Well, I'd like to open by saying this is my first post on these forums, I've spent the past week or so reading through posts and conversations in these forums and have learned a lot from it, so the point of this post is really to clarify some points that I haven't quite understood, and to get some advice from veteran Shadowrunners. I played the sega, and the super nintendo games, as well have run a few short sessions with second edition in the past, but primarily I have been an D&D nerd, as well this would be my first foray into GMing a campaign.

so, without any further yammering:

1 - how do Dragons in SR compare to Dragons in D&D, it seems to me that they're more prominent in everyday life, and they have more of a hand in political and corporate affairs, but would you consider them to be as dangerous as their D&D counterparts, and what would be involved in negotiating with one.

2 - The Players guide and GM Screen are obviously a vital part of a GM's arsenal, but I'm having difficulty in deciding which other guides would be good to read and have around as a major resource, Mr. Johnson's little black book has been recommended a few times I've noticed, but the pickings for 4th edition seem to be pretty slim right now and I'm not sure what else I need now, and what can wait.

3 - In comparing Earth, the Matrix, and the Astral World, could they best be seen as 3 dimensional layers? In that, each layer represents a different view of a simultanious reality. for example, within the astral world, would the world you see bear any resemblance to the world your physical form resides in? As for the Matrix if you subscribed to a node and went full VR, then from that node connected to a node inside a building nearby, would your Icon be considered as traveling to that node to read its information and having to travel back to your originating node in order to read the originating node's information, or would it be more akin to making a copy and you could access the information on both nodes simultaiously?

4 - In a typical legal battle, which would take presidence, corporate laws or national laws? does it depend on the location, who your SIN was registered with, or is it a simple tiered ladder?

5 - In what way does religion exist in SR, I have seen few, if any references to Christianity, Judaism, or Muslim beliefs, do these religions still exist, and how powerful would their presence be?

6 - In 4th edition, would cyberdecks and equivelant 3rd edition gear be usable with the current matrix? I would assume it would require a hardware connection, but would it be effective in combatting current IC and traversing the wireless web with hardware access to a wireless node?

Thats all I can think of right now, any other suggestions you may have would be welcome and appreciated

1: They aren't in everyday life. consider them as gods. as for negotiating: there ain't no such thing. a dragon tellls you to do something... you do it. then hope he forgets you exist.

2: IDK

3: yes. kind of, i'm too lazy to read the rest.

4: depends entirely on the circumstances. some corporations would not even give you a trial. you'd be shot "trying to escape". or you'd just disappear.

5: all exist. some are as powerfull as mid-sized corporations

6: technically not. (the web was pretty much rebuilt after the crash..)

fluff wise it's entirely up to you, the GM

First of all, fatal2ty, welcome both to the forums and to the game!

I think I might be able to help, I myself being a former AD&D gamer from a loooooooooooong time ago. How long? Before SpellJammer, before Planescape; back when the Forgotten Realms were just being accepted as the 'main' AD&D world.

First off, you should get familiar with some of the concepts from some very good sources; most cyberpunk-genre stories, some films & anime....for me, it all started with William Gibson's Neuromancer. He may not like what's happening with 'his' genre, but it's a good place to start.
Also, find & read ALL the SR novels.
No doubt quite a few DS-members here can point out more/better cyberpunk sources, but let me get back to your questions....

#1--The Dragons of SR may seem more prevailent, but most are just as reclusive (save for the late Dunkelzahn) & not overly fond of 'lesser' races. Some people in the SR world live their entire lives without ever meeting a Dracoform face-to-face.
Oh yes, they are as dangerous as their counterparts, but with a few added edges: they have lackeys, they have corporations, and they have more money than, well, God.

#2-- Any sourcebook reccomended at least more than twice is ESSENTIAL. Someone will reference some book & you'll need it to confirm.

#3--You pretty much answered your question right there. Re-read any entry on Astral Sight or going Astral in the main rules & the sb Street Magic.As for the Icon thing, yes.

#4--Corporate laws take precedence if you are on any corporate-owned land or in any corporate-leased building. National laws likewise apply only if you are on or in such designated areas. Many a shadowrunner has tried to get out of prosecution by a Corp by simply leaving it's jurisdiction. It's extremely rare that they get away with it. Many national goverments have 'quick-resolution' extradition treaties with several (if not all) Corporations stationed in their borders. Makes it easier just to hand the 'law-breakers' over to the offended Corp....saves on paperwork & makes the Nation look good.

#5--Again, check Street Magic. Religeon is very much a part of the Sixth World, especially when backed up by a person's faith & their Magic talents.

#6--Yes, but they would need some seriously expensive upgrades until they themselves get SOTA (State of the Art). The players can buy second-hand/third hand adapters & AR translators at some shady low-end tech shops (& risk a greater threat of it failing at a crucial moment), but it would be just easier to upgrade across the board.

Hope that helps.

1. Ok the big big difference in SR vs D&D is that SR dragons are actually smart. Yeah yeah I know the intelligence scores of D&D dragons, but DMs just generally have them sit in a cave until some PCs kill them.

SR dragons are smart and proactive. For example even if, hypothetically, the PCs did kill a dragon, expect it's will to offer untold amounts of wealth to whoever kills the PCs. But they wouldn't ever be able to sneak up on a dragons lair. It would have elaborate magical and technological defenses.

More importantly it probably knows you're looking into going after it. What, your hacker thought he could search for info on a dragon and not get flagged? It's pretty simple. Dragon leaves some juicy relevant bit where a skilled matrix data search could find it. Whoever shows up in the relevant node gets traced.

Players asking around for info? Sure your fixer knows somebody who knows something about the dragon, he can get the info for a price. Except the person the fixer knows is secretly in the employ of the dragon(a real world version of the matrix thing). The fixer gets his comcall traced. Maybe gets his place bugged. Pretty soon the dragon knows about the runners.

Stuff like that. It's how dragons operate. And their actual lair probably isn't where everyone thinks it is anyway.

In negotiating with a dragon expect it's plots ot be twisted and elaborate. Dragons in natural form also can't speak and must use telepathy.

(wow we're posting fast today)

Note that there are ranges of dragons and intelligences. There could be a weaker regular dragon that is highly reclusive. However still expect some very high end spirits, wards, anchored spells, paracritter friends, etc. And again finding it's layer isn't as simple as asking the peasents.

Also remember they keep thinking. Just fighting until they're dead isn't their style.

Finally an important fact is that you don't "level" in SR and get more hit points. In D&D an epic level character can reasonably survive even high end dragon attacks.

In SR you stay soft and squishy.

So summing up #1 could safely be "SR Dragons are gods, avoid them, or at least make them impossibly difficult.", fair enough.

To add to #2, are there any good canon books from SR1-3 that are more generalized that may help in SR4?

#3 seems clearer to me, but a thought i just had would be, could you use a node connected to a satellite to connect to another node on the other side of a country, or even the planet? Or is there a distance limitation for your connections?

#4 makes sense, are there any maps depicting corporate boundaries, or is that all that the GMs discression?

#5 is an easy answer, and gives me some ideas for a Campaign

and I'm happy with the answer for #6. But to exapnd it, lets say the team found an old cyberdeck that supposedly held vital information, would it be somewhat easy to interface with it, or would it require a trip to a hardware store?

Firstly:

corporate territory starts when you walk onto thier property

when you walk into an Ares store, you're on their sovereign territory. you are under Ares law.

same for Saedder Krupp, same for Aztechnology.

Elaborating on the matrix. I wouldn't think of it overlaying the real world, more like a seperate dimension. You connect to the matrix anywhere and you can pretty well get anywhere else. (the obvious exception being the isolated systems the good paydata is on).

You don't typically even decide how your data is routed. You also maybe changing how you access it (for example as the team drives around you are probably roaming from node to node to access the matrix).

Also that signal may be bouncing through three sattelites and one undersea fibre line.

All of that is assumed to be handled by the system seamlessly.

ok, heres another thought I just had, IRL I live in Edmonton, Canada, so the prospect of sending my team to the Athabaskan Council in a Campaign is tempting, are there any dedicated guides to the Athabaskan Council, or will I just be piecing it together from other guides

Oh, and the police themselves are a corporation. In some runs that could be relevant. For example, there is an ongoing rivalry between the police (Lone Star) and the Ares contract security force Knight Errant -- and if the PCs are in a position to embarrass one, maybe the other might be more willing to give them a break?

I love torrents, i'm now in possession of all the books mentioned in this thread, most I will buy hardcopy, but for now this works(yes, even the Native American Nation books). thanks for all your input and suggestions so far.

1. If you're interested in Shadowrun dragons, hunt down Dragons of the Sixth World. (Looking forward to using both Damon and Celedyr in my campaign... ) but, yes, they're scary fraggers; as was mentioned, Aden reduced Tehran to ruins, Ghostwalker went toe-to-talon with the Azzies (and just about everyone else in Denver) and won; at one point in that fight, he took a air-to-air missile on the chin and shrugged it off. And if you read the late President Dunklezhan's will, you will realize exactly how much resources the lizards have at their disposal.

2. The older books that I've found over the past year that I consider the most useful are:
Dragons of the Sixth World
Threats 2
Loose Alliances
Year of the Comet
New Seattle
Corporate Download
Sprawl Survival Guide
System Failure
3rd ed. SR Companion

And I found some ideas in Target: Matrix that I plan to inflict on my hacker (he's already come up against the "Hunt-A-Decker" business, and I plan to see how long it'll take before anyone notices his absence when he finds a node that's frozen)

3. For that question, I shall defer to knasser.

4. Check the Sprawl Survival Guide; good stuff there on the legal system. Personally, though, if my SINless players ever get caught by a corp, they're in for a rough time; cranial bombs or Gerzel's fun suggestion in this thread as incentive to do whatever the exec wants them to do.

5. The religions are still around, although they're losing followers daily; however, the Middle East is still feeling the grip of Islamic fundies, no one wants to mess with Israel after they nuked Tripoli, and the Christian right is still going strong in the U.S. Also, there are bits in Loose Alliances and Threats 2 about religious groups. Oh, and in Runner Havens, there's a group in Seattle called the People of the Book which is a cross-religion project. And, as I'm Jewish myself, there'll be a magical group of Awakened rabbis available soon for download and use as NPCs (I couldn't resist when I saw the Quabbalist tradition in Street Magic).

6. Do you have any Pentium III computers left in your house? Think the same thing, except worse. The rate of advancement today is running up the tree of knowledge like a hyperactive squirrel; in 2070, it'll be like that same squirrel after a couple of cans of Jolt soda, some Red Bull and the most sugary cereal that you can find.

*cough* I'm posting off a Pentium III. The sole issue I have -- other than some piece of malware I've picked up somewhere that's violently objecting to Flash -- is the actual connection (so called "high speed" dial-up).

Sorry. *sheepish smile* Perhaps a Pentium II would be more illustrative? Or maybe AGP expansion slots?

And then there's the 486 in the background (though I've had to cannibalise its monitor for this computer -- the previous one died, not in sparks, but in loud *bang* and smell of burnt wiring). I think I tore out every extraneous file from the core MS functions (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/IE) getting that one to flow smoothly with an Internet connection. I even found and deleted the picture of Bill Gates.

Let's compromise on a 286 if we're being kind -- the step just below where people who liked playing with computer innards used to find it cost-effective to upgrade -- or, if the GM is feeling particulary SotA-ish: a Commodore 64.

I wonder if there are old cyberdeck clubs out there, swapping among themselves the available programs?

Hi,

First off, welcome to the SR throng - I hope you enjoy the experience !!


Anyways, I find the D&D vs SR Dragon conversation most interesting in showing how people played Dragons in D&D, even though they are very nearly the same as SR Dragons - just without the tech.

As has been mentioned, Corps have extra-territoriality and their properties are considered separate countries [there's an explanation of how this happened in the SR rulebook]..
..But in practice they don't push their boundaries and extra-territoriality much, to try and maintain a 'good' public image.

Obviously, criminals receive the full weight of Corp Law, but minor transgressions of public idiocy has people handed over to the local law enforcement [usually a Corp of its own].


The longterm storage of data is starting to be a problem even now, and is a project that was mentioned on the BBC website recently - 1 generation apart can usually be worked around, but the problem you're talking about is more like 2 or 3 generations difference - 5.25 inch floppies, 3 inch disks, 14400 baud modems, etc.

In fact, since the 'Internet' was rebuilt from the ground up, maybe using an 'old' Deck is like using the equivalent to using a non-cyberdeck to access the Matrix - slow, cumbersome, barely usable. After all, cyberdecks are meant to be specialised computers in the first place, so take that advantage away and they're not much use [Kromosome [another Cyberpunk RPG] has good rules on different grades of computer].


Just my thruppence..

@ bclements:

Hey, it's not that bad! And besides, there are Plans to upgrade, sometime before Christmas. I've been pointed to lots and lots of non-Vista possibilities in the Infiltration Challenge thread.

(I don't see Vista as any kind of improvement. I'd almost rather be using DOS again.)

Re dragons:

Standard ones have been weakened enough to make them (just) potentially killable by high-level PCs (but don't forget Hardened Armor 8, Mystic Armor 8, Compulsion, Fear, Influence -- quite apart from any spells they might have, since they are all magicians).

Great dragons are in another league again. Check out the Twist Fate power:

Even with the twist fate power, they're still only nice, but not unkillable. Drain-rules for high-powered spells cast against multiple objects still apply to Great Dragons too, so they can't cast all too high spells around. If somebody wants to take out a Great Dragon, they'll be smart and well-equipped enough to deal with him and have a good chance to succeed (not exactly 50%, probably less, but still affordable), exactly the same in D&D. There, you have super-high-powered adventurers with super-expensive magical items specialised on killing dragons taking on the Elder Wyrms.
It's only a group-intern matter of how killable you want to make them. However, SR shouldn't be D&D in the future. Greater Dragons simply use their smarts to not engage in any battle at all. The farer the technology goes on, the less the Greater Dragons are able to take humans hand-on single-handedly.
Of course, you do have the odd exception like Ghostwalker, but that was under the power-creep of third edition, where Shadowrunners also seemed to become superheroes, instead of the hired criminals they're meant to be and has been re-justified in 4th edition.

Tone down the power-creep from before.

Power creep -- before?

Before, when you could only begin up to a specific level, which represented only the beginnings of true mastery? and gave an infinite scale for growth?

Whereas now, under SR4 rules, when most Dumpshock players seem to feel they aren't properly optimising their builds if they don't absolutely max out their area of expertise to the point where no improvement is possible there -- not to hired criminal level, but to best in the world level? -- and with 'ware, well beyond what is humanly possible?

Which system has the power creep again?

Dumpshock-users do not represent the majority (nor are they a minority either). Not everybody wants and needs a 6/7 in whatever particular skill there is.

Also, infinite growth isn't a good argument against the power-creep of SR3. Quite contrarily. That's where the infamous Thor comes from, the SR-character, published somewhere on the internet either for real or as a joke on the rules (people rather theorised it was meant for real) who had more strenght, body, charisma, willpower, intelligence and quickness than every Great Dragon was ever going to have.

Besides, I get the feeling that many of the "best of the best" one-trick-ponies that get posted here aren't what people actually play, . I don't have any real evidence of that, but it's a feeling that I get, just like all the debates about how "broken" magic or whatever else is as a thought execise.

Dude, are you reading the same rules and canon material that I am? We're talking about Great Dragons here. Nothing short of atomics can take them out. It's not "dragon worship," it's just the facts. The stats and powers are totally over the top. In fact, they even go so far as to mention that the stats or pointless but listed in case you need something in a hurry. Can you say "hardened armor of 20+???"

From SR4 pg 295-296...

to clear up a few misconceptions:

1) not all dragons are magicians.

2) not all dragons are filthy stinking rich (though i would suppose that many or most of them are at the very least rich, and probably working on becoming filthy stinking rich, this doesn't mean they are all there yet)

3) dragons, once you have them away from all their safeguards and you have the right gear/preparations, *can* be killed. in fact, it's really not all that difficult. however, this is kinda like saying that a team of armed soldiers could have killed sadam hussein at any time... *if* they could get to a point where it's them vs. him with no one else around. except that with dragons, it's more like you're facing an apache or a fighter jet with a lot of protection around it... dragons are smart, scheming creatures, and they are so tough not just because they are powerful directly, but especially because of their indirect power.

Did I mention Hardened Armor of 20+ ? For reference:

SR4 page 288...

hmmm... obviously they've changed stuff then, because dragons didn't used to all be magicians before. i can't help wondering if that was intentional or not...

as for your hardened armor 20 nonsense, maybe you should take a closer look at the page you're quoting about dragons all being magicians, because it clearly says hardened armor *8* is standard. sure, if you want to talk about great dragons, then yes they have hardened armor 20. but great dragons are rare, and if you are anywhere near good enough to be able to get a shot off at a great dragon, then you should be packing the kind of weapon that makes 20 hardened armor not significant (for example, an ares citymaster has effectively hardened armor 20... perhaps you think they're indestructible too? i will be shocked if arsenal doesn't introduce something bigger than we have now, and even if it doesn't we already have rockets that, against a greater dragon (should probably treat it as a vehicle for anti-vehicle rocket purposes) will punch through it's hardened armor no problem)

Sorry, man, dragons have always been magical.

They can't exist without it - it's how they fly, how they breathe, how they communicate. Dragons are highly magical creatures that breathe mana like air, always have been in SR.

Doesn't mean they can't be killed - you just have to be careful.

To make this point even more clear (please accept my apologies), there's no firearm/rocket/missile listed in the basic book that can hurt even a run-of-the-mill Great Dragon in his natural form. Munitions just bounce off.

Will Affect Great Dragon
An artifact-level weapon foci: Yes
Atomics/WMDs: Yes
Chemical/biological agent: Perhaps (body of 25 would be one tough resistance test)
Building collapsing upon him: Yes
Earth being eaten by Galactus: Yes

Will NOT Affect Great Dragon
Small arms: No
Heavy weapons: No
Fighter aircraft: No
Most powerful missile/rocket listed in game: No, but getting closer

the most powerful rocket in the book can go through 22 points of hardened armor, assuming 0 successes (note: 0 successes isn't possible while still hitting).

as far as dragons always being magical, that is true. but they weren't always all magicians, as i recall. you can be magical without being a magician.

They always had the Sorcery Power. The Magician Quality wasn't even invented until SR4, in which it replaces the Sorcery Power.

Pretty sure you have this wrong. AP only matters for the damage resistance test, as I stated. Not for determining if it exceeds Hardened Armor.

SR4 pg 152...