Has any one allowed one or more of their players to be a drake? The concept sounds pretty cool but want to hear how others have handled it, if they have.

I'm thinking of making one of the PCs in my group a drake without them knowing it. I'm starting the campaign in the 2050s though, so the comet won't be around for a while to "wake" him. Oh, and he used to belong to Lofwyr. Needless to say, this is going to be LOTS of fun watching the PCs try to figure out what SK security keeps trying to snag them until the comet comes...

The Abstruse One

I have. The character ended up getting snatched away by forces unknown after a hellish week or so of life.

~J

Because it was too unbalanced or for some other reason?

Because it was too unbalanced, and not in the player's favour. Being hunted by dragons isn't a good thing.
Well, that and the character had just managed to botch a run, leaving themself vulnerable.

~J

Yeah, I'm not exactly certain why anyone would ever want to play a drake given that they're hunted by dragons. Dragons being entities that have virtually limitless resources. If GMed properly, that's unavoidable death. If not, it makes for a really strong PC.

I'll only use them as NPCs.

Same here, I only use drakes as NPCs. And not often...

Mostly as antagonists/enemies.

While I have yet to have a drake in my game or play one, I have created one that might be played in the future and considered how I might incorporate one into my game. If they take the hunted flaw version of the drake, then the only real chance of survival is to take the Draco Foundation up on its offer for help, which opens up many an interesting plot hook. Alternatively, depending on which dragon ends up snaging them, there are possibilities that don't necessarily end their career. A dragon could quite feasibly use a drake while keeping them in there career as a shadowrunner, it gives the dragon a team of shadowrunners to call on, and if they play there cards right a good spy on the corporate world at large.
The one drake I've created in hopes of playing some day is a pirate in service of the Sea Dragon, who most of the time acts as a normal pirate and reports back to the Sea Dragon everything of note, and will try to get the ship she's on (she's first mate) to get involved in things when the Sea Dragon needs something done.

While having to take the flaw of hunted at a -6 means trouble the book does say that the dragons know when you first change. It does not say they know exactly were you are or who. Yes it should be a pain to hide but then as a shadowrunner you are always hiding any how. If this does not appeal to the individual as stated earlier you could take the draco corp up on their offer which as written seems to allow the character to still pursue his or hers own life. The other option is of course to buy the +6 edge of dragon patronage and picking a exsisting dragon or making one up with your ST. A fun twist could be that you are working for a adult dragon and not a great. He could be an up and comer that needs all of his assets in the field rather than as a voice box for the public. Just a couple ideas. Would love to try playing one and see what happens.

From what I understood, drakes are hunted by Dragons, but those dragons don't want to kill them, they want to recruit them, so I don't think a dragon would kill a drake, unless, of course, the drake said: "I prefer to work for another dragon..."

I'd allow one of my players to be a Drake if I start a new campaign and if that campaign is designed to include the "disturbances" caused by the drake and his hunters/master.

In a "normal" campaign, I won't allow drakes like I won't allow to freaky SURGEies or something similar.

Greetings,
Nyx

Something else to add to the mix. Dragons can summon both elementals and spirits. Does that ability pass on to drakes? They after all were created by dragon magic and share many of their physical powers. If I were running a story I would allow the constructed ones this ability but say the bred ones have either lost it or never had this ability due to the decrease in their power.

As to the hunted flaw that comes with being a drake this might be the best argument for doing it to established characters rather than newly created ones. Established characters have built a base of contacts and resources to aid them in dodging the scaly inquisition.

The ability to summon multiple types of spirits isn't limited to dragons (IEs should be able to do it, too, ie, the Path of the Righ). Being able to do this is more of a statement on how the person learns his magic and what shapes his learning. It is possible that any dragon mage raised by a dragon would gain this ability (the dragon having helped the drake form his impressions of magic, etc, even before he awakened). However, most of the drakes popping up out there would be subject to the same envirnmental factors which limit the rest of metahumanity.

Someone will eventually develop a way of thinking that will let them do the same thing, and eventually there will be little or no difference between mages and shaman (what's the plural of that one? Hmm...). That's a ways off, though.

Than pretty much all of the created Drakes would have this ability as they were manufactured by their dragon creator. The breeding drakes would like you said have to learn their magic from the human perception.

There are ways around the whole hunted by dragons thing. An example would be that a character has the flaw but his first manifestation occurred behind mirrored or reflecting wards. (These wards are from SRII Awakenings book and they hide what occurs magically within them from outside view.) So instead of the character starting with a flat -6 flaw of hunted you say he has a dark secret of -2 or -3 with a combination of hunted of -3 or -4. Done this way the hunted aspect would be more of a general hunt by all dragons for drakes rather than the specific character. Of course should the characters dark secret become general knowledge than the hunted flaw goes back up to -6. In this case the player would not get any corresponding build points for dark secret or hunted. Just a thought.

Alternatively (although this would be hard/impossible for a starting character as it requires being an initiate), the drake could have first transformed on a metaplane, which should be outside of even great dragons normal sensory range. It might be fun to start a character who will be a drake, and so as not to completely derail whatever the rest of the campaign is have them change while on a astral quest.

Basically:

Drakes have the potential to be amazingly powerful as well as amazingly complicated critters.

As long as the player isn't trying to be a twinkie and just be bigger/badder/uglier than anything else.

In the hands of a role-player, it could be quite entertaining.

-Siege

I'd allow someone who chose to be a drake player in a campaign starting back in 2050 to manifest at the end of Harlequin's Back.

Too true. The amount of abuse a drake character takes from the hunted flaw is up to the gm really. The more the player flaunts his drakehood the more he is hunted by the dragons is my feeling.

Pardon, but who is this Scale person? A published NPC? If so, then what are his stats like (without giving too much away)?

Sacle is a published NPC (references available on my SR/ED page), and as has been recently revealed in DotSW (like we thought) he is Lofwyr's drake. A True Drake, not Bred. No stats are given, but assume he's your average drake and then start adding until you hit Superhuman.

Maybe but maybe not. Scale is powerful but not superman. Superior more like. Kind of like Branwen in SotF, just that Scale's a True Drake (not a Bred Drake).

By the way, did anyone notice that there is no mention of named Adult Eastern Dragons in DotSW?

Having not yet made it to the year of the comet I have not had the pleasure of meeting this individual yet. Sounds like a right pain in the keyster though. If you allow player's make Drakes or not they do make great NPC's. Gotta be really funny the first time a character runs into one and decides to throw his/her weight around with out knowing what the target really is.

Actually, in Corporate Punishment, they describe Scale's abilities like this:



I play him as a high-grade magician adept True Drake with dragon magic as penned in DotSW.

What's the difference from a true form(I think that was how it was mentioned) and a breed form (Once again I think that was how it was mentioned.)

Then the next question is which type of these would Ryan Mercury be?







2:52:16
"and no, for the last time I was not awakened before, during, or immediately after the mile. The ceremony afterwards spiked me to an awakened being." -Rohestial Laendros Ehraun

Both drakes look fairly identical, the true drake having harder (possibly thicker scales).

Due to the cause of his transforamtion, it is assumed that Ryan is a bred Drake.

The main difference that I recall is that true drakes have regeneration, and maybe a few other powers that bred drakes don't.

That, and true drakes are artifical, can't have kids, and are completely loyal to their draconic creators? Oh, and when they die they break down into a puddle of goo?

Hmm. I think that was an inference I made based on the fact that True Drakes were "revealed" in the book, insofar as I can find no specific passage.

personbally, I thought he was a drake back in Corporate Download. Only thing I can remember seeing him in in your section was, what, pg105 or something, the conversation with Weaver?

Bred Drakes, that is. ...with the possible except of Ryan "munchkin Man" mercury

[/edit] Sorry 'bout the mix-up Syn...so many sourcebooks, so little time, it all starts to look the same...

To be honest I have two answers to that. I have played him as a True Drake in one game I ran (adapted from Corporate Punishment), while in a different game recently, players playtesting my Spinrad plots ran into a version of Scale as a draconic Ally Spirit I wrote up as a Superhuman NPC inspired by an idea in DotSW. Mileage may vary but I found the second version more interesting than the first.

Ancient - You may be interested in getting hold of this month's Games Unplugged if you can. I'm told this one has my bio-article on Spinrad to fill in some more holes in the background and add some more info on his plans.

That'll be a fun challenge.

The plans are for all the material published in G.U. to be distributed at a later date via the official website, so I assume the Spinrad article and some possible SoE tie-ins that might follow should be available eventually.

I have had the opertunity to play a drake in an ongoing campaign for some time (we knocked out some rules that surprisingly were very similar to those posted in Dragons of the Sixth World).
[B]It all comes down to how you play it.[/B]
The most advantageous part I found of being a Drake was the ability to fly (if need be). This opened up some very cool situations (while admitadly any team with and Artemis Nightglider could do the same its was coooooool to have that freedom:)
As for being hunted by dragons, well there are options to that. The Draco Foundation is offering some protection (also leave a door open for jobs), while secret societies (cults even) may be able to provide some sheilding / protection. It realy comes down to how hard the GM wants to make it for the team.
Our GM has a habit of having our enemies track us down and wiping out a life style or two every now and again to limit 'asset build up'. We as a group find it more fun to play a struggeling runner with a few prime resources rather than uber powerful 'i-own-a-city-block' characters.
They also present a fair option with the points required to make a Drake, a standard human character could do alot with 25 points.
last note: take the recomendation....play breed drakes (it frags with yah characters HEAD) = edges / flaws mental problems
one day as your character goes about their daily buzz *bam* Drake...nasty

The one time I played a Drake, it was as a True Drake, and was owned by the one and only Ghostwalker. I do everything he says to.

Strangely enough, after forgetting what Ghostwalker usually makes himself look like, I described my character. The GM kind of looked at me odd and said: "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" "Uh, what?" "Your character description is exactly that of Ghostwalker's meta form... Only with more 'hot' and 'female.'"

She always brings a spare change of clothes when she goes out. Don't want anybody sneaking a peek!

I'd probably alow a drake to start-off under the protection of a dragon/the DF. I don't think free drakes (unless they are already powerful mages with masking) have much chance of going it solo.

Even if the drake took the hunted flaw; it could be pursued 'gently' as the drake is sniped with a dart of GS or similar. You just need to have a discussion with the player before hand to see what faction GSed him. If the player is feling too much heat, he could always just make haste to his choice of dragon's lair (or the DF headquarters) and declare his desire to work for them.

If you did say to one of the dragons 'I'll work for you' then I think it also becomes extremely bad ettiquette for another dragon to kill you... At-least openly.

I find it possible that a drake could be trained in the ways of dragon magic (summoning both elementals & spirits) by a dragon, but it would take time and effort on both parts. Unless the dragon saw it to be an important skill then I doubt they'd bother. Ghostwalker seems to deem spirits to be important, for example, so I'd let a drake working for ghostwalker pick it up eventually (and if they pay enough karma). The DF wouldn't really offer this option, unless you're in the sort of campaign where your character is best buds with Ryan Mercury and is sleeping with Nadja Daviar (sp?) behind his back.

I was gonna Drake one of my players, without her request, and as a surprise. She's good roleplayer so I'm not worried about her abusing it. In fact she's playing a pacifist flawed character, aspected shaman with the blindness flaw as well, so In KNOW she's not munchkinned. I was gonna have them get involved in the SOTF series and have one of the Dragons offer to 'cure' her blindness if she did the job as an incentive (cos man, no team I know of would take those jobs as they're presented. "Work for dragons? Are you drekking me? Don't you listen to proverbs? What's wrong with you, Mr J?" etc). Then, on completion, he was going to say 'now, this may hurt a bit...' and BOOM, activate metagene X with flangy dragon magic and we have a big drake which can see perfectly but is freaking out cos her usually curvaceous booty is now a scaly tail about six feet long...

Haven't decided if I really am gonna do it, because she's already nearly retired this character twice because she says its too limiting (I DID warn her when she rolled it up that this was going to make it tough. But no. You can get a player to the water...), so what she'd make of every one and his dog chasing after her I don't know (though the dragon which awakened her would of course have first dibs, so the whole team would probably just end up working for the wyrm.

I dunno though. I actually don't like railroading my players, beleive it or not. I like them to at least have a chance to get out of things and I don't see a way of getting out of working for the wrym that turned (pun most definately intended) if you play great dragons properly.

Depends on which great dragon were talking about and the groups mentality. It may be the best pairing sense penutbutter and jelly, well maybe not.

In defense of drakes as PCs, it was really amusing listening to the character try to explain to the other characters why he'd just hopped a train to the California Free State for no apparent reason.

~J