Hi there everyone, new to the game and setting and hope you can help me.

I'm coming from a World of Darkness rpg background and find the Shadowrun rules intuitive and flowing. I'm currently 3/4 of the way through the core rule book (20th anniversary edition, finally got but oh no, NOT from amazon [rant for another time...]) and loving it.

My question comes from Riggers and jumping in. The game seems to lend itself wonderfully to introducing elements from Ghost in the Shell anime. I was wondering if there are any rules/books I should be looking at to run a game where the characters can effectively jump in to robotic, human shaped "shells" (as drones). - taking this further I was thinking of having a character (perhaps a pc) that found their consciousness severed from reality and exists only in the matrix - thus relying on drones (and hopefully android type drones) to exist in reality)



If anyone has done this or something like this, or if it is covered in one of the books and you can let me know, it would be very much appreciated.

thanks

first I would suggest you get the Arsenal and Augmentation books, the first has the price and stats for human like cyborg bodies and the second gives deep insight into how these full body Cyborgs work in the Shadowrun world, it should be noted the method is expensive, rare and makes you stick out as a soar thumb if you plan to put your characters on brain in a cyborg body. As for jumping in that´s no real problem as the drone mentioned in the Arsenal book can be moded to be a jump into rig drone.


As for the second option the closest thing to that is playing a technomancer since they basicly transmit there own soul threw the matrix but making the rules for someone sole living there is just to much of a mess of house rules to do as your first SR experience, it works better as the concept for a NPC rather then a PC.

fun side note: I was watching a episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG as I notice this thread :3

There are playable AI rules in Runner's Companion too, if you want to go for that "trapped in the Matrix" feel.

For someone like the Major, look for Otomo drones - they're the closest you'll get to humanoid looking drones, and you can mod them up all pretty like. There are fan created Tachi's somewhere here on Dumpshock too, if you do a search.

Nooooo! No more Tachikomas!

well there is this thread talking how one might mod a Shadowrun vehicle to make it a think tank

I wish I wasn't at work or I'd pull this up on youtube, but if you're a tachi fan, you have to watch the videos from the Playstation game. Each time you tried to beat the training mission, depending on how well you did and how far you got, you'd get a different video. My favorite one is a group of tachi's with streamers falling down around them, dancing, while one shouts, "we're covered in battlescars and racking up experience points that we've acquired!" another shouts, "we're going to get promotions!" and then they all start in with "promotions! Promotions! Promotions!"

I'd play that game sometimes just to watch those videos.

Thanks that's awesome news, I know what my next purchase will be.

There are two things which I think come close to what you want:

1.) AIs. An AI could easily make a drone its home node and go to town, and there are AIs who at least believe (whether this is true or not is another queston) that they are the conciousness of a human trapped online.

2.) Real Cyborgs. However there are no rules for using them as PCs and IMO the whole idea as presented in Augmentation is just badly done. Instead of simply allowing a rigger with full immersion lifestyle to put his meat body, minus a few useless limps, in a life support cocoon inside his favourity drone, they went for crazy stuff like cutting child brains from their bodies and letting them grow up as cyborgs...

...which, if you think about it, is following up a really old plotline from way back in the 30s with Doc Halberstrom, the Matrix Born Project, Halberstrom's Babies...

I like brains in jars, myself. The tech will get better. Stronger. Faster.

So they would work great for a PC based off the Major then?

The Tachikoma are the best part of GITS O.o
Well, aside for teh Majors Cyberbody and Batous big Guns . .

There is nothing in the playstation game about "Tachikoma". It features Fuchikoma alone, as it should.

~J

Sorry, I used tachi as the short hand, thinking that that was the common thread between the two!

*fails his knowledge check.

I think more specifically you mean GitS: SAC

I liked SAC alright, it was nice that it had more of a detective noir feel to it, but it lost some of the postmodernism/transhumanism.

Also, I always liked the tank in GitS, the name of which eludes me.

ONly thing i hate about SAC is the fact that the Tachikomas allways die at the end <.<
Poor little buggers ._.
I still get weepy McEmo-Pants when i hear the Suicide Song ;_;

Would you be referring to the Fuchikoma mentioned above?


(ToT) But learning the meaning of death teaches them to be 'human'
and teaches mecha-taku how to cry! (T_T)

well I know I'm talking about recreating the Major for Shadowrun as a PC...

well I know I'm talking about recreating the Major for Shadowrun as a PC...

[or is the idea of a "sexy robot" a bad idea...]

Sexy Robot is not a bad idea . . well, at least not in my book . .
but be carefull http://th09.deviantart.net/fs14/300W/i/200...s_by_Zapinc.png
Also, you won't have too much fun with that. complete cyber replacement is still a dead end pretty much.

Probably the Think Tank from the end of the movie.

Pardon me while I go stab whoever decided to strip nested quotes.

~J

Robot girls are sexy, and by the 70s, are probably more "more human than human", if you catch my drift.

(You may want to mark that NSFW Stahl, if the title is anything to go by)

I had an idea awhile back for a brothel that was staffed entirely by Otomos, all rigged by one guy with some weird tastes.

lol
That's too funny
[or as my friend has just said..."well I'd rather lose my fingers than..."]

seriously though, can you make a major type character?

hey, you know me ^^

*bows deep*
thank you, thank you, thank you very much!

Yes, We Can!

But it's a dead end type of character that can't do anything well.
Mostly take some damage, but even that is kinda iffy with SR4 converting Physical to Stun if Armor is bigger than Damage.

Assuming I remember the character correctly, I suspect that given enough there are several different ways that you could build a character that captures various aspects of the Major. I am not sure you could build an exact 'copy' since Shadowrun doesn't generally take advantage of the full-conversion cyborg concept.

The Major is, essentially, an incredibly elite combat hacker. The major point of differance between GITS and any shadowrun character based on her would be the ability to body jump, other than that her physical abilities are pretty well in line with what someone with a delta grade setup of cyberlimbs,torso, and skull would be capable off. In fact with some of the stuff in augmentation one could create a body with far greater performance.

Yeah, the think tank. It looks vaguely arachnid and Kusanagi had a run for her money.

In Unwired, one of the supplements, there is section about digital ghosts left over from the Crash 2.0. In other words, digital ghosts are human consciousnesses left in the Matrix. I don't have the book right in front of me, but I believe it has some rules and guidelines that might be helpful for creating a digital only character.

I agree that, yes, one should pick up Unwired and Augmentation and read them.

Now, getting over to the GITS SAC portion of the thread (fellow fans of both series will understand this);

In the GITS-SAC 2nd Gig episode "Android And I", there's this track of music that accompanies the opening story lead-in, right after the opening credits. As the android Jeri models are destroying themselves in various ways, this track plays (there's a musical popping intro, then a base-line strumming that is just too cool), then ends when the episode title comes on. It's been played in several other episodes, but I don't remember which ones.
I can't seem to find it on any listing of OST CD's available, and I don't know if it has a title or not. If you can help, please PM me?

Nobody i know seems to know

The Tachis wouldn't be so bad if their voices and mannerisms didn't sound like spoiled, annoying, ADHD-afflicted children.

At least, that's what they sound like in the native Japanese voices.

I'd say the english GitSSAC voices were kinda similar. I thought the tachcoma made an excellent example of full AIs. No fear of death or injury (at first), highly inquisitive, prone to extending existing theories rather than posit brand new ones, and almost oblivious to social concerns. I'd think extroverted AI are probably more productive because of their involvement with the wider world.

On to the major, the big issue is she is "L33t". More skilled in hand to hand combat than Batou, better hacker than Ishkawa, better shooter than Saito, possibly a better womanizer than Pazu. Togasu is probably the only one who exceeds the Major within his own specialty (investigation).

You can build a cybered up character with much of the Major's gear but without dumping several hundred build points on skills, it aint the Major.

For the Major, I'd go with a free AI whose done a few jobs and pulled herself together one hell of a custom fit Otomo. With enough skillsofts...

Or, she's someone >>>this<<< close to the bottom rung of her essence. And yet, she seems free of cyberpsychosis.

Yes, that's the one, Stahlseele. Thanks for asking your contacts.

If you search Dumpshock for tachikomas, be careful how you filter it, or you'll get everything I've ever posted plus actual tachikoma stuff.

BTW, my username has NOTHING to do with tachikomas, it's all about the Tachis baby.

As for the major, well in my opinion, she (along with all the others with cyberbrains) is pretty much an SR "e-ghost", plus she's spent a lot of Karma on advancement as an AI hacker/rigger type PC, you'd find that in Unwired P. 170, if you have it.

Thanks, I'll make a note of the page for when I get the book.

just in case anyone is interested Aintitcool.com is reporting a Ghost in the Shell live action 3D movie in the works...

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42814

Also, NGE Live Action.
And Akira Live Action.
And Cowboy Bebop.
As if Sailor Moon wasn't too much allready . .

Yep, that research note about Jarheads definitely sounds like him. A child brain wired to computers, with no concept of the real world and obviously using "childlike" metaphors for Matrix actions.


Only that in this case it did not really get better, it just popped into existence

But I guess my dislike of SR Cyborgs is also because I imagined them differently and then was really disappointed how they turned out. When a friend told me about the new stuff from augmentation, the image I got in my mind was one of riggers who consider their body as just a vestigial shell and thus go the opposite route of a sam, by putting their body into a machine...sounded really cool to me and had "cyberpunk" written all over it.
Then I got the book and alas, all we got was some freaky experiments that probably even the worst trix addicts would not do to their bodies. And the fluff explaination for it was "well, there are adaption problems with the stuff riggers do all the rime, so we waved our hands a bit and came up with something that causes even more problems"...

Funny, I never saw it that way... You do realize that you can move forward with the Rigger idea with no difficulties whatsoever, and it works out wonderfully...Jarheads are new tech, and are not perfected... but rigging has been around for 30+ years and has been refined to a fine art... the only drawback is the cost of the drones you are using for such a concept... But it will work...

Keep the Faith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x76Z9HGvlLs

Hmm?



-karma

First time I have seen that... Pretty Awesome

Keep the Faith

Arguably, the idea for cyborgs has been there since the creation of Halberstrom's babies, but the technology hadn't caught up with it yet. With the cyborgs in Augmentation, we've hit the point where they're viable, but the tech is so new that there's a lot of glitches to work out with it. I suspect that as time progresses in the books, we'll see cyborgs that are much more player friendly. For the moment, they're little more than oddities.

Compare with the cyberzombies. It used to be fsking killer to even make one, and its still dangerous now, but the tech and the know-how has gotten to the point where it's relatively simple. Not encouraged, god no, but it's getting easier and easier to laugh at your essence count...

Agreed...

Keep the Faith

Sure, thanks to my mighty tinfoil hat my thoughts keep being my thoughts

Well, You Know... Gotta keep those aliens from manipulating you...

Keep the Faith

Close! That's the intro to the game, and that right there is one of the best representations of Shadowrun rigging put to film.

The one I was thinking of is this one -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fme-8Z56vwo

There are two versions, this is the one that used to crack me up.

technically, a full body cyborg in gits is a brain in a metal case.

hell, watch gits:sac and observe the boxes with wheels and manipulators...

I'm hard pressed to come up with any pop-culture or rpg cyborg who is more than a brain in a jar. Metallo, Robotman, Robocop, "the Man Who Bit His Tongue", Rifts' Borgs, and CP2020 full conversions are brains-in-a-jar.

The SR mechanic of piloting a body is unusual but other systems really don't have a "rigger" analogue.

Just a note that Robocop was not a Jarhead...

He had a fully functioning cranial (eyes and Brain) thouigh his eyes were indeed augmented, and he also had a full torso, complete with most of his major organs intact... he had to actually eat to survive ("rudimentary paste... tastes like babyfood")... Robocop is more like what is traditional for the common full borg in Shadowrun; Full Arm Replacements, Full Leg Replacements, Torso Shell and Skull Shell, along with some subsystems added for functionality... probably state of the Art (Read Beta or Delta Grade, as he was a prototype that was singularly successful)... The Attempt in the second movie (the drug addled junkie) was more the Brain in the Jar Cyborg that you are referencing...

You are right that the Rigger is more a trope of Shadowrun than any other game that I have seen...

Keep the Faith

What about Marvel UK's Deathshead?
wiki it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_Head


Getting back to the major. Has anyone made stats for a "shell" which is similar to the Major's that a PC could rig?