Shadowrun

I don't think shadowrunning is explicitly legal; it's how the Corps (try to) avoid playing by the rules they set up. Loophole Abuse, if you will.

It's secretly legal, and that fact alone is lulzy enough. Heck, the concept of secretly legalizing a crime because it somehow has actual benefit to society (or a subsection thereof) is hilarious!

I am running a Shadowrun game soon for some players who are being inducted into a powerful crime family. What are some good mafia-esque tasks to assign them?

Personally speaking I would sent 'em on completely mundane (even legal) jobs just to with mess with 'em.

Boss is out of his favourite brand of cigars? Time to take a trip into the sprawl.

Take out some Triad/Ganger/Yakuza joint (Money Laundering Parlor, Bunraku Parlor, Mahjong Gambling Joint).

Intercept a Shipment of Drugs / Other Illegal Wares.

Eliminate a Witness or a Snitch under Lone Star / Corporate custody.

Acquire some Corp chips that can be used to make higher grade BT Ls.

Kidnap some prosecutor's relatives to ensure his cooperation in an upcoming trial.

Prevent rival outfits from becoming allies by tricking them into thinking the other's out to kill them.

...So basically stuff you do in Regular Shadowrun...

edited 27th Dec '13 6:14:44 AM by CobraPrime

Watching a lot of Martin Scorsese movies would be a start.

Finding the snitch would be an interesting RP opportunity for the players. Especially if you want to go the paranoia route.

These are great suggestions. Thanks!

Shadowrun sounds like a pretty neat setting.

If your like cyberpunk and willing to embrace or at least overlook the existent of elves it certainly is

And can resist fridge logic. Seriously. Don't ever think too long about anything in the setting.

I like elves. But they usually look way too human, it's a little boring. Do they have non-standard elves?

There is other variants other then then tolkienesque pointy elves types yes, but elves and most other fantasy creatures aren't really elves as such. They are X-men style mutants who take on typical fantasy traits.

Player races also include Dwarves, Orcs, Trolls and variations thereof.

Runner's Companion includes a bunch of metavariants; if you think being a troll isn't cool enough, you can be a cyclops or a minotaur.

So bought the fifth edition corerulebook.

Let's see, various Pathfinder rulebooks, Call of Cthulhu rulebook and now this... At this rate I have nice collection from every popular/semi popular Pen and Paper roleplaying series without ever playing them

Interesting thing about 5th edition is how they overhauled decking and the matrix.

Everything is wireless now. You can deck from just about anywhere and there are more things to hack. Guns with Smartlinks have wireless connections to get weather reports. Gadgets use wireless induction to recharge. Cybernetics sometimes use wireless to activate built in tools and weapons. All drones use wireless controls.

On the other hand, decks are now super expensive. A low tier deck is about 10k while a mid tier deck is 100k. High tier decks go for half a million nuyen and up.

I know that feeling bro ;_;

I've heard Shadowrun has a pretty big following in Japan despite the country apparently not having much of an interesting tabletop role-playing. It would be interesting to see their take on the game.

So anyway, even though I probably can't ever actually play this, it's fun to create characters so here is a question:

Can cyberarms have more than one thing in them? Like, can they both have hand blade and shock hand? Are implant weapon essence cost on top of full arm augments or do you only need to pay them? Can cyberarm have a cybergun and accessories? How much money and essence it costs to have all limbs full arms and legs and have them be alphaware? How much essence left for additional stuff? If I later in the game replace them with deltaware or something, do I get some of lost essence back or would I have needed to get deltaware in first place?

If an accessory has an Essence cost, that only applies if you're installing it into your meat. If you're putting it into 'ware, it uses up the 'ware's capacity.

When upgrading cyberware, the Essence cost of original becomes a "hole," which can be filled against the Essence cost of new 'ware, but is never refunded. For example, getting a basic cyberarm costs 1 Essence; if you upgrade to a delta cyberarm, the new arm would cost 0.5 Essence, but because it's replacing old chrome, it takes up half of the old arm's Essence cost, leaving you with 0.5 Essence to pay against something else (like, say another delta cyberarm).

If the Essence hole rule isn't in play, you can die from replacing your cyberarm enough times.

So wait, does that mean its better to just save money in game until you can get deltaware? .-. I'm not good at math really...

You won't get deltaware anyway. No GM is going to allow that.

Huh why? Are they broken? .-.

No, they technically have the same effects. It's just that it's military-grade cyberware, and requires specialized facilities and personnel to install. Just getting access to those would probably require several shadowruns.

Oh. So I guess betaware is more accessible then?

Eh, I guess that makes it simpler <_< The character concept I'm doing for fun has corporate SIN and I'm basically just checking how much cyberware I can stuck with priorty a on resources into him to get classiest psycho cyborg there is

You're forgetting the ridiculously low Essence costs they have, at least in 4Ed. That alone makes them obscenely powerful for certain characters like Adepts. Plus, the Essence Drain abilities of some enemies are less deadly to characters who start their augmentation from deltaware level, as opposed to typical heavily-wired starter characters.