I'm making my players create characters on about 400 karma, then dropping them into 2050. The concept for me is for them to gain an appreciation for what it means to get any successes at all. The ginormous dice pools were starting to annoy me. 14-15 dice might be good for a cinematic campaign, but not so much for a gritty, realistic campaign... 8-9 dice. Using probability as a guide, 6 dice should consistently yield 2 successes. In practice, it don't work tha way. Still, I feel that 8-9 is a pretty decent dice pool for a by-the-book, gritty campaign.

Secondarily I am trying to get focus back on Role play rather than Roll play. Thus I am making them flesh out their characters, contacts, lifestyles... everything. The more thought they put into it, the more likely I will be to slap or incarcerate rather than kill a character.

The third objective is to re-introduce the Lore. Our campaigns have focused entirely too much on the itty bitties of B&E and Wetwork. A little redirection back to life in 2050-2070 is in order. I just dont get the "feel" of shadowrun when I play such campaigns... not like I do when I read the old FASA sourcebooks. I'll be translating some of the old 1st Ed stuff into 4th Ed for my purposes. Anyone who has Divided Assets, Predator and Prey, and Shadows of the Underworld is welcome to help out. Your input and ideas would be welcome.

For starters, I'm restricting cyberware post-creation. Beta and Delta grades are unavailable. Alpha uses Delta costs and normal cyber uses Beta costs. I'll shift this when the time comes... Beta goes public around 2055 (I believe), and Delta in 2060 (or so). As for specific gear, I'm pretty well cutting them loose. Anything nano or otherwise strictly 4th Ed in tech or scope is strictly forbidden (example: Commlinks are available, but the Matrix is still wired, and requires a datajack and cyberdeck), but for the most part things have changed little as far as stats are concerned. I'm allowing mods and such because I can reasonably see a lot of it in 2050 (Runflats, gridless operation, ceramic parts, etc). If I see a player trying to buy something that would be decidedly top secret or unavailable in 2050 I a putting the brakes on it.

Environment is also key. I got the idea to do this from the recently published Almanac, so I got a rough timeline... but with a spotty collection of 1st Ed books (I have moved several times in the last 20 years), I'm having some trouble with specific neighborhoods. Thus, I'm using Google Earth and the Yellow Pages to get a feel for the here and now, then projecting based on the Almanac timeline.

Ok, so am I on the right track? Your thoughts?

Average humans need 240 points to have 3's in all 8 attributes. This leaves 160 points for skills, equipment, contacts, ect. I don't see how you can reasonably expect the party of have a 'decent' dice pool in many skills at that rate. Just keep that in mind.

1) By dumpshock standards of decent, he doesn't.

2) He isn't flat banning cyber, just making it much more expensive.

3) Orks.

4) Trolls become useful again.



ThePatriot: You're probably going to want to restrict magic somehow too, because under this system, Adepts and Magicians become *very* appealing options. Jacking up the price of cyber/restricting the newer bits means that the adept is going to blow through sammies like they're made of rice paper.

Honestly, if your end goal is lower dice pools and more style/RP, can I make a few recommendations?

1) This is the most obvious one: Just ask your players to stay within those limits.

2) Maybe limit augmented (or unaugmented if you have players that love to delve into things like exceptional attribute and things...though at least in 2050 you won't have changelings to worry about) maximum attributes to Racial (un-aug)Max+1? That could still get a bit hairy with 11 Str/Bod trolls, but hey, they're paying out the ass for that, and their Agi will be low due to the loss of muscle toners. (I assume you're not allowing Bio, right?)

3) Encourage the purchase of skill groups. This keeps skills from rising above 4, at least until they can invest some karma to improve it.

4) If all else fails, just lay down a blanket "No dice pools over 10" rule. Make it very clear that any character that breaks this rule will not be allowed at your table.

5) On the 'more style/rp' end of the spectrum, be very liberal with rewarding good roleplaying/clever tactics/generally awesome stuff with small edge refreshes. This has worked wonders at my table to encourage more roleplaying, and has the added benefit of letting a mundane Mr. Lucky be able to compete with the adept or magician.

That's all I've got for now. Hope it helps.


~R~

You reiterate to me the argument my players had for me... and have a valid one.

Raiki, I'll take all that advice.

As for Bioware, I believe it was introduced in the 2040's, and exploded around the 2050's, though it doesn't appear until the 2e books.

I think I'll just go with plan B... make them choose a contact archetype out of the GM screen booklet and SR4... and flesh it into a character. Even at 400 Karma they're still coming up with insane character concepts like the Dirty Pair and such. This would be all fine and dandy if I was keen on the idea of cinematic campaigning... which in this case I am not. I'm looking to produce the gritty, scary Shadowrun... where me, in real life, would be scared to perform an action, but have to in order to put food on the table. A thriller campaign.

I guess what I'm really driving at is a serious Mundane campaign... with characters right out of the corporation or gangs.

Yeah, I'll go with plan B. Thanks all

Any further ideas would be appreciated.

Again, careful with the awakened contacts. A magician could cry havoc and let slip the spirits of war on your poor little mundane game. I would say that if the mage is straight out of a gang or corp, four should be the *absolute max* for magic. Honestly, three would be safer. Force 6 spirits shouldn't be too hard to take care of, even for mundane characters. Just make sure they're allowed to have SnS ammo (in very limited doses, mind you, because this creates its own issues).


~R~

Well played, sir. I shall watch for that.

If your players don't want to play the kind of game you want to run things are just not going to work out. I think you need everyone (both you and the players) agreed on what kind of game everyone is playing before working on characters.

One stat of 11 is going to cost 330 Karma. I'm not sure how anyone could afford more then one of them....
Edit; even a stat of 8 will cost 200.

Key word there: troll.

Well, in response to your very logical point, I will admit that I first read the OP as 400 BP, not 400 Karma, and made all of my suggestions based on that.

In further response:

ThePatriot: That's a bit harsh, don't you think? 400 karma won't even make a convincing human being, nonetheless a runner/ganger of any calibre or survivability.

Unless...what rules are you using for karma-gen? Old rules or german errata?

I would keep dice pool modifiers in mind. Six dice for a combat skill does not really translate into an average of two net successes. First, you have all of the potential modifiers for wounds, fatigue, movement, visibility, range, and recoil, among possibly other things. Then, the target gets to roll Reaction to dodge it. Six dice really only has a decent chance of hitting something at point blank range, and even that is dubious if the target is anything other than a security grunt with average Reaction. An unaugmented Agility of 4, a skill of 4, a specialization, and a smartlink give a dice pool of 12 - which is truly not overpowering in actual play, if you use the aforementioned modifiers.

I've gone through a character creation system like this and really enjoyed it, but the GM's goal of making low-powered characters was largely accomplished through caps on nuyen, availability, Magic, and Resonance. The number of initiative passes was also capped, which saved everyone the points that are usually spent pursuing as many passes as they can possibly afford.

The issue I see with limiting the amount of starting karma is that the players look to trim the things they see as non-critical, like contacts and knowledge skills (especially in karmagen where knowledge skills aren't free). One of the great things about the chargen I went through is that without the normal point sinks - resources and special attributes - there was plenty of karma left over to create full, well-rounded characters. For once, the players had more than one or two contacts, plus lots of those fluff skills that are fun but not practical enough to justify under normal circumstances.

I love the campaign that you're describing and hope to run one like it one day myself.

Aye... imma have them flesh out a contact archetype.

Don't know those rules. I like the general rule of 4-6 Karma per game session, max of 10 with bonuses...


Absolutely. I'm seeing a bit of that going on. I guess what I'm really trying to run is a game where the players start out as a contact archetype, where I can actually role play out HOW they got into the shadows and why... and then go from there. For whatever reason most of them are coming up with traditional pink mohawks. Two of them are creating Kay and Yuri from Dirty Pair, another is working out a time traveler (latent) technomancer. I liked the idea of a time traveler, but it's fading... besides, time travel and teleportation don't work in SR.

.... ?
You Mean 225 for all 9
but otherwise You're right
400 BP is just another try at "Bonzaiing" Chars ....
Patriot,don't be surprised If your Players cut down all necessary Fluff Skills (like Etiquette Street or Area Knowledge Homecity) because they don't have the Points anymore And don't be startled If they start to Min/Max .Because the less Points a Player has the more likely he is to Min/Max
.....
4-6 Karma only .... ?
You might have the older SR4 Rules not the newer SR4A
because the newere (errataed) Rules grant more Karma for Players

with a Dance around the Bonzai Tree
Medicineman

Not quite what I meant.

How *exactly* are you handling character creation? Letting them pick an archetype, then they get X karma to improve upon it? Playing an archetype straight, or with only cosmetic differences? Etc.

The karma question was based on the assumption that you were using karma-gen rules out of Runner's Companion. As printed in english, you got your metatype stats for free, and paid attribute x3 to upgrade your stats. In the german release, which was popularly considered official errata (and has now been confirmed by an update to the RC PDF) you paid the BP cost of your metatype in karma, and increased attributes at x5 instead of x3.

Anyway, again, how *are* you handling char creation?

Yes, it is

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=37152

HeyaHeyaHeyaJa
Medicineman

When you put it THAT way, I guess I'm using old RC rules... we use Chummer for creation, after all. Hopefully it'll be adjusted in a future v.

Yah... imma go with Plan B...

Pick a Contact archetype and flesh it out. Dont change stats or active skills. Dont exceed 750 karma.

I think that will produce the player character pool I am looking for.

So you're reverse-building the contacts to figure out how much karma they already use, then modifying it (minus stats or skills) for personal use, with a 750 karma limit?

First of all:
Free Knowledge skills etc. Let it be 50 Karma for everyone and be done with it, or it will bite you in the ass. (Or go 30 free knowledge, 20 Contacts a distribution as seen fitting)

Anyhow: It can be done.
Depending on how you used to run your games, you might have some strange effects. (Dropping skills they do not deem worthy to pick, because they never came up and just putting everything in "combat".

225?
I thought it was 5 karma per cumulative stat point?
1 + 2 + 3 = 6
6 * 5 = 30 karma per stat
8 * 30 = 240 for all 8 basic stats. What did I miss?

That's the ticket... with some restrictions on tech/gear as well to reflect 2050... and cost modifiers for alpha/normal as described above.
Again, the ultimate goal is:

1) Give the players an appreciation for what a die success really means. Force them to be creative when they fail. Make police and security the feared and respected forces they should be considered.

1a) Avoid ungodly normal dice rolls, force the use of Edge, actually have more than one or two glitches per game session.

2) Run a campaign circa 2050 through 2070, perhaps one game session per month of game time, representing the "big job" during that period in the character's life. Let the players see Shadowrun unfold before their eyes.

3) Demonstrate what makes a shadowrunner work. Too much pink mohawk in an otherwise trenchcoat campaign. Take it down a notch, create more mirrored shades gameplay.

The first point is free, you only pay for raising above racial minimum.
Presuming human
2+3=5
5x5=25 karma per stat to raise from 1 to 3
40x5=200 for all phys/mental
3x5=15 to raise edge from human min 2 to 3.
215 total.

I thought I recognized the theme. This might be the core issue here: you want to run black trenchcoat but your characters are playing pink mohawk.
Depending upon your relationship with the players you can approach this several ways. Personally, I think various flavours of blunt are the best, though, as you've already tried subtle and they didn't get it.

If these are people you know socially outside of gaming simply level with them: "hey guys, I'm getting sick of running pink mohawk and would like to try black trenchcoat for a while?" Hopefully they'll recognize that the game will be way more fun if the gm is engrossed too, rather than just going through the motions.

If these are random strangers you recruited then you need to be explicit as a statement, not a request: " hi guys, I'm running black trenchcoat not pink mohawk." If they aren't interested start searching for replacement crew with the explicit "black trenchcoat" commentary.

Black trenchcoat can still have high end dice pools so this won't resolve all of your issues, of course. It is much easier to expand character depth in black trenchcoat though, since their non-confrontation abilities (contacts, "soft" skills, etc) matter more often.

I did the same thing with BP. Everyone started from a contact archetype that fit their background and then rounded them out to 300 BP (I let them change a few skills if they did not fit at all, for example modding a taxi driver to be a delivery truck driver). We agreed before hand that it was going to be a low powered game and I don't think anyone had a pool over 12, even with specializations, to start with. I also capped starting nuyen to 50,000, so there is not a load of cyber/bioware in play. Some of it will still depend upon your players, but it has worked out for a pretty fun game so far. And it's nice that things that should be a threat are actually a threat and having a hacker for whom it's a big deal to get into someone's commlink. Of course, in our game no one was starting as a shadowrunner and no one had any combat skills greater than 2 starting out (though I did not set that limit). It can be a lot of fun, good luck.

Ah, that would be my bad, you see I thought you needed to pay for everything, even including up to the racial min. Well isn't my face red.

I'm hoping so. I'm not even making them LOSE any karma from the 750... just save it for later. START as goober cannonfodder, and BECOME weirdos with pink mohawks... around 2060 or so...