Shadowrun

Conversations at the Dumpshock forums gave me a sick wrong and weird idea regarding Idol Singers. It all started with one guy asking how to build (from the crunch angle) an "elven J-Pop star". After reading some articles about record companies shafting musicians on royalties provided by one of the forumgoers, this idea crystalized:

''Well, considering that she, as a j-pop star, literally belongs to the record company (I don't know, she might have been bought for a carton of CalorieMates from a Filipino brothel or something, no offense), I can understand her being an elf. But once she gets off the leash somehow, expect a bunch of angry corp goons and/or (with stress on the former) Yakuza trying to either retrieve her or bring her down.

Also, while we're at it, I just got a sick, wrong and weird idea involving j-pop stars, corporations, Filipino (or Korean) brothels and p-fixes. Maybe too much Kotaku and BAshcraft's articles about Japanese pop culture, but they're the people who would do it without hesitation.''

Then, I imagined the process of building a cheap and disposable corporate-sponsored Idol Singer:
Imagine this: MCT buys some SINless orphan from some Southeast Asian hellhole. They pretty her up, dress her up and wire her up, just so they can plug some skillchips with "musical talent" and a marketing dept.-designed p-fix into her. They give her an impenetrable corporate SIN. They promote her. When the idoru expiration date comes, they take away the chips, wipe the SIN and boot her out or, preferably, arrange a convenient "accident". Drunk driver, drunk driving, sudden depression, this kind of stuff. And then, they buy themselves another SINless orphan and start anew.

Also, nobody here has an idea why the guys at Dumpshock near-constantly refer to TVT, now do you? ;)

edited 7th Sep '11 2:19:43 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

Don't forget the extensive bioware. Why settle for giving your popstars breast enlargements when you can modify them to sleep 3 hours a night, smell of strawberries and not show bruises?

Hey guys, what edition does the majority of players use? I want to try getting in a game, bt I don't know which books to bone up on to get the max likelihood of finding somebody to play with.

I've got 4E books right now, but I didn't really start until after 4E came out. 4E has been out for 5 years now and seems pretty well received by fans, and IMO it has more streamlined mechanics.

It's either 3E or 4E. Both are popular.

I personally enjoy both. For me the major difference between deciding which one to play is the setting, meaning where in the timeline do you want to play. At first I didnt like 4E too much, but after I got past that "bah I like what i know" Iv grown to like 4E.

Now all I have to do is find some people so i can get a consistant group going.

For what it's worth, I know people who use the 4E setting and play using 3E. Personally when I run the game I tend to butcher the setting and feed its corpse to the Rule of Cool.

I suggest, find a group first and find which system and setting they use.

Much obliged, everyone, I appreciate it.

Incidentally, both systems can be summarised in five minutes. If you're going for cyberware get yourself an ingram smartgun and a smartlink, if you're going for magic then stunbolt is your friend. The rest is detail.

I finally made up a shadowname for a character I designed (a cross between Balalaika and Adam Jensen). Wait, basically I made up two and can't decide between them. The first, Raven, comes from her real surname, Voronina ("voron" means "raven" in Russian) - however, she's a blonde, so she'll most probably wear a wig often. The second one, Kestrel, is a bit complicated reference to Splinter Cell Conviction, where Kestrel, one of the co-op characters, is a member of the Voron squad.

That and she's afraid of fire. Fully justified after she got a couple of napalm bombs dumped on her and her squad.

Is anyone taking bets on how long before she gets hit with a fire elemental?

At least she will still be able to perform a coordinated tactical retreat. If she doesn't drop an armed grenade at her feet, -4 dice to everything is bad enough.

There's actually a scenario from 2nd Ed where a student appears to have been kidnapped but it turns out he has run away with a fire elemental and is having an affair with them. Don't think about it too much.

I mention this because I could see that revelation driving your character completely over the edge.

Hmm, I gave Kestrel Wired Reflexes 1 and smartlinked firearms (whole two of them). 14 dice on primary ranged attack (SMG), 12 dice on secondary ranged attack (silenced pistol), 12 dice on primary melee (Blade Below the Shoulder), 9/7 on secondary melee (punch/kick). I gotta check if recoil counter resets between initiative passes, though. Four shots ain't as fun when the last one is made at 8 dice.

Hmmm, should I spend two more Build Points on 10k nuyen I can buy a spare solid ID, an undetectable nonlethal pistol with Laser Sight and a secondary comlink for?

Elvis is the puppet master of the world. It sounded so insane and yet so fitting for Shadowrun I just couldn't pass it up.

So I finally got myself a group (kinda...) and I'm preparing a little write-up for them, what's what and who's who. Of course, since they're pretty much all first-timers, they'll need to have the question of "Where do Shadowrunners come from" explained to them. Of course, I just couldn't pass up this little gem:

"Oh, you know, mommy and daddy...
Can we leave that topic out? - Slamm-0!
At least the mommy and daddy bit. - Netcat"

I've been running a campaign the past month and a half in Columbus, GA. The setting is the Tri-State area focused on North Jersey. There's a lot of setting information on Manhattan but not the bridge-and-tunnel areas. That's good, since I like making up my own shit anyway. I originally wanted to remove magic and metatypes from the campaign but some of my players were pretty set on using magic. I still ended up incorporating characters and groups from my cyberpunk fiction writing. It'a going quite well so far.

Well, the problem of magic got solved quickly here, there's enough domains with fucked-up aspects in LA that spellcasting will be a bitch there.

This causes a real problem when there's a spirit to fight. Shedim are fucked up, toxics are less fucked up but still cause problems, and insects... I don't think there are insects in LA. Not even mosquitos.

I actually wanted to eliminate magic and everything associated w ith the Awakening from the setting altogether. Basically run a pure cyberpunk campaign using Shadowrun rules and maybe the same general setting, only sans Awakening. A couple of players cried, so I gave in. Now that I've been running the campaign I've actually enjoyed doing the magic stuff. I had a Zobop house take over a large black street gang in the notorious Ironbound district of Newark. Cybered orks and trolls and Haitian voodoo elves. Awesome. I also really like your disturbing idea for creating low-overhead idoru.

Guys from Dumpshock even calculated it for me. Hardware costs are just under 10k nuyen, well, maybe a bit over 10k if you add a simrig to the mix.

This gem, from today's Twitter browsing:

@MattNixTV (Burn Notice producer Matt Nix): "#burnnotice S5 is off to a great start. Lot of new stuff this year. Like Michael's robot arms and Fi's magic powers. And Sam's new shirt."
@MikeWest007 (me): "@MattNixTV I think you just helped me create a monster. Magical elf terrorist Fiona in #Shadowrun, that is."

I CALL UPON THE DARK ARTS OF THREAD NECROMANCY TO REVIVE THIS THREAD

Running in a campaign. My only experience with SR were several Multi User Dungeons, so it's somewhat hard to adjust to not gimping your character hilariously (only pre-genned characters were allowed, so I went with Weapons Specialist, which I regret due to Boosted Reflexes not allowing Wired Reflexes) and revolvers that sucked a lot more, since the MU Ds didn't implement actions and called shots.

On the plus side, the DM's allowing us every sourcebook, regardless of edition, so I should be getting an Ares Predator III soon.

Fuck that, go for Ares Predator IV. It has a smartlink, y'know. Slap a Personalized Grip on that bitch and hey presto, two shots at full pool each round. Also, pregens eat a lot of different kinds of dick.

Also, my PBF campaign finally took off. We have a racist dick of a hacker, a scary wired B&E guy whose combat tactics consist of hitting people over the head with a cattle prod if they're meant to survive and with a collapsible baton if they don't, an environmentalist look elf shaman that hands out F10 stunbolts like candy, and a dwarf mechanic I didn't even see the sheet of yet.

Some fun stuff with stats: I compared the players' team and my NPC team:

• Team Players:
  • Havoc - the hacker. Aside from being a racist dick, he's scarily competent, mainly because he nicked the build from Dumpshock, and it's not even the medium level of DS powergaming.
  • Marx - the B&E guy. I gave him some skills and lots of hardware. Before that, he managed to roll 8 dice in melee with unimpressive strength and 8 dice in ranged combat. Now he can scale a vertical wall (if it's dry) and open pretty much every lock he encounters.
  • Katel - the shaman, built from the ground up by me, based on the player's suggestions. Squishy Wizard - but as long as she can see the target, it's knocked out cold (9 dice against average of 4, more if the enemy has some magic support). FORCE TEN STUNBOLT, MOTHER FUCKERS!
• Team Rocket - Five-Man Band I built while designing characters I'd check out in play. You might notice the Guild Wars Theme Naming.
  • Judgment - Mara Demrikov, The Big Guy. A cross between Balalaika and Adam Jensen. Has those nasty blades in her arms and the whole Firearms group at 4. Also, thanks to her layered armor, she's the quintessential Party Tank - 18 dice (6 for Form-Fitting Body Armor, 5 for armored tacvest, 3 for her armored cyberarms and 4 for Body) worth of damage soak make her pretty much Immune to Bullets. I seriously need to give her a smartlinked sniper rifle. 15 dice after aiming for almost whole turn, no distance mods, Boom, Headshot!. She can also handle explosives.
  • Rage - Omar Torivos, The Lancer. Magic Knight - adept with a Weapon Focus katana. The team's recon specialist - he can spot any danger, including those on the Astral Plane, without problem.
  • Insight - Heleyne Castillo, The Chick. Terrifyingly capable in combat (somehow she has the highest combat pools out of the whole team!), but her main specializations are social skills and B&E. A build I nicked from Dumpshock, from a thread titled "Isn't this character too much of a generalist?" - well, as far as generalists go, this one is pretty effective.
  • Harbinger - Jesse Vetaura, The Hero and The Smart Guy. Ork Playful Hacker - he's a pretty good shot, but really gets to tearing asses online.
  • Death - the Pale Rider, Sixth Ranger wheelman and Wrench Wench. Has a half-built KITT: the car's working, but could use some more software for autonomous travel.

edited 16th Jan '12 2:08:00 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

NSBL, I've always felt my interest in Burn Notice and my interest in Shadowrun were related. You have now proven me right.

Actually, the introduction I wrote for my players contains several references to Burn Notice. And the guy who employed the PCs...
...is The Management.

edited 19th Jan '12 12:00:33 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat