Not sure if this is where it goes.

But, I am curious if anyone has thought about how Amenities from Arsenal might fit in with the Advanced Lifestyle rules?

Not the same I don't think, After all I've met lots of people in rl that live in um..crap, little nothing trailer or apartment that looks like it came out of a dump, but DAMN do they have a nice car, the car is sepert from how they live there life in that respect.

Thats my view,

i think he's referring to the fact that in arsenal, you can give a vehicle a mod that gives it a 'lifestyle' equivalent. for example, the stereotypical limo might have a minifridge, a nice entertainment system, more comfortable seats, maybe even a minibar or something like that. the average sedan doesn't those things.

personally, i would probably equate that rating with the comforts, necessities, and entertainment parts of advanced lifestyles at the appropriate rating. if you wanted to do it as advanced lifestyles, i would rule that you simply deconstruct the points to get those 3 categories at the correct rating, and that's how many points you have to spend on your vehicle's 'lifestyle' stuff. no lifestyle qualities allowed though, imo. unless there was some really strong logic to it.

Hmm, okies.

We are going over to the advanced lifestyle rules in our game and just trying to figure things out. We have one character that has a 'tricked' out (High Amenities) Rover 2068 that he lives in. When he sleeps, he just has it drive around randomly on the Gridlink in the nicer parts of town.

Sounds good.

Agreed. I mentioned that earlier.

The Picador story made me want to vomit, but once I got my composure I thought it was funny how well it proved Machiavelli's comments about mercenaries in The Prince (Chapter 12, btw).



It did reinforce a comment a runner made in the midst of all of Matador's bullshit posturing about professionalism that mercenaries are at heart just the most vile, despicable pieces of shit on Earth who will gladly share a cup of tea with a captured merc from the OPFOR while his partisan employers, equals and underlings are being tortured to death the next tent over.

The Prince

Really, on the art, yeah, there is some that is kind of of..um, well, bad. However, I have never been much of a person for the art. The rules are a big part of things for me, and, over all, I think RC has some great additions. I also like the short stories at the ends focusing on(and giving faces to) some of the well knowns. And NEtCat's little stoy explains alot of things about Technomancers.

Why does everyone get so fixated on the art?

The old platitude: A picture speaks a thousand words. And when the almighty word count is an oppressive and fickle mistress, that's important.

Illustration is great for presenting ideas in an intuitive format. For example, what do the metas look like? What does a cyber-arm look like? What does the matrix look like? They give you ideas for fashions and sometimes even character concepts. And most of all they pull you into the atmosphere of the game. Good role-playing art is foreplay for the imagination. So it hurts when the art is bad. Of course, it's only representational (and don't forget, that the grand majority of artists got the troll proportions wrong), but if a new metatype like the Nartaki or an old favourite like the Oni or Gnomes look silly, it does make you slightly disinclined to play them.

And to look at it comparitively, Shadowrun has had some great artwork. From the colourful neo-tribal stylings of SR2 to the simplistic black and white grit shots of SR3, it's been pretty good.
See this is a Hoop drawing from the SR3 BBB. Now that is an awesome depiction of a street samurai. See how it illustrates the cybernetic connection between the samurai's brain and his smartlinked pistol? See how the cyber-arm has replaced his pectoral muscles with metalic sinews for re-inforcement? And most of all, that is a bad dude. From the punchy, high contrast style to the bad-arse steely eye and crotch-bulge.

No one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This kind of picture illustrates to a new character what virtual reality might look like. It shows us that a data file can look like a real file, and that a data bomb doesn't actually have to look like a bomb, it can look like a... what's the collective noun for scissors?

It's a good shadowrun picture if it makes you want to play. That picture makes we want to play a street sam. The picture of the Haruman doesn't make me want to play a Haruman. And I respect that freelance art is a minefield (to quote Ancient History, I believe), but on the other hand, I'll post up a few unofficial pieces of Shadowrun related and just plain cyberpunk/dystopia artwork.

Kai S on Deviant Art

Desdemona by Pompulous(Deviantart) See the fashionable and practical haircut and how the fashionable tattoos highlight the datajack? That's a character I want to use in my campaigns.

Hangar by Hideyoshi (DeviantArt). Runners need to steal a new LAV? Here's something to get them excited.

See? look at all that quality that can be found just by doing a quick "cyberpunk" search on Deviant Art. By all means, I forgive CGL's art director for the bad metavariant art. Killiker (that was his name, right?) had done some solid pieces for SR4 in some of the other books. But art is definately important to your experience of a fresh new book. The crunch is important. But do you get a new rulebook and go "I'm going to check out the new extended test thresholds for cooking my own chemicals and explosives! No way, you flip through and check out the art. To repeat myself, good role-playing art is foreplay for the imagination.

Quote of the day right there.

Or they could just hire UDON like Steve Kenson does for Green Ronin.

It's a sad fact that RPG art is, or is near, the bottom rung of contract art. It's where people get started, which is why Alex Ross and Tim Bradstreet (who met each other doing art for SR), or Adi Granov and Marko Djurdjevic don't do art for Shadowrun anymore. The rates are such that you aren't going to get top-notch artists sending spec work. But the funny thing about the market is that the law of averages says, and had been proven, that there is quality in there. But it's a better use of resources to let someone else look through the shit for quality work. Enter UDON.

UDON? Is he some sort of internet art fixer or a cheap artist? Link?

UDON Studios. Manga-style American comics and illustration art house.

Brilliant. Like Wesley Street said: Quote of the day right there.

So the street release of Runner's Companion is....?

Release date is Aug 29th. My local gaming store will have mine in their shop Tuesday Sept 2nd.

Would have been nice to have it over Labor Day weekend.

Odd, I just dropped by my FLGS and they had it on shelves already... w00t!

Hmm, I'll have to call and ask them then. Might be an early release on your part therefore you got lucky. Might also be the distributor on the part of my local gaming shop.

BTW, what does FLGS mean?

Favorite Local Gaming Store

I received an email yesterday stating that my print copy had been shipped so it may be in most FLGS' now.

Sometimes it's Friendly Local Gaming Store, too. Depends on who you ask, I guess.

Favored Local Games Shoppe

Thanks all. I figured the LGS portion was something akin to local gaming store. Just couldn't figure out the F.

Going to call my store this afternoon to see if there is any way they can get my book sooner.

I guess it depends on how many gaming stores there are locally. If you only have one to choose from, I guess you hope its friendly. Here in Columbus, its definitely a matter of which one do you prefer - seems like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone coming out of some kind of hobby or gaming shop.

-paws

College towns are usually a mecca of comic book, gaming and hobby stores.

The two College towns I've lived both only have 1 gaming store each.

The fact that they have a games store at all is a good thing, yes? I didn't mean to imply a college town has a comics/games/geek memorabilia store on every block.

I live in a metropolitan area of 800,000 residents. We have three specialty games stores that I know of and eight or nine comics shops. If a town with 10,000+ year-round residents is guaranteed to have a comic and/or games store in it because it's centered around a university or college I think that's pretty darned cool.

This just in: my FLGS called me and said my copy of Runner's Companion came in. I'm amazed at how quick this has gotten out following Unwired. I believe 100% now that CGL getting the rights to develop Shadowrun was a great thing. (I know it's the same people, but obviously shit is much more efficient now.)

Cool. David had said that RC shouild be shipping this week, but I wasn't entirely sure

Re: Art -

First, CGL is well aware of the problems, and want to fix it. Synner specifically mentioned this during the Whats up with Shadowrun seminar. I suspect they basically got "stuck", having commissioned the artist and wanting to get the book out by GC, so they didn;t have time to go get new artwork. (And folks would have complained almost as much had they just reused artwork, plus there may be some legal issues with reusing artwork as well, don;t really know. They may have needed to get new contracts or pay the original artists again or something, I have no clue how taht really works).

Also, since y'all are posting DA links... IIRC, someone said they found this guy on Deviant Art. And some of you even linked to previous work he's done that was a better quality. Just cause soemone's done a few decent pics doesn't mean he can do the art as needed in a timely fashion.

<shrug>

personally, I love Runner's Companion. I likely wouldn;t use much, if any, of the new stuff, and I still think Metavarients are a bit munchy/cheesy, but they are a bit improved from 2nd/3rd, IMO.

Bull

NJ Aug 23 A postal employee actually scanned a package......cult motivated endeavor or something more menacing?

My copy of RC left NJ this morning and hopefully show up on Monday, usually comes in via philly or maybe this is just the first time someone in jersey actually scanned it. very rarely get tracking info beyond it was shipped and it arrives.

I blame RC for my group wanting to all make new characters.

I already got a bloody Pixie Mage! And will soon have a Four-Armed, Red-Skinned Outsourced Hacker. And, possibly, an Orge Animal Control Officer.

Talked with my FLGS yesterday. Turns out my copy will be in on Tuesday. They would have had it this week but their normal accounts guy at Alliance (one of their warehouses / distrubtors) is out and all their stuff is being handled by another guy... which has resulted in delays.

So I have to ask... which one of you hackers / TMs hacked into the shipping database and made my order show up late?

Saw Runner's Companion yesterday when I picked up Unwired at Compleat Strategist. It will have to wait a couple of weeks until I can pick it up.

i still don't understand why you don't get a .pdf version of all the books you need that's what i do i just make like 4 back ups so i don't lose them and call it a night.

if you're not a fan of laptops at the gaming table, books are easier.

I understand entirely.

PDFs make for great quick-searching.

I understand and agree with the whole laptop thing my point is that they are cheaper, and have a lot of perks like quick searches, the ability to bookmark specific points of interest for further research, along with being able to couple sections from multiple books to use as reference material. Once again that is but one mans opinion on the subject.

Huh, never thought of that before. Interesting approach. Heh, though the semi-retired GM in me makes me think of a nice handful of story developments I can make off of a PC that did something like that. Congrats, you wake up in the middle of NAN territory, somehow.

Given the amount of GM fiat, sleeping in a solid house wouldn't protect from that, either.

Given that amount of GM fiat, sleeping in a solid house would have been, "Congrats, you wake up in prison. Somehow."

There was one official run (as far as I recall) that started with "you wake up in the NAN wilderness and have no idea how you got there".)

Well, HMKVV was retconned tremendously:
Historically, Ghoul infection ran months and was mediacally treatable(!) within the first month... and there was a partially effective inocculation against Strand I & II.

And whoever came up with the idea that a Quality that causes the character not to be infectious is a Negative Quality.....

I did finally get to flip through RC, and I pretty much agree with Bull here. The majority of the book, while a nice read, doesn't really scream "you must use this right now, paws!!!!"

I think the majority of the new qualities are going to be allowed in my game. Probably no infected (as much as I wanted to include Ghouls). I'm waffling about sapient critters. Oh, and where are the Merrow, dammit!? Free Spirits, AIs, and Drakes are a definite no. Metavariants are kind of blah and I don't agree with how they came up with the BP costs (that also goes for some of the basic races too, but, whatever).

The Advanced Lifestyle rules are an improvement, but we've never felt compelled to use them before, so I doubt there will be an overwhelming demand for them now.

-paws

I find that some of the more "mental" qualities for changelings should also exist for non changelings. Like lowered mental attributes (for that bonehead ganger...)

Spirit PC's should be better explained and need to be errated a bit, a further explanation for the possession crew (like how you pick a troll body as a starter spirit character...yes, they can possess people too but not inhibit)

Every players (yes player, not character) gets that for free already.

Well, but it helps if the character and the player have the same mental stats. Its really hard playing those INT 2 geniuses...

Sometimes, it's hard playing the Logic 1 geniuses.

As a PC? Unless you're running an underwater campaign that would be even harder to GM than an AI!

Play along with the Snorks.
Swim along with the Snorks.
Happy we'll be living under the sea.
Come along with the Snorks!

Oh im already playing that in city of villains...

TEDDY SMASH! is the usual battlecry (Big pink teddybear/hulk thingy supervillain)

Think hulk in pink thights