Things that every shadow runner should have (and tips for a new gm) Options

[Relecs]

Okay well this is going to serve two purposes the first is to compile a list of equipment that no shadow runner should leave home without.

The second is that I am a relatively new gm (this will be my second time running shadowrun) My first game lasted a total of two sessions the first going well the second ending after I nearly TPK'd by putting the runners in a pitch black room filled with pillars and three French female street sams. Suffice of to say it turns out that none of the players had any night vision capabilities (not even flashlights) a fact I had not considered seeing as how as a player I had always gone all out with equipment. In the end they got out by blowing the heavily reinforced door with nearly all of their explosives and booking it out leaving one of the runners behind quite dead. So that said I am looking for tips for gm'ing the game (4e anniversary edition) specifically for figuring out how to challenge the players without killing them as well as general tips.

For the list let me start us off

1. Nightvision/thermal goggles.

[Yerameyahu]

Lucky for you, there're at least two substantial threads about this. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You're right: #1 is 'super-goggles'/contacts, with all the bells and whistles.

[Aku]

NONE of them had any cyber eyes, or even goggles? I would not feel bad about nearly TPK'ing them...

[Jekolmy]

Heh, I just ran a game last week where the group had the option to go into a (dark) subway tunnel or over ground. They decided to go into the dark tunnels without any serious vision gear (even if there were two elves in the group) but no flashlights. So they decided to start yelling, yes yelling to see if there was a wall infront of them, but didn't bother to grab a flashlight from their friends before heading below. And well they just attracted a lot of stuff in the abandoned tunnel. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Bert]

Most of these issues can be met with the 20 questions.
One I think needs to be added is "How on earth did your character survive this long in this world??"
Even homeless people in RL have a flahslight. And a pocket knife. And a lighter. All of which I included in SRII and SR III as part of the basic survival kit (I'm still getting familiar with SRIV, so I don't even know if Survival Kits are even offered).
SO. I would say, if applicable, a Survival Kit. Along with a couple tranq patches and Stabalization patches.
Even if you don't know first aid, you should at least be able to fudge an "Apply Bandage" test.
My .02 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[LurkerOutThere]

When you master challenging your players without killing them let me know so that I may come and learn at your feet. I've been working on this in Shadowrun for years and it's still more art then science and I get more milleage out of fudging dice then anything. On the whole the player characters have hand of god and edge to help them so you can run them in the redline area with some degree of safety.

From the sound of things your runners are mostly suffering from a lack of immersion, common sense, or tone. The first and third you can help with and hopefully it will bring along the second. Personally I've found one of the best things to do with the early run is give the players/characters a very loose time line to work with, plenty of time to recon and plan. Have the retired runner turned fixer make some friendly suggestions over a beer. Don't overdue it but give them a few helpful hints. If they don't have a medkit for example let them roll a Perc check to notice one in the guard shack they shot up attached to the wall still in it's plastic wrap.

I would definitely send them on some milk runs until they get their feet wet, throw opposition at them that's weaker then them interspersed with some stuff that's obviously mmore powerful then them that they have enough forewarning to bug out on or avoid somehow. Cram the world full of details let them know what the professional runners and sec squads are armed with. In other words, show don't tell.

Now to answer your question. There are lists in nauseating detail of what you should have for runs. I don't go in for that but here is what my character generally has on him or near to hand.

Primary Weapon
Backup Weapon
Public Comlink(Loaded with Fake SIN and legal programs)
Working Comlink(Where my less legal stuff lives)
Disposable Link
Armor(Armor is god, my characters are always wearing some level of it accessorized to the threat level and the appropriateness of the situation)
A vehicle: Walking is for suckers, and it's hard to evade the police on public transit. Your vehicle can also haul a lot of things you might not need every day but you'd like close to hand, a "riot" weapon, that duffel bag sized rating 6 medkit etc etc. Smuggling compartments are your friend, although if you do it right your vehicle can be pretty close to legal.

Really everything else is individual character flavor and such and changes from mission to mission but that's my "walking around gear". My more paranoid characters often do maintain caches of unusual stuff, sometimes taken form their enemies and re-purposed to expand their options at a moments notice.

[Teryon]

Having not actually run any tabletop RPG games, I cant offer much advice there; keep the challenge level appropriate, remind them via story and hints of what kind of world it really is, maybe offer up details of a previous team that failed(under the 'Well, lets not do what they did' mantra).

As for gear, having started playing recently, Ive got a list I consider to be decent enough.

Nanopaste Trodes(for the magic users like me)
100x explosive, gel, SnS, Flechette and regular ammo
Tag Eraser
Subvocal Mic(who wants to be overheard talking to the hacker or brute of the team?)
Contact lenses - Smartlink, Imagelink and Vision Enchancement(Ork, so I have low-light)
Tranq and Stim patches
C-squared, for all that nasty biological evidence like skin cells and such left behind when breaking into an office
RFID sensor
Glasscutter
Autopicker
Rapelling gloves and 100m microwire
Endoscope(psst, go see whats around that corner!)
Sequencer
Grapple gun
Respirator(R4)
Earbuds - audio enhancement and select sound filter
Nanopaste disguise(s)
White noise generator
Flashlight(s)
Glue Sprayer(keep that troll outside for even ONE more combat round, could save yer life...)
Gecko pads
Some certified credsticks
Jackstop(never know when blocking a dataport could come in handy)
Different sets of clothing(rich, normal, cheap)
Armored vest, jacket, lined coat and full-armor body suit(lined coat I figure has ALOT of pockets, easily modded to hold sneaky items)
Ruger Superwarhawk(big time I-need-to-kill-something-fast gun) with smartgun, skinlink and other stuff
Colt Manhunter(lets be sneaky about blowing some guy's head off), silencer equipped
Savalette Guardian(why not, had the cash)
Concealed holsters
Fairlight commlink with agent and basic software + firewall
Spare commlink
2 fake SIN

And Ive had that since the beginning. Granted some of this stuff is meant for infiltration\breaking&entering, but alot of it is just common sense stuff. You wont carry all of it on you at all times, but its there for when you're going on a run and you suddenly go 'Hey, I might need this...'

[Yerameyahu]

With trodes, no particular need for the subvocal mic. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Teryon]

Perhaps not, but being the face I believe in being prepared for all possible social interactions, including places where using trodes(even in paste form) would be considered gauche. Never know.

[Jaid]

i dunno. it's a harsh world, they need to be prepared. i don't think i'd worry too much about the players dying... ultimately, they died because they didn't think, not because you killed them.

[Karoline]

i dunno. it's a harsh world, they need to be prepared. i don't think i'd worry too much about the players dying... ultimately, they died because they didn't think, not because you killed them.

I personally would be very concerned about the players dying in my games. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

That said, Teryon had a fairly good list, though he left out thermal vision. Very important for when you're in a pitch black room and you don't want to spotlight yourself by turning on a flashlight. Oh, that and the sequencer is perhaps the single most useless piece of gear ever invented, don't bother with it.

[Mäx]

Cybereyes with flowlight vision and eyelight system is my top choice for seeing around, whit this your only ever at -2 from visibility modifiers up to 25m range.

[Karoline]

Only problem with that is that you once again broadcast your location with the light.

[Mäx]

Only problem with that is that you once again broadcast your location with the light.

The eye lights are very hard to spot, unless you look the bad guys straight in to eyes.

[Karoline]

The eye lights are very hard to spot, unless you look the bad guys straight in to eyes.

When they're putting out light in a completely dark room?

[Mäx]

When they're putting out light in a completely dark room?

Yes, just read the description in Aug, actually for ease of reference here it is

"Eye Light System: The eye light system consists of tiny but
high-powered low-heat lights in the character’s cybereyes that channel
a tight, polarized beam outward along a path parallel to the
optical center of the eyes. An eye light system illuminates a small area
the character is looking at with a dim light (enough to illuminate
about half a page of paper or to work within an electronic device or a
control box). It also enables a character with low-light vision to see up
to a distance of 25 meters even in total darkness. The tight beam and
polarization minimize the beam’s scatter, so the light can’t be seen
unless the user is staring directly at another person or this person is
able to see the small spot illuminated by the eye light system."

[Karoline]

Yeah, it works like a laser pointer, only with a bigger beam, and I promise you that if you turn on a laser pointer in a pitch black room, the source and where the laser is pointed will both be immediately obvious. And illuminating half a page worth of area in something as big as a room is kind of limited usefulness, though it is handy that it automatically follows where you are looking. (And if low light lets you see more than that half a page, then it will also let everyone else with low light see just fine)

I'd still much rather have thermographic.

[Teryon]

Id MUCH prefer thermographic too, but there's limits on what you can stick on contact lenses(or am I mis-reading something?), and I needed the imagelink for obvious reasons, and the smartlink so my guns could do some of the thinking for me. Vision enhancement, bluntly put I wanted as high a perception skill as possible, too many times have I been screwed in past games(for diff systems, true) because I wasnt able to notice something. This time `round, I can notice whether the fly crawling down the back of an ork bouncer has a bum left wing(with the vision enhancement, Ive got 12 dice to throw at a visual perception check) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Sure, I could buy glasses, but they fall off easily and are noticed MORE easily. Keep everything subtle and hide whatever ye can...

As for the sequencer...then how exactly do you handle keypads and similar, aside from the usual social engineering routes?

[Karoline]

3 extra dice isn't that huge of a deal, and you could always add a sports strap to your glasses so they don't fall off, or you could have the three you had in your contacts (A good three, I'll admit) and carry goggles with the other stuff for when you're mid mission.

And as for the sequencer... It doesn't matter, because a sequencer doesn't get you through a keypad. Read the section, in order to use it you first need to make a hardware test to get the cover off, and then you can use the sequencer. Or you could just make another hardware test with a higher chance of success. Basically the only time you need a sequencer is when you have a low hardware skill, but the only time you can use a sequencer is when you have a high hardware skill.

[sabs]

My contact lenses always look like this:
Image link, smart link, flare compensation.
On human characters I often swap out smart link for low light.
But Flare compensation combined with flash grenades.. is a nice way to ruin someone's day.

[Yerameyahu]

Eye-lights can only be noticed by seeing the spot they're looking *at*, or if the user looks *directly* into someone's eyes. They're designed to be hard to notice, but obviously not impossible. Also available in low-light/thermal, right?

[Mäx]

Eye-lights can only be noticed by seeing the spot they're looking *at*, or if the user looks *directly* into someone's eyes. They're designed to be hard to notice, but obviously not impossible. Also available in low-light/thermal, right?

Nope, what would those even do?
The normal version allready allows you to see perfectly up to 25m with lowlight vision.

[Dahrken]

The light reflected on the target spot - which allow you to get the low-light bonus - will IMHO allow someone else's low-light system to pick enough light to work, and possibly see you if you are close enough ot the lighted spot.

What they would not be able to pick is the beam itself and track it back to your location, unless the air is loaded with fog, dust, smoke or similar obstructions that reflect some of the light along the path.

[Yerameyahu]

What do you mean, 'what would it even do?' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It'd do the same thing, except in thermal. Duh. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Oh well. I thought I remembered a low-light/thermal version (that's combo, not one or the other; as Max graciously said, it's already low-light).

[sabs]

Projected Thermal makes absolutely no sense :0