A long time ago, i had the project to make a free spirit only game. Characters were made with house rules but the project died some time later. Now, with official rules to help, I want to restart this campaign.

The characters will be free spirits banished from their home metaplanes and forced to live in exile (the reason of their exile is up to you, but need my approval). Use the normal 400 BP creation system, so everyone should have 150 BP after taking into consideration the free spirit racial cost. PM the characters to me and I'll review them. I'm looking for 4-5 players.

Details about the campaign will be added later. Let's just say it will begin minutes after your banishment.

Could be interesting... however, you do realize how underpowered the free spirits will be with the 400 bp game?

That was a lot of fun before Dentris!

Yeah, I saw the title and was like "Wasn't that the game where I played the succubi?"

On the point about free spirits being weak. yeah, they had to balance them against other "normal" characters.
With 150 points to spend, you'll probably have average stats (either 3s across the board, or +3 to phsyical stats if possession) - and only a couple of skills worth having. That, or a team of legally blind and retarded spirits with one or two sweet things they excel at. You'll almost certainly be less "useful" than a normal character in terms of getting things done.

The free spirit rules also disallow a good number of spirit powers we used in that old game. I don't think Adsinistrati would convert very easily, but I might try digging through the rules tonight and see how it goes.

So, question 1, is this planned to be a direct extension of that old game - or just the theory of having a team of all spirits?

Will the game be mostly in the real world, or in various astral/metaplanes? (Free spirits pick between materialization and possession, and you might want ot warn against possession, if most of hte game will be off-world)

This piques my interest.

A Possession Free Spirit and a Highland accent and we're playing Highlander II....

edit - might be easier on karmagen.

Would be crazy on karmagen since the free spirit part would cost 0 points.

Anyway, I'm interested, I'll have to look over the free spirit info a bit more first though.

Certainly would. Karmagen lets you ignore metatype costs.

Edit: Someone beat me to it while I was getting a coke.

I'd be keen, but probably not for 150 BP - but if a change is made, awesome.

That's what you get for requiring sustenance.

So few questions. For possession spirits, using a corpse for possession, what kind of stats would the corpse get? I mean I'm sure a 3/3/3/3 corpse could be found and used no problem, but what would be the requirements on getting a better one?

Similarly what kind of game would this be? I mean what would we do? We're all free spirits great, but are we like all trying to be runners or are we fighting some kind common magic enemy or what exactly is going on? Very important before getting very far .

Also, this is a bit unclear to me from reading, but free spirits get magician quality for free, do they have a separate magic stat or is magic=force? I think it is magic=force because it is often implied, but the book doesn't come out and say it (that I can see).

I'm happy to see you had fun in my short-lived game.

To answer your question, I'm thinking about a reboot, meaning I reworked the original adventure, but some of the old stuff will be the same. I don't think it will be a problem, though, as the group didn't went that far in the mission.

About the creation system, I think Karma-based creation can be done. All the attributes are bought separatly (except magic which is equal to force) and starts at 2. Maximum for all attributes is equal to Force (unless you take the exceptional attribute quality) and force may not be greater than 6. Remember, you can have only one attribute at maximum value (including Force). In addition, you all have the Magician quality for free, the Sapience, Banishment Resistance, Spirit Pact, Immunity to Normal Weapons, either Materialization or Possession powers and a number of Power points equal to their edges. 800 karma points for everyone. Don't forget to add a description of the spirit and its magical tradition of origin (which influence on spell drain and the type of powers you can have).

Okay that is awesome.

Question: Can I play a merge, and if so what would the rules be for that?

Clarification: I am in the 'brainstorm' phase of character creation where I mock up half a dozen or a dozen character creation sketchs exploring the options, so I'm just tossing things down. I do not mind being rejected, and thinking back to runners companion, rejecting is probably a good idea hah.

Question: What are the rules for possession 'hosts' or are you assumed to be 100% disembodied?

If you choose a possessing-type spirit, I will determine the physical attributes of your vessel. For normal humans in the street 3/3/3/3 is the right answer, but nothing prevents you one day from taking the body of a prime runner. Basically, only story elements will allow you to get better bodies, which are under my control.

The story will be around the free spirits trying to survive in the sixth world as shadowrunners, and getting even with those who banished them. I'm planning a mix between usual runs and epic metaplanar quests.

What do you mean a merge? A possessing spirit? Yes you can, be warned, though, that a possessing spirit has its own limitation.

Nah, I meant a merge, and thinking back to runners companion, I'm asking for a house rule (I'm not at home, so no books infront of me)

Can that idea.

You've answered my possession question

Can I actually suggest dropping the karma limit sharply? With free races, 450-600 is more than sufficent to generate strong well rounded characters.

Sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, I think I have more on my plate than I know what to do with, so I'll have to withdrawal as an active player for the time being. Please, if you're willing, add me to the waiting list, however.

Actually, I wanted "really" strong characters from the start, and I think 800 karma will do the trick. I'll see if it's too much after i received the first character sheets.

I'm definitely interested. The Mary Sue campaign I'm working on has thrown up some amazing ideas that would be fun to play.

(I am working on it Mickle5125, I promise. It's massively slow going though, lots of work....)

I'd love play. 800 points would be a fun spirit.

It will be interesting to see how a bunch of free spirits operate together....

Oops, I didn't see. Is this game play by post, or sit down and play? I can do play by post, not sit and play.

Word of warning, my baseline mockup of a 800 karma character is insane.

Body 5
Agility 5
Reaction 7
Strength 2
Charisma 2
Intuition 7
Logic 2
Willpower 7
Edge 4
Magic 7

For example. Yikes.

Given the high power you want us to start at, can karma be spent on initiation?

P.S. Cthulu, you can't have a 7 magic at start unless he OKs initiation at startup (Exceptional attribute can't apply to magic/force)

Your also limited to only one maxed attribute. But even so your right, we'll be looking at force 6, one stat at 6, and a bunch of 5s with tons of points left over for skills, spells, eqiupment?, contacts and such.

I'm also guessing we'll need to supply who our pact people are? You know, the pact we have to have in order to gain karma?

Speaking of that pact, would you rule it as being acceptable that the people in the pact can be changed (In a day+ long ritual of some kind. This prevents theoretically losing force from people dying of old age, but can't get out of your pact mates getting killed.)?

Edit: We in Seattle?

One roleplaying geek's idea of insane is another roleplaying geek's idea of a good time......

Sorry, I forgot that free spirits were limited to force 6 without initating. Can I get clarification on initating?


Sample rough cut


Body 5
Agility 5
Reaction 5
Strength 2
Charisma 2
Intuition 6
Logic 2
Willpower 5
Edge 4
Magic 6

Athletics (Group) 4
Influence (Group) 4
Stealth (Group) 4
Assensing 4
Binding 1
Counterspelling 4
Spellcasting 4
Summoning 6

Perception 4
Pilot Ground Craft 1
Automatics 4

125k yens of equipment

Knowledge skills

Contacts

Mentor spirits

740 karma, 60 left up the sleeve.
6 6

Lol, can free spirits have mentor spirits? I suppose they can, be similar to a human having a human mentor I suppose, but could it really work out properly?

No mentor spirits. And don't forget spirits cannot learn summoning.

As a side note, while you have access to Spirit Pact, your status as newly "freed" spirit means you cannot have one at character creation. It will be available through play really soon in the campaign, though.

Initiation is possible (initation is 10 + 3/next rank), but I will limit it a little bit. While you can have an initiation level, you can't raise your force attribute higher than 6 at character creation. Upon initiation, you have access to a metamagic or one power point (as described in Runner's Companion)

And it's a play by post.

EDIT: The game will start in Seattle, but many adventures will occur around the world.

Yeah, as I said I'm not infront of my books, so I'm hust using excel and engineering something - its a human mage transplated, so some stuff will carry over.

Call it 5 points of positive qualities haha

Good call re: summoning. I'll take that out.

Play by post. Sweet.
I'll just consider myself in until I hear different.....

My books aren't with me ATM either. It should work to use the char gen here on dumpshock, yes? I'll have to find spirit info somewhere, but that's no prob.

If we could have a mentor spirit, mine would be my spirit momma.

If we are newly freed.. can we start with equipment?

So it's 800 points minus 150 for racial cost leaves 650 to work with? Or a full 800?

I spesifically looked for summoning in your char and didn't notice ah well, my bad.

Ah, so we're recently freed? So much for my idea of having a cult as a group contact and my pact members (Cult leaders that is)

Edit: Speaking of contacts, 1. are you doing the chax2 for free contact points, and 2. since we're recently freed, would we even have contacts?

Also, won't getting... I'm guessing about 5 players all force 6 so... 30 people who can be trusted enough for pacts be kind on the difficult side and leave us without karma gains for a long time?

Depends on the circumstances of our becoming free?

A cult could have been the ones to help us become free or they could be pre-exiting contacts from before our liberation.

Under karma gen races are free, so its the full fat 800 (unless I'm wrong). Remember you have to pay for knowledge skills though with no free allocation, which sucks balls.

I'm not fussed about getting karma in a play by post game. It will take a million billion years to get more than like 25 karma. Whoopie.

WOW! I just watched the movie Dogma. The thought of adding Excremental Demons to the list of Shadowrun Toxic Spirits tickled my funny bone.

Don't say it: The idea stinks.

I'll look into creating a free spirit and send you a PM.

If you play a excrement spirit, you'd be playing with poo.....
And we would too....

Very good point.

And as for equipment, I'm guessing newly freed means maybe a few weeks/months, not like 15 seconds before game started, so I'm sure we could get equipment as per normal.

Edit: So would the cult thing work as a group contact? (Though it would make it rather easy for me to get my people to pact with) And true, Karma in PbP does tend to come rather slowly, so losing out on a bit isn't such a massive problem.

Edit2: You know, I'm thinking that was specifically put in there in order to get the Free Spirit character to bind themselves to the group, give them a real vested interest in the party's survival and all.

So how are all these free spirits going to stay in touch with each other? The normal commlink display just is not going to work. (Free Spirits can not read such displays.)
I suppose that throat mikes and ear buds can cover a lot. Haptic gloves would be difficult without visual clues to help. (Are you pushing the up button or the down button?) So I guess you better hope the voice recognition and command selection (was that prt of the message, or the command to end the message?) works well. Almost makes a hacker contact useful.

Joel, just observing this, although 800 point initiated Free Spirits do indeed sound neat.

Well, given that we can move at... oh 1,000xforce meters a turn or something, and if we know each other we can track each other down, it shouldn't generally take more then about five seconds to pop up and say hello to each other.

'phones' are of course a good alternative, we can't read computers, but we can talk over them just fine. I'm sure we could also get printers and set them up to automatically print any text we receive (Or e-mails or however we want to set it up). I'm sure we could walk into a computer shop and pass over some nuyen to have them set that up for you.

Speaking of Nuyen -that- could be a problem. We'd need other people to handle all our financial stuff when not dealing in credsticks and such. Even with ample use of text-to-voice and such using a bank would still be difficult.

This is why I asked about merges btw, if you merge with someone with a datajack, you can just use that. Doesn't work for possession.

Aren't all the inhabitation spirits like mantis and such?

Nah, ally spirits can be inhabitation spirits too, and I think any spirit can be merged.

Also please note that the first post says 'moments after we were booted out of heaven' so we could be in extreme problems re: equipment.

I don't see 'moments after we were booted out of heaven' at all. Perhaps your talking about his post for his previous similar game. He hasn't said that he is using that exactly or anything.

Well, he did say standard creation rules and whatnot, so I'll go with that for the moment, not that anyone is likely to have a ton of stuff anyway (Possession spirts may have a few bodies or whatnot)

No point debating it too much though, best to just wait for him to respond (And he'll have about 20 questions to respond to already by now)

But yeah, fair call.

I'm just spewing ideas and questions out, I like to make sure I'm on the same page as both the GM and the Team so everyone knows how I intend to operate and that they are okay with that.

Ah, missed or forgot that.

Well then, yes, equipment and contacts could both be problimatic. Though of course we could have been gathering these things before our banishment, and could potentially be part of the reason we where banished.

This also helps with the problem of getting people for the friendship pact. We could have a number of contacts who could be potential pact members, but since we've only just become free spirits, haven't had time to actually make it such yet.

If its feasible, I'm thinking former ally spirit, so I can justify a high loyalty contact.

Your old mage? I didn't think that an ally spirit became a free spirit by being on the best of terms with their former mage.

Ok, as it was stated, you will be freshly freed when the campaign will start, like 5 minutes fresh. It doesn't mean you can't have equipment or contacts. These can be acquired at character creation, but they must be reasonable. Cults, magicians and other awakened-related things are fair game.

Considering this, there will be no free contact points. You have to buy them with karma.

I'm assuming that I could do a write in on background events so the banishment effect kicks the ally spirit bond in the todgers - we just got freed haha.

But yeah, tough call, shaping a character then adding some bits. Need to remember the cost of groups heh.

Or the contact could be another mage which helped the ally spirit against its former master...

Wow, a LOT of traffic while I was away. Still planning to submit something tomorrow, but I understand if I'm too late.

Also, since i saw mention of inhabitation spirits, the rules for free spirits expressly forbid them (assumign Dentris hasn't overrulled that). You get possession or materialization, and inhabitation is called out as not allowed.

Yeah - I haven't decided what sort of spirit I want to play yet, so in depth background is still on the back burner.

Its looking like a triple initiate with astral chameleon and improved masking so he leaves no traces is a good idea, just gotta check things against the book and have a think about possession and materalisation is going to work as a practical matter.

I'm still keen to play inhabitation if you want to have a think about that, but yeah, as black hat says its outside the rules.

I'm more keen to play an inhabitation spirit as it allows for a more 'tangible' character with a much more normalised interaction with the world of shadowrun.

You may be internationally driving us towards intangible characters to make us feel disassociated, if so ignore me.

Funny fact that most of you won't care about: I could make a 'free spirit' with 750 karma gen by making a mage, who then summons an ally spirit and just using the resulting ally spirit as the 'free spirit'. You'd be considerably more powerful, AND the mage would be a playable character by himself.

Nice!