Game level, Why must it be street? Options

[FrankTrollman]

[Whipstitch]

Eh, let's not go too heavily into politics, shall we?

Cyberpunk, like it or not, has never been about heroes; like most good sci-fi it's about taking a hard look at the ramfications of imagined social and technological developments and not flinching away when they lead us to an idea we may not be so comfortable with. Shadowrunners are hired criminals and therefore the majority of the things they do isn't going to be very heroic. To act otherwise runs counter to cyberpunk's deepest themes, which if nothing else is about following ideas to their logical, sometimes ugly conclusions.

Because of this Shadowrun has always had to run an uneasy line between what people are comfortable playing and what its themes dictate should happen in a lot of scenarios. I know one thing is for sure though: Shadowrun was first a product of the late 80's, a time when comics and a lot of pop culture was getting bored of the super heroic white hat stuff and turning towards darker fare in general and the trend has been going full tilt ever since. Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, The Watchmen, Pulp Fiction, Spawn, gangsta rap, Scream, Saw and the re-emergence of the horror genre as a box office force has shown everyone that you don't need to tack on a happy ending or portray people as heroes or even having redeeming qualities to justify a piece of fiction's existence. These days many people will accept even the darkest and most ridiculous premises provided that what comes next is somewhat consistent with the original idea's implications, a development that dovetails nicely with cyberpunk's themes. Whether that's a good thing, of course, is completely a matter of opinion. I'm sure most of us would agree that it's far more important for a GM to care about what his players think than whether Bruce Sterling would approve.

[ShaunClinton]

We play SR that always starts out street and ends up epic.

For instance at the moment we have 4 PCs with over 5000 karma between them.

Attributes of 30+ are not uncommon (some 40+), skills of ~10 are common and several characters have their key skills are ~20+ (some have specialisations of 30+), Force 20 spells are used, as are similar Force spirits and most of the goings on are also epic.

I guess sometimes the system breaks, but you can normally find a way around it.

[TheOneRonin]

[Stahlseele]

[Redjack]

[kzt]

[ShaunClinton]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Whipstitch]

[TheOneRonin]

[Whipstitch]

I think my single biggest issue with idea of such attribute totals would be the sheer mind boggingly high numbers of dice or rolls that would be required. I'm fairly impatient so it would virtually mandate the use of a dicerolling program for me to enjoy.

[Jhaiisiin]

Wow. I'm gonna agree with Ronin and others. That's not the Shadowrun I've ever played. Heck, my old SR3 characters (recently ported in to SR4, which required 600+ BP to create them) walked all over the competition as a rule, just because of how our group was made up. I can't even imagine what could face down the characters you mentioned. Unless my memory is fuzzy, not even Great Dragons have stats like that, but maybe I'm remembering wrong.

Seems awfully munchkin/powergamer/paladium style to me, but if that's what you're happy with, more power to you. My group has a single player that is content with playing the ultimate badass character who never loses and is able to squash entire Tir Ghost teams with his pinky, but luckily, we're able to reign that in to keep him from attempting, let alone creating such a character.

[Apathy]

[deek]

Well, its 4 PCs, so on average, 1,250 karma each.

In my games, where each session gives a base 10 karma, I'd say my players will hit this mark after about 100 sessions...we've been playing for about a year, so that is three years worth of karma.

I could see my group hanging on that long, but I don't see myself overriding their max's, for skills or attributes. Which means, with that much karma, its either a lot of initiations for the mages or a ton of skills for everyone else!

But in all honesty, keeping the caps in place, I'd still think it would be fun. I mean, at least in my games, its not about trying to outpace my players with bigger/badder opponents, its about giving them difficult scenarios and plenty of failure points in their objectives...

The biggest problem I see with attributes in the 30s and 40s and skills in double-digits, is that you really are never needing to roll dice...you can just buy hits. And once you start doing that, then its really just a mind game...you don't need any rules, you just have a GM giving scenarios and players working through them...I suppose you could just play Amber to get to this point a lot quicker.

[Moon-Hawk]

Let's see. If an attribute is 40, we'll assume that that's 2/3 "natural" attribute, with +50% of that as modified attribute limit. So say 27 points "natural", and the other 13 coming from cyberware, magic, etc.
Let's assume chargen got the stat to around 11 or so.
The karma to raise a single attribute from 11 to 27 is.....936.

Ahhhh, fun with numbers. Not that I think the augmented attribute maximums are being strictly adhered to or anything.

Deek, you play twice a week? Lucky bastard.

[Redjack]

I missed the post that definitely could be a personal attack rather than a debate/dissection of the idea. Remember, the ideas are fair game to debate.... swipes at the poster are NOT.

[eidolon]

[Stormdrake]

Just for clarification, my post was not about power level. Although I can see how many would interpret it that way. rather I was questioning the seeming drive by the developers away from the idea that characters that started on the street could be thrust by happenstance into center stage of world shaping occurences. As an aside I have always enjoyed the Metaplots that have been such a part of Shadowruns past, Horrors, Insect Spirits, Immortal Elves, Super AI's and have always tried to bring something of them into any game I run, even if its just for background flavor. No, not all or even several at once.

[Sponge]

[Kenshi]

Everything is on a pendulum. 1st and 2nd Edition were very "street level". Just look at the adventures that were published at the time. In late 2nd Edition and definitely 3rd Edition, things shifted toward the "Epic" scale (Starting with things like Super Tuesday). This is simply a shift of focus back to the "pink mohawk" side. In my opinion, it's a good thing. Put the PUNK back in cyberpunk.

[FrankTrollman]

[hyzmarca]

[DTFarstar]

[Rotbart van Dain...]