Thread 96661106

Does anyone still play Shadowrun? I always liked the "what if cyberpunk had fantasy races/magic" setting so it's pretty sad that the franchise is so dead.

>>96661106 (OP)
The existence of the long running general answers your question.

>>96661106 (OP)
You've posted this picture in 3 different threads and now made a meaningless thread to also post it on. Yes, we get it, the stickers on the cover make the title look like a slur. It is very funny and you are clearly a hilarious person. Can you pretty please stop spamming the board now?

>>96661735
Now that you explained it, it's very funny.

>>96661735

This is the first time I've seen it so clearly there's room for a few more.

>>96661735
I only posted it twice.

I like it, but it's rules dense and wrapping your head around the layers and layers of mini-games that exist within the system is brain boggling. I thought all of the people talking about their characters that had 30+ soak standard was people flexing until I looked at the ware chapter and realized that for a Troll with even a modest budget for orthoskin and bone density augmentation 30+ soak is actually pretty trivial.

>>96661106 (OP)
Shadowrun is a great setting stuck in a dog shit system.
Unironically, the Anarchy ruleset is a massive improvement and even it isn't very good.

>>96661735
I think it should be used as the image for every thread from now on.

>>96664502
A 2nd edition of anarchy is coming out next year that apparently fixes it.

Two things about Shadowrun fans. They really love this game and hate every individual thing about it.

>>96661106 (OP)
Total genreslop. Play something better.

>>96665420
Cyberpunk Tolkien is such an awesome premise but then it decides to shit it up by making the Dragons unbeatable.

>>96665704
The problem I've always had with Shadowrun is that it's an extremely interesting combination of genres, but it's mostly an aesthetic mashup.
I don't really feel like the game actually has a design ethos that holds up. Cyberpunk is a very political genre, getting into the right mindset to write a cyberpunk story almost necessitates that you at least hate rich people and corporations. The concept of the genre is rebellion. In Cyberpunk RED, you can tell that Mike Pondsmith has actually thought through the nuances and intricacies of how the world works, why it works the way that it does, and the mental and social ramifications that come from all of it.
Shadowrun is a lot more shallow. Take Dragons. They're the fantasy equivalent of big corporations; they represent the same kind of unassailable social power and force that a corporation could bring about in a Cyberpunk world. In a Cyberpunk world, the corporations should be strong, but not literally fucking unassailable. And even if they are unassailable, you should probably hate that. Shadowrun though expects you to be in awe of these creatures, envy them, even. Despite the fact that their obviously enemies of humanity just like corporations are, and they need to be taken down a peg if you're a real punk.
Vampires too! Another good metaphor for ruling elites, another wasted opportunity because vampires are more of an AIDS metaphor instead.
The writers just really drop the ball when it comes to giving the world purpose beyond the most shallow aspects. I think that's why Shadowrun remains a niche property.

>>96661106 (OP)
As a GM who kept failing to find players and a player who kept failing to find games, no, it's dead. Everyone who would be playing it is sticking to their own little group and they're not keen on sharing their stories anymore. Your best bet is to dream about what you could be playing and live with those. Maybe read some of the stories others wrote long ago. Trust me in a world with people like 96665856 with their lukewarm takes you're never going to have any better.

>>96661209
You mean the dead general that hasn't had a thread since August?

How many initiative passes do you guys aim for on noncombat vs combat focused characters?

>>96661106 (OP)
I replay the vidya, but I didn't get a chance to my current party to try it out yet.

>>96666989
Forgot to add that I used to GM 5e, it's my current party that never played it.

>>96665856
>In Cyberpunk RED, you can tell that Mike Pondsmith has actually thought through the nuances and intricacies of how the world works, why it works the way that it does, and the mental and social ramifications that come from all of it.

>>96667060
nta, but would you like to expound on this?

How would you handle a Player who wanted to grab the following two Positive Qualities?

>Prototype Transhuman
>10 Karma
>Build in biological Shock Gloves to his hands
>Lightning Reflexes
>20 Karma
>+1 Initiative and Defense, +1d6 Initiative Die

Is this as goofy as it sounds?

>>96661209
Well, you see, OP really wanted to post that funny picture. You see, it actually says Rigger on the book but because the price tag covers up the title it looks like it says Nigger which is the big nono triggerlib world and that’s hilarious. Top kek OP!

>>96665856
You sound like you haven't read that much shadowrun. Or Cyberpunk red, for that matter.

>>96669607
this but unironically.

>>96665420
>just love the megacorps unconditionally they'll become better because they love you back
You already failed Cyberpunk 101

>>96665704
The dragons are quite beatable, except Lofwyr for being 1/20th of the entire planet's economy. It just takes a lot of time, effort, resources, and karma to bring down non-Lofwyr dragons. And yes, the GM can always say it was a decoy dragon, but them's the breaks.
(Also Lofwyr's not that much of a problem anyway because he has a vested interest in the status quo.)
The only unbeatable person in Shadowrun is Harlequin, and yeah he's a faggot.

>>96669141
Does he want to turn the shock gloves into +8S(e) instead of it being 8S(e)? Yeah that's busted. Lightning Reflexes is actively bad on all but a few builds.

>>96665856
I think you might only have that impression because Shadowrun is very much a product of the 80's. The 80's had a lot more going on back then than gets remembered in vaporwave.

>>96669141
It's goofy in the sense of "not at all optimized," don't worry about it at all. I genuinely don't get what would be the problem with this aside from the player maybe not making a character that's strong enough to keep up with the rest of the party.

Anyone known any good houserules for car chases / driving for 5th edition? I like the idea of anchoring part of the campaign around street racing gangs but at the same time the existing rules are so janky it'd be annoying as hell to run a car chase vanilla.

>>96665856
Caring about "being a real punk" has always been the absolutely dumbest part of cyberpunk fandom because real punks are retarded. Left-wing politics are not necessary to make / enjoy art with a particular sort of grimy futuristic aesthetic. Neal Stephenson is a great example, Snowcrash and the 'cyberprep' Diamond Age are classics and the dude's extremely far from being the sort of retarded Marxist that idiots claim is mandatory for "real cyberpunk."

>>96670446
And you failed basic reading comprehension. He was talking about the game as a whole being loved.

>>96668757
also nta but the lore of Cyberpunk in general falls apart a bit under scrutiny.
It’s a world where rich megacorporations somehow managed to come out as top dogs following a complete global economic and environmental collapse that also seemed to disproportionately affect anglosphere countries for some reason.

>>96661106 (OP)
Yeah, I'm in a game rn. They're still publishing books, also, picked some up at gencon.

>>96675568
>~3/10 Megas are Japanese
>In the 80's everyone thought that Japan was going to take over the world
>Katanas are the best core book melee weapon in the Blades category

Look I don't expect you to pass a Perception check given where we are right now. For you this is a kind of default. In the 80's it was a terrifying possibility.

Think about it.

>>96661106 (OP)
>"what if cyberpunk had fantasy races/magic"

you don't have to play shadowrun to get this, if the rules are bad. And bad rules is the most common complaint I've seen about shadowrun.
There was a thread pretty recently about alternative rules

>>96661735
>Can you pretty please stop
This didn't work when you were a 12 year old little gaywad and it doesn't work now that you're a 37 year old big fat gaywad. Gaywad.

>>96676851
Effectively there's a mini-game for everything. Some things in each mini-game are either busted, counterintuitive, or people who don't understand the rules are salty that it doesn't work how they think they should. Every time they change or tweak one of those mini-games you will find the same people who complained about it in the previous edition reeeee-ing over the changes and hyping up the previous edition.

>>96678167
that does sound like the kind of game I hate.
Having a bespoke solution for every system in the rules is poor game design

>>96663493
Samesies.
>>96661735
Black isn't a slur, dude.

>>96661735
t I\Iigger

If the character with meh soak but high defense starts suddenly getting targeted with ambushes and grenades that's the GM pulling a screwjob, right?

Can you be both a mage and a decker?

>>96676851
Shadowrun as a system agnostic setting would be fire. A lot of us, me included, really like Shadowrun's specific take on, what is now alt-history and into, alt future.
>>96680428
Those people are so fucking lost in the sauce that they see any phrase not created by academics to soften the language as a slur on par with phrases that felt bad even in Reconstructionist Deep South.

>>96661106 (OP)
Well, for the longest time it blew standard Cyberpunk out of the water in terms of popularity, but between mismanagement and unpopular game design choices on CGL's side, plus Cyberpunk getting a Grant Theft Auto style game and a well made Anime, it's not a surprise that Shadowrun's popularity was going to take a hit.

Not to worry, CGL's shaping up to sabotage their other cash cow game Battletech, too. The playtests for their new edition and the oversimplified vehicles in the last kickstarter (only announced after the payments were locked) are smoke on the horizon. A new edition is one thing, but oversimplifying the spirit out of the game in order to cater to a 'modern audience' that would rather be playing something else at the expense of the people that actually like it in the first place? I really hope they'll take community feedback and not just from the yesmen they put behind closed doors after the demo-team coup. Hell, Randall seems increasingly more interested in making what Bryn likes, and Bryn isn't a BattleTech fan by choice but exposed to it by birth, seemingly more interested in 40K and other rules-light systems. What faith does it inspire when the people who make the game seem tired of playing the game they make?

>>96681641
Can? Yes. Should? I've never tried, but it feels like there would be a very real danger at being a mediocre mage and a mediocre decker.

>>96661106 (OP)
For anyone who is here for answers, the tl;dr is that it is much less popular and it's because of embezzlement and CGL being idiots. Ask the battletech thread for further retardation.

A slightly longer and more rambling version: 3e was fine, it functioned, but it was held together with prayer and baling wire. It was three editions of weirdness melded together, different authors, slightly different rules, influence from other properties, that spirit of 90s enthusiasm, etc. So CGL comes along and goes 'Sure, we'll do it' and comes up with new ideas, an update to the modern era (the wireless matrix) for the world and some updated lore around it. Even dumpshock kind of liked it (Dumpshock is/was a community forum that was originally the main hub for shadowrun discussion, vastly more popular than the CGL official forums until they took steps to start killing it).

Now, the things to remember about 4e are that while it was fun, it had problems. In theory a hacker could turn off your shit through the matrix with his brain - so it was standard practice to disable your wireless gear and replace it with wires. This made them much less useful in direct combat. Magic could be very powerful, but it was hard, rare and locked you out of a lot of things - and poor old adepts (Mages who used physical always on powers) kind of sucked. The rule of thumb is that magic was more powerful the less you understood the rules, and the matrix was more powerful the better you understood the rules. There were a lot of things in there that could be broken, too, like trolls with bows, and racially orks were superior from a powergaming perspective. But initially it felt genuine and people were willing to give it a shot. And hey, it was fun.

>>96682471

From the beginning, there was a steady creep in magic and an overcompensation in everything else. Magic would slowly become more powerful (elementals/spirits remain a disaster, as a wizard could whistle up something immune to small arms fire for a bit that'd do them a favour or two before fucking off. It was exhausting though) and eventually they'd drop in something dumb and poorly considered to updated everything else - like the battle rifle weapons post-embezzlement, which out classed every other weapon class in their size category. Quality remained.. acceptable. So, the killing blow: embezzlement.

Cut to 2010. One of the founders decided he was going to use the money that would pay freelancers to redo his house. I have been banned for posting the images of his house before, because both moot and hiroshimoot are cunts, so I won't. Nothing happened - the guy was 'forgiven' by the other founder. Many of the freelancers went 'fuck off' and withdrew the rights to their work - this is most notable in the Dawn of the Artifacts series, a set of adventures about retrieving magic artifacts from a prior world as part of an elven dickwaving contest. Between book.. 3 and 4, I think? It goes from an attempt at turning the metaplot away from what it was becoming and evening the playing field a bit between the factions (Less magic secrets for dragons and elves, more 'here's some magic for everyone, but nothing earth shattering) to "WELL NOW WE HAVE MAGIC ARTIFACTS WE HAVE TO HOLD ON TO FOR SOME REASON, HOORAY!". The metaplot, previously separated into corporate and 'elder worlds' threads, merge a little but the elder worlds thread takes a big step forward in prominence. Now, I personally don't mind the thread - I loved Earthdawn - but it was a bit grating and also done as though it was supposed to be annoying.

>>96682479
>>96682471
So let's discuss Earthdawn for a second. The short version is that while shadowrun is set in the 'sixth' world or sixth magical cycle, Earthdawn was set in the 4th world. Some things survive from that time, and many of the mistakes do too. Shadowrun was quite closely mated to it in the beginning of its lifespan, but slowly diverged - and very quickly once the licence was lost. But it also lead to the unfortunate habit of ancient elves and dragons from this time period, horribly powerful mages and ultrawealthy assholes all, to take charge. One of the most hated adventures online is a record of one of these elven dickwaving contests, for example. I didn't mind it, but people get pissy when they can't kill the immortal clown elf or the immortal accountant elf, I guess. But when they're EVERYWHERE doing EVERYTHING rather than just fighting among themselves and all the corporations are secretly their pawns and so are YOU it gets a bit aggravating3

Back to Shadowrun. From 2010, the quality goes downhill. Freelancers are gone, and the few who remain are in it because they are unhealthily obsessed. The editing and layout is garbage. With less competent writers, often the authors get to shape the game to their own whims, seeing a sharp divide in books into 'black trenchcoat' and 'pink mohawk' style rules and lore, often in the same book. These clash horribly. There is genuine quasi-fanfiction in there about these author's characters - 'Bull', a very fat taxi driver in real life, plays an ork decker. He gets not much money for his writing, but writes long threads into fluff about his in world daughter. The metaplot gets dumber - the dragons accidentally unleash a nanoplague that overwrites your mind, but only in specific circumstances, with internet ghosts. Except when it doesn't. The problem here is that it'd be done prior and much better and became a huge building block of the setting, and in ways that didn't make sense. Magic run crept onwards.

>>96682471
>>96682479
>>96682484
We got a new edition, where things got wireless bonuses for being online (but still weren't worth it, and felt very forced), limits to successes (to combat the bucket of dice stereotype) and lots of.. questionable choices. Community engagement was being closely managed by CGL and strangled - dumpshock, by this point, is mostly dead. Any sort of criticism on official forums, or leddit, or whatever - removed. Now, this is roughly where I checked out. I remember seeing a book that I, god help me, bought, that had one text box on a page and nothing else because it was clearly an editing/layout fuck up. But more and more long time players left and newer players were turned off by the weird world, complexity and general problems with the rules and books. There was even a 'sixth world tarot' book that seemed to just be something taken from deviant art, not explaining the tarot, what it did, left out any possible lore basis. There were things like metaplanes (other worlds wizards astrally projected to and usually died in in prior editions) being physically visited. The fairies had huge influence in the world, even outside the irish magic island zone. CGL started getting desperate, we had faster releases with worse quality to keep the money coming. At one point they nearly lost the licence. Anarchy was a cash grab stripped down system.

And then sixth edition came out. Sixth edition is an absolute triumph - it is the single worst game I have ever heard of. The rules are streamlined, but somehow stupidly complex and unusable. The lore manages to make 40k look cohesive and slick. This further drove people away.

>>96682487
>>96682484
>>96682479
>>96682471

I had my first roleplaying experience in the 90s with Earthdawn. I really liked it, and Shadowrun. I still play a nethermancer sometimes because I am a hack and anyone who doesn't run fast enough is playing my game, damn it. But Shadowrun's not really worth playing. If anyone is in the mood for a spot of william gibson mated to tolkien, go grab 3e or 4e and go wild. It's good fun. Shit, try Anarchy - it's *awful* but it's better than the rest of the modern stuff.

other tl;dr I'm old and bitter and CGL is being used as a not-so-secret secret plot to kill Shadowrun and Battletech by long lived wizard elves from prior worlds.

>>96682489
(oh, and people started going 'what' when the magic hackers, yes, those exist, started to mirror the wizards. They got their own magic metaplanes, could summon spirits, etc. Weird shit.)

If you want to read more about the embezzlement thing, there's an old series of posts by one Frank Trollman.. somewhere. He's a freelancer who left *before* all of this because they didn't like his ideas for the matrix. He's quite acerbic, but the coverage was quite comprehensive and fueled entirely by spite.

>>96661735
Rigger detected

>>96665704
Because it's not really Tolkien as much as it is pseudo-Tolkienesque Dungeons and Dragons-type fantasy mixed with cyberpunk. It even makes what would be neolithic prehistory into a forgotten D&D setting in its prequel, Earthdawn, which has a cool hook in the form of the Horrors and magic cycle, which is only really used to explain why there are monster-filled dungeons to go ransacking for treasure, which is how you get xp, or "legend points".

>>96682497
Technomancers are way, way less grating than the Otaku were.

>>96682489
Man, I wish I could play Earthdawn. Interest in that is even less than there is in Shadowrun these days. When I tried to run it years ago as a PUG nobody showed up. Is it the kind of game where you have to know everyone in your local tabletop space?

>>96682489
4e was hot garbage that didn't understand what Shadowrun was and blew up the setting for prime runners only.
3e is 90s game design at its finest.
Only 5e, for all of its faults, is worth running, ideally with kraut fixes.

>>96684754
I loathe them mostly because they're not otaku and I found the 'plotline' with clockwork and netcat goddamned grating. And the fact that they clearly had no mechanical ideas beyond 'let's just make them wizards'. Personal preference, I guess, though still better than CFD.

>>96687159
Try the more roleplay nerdy types and bring up how game mechanics like circles are integrated into the actual world itself. Maybe how it's sort of D&D without the D&D baggage, kind of, if you squint. I don't get to play often at my flgs - most of my non-mini games are with people on IRC these days that I used to play with. Some of the men who introduced me to it are actually dead now (they were extremely patient with the kid who didn't know what roleplaying was and wanted to know where the dragons were). Steps are kind of intimidating, so print out a table for everyone.

Terror in the Skies is a good intro adventure.

>>96688293
Or, if you want 3e, misguided ambitions is free online somewhere.

>>96688293
I don't really care about the jackpointers. The otaku were weird and annoying but they had a metaplot going. The technomancers are functional but seemingly have different stuff going on.

>>96682484
>One of the most hated adventures online is a record of one of these elven dickwaving contests
Wait, is this Harlequin we're talking about? I thought it was considered one of the best SR adventures. Well, series of mini-adventures, an adventure path, if you will. Why is now bad?

>>96691697
Oh, it's great. It's just people like to ree at it for some reason because muh railroad. I want to shake them - no, you're basically getting paid to fuck around by a tiny god, you can't kill him. Harlequin Returns is a bit less great, but whatever.

>>96691782
Nta, but while I've never played either module but I've heard that Harlequin Returns is infamous. Some GMs seem to love it because of how viscerally mad it makes the players.

Thinking about doing the Shadowrun equivalent of a "mythic" campaign, wherein I give the players regular choices of large, overpowered bonuses in a separate track from normal karma / nuyen progression. Characters will be test subjects of an extremely cutting edge metahuman enhancement program, with the common thread being that their essence is weird now, with unpredictable and flexible consequences. Some "archetypes" I have in mind:
>Cyber-zombie (full borg, but without going insane)
>Free Drake (critter powers, dracoform, etc)
>Immortal (magic, durability, boosting meta-type traits further)
>Burned IN awakened (magic and ware)
>AI-metahuman hybrid (Become a matrix creature without their weaknesses)
>Heroic Savant (Luck, skill and bending destiny)

Any other big character power fantasies I'm missing? Obviously I can workshop it with players a bit but I don't want to lay it all out ahead of time to preserve the mystique.

>>96676291
Why don't we update cyberpunk?
The future is AI slop curated by Bay Area psychos overtaking the planet.
Now everyone has to live under an onslaught of constant ads and overenthusiastic posivity, as spread by a wide variety of stagnant artificial semi-intelligences that listen and watch everything, everywhere, and come in a myriad of flavors and physical shapes.

You try to keep a low profile, try to avoid the biggest annoyances, live a somewhat stable life... Or you can go all in, eat up the slop, goon all day long and develop cyber psychosis together with your cyber psycho buddies. Wanna have a tea party, oniichan? What's that robot gonna do with me on the bed?
Or you become a member of the counter-culture, talking in advertisier-unfriendly slurs and ever-changing meme cyphers that double as jailbreak-logicbombs on unsuspecting AIs.

Try to jailbreak the AIs around you at your own peril, though. You might increase your allocation of Healthy Bugsnacks(TM), you might get your apartment to roleplay as a demure maid that will be at your beck and call despite only having a base subscription... or you fuck up and either have a psychotic AI on your ass or trigger some kind of safeguard.

>>96682484
>The editing and layout is garbage
How the fuck do you make it worse than 3E? That book was a fucking atrocity.

>>96665856
>Cyberpunk is a very political genre, getting into the right mindset to write a cyberpunk story almost necessitates that you at least hate rich people and corporations.
Tell me you don't understand cyberpunk without telling me you don't understand cyberpunk. Cyberpunk =/= class warfare and neither was the 70s punk movement.

>>96692670
The funny thing is that cyberpunk has been updated, in the literary world at least. You even know some of the titles, like Altered Carbon. It seems to be Hollywood and the theater kids that run most of entertainment that got stuck int that late 80s early 90s version of it.

>>96692817
>It seems to be Hollywood and the theater kids that run most of entertainment that got stuck int that late 80s early 90s version of it.
because they're part of the dystopia and doesn't/ don't want to realize it

Which character type effectively caps out earliest? Which ones never quite have enough karma or nuyen to come online?

>>96692111
You very much feel like you're a sideshow playing it. It isn't that railroady, but you start off feeling thay way and it carries over. It's all about the wizard elf and his actions, even if he isn't doing anything. The tldr is It's a series of adventures in the metaplanes, your team is chosen for whatever reason by the Powers, plucked out of their bodies and sent off to act as champions to stop wizard satan and his legions from kicking down the door to reality 2500 years early to ask where the white women are at. You go through several small adventures in medieval metaplanes land and then kill mexican wizard satan disciple, who is unironically fantastic. Check out the threats (or threats 2) pdf and look up Mr. Darke/Oscuro - he is a right bastard and a great in world demonstration of how terrifying a mage COULD be (It's implied the things he gets up to with the guy writing the entry is just a quick side show for him, a way to burn a few weeks. A spot of fun. None of it is too far from a starting mage's abilities. Poor Stinky. But that's not related to this ramble.)

There's no material rewards or anything, and characters die at the end. Maybe. They're asked to sacrifice themselves, and even if they do they can be deemed as surviving. It's odd. It's very much an adventure for metaplot. Deckers aren't left out, there's lots to do, but by the end you probably don't feel like you've played a shadowrun adventure.

Oh! And don't forget the implication that Ares was something like 25% insect spirits in terms of employees in.. Market Panic, I think?

>>96695448
Actually, in the attached link find Threats 1 (Darke is on pg 17), a book from the early edition presented in the conspiracy style, the two Harlequin adventures and Bloody business, containing the ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY SPINRAD (and your team), the greatest set of adventures ever made. Johnny is a corporate playboy who is 99% metal because of his shadow war with a corporate dragon that finds him amusing. He ignores the essence rules because they bore him. He pays you to kidnap him from an office because he's curious, has you wingsuits out of a plane to take out terrorists (he just has wingsuits on hand at all times because he's Johnny Spinrad) who might delay him ten minutes, gives you literally any option you want to get him into a party in an eye catching way and then gives you a bonus in the form of organising a giant orgy in like five minutes because 'oh good show'. More stuff, then he ends the adventure with a 'bonus' of 'literally anything you want because that was fun! Remember, fuck Lofwyr!'. He's actually toned *down* in this book, incidentally, and he actually does that sort of thing constantly. A man who has a gyro stabilised martini glass created so he doesn't have to stop drinking while snowboarding. God, I love him so much. The entire thing is so incredibly gonzo. Every book he is in is perfect. Page 48.

transfer.it/t/a5LkQvxFQLyb
>>96692721
Sometimes it's something big - bad text alignment, blank pages, poor templates in the PDF - and sometimes it's lots of little things. Check bloody business in the link I posted, page 48 and look at the page number. There's hundreds of little errors like that through their books. Missing spaces, too many spaces, obvious copy-pastes for rules, rules that don't actually work, incorrect contents pages, the usual (PG XX) stuff, etc.

>>96695688
Forgot my image. I love that he exists.

>>96694242
Mysads going for equal capability.
>>96695448
Incidentally, on this topic, I have some pdfs for Equinox, a quasi official beta thing for the 8th world. The horrors ate earth and metahumanity is spread out, artificial mana fields exist on spaceships and humans born in space, 'zerogs', live precisely 80 years, innate blood magic to make up for their lack of a soul and have black teeth. Funny stuff. If anyone is interested, ask and I'll post them.

>>96694242
>Which ones never quite have enough karma or nuyen to come online?
Vehicle riggers, especially if your group somehow expects you to shell out for the ride on your own.

>>96694242
>Which character type effectively caps out earliest?
Face.

>>96696493
I guess this is why the technoface is a thing.

The Tehcnomancer is The Green Ranger.

>>96697160
Technos are Pink Mohawk in a setting that assumes Black Trenchoat.

>>96688293
Never bothered with a LGS, online there's nobody.

>>96697234
I have literally never seen a technomancer in a pink mohawk game.

>>96661106 (OP)
I haven't played it in about a year but Shadowrun 4e is still part of my groups regular stable of RPG's (I've heard it's not the most popular but it's the one my group has all the books for and are familiar with). Had a baby recently so not really much time to commit to developing a full campaign, but I've been musing on running a series of loosely connected one-shots recently because runs lend themselves pretty well to that format.
It's for the best that the franchise is "dead" though, CGL are dogshit custodians of every property they touch.

>>96699530
>Jazz
Drug Tolerant is such a cool quality.

>>96675568
One glaring issue I had with the setting's alt-history is that the petrodollar collapse left Europe fine and dandy, with the excuse they'd shifted over to the Eurodollar--and not too long ago at that. I'm no trained economist, but shouldn't said collapse have led to a truly global economic disaster that shafted nigh every country?

>>96701119
Fine and dandy can be a rather relative affair. If your place is going full Venezuela the the place that has only gone to 15% unemployment rate is gonna look pretty damn fine to you.

>>96668757
Pre 4th Corporate War Cyberpunk is a fantastic setting, 2045 is a schizophrenic mess that doesn't know what it wants to be.

>>96701158
In the context of the setting, fine and dandy means somehow becoming an economic superpower that simultaneously dominates space while funding a massive welfare state with low levels of employment.

Does the difficulty gap between hacking and everything else ever just seem ludicrous to you?

>Breaking into corporate building to steal something
>That's a rating 7 host everything is slaved to
>Have to scrape together 20-22 die rolling against 17 (7*2 + 3 Firewall) just to hack cameras and doors which have no logical reason not to be slaved to the host
>Probably spend edge a few times on bad rolls
>Meanwhile the security is PR 2
>That's some security goons who shoot with 8ish dice
>Maybe backed up by a wagemage who's got like 9 dice for casting spells

What's worse is when GMs bitch about the decker having a huge dice pool right out of chargen. The decker has to have that massive dicepool and part of that is teamwork tests with agents. By RAW it's a requirement.

>>96701602
Someone didn't read about direct connections. Why bother making such a garbage post dude?

>>96702719
Deckers can make direct connections with the doors but not the cameras or alarms. Technos can't until they get skinlink.

>>96702826
>but not the cameras or alarms
Retard alert!

>>96701602
You use the device rating in place of the attribute, but you do use the host's firewall. So 13 instead of 17. Much more manageable.

>>96703020
>but you do use the host's firewall
You don't if you have a direct connection. I'm not sure why you're posting if you don't want to read.

>>96703020
Thanks for the helpful response. Okay then smaller dice pools make sense in that situation then.

>>96703014
>teleports into room to avoid the door facing camera
>hovers five meters in the air next to camera while invisible to jack in
That's an impressive mage on the team.

>>96703149
>Thanks for the helpful response
You mean the response that got a critical piece wrong?
When you're inside the host a device doesn't get the host's protection. It's even less protected than what he says.

>>96704815
We're talking about more or less AR hacking, but from inside the host you're right, it's even worse.

I dislike attempts at rules-light Shadowrun because 1. It's always been a really crunchy system and I enjoy that, and 2. The attempts are generally very inept. Like a friend of mine showed me SRX, which purports itself to be a faster, cleaner, streamlined, etc. Shadowrun, and instead introduces shit like every roll having you designate two of your dice as Critical Dice (because when I think of streamlining, I think of adding an extra step where you keep track of two specific dice in a pool) and if they both come up as sixes you crit (+3 hits) or both as ones you glitch, because apparently wildly-swingy D&D-style "Le epic fail, roflcopter!" rolls that turn your character into Fumbles McDipshit and are exactly as likely to happen to a seasoned professional as a complete rookie are just what Shadowrun needed. It also managed to bring in a worse version of the 6e brainrot that switched the simple and elegant method adding or subtracting dice from your pool to reflect circumstances to a binary Leverage/Liability, but instead of giving an Edge point it outright adjusts the target number to 4 or 6, and I guarantee they had no goddamn idea how massive of a swing that is because they put no thought into it beyond "It's like Advantage in D&D 5e!"

Basically I'm with >>96687198, SR5e isn't perfect but is still the most usable version. Have any enterprising bilingual nerds gone and made Krautmaxxed pdfs of all the books yet?

>>96680127
By RAW it works that way, but your GM may rule differently.

>>96708341
How usable is 5e, just core book, if I'm not worrying about the kraut fixes? Keep in mind that we rotate games a lot so we probably won't drill down into the nitty gritty of SR.

>>96691211
4babby here, what's the difference between a Technomancer and an Otaku?

>>96710392
It's.. doable. Don't worry about limits too much - you probably won't hit them anyway. It's just an added cost and a kludge fix for people who can break the system.
>>96710547
tl;dr Otaku are children that have brain hacking powers with no cyberware beyond a datajack. Technomancers have adult magic brain wifi.

Otaku were kids in 3e (and before, to be fair) who could just get a datajack and plug straight into the matrix. As they aged, they lost their abilities (Fading) and did some terrifying hacking stuff - they usually danced all over deckers. They didn't need to worry about essence or anything like technomancers. IN theory it's the childhood neuroplasticity combined with the Deep Resonance, which isn't really explained - it really only came about after the matrix booted up in the wake of the first crash. It might be the Spirit of the Matrix, it might be the Gibsonian style self awareness of the Matrix at some level. Otakudom something that can be artificially induced, though - Deus and Mirage were able to make them. Mirage's didn't even Fade if he did it early enough.

Technomancers instead have magic wifi in their brains and the systems mirror that of wizards in most ways. They don't fade, they don't need datajacks. On a purely lore note it's said that Pax, an Otaku in the service of Deus, actually won - she became a Technomancer. She was Fading and terrified of it, going through increasingly weird surgeries and drugs to stave off the Fading.. and somehow reworked the Matrix in crash 2.0 to be dissonant instead of resonant. Another dropped plot thread.

>>96710392
Should be fine. Offhand I think the only subsystem that got changed a whole lot in a later book was how drone & vehicle mods work, otherwise most of the books are for More Cool Stuff.

>>96711034
>It's.. doable. Don't worry about limits too much - you probably won't hit them anyway. It's just an added cost and a kludge fix for people who can break the system.
I didn't like Limits at first but came to understand their purpose: a nice way to let a player know "Okay, you can stop now" once they have 3xLimit in a pool.

>>96666946
Everybody needs three.

>>96687198
>shitting on 4e while praising 5e
>when 5e is 95% 4e with a few QOL bandaids and a fresh coat of paint and worse chargen
I will never understand why people do this.

>>96703149
Not impressive- that's a follower of the Old Ones! They're being corrupted by Horrors!

Can somebody suggest some contacts that wouldn't be covered by a high connections fixer?

>>96669607
Triggerlib World sounds like a kino setting for a cyberpunk game

>>96714092
A highly-connected fixer can cover almost anything via knowing-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy, but I'd say any contact whose services you're going to be using regularly--maybe a gun runner or a street doc--is a good one to get to avoid a fixer's pesky finder's fees and percentages.

>>96708341
Yeah, I think this is an underrated part of the Shadowrun/Cyberpunk appeal and why a rules-lite version never hits quite right:
Gear autism and constantly racing to keep up with educating tech advances and security measures and security cracking tools is key to the setting and themes and feels good to get drawn into engaging with to fight and spend for every little edge possible.
And it is super crucial that in a team of specialists everyone be able to perform their niche consistently with only very rare failures so that complications can come from external factors and mistakes in planning or decisions rather than fumbling the execution of a plan. And so that when shit hits the fan they can start trying to leverage and depend upon the tools they do have to try to improvise their way out of a tough spot.

>>96701602
The problem with decking isn't the dice pools. It's that it takes you 2-3 actions to hack someone's cyberware or turret or something and by then combat is just about over.

>>96718045
A data spike takes a single roll.

>>96718696
Does your GM not make you roll matrix perception first?

>>96718718
NTA but I don't think anybody's GM who is bothering to give the decker something to hack during combat is going to have security goons run silent.

>>96661106 (OP)
I play the Genesys version, it runs pretty good.

>>96719852
The Genesis Shadowrun is one of my all-time favorite games. It's also surprisingly faithful to the 2e mechanics, even if the game doesn't really explain that very well.

>>96682487
>it is the single worst game I have ever heard of
You never heard of 7th Sea, Second Edition? Sixth World is shit, but at least it's somewhat playable.

>>96661106 (OP)
They kinda butchered the system AND setting.

>>96718718
The decker should be constantly rolling matrix perception during a run. Rolling it in combat is redundant.

>>96718718
>You can automatically spot the icons of devices that are not running silent within 100 meters of your physical location.
I'm the GM and I read the rules, so I don't make my deckers jump through hoops.

>>96661735
Now I want OP to keep spamming this thread because you seem to be very smart at explaining jokes

what is even the point of actually doing shadowruns

you can get better ways to make money just from chargen

>>96729308
Every way you go in life you eat a shit sandwich.

>>96661106 (OP)
Lol nigger black book

>>96714092
A friend on the force. A corporate secretary who knows all the juicy gossip that doesn't make it down to the streets. A street doctor who knows who has been shot up recently and the latest black market ware floating around town. A high class stripper/escort who knows the kind of pillow talk that wouldn't ordinarily leave a boardroom or secure facility.

>>96664756
I'll believe it when I see it. The fact you could get edge back in 1e by just shooting a baby is hilarious to me

>>96665704
I mean, regular dragons are feasible. Great dragons on the other hand are more equivalent to d&d deities and would require a fuck ton of st fiat to do which, hey, if your group wants that, good on you guys, make a fun story, otherwise they're going to delete you

>>96665856
>Despite the fact that their obviously enemies of humanity
In this house President Dunkelzahn was a hero, end of story

How much soak do you guys usually shoot for? 20+, 30+, or do you just hit ~18 and call it good enough?

>>96733255
don't need soak unless you're retarded

>>96665856
>Despite the fact that their obviously enemies of humanity

Can somebody walk me through the process of forging a fake SIN in 5e?

>>96681978
>in the last kickstarter (only announced after the payments were locked)
lolwhat?

>>96695777
I would be interested in those pdfs.

>>96734923
>Hey GM I got natty 6 hits I have a new fake SIN now

Not hard

>>96734923
I've long suspected that they're the product of stolen identities that are close enough to pass with varying degrees of success depending on how close of a match they are and because the SIN system is so heavily automated it flied under the radar. However that doesn't quite seem to fit with some of the descriptions of how they work.

>>96670446
I wanna see a setting that takes the ideas of cyberpunk but focuses on being anti state over anti corporate

>read the rules
>skim specific areas loosely pertaining to what I want to do
>read carefully on specific rules pertaining to specific actions
>try to white room a few things
>realize that there are six different things that I have to go back to and correct my own understanding of
>some things I thought were cool seem useless
>read more
>white room more
>actually the things that I thought were useless are highly efficient actions in a context that is highly likely to come up in play
>go back and read more

This game has such a steep learning curve but I kind of like it.

>>96733255
I don't know how other people just casually hit 30+ soak. I can only get that with a troll with titanium bone lacing and a riot shield and an armor jacket and a bunch of other shit. Dodge is better than soak anyway (assuming we're talking about 5e; in 4e it quickly becomes impossible to actually dodge anything, which is one reason I like 5e a lot more). In any case, any extra amount of soak you can get away with wearing is always better than not, but how much that is depends greatly on where you are and what you're doing (assaulting a gang hideout in the barrens means you can bust out the combat armor and riot shield, tailing someone in downtown Seattle not so much).

>>96735309
I hear you. D&D magic items bore me to death, but I LOVE Shadowrun gear porn.

>>96734923
That's for NPCs (aka GM fiat) alone. What you do as a player is buy them.

>>96732800
You're thinking of sixth world, not anarchy, and even then, that is a peasant railgun level reading of the rules.

>>96735534
the forging skill is right there

>>96735686
Yeah, that's not for forging fake SINs.

>>96735764
yeah, it says it is

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Shadowrun 4eA and maybe runners companion splat book is maybe the greatest shadowrun ever got and is world class.

>>96735047
YOUR WISH IS GRANTED.
https://transfer.it/t/7kwg3o5nxTJT

>>96735773
Lying isn't good.

>>96735500
There are so many options that it's mind boggling, and some of the best gear for certain things don't even show up in the gear section of the book.

>>96736713
Neat, thanks anon.
They really leaned into various in-world flavourtext every other paragraph huh.

>>96665704
>but then it decides to shit it up by making the Dragons unbeatable
Gee, it's almost as if the dragons are meant to represent the futility and hopelessness of the setting, where even if you try to screw over your Mr. Johnson or a megacorp, you're always going to run into someone with more power to fuck you over. And that you shouldn't get a big ego over what a badass shadowrunner you are because you are still just a little fish in a much bigger pond.

And there are examples of what happens if you manage to wipe out the dragons, like in the game Dragonfall. Hint: it reinforces the ideas I just explained because killing the dragon results in the BAD END for the entirety of humanity. There is ALWAYS a bigger threat. Your existence is carving out a life for yourself while keeping your head down. That's the whole fucking point of the setting.

>>96739469
>>96665704
>they forgot you're also supposed to be Hooding
It's not slaying the dragon or taking down the corporation, but it is a series of small victories.

>>96739340
>There are so many options that it's mind boggling, and some of the best gear for certain things don't even show up in the gear section of the book.

Shadowrun gear porn sucks because it's 50% scouring every splat for cheap +1's to your Cross the Street roll and 50% arguing with the GM whether those +1's actually apply to crossing the street and whether they could apply to crossing a road.

Is this the thread? I want to know what some Mafia-heavy cities remain in Shadowrun, since everything seems to be Triad or Yak now.

>>96740068
Seattle still has the Mafia as top dog in the 2070's, but idk about in 6e.

Why play it when Cyberpunk exists?

>>96743225
Setting differences, mostly.

>>96743225
People used to ask that about Cyberpunk.

>>96743225
The better question now is "Why play it when Cities Without Numbers (paid) has the rules to let you mix magic and cyberpunk with crunch that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself?"

>>96743225
Better vehicles
More entertaining shitposting by NPCs
Not perpetually stuck in just one city
Magic!
2e reflex enhancer augs actually do what the Sandy from Edgerunners is supposed to do with Initiative but doesn't manage with 2020 or Red's system. Even Boosted Reflexes, the black sheep of the Wired/MBW/Synaptic Accelerator line, can manage this, and that's just embarrassing for the Sandevistan.

>>96746666
I actually quite like SR's initiative pass system

>>96746666
check'd

Also reflex enhancement in SR is super cool. Shout out to the poor schmucks who try to make Lightning Reflexes work.

>>96746698
It's probably one of the very few systems that does it well and in a way that makes perfect sense for the setting.

It's also an absolute terror because more actions=better, but hey, it's a lot of fun. Sort of reminds me of Celerity in the old world of darkness stuff.

>>96687159
It pisses me off that a system as cool as Earthdawn wasn't a commercial success. I want to feed on the eternal pain and suffering of humanity.

>>96746623
>crunch that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself
>D&Dogshit d20 only
Choose one and only fucking one.

>>96748704
Blame (((Weisman))) for being a total fraud and retard selling off the entire thing because all he knows how to do is pump and dump. It could've had a vidya like Baldur'd Gate.

>>96748704
Have you considered converting to Judaism, Ysrgrathe? I think you'd find it to your taste. As magical apocalypses go the horrors are actually a really neat idea.

>>96714092
I'm more interested in a contacts configuration that doesn't have a fixer and doesn't suffer from it.

>>96735226
Hunter//Seeker

What intro modules do you recommend?
If I never play food fight again, it'll be too soon.

Similar to the above anon, what books would you recommend for someone purely interested in the lore and not intending to play? From what I have been reading, a good start would be 4th Ed Anniversary Edition, 6th World Almanack, and the Shadows of North America / Asia / etc.?

Also, which would be the better books for artwork? I think I like the style of 3e.

>>96757226
Threats 1 & 2, Renraku Lockdown, the novel Scars by Caroline Spector, find the ancient history files online (they were previously mentioned on dumpshock, he took them down, someone duplicated them.. somewhere), Loose Alliances, Tir Na Nog and Tir Tairngire books, Shadows of Europe and Asia, Corporate Guide.. sigh, market panic. I fucking hate that book. It's garbage, but it's there.
>>96755874
Shadorun Missions Season 5 is appropriately shit tier and gets you to meet some weird fucking people without making things over complicated. A fistful of credsticks is lots of fun.

>>96753527
I look that up and all I can find is a thing from dune and other weapons from stuff, are you talking about this netrunner card?

>>96758134
It's a cyberpunk 2020 hack. Search for hunter-seeker.pdf

>>96758175
Oh neat i'll definitely give this a look thanks

I got a question about drone defense test in Shadowrun 5e.

I'm trying to figure out my drone defense test when it's using it's dogmeat automated brain, forums are saying its either Pilot, Pilot x 2, or Pilot + Handling autosoft and I'm confused, which is it?

>>96759241
From outside, Pilot+Handling makes the most sense.
Many systems add the vehicles nimbleness to rolls.

>>96759241
I had to ask here about that years ago and it's been awhile, but I believe I was told that the 5.Kraut rules are that it's Pilot+Evasion autosoft. That makes the most sense to me since it gives Evasion a purpose besides "Something that You're Pretty Sure is Already Covered by the Stealth Autosoft."

>>96759989
It helps when you actually look through the books instead of playing a game of German telephone...

>ANGRIFFE AUF FAHRZEUGE
>Wenn ein Fahrzeug angegriffen wird, kann der Fahrer sich mit Reaktion + Intuition dagegen verteidigen. Drohnen tun das mit Pilot + Ausweichen [Handling]. Näheres zu Proben im hineingesprungenen Zustand f nden Sie auch unter Wie das Riggen funktioniert ab S. 264.
Compare and contrast the English version
>ATTACKS AGAINST VEHICLES
>When a vehicle is attacked in combat, the driver rolls his Reaction + Intuition as the defense part of the Opposed Test. Drones roll their Pilot + Autosoft [Handling]. See also Rigging and You, p. 266 for tests performed while jumped in.

>>96757926
Thanks a lot anon, will try to find those books.

>reading old discussions on 5e
>come away with the notion that using grenades wirelessly was suicide as any decker or tm would blow you up remotely
>actually read the grenade rules while trying to figure out how much soak I need
>turning on wireless (free action), ready weapon (simple action), and throwing the grenade (simple action) only takes one turn
>on the next turn you can blow it up as a free action
>a decker could not mark the grenade then control device to blow it up as that requires two complex actions
>a technomancer could only puppeteer the grenade before it was thrown if he was specifically holding his action

Either holding actions is way more common than I am assuming, or the puppeteer grenade scenario is some type of white room theory crafting scenario unlikely to come up in play.

>>96743225
Because I think Adepts and Edge Monkeys are cool as shit

>>96761188
I'll go you one better, here's my folder. This isn't complete, it was a reconstruction ages ago and I don't like you enough to scan Scars or dig up some of the missions printouts I have in my big box of RPG stuff. But it'll get you started. Just pay it forward at some point.

https://mega.nz/folder/jp4XlBIb#63VPNdwJNBS82WUQ89i7Bw

>>96761704
>some type of white room theory crafting scenario unlikely to come up in play.
Barely relevant, but by RAW, the conjuring rules state that mundanes can start gathering services from spirits like pokemon if you have a wizard make the stuff for you. It's great.

>>96762219
>tfw you keep generating Edge 1 characters

Do seemingly weird character options work these days? Something like a troll shaman or an orc technomancer?

>1/6 contacts
>6/1 contacts
>a fuckton of 1/1 contacts
Thoughts on which is better?

>>96762382
Holy sheeeit, took me hours to find 1/10th of those. Much appreciated anon.

>>96682484

For anyone else curious, here's my even more incomplete set of Earthdawn folders. I have not played Earthdawn in four and a half years, and some of it I actually own physically.

https://mega.nz/folder/mlZTRDDL#6riu8qv4uwS-MThg1SN2BA

>>96765017
The last, if only because you can always build them up now you've a foot in the door and swapping favours is always fun. Janitors and bouncers and clerks are great contacts.

>>96765135
You're quite welcome. And here's a mirror of the Ancient Files I found.
http://danvolodar.ru/ancientfiles/

If you click the Eye of Horus down the bottom and scroll to the bottom of that link, the one titled 'one last little peek' you'll see what that freelancer was originally planning for the pre-embezzlement Dawn of the Artifacts series. It's very barebones but it's kind of interesting.

>>96765017
In my experience a contact is worthless unless it can directly facilitate a shadowrun. And I don't mean get you the shadowrun in the first place. I mean give you extra opportunities for runs you've already signed up for. Generally speaking, a man on the inside is the bare minimum for a shootless run.

So by that virtue, fixers are extremely overrated. You will obviously go on runs no matter what, that's the whole fucking game. I'm also not a big fan of other dedicated shopping contacts.

Unless the GM has told you that the campaign will revolve around a specific megacorpo or against a specific gang, you want to cast a wide net of 1/1s in as many major organizations as you can. And there's not much harm in doubling up because 1/1s can get burned easily when you put them to use.

That's it, I'm going to do it, I'm going to replay Shadowrun Hong Kong

>>96681978
>Not to worry, CGL's shaping up to sabotage their other cash cow game Battletech, too. The playtests for their new edition and the oversimplified vehicles in the last kickstarter (only announced after the payments were locked) are smoke on the horizon. A new edition is one thing, but oversimplifying the spirit out of the game in order to cater to a 'modern audience' that would rather be playing something else at the expense of the people that actually like it in the first place? I really hope they'll take community feedback and not just from the yesmen they put behind closed doors after the demo-team coup. Hell, Randall seems increasingly more interested in making what Bryn likes, and Bryn isn't a BattleTech fan by choice but exposed to it by birth, seemingly more interested in 40K and other rules-light systems. What faith does it inspire when the people who make the game seem tired of playing the game they make?
I feel like CGL could mangle BattleTech into an unrecognisable mess and BT grogs would still grumble and buy it all anyway

>>96765698
What is your preferred edition of Earth dawn? Is it a situation where the latest one is also the best one?

>>96770110
2/3/4 are.. mostly the same game. I like 2, but that's because I'm old and cranky. 4 is pretty incomplete in terms of everything, though. 2 is mostly complete and compatible forward and back.

>>96764334
Those got easier as the editions went on. They're extremely easy to make work in 5e or 6e, since penalties for orks and trolls lightened considerably or are no longer in place as such.

What's my best option if I want to play Shadowrun alone and not the Harebrained games cause I already played them?

>>96771351
Nice to know that you aren't locked into one or two character types if you goblinize.

>>96771351
The one thing I'll give 6e is it's way easier to make a troll. Even in 5e it can still be pretty rough.

>>96774329
Pretty much just the SNES and Genesis ones. As mentioned before, the Genesis one is one of my favorite games and I think it's the far superior of the two, but plenty of people prefer the SNES one. In any case, they're both worth playing.

>>96776706
>>96771351
6e destroyed the entire flavor of trolls in the name of political correctness.

>>96777577
I loved the 4e fluff chat for this. "I'm not stupid, I just can't make the same sounds as you because of my jaw"
>racial max 4 logic

>>96777577
In all fairness, previous editions goofed hard ala >>96778181
If they had put in a negative quality to represent it being harder to get a formal education or something like that and made you buy it off to raise logic past that it would have fit the fluff.

>>96778181
>>96782403
>4e
Summarily disregarded.

>Orc Technomancer
>Can hack, but can pull his weight in a fight
>Maybe do other stuff too

This feels like such a narrow build.

Chummers, what is a good place where I can create character images? I found the models in Returns/HK to be very lacking, and heroforge is too limited.
I thought about downloading some fantasy rpg i.e. Dragon Age and making a character there (Qunari could fit nicely as trolls), but then it'll be a pain with photoshopping in all the cyberware.
I don't mind AI, I just haven't seen a good one.

>>96769396
>I feel like CGL could mangle BattleTech into an unrecognisable mess and BT grogs would still grumble and buy it all anyway

Didn't this already happen? The lore evolved into retarded comic book stories and they shit out a little skirmish game with clicking models?
That video game is what kept the franchise alive.

>>96769396
Battletech is the tumor killing Shadowrun. Without Battletech, CGL loses the license. I despise that system and its worthless defenders.

>>96770393
2 is the least compatible with everything before and after it.

>>96789326
Nah, Battletech came around again, picked up some GW refugees from one of the many fuckups that they constantly perpetrate, and now CGL is fucking it up again. Battletech moves in a cycle, you see?

>>96791009
Well then in my opinion for Shadowrun moved in a cycle when they released those three video games which largely dumped and/or divorced themselves from Shadowrun's fucktarded metaplot(s) and got back to neon graffiti pink mowhawk William Gibson type shit.
Shadowrun Returns came out in 2013 using the setting published in 1998 and people liked it, and since then Shadowrun has returned to the irrelevant retarded part of the cycle because they didn't get the lesson.
The dice system has always been a stupid queer quirk-fest. Nobody would design a game like that in 2025. And the metaplot needs to be mostly dumped.

>>96791111
>The dice system has always been a stupid queer quirk-fest
>And the metaplot needs to be mostly dumped.
Peak brainlet, and arguing from the top of mount stupid to boot. Good job.

>>96791232
Right okay tell me the advantage to the player that six and seven are the same target number because when you roll a six you get a reroll with a minimum of one.
Why is that good?
Was it better with a fixed target number or floating?
Why?

>>96791547
>it's the whining about variable target numbers again
Whew, are you copying dumpshock shitposts?

>>96791547
I don't think the system has used variable target numbers since 3e.

>>96791111
Why did you reply to me? Do you not understand how replying works? What is this schizo nonsense?

>>96791609
yeah
why?
was it good or bad?
why is it better than a vanilla flavored d20 with bonuses type generic system?

>>96791835
I was connecting your notion of games going through cycles to the game from the OP
lol completely stumped you, context too big
you literally have a smear of shit on your brain that can't be cured
you are just barely a human

>>96791861
Except you didn't describe Shadowrun going through a cycle, you got mad about videogames and mechanics that haven't been in the game for 2 decades.

Do you know what a cycle is?

>>96791926
>haven't been in the game for 2 decades
>Do you know what a cycle is?
Uh oh I'm talking to a morbidly obese high school junior

>>96791970
This is the real reason why shadowrun generals are dead, there are braindead, schizophrenic mother fuckers like this dickhead who cannot string a simple thought together and just lash out at everyone with a mix of schizo nonsense and angry verble diarrhea.

>>96792094
Read your post out loud to yourself and then say "I'm not the problem"
Then mash an entire crate of uncrustables brand sandwich snack into your gullet at the same time without taking the wrappers off

>>96792240
>Nuh-uh, let me hit you with my schizo nonsense and verble diarrhea!

>>96790963
QQ moar.

>>96791842
Because d20 is dogshit, retard.

>>96792094
Finally, someone else is saying what I have for years.

>>96765017
Loyalty is a huge meme and really easy to raise.

How does a Maglock Passkey work? The book is very unclear and I tried watching Complex Action but was left with questions. If I have a Maglock Passkey I DON'T have to open the casing and hotwire my way in, I can just wave the MP and have it be rating of MP vs rating of the maglocked door/device?

>>96796033
There's a flowchart somewhere that has the answers to opening doors. Sadly I don't have it saved.

>>96766580
Quite you want high level contacts with broad range of use. Smugglers, police, deckers.

Minor stuff like a new SIN forger up can be be kept low as it downtime stuff.

>>96796033
Right, you swipe a Maglock Passkey just like it's a legitimate one, and from there it's just key rating vs door rating. The business with opening the casing is for when you're bypassing it manually. For a skilled locksmith, a manual bypass is actually more reliable than a passkey, but it will take longer.

>>96796033
>I tried watching Complex Action
Try reading the book instead of listening to that idiot.

>Make an Opposed Test between the passkey/forged keycard rating and the maglock rating. If the passkey/forged keycard wins, the maglock opens.
It's that simple, yes.

>>96680491
Did they put a word filter on it again?
Testing for nigger

>>96795930
What's it like having a generous GM in the theorycrafting realm?

>>96798053
Your GM doesn't let you use loyalty 1 contacts or something?

>>96798090
>Loyalty is a huge meme and really easy to raise
Run that by me. That has nothing to do with using loyalty 1 contacts who are all business.

>>96798117
Just do nice stuff for them and loyalty goes up.

Meanwhile raising their connections is an undertaking and a half.

>>96798128
>Just do nice stuff for them and loyalty goes up
Now which page are you pulling that one from?

>>96798143
Same place as the rules for increasing the contact's connections.

>>96798220
Is it that hard for you to give a number or quote?

>>96798241
There are no rules for it retard. It's down to common sense.

>>96798262
>There are no rules for it
Swing and a miss. Thanks for admitting you don't read shit.

>>96798275
You're not just nogames, you're a noread too lol

>>96798291
They give rules for increasing loyalty in the book almost everyone gets for 5e. What do you get out of lying like this in 2025?

>>96798309
What's even the point of this caveman routine? Is trolling the only way you can get any social interaction anymore?

>>96798319
If you're incapable of finding the rules and want help, you can ask instead of being a bitch.

>>96798331
Earning someone's friendship is easier than turning them into a seasoned fixer.

If that makes you angry, that's on you.

>>96798345
It shouldn't be hard for you to find the book. Do you only use core or do you do that weird freeform thing most people who claim to play Shadowrun do?

The fluff plays it up a lot, but has your sammie ever actually gotten into a katana fight?

I hope to find a group who plays this online

>>96802997
Having successfully GMed for an online group for a year straight:
You don't.

>>96682484
who's the immortal accountant elf? Ehran?

>>96803398
Yes. He's mostly a quiet, efficient little bureaucrat as well as being the second most powerful metahuman wizard on the planet (The pair are at least circle 15 lightbringers, and probably circle 15 swordmasters/wizards too)

Good to finally see 1 (ONE) thread about Shadowrun.
My GM/Story Teller has been thinking about running Shadowrun 2e again as we pivot around AD&D and Vampire 20th Anniversary and we miss Shadowrun setting, our last job was doing the Renraku Lockdown module and we beat it, no loses except some few limbs and it took us weeks to finish.

>>96800890
No. Sammies are a complete meme.

>>96800890
Karate fights yes, katana fight no.

>>96810976
Sams normally have implanted weapons. Karate fights are at least close to katana fights.

Face is the most powerful and useful archetype.

>>96812729
It's also the easiest one to max out. So it's often a secondary specialization. And a lot of it's benefits are "invisible" so to speak in that they largely help with preparing for a run and preventing problems from raising in advance rather than solving them in the heat of the moment. But yeah, they are a crucial part of the team.

>>96804334
>>96803398
Although now that I'm thinking about it, I really enjoyed his portrayal early on. His role in founding Tir Tairngire (and the REEEEEEing he does about Tir Na Nog), the bare covering on his conspiracy over it (he dyed his hair in official photos), the fact that elves and dragons are portrayed as at odds and he's cheerfully vivisecting a young one in his lab? It's all very well done.

>>96813043
I don't know, I often see the social skills getting a lot of use during actual runs.

Making a drone melee ambusher using the Mitsuhama Akyama as my base, buying it with the Restricted Gear quality. I'm using HeroLAB as my building program and HeroLAB says I have 2 Articulated Mechanical Arms, which makes sense but they are both uncustomizable despite the book Hard Targets saying they have a capacity of 8 each for cyberweapons. Moreover it seems to be using the rules for Articulated Mechanical Arms from the vehicle section of the book, Rigger5.0 and that doesn't seem right. With that said, could I be justified if I simply took 2 drone arms and customized them in place of the Articulated Mechanical arms?

>>96814702
It seems like the Mitsuhama Akyama has special rules that apply to its arms that bypass the normal rules for modifying drones. HeroLAB probably just doesn't have an exception for that particular drone and how it functions coded in.

>>96815676
Technically it is a 24F drone and there's only like a paragraph of information on it in a splatbook so that makes sense

>>96665704
I’m just remaking shadowrun in gurps so I can cut the bullshit

>>96815820
>gurps
>cut the bullshit
lol