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Rotbart van Dainig
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid @ Feb 5 2008, 09:11 PM) *
(which without a VCR was 1d6 no matter what other boosting one had).

Technically, a driver with MBW or SA gets his initative bonus while driving in SR3, as RAW only excludes spells, adept powers, and the specific implants in the main book.
knasser
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid @ Feb 5 2008, 09:37 PM) *
...seen Fisty's Avatar yet?


AAAAHHHHHH!!!!
Kremlin KOA
QUOTE (arathian @ Feb 5 2008, 09:47 PM) *
LOL. If they can get away with them before the SWAT team arrives. In my game, the Lone Star response to an Awakened threat includes their own Awakened officers. But, if the players do well against them they might score some foci as well.



Response? what response? the officers get sleepified from a concealed ambush position, then have their gear nicked
they don't get time to call for backup
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (Rotbart van Dainig @ Feb 5 2008, 01:58 PM) *
Technically, a driver with MBW or SA gets his initative bonus while driving in SR3, as RAW only excludes spells, adept powers, and the specific implants in the main book.

...not that I recall, unless that was buried somewhere on a back page in Rigger 3 I missed seeing. They do get their full Reaction but not the additional initiative dice.
DTFarstar
Kremlin, I just assume that all officers are equipped with external biomonitors because it is a lot cheaper to do so than have things like what you described happen all the time. All the officers go to sleep at once and suddenly another team is sent to investigate, or possibly a HTR team depending on the cities political climate and what else is happening that night.

Chris
kzt
QUOTE (DTFarstar @ Feb 5 2008, 07:43 PM) *
Kremlin, I just assume that all officers are equipped with external biomonitors because it is a lot cheaper to do so than have things like what you described happen all the time. All the officers go to sleep at once and suddenly another team is sent to investigate, or possibly a HTR team depending on the cities political climate and what else is happening that night.


Nah, a mage and a set of spirits arrive astrally 15-30 seconds later, with concealment. At the same time a drone gets directed to loot at the area and all the cameras around it get looked at to see if they have a view. Mage stays high, sends a summoned spirit in to use their assensing to look at the cops and people around. If anyone hostile is there mage bounces back to office, leaving heavily concealed spirit on watch, makes a call and lots more mages from the local office with spirits show up a few seconds later to start the party. Followed by the heavy hitters from regional and national, who start arriving a few minutes later if needed, about the time the HTR units arrive.

Carrying out high profile attacks has its drawbacks. LS or KE can apply a very large amount of firepower rapidly once a threat is localized, and can apply an overwhelming amount within several minutes. They do this for a living and have 50 years experience in how to do it right.
Whipstitch
QUOTE (Spike @ Feb 5 2008, 02:58 PM) *
Weirdly, the Metagame was what should have made this sort of thing impossible. I wasn't 'passing notes' or conferencing with the GM on the side, everything I did I did in full view of the other players.

In CHARACTER my character was right in the game. I was playing him, near the end, like a johnson, calling up the team and offering them a stripped down version of the deal my character had been offered. Money and contacts flowed through my character, giving me the leverage necessary to run these scams.

I wasn't a 'face', but I had the charisma and connections to be believable in this secondary role.


lol. Okay, your group's just awesome then. biggrin.gif
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (me)
...seen Fisty's Avatar yet?


QUOTE (knasser @ Feb 5 2008, 02:06 PM) *
AAAAHHHHHH!!!!

...thought you'd like it. grinbig.gif
Critias
My "what wouldn't you do" varies wildly from character to character, but normally only the extreme ends of it. Pretty much all of my Shadowrunners, ever, are a-okay with everyday Shadowrunner junk; killing for money, stealing for money, looting, burning, sniping unsuspecting targets, forced extractions, the occasional bit of torture, yadda yadda yadda. Because, well, they're Shadowrunners, and in much the same way you don't get a job delivering pizza if you're morally opposed to driving or findind street addresses, you don't get a job as a Shadowrunner if you can't get your hands dirty. I've long been of the opinion that (much like the murderous hobos that D&D players call "adventurers") there is just something fundamentally wrong with most Shadowrunners, somewhere deep in their psyche and/or background, and I create my characters with that in mind. There has to be some reason they're working the side of the shadows that they're working, so most basic "roll up your sleeves and fuck over the innocent wageslave" work is not beyond them.

When GMing? There's pretty much nothing that's off limits. Because I (and most of the people I play Shadowrun with) believe what we do about the innately flawed/scarred/dark nature of professional criminals, the opposition in my Shadowrun games is a little bit worse than that. I'm from the Frank Miller/Sin City school of GMing Shadowrun (and CP:2020, when it comes up); in order to keep fundamanetally dark player characters as the protagonists, the antagonists have to be even worse. There's nothing like breaking up a bunraku ring to make hired killers feel like they're still good guys, y'know?
DocTaotsu
Metagaming preferences:

No missing persons.

In character preferences:
I'm one of those sick bastards who usually tries to play a "good guy" in Shadowrun. As such my characters usually don't jump for wetwork or other such "black hat" affairs. Although I've been known to go in for the Sin City style revenge kill if my team gets particularly boned. I have no problem being screwed because I didn't ask enough questions. One of my favorite games more or less ended when my angelic white hat doctor character took part in a Humanis sanctioned fire bombing of a metahuman squatter hovel. Poor guy never did get over that.

As a GM:
-No rape RP. If players want to go to that place they can go there on their own time and without me moderating. I've occassionally used it as a thematic device but I've never RPed it.
-Torture I'm less squemish about but I've never played with a group of people who wanted to spend 2 hours describing exactly what sort of surgical tools they apply to what parts for how long and at what temperature. I'm usually fine with players saying "We do very very very bad things to him for no less than 4 hours and make first aid/medicine rolls to make sure he doesn't die. If we can get bonuses here is a list of the things we purchase at the hardware store." If I torture players (in game, not out of game because I've written some really awful flavor text or didn't bother to learn the magic rules) I usually just give them a general idea and have them roll a series of willpower checks. I'm also a big fan of 'The villian lowers the trodes over your head and slots a chip that appears as a cackling daemon in your AR" Mangling someones body seems so much less efficient than mangling their mind with some modified Black IC and a hot sim of being fed into a meat grinder turn by turn.
-Creepy sex stuff. If your character has creepy sex needs, just give me a general idea and I'll let you know how much all those gerbils add to your lifestyle costs. As a former MUX administrator I can tell you that my interest in reading 20 page tinysex logs evaporated after I got out of puberty. Now if you're knocking boots when a Firewatch team burst through your door, I find that intensely amusing and encourage you with karma.
Rajaat99
QUOTE (Hank @ Feb 5 2008, 05:33 PM) *
This one time, I had my players kill a puppy so it wouldn't give away their position.


That's just wrong.
Kyoto Kid
...DocT, I'm pretty much on the same bus with my PCs. Maybe the hats turn a few shades grayer at times but never black.

As to GM-ing, About the same too, though I do do love intrigue mixed with a healthy dose of suspense. One thing I try to steer completely clear from is the whole GD & IE metaplot. Based on the experience, when they show up, the PCs tend to become rather superfluous as the GD or IE usually always wins.
DocTaotsu
hehe, I'm sure that, given the right situation, my players hats could be turned very very dark grey indeed. I look forward to providing those "opportunities".

GD or IE?
Critias
QUOTE (DocTaotsu @ Feb 8 2008, 01:02 AM) *
GD or IE?

I'm not sure if it's what you're asking, but "GD" is Great Dragons, "IE" is Immortal Elves. Some big conspiracy/behind-the-scenes metaplots (mostly from previous editions) that some people feel were overplayed, or just don't fit in very well. So some folks ignore 'em, while some folks adore 'em (just like everything else).
DTFarstar
Great Dragon or Immortal Elf.

Or Immoral Elf, if you happen to play with Fortune.

Chris

EDIT: Scooped of course, dammit.
BishopMcQ
I wear the black hat a lot of times, with shades of grey and rarely a white hat. As a GM, I've had an NPC who was a sexual sadist before becoming infected with HMHVV--the players got to relive a moment as a joygirl got what she was paid for and a whole lot more. PCs have called in contracts on other PCs, they've sold their souls to Threats and Corps to gain more power, but there are always consequences.
DocTaotsu
Ah... I usually shy away from putting those into my games. They need a fine touch and they are by definition, not a fine touch.

Unless my players trounce traditional corps/orgs they probably will never come into any sort of meaningful contact with that sort of thing. And if you they do it will probably be the last thing they see.
Dashifen
I don't think there is anywhere I wouldn't go. I've had targets of wet work be Down Syndrome patients, I've had Mormons show up in the middle of a run attempting to proselytize, I've had the players attempt to forcibly abort a pregnant woman using drugs fired at range from a modified rifle. While I've never really gone in for rape, torture, etc. that's more because I don't see those as being interesting plot developments. I like my morality to be a bit ambiguous and rape/torture/molestations/etc. are all pretty nasty and reasonably difficult to justify (well, torture can be justified, but it's just not very reliable in my games).
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (DocTaotsu @ Feb 8 2008, 04:58 AM) *
Ah... I usually shy away from putting those into my games. They need a fine touch and they are by definition, not a fine touch.

Unless my players trounce traditional corps/orgs they probably will never come into any sort of meaningful contact with that sort of thing. And if you they do it will probably be the last thing they see.

...dealt with the scaly ones on several occasions. The worst experience was Survival of the Fittest (3rd ed). In that one the Dragons win no matter what the PCs do.
Ravor
Although it sucks to for the player, at least it is fitting that in the Sixth World the Dragon always wins. cyber.gif
Kyoto Kid
...which is why they remain as background color in my campaigns. I want the PCs to feel they have some relevance.
Ravor
True, but I figure that Cyberpunk is supposed to be at least somewhat hopeless, so I don't ahve as much of a problem which dashing the Character's pitiful illusion of freewill when it makes sense. cyber.gif

But then again, as I've said before, I sit my players down before I agree to run a campaign and explain what it means to live in a Cyberpunk world.
Slymoon
As a player I am typically reserved. My charactes always seem to have a healthy dose of morals, however, they are also reactionists. In such a way as though I wouldnt think about skinning someone, but say if situations occured to piss the character off enough he would lose it and do such a thing. But really that is such an extremely rare case that It may have happened 3 times in 15 years of playing. And each time was a GM twist to make me lose it in character.

As a GM though, I will stoop to any depths to make the players/ characters feel how I want them too. Whether it is making a potential vamp pawn (player) prove his loyalty by capping a child in the street and carrying his little sister to the vamp for food. (and the player does have a little girl)

To describing in detail a torture session where Tamanous dismembers a character and feeds his limbs to the ghouls infront of him. One piece at a time while concious (it took awhile). Finally delivering his still oozing body in a burlap sack to the bar in which his runner friends were hidding.


Overall, I can be quite evil, but largely I do not want to kill the players, just journey with them to create a very memerable story. Positive and negative for the characters.
swirler
GM: I ran some games where the team was sent to rescue children being held by organ leggers. After they deliver the kids to the Johnson and get paid and he leaves they find out he's actually a pedophile who thinks he's santa "claws" (arm claws and all). I was proud they actually went after him and rescued the kids again. I had left it up to them to decide.

I had a nemesis in a game for awhile who was a "runner killer". He would get hired into runs and take out the team during the job.

as a player I usually go the good guy route, can't help it.

actually in the D&D campaign I'm running atm the players haven't realized it yet but they may actually be figments of the main villains imagination. He's essentially a "frankenstien's monster" and his parts are rebelling against him, creating enemies for him. IE: the players.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (Ravor @ Feb 8 2008, 09:37 AM) *
True, but I figure that Cyberpunk is supposed to be at least somewhat hopeless, so I don't have as much of a problem which dashing the Character's pitiful illusion of freewill when it makes sense. cyber.gif

...ahh but hopelessness is one thing. You can put someone in a setting that appears hopeless but they may still feel there is still that chance, as small as it may be, that they can still achieve some sort of goal. Now uselessness (which was how I felt while running in SotF) is another matter as it tends to discourage the player by letting them know they will have no effect on the final outcome and are nothing more than pawns in a chess game between "superior" beings.
Ravor
Very true, but when apporiate I believe that uselessness is also a legitament Cyberpunk theme, when the day is done despite all of your hard work and spilt blood nothing has really changed other then a minor shift in the stock market that will be quickly erased by tomorrow's salvo in the unending war between the powers that be.
Kyoto Kid
...OK to rephrase: a feeling of uselessness from the perspective of the character in the game, that I can agree with as long as it is done well and there are smaller "victories" along hte way the character can be distracted with now and then.

However, from the metgame aspect, when the player feels his character is absolutely useless he begins to wonder why he is taking the time to show up. That was where SotF (and ot a lesser extent Braisnscan) left me.
Sir_Psycho
I understand if a player wants to be a good guy, and I don't necessarily punish him, but in the sixth world, it's never easy. Sure, so you've got a drop and a bunch of security goons and have an opportunity to pick them off with some less-than-lethal tech, whether it's a chemical grenade, hand-to-hand knock-outs or a stunball. But when a character I gm'd, Vaziel, heard the sewer-dwelling ghoul growl behind him, or the troll physad charge him at the end of a dock, he pulled his Browning Mp and sunk Karma Pool into nailing both of them through the brain. I understand that ghoul's are in a very difficult situation, and personally I wouldn't make a ghoul hunter character "ten points!", but when you're shit scared, the white cap tactics should dissapear.

Also with the exception of my first character, I've never done one of those "won't won't won't" moral qualm characters. Most of the characters I create are conflicted, yes, as most of them have trained their whole lives to assassinate, torture, blow-up and ruin people's lives through various crimes or morally bankrupt professions.

Kestrel was a young Sioux who enrolled in the armed forces as a scout/sniper because of nationalistic pressures and because it suited his love of his home wilderness. They trained him in information warfare and riflery, so his job was to jam/decrypt/triangulate the enemy's communications and then watch through his scope as their heads explode with the pull of his trigger. One day during a long stint of scouting near his home town, he managed to pick up a team of Tir Ghosts, practically right on top of him. Wide-spectrum jamming stopped him from calling in back-up or air support, so he managed, with his Electronic Warfare skills, his high calibre rifle and moving stealthily through the familiar terrain he managed to kill them all one of them he had to kill with his bare hands. This performance instantly qualified him for the Wildcats, but he felt claustrophobic throughout the arduous training and removed from his home environment. He turned his back on the military soon after, choosing to live in a valley near his birthplace, but it was soon that corporate interests threatened the ecosystem of his home, and eco-terrorists approached him, knowing of his skills, to murder the supervisors of the project and sabotage the machinery with a bomb. So he ended up a Shadowrunner. He doesn't enjoy killing, but his skillset and training suit him to assassination and merc work.

Abraham Baruch, an Israeli troll, left high-school due to prejudice and claustrophobia, and the IDF was happy to have him, due to his physical strength and endurance. He just wanted to be a quartermaster, not being a particularly violent person, but the army was the only job other than physical labourer that would take him. When an islamist terrorist detonated a bomb on a bus Bram was on, he watched several of his fellow countryment turned to chunky salsa, and he lost an arm. He spent decades of his life as a special forces operative for the IDF and Mossad, participating in assassinations and unconventional warfare operations across the middle-east, as a weapons specialist/tech. He tortured countless people throughout the operations, justifying it with his memories and nationalistic fury. About When his baby daughter was born, and the agonized faces of his torture victims began to outweigh the memories of the bomb victims, and his wife was killed in a retaliatory strike by a foreign intelligence service, he took his daughter and left Israel.

When Bram begins play, he's living in Seattle with his 20 year old daughter, who resents the fact that he's turned to Shadowrunning to support them. She's moved out. So he sits in his crappy house amongst his stockpile of fire-arms, oiling his old military issue cyber-arm, casually gunsmithing and having to go do another reprehensible and violent job when he hasn't got enough money to pay for his rent, cigarettes and various addictions.

Another (very lame) character I put together when I was younger was a Ninja. (I had been watching a whole lot of Lone Wolf and Cub, Rourouni Kenshin and Kurosawa films). Shinji Mitsurugi was a young adept born into a ninja clan (well they actually recognized his powers as a young child and murdered his parents, scattering his orphaned siblings about the globe). When he left, he was nineteen. Literally his whole life had been training to kill people. His magical powers did little but facilitate assassination. When his only friend in his clan, Misato, fears that after a failed mission, she will be killed, Shinji sneaks into the restricted areas of the dojo and finds the file on his parents, goes berserk and makes his escape, killing his master, and several other lesser ninja.

The interesting thing about roleplaying Shinji was that while he hated Ninja and killing, they defined him. He had nothing else (he was even a virgin) He had the compulsive: Killing flaw. As a role-player, I would try not to kill, but Shinji instinctively moves to eliminate opposition. And despite a white cap attitude of "i hate killing killing is wrong", what choice did he have but become a Shadowrunner and do wetwork? In a fit of Lame-itude in the "are there any quotes from your character" in his 20 questions I wrote.
[ Spoiler ]


Also, in my games, I'm not going to openly punish you for doing morally reprehensible things. But if you shoot that guy in the torso, he's unlikely to give a movie style "ugh!" and drop dead, he's got an equal chance of falling to his knees, spewing blood, convulsing, and screaming to god and about his wife and kids. I was GM'ing my young neighbour, who came across two gangers mugging a woman in an alleyway. They told him to back off and turn away, and he shot one ganger in the head with his Manhunter and fried the other one (holding the woman with a knife) with a manabolt, but not before the ganger saw his friend's head explode, chips of bone and chunks of bloody grey matter thrown across the alley and the wet thud of his open skull hitting the pavement. Understandably the ganger, before his brain was fried with a force 5S Manabolt slit the woman's throat from ear to ear and ran for his life.

My neighbour comments to me afterwards, that I was being a bit harsh, especially with my description of the bullet fucking up the ganger's skull, and the woman being cut open. I replied that it was he who made the moral decision. The gangers were most likely going to take the woman's purse, and maybe sexually assault her. And my neighbour's call ended up being to murder the two guys, and risk her life in a hostage situation. Luckily he had a heal spell, and knives do shit all damage anyway.
“I hold this blade and loathe it, for the blade is death yet I cannot cast it away because I am empty without it, and I cannot replace it with the artists brush nor a farmer’s tool, because I can’t use them. So I hold this blade in my hand, and I hold death close to me because I cannot exist without, but what existence is this?�
DocTaotsu
Hopelessness and powerlessness are both very valid cyberpunk themes.

That I don't like to use except for the occasional dramatic effect.

I mentioned in another thread that one of the worst games I ever played was set in Russia and basically devolved into Depression Run where all the character should have probably tried to suck start their Pred IV's (II's at the time?) The GM did an excellent job showing us how powerless we were and did such a great job we just lost all motivation to run. We just couldn't catch a break, why bother? Everything we know and love will just be taken away from us in a heartbeat but some malevolent god...

If I wanted that I'd play Real Life and move to somewhere awful.

But as in all things it's a balance. SR isn't D&D, runners aren't really heros, and things are supposed to go south in a hurry. Nothing is pure, no one is innocent, and everyone has a price. But even in such a dark world, people can make a difference, even if it's just a small thing. Truly lucky and motivated people /can/ make a difference, but it will cost them.

Generally I like to use that cliche story about the child and the starfish on the seashore. "Good" runners might not be able to make an appreciable dent in the shit storm that's the 6th world... but they can make a difference to the people they /can/ touch.

Wow, that got really preachy didn't it? Sorry folks, I'm projecting again.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (DocTaotsu)
But as in all things it's a balance. SR isn't D&D, runners aren't really heros, and things are supposed to go south in a hurry. Nothing is pure, no one is innocent, and everyone has a price. But even in such a dark world, people can make a difference, even if it's just a small thing. Truly lucky and motivated people /can/ make a difference, but it will cost them.

Generally I like to use that cliche story about the child and the starfish on the seashore. "Good" runners might not be able to make an appreciable dent in the shit storm that's the 6th world... but they can make a difference to the people they /can/ touch.

...that is pretty much the approach I take for my characters. SotF and Brainscan were admittedly extreme examples (both pre written scenarios that dealt more with moving the Metaplot along than offering the PCs a chance to shine on their own).

As Sir_Psycho mentions when it comes down to the PC or the threat, even the character with high morals needs to bury the pride and start a hosin' if she wants to be the one who walks away alive. In a recent run Violet ended up black hammering a LoneStar Matrix Specialist until his brains dripped out his ears. Now while normally a nice kid, she doesn't think twice about decision she made for it was either him or her (as well as her being fairly paranoid to boot). She knew he would soon have backup and possibly her location if she didn't keep him on the defensive and then take him down.
DocTaotsu
Absolutely. A Shadowrun who has a problem with killing or maiming people should probably be doing something else for a living.

It would be interesting to see a group of players try to play a "Saint" game where they don't kill a single person through an entire campaign.
Angelone
There is not much I (my character) wouldn't do to stay alive and continue to make nuyen.gif . I agree that those who find themselves in the shadows are fundementally broken on some level. That doesn't mean I'll go around eatting babies in broad daylight. Killing, torturing, selling opposition for spare parts is all fair game. I have never really tried to play the part of the white hat, even in the other game, I could be better classified as someone put it a "muderous hobo" rather than a hero.
Critias
To clarify, "murderous hobo" is my job title for your average D&D character (they aimlessly wander from town to town, never settling down except for maybe two night's stay in an inn, they kick in doors, murder whoever's in the room, take their things, and then move on to the next dungeon. As presented, regardless of alignment, they aren't terribly heroic when you look at their actual patterns of action).

It works for some Shadowrun characters, too, mind. But I originally came up with the phrase to describe most fantasy adventurers. I'm trying to talk the other Iron Kingdom rpg guys into making it an official prestige class, but the whole "4th edition is coming" thing is disrupting my schemes.
DocTaotsu
Please... let us not speak of coming of the RPG equivalent of the Horrors.
Ravor
And here I was thinking that D&D 4.0 might actually be worthy of playing if they finally did away with memorizing spells and fire & forget wizards. cyber.gif
DocTaotsu
I haven't actually sat down and played 4th ed.

I doubt I ever will though.

The thing that got me in a brief rundown of the rules is how much the game sounds like World of Warcraft without graphics and having to roll all the dice yourself. The traditional division of labors of D&D have somewhat gone out the window because the designers wanted to democratize that playing field. Everyone gets a once per day piddly ranged attack, some special move, etc etc. All the crunchy obscura I've tolerated since 2nd ed has been replaced with this bland "Elves no longer have any negative attribute qualities, having an elf in your party immediately grants EVERYONE IN THE PARTY a bonus to search and listen tests." (not actually sure if it's search and listen or just search).

I honestly think I'll stick with 3.5 rules which I consider the "optimal" d20 rule system for hack and slash fantasy.

That said there is a reason I'm playing Shadowrun regularly these days. And it's not just because I can spend 10 pages talking about bunraku parlors.
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