He's talking about giving everyone a crap tonne of bonus points and a huge pile of money. Then he's thinking about giving players the old "Force Point Purchase" where characters could spend their Resource Priorities down for extra spellpoints (or Initiations and Allies).

I personally think this is a bad idea, but only because the closer you push SR4 (or any edition of Shadowrun) to epic, the less well it functions.

-Frank

If you plan to start with people new to the system, you are probably better off having them make normal characters, running, say, 3 games, having 'a year pass', dumping a bunch of karma + money on them, running 3 more games, then dumping some more karma+ money, lather, rinse, repeat. This way, you don't have the 200 karma runner who lacks some critical runner skill.

It'd also be a good way for them to learn the basics of the system, tossing 6 and 7 dice at a time (instead of starting out with 18 or 20), learn how and when to use cover (before miniguns start pointing at them), see what "niche" they're each comfortable filling on the team, and it'd help them really appreciate what unstoppable god-king's you're trying to have them create, to start mortal and then get boosted.

Good idea.

6 or 7 dice at chargen in SR4? Any half decent character will roll 10-12 dice for their specialty, and specialist adepts can roll 20+ right out of the box.

Yeah, but not at every skill.

This weekend, after talking to a friend about his draconian, "Metal Gear Solid the MUD" Mechwarrior campaign, I realized just how true everything you said about the whole "Rifts with instant-kill shots" idea was. I'll actually run normal games without bullet-dodging adepts and force 12 toxic spirits with drone plasma fisters.

That sounds good Tell us, how the run was and we'll probably help you with advices

No one could show up. It failed because it took place during the Super Bowl.

hello I'm back

Ok now this is a list of anti-bug totems that AREN'T INSECTS TOO

(I have some basic outlines of a anti-bug specialist team uses some of these totems but I will give you these alittle later)

These totem/mentor spirits are
(and some of these are obscure now)

Armadillo
Possum
Ant Eater(s) [more then one type]
Skunk(s) [all kinds-including Stink Badgers and probably Ratels-(Honey Badger)]
Shirkes[a kind of perching bird that eats lizards and bugs]
Chameleon
Gecko
Sherews
Moles
Mongooses
Civets
Taiser[Monkey relative from the Philippines with big eyes]
Pangolin
Ardvaark
Regular Lemurs[still alive on Madagascar]
Aye-Aye[special kind of Lemur]
Hedgehog
Salamander
Woodpecker
Frog/Toad
BatEaredFox
Ardwolf(African Kind?)
Coati
Racoon
Cacomistel(Ringtail)
Tenrec
Hurita
Platapus
Ekidna(Spiney AntEater)
Desman-(basicly a big Sherew)
Most Bats
Numbat-(Another Australian)

and maybe
Tree Sherew(actually more in the monkey family)

A big list to be Sure

Thems Insects are Good Eating!

Are you looking for all non-insect animals that eat insects? Because you missed a ton. "Blue jay" leaps off the top of my head. Badger. Spiders, centipedes. Turtles. I also noticed you didn't include any invertebrates.

Sorry I didn't get them all-Bluy Jay is a good one so we may as well add Magpie as well-Badger was Kinda covered but not the European Or American Species so throw them in too-Then There are your Terrapin and Tortoise Turtles-As for Spiders they have been covered before but there are varients with Spiders as well-But the Centepede is a Real Interresting one; Just Imagine A Shamanic Physical Magician (any Metatype) Who Has Surged(Or been transformed) To Look Like a Walking Centepede

Anyone Able to make a Write up of that?

And lets not forget Trout!

Yeah and Salmon Too-And Though in Pike and Crawfish While we are at it

Thats it-I'm wore out

I forgot were we thinking up totems or brainstorming the secret ingredient for the next Iron Chef episode?

it certainly seems that way-what actually happened is we started to run out of Totems with legs so we moved on to fish

Thought of another one though-Catfish

And for Invertebrates there is Worm-I'm just worried that if someone used the worm Totem that they might call up that Giant Worm Looking Horror From Earthdawn- What was it's name anyways?

Because I'm not a real doctor but I am a real worm, I am an actual worm.

-FRank

I have an idea for a first run. It'll be like Food Fight, except instead of a Stuffer Shack, it'll be a mall with all kinds of stores. Instead of gangsters, it'll be fucking insect spirits. Roach and mosquito ones. Within an hour, Knight Errant'll cordon off the area, and they can't release Strain-III, because the infestation's limited to the mall and destroying astral space for, like, all eternity would not seem justified in this context. The insect spirits will have accounted for this.

I'll advise the characters not to buy lots of equipment outside of cyberware and vehicles, since the first run will be a sort of monty haul, even with foci and stuff. They'll have to secure food and water sources and protect the Cinnabon and Krispy Kreme stands, since most insect spirits eat sugar and they'd all gain, like, 5 force levels just from raiding the glaze stores. The hackers and technomancers will get lots of stuff to do like hacking the cameras, since if the mage projects, he'll be spotted instantly, and he'll also be able to hack robo-arms in the storage facilities and reprogram them for combat. The mages, of course, will be banishing and manaballing everything, and the samurai will have a whole Weapons World to raid.

first I'd like to ask is there a strain-3 anti-dote yet?

second will we ever see strain-4? (I've got an idea but I'll save it for now)

third you could send in Skree-A Gnome Sherew Shamanic Physical Magician-fast ultra hyper and aggressive HE WILL EAT BUGS-Chester A Ork Possum PhysAd From CAS with a roll of quarters whepon focus and a Automatic Combat Shotgun and Ax; The real freaky Surged Human Taisar Shaman from the Philippines Uses A Net Gun and Electro-Burn Gloves- And of Course a Sexy Elf Shrike Phys Ad Sniper-Ex Tir Tairngire Intel-One side protects her and one side chases her-but it is all an experiment anyway to see how see does and get intel from what she Learns(has gray cape that looks like feathers & high heels!)

Now that would be an all magical anti-bug squad

Can I have you killed?

Noooooooooooooooo......please lets be civil

There are alot of Exotic angles on shadowrun that are woefully unexplioted- yes A Yaqui Gnome Sherew Shamanic Phys-Magican who can essence drain bug spirits (And he may have to because The biggest Drawback To being a Sherew Shaman is you will have to eat about...say every half hour......He might need that essence to live) might be a bit much but for comparisons sake Try Out an Animus Style A.I. Who Likes to get some meat ghost action(also called Carbon-baseds) on the Matrix or A Psionic Single Spell adept(A shadowrun mutant)....Or well can just recall the Surged Troll Centapede Psy-Ad mentioned a few posts back

Please be a parody.

Please.

its not a parody....it's just ideas...shadowrun just needs to keep pushing the envelope

Now, go and take your pills.

Can we talk about my game now?

I think the bugs getting energy from eating sugar is hilarious.

How many insects do you anticipate? This may be a bit much for a 'first' run, at least if your players aren't familiar with SR. ALso keep in mind, you're not going to find a lot of magical gear or any real good weapons by looting a mall. Most of that is either illegal or very specialized. A talismonger will do better setting up shop elsewhere (she has a very specialized product and mall space is pricey). I doubt weapons world will be a full sized warehouse either, but there'll still be more Preds than your sam will care to count.

Make sure you make lots of big maps beforehand.

I PERSONALLY wouldn't use this only because I like bug spirits to be more creepy, and that means lots of build-up and little use. But that's just how I like to run things. You sound like you enjoy action, and so a good bug smashing could be a lot of fun, as long as you keep the power levels in check.

Well, you could make it something of a RAS game where the bug spirits are running around, but the PCs really don't want to confront them directly when they can avoid it. I'd go so far as to cast the bug spirits as more of background to what was really going on (defeating mall security systems, avoiding being seen by the bugs, confrontations with other survivors over resources).

That's true. It really depends on the background. Alternatively, if you're using ants or something, their job could be to go get the queen. So there WILL be points of barricading yourself in and looting stores, but they'll benefit from being smart and avoiding fights over just blowing up everything.

There'll be a deadline for when Strain III is released; it'll be about a month. If you don't form a supply chain, then the food stocks won't last you more than a week. That's the time you have to kill off the ant queen. And it'll be a BIG extraterritorial mall, owned by all the megacorps at once. The draw will be low prices from the lack of taxes and the illegal stuff you could get. So you'll see miniguns being sold next to Gap Kids. It'll be a free economic zone, and the runners are there because it's got all the illegality of the streets with none of the troublesome searching. It's almost perfect for shadowrunners, which is why I'm destroying it in my first campaign.

I'm thinking of doing it, but not as a first run. And what do you think is the plausibility of this mall being made? I mean, the megacorps banding together like this just to make a free shopping zone. Would Joe 2070 take his kids to a place that sells sniper rifles and power foci for psycho toxic shamans even if everything's 20% off? Oh, well, the runners'll get to loot the place.

Also, the Renraku Arcology will be pretty much fire saled in my game. The mission will be to steal the diamond optical core of Deus's original server. It's way too big to be called a chip; it's perfectly spherical and is suspended in a fluid of perfect liquid density for the sphere to be suspended in the exact center. Pointless? Yes. Way fucking cool? Definitely, and that's why Renraku did it. It'll be the most delicate extractee ever, and the mission will require much subtlety.

Shadowrunners and gangsters are a pretty big customer base, at least in my world. The corps pay the Star to leave them alone. The shadowrunners don't go for the whole "sheltered customer base" thing, so they'll need to sell weapons there if they want to get paid for their equipment instead of having it fall off the back of a truck constantly. And having a supermall with 30% off from not having to pay taxes on their payrolls and products and everything else means that they'll attract lots of norms to cover up the runners and gangsters. Even if the weapons are a little above street price, runners and gangsters don't have to wait a week and run up a network of greedy contacts who themselves ramp up the price above market price in order to find a case of bullets.

Meh. I could see a "crime mall" that the Seattle criminal syndicates considered neutral territory, in some gutted building in the barrens, but I have a harder time picturing a legitimate mall offering all of this quasi-legal and illegal stuff to shadowrunners while people two stores down are buying slurpees and donuts for their kids. I could see a few stores in the mall with a "back room" for parties in the know, but I can't see a Panther assault cannon being sold over the counter - not when you need permits and such to buy those kind of things.


Besides, if you are doing a run where the PCs are trapped in a mall with a bunch of (hopefully not too high Force) bug spirits, it might be more fun, and encourage more creative thinking, if the stores sell normal stuff, and the PCs have to figure out how to improvise weapons out of it. Maybe the sporting goods store will have some bows, or the camping store might have kerosene cannisters or flare guns.


The trouble with spirits is their immunity to normal weapons power, which can make them frustrating for mundane characters to deal with. Maybe instead of a bug spirit infestation, you could have a surge of wild magic turn a swarm of devil rats crazed, and give a few of them some random paranormal powers. And the background count will make things tougher for the mages, while everyone else is scrambling to find some kind of weapons. And even though they're just devil rats, they're still nasty critters, and the random paranormal powers make them more unpredictable. Just a thought.

I want to blow up Cinnabon!

Here's an idea.

The characters are called by their respective contacts for a meet. It's going to be held at some huge mall food court (extrateritorial doesn't matter so much here) and the run is supposed to be a profitable one. Plop the mall in the middle of downtown and inform them of this. Remind them that there are MADs on the entrances and unlicensed weapons (and licensed weapons that scream "looking for trouble") will likely get them in trouble.

The Johnson comes in and the meet starts. He starts describing how he wants the PCs to pick up his friend who is considering changing employers (just another extraction) and offers them some figure of cash or some amount of goods for the job.

Once the PCs agree, bug-da-monium breaks lose and the Johnson declares a change of plans. He wants the PCs to get him the drek out of there.

Then proceed with the game as normal (since, obviously, you can't just walk the Johnson out, no matter who he is or really works for). Now the PCs have to protect the J if they want their pay, but they're in meet clothes without their heavy firepower. Probably a few pistols and tasers among them, but that's about it.

Fun fun.

Dude, survival horror would be so much cooler. Organizing the peasants, finding hardware... but then again, Knight Errant probably wouldn't need the shadowrunners for help much.

To do that, same setup, just the Johnson dies in the first few seconds of the bug attack and never tries to change the job.

I want the players to stand and destroy the bugs themselves; how do I justify not having Knight Errant doing it for them?

Maybe the fact that KE pays a lot more for each dead KE officer than it does for each dead runner?

So I could play down the "Knight Errant as Champions of Order" angle. Makes sense, since they don't have to play to public opinion; normal people don't shop there. I'll get rid of the "normal people being there" angle. But how will the characters stand out and manage to take command, if the people there are already killers and stuff? Maybe I'll have the gangsters mostly dominate the mall, with most runners being too smart and paranoid to go anywhere owned by a megacorp and not do everything in their power to not stand out.

you don't... jesus christ, why would anyone go to this mall? normal people don't go there because there are miniguns for sale, and criminals won't go there because the mall makes it insanely easy to track their activities. you can't just hand LS some money and expect them to look the other way while millions of dollars' worth of weapons are sold to criminals in a public venue. it doesn't work like that, for chrissake. you can bribe a security guard to let you into a warehouse, you can't bribe a security guard to let you throw bombs at people.

for pete's sake, if you're so dead-set on having miniguns at a mall, have the miniguns being sold out of the back of a truck in the freaking parking garage. don't put them in display windows next to the food court.

Next to the Food Court? In the Food Court! I can see it now, an international chain that was created as a result of Ares buying Taco Time. It's called Guacamole & Guns. You can chow down on crappy psuedo Mexican food while checking out the latest and greastest in bigtime blackmarket firepower. Their marketing slogan splashed across nationwide saturation-run ads is We spice up your criminal activities, no questions asked.

You really think that anyone that can own or carry a class 'F' weapon legally is going to shop at the mall? Those are institutional buyers, if they don't actually make the weapons themselves. You don't sell to them through a store front. You sell to them on travel junkets treating them to a Sasquatch BBQ, complete with sorted vices, on the company yatch.

The nastiest 'R' weapons listed are hunting rifles, shotguns, the microwave laser pain inducer, and basic ARs without the grenade launchers. About as much as you could argue as personal defense or recreational use.

But really, isn't that going to be more than enough for most criminal activity? Strolling around with a minigun laying down covering fire tends to draw attention. Do that in anything above a Z zone and expect Lone Star to throw just about everything they can muster at you. Stand your ground against LS and expect the UCAS military to start showing up, and not just a mule loaded with grunts.