 What would River use?, Firefly and Serenity meet Shadowrun |
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 Jul 17 2007, 03:54 AM
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#1
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Shooting Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,677 Joined: 5-June 03 Member No.: 4,689  |
... and, having marked her opponents, River deliberately looks away and shoots: three shots, three opponents dead. What Shadowrun abilities does River have? What would her stats be? |
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Jul 17 2007, 03:58 AM
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#2
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 410 Joined: 5-April 07 From: Vancouver, BC Member No.: 11,383 |
Probably a pistol. :)
Had to make the joke before someone else. |
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Jul 17 2007, 04:03 AM
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#3
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Moving Target Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 453 Joined: 15-August 02 From: Kansas City, MO Member No.: 3,116 |
I assume you've been paying attention to the blind fire thread? =) She apparently has her Intuition. =)
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Jul 17 2007, 04:16 AM
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#4
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Target Group: Members Posts: 95 Joined: 23-June 07 Member No.: 11,998 |
A new Adept power we should houserule.
Mnemonic Targeting The Adept makes a Mnemonic Targeting+Intuition Test, with a Threshold equal to the number of opponents she intends to attack. If she succeeds, she can attack those targets without suffering penalties for visibility modifiers. It's rough, I just made it up, watcha think? |
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Jul 17 2007, 04:17 AM
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#5
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
should be Magic+Int, or Targeting+Magic, or something.
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Jul 17 2007, 04:21 AM
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#6
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Target Group: Members Posts: 95 Joined: 23-June 07 Member No.: 11,998 |
I thought about making it magic, but then I think it may be too "cheap". Making a player buy it at certain point levels makes it an investment and hopefully less game unbalancing.
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Jul 17 2007, 04:44 AM
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#7
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,677 Joined: 5-June 03 Member No.: 4,689 |
I wonder -- can we create her as the standard 400 bp PC? After all, she is supposed to be a "starting" character.
I like your new adept power, Solomon Greene, and plan to introduce it to my GM :D |
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Jul 17 2007, 04:48 AM
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#8
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
No, and no she isn't. They specifically say so in their own RPG (where they present weakened, watered down, stats for her that are still more kick-ass than anyone else in the group). River Tam's far from a starting character. |
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Jul 17 2007, 04:51 AM
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#9
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
erm.. how 'bout three dimensional memory and eidetic memory sense? Does blind fire matter if she still knows precisely where they are? Just a thought.
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Jul 17 2007, 05:02 AM
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#10
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,677 Joined: 5-June 03 Member No.: 4,689 |
I've read that RPG, and run it through a few tests. What a "starting" PC means there and in Shadowrun are two very different things. I also seem to remember a vehement insistence in other threads that in many cases Shadowrun starting PCs already came into the game with "pre-game experience" ... :grinbig: For the purposes of this challenge, the 400 bp limit stands.
I've been wondering the same thing. Also, there's her Reader ability to take into account: just how precise is that in tracing location? |
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Jul 17 2007, 05:34 AM
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#11
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Moving Target Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 453 Joined: 15-August 02 From: Kansas City, MO Member No.: 3,116 |
She's not a character. She's an Edge. =) Edit: Er, I mean "positive quality." |
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Jul 17 2007, 06:06 AM
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#12
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
So you think a starting Shadowrun character can (and should) be smarter than the "I'm a very smart guy" character concept in the group, good enough in melee to take out the "I'm a combat guy" character concept and a bar full of people and a room full of charging "we're all melee guys" NPCs, better with guns than the "I'm a combat guy" character concept and the "I'm a pistols guy, specifically" concepts in the group...oh, and a psychic and a pilot and an athletics ninja, etc, etc, etc.
If River's a starting character in Shadowrun, it means the rest of the crew are a bunch of 250 bp chumps. Plain and simple. She's a better shot than anyone else, better unarmed than anyone else, smarter than anyone else -- even (especially) when compared straight-up against someone operating within their chosen specialization. What's that say about the rest of Serenity's "big damned heroes," if she's a starting character? |
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Jul 17 2007, 06:30 AM
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#13
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Target Group: Members Posts: 95 Joined: 23-June 07 Member No.: 11,998 |
River's one of Whedon's super-girls. He admits that he likes the idea of having a super-powerful teen girl in his work - super-powerful and beginning don't equal out.
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Jul 17 2007, 07:28 AM
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#14
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,677 Joined: 5-June 03 Member No.: 4,689 |
A point: she doesn't start being able to do all that stuff. She's obviously got the potential -- but then who doesn't? Which is more immediately valuable: an unknown, uncontrolled potential, or the clear knowledge of one's own skills and the parallel ability to act? For that matter: how much of her early skills might literally be the result of experimentation -- bioware or geneware, maybe? The net effect expresses as a dice pool, after all: it doesn't differentiate between where those dice came from. (Heck, some of those episodes, you could almost use pseudo-possession rules in the way that she can't shut out her Reading abilities: in that the more she picked up, the less able she became.) It's not until a later episode of Firefly before she uses pistols for the first time, during the rescue of Malcolm. Three placed shots. We could even say Edge for those, if we wanted. After all, we never see her using pistols again, even during the Reaver fight. It's not until a surprise knifing of Jayne that she uses a weapon for the first time -- badly, Jayne would never have been caught if not for the surprise, and even then the damage is literally a flesh wound -- and after that not again until the end of Serenity. It's not until Serenity when she uses unarmed combat for the first time. It's not until near the end of Serenity when she uses unarmed combat "consciously". It's not until the end of Serenity that she demonstrates piloting skills. It's also not until the end of Serenity that she becomes an equal with the rest of the crew -- not superior, but a fully contributing member. You'll remember, that was an issue that nearly got her and Simon thrown off the ship after she knifed Jayne. Granted, in each case she uses the skill well -- but until that moment she literally doesn't seem to know it at all. Serenity rewrites that beginning, but still doesn't give her more than those athletic abilities and her own natural ability to learn. There's also several things that, for all her genius, she's not. Never once do we see her as the tactician, for example. She's definitely not the negotiator, let alone the leader -- although Simon's leadership qualities have become just strong enough to clash with Malcolm's. The character at the end of Serenity is not a beginning character, true. But that's not how we knew River in Firefly -- even at the end of Firefly. Here's a thought: isn't there a "borrow skill" spell? |
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Jul 17 2007, 08:05 AM
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#15
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Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445 |
River's not a Player Character. She's Simon Tam's Complication. (Negative Quality, for those who don't own the Serenity RPG.)
In Firefly. In Serenity, she becomes Joss Whedon's GMPC, and all bets are off. Alternatively, you can make River; you just need dispensation from the GM to ignore the rules on how many points worth of Negative qualities you can take. She clearly took every Negaquality in the book, multiple times, to pay for her Mary Sueish character...... Yeah, maybe not. It does kinda bug me that she can out-do the other PCs in their areas of expertise - even their areas of specialization.... But then, it's stated from the beginning that she's some kind of ultra-prodigy who's been experimented on by the government, so... Heh. It'd be interesting to make her as a PhysAd, given a 500 point starting budget and then advanced 200 Karma's worth. Does that sound like the right ballpark? |
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Jul 17 2007, 09:17 AM
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#16
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 906 Joined: 16-October 06 Member No.: 9,630 |
Well she's a conditioned super soldier she had all these skills the moment she set foot on the ship. However it was all buried in her subconscious. Its better to say she was a high BP adept with a unique negative quality called "Sleeper" and until the sleeper is awakened she's just a 95 pound crazy girl with little to no combat skills.
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Jul 17 2007, 09:30 AM
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#17
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
She had all the skill groups at 1, all the augmentations and Edge. A lot of Edge.
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Jul 17 2007, 09:36 AM
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#18
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
Talia, just to clarify, but are you genuinely trying to say that River was a starting character at the beginning of the series, and somehow (throughout the tv show, and by the end of the film) just spent karma to learn all that stuff by the end of the timeline as presented? If so, well, heck -- where's the GM with everyone else's karma? Is River Tam's player giving the GM special favors under the table, or what? What's everyone else spending it on, what skills are they increasing even half as dramatically as any ONE of hers? Where's all the xp coming from, since she doesn't even go with them on half their jobs?
And I'm not just going off their actions during the series and the film itself. Again, just take a look at the character sheets as presented in Serenity's own RPG -- there, she's presented watered down and pathetic (but still better than everyone at everything, more or less), and with a footnote at the bottom of her sheet basically saying "She's not really this sucky, we just weakened her so if you guys want to play as the crew of Serenity, the other character will still bother showing up. Maybe." River Tam isn't a character -- and she sure as hell isn't a starting one. She's a plot device, the same way a tornado is. |
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Jul 17 2007, 11:33 AM
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#19
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Target Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: 4-January 04 Member No.: 5,955 |
Cash for Karma? :P |
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Jul 17 2007, 11:39 AM
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#20
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Shooting Target Group: Retired Admins Posts: 1,784 Joined: 28-July 04 From: Cleveland, OH Member No.: 6,522 |
Well, duh! River's being played by the GM's SO. :D |
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Jul 17 2007, 12:08 PM
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#21
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
She could easily be a 400 bp shadowrun character if she has more than 35 bp in negative qualities.
Negative qualities just off the top of my head:
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Jul 17 2007, 12:15 PM
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#22
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i don't recall any instances of combat paralysis. definitely phobia: hair, though.
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Jul 17 2007, 12:16 PM
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#23
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
I guess not Combat Paralysis, but "Random Paralysis".
Also added Criminal SIN and Hairophobia. |
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Jul 17 2007, 12:37 PM
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#24
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
She has awful long hair for someone with a phobia of it.
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Jul 17 2007, 02:19 PM
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#25
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 458 Joined: 28-March 05 From: NA/UCAS/IN/ Member No.: 7,246 |
Remember she freaked out when she saw Shepherd Books' wild hair after he washed it but before he combed it. Thus the Hairophobia. |
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