BAN STICK: What SR4 items or rules does your GM ban?, And do you hate him because of it?! Options

[SamVDW]

What items or rules does your SR4 GM ban?

Example: Item ban - My GM doesn't allow Form-Fitting Body Armor (Arsenal - Gear Rulebook pg. 48) in the campaign.

Example: Rule ban - My GM allows Form-Fitting Body Armor in the campaign, but he does not allow it to stack with other armors.

[TheGothfather]

I am the GM in my group. The only rule I acutally ban is the "Try Again" rule. I use a Let it Ride rule instead. Guess that's more of a house-rule than anything else, though.

[WeaverMount]

Emo-toys are banned.
Unwired Activesofts mods are banned.
Must of unwired is banned,
Actually most of the matrix is banned.

I didn't personally ban them, but my table doesn't allow social Activesofts

We also don't allow FFA stacking. No-one has tried gel packs, but I don't think they would go over well.

[Ancient History]

I know one table where K-10 was banned after the entire table died. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Namelessjoe]

our primary GM doesn't go for technomansers, so i supose it would be considered a ban and no material he hasn't read yet

EDIT: oh and i dont hate him for it.

[Matsci]

Buying STR 30 Bows.
For your Plane
Which has arms.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

Emo-toys are banned.
Unwired Activesofts mods are banned.
Must of unwired is banned,
Actually most of the matrix is banned.

I didn't personally ban them, but my table doesn't allow social Activesofts

We also don't allow FFA stacking. No-one has tried gel packs, but I don't think they would go over well.

Why ban the emotitoys? They make sense in world, IMO (but I'm not expert) they're a great time and money sync for players and they can get pwned so ver easily. We had it come up on a run and it became a tool of clever planning and really allowed the players to come up with an inventive idea rather than come up with the same old schtick. I'm pro my players having a variety of toys, they make things more fun from a formation of strategy end, I just make sure the constraints against availability and the like are enforced.

[Tiger Eyes]

My GM banned the biowires TM echo (but only the part where you can permanently memorize the skillsoft by paying karma=rating). There is also an unspoken table agreement banning skill wires. My GM also ignores Notoriety & Public Awareness & Street Cred rules.

But worse of all... he has banned any rule or gear that isn't in print-or at least PDF. Excrutiating. Oh, the agony.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

My GM banned the biowires TM echo (but only the part where you can permanently memorize the skillsoft by paying karma=rating). There is also an unspoken table agreement banning skill wires. My GM also ignores Notoriety & Public Awareness & Street Cred rules.

But worse of all... he has banned any rule or gear that isn't in print-or at least PDF. Excrutiating. Oh, the agony.

Excuse my ignorance but what would this exclude? Aren't all the main books, Ghost Cartels, Digital Grimoire etc at least in PDF?

Also my GM has banned the Restricted Item Quality.

[Ancient History]

Tiger Eyes is a freelancer, which explains her comment a touch.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

Tiger Eyes is a freelancer, which explains her comment a touch.

Right my ignorance is maintained, freelancer in what?

[Aaron]

She's a freelancer for Shadowrun. She wrote some of what you (probably) own. I think the implication here is that she has access to rules before they become available to the general public and that some of those rules are pretty cool.

[hyzmarca]

Right my ignorance is maintained, freelancer in what?

Freelancer, more commonly referred to as an independent contractor, someone who does work for a company, usually on a per-job basis, without actually being an employee of that company, thus freeing the company from basic obligations such as providing health insurance and withholding taxes.

In this context, it refers to an independent contractor who writes material for Shadowrun books, and thus has access to stuff that was cut from books, for one reason or another, and stuff that hasn't been published yet. This includes rules and equipment, which if we knew about, Catalyst would have no choice but to send assassins to kill us all.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

She's a freelancer for Shadowrun. She wrote some of what you (probably) own. I think the implication here is that she has access to rules before they become available to the general public and that some of those rules are pretty cool.

Ah okay, I know how content creation works for some other games but not Shadowrun I gotcha. It seems like there are alot of people on the boards who are intimiately involved in the creative process of the game. Is there like a listing of who these people are before I end up saying something stupid to someone who generated the content being debated? I'm a big fan of technical expertise as being paramount to argumentative success.

[WeaverMount]

Why ban the emotitoys?

First off I'm against all "must have" items. If something is worth the cost in money/essence/weight to be in every runner's load out it's too good. Must haves also punish playing a character concept that can't/won't make use of the item. Which brings me to the exception to this principle: Theme. I'm totally ok with thematic must have items like com-links, DNI, guns, armor etc. The ubiquity and utility of those items help to make the world a cyber-punk world. emotitoys? no not really. Could you really see Henry Case, Motoko Kusanagi, Richard Deckard, Heiro Protagonist or any other inspiration for a shadowrun PC whipping out their emotitoy on the job? Maybe as a onetime comic relief stunt, but that's about it.


Also banned at my table (again not by me) is red-lining for body or agility.

[Ancient History]

Is there like a listing of who these people are before I end up saying something stupid to someone who generated the content being debated?

Not a complete listing, no. The big dogs (actual CGL employees) are Vairdic, Synner (line developer), and Adam Jury. Freelancers include Aaron, Tiger Eyes, and myself.

[ludomastro]

I am the GM at my (virtual) table. I ban shifters, AIs, free spirits, sapient critters, and sometimes the infected. If I don't own the book then I have a ban until I can talk to the player and understand what they want and how it will affect my game.

Houserules - Contact Points in lieu of Karma to purchase contacts.

Do my player hate me? They have never said so.

[Maelstrome]

one of our gms(we have 3) attempts to ban several items,spells,or tactics at random points in the game. basically if a decker is no longer a complete necessity or godsend then he plays the unbalanced card.

[Drogos]

Just recently banned Mana Static. Our GM didn't realize the awesome of the spell and I had purposefully avoided it eventhough my mentor is Sky Father because I would have shown him that proper application of it's awesome. He gave it to a newbie and we just laughed and laughed because he wasn't seeing why it was so powerful. His argument was that it affects you too...and then I explained that it also affects spirits and he was like "Ohhh...yeah, that doesn't exist in this game." The two rules lawyers of the group (me and the street sam) got a HUGE kick out of that reaction.

For the most part, he has dropped all of Unwired because he's unsure what works and what doesn't. He's definately dropping the 5th IP mod for Comms. The ergonomic program option is also toast (because why the hell wouldn't all of your basic programs be made that way). But he hasn't made a final decision and our hacker decided he didn't like the game balancing constraints placed on the Matrix and played a troll ghoul sam instead (he's a sloid transhumanist and figures that the tech level should allow him to do it, then why doesn't it), so the issue is moot.

So far he's seemed positive about emotitoys, which are a personal peeve of mine (too good for too little money; I'm ok with the software, since it's 10x more expensive, but the toy is just dumb in comparison), but no one in our group has one because we feel it's retarded.

[Whipstitch]

A little piece of me dies inside everytime my Face is effectively penalized for refusing to bring a Furby to the meet.

[Hatspur]

As GM I don't really ban anything unless we have to spend the entire game working around it. Example: a party of infected, AI's, free spirits, or someone having WAY too much fun with the restricted gear advantage out of Runner's companion.

The other GM in the group never bans anything either because he knows how to use it against you to balance things out.

[Dr Funfrock]

The ergonomic program option is also toast (because why the hell wouldn't all of your basic programs be made that way).

Have you seen the processor overheads on Microsoft Office?! Hell, just take a look at much of a ridiculous memory hog Vista is. Pretty much anything coded by Microsoft is ridiculously inneficient with system resources, but they still dominate the market. The software we use day-to-day is far from ergonomic, even outside of the usual Microsoft products; even Firefox is an ugly memory whore. Does that mean you shouldn't go out and get ergonomic versions anyway? Of course not. Any hacker worth their salt should be running the best damn system setup they can. That's what seperates a computer wiz from someone who just has the standard off-the-shelf setup.

[Whipstitch]

Yep, in SR4 it's assumed your character is a smart shopper and actually gets what he pays for-- but he still has to pay for it. A Hacker can and should have the best setup available to him, but it's going to cost him either nuyen or effort. Joe Wageslave, on the other hand, doesn't really need a tweaked out commlink and ergonomic programs. Hell, the corps are probably happier with him coming to work with a POS commlink that couldn't hack its way out of a Stuffer Shack. With how much raw processing power is available in the Sixth World, I can't imagine your average Joe really needs that fancy of a commlink-- if anything, allowing all your employees to run a plethora of programs is a productivity or security risk.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

A little piece of me dies inside everytime my Face is effectively penalized for refusing to bring a Furby to the meet.

I'm not trying to start a flamewar or put a kink in thread but several people have mentioned this and I don't get it. What's so broke, annoying, or powerful about emotitoys? The only person in my group that really used one was the technomancer who used in conjunction with the drone rigger so the rigger could do some B&E. The little sucker got popped by a pair of lightning bolts and given the sheer cost of putting it together, the group has been hesistant to buy one ever since.

[Tiger Eyes]

In this context, it refers to an independent contractor who writes material for Shadowrun books, and thus has access to stuff that was cut from books, for one reason or another, and stuff that hasn't been published yet. This includes rules and equipment, which if we knew about, Catalyst would have no choice but to send assassins to kill us all.

Yes, sorry, I didn't make my post completely clear. Now, mind you, my GM is NDA'd (non-disclosure agreement) as is the rest of my roleplaying group (I use them for playtesting sometimes). So even if he's seen something new and awesome, he gets great pleasure in denying it in the game until it makes it into print. I didn't get to use anything from Unwired until he went to Gencon and bought the hard copy. I always play hackers & technomancers, so this was a source of great pain for me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Similar story for Ghost Cartels. Oh, the pain! Oh, the angst!