I have to ask why this trend towards street level games? Most of the players I have ever known want to play epic games, to be the hero that rises up, not some one who is trapped always on the bottom rung. The current incarnation seems bent on making every one play one style, street. Yes I know people here have posted ways to up the level, so to speak and i have come up with several on my own. Still the game itself as it is presented does not seem to lend itself to any other style of play rather than the previously mentioned street level. Hand in hand with this is the apparent removal of all meta plots. The exception to this is Emergence and that was really a hold over from 3rd edition. I really am not out to start an argument but am genuinely curious as to why this has happened. As we do have many of the free lance writers who developed the latest edition, here on Dump Shock I was hoping they mite shed a little light on this for me.

...To be fair, I've yet to run a pc by the normal rules that wasn't either capable of whipping out Force 8+ level spells, throwing a dozen plus social dice, blowing up a van with a compound bow or a designer baby with 7+ reaction, reflex recorders and the ability to memorize and instantly adapt to his opponent's fighting style, gaining extra die. So I guess I don't see how it's very "street level". It's perhaps "street level" relative to the stupidly powerful Priority A in nuyen samurai you used to be able to make in SR3, but honestly, I think the gulf between 5 or 6 essence Joe Mundane and the Awakened or highly cybered shadowrunner is wide enough where it's awfully hard to call a Samurai with 30-40 points crammed into combat 'ware weak, and I think Adepts in general got a big power boost with the new edition.

It's street level if the other jerks on the street can do that stuff too.

the opinion in the industry seems to be that dark and gritty is cool and that cool equals fun somehow . . while it is in my opinion quite the opposite as i don't really like that james bond style or splinter cell run style realistically speaking if you're playing a STREET Runner with mucho chrome you will not be able to do many things because you would stand out like a sore thumb . .

Chrome is less of a pain in the ass than ever in the shadowrun rules. Before you got flat social penalties based on your essence because you were "creepy" or something. Now, if they've got a scanner or someone assensing you at the door you need the correct licensing, a reason to be there or a Hacker on call to sleaze you past scanners. The really noticeable stuff like big time muscle replacements and dermal plating is either dinosaur 'ware used by poor gangers or molded into stylized plates and engraved as a status symbol. As the books say, nobody really cares what you look like, as long as you don't look poor. If your GM wants to punch your PC right in the balls for having such stuff, that's their prerogative, but I don't really think the rules as a whole have as big of a bias against cyberware as many people seem to think, nor do I think any bias is unique to this edition.

quoth the GM:"i don't friggin care what the rules say! people will remember the 3m large Troll with the tricked out obvious and heavyly armored cyber-arm and the obvious cyber skull!"

Again though, what's that have to do with 4th edition? A GM taking issue with Robo-Troll is something that transcends editions. The biggest difference I really see in terms of power level from 3rd to 4th is some incompatibility in character conversion and that people are generally working with smaller piles of nuyen in general (but most 'ware is also WAAAY cheaper). Admittedly, there's a lack of metaplot books, but I don't really see how that really limits your "epic" options all that much. After all, in earlier editions I used to play in a group that apparently had some real epic shit going down until Ghostwalker moved into Denver and pooped all over the city, leaving them to either diverge from canon or find a new town to play in for most of 3rd.

Personally, I do think SR is somewhat less "epic" right now on a global scale, but I don't think it has as much to with power level as it does with a lack of metaplot books offering up some inspiration (even if I do think most metaplots like the YOTC events are silly). The tools for making runs crazy are still there though.

Dark and morally dubious is in. Heroes are out. Haven't you noticed TV and Hollywood movies, recently? I think the cultural trend is partly because there's a growing realisation on the part of a lot of people in the West that they're governments can actually be total shits and so there's a lot of self-justification gritty-hero stuff. You know - it's okay to torture and threaten, because sometimes you just got to do what's necessary, right? Right? Or maybe it's just that the demographic being targetted is just so fat and happy and free right now, that they need some artificial darkness so they can identify with someone rebellious. Or, perhaps this one - populations are spending so much effort on not noticing the terrible things that are going on over their heads, a little indulging in a fantasy of acknowledging that where it's accepted, is wanted by them. I'd be fascinated to hear what other Dumpshockers think.

But street... I don't play at ganger-level but I start things off fairly low-powered and I never lose perspective on the power-scale. However, the plot-lines I bring in tend to get pretty high-level, at least that's what I was working toward last time before my group imploded. I don't see the point in grinding misery, or the fun. I don't even see much realism in portraying endless grinding misery as I've been in some pretty miserable places myself and still found people caring about each other and hoping for better. The purpose of the dark and the brutal is to make the beauty of things stand out more. My favourite moment GM'ing a Shadowrun game was after running a couple of really dark sessions, in which I took the darkness literally as well as metaphorically, letting no action happen outside of night or warrens of concrete, the players came out on to the roof of a abandoned tenement block in the barrens finally above the clouds, to release a shaman that they'd rescued. Watching him fly away in the form of an owl, under the full moon made for a really nice sense of triumph over adversity.

That's what the grittiness of Shadowrun is for to me.

Why street level? Because your chars are king of the street. They might improve over time, their corporate targets become harder. But from the get-go, lowly gangers usually should stay away from the group. I´ve run a 400 BP Mafia campaign, and am now running a 450 BP Yakuza campaign now (by affiliation only in both cases). Financial success makes them move up in society, but we stil run street-based. Respect on the street is good protection from the law.

Although not familiar with previous editions, I don't see SR4 as particularly pointing GMs or players at street level. It has rules including high-end stuff such as luxury lifestyle, augmentation costing millions of nuyen (eg delta-grade synaptic booster 3), stats on dragons and other nasty beasties if you end up opposing one directly, and enough raw material to write a plot involving epic magic (a master mage vampire and his minions are taking over your home city, PCs to the rescue), epic Matrix intrigue (NeoNET vs Deus, PCs tip the scales in humanity's favor), and so forth.

A 400 BP character could start as one of the more dangerous people on the street, and as they gain karma and connections, could quickly get involved in increasingly important affairs, and in a year's playing time, could be tipping the scales of an epic level conflict. If they then go back to their street gang, they should stand out like Merry and Pippin returning to the Shire (or, taking that storyline back a few millenia, like Odysseus returning to Ithaka and "cleaning house" at 100-to-1 odds).

If the GM puts NPC gangers with synaptic boosters on the street, then that GM is, in my opinion, sabotaging the potential of their game. Save that for the Renraku Red Samurai - and not the ones at the local facility; the ones who guard the underground core of the Tokyo main office.

I guess it nails down to how much you think runners should earn. I didn't play SR before 4th, and when I saw 'on the run' I was disappointed with how much the runners made. You're taking pretty extreme risks so there should be significant money on the table. But other people might think that it sfair enough.

And the tone of your game will logically follow from the cash. Runners pulling in 20k a run for once a month action are going to be playing a much less gritty feeling game than guys running 4 times a month for 5k a throw, despite both teams making the same cash.

I GM at the 20k¥+/run side of things. The streets are the habitat of my runners, even if they live a pretty good life. If by street you meant being powerless and downtrodden, then we are definitly not on a same view of the world. I mean, my players can´t afford everything they want, but if they have problems with a gang, the local oyabun will be PLEASED to help. Against the whole lot of them, even a SWAT team has to take care. That is what makes a street runner, not being poor.

I like to play and run in good middleground. 400 point chars(occationaly dipping to 450, which i find doesn't really change things enormously), decent pay. I have noticed alot of people asking about ''How to run a street campaign? 300-320 point characters! Never go above availability!!!!'' and the like.

Actually, i have, a couple of times, posted characters for critique. Now, our group doesn't, and has NEVER, played with availability. So i ask for some honest critiques. No problems. I like to see if im going in an interesting direction or not, or if im playing something that im not familiar with, if im going in the right direction with it. (Im not that experienced with hackers, for example.)

The first thing ive heard people say(and im NOT pointing fingers, and i can sort of understand, and honestly anymore i don't even remember names, nor would i care or put them down if i did), was to comment, rather on background, story, skill selection or anything else, was ''this character has one piece of ware above availability'...AFTER i explain, in the original post, that we dont use it and have never.

It doesn't upset me, i asked for critiques after all, but i sometimes wonder how all the good meat of a character can go unnoticed for one piece of ware that's ''above the written rules in the BBB that can be looked over anyway, since no BBB rule is in stone''. And im guessing this goes to the whole thing that runners must be kept in check. I know im not part of the only group that has skipped the availability...but i sometimes wonder why people seem to notice when something is ''too much'' LONG before they notice a cool backstory piece. It seems ingrained in many people that ''going over availability at chargen is a big nono''...but perhaps we are a rare group that plays without it. To me, i don't care if someone posts a critique about availability. I MIGHT comment if they have a HUGE load of stuff that goes above, to just check with the GM if he or she isn't using it. And that's after i go over the meat.

Then i realize the amount of folks who prefer the low end games and i think i understand it more. I, for one, have had slogged through countless games where we start at 1st level and are scarcely more than gum on a shoe, so to us, moving onto Shadowrun where we can be actual movers and shakers from the start is fun for us. We aren't gods, we're just better than the average gang member. That being said, ive been in a couple gang type campaigns and have had alot of fun. But for me, i prefer it more sporadic. Middle ground rules....it's not so powerful that you walk on everything, and it's not so low that you're fighting for your next cup of soycaf and half a soymuffin out of a dumpster.

I agree there aren't many metaplot books, but then 4th ed is young in its cycle. I count something like 6 books so far excluding BBB - 2 core rules (magic and cyber) 2 setting (runner havens and corp enclaves) 1 adventure (on the run) and 1 plot style book (emergence). Personally I would prefer there be a few setting books given the jump between 3rd and 4th, as well as the core rule books which there are still 2 missing. Once these are laid down I can easily imagine more plots coming up.

The problem here is that SR4 suffers from a massive disconnect. The stated intention of the devs was to return to a grittier, "street-level" game, closer to Shadowrun's cyberpunk roots. The game as delivered favors robo-trolls, pornomancers, Force-12 Stunballs, and Mr. Luckies; definitely far and above the "street-level" characters the fluff text and a few half-assed rules try to force onto players.

So, on the one hand, you've got all this stuff that tries to trick you into playing a street punk, and either ignores or is oblivious to the fact that those characters are, at best, barely viable. Thus, you end up with some people who are frustrated with their useless characters, and others who are frustrated with the fact that they overpower everything.

I think the problem is that when the devs said "street level", they were thinking "Let's get away from this overpowered anime crap with jet-setting runners who can't kick a can without hitting an immortal elf or a great dragon, and get back to more traditional runs of deniable assets committing inter-corporate espionage and terrorism." Unfortunately, some people heard "street level" and thought it meant playing gangers, punks, and novice criminals.


The book is pretty clear that the default is still professional-level characters. Even archetypes such as the sprawl ganger are described as big fish in a small pond who want to move up the criminal ladder. When it talks about build points, it describes 400 as the normal starting allotment, with 300 given as an example of a low-level street campaign, and 500 as an example of a high-powered elite operative campaign.


I think that the game is actually fairly well balanced, in that a lot of the things that people complain about (pornomancers, troll tanks, high Edge characters, overcasted spells, etc.) are NOT as overpowered as they are made out to be. Most characters have plenty of weaknesses that can be exploited, and can be challenged even in their areas of strength without too much difficulty. The only problem is that with an open build system, you can have characters with widely varying degrees of effectiveness, even when they are built to do similar things.

The gray hats also never promised we would feel clean afterwards, which is where the white hats went wrong. People can stand to get a little dirty to get important things done if they have to, but if you even hint at a clean way then they run to the path of least resistance. The gray hats tell it like they see it, it's hard and dirty, but it will work and unless you want those black hat bastards it is the only way. Eventually, after white hats failing and us falling in the mud so they can stay clean, people learn to crave the gray.

Chris

Well in my opinion, Fourth Edition's Engine is way too easy to break once you move away from "Street Level", so that is one of the reasons I tend to play at that level, another is the fact that I personally like dark and gritty Pink Mohawk style games, and in my opinion the street is a better place for those types of stories to unfold. (Granted, sometimes a little epic gets thrown in as spice just to keep things fresh.)

Eh, let's not go too heavily into politics, shall we?

Cyberpunk, like it or not, has never been about heroes; like most good sci-fi it's about taking a hard look at the ramfications of imagined social and technological developments and not flinching away when they lead us to an idea we may not be so comfortable with. Shadowrunners are hired criminals and therefore the majority of the things they do isn't going to be very heroic. To act otherwise runs counter to cyberpunk's deepest themes, which if nothing else is about following ideas to their logical, sometimes ugly conclusions.

Because of this Shadowrun has always had to run an uneasy line between what people are comfortable playing and what its themes dictate should happen in a lot of scenarios. I know one thing is for sure though: Shadowrun was first a product of the late 80's, a time when comics and a lot of pop culture was getting bored of the super heroic white hat stuff and turning towards darker fare in general and the trend has been going full tilt ever since. Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, The Watchmen, Pulp Fiction, Spawn, gangsta rap, Scream, Saw and the re-emergence of the horror genre as a box office force has shown everyone that you don't need to tack on a happy ending or portray people as heroes or even having redeeming qualities to justify a piece of fiction's existence. These days many people will accept even the darkest and most ridiculous premises provided that what comes next is somewhat consistent with the original idea's implications, a development that dovetails nicely with cyberpunk's themes. Whether that's a good thing, of course, is completely a matter of opinion. I'm sure most of us would agree that it's far more important for a GM to care about what his players think than whether Bruce Sterling would approve.

We play SR that always starts out street and ends up epic.

For instance at the moment we have 4 PCs with over 5000 karma between them.

Attributes of 30+ are not uncommon (some 40+), skills of ~10 are common and several characters have their key skills are ~20+ (some have specialisations of 30+), Force 20 spells are used, as are similar Force spirits and most of the goings on are also epic.

I guess sometimes the system breaks, but you can normally find a way around it.

I think my single biggest issue with idea of such attribute totals would be the sheer mind boggingly high numbers of dice or rolls that would be required. I'm fairly impatient so it would virtually mandate the use of a dicerolling program for me to enjoy.

Wow. I'm gonna agree with Ronin and others. That's not the Shadowrun I've ever played. Heck, my old SR3 characters (recently ported in to SR4, which required 600+ BP to create them) walked all over the competition as a rule, just because of how our group was made up. I can't even imagine what could face down the characters you mentioned. Unless my memory is fuzzy, not even Great Dragons have stats like that, but maybe I'm remembering wrong.

Seems awfully munchkin/powergamer/paladium style to me, but if that's what you're happy with, more power to you. My group has a single player that is content with playing the ultimate badass character who never loses and is able to squash entire Tir Ghost teams with his pinky, but luckily, we're able to reign that in to keep him from attempting, let alone creating such a character.

Well, its 4 PCs, so on average, 1,250 karma each.

In my games, where each session gives a base 10 karma, I'd say my players will hit this mark after about 100 sessions...we've been playing for about a year, so that is three years worth of karma.

I could see my group hanging on that long, but I don't see myself overriding their max's, for skills or attributes. Which means, with that much karma, its either a lot of initiations for the mages or a ton of skills for everyone else!

But in all honesty, keeping the caps in place, I'd still think it would be fun. I mean, at least in my games, its not about trying to outpace my players with bigger/badder opponents, its about giving them difficult scenarios and plenty of failure points in their objectives...

The biggest problem I see with attributes in the 30s and 40s and skills in double-digits, is that you really are never needing to roll dice...you can just buy hits. And once you start doing that, then its really just a mind game...you don't need any rules, you just have a GM giving scenarios and players working through them...I suppose you could just play Amber to get to this point a lot quicker.

Let's see. If an attribute is 40, we'll assume that that's 2/3 "natural" attribute, with +50% of that as modified attribute limit. So say 27 points "natural", and the other 13 coming from cyberware, magic, etc.
Let's assume chargen got the stat to around 11 or so.
The karma to raise a single attribute from 11 to 27 is.....936.

Ahhhh, fun with numbers. Not that I think the augmented attribute maximums are being strictly adhered to or anything.

Deek, you play twice a week? Lucky bastard.

I missed the post that definitely could be a personal attack rather than a debate/dissection of the idea. Remember, the ideas are fair game to debate.... swipes at the poster are NOT.

Just for clarification, my post was not about power level. Although I can see how many would interpret it that way. rather I was questioning the seeming drive by the developers away from the idea that characters that started on the street could be thrust by happenstance into center stage of world shaping occurences. As an aside I have always enjoyed the Metaplots that have been such a part of Shadowruns past, Horrors, Insect Spirits, Immortal Elves, Super AI's and have always tried to bring something of them into any game I run, even if its just for background flavor. No, not all or even several at once.

Everything is on a pendulum. 1st and 2nd Edition were very "street level". Just look at the adventures that were published at the time. In late 2nd Edition and definitely 3rd Edition, things shifted toward the "Epic" scale (Starting with things like Super Tuesday). This is simply a shift of focus back to the "pink mohawk" side. In my opinion, it's a good thing. Put the PUNK back in cyberpunk.