. There is a variant of it that's unambigously evil - sacrificing other beings - but there are plenty of options available for the players that mostly involve hurting themselves. You can straight out cut yourself to improve your magic, buy an amulet that gives you powers in exchange for a small wound you can never heal, or swear oaths with blood that will brand you as a traitor if you break them. Yes, you could misuse it - an entire subrace of elves tried to use blood magic to protect themselves from the Horrors and it kinda worked, but changed them into psychopaths constantly wracked by physical pain. Pretty sure Bloodmagic has always been one of the off limits things similar to toxic shamans. There is an implication that it is not just bad, but damaging to the user in some fundamental and deeply wrong way.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2017 17:01
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Totem spirits (in general) are the embodiment of a certain archetype; for instance Dog is very loyal and protective of his friends, Rat is an urban survivor and thief, and so on. Totems are drawn to spiritually magic folks that match their personalities, so a shaman whose totem is Dog will more than likely be very loyal and protective of his friends even before being approached by the totem. Additionally, a lot of toxic shaman start as a different type of totem and when they go toxic they twist their original totems ideals into it's evil mirror version. So a toxic dog shaman would seek to betray and destroy those who trust him/her the most. Evil Mastermind posted:And here we see a runner blowing an Infiltration skill test. These things happen when you treat charisma as a dump stat. I dont know fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Aug 4, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2017 21:16
|
|
|
tadashi posted:The best in-between updates thing was the guy who accidentally RP'd driving a motorcycle at the speed of light. 6x the speed of light. For all the jankyness in Shadowruns rules, things like this make it absolutely worthwhile.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
Psion posted:Well if it's absolute power, yes. Historical fact, when Lord Acton said, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." He was talking about 4 ap drones.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 2, 2017 01:17
|
|
|
painedforever posted:Does tabletop Shadowrun work the same way as it does in the HBS games for character creation? Do you get point buys (with each level of competence requiring more karma), or was it with dice rolls? The table top use a weird priority system. Basically you have 5 categories (nuyen, attributes, skills, magic, and race) which you rank from A to E. The higher the rank the more resources you get in a given category to distribute how you want. You can then further fine tune your character with perks and flaws. End result, character creation takes an absurdly long time compared to other systems, but on the plus side you can really tinker with the fine bit of your character in ways that's not possible in more straightforward systems. There is very little hard limits on how you can build a character, but realistically if you don't specialize and build toward a given niche you can end up with a character that sucks at everything. Then there are additional weird pitfalls like reactions/initative being the most important combat stat for pretty much every character... I dont know fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Sep 28, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2017 03:01
|
|
|
mauman posted:Stats, race, skills, money/gear, and everything in between costs an amount of points from that pool. This was the system that originally used the flaw/perk system as it would simply give + or - to the point pool, and I've never actually seen perk/flaws work with the A-E system (though maybe that's a recent thing since I haven't played the more recent editions). I'm referencing 2nd edition, with the perk/flaws rules coming from The Shadowrun Companion. You could still take perks and flaws with the priority system, you just had to balance the perks you get with flaws worth an equal or greater amount of points. Yeah, any left over money is divided by 10 after character creation with the additional limit that you can't start with more than 10,000. painedforever posted:So, just like the computer game. Unless you're a decker that literally never leaves the safehouse (in which case the rest of the gaming group personally hates you) you're going to want your character competent in combat in some form. I dont know fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Sep 28, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2017 04:02
|
|
|
Poil posted:Also the GM can use the shittier guns for opponents. Or if you are running a low power campaign, like the player group being a street gang.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2017 13:50
|
|
|
CannonFodder posted:They can make body armor look good without making the mage look like a giant neon sign blinking "GEEK ME" Plenty of mages wear the same armored vests and lined coats that everyone else wears. Alternatively, wage mages often wear basic business suits. Shaman usually wear something more totem appropriate, but then again they much more rarely get office jobs. Coyote will not tolerate only getting an hour for lunch.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 03:04
|
|
|
GunnerJ posted:I have to say though the general system for that dialog puzzle is neat. It reminds me of the kind of puzzle that would show up in a Silent Hill. The first time played through as cybered to the gills troll with an axe, the second an elf rigger. I could decide which was funnier, posing as a janitor with 2 tons of obvious chrome or the janitor that inexplicably has a pair militarily grade drones following him like puppies.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2017 00:56
|
|
|
Fighting Trousers posted:To be fair, he's just a kid trying to impress a girl. I would be fine with this if the game presented it this way. But everyone we chatted with back at the union talked him up as some kind of matrix god. Smash cut to the run going south as a result of his repeated fuckups, half baked plans, and general incompetence.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2017 18:29
|
|
|
Psion posted:This section of the game is a little fanservicey but I think HBS wasn't sure how this game would play out (obviously, the series did quite well) and went a little hard on callbacks to established Shadowrun. At the time it really was a risk, but obviously in hindsight they hit on a really good formula and, well, DF and HK have been talked up enough in this thread. I think part of the reason they went maximum fanservice here is because so much of the rest of the game over explains itself for the benefit of people new to the setting. Both in terms of basic concepts and also story ideas, such as the Universal Brotherhood. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the setting could tell from the introducing UB in the first act means your runner is going on a bug hunt in the third. Nekomimi-Maiden posted:Mana levels rising draws and sustains the Horrors, astral spirits from a hellish far realm; I think the main thing that kept the Horrors from annihilating everything last time was the actions of the denizens of the Fourth World [humanoids, dragons, etc] slowing down their arrival and keeping them from making a beachhead until the 'magical tide' went out and the world went too mundane for the Horrors to invade; basically the mana levels dropping is the Russian Winter to the Horrors' Napoleon. Earthdawn was set just after the peak of the last magic cycle when ambient magic levels had fallen and most of the horrors, in particular the truely nasty "Doom Horrors" forced out of the world. The doom horrors literally ate the gods of the world during their last stay. The way a good chunk of metahumanity survived is that one particularly powerful civilization/empire found a way to first bury and magically ward cities that caused most of the ambient magic to flow around them instead of through them, in effect creating falloutshelters, only for horrors. Most of the wards failed and the cities fell, but few survived and this one empire became an unstoppable juggernauts in a ruined world. Additionally, horrors specifically feed on the negative emotions from sentient creatures, so there was probably less random destruction then you might imagine since tearing up nature isn't particularly sustaining.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 02:00
|
|
|
It's also worth pointing out that table top games are flexible by design. If the GM wants to run a setting were the PC's are squatters just looking to food/booze money, their fixer is a local cab driver, and an Ares Predator is absurdly overpowered for the campaign, that's fine. If they want a setting where the players have dragons in their Rolodex, the mage is a level 10 initiate, and the street sam's delta grade fly-by-wire system gives him an initiative score in the high 40's, that's fine too. I think most groups will mostly focus on a mid power kind of setting, with the occasional big fish or established character showing up now and then to make things interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 03:04
|
|
|
Lack of Gravitas posted:Something Awful has taught me that spending any amount of time on the internet is going to burn off some portion of your humanity regardless of how you connect Correct. The breakdown is 0.1 essence loss for the jack itself, and 0.4 for the harm that shitposting does to your soul.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2017 11:46
|
|
|
IMJack posted:The popular impact of the '57 election and Dunk's death is pretty remarkable considering what a small portion of North America would be allowed to vote in that election. Then again, if what the metaplot rumors say about Dunk's plan is true, he did what he did for everybody's sake and being extremely popular throughout the world was an important part of it. More broadly there was a campaign book called "Super Tuesday" with all the runs themed around the '57 election. It came with a mail-in voter card for players who bought the book to vote for who they wanted to win the election. Though, of course, people were going to pick the dragon. FASA later published the results and the only other candidate who got more then 1 or 2 was the environmental candidate who rewards the runners with a big favor at the end of his run.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2017 05:53
|
|
|
GunnerJ posted:OK, I see now. That's how it is in 3rd with maybe some different terms. I thought you meant, like, in-setting something happened to make the distinction completely moot. In 5th there is also a perk that magical characters (all 4 kinds) can take if they want called mentor spirit, or something similar to that. The mentor functions like a lite version of shaman totems in older editions, giving certain magical bonuses and penalties while also suggesting personality traits for RPing your character. wiegieman posted:In Returns, Shamans and Mages are separate skill trees, with Adepts being a sub-tree of the Mage tree. In Returns all three are seperate skill lines. Adepts and Mages are both subbed to willpower, but they are independent of each other.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2017 02:52
|
|
|
painedforever posted:Y'know, I've heard about that. Apparently, they've been fixing Adepts in each of the games so that they're a viable build, but apparently going samurai/rigger is better for combat in the first one, and samurai or mage is better in Dragonfall? What's the dealio with Adepts anyway? The main problem is that they have an untenable skill spread. Most classes have a main attribute, splash a few points in a second or tertiary attribute, and then pick 2-3 skill lines. Adepts need high strength for melee damage, quickness for evasion, body for health (they need to spend a lot on defensive stats since they are out of cover most of the time), will for their powers set, and then the adept powers themselves. They simply don't get enough karma. Add to this that, especially in Returns, adept powers are really underwhelming, the aforementioned class design means they are out of cover, have to spend precious ap just moving around, and you have an all around lovely class. I still beat the hardest difficulty with one, since they were my favorite in the TT, but they have some problems.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2017 04:28
|
|
|
Graylien posted:Can you still get elves born to humans? Or is it the case where everyone with elf genes is already an elf? It's rare, but a baby can be born as a metatype and not share a metatype with either of his or her parents. So in 205X you could have a human couple produce an elf, or vise-versa.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2017 16:16
|
|
|
Kanfy posted:If I were someone completely unfamiliar with these games I'd probably think "They did this better in the later games" is some kind of a running gag with how many times it's been said, but they really did improve on nearly every aspect. It's actually quite impressive. One thing I really have to give Hairbrain Schemes credit for is listening to their audience and working with the feedback. The Berlin Campaign (later renamed Dragonfall) was originally supposed to be a short 2-4 hour bonus campaign for backers. Then based on feedback they ended up expanding it to a full sequel that that the base game should have been.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2017 04:17
|
|
|
A lot of people turn to running because they are either born out of society, or forcibly ejected from it. Not everyone who does it likes living that way, and will eagerly snap up the opportunity to escape if someone offers it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2017 18:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 22:00 |
|
|
TheMcD posted:To be fair, you start the game being absolutely up poo poo creek without a paddle. You're broke, you have no runs, and all your contacts are dead or missing. It's basically a total dead end. I'd be hankering for some secure income after this - especially since without Telestrian, the run you've staked everything on would have left you with jack poo poo as well, since true to being a stiff, Sam stiffed you on the payment. Not entirely jack poo poo, since you now have several good contacts, solid gear, and a base of operations in Seattle (assume you opt to save The Union, which also means you skipped out on the big payday). You may still be pretty broke, but your overall prospects are much improved. Psion posted:I guess maybe if your PC had ever expressed any dissatisfaction with running I could buy it? But when I'm playing a Shadowrun game and I have to invent a backstory where I actually don't like shadowrunning? Ehhhh. Perhaps my total lack of lore knowledge is why it just completely missed for me. It makes sense in the lore that a lot of people in the shadows don't want to be there, but as you say it comes out of nowhere for your PC since up till this point the game doesn't really provide you with a lot of dialog choices where your character wants to quit, but has no choice.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2017 19:14
|
|