Players

If it was cleverly disguised as a necklace, that's one thing. But if I see the face clearly using an emotitoy, it makes me think that the runners are arrogant and trying to take advantage of me. Now this isn't exactly out-of-place behavior for runners, but the clear audacity of the runners to try to obviously take advantage would piss Mr. J off. And more frequently than not, Mr. J has a lot more bargaining power.

I'm sorry, I know its off topic, but I have a question. I saw mention that the Sinner flaw was banned by someone for being a recipie for disaster. I've not played in many, many years, and never played more than a few games then. I've recently made characters for my events at Gencon and one of them took the SINNER flaw. What are the major problems with this flaw? Should I look into switching it out with something else? I wanted my chatracter to have a criminal SIN from doing time for stealing motorcycles as a kid. Don't want to cause any major problems for my character or the group though. Thanks.

Probably the single biggest in game problem would be the fact that you can be identified much more easily than the SINless can. You exist, you are tracked in credit reports, medical statistics, census, data, all sorts of things. If you have a criminal SIN they have all of that plus a DNA and Actual fingerprint.

Sinner isn't really that bad in of itself, you just have a sin in the system that can be pulled up if captured or you don't take basic precautions on runs.

Data balkanization works in your favor a bit, since if you got a SIN from say Evo they are not likely to share much if any data with Aztechnology.

The other thing is, if you have any fake SINs the data can show up for them if you leave evidence or are captured.

So unless everyone goes totally sinless there is a record of them out there to be pulled up.


As for day job, depends a lot on the job. I've done riggers/hackers/etc with it that do tutoring/research (including one that actually used agents to do the work >;3 )

For the character that took the SINNER drawback, I bought a fake SIN that I thought he would use in place of his real SIN with the criminal history. Is that an option, or should I just drop the quality all together?

that's actually the whole point of fake SiN's and Sinner

It's not disquised as anything, it's designed to be worn as a necklace, bracelet, keychain, etc by default.

The exception is the mobile ones and the animatronics

There are two simple answers to the emotitoy. The first is that the J also has a rating 6 one, so they cancel out and are pointless.

The second is that anyone who notices you use them in a professional setting gets so pissed that you suffer a -6 penalty.

The things really are one of the worse additions to the game I've ever seen. The emotion software itself isn't so bad because running it on a commlink requires a top of the line system and response, but getting the software cheaper by putting it on some stupid little drone is just inane.

As for TMs threading it, I'd say they should be able to so long as they've seen it before, just like skillsofts.

Stick-n-Shock ammo. Most "Incompetence" Negative Qualities. Several "Allergy" Negative Qualities. Most of the cheese stuff.

Mmm, cheese. If I run a game I'm more likely to simply house rule SnS ammo as opposed to disallowing it entirely.
For the incompetence stuff, it has to be something that can be done without training (So no hacking incompetence, no diving or parachuting incompetence)
Allergies are fine so long as they aren't silly, or I'll be just as silly in the adventure I run (You need to get something from a "Your allergy here" factory.)

Allergies can be tricky things

I've had pollutants (nullified by a resperator) and others.

Some are mostly psycosomatic on the mild range for rare things (like gold, silver for most)

I'd probably allow common allergies, it's the "Allergy: Gold" type stuff I'm trying to avoid (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Also, I'm just going to say right now "I don't care" to the 10 people who post after this, "Well, Gold is actually pretty common in 2070.."

EDIT: I don't care mainly because anytime I introduce Gold into my game, I feel like I'm forcing it to make a player pay for their allergy. I'd prefer not to expend the effort only to piss a person off.

Your first mission will be to steal the golden statue from the gold foundry downtown.

I don't know that gold would be all that common, and more importantly, it is easy to avoid. It isn't like pollen. Pollen is rare, generally only being a problem in the spring/summer, but when it is around, it is nearly impossible to avoid.

All of those can be done without training per RAW. That's what the defaulting rule is for. I agree that Incompetent(Hacking) is pretty cheesy, but for diving or parachuting you can put the runners in a bad situation too.

"So, since you cannot use scuba like everyone else, you can rent a pocket submarine for the low low price of 5000Y. What? The run pays 6000Y?"

Gold's combination of corrosion resistance and conductive properties make it very useful in electronics, this is where the argument that it's common comes from. Effectively using the Gold Allergy requires a lot of cooperation between player and GM, and if they are not on the same page about Gold's use and frequency in the game world the Gold Allergy ends up a big problem.

The conflict is usually worst between players who want free build points and GM's who figure that if I wanted to give the players free build points I just would have said here are 425 points build the character.

Most electronics in SR have gone optical.

Somewhere you still need electric current, disect your optical drive (CD or DVD) if you want an idea of just how much gold is still needed in an "optical" electronic device

It's not a ton, but it's more than none at all.

Gold is very non reactive stuff. Silver however is something people get allergic reactions to. People find out about it in real life when they get silver earrings. Nickle causes a problem for some people in the same way.

Gold would still be a dumb allergy to take if you counted Orichalcum as triggering your allergy. As it might being that it is an alloy of gold, silver, copper, and mercury. Also it is a thin coating on many electronic jack connections. Because it is a good connector and prevents corrosion. Logically it could cause problems with cyberware. It would be a hassle to implement the game mechanic but they would probably need to get those contacts in their cyberware stripped and plated with platinum which is vertically the same chemical (even more non reactive, non-corroding, and an excellent conductor).

But it would not make sense for a human to be severely allergic to gold or silver.

The rule of thumb we've always had with the allergies is that a "common" allergy should come up and give a penalty in every, or just about every, run. An "uncommon" allergy is one that wouldn't come up unless the runner went outside his or her comfort zone. Thus, allergies to seawater and pollen would be uncommon in our games, which are always based in cities.

Which would be a good use of the flaw because it would drive up the price of the cyber, but like I said before Player & GM have to be on the same page for it to work.

My gripe with the sinner flaw---is that it is either a non-issue cause you took some SOP to make it a non-issue (disguises, multiple fake sins etc) or your screwed cause Johnny with a Sin has broken the law and is now subject to an arrest warrant cuase his fingerprints and DNA were found at the crime scene of a triple homicide and they can track him down and "interrogate" him later. I'll agree with the data balkanization and that helps mitigate things somewhat.

With the day job flaw I have issues with a flaw providing enough income to support the lifestyle. Add the fame quality and things get wonkey.

day job barely provides for the lifestyle.

Level 1 - living in a coffin motel w/500 left over
level 2 - low lifestyle w/500 left over
level 3 - middle lifestyle w/nothing left over

If ya working you should get paid, but none of them are going to pay the bills a SR character has in gear/training/etc


Fame is a double edge sword, unless they go out of their way to hide it like a SIN

Imagine richard villars (fame - global) trying to run the shadows.

raisins *nods sagely*

Well, it is only a 5 point flaw. It isn't something that should really require a ton to overcome. And if the person does get found out, it shouldn't be too horrid. They'll still use fake SINs and stuff. They'd likely need to drop everything their real SIN is attached to, but they wouldn't really be all that much worse off than someone without a SIN.