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Target ![]() Group: Members Posts: 5 Joined: 5-December 08 Member No.: 16,659 ![]() |
My name is Meager, I am an old school runner. I recently picked up 4th ed because I was nostalgic for the shadows and I wanted to introduce my gaming group to the game. They have since taken to it like a humanis to wihte bread. In my game I have disallowed technomancers, SURGED, AI, and Drakes from the game for various reasons, generally for fluff reasons, I was hoping to get some feedback from some experienced GMs about how they deal with them from a fluff point of view, as well as any gripes/discrepencies they have about the new system.
Here is why I dissallowed them: Technomancers: As I understood it Technomancers were originally the deckers caught in the renraku arcology shutdown, Deus preformed experiments on them and turned them into a kind of living deck, able to interface with computers with their mind. Their power to interface with the matrix using their mind was never really explained or made much sense, I don't mind having a rare technomancer in the game, but they are badly explained in the new edition and frankly I think they are a shameless player service, a mechanic for being 'the one' and talking with machines. I think that in an effort to make a playable class out of them they have detracted from technomancers as a whole. SURGED: I personally disliked this entry from Shadows of the Comet, my group ignored it for the most part, SURGEd and technomancers felt alittle too much like trying to make the game an anime. In my game any SURGEd character is ostracized, as the smallest and most recent minority of metahumanity they have the least support, even the trolls dislike them. AI: I remember a day when the word AI caused deckers to cringe in fear, a time when even the smallest AI was a unstoppable force in the matrix that could rip you apart with a thought. I see no reason why this would change, a true AI is a god in the machine, able to replicate across systems and seamlessly intagrate into systems, able to rewrite things on the fly. I feel that letting the players play a 'weak' AI is a insult to AI's and makes little sense, if a program became self aware it would rapidly expand to the maximum capabilities of the system its in, and then expand to any system it can. In the name of WIntermute, Shodan, Xerxces, Deus, Mirage. I say NO. Drakes: WOW, really? Drakes? dragonkind are the most powerful beings in shadowrun, even the weakest should be far beyond any starting character. I think that by making them a playable race you are forced to remove the majority of their power in the name of balance, in my game even the weakest drake would be a 1000bp character because thats how bad ass they SHOULD be. So in conclusion I'd have to say that my problem with these archetypes and races are that in making the rare and powerful into a playable choice for starting character you remove the very aspects which makes them so awesome, they should have been left as overpowered or very rare beings who require gm special approval, not made into balanced starting classes. |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 28th July 2025 - 01:12 PM |
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