Hey again Dumpshock, since I got such a lively response last time I've come back with a new batch of questions. The interesting thing about Shadowrun is that most of the answers I get are based on logic and guessing as opposed to actual words written in the books - GM discretion sure is let loose with this system. Anyway, I've got questions for mages, hackers, and sammies alike, so if anyone can give me a hand, thanks!
First, some magic questions:
1. What is background count? I see it mentioned in a few adventures, but I don't see it described anywhere in the magic chapter. Is this only in Street Magic, or SR3?
2. In a related question, what's the deal with toxic spirits and free spirits? I understand the difference between spirits of fire, water, air, earth, man, and beast, but I don't see anything that describes toxic spirits or free spirits, even though they're both clearly parts of the Shadowrun settint. More Street Magic, perhaps?
3. And how do you get to the metaplanes, anyway? It doesn't say in the book, it likes being tantalizingly vague with these cool new areas to explore. And are there really metaplanes like the Plane of Death, or King Arthur's Court, or whatnot?
Now on to technological questions:
4. What exactly does spoofing a commlink ID do? It sounds like it totally eliminates the trail to your commlink, so that trace programs will just automatically fail - seems awfully effective for a threshold 2 test. Say you hack into a system, get IC on your trail, jack out, and spoof your access ID; then the IC won't be able to track you, right?
5. What's the deal with patrolling IC? They periodically run analyze scans for intruders, right? So what determines how often? If it's just as easy to tell IC to run a scan every turn instead of every minute, why don't all security systems just tell their IC to scan as often as possible? Also, do nodes need an agent running to use programs, or could a node automatically run analyze every so often by itself?
6. What happens to a crashed program? Or rather, what is the use in crashing programs or complex forms? Couldn't you just reload it immediately? I know operating systems take a while to reboot, but I don't see why for programs it wouldn't be as simple as just hitting the run button again.
7. Now this I'm really interested: what can you tell me about ultraviolet nodes? They sound really cool, but there's literally nothing more than a single mention of them in the SR4 book. Pretty please with a cherry on top?
And finally, some mostly combat questions.
8. Is knockdown useful? It seems like most humans and elves won't have enough body to resist being knocked down by even a light hit, so they should be getting knocked down pretty often. With gel rounds, they should be bouncing to the floor in the blink of an eye. But what's the point? Do prone characters take penalties to defense or attack? What kind of action does it take to stand up from prone?
9. Movement rates are completely crazy. In the game I ran a couple weeks ago, the street samurai made a running test and outran the fastest olympic athelete. The rates would all make decent sense if they were slashed in half. In three seconds a human can walk five meters briskly, simple enough. But ten meters? Show me the guy who can walk - not run - three meters in one second, and I will be very surprised. So I guess the question is, do they actually work the way they seem to? Are they that outrageous?
10. So far I've had two characters have to burn edge to stay alive. This is a question that hasn't come up yet in our games, but I'm betting it will: is there something special about buying edge? Couldn't I just have an Edge 2 character, burn a point to save myself from death, and then increase it back to two with the karma from the adventure?
Well, that's everything for tonight. I'm starting to think perhaps I should split this up into two posts...but I didn't. Thanks again for helping, everyone. Good hunting!
Full Version: Further questions from a new running team
Yes, Street Magic is a must have for Fourth Edition if you intent on focusing on Magic at all.
Ask five Mages what the meta-planes are and you'll get at least ten different answers.
Ultraviolet Nodes are scary, there aren't rules for them in Fourth Edition yet, you'll have to wait for Unwired, but if your Decker ever notices that the Matrix seems to be flawlessly real, get out as soon as possible because you've just stumbled into an Ultraviolet Node.
Ask five Mages what the meta-planes are and you'll get at least ten different answers.
Ultraviolet Nodes are scary, there aren't rules for them in Fourth Edition yet, you'll have to wait for Unwired, but if your Decker ever notices that the Matrix seems to be flawlessly real, get out as soon as possible because you've just stumbled into an Ultraviolet Node.
1. Background count is described in Street Magic, but it essentially means that mana, the energy that Awakened use to do magic, has essentially pooled in that location, creating an area of increased magical energy.
2. Toxic spirits are spirits that have been corrupted by man's destruction and desolation of the environment; consider a spirit of water that's summoned in an area of pristine spring water. Now consider a spirit of water summoned from polluted sludge.
3. Described in Street Magic; there's an entire chapter devoted to astral space and the metaplanes (and, yes, there is the metaplane of death, and in one campaign, the players visit a fallen Camelot).
4-6. I shall leave this topic to those more savvy in the ways of the Matrix than I, but I visualize spoofing one's ID as running one's IP address through an anonymizer service, I have IC in my games run analyze, depending on the security of the system, between every turn to every minute, and the subject of crashed programs is something that I've been wondering on myself.
7. An ultraviolet node... hmmm... Ok, you're playing on your [Insert Seventh Generation Game Console]; the picture quality is insanely good, but you can still tell that it's computer generated, right? Now imagine a place in the matrix that is so photorealistic that there is no difference from the real world that your mind can distinguish.
8. Hasn't come up in my game yet, but, yes, someone on the ground has a harder time dodging.
9. I have to agree on the movement rate issue; if they were cut in half for unaugmented people, I would be much happier.
10. Yes, but many of us have a house rule that works somewhere on these lines (individual GMs use different version, of course): that says that once you burn a point of edge, your maximum level has dropped, so if someone who has maxed out their edge burns a point, they can't get it back.
2. Toxic spirits are spirits that have been corrupted by man's destruction and desolation of the environment; consider a spirit of water that's summoned in an area of pristine spring water. Now consider a spirit of water summoned from polluted sludge.
3. Described in Street Magic; there's an entire chapter devoted to astral space and the metaplanes (and, yes, there is the metaplane of death, and in one campaign, the players visit a fallen Camelot).
4-6. I shall leave this topic to those more savvy in the ways of the Matrix than I, but I visualize spoofing one's ID as running one's IP address through an anonymizer service, I have IC in my games run analyze, depending on the security of the system, between every turn to every minute, and the subject of crashed programs is something that I've been wondering on myself.
7. An ultraviolet node... hmmm... Ok, you're playing on your [Insert Seventh Generation Game Console]; the picture quality is insanely good, but you can still tell that it's computer generated, right? Now imagine a place in the matrix that is so photorealistic that there is no difference from the real world that your mind can distinguish.
8. Hasn't come up in my game yet, but, yes, someone on the ground has a harder time dodging.
9. I have to agree on the movement rate issue; if they were cut in half for unaugmented people, I would be much happier.
10. Yes, but many of us have a house rule that works somewhere on these lines (individual GMs use different version, of course): that says that once you burn a point of edge, your maximum level has dropped, so if someone who has maxed out their edge burns a point, they can't get it back.
1. What is background count? I see it mentioned in a few adventures, but I don't see it described anywhere in the magic chapter. Is this only in Street Magic, or SR3?
Places where the mana is all warped and unpleasant, usually the result of strong negative emotions. They make using magic harder.
2. In a related question, what's the deal with toxic spirits and free spirits? I understand the difference between spirits of fire, water, air, earth, man, and beast, but I don't see anything that describes toxic spirits or free spirits, even though they're both clearly parts of the Shadowrun settint. More Street Magic, perhaps?
Toxic Spirits are twisted and wrong versions of normal spirits, 'evil' by human lights. A classic example of a toxic spirit would be an 'earth' spirit from a superfund site.
Free Spirits are spirits not beholden to any mage, but acting independantly and of their own accord in the astral or physical.
3. And how do you get to the metaplanes, anyway? It doesn't say in the book, it likes being tantalizingly vague with these cool new areas to explore. And are there really metaplanes like the Plane of Death, or King Arthur's Court, or whatnot?
To get to the metaplanes you have to be an initiated full mage, then project there. More in Street Magic.
(...)
7. Now this I'm really interested: what can you tell me about ultraviolet nodes? They sound really cool, but there's literally nothing more than a single mention of them in the SR4 book. Pretty please with a cherry on top?
Wait for Unwired I'm afraid. Or look at SR3 stuff.
(...)
9. Movement rates are completely crazy. In the game I ran a couple weeks ago, the street samurai made a running test and outran the fastest olympic athelete. The rates would all make decent sense if they were slashed in half. In three seconds a human can walk five meters briskly, simple enough. But ten meters? Show me the guy who can walk - not run - three meters in one second, and I will be very surprised. So I guess the question is, do they actually work the way they seem to? Are they that outrageous?
A street samurai is augmented. Any reason he shouldn't be able to outrun an old-style human?
10. So far I've had two characters have to burn edge to stay alive. This is a question that hasn't come up yet in our games, but I'm betting it will: is there something special about buying edge? Couldn't I just have an Edge 2 character, burn a point to save myself from death, and then increase it back to two with the karma from the adventure?
No reason why not, except that an Edge of 2 is pretty limiting.
Places where the mana is all warped and unpleasant, usually the result of strong negative emotions. They make using magic harder.
2. In a related question, what's the deal with toxic spirits and free spirits? I understand the difference between spirits of fire, water, air, earth, man, and beast, but I don't see anything that describes toxic spirits or free spirits, even though they're both clearly parts of the Shadowrun settint. More Street Magic, perhaps?
Toxic Spirits are twisted and wrong versions of normal spirits, 'evil' by human lights. A classic example of a toxic spirit would be an 'earth' spirit from a superfund site.
Free Spirits are spirits not beholden to any mage, but acting independantly and of their own accord in the astral or physical.
3. And how do you get to the metaplanes, anyway? It doesn't say in the book, it likes being tantalizingly vague with these cool new areas to explore. And are there really metaplanes like the Plane of Death, or King Arthur's Court, or whatnot?
To get to the metaplanes you have to be an initiated full mage, then project there. More in Street Magic.
(...)
7. Now this I'm really interested: what can you tell me about ultraviolet nodes? They sound really cool, but there's literally nothing more than a single mention of them in the SR4 book. Pretty please with a cherry on top?
Wait for Unwired I'm afraid. Or look at SR3 stuff.
(...)
9. Movement rates are completely crazy. In the game I ran a couple weeks ago, the street samurai made a running test and outran the fastest olympic athelete. The rates would all make decent sense if they were slashed in half. In three seconds a human can walk five meters briskly, simple enough. But ten meters? Show me the guy who can walk - not run - three meters in one second, and I will be very surprised. So I guess the question is, do they actually work the way they seem to? Are they that outrageous?
A street samurai is augmented. Any reason he shouldn't be able to outrun an old-style human?
10. So far I've had two characters have to burn edge to stay alive. This is a question that hasn't come up yet in our games, but I'm betting it will: is there something special about buying edge? Couldn't I just have an Edge 2 character, burn a point to save myself from death, and then increase it back to two with the karma from the adventure?
No reason why not, except that an Edge of 2 is pretty limiting.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
| First, some magic questions: 1. What is background count? I see it mentioned in a few adventures, but I don't see it described anywhere in the magic chapter. Is this only in Street Magic, or SR3? |
It's in SM. It affects a magician's ability to work magic. If it's at the site of a terrible massacre or a great sacrifice, you get background count. You also get it for natural reasons. It can be aspected, so that the druid gets bonuses at Stone Henge, etc.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
2. In a related question, what's the deal with toxic spirits and free spirits? I understand the difference between spirits of fire, water, air, earth, man, and beast, but I don't see anything that describes toxic spirits or free spirits, even though they're both clearly parts of the Shadowrun settint. More Street Magic, perhaps? |
Again, detailed in SM. Toxic magicians are perverted ideals of ordinary magicians. So you get a shaman wants to defile nature, or views mankind as an aberation which must be eliminated to save Mother Earth, for example. There are toxic spirits such as Radiation Elementals. These are quite nasty.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
3. And how do you get to the metaplanes, anyway? It doesn't say in the book, it likes being tantalizingly vague with these cool new areas to explore. And are there really metaplanes like the Plane of Death, or King Arthur's Court, or whatnot? |
There can be metaplanes that represent anything you wish. Are they real, are they a product of your subconcious, or are they somehow both? They're one great mystery, but if you initiate you can go to these planes. Again, you need to read SM. The deepest metaplanes are also home to such alien entities as the Insect Spirits.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
Now on to technological questions: 4. What exactly does spoofing a commlink ID do? It sounds like it totally eliminates the trail to your commlink, so that trace programs will just automatically fail - seems awfully effective for a threshold 2 test. Say you hack into a system, get IC on your trail, jack out, and spoof your access ID; then the IC won't be able to track you, right? |
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
5. What's the deal with patrolling IC? They periodically run analyze scans for intruders, right? So what determines how often? If it's just as easy to tell IC to run a scan every turn instead of every minute, why don't all security systems just tell their IC to scan as often as possible? Also, do nodes need an agent running to use programs, or could a node automatically run analyze every so often by itself? |
Nodes can run programs without IC. It is quite normal to have a node running Analyze so that any intruders can be detected. The rules don't specify how long it takes before you can try again to detect something, but it's implied by specifically stating when the node gets a chance to try and detect the intruder (under probing the target and hacking on the fly) that there needs to be some trigger for it. Normally I only subject a hacker to one check on it. If an analyze fails (it's an opposed roll when the subject is using Stealth), then it's failed. If a patrolling IC enters a node to check for intruders, it gets to run its analyse as an action, but can't keep on and on until it gets a result.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
6. What happens to a crashed program? Or rather, what is the use in crashing programs or complex forms? Couldn't you just reload it immediately? I know operating systems take a while to reboot, but I don't see why for programs it wouldn't be as simple as just hitting the run button again. |
Again, this is up the GM to determine, but remember that the Matrix is not the Internet and technology of 2070 is not the same as today. Quite possibly a program is crashed in such a way that it cannot simply be restarted. Resources used by the program are still locked, parts of it corrupted, etc. I think its best if programs are normally only allowed to restart outside the span of combat turns. Though a node could have back-up programs ready to spawn if the corp were willing to pay the expense. If you want more fluff for how the Matrix works, regarding these issues, there are some pieces on the site in my sig.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
7. Now this I'm really interested: what can you tell me about ultraviolet nodes? They sound really cool, but there's literally nothing more than a single mention of them in the SR4 book. Pretty please with a cherry on top? |
You're going to have to wait for Unwired like everyone else, I'm afraid. Ultraviolet nodes are so realistic as to be indistinguishable from reality. Rare, too.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
And finally, some mostly combat questions. 8. Is knockdown useful? It seems like most humans and elves won't have enough body to resist being knocked down by even a light hit, so they should be getting knocked down pretty often. With gel rounds, they should be bouncing to the floor in the blink of an eye. But what's the point? Do prone characters take penalties to defense or attack? What kind of action does it take to stand up from prone? |
Depends what they get hit by. Characters with low body should avoid getting hit, imo and serve em right if they do.
Prone characters suffer penalties to defend themselves in Melee and attackers get a fat bonus. Standing up again is a Simple Action, so unless the character wants to keep firing whilst sitting on their butt, you've just cost them a shot. If they were crouching behind cover then they're probably now obscured, if they were hanging off a fire escape, they've now fallen. Shadowrun combat tends to be less about standing there hitting each other and more about maneuverability, racing for cover and other tactical behaviour. Getting knocked on your butt whilst sprinting across an open area can be a big thing.| QUOTE (Gelare) |
9. Movement rates are completely crazy. In the game I ran a couple weeks ago, the street samurai made a running test and outran the fastest olympic athelete. The rates would all make decent sense if they were slashed in half. In three seconds a human can walk five meters briskly, simple enough. But ten meters? Show me the guy who can walk - not run - three meters in one second, and I will be very surprised. So I guess the question is, do they actually work the way they seem to? Are they that outrageous? |
Have a look at this. It shows average results for an augmented Samurai. As you can see, the running results are good, but not unreasonable when compared to the real world. What is your character's Strength and Athletics score? Also, I think people normally only allow one Sprint action in a turn. And I can walk three metres in about a second. It's not hard. Try it.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
10. So far I've had two characters have to burn edge to stay alive. This is a question that hasn't come up yet in our games, but I'm betting it will: is there something special about buying edge? Couldn't I just have an Edge 2 character, burn a point to save myself from death, and then increase it back to two with the karma from the adventure? |
By rules, perhaps. I personally say that when a point of edge is gone, it is gone for good. The character has a "dead" point. Also, burning a point of edge is not total success, it just means you live. A character should probably lose an arm due to injury, wake up captured by the enemy corp, etc. etc. Burning edge is a way for the player to beg the GM for another chance. Not a way to spring back to life. And it will only apply if the GM lets it. If the character jumps out of the VTOL without a parachute, the GM might let her spend an edge point, but will quite probably just say "SPLAT!" in a loud, happy way.
| QUOTE (Gelare) |
Well, that's everything for tonight. I'm starting to think perhaps I should split this up into two posts...but I didn't. Thanks again for helping, everyone. Good hunting! |
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-Khadim.
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