My personal views on this...

Infected: No... just no. If people want to play vamps, I have run several very good V:tM campaigns in the past. I even have V:tR, though I haven't run it yet. One of the best characters in any of my games was from V:tM. He was a Malki named "Iron Heart" whos insanity was that he throught he was a Mortal Combat character. Sounds pretty funny right? At times it was... but mostly it was freaking scary crazy psycho shiz. Anyway, as I was saying, you want Vamps play a vamp game.

Drakes: Not that I dislike them, but as a PC they just don't really work. If you want to play something like this then I would suggest Fireborn. It does the job many many times better then trying to fit a Drake into a SR4 game. Now as NPCs that fit into the plot, they work well. I got an NPC with latent Drake and Adept. I'll be using him to draw the PCs into a little metaplot with Ghostdancer.

TMs: Ehhhh... I rather dislike some parts of their fluff, but as PCs they are perfectly acceptable and not overpowering (as long as I completely block their access to all that world breaking fluffy stuff, which as a GM I can do and still be RAW).

AI & Freespirits: I like having the rules, since it makes it easier for me as a GM to create them. However, they don't really appear to work well as a character.

But they have zero chance against any cop on a motorbike (or, for that matter, a speed-boosted segway).


That would mean letting them off the hook and be special without much of the intended drawbacks. This won't happen with me, sorry. And since these flaws demand the character to be the thing the campaign revolves around (fairly little room for the PC to do anything if at everys opportinuty, agents of a Great will jump them) ... such charcters won't happen except for special campaigns built around that to begin with. And even there, I'd propably not give the character to someone who is in only because he wants to play something kewl, leet and suetiful, but a player I trust to be able to handle the character likely not making it through the campaign.


What, except for GM fiat, will stop your initiated otaku from abusing the endless archive and great connection to hack anything anywhere anytime and get paydata which nets ginormours amounts of money, or is just the thing to blackmail anybody to do annything for them? Do you disallow resonance quests entirely for them? If so, good, but where is that still RAW?

I think your reading all to much into resonance quests.
I don't see where the rules really allow doing thinks like that.

Nothing. But the GM wants to have some free hand to deliver HIS campaign. He actually builds a car and writes code, everything he gets from the Devs is Tools and Materials. You confused the part with the whole.

It is my choice as the GM on what paths he can find in the resonance, based on what is needed for the game. Trying to constantly go into the endless archive to rip and destroy stuff that does not contribute to the game and the rest of the players fun will be met with a simple "you can not find the path". If finding it is essentual to a session piece, then it is quiet easy to let him manage to find the path on this try, get in, and blow almost all of his time searching till he finds what he needs. After that, he has to hop out and hurry. If he trys to follow the same path again later for world breaking, he can't find it since it seems to have moved.

A resonance quest doesn't mean always going to the great connection or the endless archive. There are many paths. I would go so far as to state that most submerged TM have not been to ether (IMO).

On a straightaway. But I'll take a quick quadruped that can jump obstacles going through alleyways and crowded markets over a crotch-rocket any day.


That's a lot of assumptions made about players and GMs that don't hold true for every group.

Or make him a hi-initiate centaur horse shaman with the movement power, four kid stealth legs and cyberskates (laughs at the idea of a horse on skates).

EDIT: What would be sillier - centaur with cyberskates, or centaur with gecko pads so he could walk across the ceiling?

The pads... no ifs ands buts or winnys about it.

You really overestimate the maneuverability of horses.


Well, this is an opinion thread, and that would be mine. Sure, other groups may handle that differently. This is how i would handle it and why.

Because of the rider being duct-taped to the centaur´s back?

The rider would need a gecko pad on his butt.

The resonance realms have their disadvantages too. If you are on a serious time constraint you will probably want to avoid it. It may seem like hours in the realm, but it may be weeks on the real time.
Also, finding the information is based on its availability. That call is by the GM. So yes it is possible-but the difficulty and timeliness are left to the GM who may make such quests near impossible unless it advances the adventure.

So, apart from GM fiat, there is nothing that can be done to keep a techno from finding out everything and hacking everything. Good to see we're in agreeance.

Explain to me how you do those thinks by the rules and don't just point us into litlle fluff pieces.

What, you want a rundown for how to roll an average or challenging resonance quest?

No i want to know where the rules say that a tm can do what you said in that quote.
Becouse i think you reading all to much into those little fluff descriptions of the few resonance realms.

Those "fluff descriptions" are all under "Game Information".

I know you have been beaten to death over the differences between Drakes and Dragons, so I will not add flames to the fire.

I would like to point out an excellent example of a Drake as a Character.

Please checkout the DragonHeart Saga, which is a trilogy of official Shadowrun Novels first published in 1997 (back in 2nd edition times). It deals with Dunkelzhan's death and the team that was enlisted to fullfill certain aspects of his written will. The story has at least one Drake in it, who is powerful, but not beyond starting shadowrunner abilities.

http://www.jakkoke.com/work/novels/

So whats your point, their still fluff not rules.

I'm talking about centaurs.

And isn't actually a Drake for most of the books...
...And may not be beyond the starting shadowrunner abilities, but his training and experience would probably put him beyond "standard starting" characters...
...Unless tuition from a Dragon counts as "standard" with you ??

How are they more maneuverable than common horses?


Ryan Mercury was a prime runner with the very start of the novel. Where that would make him comparable to a startup SR character is beyond me. Also, please don't leave out he had Dunkelzahn's might backing him - he was no lone drake, he was a draconic agent, and that alone gives a character access to ressources vastly beyond even those of high-karma characters.

He started out initiated - being able to mask his true nature. He had at least 4 levels of giant leap, boosted reflexes 3, maximised combat sense and several maximised skills. No way this was a starting character. Also, his buying the mystical adept feat after chargen puts him well outside rules legality to boot. While the novels were somewhat fun, he sure isn't a good example of an easily integratable drake character. In fact, he is the opposite.

He could have always had the Mystic Adept ability, but never spent points towards spellcasting until much later...

First time I heard Ryan is called an "excellent example".

First time I've heard "Ryan Mercury" and "excellent" in the same sentence!

He's an excellent example of why drakes make crappy PCs. He's an excellent example of how to create a character everyone should like but ends up thinking is a tool, which, coincidently, is something I experimented with doing. I've been very happy with the results. But I digress. Ryan Mercury, much like Kid Stealth, is an excellent example of so many things. None of them are positive, but that's not important.

First time GM weighing in.

I'm running a game wherein I only placed a single restriction on the PCs - no drakes. Other than that, I gave them freedom to build whatever they wanted with their 400BP. Right now I have a pixie, sasquatch, AI, free spirit, troll, spider shaman, organ-legger, street sam, and one sniper constantly on red mescaline.

That's right, nine players. Four are non-metahuman sapients, one is just plain creepy, and the rest all have their faults. I couldn't be having more fun with it. Working their different origins and backstories into the framework of the campaign is challenging, and I'm sure that I've bent or broken canon in some areas but I don't care. All I want is for my players to have fun.

Also, I don't know what you guys do for house rules regarding hallucinogens, but I make the sniper roll perception every time he is using and wants to shoot. During the first run he hallucinated that a guard in a tower was an exact duplicate of himself and shot anyways; the result of killing "himself" was ego death (short term combat paralysis).

Jesus.

I would NOT be wanting a sniper on red mescaline watching my back.

LOL. I thought my PCs playing an AI, a drake mystic adept/covert ops agent, a troll merc, human spy, eagle shapeshifter/shaman was just plain wierd. I raise my hat to you man.

- J.

That gem right there is why you are doing it right. Everything else is more or less irrelevant.

Congrats!

I have to agree, run the game your players want to play. Only thing I would add is that if you as a GM are not having fun, then something needs to change.

My thoughts:

Technomancers: I allow them, BUT, they have to deal with the fact that people are still scared of technomancers. Kinda like mages from the Dark Sun setting; powerful, but they'll die quickly if people figure out how they're doing that neat stuff.

AI: No. No. No. AI's should be scary, not PCs. Even if they're not all-powerful, they are not human, and do not have human motivations.

Drakes: Never allowed them; they seem to be too far away from the games I've run. Might allow one in Amazonai or something like that.

Ghouls: Meant to be killed, not played. Their very nature requires them to kill and eat people.

Just EAT people. Killing can be done by another one ^^

Gouls are required to eat metahuman flesh in order to survive, but this doesn't mean that it's the only thing they can eat. They have to eat about the 5% of their weight in metahuman flesh or start to starve, but the rest of their meals can be any type of raw meat (they can also eat anything if they have a digestive expansion but the dietary requirement still forces them to eat that minimum weekly ammount).
Also metahuman flesh doesn't mean necessary living (or not so living anymore) peoples, cloned flesh will do, as medical scraps (gouls love when sammie choses to switch his/hers default limbs with a tricked-out cyberlimb), being a goul is a pain in the ass but it's not impossible to coexist peacefully with non infected (at a teorical level at least).

Also ( ) who says that the meal must be dead to be eaten?

Hmm... a metahuman with Regeneration perhaps?