I'm in the process of starting up a SR4 campaign, themed around the idea of players being able to come and go freely, and having something of a revolving cast of characters.
My FLGS had SR4A and Street Magic, but I'll probably be getting the other core books from Amazon. What, if anything, does the Runner's Companion contain that's a must-have for character creation (besides Albinism and Night Elves...)? If it helps to have an example, I'm currently building a Fox Shamanic Adept.
Secondly, has anyone found a good substitute for Wordman's character sheets? I've always preferred character sheets that were crisp, clean, and efficient.
Full Version: Another player who's new to SR4
Unwired, Arsenal, and Augmentation are all very handy gear books. Unwired has that added bonus of trying to explain wireless networks...and to be honest I still haven't been able to finish reading it. But it has some good info.
To get to the question about the Runner's Companion, it has a number of...interesting...concepts. It has racial variants, SURGE, and the ability to play AIs, Free Spirits, and a number of other races.
It also talks about in depth lifestyles, and gives a plethora of new positive and negative qualities. It is worth getting, especially from a 'role-play' vs. "roll-play" standpoint.
There are a number of character sheets and generators that are over in the community projects section of this forum.
That said, if you are looking at picking up casual gamers with a rotating stable of whoever can make it, you might want to keep things limited to SR4A. You can make some pretty damn good characters with just that book...but they will always be out-shined by people who are eking out every bonus from the other books.
Hope that answers your Qs, and welcome to Shadowrun.
To get to the question about the Runner's Companion, it has a number of...interesting...concepts. It has racial variants, SURGE, and the ability to play AIs, Free Spirits, and a number of other races.
It also talks about in depth lifestyles, and gives a plethora of new positive and negative qualities. It is worth getting, especially from a 'role-play' vs. "roll-play" standpoint.
There are a number of character sheets and generators that are over in the community projects section of this forum.
That said, if you are looking at picking up casual gamers with a rotating stable of whoever can make it, you might want to keep things limited to SR4A. You can make some pretty damn good characters with just that book...but they will always be out-shined by people who are eking out every bonus from the other books.
Hope that answers your Qs, and welcome to Shadowrun.
QUOTE (CollateralDynamo @ Nov 24 2009, 03:44 PM) 
That said, if you are looking at picking up casual gamers with a rotating stable of whoever can make it, you might want to keep things limited to SR4A. You can make some pretty damn good characters with just that book...but they will always be out-shined by people who are eking out every bonus from the other books.
We actually have sort of the opposite goal. It's more about catering to our busy lifestyle. It can be hard to commit to a weekly game. Knowing the game will be there if you have to take a month off can be liberating. I'm quite confident we have enough obsessive players that we'll have enough copies of all the core books eventually, though I understand the recommendation of sticking to SR4A. We stuck to SR3, SR3C, M&M, Mits, and Rigger 3 pretty effectively, though.
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