Bob made me laugh.

The in character section on living with the nagas was far too short. That should be a full short story somewhere.

K.

I need an animal form assumable via Shapechange that has a Body stat between 7 and 11. The largest thing in the main book was a 6, which made shapechange a non-option for my Body 9 Troll... very sad.

What? No bears / alligators / bulls?

They are in there, I believe...but, who cares about the mundane animals? *puts in earplugs* Hey! Fido! Fetch! *throws a stick, and watches the Barghest chase after it!*

Have been trying to buy the PDF from RPGDrivethru and am having no luck. Has anyone else had issues or is it just me?

Purchase from DriveThruRPG went fine for me, payment by credit card. I've only once had issues with DriveThruRPG and in that case bought the product from their sister site on RPGnow. For some reason that worked. I'd email them, they're usually quite prompt.

No talis cat? *fume*

Okay, I have to post, this is a travesty to end all travesties, making ghoul plague apocalypses pale in comparison!

Penguins are not marine mammals.

That is all.


P.S. Other than that, this is a wonderful book, kudos!

Well, at least no one is bitching about the draka.

It's got penguins listed as mammals?

Weren't the magical Cats in Feral Cities?

No.

Lots of stuff in here for my adept shepherd and his attuned border collies, and for my wife's eco-semi-terrorist animal lover. Thanks!

I do wish the vorpal beaver had made it in, though. I'd like to have seen how close my imagining came to yours.

Finished my first read though. Great book!

Normal critter rules are exactly what has been lacking from our games. The stuff on extinct species really gave a lot of shape to the Sixth World. Not to mention really putting the UCAS, CAS and NAN in a different light based solely how they treat what they consider people. NetCat befriending a net cat was about the coolest thing in the book. Good mix of crunch and fluff over all.

I really won't have any gripes until I see it in action, never being the sort to dismiss anything based of showroom performance.

Well, at tonight's session, a player asked me how much a horse would cost. I said "if you just want a regular cloned horse, about 2,000Â¥". My confidence and the added detail of cloned animals took them aback. I was then asked how much a cow would cost. "The same," I replied. A pig, they asked, trying to shake me. "250Â¥," I replied. They were impressed.

Thank you, Running Wild!

That sounds kina like Bladerunner to me . .

be very afraid when that CEO's little princess wont be happy with a cloned pony...

She'd probably want a Unicorn...

This book is really useful, and well done! I have a few specific gamer-type questions, but all in all I'm quite happy.

A few specific questions from the book, regarding what we can expect of the SOTA in the official shadowrun universe (barring house rules):

1. Are warformed paracritters or technocritters available? Possible? For example, among the more 'institutionalized' paracritters, like Barghests and Hell Hounds, have they tried tinkering with 'em?
2. Do warformed critters react differently to bioware (the line saying they can accept standard bioware seems redundant unless they have some additional response)?
3. Do paracritters/technocritters react differently to cyberware or other implants than normal?
4. I would really appreciate a more comprehensive 'procuring critters' table, with some commentary on which kinds of critters are available/domesticable/etc. For example, the Oracle Owl is described as being readily available, but seems to be as useful as the Merlin Hawk in certain circumstances, but difficult to price because its powers are so dissimilar. In addition, some critters, like the Grandfather Elk or Golden Boar, or the Roc (how would you capture one? How would you even get a bulldozer or helicopter near enough to a nest to steal an egg?) seem fundamentally undomesticable (or, at least, shouldn't be without a couple shadowruns), but the generic procurement rules seem to leave a lot to GM discretion with fairly unclear guidelines from which to make plausible calls.
5. I would also appreciate more guidance as to when it is appropriate to use mischief/swarm rules... Oracle owls, for example, have Gestalt Consciousness, but nothing says they should be mischiefs vs. grunts.

v/r
Rob

1--Yes, though they are rare. The genetic manipulation which goes into creating a Warform generally utilizes forced cloning to speed up the process. Clones don't always express Awakened and Emergent properties, which can make entire batches useless. It would be more likely to utilize selective breeding techniques, such as those used with modern purebreds, though the process will take longer.

2--The line I think you're referring to is "Warforms are capable of accepting standard bioware, though cultured is more often used." This is to state that most corporations which go through the effort of implanting bioware use cultured bioware since they are force growing the tissue anyways from raw DNA. Standard bioware can be used as a cost-saving technique in one-off cases, but most firms will use cultured. (Afterall if you just spent several million nuyen on perfecting this Cat, why use a generic monkey organ, when the cat's organ could be perfect.)

3--They lose Essence just as their metahuman counterparts do. Critters (Mundane, Paranormal, and Emergent) express cyber-psychosis based on Essence loss more readily and the techniques used when implanting. Low impact augmentations may be used, but full-scale replacements are unlikely.

4--That's Tiger Eye's department, and I will leave it to her unless she hits me.

5--Any critter group with Gestalt Consciousness was designed to be run as a Swarm or Mischief when working as a group. If they are instead acting as staunch individualists (something completely out of character for such critters), treat them as Lieutenants and Grunts. The information about this is listed in the Gestalt Consciousness power description (p. 206) and the Swarm rules (p. 25).

Add to the questions: "What tradition(s) is (are) suggested for Sapient Dracoforms, such as Hydras, Gorgons, Sea Serpents, and Wyvern?" I know that proper dragons don't worry about such a thing, but it matters for Geomancy and I'd like to think that the 'lesser' dracoforms don't necessarily have the full mastery of magic that true dragons do.

Whatever you want. Really.

1. Technically, cloning has not worked on technocritters. See p. 187, 2nd column:



Just to give you a peek behind the fluff, cloning technocritters never produces a technocritter, only a mundane of the parent species. (Same for technomancers, fyi). Whereas cloning a paracritter sometimes works, but not with any scientific regularity. And since technocritters don't breed true (yet), it could be some time before selective breeding works.

4. The list you see is the list you get. Sorry. Every GM must decide what is or is not available for his/her game, and what the costs are. The table is for reference, and is just the costs for one location (Seattle). If you live in Manhattan, or LA, or Salt Lake City, (or Denver, there's a messed up city), the prices are different. Domestic vs not - domestic is also a GM call, although several critters' writeups do list specifically that they have never been successfully kept in captivity and/or domesticated. We tried to provide a pretty broad spectrum of critters on the table, and we did poll many of the Playtesters on how many critters they'd like to see and what critters they'd like to see included.

*beams* Glad you like it. Hope I didn't mangle the drop bear too badly....

Still on the books, though, and just because no one's reported to have enforced it doesn't mean that people haven't been collecting bounties on ghouls or banshees. McAllister's well-informed, but he's got a lot of biases and he's nowhere near a perfect source of information.

Part of the deal on that was writing to what was established before; I fought some of it and was brought down by my developer. I've got no problem there.

And personally, I think you're reading a little too much into some of McAllister's remarks regarding Krieger infection. It was less a comment on the potency of HMHVV III than it was the conditions in which most ghouls live. Give a ghoul a nice hot shower, and he's not likely to infect anyone without making a deliberate effort.

..and infect everyone down the water line? How long does the virus 'survive' away from it's host, anyway?

Except that cultured is just a specific list of bioware(not a grade like alpha, beta..) so if they want more strenght, agility or hardier bones for example they can't use cultured as bioware with those effects are standart bioware.
Seems like who ever write that one, isn't up fit the latest ware rules.

As said before - fluff and rules do not match then. By RAW, ghouls are highly infectious, and nigh-incurable.

SMBC

Ware is (since Shadowtech) either Type-O or cloned from your cells. Neural bioware is always cloned from your cells.

Standard Bioware is Type-O for cost reasons, but can be available cultured, too.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal?

So whats the coolest critter in the book?
Most surprising critter in the book?
Which one makes you chuckle to yourself? (Edit: Or grin all evil like.)

Dunno, haven't read the final PDF yet but the Stalker Chimera gave me a few lol's.

edit

Assuming they made the cut, Imps were pretty funny.

Question: other than the Talis Cat, which critters from the bestiary in the 2e (and possibly 1e) core and the two Paranormal Animals books (North America & Europe) AREN'T contained in Running Wild? I was going to try to convert a bunch of the other paranimals, but depending perhaps I should just focus on a few -- no sense doing what's already done.

Any word on when the print version's out?

Imps from threats book?

Yes, Imps made the cut.

Silly gamer! You know Catalyst doesn't do shipping dates past "When it's out"

Heck, the only reason we know that SR4A will be out after Gencon is because of a lot of educated guessing

That is correct, that quote about the unicorn was from the webcomic SMBC

Was reading the advanced rules for critters section, on swarms and mischief's. In reading the discription of mischief's it says that individual attacks are possible but not very effective against the group. Then it follows up with direct attacks reduce the mischief's population by one quarter of the modified DV but that area effect attacks reduce the group rating by half of the modified DV. So direct attacks are diffrent than individual attacks? Is damage from direct attacks counted against the population (ie. each net success reduces the population by one?) I like the idea as it allows me to deal with large mass attacks without rolling for each individual critter but the mechanics need a bit more explanation (or I need more coffee). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Storm--Have you read through the example on page 25? That shows the effect of a single target attack (a pistol shot). If you need more clarification, let me know and I will walk you through it.

I haven't read through the book yet, but just finished all 6 pages of this discussion. Looks like there is a lot of great stuff in there. The problem is, how to get even a fraction of it in game with a group that only meets once every other month. Poor me...so many toys, so little time.

You have to pick your battles, so to speak. Select a creature or encounter that you think will give the biggest "bang" or entertainment value for your group and work with that.

Do something with tentacles.
everybody loves tentacles!
and do NOT mix them up with testicles.

You're not entirely correct there. We announce Street Dates when are very sure that those dates [the date that a game store actually HAS the book and is allowed to offer it for sale] will be hit. This generally means waiting until the books are in our warehouse, and it also means that when we give a date, it's much more likely to be accurate than a "release date" we prognosticate months in advance.

This is better for everyone involved -- us, distributors, retailers, customers.

So a baby kraken lurking in toilets around the sprawl would NOT be a good idea???

hmm, a cephalopod with some kind of lighter then air mod, and a AI running the show...

Oh man Stahlseele, you hit one out of the park with that one. I rarely laugh out loud at work...

If you seriously want something with tentacles then why not have the runners hired to escort an important (and illegal) shipment as it crosses the ocean, then have it be attacked by a Kraken. I wanted to put one of those in a run as soon as I read about them.

Or (if you want to be a little bit of a bugger GM) have the team be hired to escort a boat from California to Hawai. The weather forecast is fabulous, no pirate activity has been reported for months, and reports indicate that there is a high probability of Mermaid activity in the area. Halfway through the journey, when nasty Sea-lions with arms start jumping up to drag people off of the boat and drown them, tell your players that a Mermaid might be something slightly different than what they are used to.

Much with the respect for that idea.

It wasn't meant as a knock at Catalyst. As I said in the Street Magic errata thread, I think you guys put out some of the better stuff out there.

But you have to admit, you know you keep us drooling over those books, well intentioned or not

/still drooling over 20th Anni edition
// So much in fact, I'm sending a roomate to Gencon with 40 bucks because Amazon is to slow