Emo Samurai's Dedicated Campaign Thread, The Next Generation Options

[Churl Beck]

[emo samurai]

No, they know the fights are for real, they just don't know that they aren't the first Slayer the show's gone through, and they don't know that Spike is in on the joke. Plus, practically every vampire is powerful enough to absolutely destroy any phys adept; the only way a phys adept could win in single combat without being an Anime character is if the vampire is underfed or completely ignorant.

[FrankTrollman]

Using the SR4 Vampire rules, that's just not true.

A vampire inherently has the ability to add up to +6 to one attribute for 12 hours at a time before it needs to feed. And it regenerates.

A PhysAd, OTOH, has access to Improved Attribute (up to +3 Agility) and Improved Ability (up to +3 to combat skill). So the PhysAd's maximum dice pool is the same as the Vampire's, and it can use those dice pools 24/7 instead of only for 12 hour bursts after committing human sacrifice.

And if the PhysAd is using a spear (magical or not), she can ignore the Regeneration (no regen vs. wooden weapons or weapon foci). So the regeneration doesn't do diddly, and the Adept can still use her bonus IPs to lay the hurt on the Vampire.

So an Adept can easily be better than "a Vampire". It's not even hard. An Adept should honestly kick the crap out of a vampire. +6 to a singal physical attribute is not impressive compared to having Increased Agility and Increased Reflexes and Combat Sense all running at the same time.

---

The problem comes in when the Vampire knows Manabolt. Suddenly he isn't playing the Adept's game at all. He doesn't brawl it out and bloodily triumph. That vampire combat mage simply focuses his blood powers into Magic Attribute, throws a Force 20 Manabolt backed up a with 20 die pool, and vamporizes Buffy with a thought.

That's where this whole thing makes really crappy cinema. Any Vampire who has even the slightest bit of a chance against a physical adept tweaked for melee whupass is one that makes for a really boring simsense feed. "This is what it feels like to get hit with an anti-Great Dragon Spell and die instantly" is a simsense chip you can make once. I'm pretty sure every subsequent iteration is going to be pretty much the same.

In short, no company is going to bother with this sort of thing. Maybe if it was some kind of bruiser monster, but even then. Corporations don't generally make SimSense chips that they don't know the plots of. There's some market for "real gladitorial death matches", and there's a market for "fake death matches". And there's plenty of reason to make fake death matches and pretend that they are real. But there's no reason at all to ever make real death matches and pretend that they are fake.

-Frank

[Critias]

Frank gets a gold star.

[emo samurai]

Goddammit, you're always finding the holes in my brilliant but utterly foolish plots.

[Cold-Dragon]

Frank is one of the Smartest Trolls I know - which is why he'll probably end up owning a MegaCorp one of these days.

*sighs* Chocolate malts during happy hour, now THAT is incentive for Coyote! ;)

[Crusher Bob]

As for you power armor idea...
Take a look at this game/training tool: tacops 4 which will give you some idea what modern armored combat is like, also the relative ranges, rates of fire, etc of the various branches of combined arms.

[Critias]

Emo, I really think you (and whoever plays in the games you run) would be better served by just running a few "normal" games of SR. Try the game out with the default character build, run through a few basic datasteal jobs against basic corporate security (with a few critters backing them up, in later games), do a bodyguard gig or two, try an extraction out for size. Run some normal, canon, stuff against some normal, canon enemies, with some normal, canon, level characters.

Then maybe leap from the nest madly flapping your wings, with 500 bp characters fighting guys in powerfist-and-minigun wielding Iron Man armor, and vampires, and uber genetically-tailored Red Samurai guys, and stuff like that. If nothing else, some experience with the game will make it much easier to come up with zany, off the wall, weirdly power-scaled ideas like that. You'll get an idea of what a recoil compensated (15) minigun will do to a player character (regardless of build points), after maybe seeing how nasty a recoil compensated (6) assault rifle can be. It's all about scale, and experience.

Learn the basics, get a feel for the lethality and the game world, first. Lay a foundation, based on canon material in the canon timeframe with the canon tech level. Then build from there, with crazy experimental stuff.

You just might like it. The rest of us do.

[Crusher Bob]

Feh, it is advice like that that makes up think that giving up our black hat, white jumpsuit wearing, ultra-violent ways and getting a respectable life was a good thing. Well, at least we still have our music.

[emo samurai]

Oh, bollycocks and beedles.

[Grinder]

I agree with Critias. It seems as if you don't have a clue about "normal" SR games (sometimes i ask myself, if you even have one SR book), so imo it would be better if you start from the scratch with some typical shadowrunners doing typical shaodwruns.

[emo samurai]

Okay. That makes sense, even though my superhero-like sense of RPG honor says no, I can see exactly why those kinds of runs will be fun. I guess I'll start there before bringing in tank-smashing power armor.

[Aku]

did someone just turn emo into a... "normal" shadowrun GM, albeit maybe just for a little time?



I'm stunned....

[emo samurai]

Maybe.... And that's a very shaky maybe. Once they have about 100 karma under their belts, I'll start bringing out the female mantid who runs a gang of prime runners and a quest to determine the real identity of Damien Knight.

[emo samurai]

When you say "Normal," do you mean not having Joss Whedon moments of sarcasm and stuff? Because I'm having Joss Whedon points for timely sarcasm that will basically amount to extra Karma and refreshed Edge.

[hyzmarca]

If you have your players discover the true identity of Damien Knight don't forget to include the fact that he was Dunkelzhan 's lover.

[emo samurai]

[Azralon]

[emo samurai]

You mean with glitter boys, people normally having tanks and gigantic beetles, and dragon hatchlings?

[Azralon]

Yeah, wacky multi-genre stuff like that. It seems to be what you're looking for in Shadowrun.

[emo samurai]

But isn't it multi-genre? There's genetic engineering, cyberware, magic, dragons, astral quests, and really awesome weaponry. That sounds REALLY multi-genre, if put on a very cyberpunk template.

Also, I'm thinking of allowing people to buy initiation levels with the free million nuyen they start out with. How much do you think they should pay for each initiation level and extra magic point?

[Grinder]

[Azralon]

[Grinder]

But he wants to start with a very high power-level (at least that's the impression i got in this thread) without having played the usual SR-level...

[emo samurai]