Older D&D/AD&D and Other SystemsThe forum for discussions specifically related to the rules and procedures of either any of the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons (1e, 2e, BECMI, OD&D) or any other non-D&D roleplaying rules (Vampire: The Requiem, Dread), including non-fantasy d20 systems (such as Mutants & Masterminds).
Corps having freelance software writers knocked of by troll gangers?
Seems an odd and risky way of handling things.
Remember this is Shadowrun. The corps run pretty much everything. You're talking about groups of people who hired well armed mercenaries to steel information and employees from their competitors. Using local mob or gang muscle to squash a freeware program that's damaging their bottom line is nothing to them.
And what's the risk. If your country has signed the corporate business accords, (which nearly every country has), there is pretty much nothing you can do. And since law enforcement and media is almost entirely corp owned...
About the worst thing you can do in the sixth world is make a mega think that you living gets in the way of their bottom line.
Paraphrased from a line I heard once:
"In shadowrun, efficiency takes priority over security, and the bottom line takes priority over metahuman life."
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Remember this is Shadowrun. The corps run pretty much everything. You're talking about groups of people who hired well armed mercenaries to steel information and employees from their competitors. Using local mob or gang muscle to squash a freeware program that's damaging their bottom line is nothing to them.
And what's the risk. If your country has signed the corporate business accords, (which nearly every country has), there is pretty much nothing you can do. And since law enforcement and media is almost entirely corp owned...
About the worst thing you can do in the sixth world is make a mega think that you living gets in the way of their bottom line.
Paraphrased from a line I heard once:
"In shadowrun, efficiency takes priority over security, and the bottom line takes priority over metahuman life."
Yeah i can understand that but i can see corps buying the IP off the freelancers more often then paying for them to be killed.
I mean it gives you a lot more control over the situation then simply shooting the guy who originally wrote the freeware.
Seems like the smarter option from a business sense.
Well, I was wrong, but it seems to have sparked a nice discussion, so cool!
Anyway, regarding future map stuff, I've always seen it as a typical Browse + Data Search to see if you can get the information you need off of the internet. (Getting a basic tour-map of a city is easy. Getting a satellite image good enough to make a good escape route out of back roads that make you drop off of GridGuide is harder. Getting a real-time room-by-room political map of Sao Paolo's ever-shifting gang territories is hardest, and might require getting a good custom mapsoft from one of the locals.)
Also remember that corps and businesses do benefit from some kinds of information being public - all of the advertizing in the world won't help you if nobody can actually find your business, and if you can maybe draw attention to some of your other subsidiaries on that same map, well...
At some point I imagine each megacorp would be clamoring for people to look at their even fancier constantly-updated (however filtered) satellite feeds, just to get more eyes on their ads. Depending on what you want out of your map, that might be all you need.
You should be careful about your data trail getting tracked, but you should be doing that anyway, and this is hardly the most suspicious thing you're likely to be doing on your commlink during a run.
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Last edited by Dr.Gunsforhands : 07-02-2012 at 01:58 AM.
The amount and type of data available on the matrix is up to the GM. You could find the location of nearly any building, and who owns it, unless it's a AA or AAA corp. Then you'd just be able to see where the corps extraterritorial lands are, any info about whats in them likely won't be publicly available.
With a good enough check you could likely find floor plans on any building not in extraterritorial lands, but there is no promise they've been updated since they building plan was approved during construction.
Any info you find on a corp will come in 2 flavors. The first is the carefully selected info they release to the public, and the rest is crap on shadow BBS's.
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They aren't so bad that you can't use them to decide if you want an ongoing shadowrun game, but they do make some poor choices and have bad math, mostly by using more or less than the 400 bp default. For example the troll bounty hunter uses 386 bp and has 5 different weapon skills.
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Last edited by The Random NPC : 07-04-2012 at 04:51 PM.
They aren't so bad that you can't use them to decide if you want an ongoing shadowrun game, but they do make some poor choices and have bad math, mostly by using more or less than the 400 bp default. For example the troll bounty hunter uses 386 bp and has 5 different weapon skills.
I can live with that.
given that they'll be used for (at most) 4 games, I don't forsee it being a problem.
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I wouldn't say the sample characters are bad, just at a low level of optimization.
No, you're being to kind. They are bad, really bad. First they don't all follows the character creation rules, second, they often fail at the jobs they set out to do(the weapon specialist in particular is horrid, a combat focused mundane character with no 'ware is a horrible idea, especially for a new player).
You also have to understand the power level of SR is fairly high. While not all characters have to be optimized to hell and back, the BP system strongly encourages your character to have strong attributes and skills, and the combat and damage system requires a certain amount of power to avoid death on a regular basis.
While it's never expect the pre-gen characters in a system to show the best the system should offer, they should at least be functional in the role they are built for.
There was a dumpshock project to remake all the pregen characters to not suck, but I can't for the life of me find it right now.
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No, you're being to kind. They are bad, really bad. First they don't all follows the character creation rules, second, they often fail at the jobs they set out to do(the weapon specialist in particular is horrid, a combat focused mundane character with no 'ware is a horrible idea, especially for a new player).
You also have to understand the power level of SR is fairly high. While not all characters have to be optimized to hell and back, the BP system strongly encourages your character to have strong attributes and skills, and the combat and damage system requires a certain amount of power to avoid death on a regular basis.
While it's never expect the pre-gen characters in a system to show the best the system should offer, they should at least be functional in the role they are built for.
There was a dumpshock project to remake all the pregen characters to not suck, but I can't for the life of me find it right now.
okay. they suck. I can accept that.
can they at least be used long enough for a group of players to decide if they are interested in the system?
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big teej, you are the GitP forum with legs.
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Or if you're feeling saucy you can remind him that it's not a democracy, it's a Teej-tatorship, and he'd best remember that.
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Originally Posted by IthroZada
I imagine Cenobites to be what you get when you mash together the Book of Erotic Fantasy and the Book of Vile Darkness.
if I've gone quiet in a pbp we share, PM ME! this means I'm not getting updates!
These are a list of rebuilds of most of the pregen characters, using standard 400BP point build. For the most part, they are designed to be easy to play(though it varies depending on role), and effective without being overpowered. Also core rulebook only. They are not the best characters you can make, they are not even that great, but they are all very playable.
Seriously though, if anyone here is serious about going down the rabbithole that is Shadowrun, make yourself a dumpshock account. While debates can and do spring up there(and can get pretty heavy), there is no place with more people knowledgeable about the system on the net.
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These are a list of rebuilds of most of the pregen characters, using standard 400BP point build. For the most part, they are designed to be easy to play(though it varies depending on role), and effective without being overpowered. Also core rulebook only. They are not the best characters you can make, they are not even that great, but they are all very playable.
Seriously though, if anyone here is serious about going down the rabbithole that is Shadowrun, make yourself a dumpshock account. While debates can and do spring up there(and can get pretty heavy), there is no place with more people knowledgeable about the system on the net.
well, I'm interested in taking the proverbial plunge, but I'm not going to until I see if my players are interested.
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big teej, you are the GitP forum with legs.
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Or if you're feeling saucy you can remind him that it's not a democracy, it's a Teej-tatorship, and he'd best remember that.
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Originally Posted by IthroZada
I imagine Cenobites to be what you get when you mash together the Book of Erotic Fantasy and the Book of Vile Darkness.
if I've gone quiet in a pbp we share, PM ME! this means I'm not getting updates!
So, thinking about the Earthdawn/Shadowrun line again...
Could a Mystic Adept also be an Aspected Magician? Basically incompetent with things that don't fall into his magical specialty (i.e. a Weaponsmith, who can only really use Enchanting of the basic magical abilities)?
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So, thinking about the Earthdawn/Shadowrun line again...
Could a Mystic Adept also be an Aspected Magician? Basically incompetent with things that don't fall into his magical specialty (i.e. a Weaponsmith, who can only really use Enchanting of the basic magical abilities)?
Yes.
In Street Magic you even have the Aspected Magician Quality which explicitly says that Mystic Adepts can take it. Unlike older editions, you can still use skills outside of your specialty but they are much harder. (i.e. your Weaponsmith could still summon spirits, but she would have a -4 dice modifier.) I'd like to learn more about Earthdawn someday, it is on my list of books to try to get.
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Can a character even take the Enchanting skill as an aspected quality? I thought it was either Summoning or Spellcasting.
Frankly, I'd let the character take the Enchanting Skill as a regular adept, though that's not RAW.
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Yup, you can. You can also take an Astral Aspect (can only use Assensing and Astral combat without penalty) and Spell Category/Spirit Aspect (can only freely use one category of spells and its associated spirit).
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At the time of 3rd edition there was an official link between Shadowrun and Earthdawn in a series of FASA produced novels which moved between the time frames of the two games and featured several characters which existed in both time frames and are identifiable in the game material of both (Dunklezahn/Mountainshadow being the most obvious) , also the Harlequins back scenario featured the Horrors. Several of the characters from the novel continue in 4th ed (at least as far as Dawn of the Artefacts) so making the link appear to continue.
(Someone had an excellent webpage with most of the links from 2nd/3rd ed shadowrun supplements to Earthdawn and Vice versa cannot remember were though anymore)
However you are absolutely right about the level of magic (and experience of using magic) making the two difficult to compare.
Remember that there is no official setting link between earthdawn and SR, and defiantly not a mechanics link at all.
Even if there was, magic in shadowrun is so underdeveloped compared to earthdawn there is little point comparing the two.
I'm a bit more old school... the 2nd edition material was pretty explicit about it, and there's lists out there of the various connections. Dunkelzahn's will includes several such notes.
And I'm not so sure that the magic will remain undeveloped. Shadowrun has a few advantages... namely, I can see certain magical theories leaking out from immortals (things like drain-reducing Spell Matricies, Thread Magic, and blood magic), and because while Earthdawn had the "throughout eternity" part of the equation, Shadowrun has the "infinite monkeys" part down.
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*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*"My Little Pony" is the name of my Wyld Stallyns cover band.
*"I'll give you a hint. It begins with 'L', ends in 'd', and has an 'awful goo' in the middle."
*Since I'm bound to mention it and you're bound to ask: C&C stands for Castles and Crusades.
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I'm a bit more old school... the 2nd edition material was pretty explicit about it, and there's lists out there of the various connections. Dunkelzahn's will includes several such notes.
And I'm not so sure that the magic will remain undeveloped. Shadowrun has a few advantages... namely, I can see certain magical theories leaking out from immortals (things like drain-reducing Spell Matricies, Thread Magic, and blood magic), and because while Earthdawn had the "throughout eternity" part of the equation, Shadowrun has the "infinite monkeys" part down.
Yes, but it's still important to note that shadowrun is a self contained system, with mechanics that are completely it's own.
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Yes, but it's still important to note that shadowrun is a self contained system, with mechanics that are completely it's own.
While the different rule engines (and, IIRC, different companies now owning the different intellectual properties), you're not going to see direct translations. However, having an Earthdawn idea translated over to Shadowrun takes nothing more than a freelancer who wants it to happen.
Never underestimate the predictability of freelancers trying to follow their own vision.
While the different rule engines (and, IIRC, different companies now owning the different intellectual properties), you're not going to see direct translations. However, having an Earthdawn idea translated over to Shadowrun takes nothing more than a freelancer who wants it to happen.
Never underestimate the predictability of freelancers trying to follow their own vision.
Really, the blunt edge of my point is that some people try to make assumptions about the rules of the game/setting based on Earthdawn lore. Earthdawn mechanics don't directly affect shadowrun mechanics any more than D&D does.
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Yes, but it's still important to note that shadowrun is a self contained system, with mechanics that are completely it's own.
It's mechanics are its own, but if it is taken to be a "sequel" to Earthdawn, its metaphysics aren't, entirely. I mean, the SR and Earthdawn mechanics were always separate; coming up with a way to translate ideas across them is really the basics of the Earthdawn circles system.
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Never underestimate the predictability of freelancers trying to follow their own vision.
LOL! That is VERY true.
__________________ The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*"My Little Pony" is the name of my Wyld Stallyns cover band.
*"I'll give you a hint. It begins with 'L', ends in 'd', and has an 'awful goo' in the middle."
*Since I'm bound to mention it and you're bound to ask: C&C stands for Castles and Crusades.
Avatar is from Thunt's Goblins! HackMaster Basic: A Free Game
Trying to plan a BnE for my newbie group at the moment, i want to keep things "easy" tho for the first few missions while they get out of the DnD mentality and into the Runner mindset.
Not really coming up with anything im happy with so far and the session is this weekend .
I keep coming up with good ideas that i note down and put to the side but not stuff i want to throw at them just yet.
If anybody wants to throw random ideas at me it would be greatly appreciated!
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