THat

That

And that

Yep

That's about right, a mix of cyber and manna but I said mana because I favor spell slingers.

We also prefer prime runners. this is the top flight playing with the big boys. The James Bond/Dr Who/Leathal Weapon deals.

The difference between gutter runners and prime runners is not really in the numbers, but in the campaign. My runners are quite capable, they are certainly stronger than gangers, even the non-combat types. What makes them gutter runners is that they are neither equipped nor even hired for runs upon AzTech HQ. They have a limited reputation in the corp world (They are currently in contact with only one corp Johnson, having worked up their way from mafia jobs. They worked twice for the New Templars, once against AzTech interests). The range of enemies and friends is very broad.

What makes them gutter runners is the quality of their connections and the amount of money available for toys. And the selection of real targets they can beat. When I started playing SR, our usual strategy was half the samurai waiting for the FRT outside. Those days are gone.

Well, let me get to that in a bit. First, let me show, for those that haven't voted, or didn't bother to look, what the results were so far;

Now, personally, I enjoy long campaigns, with several plots, seemingly dissociated events, and pretty heavy on the character vs character and character vs npc interaction. (Sounds a bit pompous, and I apologise for that. I'm not an elitist, to each his own.) This is my flavour of game-play, and I know that lots of people work with pre-made characters, or play in very tactical games, or enjoy playing top-end runners, and while these people might not be the majority, they are perhaps a very vocal minority, which gave me the impression that I was the only one to play a radically different game than some.

We see that manapunk is hot among people who play a high-end game, while cyberpunk is hot among those who play a low-end game. Personally, I think that magic is poorly implemented. No, let me rephrase that; I think the way magic is regarded in canon Shadowrun is very plastic, very overdone, and without any sense of mysticism left. There are university and research-groups that are bordering on the clinical and dispassionate, while I always saw magic as anything but.

In another thread people were asked what their favourite piece of Shadowrun-art was, and someone mentioned one of Timothy Bradstreet's works, of a streetmage painting an arcane circle in an alley. When I saw this picture, years ago, something clicked within me, and I realised I wouldn't want magic to be widespread, or well-known, or well-researched, or well-trusted, or well-documented...I wanted it mystical. This streetmage, squatting down and painting that cirlce with such nonchalant arrogance showed me that he had power that I would never comprehend, and something that he couldn't put into words I'd understand, because I'm a sleeper.

Just like it irks me that in canon Shadowrun every shadowrunner has a shoe-endorsement and that there are shadowrunner television shows, and the simple notion that "shadowrun" is a commonly understood phrase in 2060, just so does it irk me to think that everyone could be textbook-knowledgable about magic. And manapunk Shadowrun encourages that. So I wouldn't call myself a manapunk-player, but I can't say that it's pure cyberpunk either, but it does lean in that direction. I think magic, in its mystical and near-mythical form can most assuredly be incorporated in the grittiness of cyberpunk, just like it incorporated brilliantly in the interbellum-period television-show Carnivàle.

Then we get to the other question, Prime vs Gutter? Both have its appeal, but when you play the prime runner story, you - or at least, I - get the urge to start playing an unrealistic game. Let's face it, most of us can't fathom what it must be like to operate on the level of a prime runner. We can't think that high. We can't possibly imagine the intricacies and intrigue at that level. But gutter-reality, while still hard, is easier for us to imagine, because everything that happens in a gutter-punk game is founded on simple human urges like survival. Prime-punk games are founded on complex human urges; power. As soon as I, as a GM, cross the boundary where my players are no longer playing for survival but for power, it becomes such an entirely different ball-game, and I often look back on campaigns that have gone past and chuckle at how unrealistic they became. So I tend to stay on the gutter side of the equation, some longer living players pulling themselves out of the slums. But as soon as they start to earn real cred, real rep, then it becomes so incredibly complicated.

The most important and difficult thing you need to think about when a runner becomes of a certain grade is that he's going to start attracting attention. Some attention is wanted (potential employers, potential business associates), but most of the attention is going to come from exposure and there's no amount of fake SINs you can purchase that you're going to keep the heat off your back. Pretty soon a runner will be more busy covering his tracks then he is busy grafting. Besides that, nobody would want to work with a runner that's too well known, it'll be impossible to not get caught with someone as high profile (relatively speaking) as that.

A runner will have to start maintaining a few fake IDs. He'll have to start renting several apartments, and making sure that they are run like regular households. They'll have to recieve grocery-deliveries, and have an particular energy consumption, because an empty apartment with no movement surrounding it is going to draw suspicion. A runner could pay a neighbour off and get them to make all the daily purchases, and make sure the mail is picked up and the bills are paid, but that would mean involving yet another person in your little scam...and nobody wants that.

Anyway, I can go on ranting and raving like that for a while, waxing psuedo-intellectually about the intricacies of maintaining multiple identities in a high information-density, totalitarian and paranoid state, but nobody is waiting for that. The bottom line is that I want my games to be realistic. Whether it's because I don't think that in 50 years people can start to comprehend the depth of magic, and therefore it should still be considered too complex for the normal man to comprehend (sort of like quantum- or string-theory nowadays), or the depth of trouble one can get into a shadowrunner if too many people know your name.

Gods, always with the show endorsements with you isn't it?

You read the writing on the paint can, right? Otherwise I completely agree with you. Magic too well understood and too widespread can effectively ruin the cyberpunk setting.

The rules never make any judgements on the characters created, I think that neither the tone of the rules nor the writers "spit on anyone more powerful than a ganger as an evil powergamer". In fact, I think the novels are a good way to show that players the level of power that is available just out of character generation or with karma gained after some runs. The problem is that some GMs that have problems with that.

Naturally there has to be some progression, and eventually, even in my campaigns runners do out-grow their neighbourhoods. Sadly, however, and this is probably just a failing of my own, though I have noticed similar failings in many other campaigns not run by me, the stories simply lose credibility.

Also, I don't advocate ever making characters powerless pawns. You'll end up railroading your players, and I have yet to meet a player who likes the inability to make decisions.

Well, you of all people most know by now how strongly I feel about that issue.

I must admit that I hadn't before spotted that. Hmmm, I don't know how I feel about that. I'm inclined to think it's Bradstreet's way of joking around, considering his use of the "Acme" brand, though if it's not, the picture does lose some of its quality. Nicely spotted, by the way.

That's good to hear. I was looking for confirmation like that when I first started writing the post.

I fully agree, and admit, that I am a GM who likes to keep it a bit smaller in a worldly scope, and find it difficult to deal with a scope like the ones portrayed in many Shadowrun novels. On the one hand it's because many of my players don't want to play a game in which they're responsible for saving the world (or anything significant), and on the other hand because I simply can't seem to keep a story believable and realistic beyond a certain scope, and those are two elements I value dearly.

Elaborate, please? How did they do this?

~J

There are many SR novels that are not "save the world" or campaigns of similar scope. There are some that are, but I chalk that up to what a good runner is able to achieve.

For example, many people diss Ryan Mercury books, but consider that in those books, the Asset mages tend to drop like flies, it should highlight the fact that if you are not really(like double digit initiated) good enough (or min-maxed enough), you will die when you mess with the big boys. There are 2 other (IMO) min-maxed characters but due to the way the book is written, they do not appear that way. I am talking about Wolf and Kid Stealth. A wolf shapeshifter Wolf shaman - hello... powergamer! Cyber-almost-zombie-no-social-skills-low-Cha Kid Stealth - sounds like any powergamed PC we are familiar with? But do I hear many people dissing Wolf and Raven?

If my players bite into the "Save the world" plothook, then they either be ready and able or know better and walk away or die. They can choose to keep to their safe gutter, or bite into the big time. If they elect to play with the big boys, well, they better be ready. I am not going to pull any punches, that is how I keep my campaigns believable and realistic. If you aren't good enough to save the world, well the world is doomed. Sucks to be the world.

I always play with a strong mysticism in magic, even hermetic magic. I hope that carried through in the writing I did for Street Magic. I don't necessarily think that goes against the idea that there are people who study magic in academic settings. Whenever I think about magical studies in an academic setting, I think about the time I wandered through the Astronomy department at my alma mater, Cornell University. To me, what they were doing in there was mystical. I could only understand the very basics of the whiteboards full of equations, the digital photography displaying different spectrums of information, and the conversations between professors and graduate students. I was awed by it all, and I could tell they were too, even though they discussed it with a scientific bend.

Ah but not all change is positive, and not all progress is forward. Real life has it's ups and downs, which I think is what Deev is talking about. Success isn't always a major success either. Sometimes success can be as simple as survival, or as complex as you'd like.

Your point of view sounds a lot, to me, like a players perspective. "I always want to be moving forward." Since none of us posting to this board, that I know of, are millionaires I think we can all understand that one fo the challenges of real life is we don't always succeed.

So yeah things change, and they grow-but that growth doesn't have to be contrived, or forced either. In fact it shouldn't be forced.

Not really true. Samurai can go shopping for full combat gear but if he has good cover(ie a good face and hacker/otaku pal) he can get away with it.

I think it's funny how much extra crap you read into my brief post. I only referred to change (and did not define it in any way), not upward mobility or accumulating power or the like.

I don't think it's crap, nor do I mean to make you think your somehow wrong or especially deserving of reprimand. I simply stated my opinions. Feel free to disregard them if they don't help your game become a better, more fun game.

Well I guess I don't really care how you'd define it, I wanted to discuss it so I did. Try not to be so thin skinned. It's unbecoming.

He can go shopping in full combat gear. It all depends on where. If you are playing SR3, there are rules for that. If it was in SR4, the rules are not as specific, but may be included under "wrong attire" in the Social Modifiers Table. So if he does have a high Cha/Influence Group, well, he gets away with it. That's how the game world functions according to the rules.

The tone of your first post seems to be implying that I am too immature to understand that life does not always go from win to win. You misread what I was saying. When I tried to correct that misinterpretation, you tell me you don't care how I define things. Ok.

I will let the matter drop if you do.

I have no problems whatsoever with a discussion of the subject. In fact, that is what I thought we were all here for.

In my opinion, a campaign of any notable duration needs room to breathe ... to grow and change. What I mean is that while the characters may have started as the lowest of the low (or even just normal mid-level runners), their actions will have an effeect on the game world ... and on their own characters as well. They will grow in experience, knowledge, influence, etc. This does not necssaily mean that the campaign has to become world-spanning, containing meetings with Lofwyr every second week. This just means that they should not still be in the exact same situations or positions after a year or two of game time.

On this I think we can both agree!

Oh yeah, that's another way I wouldn't mind going...

...but still there remain so many unsolved mysteries, unanswered questions, that for the masses it's all deep voodoo, and completely incomprehensible. The difference between the examples of string-theory and Astronomy and magic in the sixth world being that people who are awakened are able to do these amazing things, while they, and certainly many others, just simply don't quite (yet) grasp how it all works. People also forget that according to canon only 1% of the population is awakened, and I can imagine that of those people only an equal amount is aware of it. (I'm sure that opinion will spark some debate. ) So if we take today's United States population that would be 3 million people awakened, and only 30.000 that can actually do something with it. In my country (The Netherlands), it would be 160.000 awakened people, with only 1600 people being able to actually do something with it. It's rare.

The Assensing Table in SR4 does not have "Positive Qualities" as a Information gained.

One must keep up with the SOTA. SR3 is valid as of circa 2060-65, but as of 2070, the rules have changed.

However, I do have a SR3 example.

A mundane is someone with Magic 0 and an Awakened is someone who has Magic > 0. Yes? So Joe Mundane has Magic 0. One fine day during 2061, he SURGEs and gains Astral Sight! His Magic is now 1.

Now if Jack Mage were to assess Joe before 2061, what does he see?

If Jack Mage were to assess Joe after 2061? What does he see?