Easier than that: the Star has a network of rotodrones keeping an eye on the sprawl, some of them armed with LMGs for officer backup. Can't hide from them on a roof. Since they can observe from the safe distance, they are probably the surveillance tool of choice in Z-zones.

A non-pimped-out rotodrone in a Z-zone might also just be hacker fodder. Everyone wants a few new drones, right?

A pimped out rotodrone, however, is quite expensive, although I guess they get discounts on software. Of course, a good chameleon-coated pimped out roto-drone can stay a long way off while wide-bursting LMG-fire, and at those distances an AR can't even shoot back.

From the previous post the usual procedure is to have the mage cast invisibility on him, then levitate him into position. Which bypasses most access problems. Of course it raise the question of how he managed that before hooking up with a mage.

But for all intents and purpose, it's not a character, but rather a somewhat mobile gun platform. It feels like the player gave more attention to his gun than to his background and personality... (and seems to have overlooked the rules to cram a crapload of modifications that I'm not sure could fit on the gun). Except as far as the 'automatics' dice pool is concerned, you could replace Zod with an armed drone and his partners would barely notice the difference.

Seriously what does all this bashing help? We've all built crappy characters in our lives, and all the problems have been laid out already, it's now up to the GM and the player to work things out, at least concerning this specific character.

My current character was crappy build but i won´t play another one until he dies. Most of the time, these crappy build chars are the best....over time....^^

Brainpiercing, it's *fun*. Duh.

It's also educational, but whatever. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Agreed. Personal opinions aside, they have more than enough advice to adjust whatever they feel will best suit their play. Each table is different, there really isn't much else to say.

Still, I find the threads entertaining and they do inspire some discussion.

Well, Gazzor (player of Dawg) straight up says he is having fun in Post 37: "I've been enjoying the sessions."

Everything I've been reading so far sounds like they are frustrated with the generally shitty SR4 rules and how that meshes with poorly defined power levels. Sometimes the game itself gets in the way of fun -- Shadowrun is notorious for this (all editions). The GM is trying to find a way to make things hard for the group but SR offers exactly 0 help with this. In fact, from the GM's description of the game it sounds to me like he has been doing a bang up job of difficulty but it doesn't feel like that because the SR rules make it hard to tell exactly what works and what doesn't. This can be frustrating when you come from a well-written and well-defined game to one that is an amorphous heap of poorly though out concepts and that relies heavily on "Rule of Cool."

Hence why I don't think that Dumpshock will really have the answers for this group. Especially not some of the snarky, downright hostile comments that some of the posters have been making. I really think that they need to sit down as a group and decide on a playstyle and campaign style that will work for everyone. Dumpshock can give some answers but I'd recommend just general gaming blogs or a site like RPG.net for musings on playstyles and group dynamics. Leave Dumpshock for rules questions.

PS. As for Zod playing an MMO all night perhaps that's just what he wanted to do. My group has been having issues with a player that just sits there working on her knitting all night but when we try to engage her in role-playing she disengages. Sometimes people just aren't engaged. This is an optional, fun activity for everyone so if someone doesn't want to engage and are being disruptive just ask them to leave. Zod can go home and MMO. Everyone else can have fun playing SR. If he isn't being disruptive and just wants to hang with his buddies then I fail to see what is wrong. Sure as a GM I want everyone to be enthralled in my story but I can't force them to.

Weird, I never considered Dumpshock a 'rules forum', as opposed to other forums (RPG.net).

I do believe they're playing at Zod's player's place, which makes him be home. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

But hey, some people can be engaged while doing stuff on the side. I even sometimes prefer people doing things on the side while a character is doing things completely separate from them, since this makes them large OOC unaware of information they shouldn't have IC.

Entitled to your opinion, but I can't agree. I hardly think they're shitty rules and the game's open character design mechanics wouldn't favor "power levels" anyway, whatever the hell that means (it's all subjective to the game being run by the GM).

Balance is achieved by many things, the GM being foremost, but also by a mutual understanding between the group as to what constitutes fun and fair.

I don't think anyone has the right to say "you're not playing right", but they DID solicit advice, and every caption under each thread implies a large amount of dissatisfaction by the OP.

Edit: *double click*

Any rule is only as useful as you, the GM, make it. The game isn't the ten commandments folks. Modify and make it your own-where it's weak, shore it up. Where it's strong play it out. Balance isn't words on a page, it's what the GM and players make it.

In fairness, that's the sort of advice that was sometimes given out like six or seven threads ago. If folks have gotten snarky or hostile since then, it's because lots of that advice seems to have been wholly ignored, or at least poorly implemented, or that the GM was unable/unwilling to follow through on it for fear of alienating Zod's player (who hosts the group), or...I dunno.

At any rate, if the impression you've gotten is that they're all having a lot of fun, cool. From the way the GM has come in here desperately seeking help after every single session, and given some of what he's said (like folks just not being interested, not staying engaged, etc), I've gotten a different impression. If yours is right, I'm glad. I'd rather look at these threads as folks who are having fun but occasionally bumping into issues, than threads of people who are pulling their hair out in frustration week after week after week.

Heh, not everyone was born to be a great GM. At least not with a system they are not entirely familiar with - no offense, Hyphz.

And anyway, the 7th and 8th sessions seem to have been much better. I have to say I've played far WORSE sessions than the ones described here, and the players say they haven't been bored, anyway.

With the exception of Zod being so bored in session 7 (or was it 6?) that he needed a second character

A point that was adressed. And while I would tend to agree that using two characters to cover the other one's weaknesses is a bit of a munchkin tactic, if it helps their game, then there is really nothing wrong with that, either, because it seems to me that after making the hacker the game has picked up.

Still better than playing MMOs. Besides, they're 3 players and 5 characters, so it's not like he's the only offender.

Indeed, and with previous systems (4e DnD for instance) I've generally ended up playing 2 chars in those sessions where players 4 and/or 5 didn't turn up. You don't get the same Resonance between player and character when you have multiple, but it does give you a wider grounding in the mechanic (e.g Zod for guns practise, and Haxor for matrix practise).

I'm actually kind of looking forward to the inevitable TPK our retarded gung-ho antics are going to engender. With Zod hanging around the first couple of rounds are going to go badly for the opposition (at least until their force 10 spirits turn up), and going up against truly powerful opposition will give us (as a group) a far better feel for how underpowered / balanced / overpowered we are in each area. That, coupled with the awesome advice I'm getting in the character thread, should help substantially in getting the next char working from the first build, instead of having 2 (or 3) iterations which end up gimped in some areas because I overlooked or misunderstood chargen rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The point being that Zod shouldn't be living through the first 3 rounds except the Gm is basically giving him a by, and Dawg should be spurintg blood out his ears, but the Gm is giving him a by on summoning...

Since most of your group apart from Zod are already on the board, I recommend reading this thread for a benchmark of sample characters and capabilities.

Pretending this is a real campaign, when the mage gets capped, how does Zod plan on leaving his perch?

Gravity should solve this little conundrum.

In several ways.

Sorry for taking a while to respond. Bad week at work (ie, new semester), etc..



I've seen a couple of people mention STR 1 carrying things. I'd honestly not considered that - I thought that it wasn't that important since the books don't list the weight of items. Ability to wear armor seems to be restricted by BOD, not STR, though.



That wasn't the reason - the reason why was because it had only been 3 Combat Turns since the business began. With multiple IP people can do things terrifyingly fast. Even if I saw a crime outside my window I doubt I could even get to the phone and call 999 (911 for you US folks) in 9 seconds, let alone having a conversation with the person on the other end of the line.



It's mainly because.. well, um, bluntly it feels horribly uncomfortable.

I mean, yes, I can say, "he has Willpower 1 so I could just rustle up a mage from somewhere, put it against him and pretty much know in advance that Zod would die" but.. well, that kinda stinks. It basically implies that every character has to have a certain minimum defense against every threat, else they'll certainly meet it and it will kill them. If I wanted to have that kind of rule I'd rather be explicit about it at character generation than drop characters until the rules are met. zAnd mages are supposed to be pretty rare - the books give a strong impression that they're rare like unicorns (ie, every one you ever meet will remind you how rare they are). Street Magic gave some nice discussion of why mages might not want to join a corp, but what the heck would they be doing hanging with the Ragers? Now, of course, Zod has now managed to annoy some groups who most definitely would have big mojo on their side, and the next session may end up being, um, interesting (I've been through my relationship chart several times and really can't find any loopholes at this point).

But, yea. If a player does put loads of points into gun skills like Zod did, I'm going to assume he's placing an order for the game to have lots of him being awesome with guns in it, and if I can do that it's fine by me. The idea of designing challenges that fit the PCs is perfectly fine but it should at least match what the player seems to want to play as well - otherwise you get the horrible thing where, if a player puts loads of points into gun skills, then it is guaranteed that they will almost never meet a situation they can resolve with gunplay because "it wouldn't be any challenge", so they end up not using their gun at all. I mean, it's the same thing with him having a Meta Link - when he made Zod, he just didn't want to be involved with the whole Matrix thing at all, so I eased off on having his commlink hacked (even though it could happen easily) because if he didn't want to play that part of the game, fair enough, he doesn't have to.

I admit this was something I found a bit frustrating about D&D4E - if someone plays a Fighter, most of the DMs tactics will be about avoiding ever fighting them, or everything will be a walkover. Which just seems bass-ackwards to me. If someone wants to play a fighter, they should get to fight, right?

As for how things are going - Dawg's and Kane's player say everything's fine, but Zod's player seems a bit paged out and I just feel rather frustrated because I can't get things to run together like they ought to. I haven't managed to have a nice epic confrontation with anyone yet - the nearest we got was the battle against the Shangri-La runner team in the park. When it's possible for people to do things like "I summon a massive spirit and it does everything for me" or "forget their preparations, I just shoot him from several buildings away" then it just defuses all of that but I am reluctant to penalize it because it's a perfectly logical thing the characters would do - edge-of-your-seat battles might be fun to watch and play but realistically nobody's going to go into them if they can just bomb the other guy from orbit, after all. My old copy of Robin's Laws mentions this is pretty common with Tactician players: "Embrace anti-climax as the only climax." It just doesn't feel right to me, but I don't know that the players feel the same way.