I've decided to GM a game in about a month...the last time I played shadowrun was almost 10 years ago, when I was 12. I've read the 4th edition book but I've still got some questions. By all means add any other advice. I've got kind of a laundry list here:

1. On page 84 it says that during the character creation process, all gear is subject to gamemaster approval and all gear must have an availibilty rating under 12. So what gear do most GMs not allow? Should I allow prohibited items all the way up to 8F or so? Any thoughts?

2. On page 141 it says that by using image magnification equipment you can elimenate range modifiers once you are locked onto the target. Due to the nature of physics the size of the group increases, velocity decreases, (and accuracy decreases as a result) the farther the distance to the target- the shooter has no effect on that. Magnification helps you see the target, shure, but it shouldn't totally negate range modifiers. I don't understand the reasoning there.

3. I was reading a shadowrun novel and came across a reference to a "Toxic Shaman," and couldn't find it in the book. From the description in the novel it dosen't sound like something I would let a PC play, but it sounds like a good NPC. What is it?

4. If you have a rigger that wants to have hot sim capability, do you modify his comlink to make it hot sim, or his control rig?

5. How many players is an average group? Like 4 or 5? Is 400BP what most people go with?

6. Is there any way I should handle the group's first run? Make it hard or make it easy, throw curve balls or kid gloves?

2. it might be more realistic to include modifiers for actual distance; that way, you'd actually have to aim at targets a klick away, even if you have a top-rated scope. not using such modifiers is, however, more streamlined.

3. a toxic shaman perverts the ideals of his totem. as shamans are generally presented as treehuggers, that generally means that they use environmentally-unfriendly magic, which is more powerful than eco-friendly (or at least eco-neutral) magic.

1. I would allow the standard Availability ratings, with no additional restrictions for an F rating - runners do illegal things for a living. Limiting F items to 8 would, for example, restrict characters to Rating: 2 fake IDs. The line about gear being subject to GM approval is a reiteration that characters, period, are subject to GM approval, and is more concerned with the GM's desire to preserve the tone of his campaign. For example, a GM could disallow a heavily cybered character if he said he was running a campaign where everyone plays street-level gang members. Or he could disallow a machine gun in a campaign about stealthy heists. GMs can, and do, house rule the starting Availability limits, but remember that this will affect mundane characters much more than it will affect awakened characters such as mages and adepts.

2. Shadowrun is an abstract rules system, so a lot of things are simplified, but remember that range modifiers are simplified as well. If it jars your suspension of disbelief too much, house rule it. But if you do, just be sure to let the players know ahead of time, so they are aware of the new rules.

3. Toxic shamans appear in Street Magic. Basically, they are corrupted shamans who spread pollution and destruction.

4. You only need to modify the commlink. The control rig is already good to go.

5. Both sound about right. More people than that can be unwieldy in a game like Shadowrun (although smaller groups of 2 or 3 people can be fine - the only problem is that they won't quite have a fully-rounded shadowrunning team). 400 points is the default setting, which lets you create seasoned pros who may not be the heaviest hitters, but can potentially get there. 300 points is a low-powered game, which I would recommend for seasoned roleplayers, but which might turn off new players, who will come into the game expecting wire-fu and lightning bolts only to get stuck playing common street thugs. 500 points is a high-powered game. I would recommend saving that for later, too, when you are more familiar with the rules (and how they can potentially be abused by players).

6. I would talk with them, and figure out what kind of game that you all want to run, and then go from there. One of the strengths of the game is that it can support a variety of play styles, from gritty heroes to savvy pros to street trash losers. Just be sure you're all on the same page.

I usually run with 4-6 players. Anything below four and I have to throw in an NPC 'hireling' which invites abuse, and having more than six... someone ends up feeling left out.

As for their first run, keep it simple, keep it sweet. But what you should do is try to cover all the bases. There's a lot of rules to learn, and sometimes what you think you read isn't what someone else did. If you get surprised by a rule, play it out as written first, then if it seems totally unbelievable, then house rule it.. but do let your players have a say. You can override them, but at least let them speak their piece about why 'Turn to Goo' shouldn't affect cyberware or whatever the issue is.

1) Have at least one firefight (it keeps the sammies happy). I recommend a half dozen ghouls or so. I also recommend having them deal with a swarm (like 24) of devil rats. Keep in mind devil rats are very hard to hit (-3 dicepool) and this should teach them that there's always the option to disengage and get out of dodge. Alternatively, it can teach the mage that area effect stun spells are really very handy. Or it might teach them to always bring grenades. Actually, if your runners are new, it might be better to try and keep the gunplay down to a dull roar, combat can drag along sometimes. And the longer it lasts, the greater the chance someone else will come along and join it... like Lone Star.

2) Do some rigging/driving stuff. There's go-gangs everywhere, and nothing says Shadowrun than merging onto the freeway and ending up as the only cover in an all-out go-gang fragfest. If the players decide to get involved they may make friends... they most assuredly will make enemies. But driving is fun.

3) Try (but don't lose your mind over) hacking. Actually, I now stress every player should have some skill in hacking. If you can't spoof your own datatrail, you have to rely on someone else doing it for you. People glitch, let them glitch when their hoop is on the line, not yours.

4) Get creative. At some point in a GM's career the last thing he wants to say is 'Okay, so you're all in a bar...'. This will happen a lot. Apparently every shadowrunner has the flaw 'mild alcoholic'. This is fine, but mix it up. What better place to meet a Johnson for the run at the combat biker arena, or during an Urban Brawl game? Talk about a white noise generator...

5) Use test encounters. A classic staple for every GM; you want to get a feel for the type of players you'll have. I ALWAYS use the 'It's late at night, the street you're on is pretty much deserted. A Joygirl/boy/thing wanders past you. She/he/it gets about 15 meters behind you when she/he/it gives out an unholy scream...' and then give them the chance to make per+int rolls to realize that passerby just got jumped by a ghoul. Nothing sucks more than having an adventure planned out for relatively moral players and then to be surprised (like I was) when they keep going and let the Joyperson be eaten alive. The nice thing about a GM screen is it will help hide the fact your jaw is on the table.

6) A problem I often encounter is that if you leave too much up to the players, the game can get bogged down. Every so often you may have to 'reverse' legwork to spur the adventure. If normally a character would call or visit their bartender friend, get the latest gossip, and tip 20 nuyen, what's to stop that bartender from calling the character to sell a 'drek-hot piece of news'? This is something I rarely see in most SR games, contacts that are proactive about getting favors/paid/debts to hold over the characters.

7) Make an evil villain for them. Yep, you can have a character too, and if you have older SR characters from any edition, what's to say they didn't retire and open up a gun store/talismonger shop/mechanic shop/whatever? Just don't make them bartenders, I think bars make up about 45% of the GNP of Seattle. But you'll need 'people' and an existing character is so handy when the players play "Oh, another bartender, eh? What's his name? What's he look like?" There's four million plus beings in Seattle, there's no way you can create stats and names for them all. That's why there are the contact NPCs in the back. Just jot down a name or two next to the archetypes when you're bored or watching the credits of your favorite movie or show. "The bartender's name is Colin, he's got reddish hair but is bald on top. He has a goofy grin as he asks you 'What's your poison?"

Let them kill their villain. The biggest problem most GMs face is the drive to play as well as GM. Don't do it. There's almost no way you can pull this off without pissing off your players. If you discover your team has a huge hole in it, with no Street Samurai/Hacker/Rigger/Mage/Face, you may be tempted to throw in an NPC to help out. The big trap is if your NPC is able to steal the spotlight, your players will get annoyed. The only safe way I've seen to give the players a hand as an NPC is to take say, a semi-retired ork Street Samurai who's tagging along because player character A's father/cousin/uncle/sister/dog once did him a favor. "Oh cool," you say, "I can help them out with tactics and advice!" DON'T. Being the brains of an outfit is a player's job. Your 'babysitter' is only there to give them the warning when an action is really really stupid. The positive quality of 'common sense' in previous editions let you help out a player before they decided to do something really stupid, and it helps keep the game rolling along 'Mugging Lone Star officers and stealing their cars... maybe not the best idea.' When they think they've got the hang of things, and when the run is going well, have those pissed-off go-gangers show up again (or that ghoul), and have them KILL the babysitter. This does two things, it removes your temptation to keep the NPC around, and it should shock the crap out of your players. If you can get one of the players to scream "Uncle Ben, noooooo!!" it'll get you some GM points.

Finally (yeah, sorry) a note about curveballs. You can throw them, but if you throw them too often it comes back to bite you. I used to totally screw with my players all the time because I felt SR was a very treacherous place where a Johnson would hire you to steal a new, experimental weapon only to get it, pay you, then shoot you with said experimental gun. Your players might like this (if they're masochists like my players are), then again, they might not ever feel like they can rest. They'll sit and wonder what their landlord meant when he made that crack about there being a lot of weather today...

The most important thing when GMing a game is tailoring it to your players and their characters. Don't give them a Matrix-heavy run if they don't have a decker, and don't put them in the middle of a huge gang war if they are all face/stealth types. Write it like you would a movie. No one wants to see a brainy computer nerd get in a fist fight with a 300 lb of muscle thug. They want him to outsmart the bad guy. No one wants to see Ahnold typing away at a computer to win either. They want to see him firing guns bigger than the entire cast put together and blowing crap up.

Also remember that cliches are cliches because they work. Movie cliches are perfectly acceptable to use. However, avoid RPG cliches. The meet in the seedy bar, run down motel, or abandoned industrial warehouse all work well, but mix it up. A meet at a park bench. The Stuffer Shack. As stated before, a Combat Biker or Urban Brawl match. Let the bad guy escape in a hidden escape pod. Money and power are the ultimate motivations for bad guys to do bad things. See something cool in a movie? Modify it then steal it.

Like everyone said, a group from 3-6 players works best. You can do 2 but you have to make sure to tailor your adventures for them to make sure that your investigative mage and stealthy sharpshooter aren't facing a half dozen cybered-up security guards in an open field. Seven or more players means that combat gets infinitely more complex and it's hard to keep track of what everyone's doing, especially since you'll need to beef up your NPC opposition in order to give them a challenge. Most published adventures (including the Missions adventures) are written with four PCs in mind, and a group of 7 or 8 players will steamroll right over any combat situations unless they're stupid. Plus, when players get bored that's when they start doing stupid things like tossing around soccer ball sized chucks of C4 with remote detonators as their primary weapon in a firefight in a corridor.

The most important thing to keep is mind is that you're playing a game. If you or any of your players aren't having fun, then what's the point? Keep that in mind when you're doing everything. Don't be afraid to pull pop culture references, tributes, parodies, and flat-out jokes if you think it'll help your group have fun. I stole a moment from one of my favorite novels once and, during a pitched battle in a city street and when one of the players made a DAMN lucky roll (3rd edition rules, he rolled like 40+ because he rolled 6 after 6 after 6), I had a frozen turkey fall from the sky at terminal velocity and kill one of the bad guys. Then the plastic timer popped out.

The Abstruse One

May I recommend starting with a canned adventure? There's On the Run, which I used to kick off my game. I've also got a couple of appropriate one-shots that were run at Gen Con last year; I can send them to you if you like.

After a canned run or two, you'll have a better feel of where the characters are going and who they are, and will be more able to pull some plot threads out of the game.

Also, if it helps, may I offer a link to my Shadowrun Resources page? There are some cheat sheets and other things on there.

I used a 3rd edition Missions adventure to start off my players. Its the one where they are all hired to guard a pavilion...I just re-statted some of the NPCs and it worked really well.

The thing I really liked about it was that it assumed they were all strangers, which a lot of PCs start off being, so you automatically get them all involved, in the same location and having to work together. Plus there was plenty of action to keep everyone involved...and gives the players a ton of choices to act or sit back and be cerebral:)

The one suggestion I would have is understand what your players are going to play. I've run old campaigns where we had no magic PCs, so I basically never used magic. Just get a solid understanding of what your players are going to want to play and I recommend having them fill more than just one role. Our hacker is also a shooter. Our stealth guy is also a shooter. That way you can always through in some action and keep everyone happy!

I've also removed technomancers as a PC option from my campaign. I still have them in the world, but I didn't want to give a player the frustration of having to play one:)

[QUOTE1. On page 84 it says that during the character creation process, all gear is subject to gamemaster approval and all gear must have an availibilty rating under 12. So what gear do most GMs not allow? Should I allow prohibited items all the way up to 8F or so? Any thoughts?[/QUOTE]

I allow all gear up to availability 12.

[QUOTE]2. On page 141 it says that by using image magnification equipment you can elimenate range modifiers once you are locked onto the target. Due to the nature of physics the size of the group increases, velocity decreases, (and accuracy decreases as a result) the farther the distance to the target- the shooter has no effect on that. Magnification helps you see the target, shure, but it shouldn't totally negate range modifiers. I don't understand the reasoning there.[/QUOTE]

I think the idea is that the bullet is still effected by the distance, losing kinetic energy as it leaves the muzzle, so the ability to accurately see the target isn't the only thing factored into range penalties.

[QUOTE]3. I was reading a shadowrun novel and came across a reference to a "Toxic Shaman," and couldn't find it in the book. From the description in the novel it dosen't sound like something I would let a PC play, but it sounds like a good NPC. What is it?[/QUOTE]

Big bad guys. More information is found in the magic supplement.

4. If you have a rigger that wants to have hot sim capability, do you modify his comlink to make it hot sim, or his control rig?

The comlink.

5. How many players is an average group? Like 4 or 5? Is 400BP what most people go with?

I think 4 is considered average, but I ran my game with 2 and they did alright. There was much more of an emphasis on stealth and dialogue this way, which I liked,


6. Is there any way I should handle the group's first run? Make it hard or make it easy, throw curve balls or kid gloves?

If possible, make the first run modular. What I mean, is have a series of encounters that can either be used or not without making an overall impact on the game. An example, might be a series of objectives that need to be completed. this way, if need be, you can add in one of the modules if the game is going faster or easier than you thought or leave our a module if you want to focus on what the group is currently doing for awhile.

Likewise, have a series of trigger-events to "stir things up" whenever the action starts to get stale. Stuff that can be used anywhere at anytime.

The most important thing is to decide on some overall themes for the campaign and stick them into the first one. My players were surprised, for example, that they interacted with one of the player's NPC brothers in thier first run, but I handed intended for "family" to be an important theme in the game, both for PCs and NPCs.

I would make it pretty easy. An intro adventure. Use plenty of grunts. I decided to set the first run against Lone Star to get the police involved early since I knew they'd be involved in many sessions. You could always set runs harder later (and it will make sense) but starting up with a hard run and then easing up is a little harder. Especially if the group gets discouraged after the first run.

I have an introductory adventure on my site you're welcome to use / cut up and steal from. The link is in my sig and it's in the Shadowrun section and called Cold Blood. (Not Carnival - that is almost an anti-introductory adventure). It talks through what is required for several of the rolls, difficulties, etc. It is only an introductory adventure though.

Anyway, welcome to the game. Good luck!

-K.

Thanks for help everybody! I have two more questions. First, do you keep track of the normal ammunition that your players use, or just assume that they always have it? Second, the ammo and firearm prices don't make sense. For example a FN HAR automatic is 1000Y, but 500 rounds of ammunition for it is 20Y per every 10 rounds or 1000Y (the cost of the gun itself). Every month I go through 500 rounds of .223 ammo target shooting with my AR-15, and that's just on semi-automatic with no rapid fire. You could easily go through a lot more with burst or full auto. Maybe I'm just making this to complicated but the rules don't make sense to me. The ammo is overpriced.

I don't think it's that bad. You don't really go through that much ammo unless you miss a lot. If a game had say 4 combats in it each lasting 3 initiative rounds and the sam had 3 passes and shot full auto full burst on all his actions that would be 270 rounds a game at 540 . More realistically would be burst fire for 2 simple actions each pass giving 162 rounds. A shadowrun is going to pay much more than this so it balances out.

maybe they took Chris Rock's advice on gun control!

it's really, really rare i a run that i even go through a full clip, on most of my characters. combat is deadly enough, and my characters tend to be min-maxed enough (hey, combat in SR is fun) that i don't need more than one burst per target. a week or so ago was the first time i ever remember someone having to change their clip in the middle of a round. granted, most of my experience comes from running a guy who really excels at firefights.

I at least track what they have in the clip and what they have on them. A little supressive fire and they'll go through a lot.

And that ammo doesn't lose velocity and such over the length of it's range. You have to poney up two nuyen a pop for that!

Well, IMO, your Availability question: Im also in the boat that if a character wants something really cool, that fits the character, and it's above availability, it's an easy handwave for me. I wont let the rules hold back someone trying to make something really interesting.

That being said, me and my buddies that have roleplayed for 12+ years together, don't even bother with availability at all. But that's a long time of gaming and trust, and usually we end up taking things beyond book availability(the biggie are Fake ID's. Just about every game has us starting with higher level fake IDs, but with a limit of 2 by the book, that's not hard to do.) And yes, weve all taken some big bang-bang at some point. We don't use it all willy-nilly however. (Two of our big game hunters a few years ago had started with a sniper rifle and a rocket respectively. But we never threw off the campaign. Some of the crap we could end up against could have shrugged it off, anyway. )

Basically; IMO, if you trust your players, then you could possibly handwave it all together and let the folks make what they see with no restrictions. But if you have a known powergamer/rules bender expert or two in your group, or are simply more comfortable with keeping with the rules til you are more experienced, it might be a good idea to keep it and just handwave it as you see fit.

Onto group size: i was in a SR group, my very first one, in 2e, once consisting of: Me(Street sam), sam, sniper merc, demolitions merc, combat mage, combat mage, combat mage, former company man, former company man, decker, and street guy. Yeah, all of that and we didn't even have a damn rigger. Simply put, it was waaaaay too many. I find 3-5 is the best size, with 2 being pretty fun as well(done it successfully), and 6 even being doable, but as a new GM, be careful there.

400 BP is a good amount. Race/Advantages/Disadvantages can raise or lower this, but Race is a set amount and you can have +/- 35 points of advads or disadvads, so that number will never go overboard. With a little more experience, low to high powered games will be easily doable. (Also rememeber the middle ground 350-450 point methods, which should easily work in with a lil' experience under the belt.)

I've always just assumed that the scopes of 2070 are smart enough to compensate for the other factors involved in "zooming in" on a target.

i'm not sure if this is what kzt is talking about, but zooming in on a target requires keeping the target in your scope as you zoom. a tiny movement means you lose your target, which means you have to zoom back out, re-acquire, and zoom back in again.

edit: yeah, that. that's why i've always advocated a flat distance penalty, in addition to the range categories. further targets, no matter how many fancy toys you have, are always harder to hit than closer targets.

How often are Runners shooting at over a klick????!!!!

Man, in every game I've ever played the 'long shots' were out around the 200-300 meter mark, and I KNOW you can shoot those with the naked eye without learning any of that fancy crap.

Of course, I can say that about the 600m mark as well, just with a bit more hedging.... okay... a LOT more hedging....

Well magnification (with smart gun) can offset shooter momvement same way image stablization can for cameras.

Prediction. With the magnification zooming in, detailed and accurate target information is available. the magnification could also include 'tracking's tyle cross-hairs that calculates in target movement and shooter movement 'predictions'. Sure you could suddenly jerk unexpectedly but more likely it is a somewhat rythmic motion. Computers wouldnt have a hard time judging.

Same way Tank now adays can fire dead on with their main gun, while moving top speed and still hit. Rest assured that barrel is moving, but with the right targetting (which in SR terms seems to be all vision magnification) 99% of that movement is predicatable thus offsetable.

We can assume that a 2070 optical scope comes standard with rangewinder and windometer and are able to communicate wirelessly with both the rifle it is attached to and the bullets in the gun to determine the exact powder weight, bullet weight, barrel length on the fly and uses all this information to calculate the exact path that the bullet will take.