Continuity issues? Nah.

angry fanboys not liking that fact that since surge everyone wants to play a changeling for their pure min-maxing potential? Yeah.

How come I see more shadowrun art of changelings, the surged and furries than should exist? No, I don't think your transgendered foxgirl is cool... QFT!

So yeah, that's the problem with surge. Should we be mad at surge though? Nope. Should we be mad at those who overplay surged characters? You betcha!

Also, come on, with a new plot arc and epic story that happens every game year, there are going to be some off years... Not everything can be Bug City or Renraku Arcology Shutdown...

Learn to differentiate between people who like playing SURGEd characters and mindless furries.

Generally one and the same! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

No, the furries don't do it because it gives them cool abilities cheaply, they do it because they think it is inherently cool.

I like the SURGEd just because it allows you to make such weird characters. When I looked at it I didn't think "man I am going to have such fun min maxing the crap out of this" I thought "DUDE! I am going to make a 4 armed dwarf climbing adept with an addiction to spiderman BTLs and call him Gimli the Midget Spider!"

But then again thats just me.

Heh... i had quite some contact with furries but i think there should be a difference between playing something mindless (wether for mindless min/maxing or mindless living out whatever you ride on) and other categorizations.

Granted... though both have bounced back and forth from the original creators.

Re: Furries. C'mon guys.

I like SURGE because it plays up the weird facets of the Shadowrun universe. Magic was getting too pat and too recognizable, and SURGE (and basically all of YOtC) blew that all to the void. SURGE allows you to play people whose goblinization didn't kick in all the way or they're a race that maybe hasn't, or even wont pop up in the Sixth World yet. Maybe magic twisted some part of their genetic make-up and they picked up some beneficial or superficial (or even dangerous) abilities. Maybe their ancestors did the horizontal nasty with a magic beastie back in the day and they got some of their traits because of it.

Either way, it's a way to play up how weird the Sixth World can be. Anything in SR can be twisted for min/max potential (and it drives me up the wall to see people do that around here) but just because Joe Random Otaku can make an anime catgirl doesn't mean that potential lays within the option given.

Anyone who plays a SURGE character should make sure that they are not min maxing. My SURGE character spent 5 of his surge points on a metahuman characteristic (elven longevity)... 5 pts spent worthlessly, but fits the character quite well.

Anyone who plays should avoid intentionally gimping their character. Optimizing, on the other hand, is the most in-character thing to do.

I asked people here what elven longevity be worth and they said 5 BP. What would you say?

I only like SURGEd for further min-max cheese. I'd personally be happier without the furbies in my games.

- J.

I would say nothing. Unless your game is very, very long-running, or skips forward several years every few months, it is not something that gives any kind of tangible in-game benefit.

I like the Runner's Companion version of SURGE. The previous version (I don't have YOTC, so I could have heard, or remembered, wrongly) had, I believe, random tables, which is lame in a point-build system. Similarly, I would not ever play a changeling if the GM insisted on picking out the negative traits for me. The whole point of build points is to custom-craft your character exactly how you (the player) want it! Especially for something like SURGE, where the player is likely to have a very specific concept in mind.

As for furries, you had them as of Augmentation (spawning a rather disturbing thread, I recall). SURGE only introduced the option to have a "natural" cat girl.

Nothing, though as it happens I was responding more to the first part of your post.

Ah, I remember that thread. I created my cyberkitty sex slaves... good for sex (of the kinky kind) and good for killing your enemies when they piss you off.

The rules for SURGE in YotC gives the option of randomizing the event, but it was by no means mandatory that it be random. However, the interesting thing that I wish they would have retained in the RC version of SURGE was the fact that you had to pick at least an equal point value of Negative SURGE qualities as positive SURGE qualities.

Except you pay the BP for the level of SURGE. This comes out of your positive qualities pool.

I didn't invent manatech, but gorramit I did work hard on it.

Yes, they did. The actual Changeling qualities (which you need to take before taking the SURGE qualities) require you to take a matching amount of negative SURGE qualities for no BP.

Nothing with matching reading here, only a set amount is mentioned but the Surge Qualities don't count against the regular Quality Limit.

Pretty much spot on.

My issue with surge is that, well, considering the options SR's Tech offers, the whole persecution just makes no sense to me, and even less sense makes the "I am stuck as a freak, woe me, since for some strange reason I cannot think of simply having this strange tail cut off and my humanity restored by a short trip to the next surgeon!" background.

Would be like if today some magic made people get strange colored hair, and we should flip out about those "mutants" and hate and fear them - as if there were not tons of people who dye their hair already, and as if anyone who mutated could not dye their new hair back to black or whatever it was.

It's not the people with strange coloured hair. It's the ones who suddenly gained Ork tusks or Troll horns. The ones who have a second heart that means that it's absolutely necessary to exclude them from sports now that they've got an unfair competitive advantage. The ones who now look like kids, but have the mind and drives of an adult. We're looking at people who remind people of things they'd rather not think about, who have legitimate reasons for exclusion that are also profoundly unfair, or just disturb people.

There are fewer shadowrunners than there are Doctors. They're less than 0.1% of the population. The vast majority of people affected by SURGE are wageslaves, whose total blandness is a carefully calculated social move to avoid alienating people who might advance their career. Suddenly turning into a kid, or something vaguely Orklike is too weird, and you're going to see a glass ceiling if you're suddenly weird. Who knows whether Changelings are like us - they certainly don't look like us. We can't exactly promote someone we don't know if we can trust. I always thought that George was a little bit odd.

That's the thing. The whole process is deceivingly rational. You approach your data looking to confirm your conclusions, so after you've heard that James from Accounting grew horns, your memory dredges up every little awkward moment you've seen him have. Suddenly you're far more suspicious that he's not like the rest of "the gang" and it's best if he doesn't get to managerial positions. After all, he doesn't represent the rest of the team at all - how can you manage the interests of people you share nothing with?

Edit: Oops, missed a "not" in there.

It's not much about the changes per se but about the implications. Remember that nobody knew what was going on and many played the "Mutation" or "Plague" Card. Yes, you may get your nice little tail cut off, but what if it regrows or worse, gets bigger? And what if your whole family starts getting it because you transferred your "sickness" to them?
Adding the already in place Comet Hysteria, you can bet that some of the comet cults used SURGE as a Sign of the End Times or as Prophets of a new Time. Hilarity ensues.
And it would also make sense that some "Transhumanists" of the extreme type got beaten up too by some angry mob not knowing that this bastard just loved his new iTail G5.

Edith told me that Heath also made a good point.

Read the qualities themselves: