http://www.shadowrun4.com/wordpress/2010/1...e-season-4-faq/

Enjoy!

Bull,

Looks good.

Quick question - if someone starts the season with less than 150 karma, then gets to 150 after a few mods, will they be 'promoted' up to Prime Runner status mid-season? Or just keep playing the character no matter how much Karma they have by the end?

For example, a friend I run for has about 135 karma...almost there.

If it's in the FAQ I apologize, only had a chance to quickly scan it, but will read it more closely tomorrow!

Thanks for all the hard work, and looking forward to season 4!

Jeff
tpb Tenh

Per the FAQ:



Probably not as direct and obvious as I'd intended (The FAQ needs a FAQ! ), but basically you only have to worry about that when you transfer between Seasons. So even if you manage to go into Season 4 with 149 Karma, you don't have to worry about Promotion until Season 5.

Characters that start Season 4 with 149 karma, however, get a special Title: Cheese Monkey

Bull

Neat. And very interesting.

I to did a quick scan so if it's in the FAQ, my bad, but if we use the karma transfer to make a new character, but say have just below the 150 karma needed to be a prime runner. Can we still promote the first character to prime status play in the prime runner missions with that character and then use the second new character to play in the normal missions campain? Example, my character has 145 karma, I transfer say 70 karma to a new missions character then promote the Original character to prime runner status is that Legal? Cause I made a brand spanking new character ready to go for season 4 and intended to promote my original character from season 3 to Prime status. Don't wanna be a Cheese Monkey. If i do promote my Season 3 character then the perks for the new character apply as normal correct? I cant transfer some of the Karme to that new character, Kinda an all or nothing transfer? OH NOES I've gone crosseyed

OH, HALLELUJAH, PRAISE BE BULL.





-k

The FAQ says you can create your own magical groups. Can you join existing ones (ie, the ones in Street Magic?)

Mr. Barnes... Are you causing problems again? Always the troublemaker.

Ok, I'm not sure I entirely understood your questions, as it was a bit rambling, but lemme take a crack at it:

1) Karma Transfer is all or nothing. You can't split the karma up.

2) Promoting a character is all or nothing. Going along with #1, you can't promote the character but put some of the karma toward a new character.

3) You can promote a character that is under the 150 cap, and you still get Benefits for your new character.

4) This was generally to do two things. For one, to help level the playing field for Season 4 a bit better. It's not perfect, never will be, but I think we'll see a more even distribution of gear and money from here out. And two, we do want to see the Prime Runner program grow. We think it could be a lot of fun to have these high powered games for older, more powerful characters to really play around in and cut loose.

Umaro: If you fit the criteria (and it makes sense for your character), then yes. Keep in mind though that some of those groups have some ties that may not fit well with Missions or Shadowrun characters (Like the MCT Group). YOu can also join one of the player created groups that are kicking around here and on the SR4 Forums.

(And for those paying attention at home, yes, this is me backpeddling from my "No player created groups" stance, after rethinking things a bit and batting the idea around with a few folks.)

Bull

For TM's the Guild rules are clear. The FAQ doesnt say the Party rules are disallowed, though, so is using the book rules for finding a Party still a valid option for Season 4?

Yeah. That's something I wanted to change, but we decided against it. I'm not particularly happy that TMs, while functioning exactly like Mages for these purposes, basically don't have the Karma cost to join a Guild, and can join temp parties on top of it.

But, I only modified existing rules where they help streamline play, such as the Piracy and Program Degredation rules. It's not really Missions job to "Fix" problems in the core rules.

(Which, lemme tell you, is going to give me an ulcer when War! is released in print. I may have to break my own guidelines for that, or simply disallow some stuff as unbalancing. Need to wait and see what gets eratted and changed.)

Hey Bull I think (don't hold me to this) what sgtbarnes_ky was asking was this:

S/He has a character that s/he wants to 1st} transfer karma to a new character and then 2nd} promote the old character to prime.

At least thats what I seem to read in the post.

(no I haven't read the FAQ yet blame WoW)

When the FAQ uses the term 'copied' does that mean that technomancers may not emulate skillsofts? (A required part of using the Biowires echo)

Bull,

I was born a Rambling man! Anyway, you answered my question, so thanks, FAQ looks fantastic by the way, love the color and the Tim Bradstreet art. Casazil, close enough for government work. Can't wait to play in a Prime Runner mission and start a new character for Season 4, see y'all at the Cons this summer, Merry New Years everybody

Wait a tick, I meant to say love the Luis Royo art, though throwing around some old Bradstreet art from 1st/2nd ed. would be cool too, love the enterior art from those older mods back in the day

What about a hacker coding his own programs? Created != Copied/Pirated

Just a quick post up for you guys who might not follow Missions on FB; Bull is in the process of moving right now, and his estimate was 2-4 weeks offline. If he seems a bit slow in gting you a response, it might be related to that.

one thing I wish had been clarified was the use of edge on extended tests and how thats calculated since there is absolutly 0 guidelines in the Core book

So there are high-powered Missions available? where can one find these?

The plan is to release these quarterly. The first one is being worked on now, and will hopefully be out in the next month or so.

Okay, good to know (will it tie into the current season's storylines?). What about past special events missions, like the one where you have to donate cans.

THe Primes probably won't tie into Seattle. Of the two we have lined up, the first one revisits New York, and the second revisits Denver. We expect most players doing Primes will have played one or both previous seasons, so it's nice to have those set in previous Missions locations (Though that may not always be the case).

As for the Special Missions... We're discussing exactly how to handle SMH-2010 now. I'd ideally like to set it up as a charity event still, with some of the proceeds going to a Harvest for Hunger type charity event. But that's up in the air for the moment, and something that's decided by the higher ups. I do know the adventure needs one more proofing pass before it's "release" ready (It was slightly rushed to get it out at the beginning of November for GMs, and since they weren't major issues that would really foul up the game, and the GMs weren't paying for the adventure, we back-burnered fixing it until we figured out how we were publicly releasing it.)

I also have the 2010 CMP adventures that I want to see released at some point, but those too are a bit up in the air, and need a little more work before they're ready to go out (They're all still in text format still. FInding time to get everything we have lined through layout is starting to become an issue. I think Matt cries whenever he sees an email from me now).

Bull

CMP would be ...?

Also, okay, so the special missions are playable apart from the old campaigns, then? Because my group is full of old to ancient characters, and those need a bit more ... challenging ... stuff.

CMP is "Convention Mission Pack". Starting this past year, we started doing 8 adventures that are designed to be "One shot" adventures and are exclusive to the convention circuit for the year. There were 8 CMPs for 2010, including two that serve as a kind of precursor to Season 4 (One that deals with the Ork Underground and Alamos 20K trying top burn down the tourist highway, and one dealing with a copycat Mayan Cutter and the death of MacCallister's daughter).

By one shot, as a note, I mean these aren't tied to the current season or location, don't generally use the Seasonal contacts, etc. Since about half of our players at the bigger cons (and more than that at the smaller) tend to just be looking for SR games to play and aren't prior Missions players, this makes them easier for players to simply drop in on.

The Special Missions (Of which so far there's only one) are, indeed, playable separately. Similar to the CMP adventures, SMH adventures are designed to be open to anyone, whether they've played Missions or not. Appetite for Vengeance is a bit more challenging on the whole mainly because it had a special mechanic that allowed for Edge to refresh via canned good donations. So the bad guys are ramped up a bit, encouraging players to spend and refresh their Edge during play (and thus encouraging more donations). It seems to have worked pretty well, and I'm hoping to continue it again in 2011 come the holiday season.

Bull

Ah, so that's what the references were to. Also, Jack Turner the smuggler. I suppose his ancestors were from the Caribbean?


Canned goods, in that case, meaning real food donations?

Quote possible He is a pirate, after all.




Yeah. The Catalyst Demo Team had a coordinator who helped hook GMs up with their local Food Banks. Entering the games required a canned good donation, and you could donate up to 6 additional canned goods to refresh a point of Edge during the game. The event wasn't quite as widespread as I'd have liked (It was a last minute idea and we didn't manage to get as much advertsing and word of mouth as we'd have liked), but it was run at a handful of smaller conventions during the holidays and by at bunch of the CDT Agents, and the donations were pretty good at each (More than a couple players donated extra cans, even though they capped out their Edge Refresh).

The Battletech side did a similar event, running a Solaris event.

We fully intend to do another one like it this year, and will have better advertising and lead time this year.

Bull

does this also include unused mission affiliate rewards ?

So, Is Appetite for Vengeance still active? (Including, of course, the donations for food banks)

And some of us made friends with the Exchange during season 03. Since they're international in scope, would they carry over into 04?

Regarding old contacts earned from previous seasons:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=27178

It appears the link to the Season 4 FAQ file on that news announcement page in the first post is broken.

The link on the regular FAQ page still works.




-k

It's a database error, looks like, on the back end of the webpage. Nothing I can do about it, other than flag upper Management and let them know.

If anyone needs the FAQ, it's available on DrivethruRPG, both by itself and as a bundle with the Calendar and a Transfer Log. Free, of course.

Bull