General Shadowrun Questions III: Ya like that, Chummer?

[Delta]

It's been forever so I could be wrong, but IIRC a "two phase laser system" is one where there is a low energy laser beam that detects intruders which can then switch into a high energy mode to damage said intruder, I think it was in the old SR2 sourcebook about corporate security which also introduced the idea of "security riggers" that could basically access a whole security system in the same way a regular rigger interfaces with a vehicle.

[comicshorse]

It's been forever so I could be wrong, but IIRC a "two phase laser system" is one where there is a low energy laser beam that detects intruders which can then switch into a high energy mode to damage said intruder, I think it was in the old SR2 sourcebook about corporate security which also introduced the idea of "security riggers" that could basically access a whole security system in the same way a regular rigger interfaces with a vehicle.

Hmmmm. The 'Corporate Security Handbook' (p27) makes reference to 'two part devices', a sending unit that emits a beam of light ( 'or a laser') and a receiving unit that detects it. With the alarm being raised if an intruder disrupts the beam so the receiving unit isn't getting it.

[Lord Torath]

Hmmmm. The 'Corporate Security Handbook' (p27) makes reference to 'two part devices', a sending unit that emits a beam of light ( 'or a laser') and a receiving unit that detects it. With the alarm being raised if an intruder disrupts the beam so the receiving unit isn't getting it.

Interesting. But the adventure One Stage Before was published in 1992, and the Corp Sec Handbook was published in 1995. Anyone recall something from an earlier source?

[Delta]

Huh, 1992 is really early there aren't really many sources to go back on, I'm confident there's nothing about this tech in either the core or the old Street Sam Catalog (although it does have the first mention of laser weapons in SR) and nothing in the old Grimoire either for sure, so that would only leave maybe the old Rigger Black Book but I don't think there's a lot of security stuff in that either.

[Corsair14]

Which edition is least crunchy with relatively simple rules for combat and so forth. Relatively as in only a pool or two compared to the mass number of pools in 5th. I read through that book and you need a frikkin accounting degree to make sense of it and even make characters. I played I think it was 4th in the mid-2000s, played back in 1st and 2nd briefly but only remember the fluff of those eras. Not planning on using the matrix, players can either do a simple skill test or hire a decker. Never liked having to run a separate adventure just for deckers while everyone else twiddles their thumbs.

[Lord Torath]

Which edition is least crunchy with relatively simple rules for combat and so forth. Relatively as in only a pool or two compared to the mass number of pools in 5th. I read through that book and you need a frikkin accounting degree to make sense of it and even make characters. I played I think it was 4th in the mid-2000s, played back in 1st and 2nd briefly but only remember the fluff of those eras. Not planning on using the matrix, players can either do a simple skill test or hire a decker. Never liked having to run a separate adventure just for deckers while everyone else twiddles their thumbs.

I think all the editions are pretty much equally crunchy, just in slightly different ways. 3E was supposed to have smaller dice pools than 2E, but I recall hearing it failed pretty badly in that regard. Personally I prefer 2E. But that's at least partly because I already know the system, I own most of the books already, and can't justify to myself spending another $200 on a new edition, and then again when the next edition gets released.

I've heard people talk (read people's posts on this board) about using Savage Worlds (I think?) for rules-lite Shadowrun. And possibly Shadowrun-Anarchy? I think?

[LibraryOgre]

I think all the editions are pretty much equally crunchy, just in slightly different ways. 3E was supposed to have smaller dice pools than 2E, but I recall hearing it failed pretty badly in that regard. Personally I prefer 2E. But that's at least partly because I already know the system, I own most of the books already, and can't justify to myself spending another $200 on a new edition, and then again when the next edition gets released.

I've heard people talk (read people's posts on this board) about using Savage Worlds (I think?) for rules-lite Shadowrun. And possibly Shadowrun-Anarchy? I think?

I've been thinking more and more about Savage Worlds Shadowrun. Lots of folks say to look at Interface for hacking rules, so I intend to delve into those, but, mostly, I don't want to screw with the Shadowrun system when there's others that work as well with fewer moving parts.

[DeTess]

As others have said, if you want to significantly simplify shadowrun's math, it's probably best to port the fluff to another system. I've run Shadowrun in fate for a couple of sessions, which worked for my group.

[Delta]

Well, if you want the least crunchy Shadowrun, there is Anarchy, but I'm not sure that's exactly what you're looking for either.

[DigoDragon]

Well, if you want the least crunchy Shadowrun, there is Anarchy, but I'm not sure that's exactly what you're looking for either.

A friend of mine ported the fluff to GURPS 4e and we played off that. Not really any less crunchy, but the rules definitely flow a lot less clunky than Shadowrun's various incarnations.

[Dimers]

A friend of mine ported the fluff to GURPS 4e and we played off that. Not really any less crunchy, but the rules definitely flow a lot less clunky than Shadowrun's various incarnations.

Any crunch you'd care to share from that translation?

[DigoDragon]

Any crunch you'd care to share from that translation?

Sorry I didn't get back to you on this Q. I can find the crunch, but all the race builds are ponies and unicorns, so I'm not sure if that is still useful for your needs?


Anyone ever do a Christmas theme heist in SR?

[DeTess]

Anyone ever do a Christmas theme heist in SR?

Not yet, but I really want to do Something with the annual exchange of a Christmas fruit cake between Alamais and Dunkelzahn. I might actually try to get a group together for that this month.

[Dimers]

Sorry I didn't get back to you on this Q. I can find the crunch, but all the race builds are ponies and unicorns, so I'm not sure if that is still useful for your needs?

Heh, probably not

Anyone ever do a Christmas theme heist in SR?

No, but I have a SR Christmas Humor Dream Team:

Santa, a fat and jolly Elf, shaman of deer and cold. Wears red with white fur trim, shades; uses a tommygun, mostly for the look

Mrs. Claws, female street samurai

Abominable / "Bumble", an albino troll bruiser or gunman

The Snowman, an elf decker who looks like Billy Idol in "White Wedding". Says "Ice is no problem for The Snowman". Possibly addicted to cocaine. His teammates call upon him by saying there's-no-man alive who could do XYZ ...

Rude Dolph, red-nosed dwarf rigger, adept at piloting through the worst weather. Team's main vehicle is called "The Slay". Has a tiny drone adapted to be miniature whirling death, "Saint Nicks'n'Scratches". And another one for drilling into target sites: we make our own damn chimney!

o/~ You'd better run, or you're gonna die!
If you wanna fight kiss your ass goodbye --
Santa Claus is gunning you down.
He'll freeze you in your footsteps, he'll shoot you in the head
Last thing you'll see is red and white, if you live you're better off dead ... o/~

I haven't yet figured out a good way to pun "stocking" against "stalking".

[DigoDragon]

That is a beautiful team idea. XD

Who is their fixer, the Krampus?

[Dimers]

Absolutely. I'll add that to my notes.

[Eurus]

So, I could have sworn that there was a rule somewhere for disabling the part of your sim module that makes your body ragdoll when you're in VR (taking big penalties to any meatspace actions but at least you can move). But I can't find it, and I'm wondering if I just imagined it. Does anyone know of anything like that in 5e?

[Dimers]

So, I could have sworn that there was a rule somewhere for disabling the part of your sim module that makes your body ragdoll when you're in VR (taking big penalties to any meatspace actions but at least you can move). But I can't find it, and I'm wondering if I just imagined it. Does anyone know of anything like that--

Yep, that's the --

-- in 5e?

... crap. I know the name for it in 4e is "reticular override", if that helps.

[Eurus]

Yep, that's the --



... crap. I know the name for it in 4e is "reticular override", if that helps.

Good catch. Google only turns up 4e results so that might be what I'm remembering it from, maybe it didn't make the jump to 5e. Pity, I like bouncing from AR to VR and it'd be nice to not have to pick myself up off the floor every time...

[LibraryOgre]

So, I could have sworn that there was a rule somewhere for disabling the part of your sim module that makes your body ragdoll when you're in VR (taking big penalties to any meatspace actions but at least you can move). But I can't find it, and I'm wondering if I just imagined it. Does anyone know of anything like that in 5e?

RAS Override is how it might be termed.

[Lord Torath]

Does Bioware still work the same from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition? I've possibly got a game lined up on Roll20 for a 3E game, but I'm not certain how many of the mechanics changed between the 2nd and 3rd.

[LibraryOgre]

I have started work on Savage Shadows, because I need things to do.

[Telwar]

Does Bioware still work the same from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition? I've possibly got a game lined up on Roll20 for a 3E game, but I'm not certain how many of the mechanics changed between the 2nd and 3rd.

I feel like it does. I have a vague-ish memory of being surprised in 4e that Bioware cost Essence. I can check when I get home later tonight.

Edit: Okay, now that I remembered to check, Man & Machine: Cyberware says that Bioware does use Bio Index instead of Essence, but it looks like there's a little more interaction between Bio Index and Essence.

[Ignimortis]

I'm kinda curious how people keep making conversions for Shadowrun to other systems. Me, I'm thinking about making a setting conversion for SR-like-lite rules. 4e basic mechanics are incredibly robust, and if they didn't lose everything in needless minutiae of +1 and -2 dice for this particular thingy every ten seconds, it could be a quick yet crunchy game.

But the setting is...like, why are there three core metatypes that are just tough and strong, and yet there are no "smarter" core metatypes or someone who actually is LESS tough and strong than a human? Why is magic is so borked broken and yet eventually dumbed down to "it's all the same, you just pick your drain stat and spirits with traditions"? Why is the Matrix increasingly more magical with Technomancers and 5e's rewrite? Do we really need the Astral Plane as something that exists despite 60% of the archetypes being unable to access it and most of the rest being only able to see into it, but not project? Why has the cyber stopped advancing after 3e? Etc, etc.

Sure, most of that is intertwined with mechanics, but it's still relevant lorewise. It just seems to be a mish-mash of late 80s game design with nostalgia bait and clear author preference towards the fantasy angle.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm kinda curious how people keep making conversions for Shadowrun to other systems. Me, I'm thinking about making a setting conversion for SR-like-lite rules. 4e basic mechanics are incredibly robust, and if they didn't lose everything in needless minutiae of +1 and -2 dice for this particular thingy every ten seconds, it could be a quick yet crunchy game.

...

Sure, most of that is intertwined with mechanics, but it's still relevant lorewise. It just seems to be a mish-mash of late 80s game design with nostalgia bait and clear author preference towards the fantasy angle.

I like the world... I like the mixture of cyberpunk and fantasy, and while Matrix and Astral operations can be frustrating for those who aren't set of them, it's one of the more effective forms of niche protection I've seen. I like the episodic and troupe nature that the game lends itself to. But I have hated Shadowrun's mechanics since 1st edition.

[Delta]

I'll try to answer a few of your questions

Why is magic is so borked broken and yet eventually dumbed down to "it's all the same, you just pick your drain stat and spirits with traditions"?

That's a problem going back to 1/2e when it was basically "There are two ways of doing magic, there's native american shaman stuff or there's pseudo-medieval hermetic magic", which immediately made a lot of people ask "Um... why only those two?" because let's be honest, that's a really weird focus on a very specific cross-section of real world mythology.

So when they added Druids in the London sourcebook, they ended up with "Um... they're either like the one, or like the other" which was never the best solution and still left like 90% of the worlds mythological background out in the cold. Years later, they tried to add on this with Vodoo which really worked differently from both shamanic and hermetic traditions with their focus on spirit possession, which was interesting but put even more of a spotlight on the fact that basically most of Europe's and all of Asia's mythological background was simply ignored.

In the end, they decided that if they wanted to give each and every mythology a place in their magical ruleset, the only way to do this was the UMT, declaring that all magic works the same in some way so every new tradition is just some variation of that. Not saying I think what we have is the perfect solution, but I can honestly understand where they came from.

Why is the Matrix increasingly more magical with Technomancers and 5e's rewrite?

Essentially: Because that's what the Matrix is and always has been? Not like Shadowrun invented the wheel here, the whole idea of the Gibson-esque Matrix was that when it got beyond a singularity point (meaning once AIs got powerful enough) it would become a quasi-mystical place ruled by Ghosts in the Machine and the whole fact that everything is decentralized and based on abstract representation very far removed from the actual flow of data underneath means weird things can start happening that no one can really explain.

All of this is simply based on the very books the whole genre is based on, it would be even more weird for an openly fantastic setting like Shadowrun to make their Matrix less weird than Gibson did.

Do we really need the Astral Plane as something that exists despite 60% of the archetypes being unable to access it and most of the rest being only able to see into it, but not project?

It was an integral part of the setting ever since 1e, retconning the astral plane out of existence would cause an outcry in the player base that would make current edition wars seem like a tame polite argument over a nice warm cup of tea.

Why has the cyber stopped advancing after 3e? Etc, etc.

Because the people who have taken over in the last few years want to make the system as magical as possible and don't really care about cyber. It's really that simple, but not going to change anytime soon unless CGL goes under or something.

[Ignimortis]

I'll try to answer a few of your questions.

Eh, I'm not exactly advocating for retconning those things. It's just that I see them as incredibly outdated even with updated rules. SR seems to be not unlike VtM, a reflection on game design and general world perception of the late 80s and early 90s.

While mechanics have been updated with 4e (thank god for that), the setting also tried to move forward in 4e and then was slammed back into the "future of the 80s also there's magic, and it works in the way RPGs did it in the 90s" with 5e and onward.

[Waxpapers]

I think some of that incongruity comes from the fact that given the setting, cyberware should be getting better, but actually implementing that means changing the balance of the game. In 4e, wired reflexes 2 (the best you can get at start) cost 3 essence and 32kY, while in 5e, wired reflexes 2 costs... 3 essence and 149kY. And the cost of the more "advanced" tech, synaptic boosters, also doesn't get better. So it looks like the tech isn't improving, which is weird. But of course, if tech was improving, you'd have to deal with the street sam being able to cram twice as much 'ware into their body, leaving the adept even further behind.

[Ignimortis]

I think some of that incongruity comes from the fact that given the setting, cyberware should be getting better, but actually implementing that means changing the balance of the game. In 4e, wired reflexes 2 (the best you can get at start) cost 3 essence and 32kY, while in 5e, wired reflexes 2 costs... 3 essence and 149kY. And the cost of the more "advanced" tech, synaptic boosters, also doesn't get better. So it looks like the tech isn't improving, which is weird. But of course, if tech was improving, you'd have to deal with the street sam being able to cram twice as much 'ware into their body, leaving the adept even further behind.

But the adept isn't actually behind. In fact, adepts only do two things worse than cyber - armor stacking and raw stat boosts. The first is good and shouldn't be changed, since being nigh-impenetrable is what the samurai is for (and biosams don't even get there, not really), and the second is easily fixed - drop Improved Physical Attribute to 0.5PP and Improved Skill to 0.25 PP, while limiting the total amount of IS you can have to Magic. There, you just lost any reason to build a samurai if you aren't magic-averse and don't aim for being almost unkillable with conventional weapons.

[Lord Torath]

They sort of tried to address this with the State of the Art rules. Every other run or so, the GM is supposed to decide which field the Art has improved in, and anyone with that type of equipment needs to pay to upgrade, or their equipment starts working less effectively. This is supposed to illustrate technology moving forward, and new gear being better than the old, without the power creep.