Background Count, How often, when and how strong? Options

[Stahlseele]

So, i brought this up once again in a thread about essence and i got curious.

What are your experiences?
Does it happen at all?
When/where does it happen if at all?
How circumstancial is it?
Is the BGC Table being used and if so, why is there no BGC of 1 or 2 in almost everystreet of a Megaplex and what is the justification for that?

Have you been fucked over by sudden BGC aside from the BGC creating spells?
How so?
How do you deal with BGC?


ALL EDITIONS WELCOME

[Mantis]

Magic is supposed to reach a level, like water, over most of the earth. BGC is spikes in that level. Unless there is something ongoing in a city, it will eventually just level out, with the spikes remaining around a recent murder, etc, as suggested in Street Magic. So whole cities don't get a BGC, just areas that warrant it. Just like you need to do something to create and maintain an Aspected Domain, you need to do something to create a BGC and if you want it to remain you need to keep doing that thing.
That said, any magician without Cleansing is kind of asking for it in our games. That's the first or second meta-magic they grab in most cases. Usually because they go to places where folks are creating that spike in the mana level. So as runners they encounter BGC more than most would but once they go home, things go back to whatever passes for normal.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

We run into it enough that I always account for it during Character Generation. It is not universally pervasive, per se, but it is common enough that if you don't plan for it, it bites you in the ass. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ryu]

Our current campaign started low level (350 BP/656 Karma using SR4A). Yet any PC currently remade would consider BGC. So I voted that.

One way to deal with it is getting higher magic than usually necessary. "Disadvantage": You are overpowered without BGC. It also tends to get excessive preparing for high BGC. Better: Get Filtering/Cleansing. We houseruled Filtering (do short-term stuff for yourself) to come before Cleansing (removing the problem for everyone).

Does it happen at all?
- Oh, yes.

When/where does it happen if at all? How circumstancial is it?
- We play an Earthdawn cross-over campaign. THIS. IS. CORRUPTION. With graphical description and carrying over to technomancers, too.

Is the BGC Table being used and if so, why is there no BGC of 1 or 2 in almost everystreet of a Megaplex and what is the justification for that?
- No. Where can that table be found?

Have you been fucked over by sudden BGC aside from the BGC creating spells?
- Comes with the territory, so yes.

How so?
- The Enemy and other astral threats are not stupid and mask their effects. Step inside the opponents lair, deal with the consequences.

How do you deal with BGC?
- Conjuring/summoning beforehand and Filtering, mostly. Being slightly ahead of the power curve outside BGC also helps, being below during final encounters gives the mundanes a chance to shine.

[binarywraith]

Depends on who's GMing. I personally get really tired of MagicRun and never being able to play a decker, so I make background count a known and feared thing for my players to emphasize just how fucked up the Sprawl is.

[Stahlseele]

@Ryu:
SR3 Magic in the Shadows Page 83 it starts on BGC and on PAge 84 is a little Table:
BGC1:
Any Place where Background Count was briefly or recently generated; (interpretation by me: means BGC does not go away, if it has ever been created?)
The Site of a heated argument or passionate affair, a magicians convention or a bar frequented by the Awakened, an alienating corporate office environment, a hospital, any site where violence was committed or a heroic action taken within the last hour
(interpretation by me: so, basically mostly anywhere in a modern city then?)

BGC2:
Any place where BGC was generated by a large number of people or over a length of time: a rock concert or riot, a sports game or revival meeting, a maximum security prison or enchanters workshop, a ward for terminal patiets or cyberware-clinic, a corporate research facility or large factory (interpretation by me: so still many if not most places in a metroplex then?)

BGC3:
Any place where significant BGC was created in the recent past(last 100 years[interpretation by me: so yes, even before magic so basically anywhere all over the world]):
Major Battlefields, slashed-and-burned forrests, burned-out residential areas, organ-legger chop-shops, most cathedrals, monasteries, lasmaseries, shrines and so on. (interpretation by me: so still many places in a metroplex)

BGC4:
Any place where significant BGC was created and the condition that created it still exists: battlefield that has seen heavy fighting and is still in use, a dragons lair, a heavily polluted area such as a slag heap or strip-mine, sites long and repeatedly associated with strong emotions, such as arlington national cemetery, stonehenge, scenes of sudden mass death such as transportation disasters or terrorist massacres like the chicago shattergraves.

BGC5:
Any site whose bgc was created by an event historical in scope: any place within 5 kilometers of a nuclear blast site(hiroshima, nagasaki, chicago, bikini etc; any genocidal death camps or gulags such as auschwitz(which, btw, SR4 WAR i think assigned a BGC of 8 . . and then made people go in to get a nazi administrators scalpell because they did not dare actually use the name mengele and to get to it you'd have to fight jew-zombies/spirits of the deceased prisoners) or the native american re-education and detention centers , any lethally toxic areas or radioactive waste storage sites.



So, yes, going by that i feel perfectly justified in thinking that most places in a megaplex should be BGC1 or 2 with spikes of 3 and 4.

this is ONLY the table.
i am NOT typing the whole BGC set, which is about 1.5 DINA4 Pages of Text.

SR4 BGC RULES:
Street Magic Pages 118-122 with a BGC "table" on Page 121

[Prime Mover]

I try to use more as a foreshadowing then environmental factor. When the PC's start to feel the pain so to speak they know the location is somthing special.

[psychophipps]

I don't play adepts/mages really so it's not something that I have run into, One GM/Player (we traded off between adventures) really liked to add the "flavor" (for lack of a better term) of the BGC into how it affected the magic in the group negatively. He got so graphic in a scene that the mage player said, "Fuck that shit. No more non-emergency assensing or magic guys, my character isn't letting that touch his aura any more than absolutely necessary." And strangely enough, the whole group just nodded grimly in agreement despite the serious hit in combat effectiveness we were risking.

[Ryu]

@Stahlseele: For anything from SR2-4 references will do, thanks! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Shemhazai]

How do those examples amount to entire cities for all time?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

How do those examples amount to entire cities for all time?

They don't, necessarily, but some see it that way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Applying a static background count to the entire plex is, IMO, kind of assy. It's like applying a blanket -1 dice to the hacker's hacking skill and program rating, or applying a blanket -1 skill and attribute to the Sammy's sammying.

In my games, I'd only hit someone with the background count of the Seattle Metroplex if they just got off the bus from rural Kansas or the middle of Tribesville, NAN or whatever, and just as a "holy smokes this place is different!" In general, though, I'd say that Magicians, Adepts, etcetera, should be able to adapt to "general environmental" background count like that, much in the way that someone from North America who goes off to Southeast Asia will after a few months adapt to the heat.

[binarywraith]

How do those examples amount to entire cities for all time?

Pompeii.

The burning of Dresden.

The sack of Constantinople.

The black death in London.

The Rape of Nanking.

Hiroshima.

Nagasaki.

The French Revolution's bloody reign in Paris.

Wounded Knee.

The Battle of Praga.

All of Cambodia, after Pol Pot's bloody-handed butchers got done.

There isn't a field or flower in all of mainland Europe that hasn't been well watered with blood over the last couple thousand years, and the rest of the world isn't far behind. Humanity is -good- at atrocities.

[Draco18s]

Pompeii.

The burning of Dresden.

The sack of Constantinople.

Uh, I think he means this:

BGC2:
Any place where BGC was generated by a large number of people or over a length of time.

That description applies to basically any city ever built.

[Shemhazai]

Pompeii.

The burning of Dresden.

The sack of Constantinople.

The black death in London.

The Rape of Nanking.

Hiroshima.

Nagasaki.

The French Revolution's bloody reign in Paris.

Wounded Knee.

The Battle of Praga.

All of Cambodia, after Pol Pot's bloody-handed butchers got done.

There isn't a field or flower in all of mainland Europe that hasn't been well watered with blood over the last couple thousand years, and the rest of the world isn't far behind. Humanity is -good- at atrocities.

That's a great list of historical events worthy of background count. Of course, I was talking about the assertion that significant background count should cover typical metroplexes in Shadowrun and never fade.

[Stahlseele]

Uh, I think he means this:



That description applies to basically any city ever built.

That and for instance the fires of rome and london and seattle(see hells kittchen, frigging volcanoe in the middle right?)
Also, if you were to dredge up crime statistics you'd probably have reason enough to have BGC in most parts of the citi because of crime.
And in the parts where THAT is NOT the case . . you have the alienating corp offices. Or research centers. Or factories.
And considering how toxic the river and the rain are, probably even BGC from pollution as well.

[SpellBinder]

I don't play adepts/mages really so it's not something that I have run into, One GM/Player (we traded off between adventures) really liked to add the "flavor" (for lack of a better term) of the BGC into how it affected the magic in the group negatively. He got so graphic in a scene that the mage player said, "Fuck that shit. No more non-emergency assensing or magic guys, my character isn't letting that touch his aura any more than absolutely necessary." And strangely enough, the whole group just nodded grimly in agreement despite the serious hit in combat effectiveness we were risking.

Gotta run into BGC the right way. Antagonistic spirits aspected towards the domain they're in (like the toxic areas in Lagos) can be delightfully scary to try and deal with.

In my group one player had dealt with a few spirits before an underground job brought them into a rating 3 blood domain. He cussed up a storm as the EX-Explosive rounds from his Predator IV (using the deadlier combat option, so +2 DV to all weapons) were mostly ineffective against a spirit's "shield" as it stood between him and its summoner (it wasn't any more powerful than what he had dealt with before, as reported by the party magician). It was also the first time that combat had lasted longer than one complete turn.

[Shemhazai]

That and for instance the fires of rome and london and seattle(see hells kittchen, frigging volcanoe in the middle right?)
Also, if you were to dredge up crime statistics you'd probably have reason enough to have BGC in most parts of the citi because of crime.
And in the parts where THAT is NOT the case . . you have the alienating corp offices. Or research centers. Or factories.
And considering how toxic the river and the rain are, probably even BGC from pollution as well.

All of those fires were over a century ago and their effects are not ongoing. That would seem to rule out BGC3 and BCG4. Acts of violence only generate BGC1 for an hour.

The alienating offices (BGC1), and research facilities, and large factories (both BCG2) can be anywhere the GM wants them to be, but are not the bulk of a city. (and hospitals, and awakened bars)

The environmental examples (slash and burn BGC3, strip mine BCG4, lethally toxic/radioactive waste BCG5) are quite severe.

But I just got the idea of an awakened bartender contact.

[Bull]

Season 5 of Missions takes place in Chicago, and the CZ is an incredibly fragged up place now, as it should be. I have a blanket (and IMO very generous) BGC of 2 inside the zone itself (and none outside. The BGC respects boundaries, apparently). Due to lack of wireless infrastructure in Chicago in general and the CZ in general, there's also a Noise level of 2. (Both of these can and do change depending on circumstances, but will be laid out by the adventure itself).

So definitely something you have to deal with, and something to make players think twice about what they're playing. Noise can be dealt with, but BGC is a bit more difficult to deal with.

[Warlordtheft]

Also, background counts fade over time iirc. A murder might result in a BC of 1 for a couple of days in an apartment, but gradually fade.

[Lindt]

Im a shade rusty, but I would tend to assign BGCs when it felt that it was 'more' then just screwing the one player who read and understood the magic rules. It had to have a good reason in my narrative for it to be there.

At the same time, I also made an effort to have more power sites (Sr3, MitS p84 for those of you old farts keeping track) when events took my players off the city grid.

[pbangarth]

I wonder how strong a correlation exists in our community between "thinking magic is too strong in this game" and "our group doesn't do background count much".

[Stahlseele]

Im a shade rusty, but I would tend to assign BGCs when it felt that it was 'more' then just screwing the one player who read and understood the magic rules. It had to have a good reason in my narrative for it to be there.

At the same time, I also made an effort to have more power sites (Sr3, MitS p84 for those of you old farts keeping track) when events took my players off the city grid.

So, less of a hindrance for magic users and sometimes a bonus as well and BGC only used for "this is big evil juju"?

I wonder how strong a correlation exists in our community between "thinking magic is too strong in this game" and "our group doesn't do background count much".

That's part of the reason for me making this thread.
In my experience, balancing mechanisms that should stop magic from being a go to easy mode i win button solution are not used often, if at all.
While there are sanners for cyberware and weapons and cameras and the such more or less everywhere which makes that even more of an issue.

[Draco18s]

That's part of the reason for me making this thread.
In my experience, balancing mechanisms that should stop magic from being a go to easy mode i win button solution are not used often, if at all.
While there are sanners for cyberware and weapons and cameras and the such more or less everywhere which makes that even more of an issue.

Seems that BGC usage is evenly split across the spectrum, with a slight dip on "every session."

[Ryu]

Maybe everything from "every other game" onwards is potentially a "Chargen factors in BGC" answer.

Unchecked magic is very powerful, and BGC helps balancing that. What I still don´t like after all those years is the double-dipping (less magic + reduced force), so Filtering is really good to have.