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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ The SR solar system -- what's out there?

Posted by: Ian Noble Sep 18 2006, 07:11 PM

I'm a newbie to the SR setting -- I'm reading 4th ed. and love it -- and I'm curious about what lies beyond Earth. There isn't much in the core about the solar system. What's going on in orbit, with the Earth's moon, Mars, the Jupiter system, etc.? Is there a resource I should be looking for that provides some of these answers?

Thank you for any help.

- Ian

Posted by: 6thDragon Sep 18 2006, 07:27 PM

Shadowrun doesn't really deal with areas outside the solar system. As far as SR3 goes, there is some comments about lunar mining and other mineral exploration being conducted by some of the megacorps, S-K comes to mind, found in the corporate Download sourcebook. Also in the Target:Wastelands, some other background info can be found regarding orbital space stations and such. Hope this helps.

Posted by: Ancient History Sep 18 2006, 07:29 PM

Target: Wastelands provides the most info, but in short:

A mass driver was built on Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, lowering the cost of boosting material into space.

Earth is orbited by a shitload of satellites, space stations, and factories. Most prominent of these is the Zurich-Orbital Habitat, home of the Corporate Court. All of the LaGrange points are occupied to some extant.

Luna hosts several megacorporate mining operations.

Evo has established a facility on Mars.

Couple others rumored.

Posted by: JongWK Sep 18 2006, 07:30 PM

Ares' Helios?

Posted by: Drraagh Sep 18 2006, 07:34 PM

I don't know about SR4, but in SR3, magic wasn't possible in outer space, due to the lack of the astral, living plane that surrounds the Earth and so forth. Not sure what goes on in SR4.

However, if you are interested in going on something outside Earth, CP2020 did a couple good books. Deep Space and Near Orbit. They are older books, but they can help give you some options if you can find them.

Posted by: Warmaster Lah Sep 18 2006, 07:35 PM

Hah I remeber when I first found out about Shadowrun.

I was so intriqued by the Backstory info in SR3 I later bought that book just to read about the rest. My first Shadowrun experience and purchase.

Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot Sep 18 2006, 07:39 PM

Street Magic has a story at the begining of the chapter on astral space involving specially-bred plants that replicate earth's astral biosphere, or some-such. They don't have mechanics for this as far as I know. The story has to do with bug-hunts through astral projection.

Posted by: Slithery D Sep 18 2006, 07:46 PM

In SR3 the max background count of a manawarp was 10, the condition in space. The moon was 8, presumably because unliving rock is worth something. And: "Certain stations, due to their population and activity, may have a lower background count (8 or 9)."

I'm willing to handwave that Ares has developed specific plants/techniques that can improve on that 1-2 point benefit an ordinary station might receive. But the max warp is also a 12 now, so I'd guess Helios is still somewhere in the 7-9 range and still a mana warp. Since metaplanar quests go directly to the metaplanes, that's not really a problem, and in fact is an advantage if you're hunting bugs - if they follow you back to your point of origin, they die damned fast from exposure to the warp in regular astral space.

Posted by: Dragonscript Sep 18 2006, 07:46 PM

In my game world, i move away from Cannon a little by having space exploration. The earth has more than a few space stations, the moon has a couple dozen bases, the asteroid belt has over a dozen mining operations already set up and the race is on for Mars. Most corps are actively recruiting colonist for exploration.

This is all background info right now since the group hasn't expressed interest in leaving the planet, yet.

Posted by: Casazil Sep 19 2006, 06:05 AM

Mars has pyrimids and dragon bones. Or were those photos taken on another planet other than mars or earth?

Posted by: Link Sep 19 2006, 07:29 AM

For a bit of cyberpunkish flavour, Neuromancer has some near Earth space action.

Also SR history diverged in 1989 or thereabouts so Pluto may still be a planet which could have ramifications for your "Troll Cyber-Astronomer" archetypes.

Posted by: FrankTrollman Sep 19 2006, 08:46 AM

QUOTE (Casazil)

Mars has pyrimids and dragon bones. Or were those photos taken on another planet other than mars or earth?

Well yeah. That's because Cathay Dragons are from the red star.

-Frank

Posted by: Witness Sep 19 2006, 12:55 PM

QUOTE (Casazil)

Mars has pyrimids and dragon bones.

Don't let Ancient History hear you say that!

Posted by: Grinder Sep 19 2006, 01:03 PM

Too late, too late. he found interest in this thread and will come back...

Posted by: Dashifen Sep 19 2006, 01:36 PM

QUOTE (Charlie Foxtrot)

Page 111 for those who want to know.

Posted by: Ancient History Sep 19 2006, 01:47 PM

QUOTE (Casazil)

Mars has pyrimids and dragon bones. Or were those photos taken on another planet other than mars or earth?

They're not dragon bones, dammit!

Posted by: Grinder Sep 19 2006, 01:50 PM

What I said.

Posted by: Demonseed Elite Sep 19 2006, 02:14 PM

QUOTE (Dashifen)

QUOTE (Charlie Foxtrot @ Sep 18 2006, 02:39 PM)

Page 111 for those who want to know.

It isn't necessarily that the specially-bred plants are better at creating ambient mana. They are specially-bred to thrive in low-gravity environments. But creating a biosphere can help anchor mana to the environment instead of it being dispersed in a vacuum. Which is why space stations usually have more ambient mana than space or the planetoid they are on.

It's also possible that Ares uses some sophisticated metamagical techniques to enhance the ambient mana field that the biosphere provides.

Posted by: Wanderer Sep 19 2006, 03:22 PM

QUOTE (Slithery D)

I have to remark that Street Magic has changed significantly the way background count works in SR4. Now you have negative BC, from dearth of mana, and positive BC, from excess of mana, which you aren't aligned with. Differently from SR3, where outer space was a mana warp (super-high positive BC), now it is a mana void (super-low negative BC). This changes the situation considerably: e.g. Cleansing and Filtering metamagics are no longer a valid strategy to deal with magic problems in space. The only effective stratregy seems to accumulate enough biomass (and human emotion) in one single location (such as a space station or Moon/Mars base) until a (weak) local mana field develops.

Posted by: Ian Noble Sep 19 2006, 06:26 PM

Thanks very much for all the info! It's very helpful.

- Ian

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Sep 19 2006, 09:02 PM

...I've actually been working on a more well defined presence in space for an upcoming campaign (SR3 ruleset). I liked the Near/Far Space supplements in Cyberpunk and wish that SR would have developed more in this direction. The game system actually lends itself well to a futuristic setting (when you remove Magic from the equation).

I actually have some of the basics worked up for a futuristic space campaign using the SR3 game engine & BP systems from the SR Companion (and no, I do not have Psionics which IMHO always seemed like a half baked substitute for magic in other SF game systems).

Posted by: FlakJacket Sep 19 2006, 11:59 PM

QUOTE (Ancient History)

They're not dragon bones, dammit!

Are too!

Posted by: SL James Sep 20 2006, 12:13 AM

QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)

There are orbital mercenaries, scavengers, syndicates on the space stations, and even orbital prostitution. And that's as of Target: Wastelands. What more do you want?

Posted by: FrankTrollman Sep 20 2006, 12:46 AM

QUOTE

What more do you want?

I think a lot of people want some structural schematics of how those things are put together. As is, the information presented in Shadowrun is more aspirational than operational... it's hard to really run a space-based interlude as there's nothing to read that will really tell your players what their characters are looking at up there.

It's not that there isn't plenty of run material up there, it's that most people lack the deep space engineering backgrounds needed to actually lay down the battle maps for those locations. There's no "Sprawl Sites" for space, and no easy way for many people to replicate it.

-Frank

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Sep 20 2006, 01:22 AM

...For a future campaign arc that is in the works (SR 3), I have designed quite a bit of space hardware & systems including:

Surface to high orbit spaceplanes
Heavy lift unmanned boosters
Personal Maneuvering packs
Earth-Lunar transfer shuttles
Planetary Rover vehicles
Long duration autonomous survey craft.

There are two large installations, one a free floating Stanford Torus design and a sub surface Lunar complex.

I also wrote (before Target wastelands came out) my own version of the Neo Anarchist's Guide to Real Space.

Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 20 2006, 01:33 AM

I've alwasy wondered, could you creat a powerful ward, say force 15, in the form of a box, then say summon a spirit or just make the ox ward on a power site, then shoot it up to the space station, and ward that station up the wazoo, and eventually clean up the mana in the station, assuming the ward is strong enough to resist the mana warp, say 16+?
Sort of like cleaning out a polluted lake. You know, do lots of cleansing , bring in fresh mana, cleanse again, so on an so forth, and not letting in more warped mana because of the stations wards? Sorry if its a bit off, just somethign that was bouncing around in my head. I ran a game on Daedalus station once, having to do with Project:Artemis, and was thinking about that.

Posted by: Slithery D Sep 20 2006, 01:51 AM

As someone noted, space is no longer a mana warp, it's a mana void. There's no magic rather than too much of it. Even if a ward could "protect" an area from high background count, it wouldn't do anything for an ebb/void. And I doubt it could do anything for a high background count - the count should be generated pretty uniformly over the space effected, not radiating from one point. It's either a natural phenomenon of astral space or stuff oozing in from the metaplanes (or even emotions from the physical plane). It's not an astral form or concentrated energy that should be inhibited by a mana barrier.

And in any case, the number of mages willing to resist 15p of unhealable drain to create a ward that will last a few weeks should be...few. Even Centering and power sites only go so far, and if you routinely force your spirits to take physical drain doing anything but directly saving your ass (and only maybe then), I'd start you off with your bound spirits automatically causing sustaining penalties when present, and move you up to a Spirit Bane negative quality or two if you persisted.

Posted by: Grinder Sep 20 2006, 08:03 AM

@Kyoto Kid: do you know Transhuman Space, a GURPS-setting? It set in 2100 and has a a lot of information about space stations and all that.

Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 22 2006, 05:11 PM

SD: Sorry, I haven't got to read through Street Magic much, so I hadn't noticed that it was an ebb/void now. Basically though, all that means is that is that you need really strong wards, something stronger than the ebb. This is , of course, assuming that you have a strong enough mage or group to create the force 15+ ward and resist the damage. So we'll stick to hypothetical for now.

If you could get such a spell caster, or perhaps creat the wards on the pre-fab station parts on groundside, then would it be possible to , for lack of a better word, import mana, and make magic a bit easier to use in orbit?

Sorry if it seems like I'm beating a dead horse here. Just something I'm trying to figure out the details of.

Posted by: Slithery D Sep 22 2006, 05:20 PM

If you take a Force 15 ward into a Force 12 mana void (space), you've got, IIRC, a Force 3 ward. How the existence of a ward would help reduce the void is somewhat beyond me. I regard them as a shaping of existing mana, not a source that will radiate stored mana into the emptiness around them.

You can't clean ebbs/voids like you can background count/warps. You need some way to create mana, not calm/clean what's already there and out of control. The only way to do that appears to be by changing the mundane physical environment by putting in lots of living biomass. But even on earth their are unexplained "holes" that can't be filled in or fixed.

Posted by: FrankTrollman Sep 22 2006, 05:23 PM

The ward wouldn't actually keep mana in. Even in the harsh mana void of space, it would persist if it was large enough to begin with. But that's all it would do - the mana on either side ofthe ward would still be a void and anything else that projected there would still explode.

I honestly have no idea whether a Ward would get shredded in a Mana Void. As written, it appears not. A Mana Void inflicts 12 DV damage to the astral forms of "characters", apparently "all" it does to Wards is reduce their Force by 12.

But that wouldn't keep the Mana Void out, it would still be a void inside the ward as wll as out. I'm sure that having something that powerful sitting around would help stabilize the mana on your space station though, so the mana would doubtless strength over time much faster than it would if you didn't do that.

-Frank

Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 22 2006, 07:02 PM

QUOTE (FrankTrollman)

The ward wouldn't actually keep mana in.
-Frank

Thanks Frank, thats mostly what I was trying to get at. Sorry I wasn't clear enough. Mostly I was looking for a way to give an extra opint or two edged off the void like you do w/ bio-mass. Not so much the mana fish tank as a little bit extra to help against the Background count.

QUOTE (Frank Trollman)

I'm sure that having something that powerful sitting around would help stabilize the mana on your space station though, so the mana would doubtless strength over time much faster than it would if you didn't do that.

yeah, something along those lines. Thanks Frank and SlD for the pseudo reality check.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Sep 22 2006, 08:53 PM

QUOTE (Grinder)

@Kyoto Kid: do you know Transhuman Space, a GURPS-setting? It set in 2100 and has a a lot of information about space stations and all that.

...don't have that one but did get GURPS Space and Hero System's Star Hero when I was looking to run a space campaign years ago. Aside from the media "tie-in" games (Star Wars, Star Trek which had very defined universes of their own) there really wasn't much out there at the time.

The last system I used for a space campaign was FGU's Space Opera but as with all FGU's offerings, the overly complex rules makes even SR3 look as simple as Tunnels & Trolls (the running joke back then was that you basically needed time on a Cray XMP to manage the game. The PC as we know it was still off on the event horizon somewhere).

I'll keep a lookout at Powell's (Portland OR's Only bookstore) for it. I'm sure there's a copy or two floating around in one of their locations.

Posted by: FlakJacket Sep 22 2006, 09:48 PM

It's funny but with a lot of the new stuff they put into Fourth Edition and then reading about Evo Corporations new interest in transhumanism, Transhuman Space readily sprung to mind. Prabably helped that Tzeentch/Kenneth Peters was also in to the game as well.

Posted by: SL James Sep 22 2006, 10:12 PM

Yeah, but the last thing he did for SR was, what, SoNA?

Posted by: Grinder Sep 22 2006, 11:00 PM

That's what they tell us...

Posted by: Cray74 Sep 23 2006, 06:52 PM

QUOTE (Grinder)

@Kyoto Kid: do you know Transhuman Space, a GURPS-setting? It set in 2100 and has a a lot of information about space stations and all that.

Transhuman Space is great inspirational material for any cyberpunk/space setting. It's moved a bit beyond the 1980s cyberpunk to the 1990s Transhumanism/nanotech/genetech revolution, but it's still great stuff and should help anyone looking into a Shadowrun space game.

The science and engineering behind space travel is very grounded and realistic (as far as playable sci-fi settings go).

Posted by: knasser Sep 23 2006, 07:46 PM

QUOTE (Ancient History)

QUOTE (Casazil @ Sep 19 2006, 06:05 AM)

Mars has pyrimids and dragon bones. Or were those photos taken on another planet other than mars or earth?

They're not dragon bones, dammit!

So what is up there? I recall reading a reference to dwarf skeletons found on Mars and that other planets had their own mana cycles. I can't remember where, though. Has there been some cannon material on this (regardless of whether people like it or not).

Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 23 2006, 09:22 PM

The most that I've seen is in the Missions book. There's an adventure that details the Mars missions from an Ares ops POV. I thought it was a pretty neat run, all x-files-ish.

Posted by: MaxHunter Sep 26 2006, 07:22 PM

...and all the runners who played it with me died horribly during the run or afterwards. But for one, the hacker (then a decker) who is still hiding (character retired)
Got to keep the X-files feel.

Cheers

Max

Posted by: caul Oct 6 2009, 09:46 PM

Personally, I love the idea that space is a mana void. That makes it the perfect place for norms to go when they are tired of magic fraking with their lives...no HMHVV in space for instance...

Posted by: nylanfs Oct 7 2009, 01:46 AM

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. Since HMHVV is an awakened disease, would the infected be cured by living in space for say 2-3 weeks, where the lack of mana would kill the mana dependent organism's that cause the HMHVV?

Posted by: Khyron Oct 7 2009, 01:56 AM

Old thread necromancy. I'm pretty sure infected would be killed along with anything reliant on mana.

Posted by: Adarael Oct 7 2009, 08:11 AM

I am very disappointed at this whole Filtering Doesn't Fix Mana Voids thing, and may have to change it. It utterly KILLS the plan Ihad for a player's PC to previously be trained on Ares' L5 station and brainwashed into forgetting it.

Posted by: Dahrken Oct 7 2009, 10:39 AM

If the station is large enough and has some kind of ecosystem, you have a weak but usable mana level.

If I remember correctly in one of the background short stories in Street Magic Ares maintain precisely this kind of facility up there for their Firewatch teams. Any bug that could trace back the mana trail they use of metaplanar expeditions to the Hive would end up stuck in a dead end - and go "plop" in the mana void if it could not be contained there and the area is jetissoned.

Posted by: Hagga Oct 7 2009, 10:52 AM

QUOTE (Slithery D @ Sep 18 2006, 07:46 PM)

It could be higher than -12/12. It's just that's deep space, a place where there isn't an orbit of the space station, and the lack of life/emotion makes it a pure baseline leve- hm. What about a Sterile Toxic who was aspected to deep space flavoured astral space?

Posted by: GreyBrother Oct 7 2009, 04:04 PM

QUOTE (nylanfs @ Oct 7 2009, 03:46 AM)

Nope. HMHVV alters the genetic code of the victim on a permanent base. But he would get rid of the virus and could live his life as sterile whatever.