I've got a player that wants to design his own drones.

Any GMs with experience in this department want to give me some advice? If I recall correctly, there aren't currently any published rules for creating vehicles/drones...

And there won't be.

There should be modification rules in Arsenal. And more base drones.

Otherwise, remember that custom vehicles are going to be hugely expensive, just like they are now.

And if the design if too good to be true, it certainly shouldn't be allowed.

And the opposition has lots more money and riggers than the players.

Take a look at what they want.

If you know your players well, give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are just creating something new and different.

Not all players go into design mode with 'munchkin' on their minds. But yeah, if it looks a bit...much, just ask them to tone it down a bit. Most players are happy to compromise with a design if they know they can bring in one of *their* designs.

But yeah, it's going to cost. Typically, IRL buying the parts is alot cheaper than the whole. Alot of times when my friends get a new computer, they'd rather save a few hundred, get the parts, and assemble it themselves.

However, in SR, it's the opposite(buying the whole is usually much cheaper than getting the parts). I suppose things changed in the 2050s on up that it became less expensive to get a whole item.

I love the idea of customization, and i await Arsenal for rules on it. That's one of the things i loved about SR3 and made playing a techwiz so fun.

There are two distinct takes on "designing" your own drone. One would be to slap together proven and well engineered parts from drones that do work... Taking the chassis from one brand and combining it with the motivation units of another and the weapon systems of a third. That sort of thing is not terribly difficult (Chevy v8 in a Ford etc.).

Designing your own drone from scratch? That is... well, for a player it is basically impossible. Thats what corps have legions of engineers, R&D scientists, chemists, computer programmers and all that hoo hah for. It can take whole teams of people years to develop a working prototype of a fresh design. The minute amount of engineering that takes place on every part of a complex mechanical design is staggering.

If you want to understand empathy imagine any device that you use regularly. Now imagine an engineer banging his head into a wall for hours on end trying to make it work just right. Welcome to the human race, thats empathy.

Seriously.

I have had players come to me requesting to build custom drones. Working with them is a must to make sure that the thing does not go above and beyond reason. The players in the past that I have worked with about this generally were just fine with combining bits and pieces of other drones (and borrowing chunks of their stats) to create a drone of their own style and uses.

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

If I am designing something like a new gun, drone or vehicle, I rarely if ever treat it as a 'custom' design. Instead I treat it as one of the many examples of the object (gun, drone, etc) that the big corporations make that just has not been published yet (and as such is usually on a par with them in power level). It doesn't even have to be a newly-designed end product, as there are far more examples and variations of items in the world than are listed in the books.

That's how I typically treat it, too. Shadowrun does a very poor job of demonstrating a wide array of technology, and even in fields where the technology shouldn't be as grossly different from one another in an abstract system (read: individual guns within the same bracket) they show that they are. But then only list a tiny handful of such options. And in a world as commercial and corporate as the Sixth World, there's obviously a lot more options available.

Which is where the old creation rules came in. Sure, you could min/max them to death and create some nearly game-breaking items, but despite that tendency they still had a lot of good guidelines for creating more appropriate things. I particularly enjoyed making "spy cars" ala James Bond with Rigger 3.

But, yeah, as others have said there likely won't be any rules for designing new equipment in SR4. Street Magic was the closest so far and their spell design rules are grossly limited in scope (which, to be honest, is as much a fault of the new game mechanics as it is the actual design rules). Best advice is to just ask your friend/player what he has in mind, find the closest thing, and help him tweak it so that you both like it.

I'd recommend giving anything tweaked significantly an inborn Gremlins-like flaw when used, however, just to make things more interesting and give a reprecussion for all that modifying (which works nicely for both a vehicle that's been heavily modified or a stolen prototype). But that's just me.

As Fortune and Doc have pointed out, the SR books are usually pretty sparse when it comes to the sheer variety of crap that is/can/will be produced. Looking at the vehicles listing will show this pretty clearly - one vehicle per major class or type. Only a few manufacturers are even present.

Its not hard to extrapolate whole lists of other vehicles with slightly tweaked stats all with different names from different companies. I have several tables of new firearms and vehicles for SR3 that are for precisely this purpose - to expand on the otherwise vanilla item lists.

As long as the custom design conforms relatively closely to the design specs, as represented by stats, given in the book, there should be no problems explaining the hows or whys.

Exceptional gear is a horse of a different color, however.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

Thank you for all the responses, but allow me to clarify.

First off, while I genuinely appreciate the feedback that was given, I would like to request that people do less "oh you can't do that, think about it" and more "well, this is what I would do".

I understand that coming up with an entirely new, functional, from-scratch drone is the purview of corporations and influential individuals. The player in question wasn't looking to create his own drones from scratch, but to design new drones that would be available commercially.

I don't mean to be rude, and I hope I didn't come off that way. It's my fault for not phrasing the question more precisely.

Thanks!

Yeah, thanks a lot guys. Also, I'm confused as to what exactly you can do with drones.

[Gears of War Reference]: A player wants to have a "Jack"-like drone, with the tools required to defeat physical security. How would I do that? He's concerned about the amount of noise such a drone would make. How much noise does say, a Dalmatian make? Can you create an autosoft that emphasizes stealth (i.e. a drone stealth skill)?

The autosofts in the book lead me to believe that they're only supposed to do certain things (combat, perception, etc), but what do you think about autosofts that give other skills, like First Aid, or Hardware (Maglocks)?

Hmm. Ok.

You need a stable platform. Base: Doberman or Steel Lynx depending on size. Likely the latter. Now we go the route of the good olde Hachiman-series and use a upper-body-style turret. This is just framework so we don´t change the stats.

Next we add some solid cyberarms, armored to the max. to reflect vehicle armor. Installing those should require both cybernetics and mechanic skills. I would also require that the player programs a special autosoft for his drone to make use of the arms.

Seems we are done already, and the player can make use of several background skills that are otherwise unused.


For stealth: There already is a talent soft for that. Allow your player to program a drone version (Autosoft) for this. A Steel Lynx should sneak as well as a troll, whatever that means in your campaign. Too large, too heavy, but potentially able to move silent IF going slow.

One thing to keep in mind is that in many systems, crafting breaks the game a bit. In D&D, half-cost for magical items can be an awesomely strong power (a single feat can enhance all your attributes and much more).

With the ability to make drones, the player gains a huge benefit. They could potentially reduce the cost of drones, right then and there gaining more drones for the same nuyen in exchange for... a skill they would have had anyway and a workshop they would have had anyway. That's pretty strong. Then, they might be able to add special features no other drone has, such as disabling maglocks. They could patch party holes just by building the right type of drone.

For those reasons, I would guess, the rules don't allow them.

Thus, I'm cautious. Now, if you know your player won't abuse things, or if they are looking for a bit of power but not much, then it is a great idea. You could add balance in several ways:
- require a facility instead of a workshop
- require adventuring to secure expertise for every single drone design (steal plans, gain contacts, gain parts, etc.)
- require full cost rather than giving discounts, since they are not a corp with tons of resources.
- consider increasing glitche chancess or adding flaws.

Then have fun with designs. Just take existing drones, remove one benefit to add another, or increase cost. A normal drone that can also bypass maglocks? I would probably take the cost of the maglock passkey they are replicating, add it to the drone, and add some safety margin of cost based on the type of cash flow the party often has.

The important part is to have a good conversation with the player that ensures balance. It can be "easy come, easy go", where low cost is allowed but the player knows the drone can glitch at any time, or it can be a harder balance where the PC has to put lots of effort into something but it will then work well.

Hope that helps in some way.

I'm a big fan of "Half-Life 2" engineering. Let players cobble together scrapwork vehicles over many months of in-game time, but plague it with problems and maintenance issues. In the long run, it'll actually cause them to build an attachment to it.

I'll do an example with making a vehicle rather than a drone since I recently wrote one up for a campaign I'm playing in. The process should be relatively similar though. It helps too if you can get your hands on Rigger 3 or some such to at least use as a guideline.

1) Determine what exactly you want your new toy to accomplish. In my case I wanted an armoured luxury sedan. Something that wouldn't look out of place in a AA neighborhood, but could take a shot too.

2) Determine if this is something that a market would exist for, or is your PC going to be building it in his garage out of old toaster ovens and lawnmower parts. If you decide that someone out there is making it then it's going to be a lot cheaper to get. In my case I figured there would definitely be a market for it. The same market that buys Lexus' and BMW's today is going to want it, especially if it will protect them from getting shot up by go gangers, or random road ragers.

3) Determine who is making it, and who the market is. If the market is military, that will definitely affect the cost. In my case I figure I'll have Mercedes build the car. They're an established high end manufacturer and something like this would be right up their alley.

4) Find something in the BBB that is similar. This gives you a base line to modify somewhat so you don't end up with a step van that can drag race westwinds. I'm looking at a combination of a Westwind and a Patrol-1.

5) Start tweaking. I want the car to have fairly good handling, not as good as the patrol or the Westwind since it isn't designed for it, I wast decent acceleration, and top speed, the patrol car is probably a perfect match here. Pilot, and body can probably stay the same as the patrol car as well. I'll bump the armour up to 12 though. Set the availability at 8 so you'll probably have to go on a waiting list for it, but it's perfectly legal. Since it's a luxury sedan we'll set the price at 35,000 ballpark.

A the end of the day we have something that looks like this