The Redneck Runs have been better received than I anticipated. Much better, in fact.

There don't seem to be a large number of runs planned for very junior runners. Everyone wants to squeeze their build points until their 400 point character is a world-beating monster of domination, but begs the question of how they got to such a potent stage.

If I put my mind to it, I might be able to come up with a couple of runs for people with fewer build points - 300 or less. Or to be given to 400 point godkillers, just to make them paranoid that it's all too easy.

Would folks be interested?

Definitely would enjoy such a Topic.
Just a note, however... Not all 400 BP Characters are World Killers. Some are just starting out 'Runners.

Starting runners and such are better simulated by capping dice pools, skill levels and equipment, rather than points given.

True, but just look at the number of threads floating around here about how to turn 400 points into the ultimate master of the cosmos. I'm not suggesting that the rules are broken as such, but that when your players start the campaign struggling to hold all the dice in their hands at once, one has to wonder how they reached this pinnacle of excellence.

Conceptually, I think of a starting runner as someone who maybe has a dice pool of 10 or so in their best skill or set of skills. When 20 dice is derided as being weak sauce, you're playing an entirely different kind of game. Here I'm thinking of runs where 10 dice will get you there as long as your braincells are actively engaged. Less money per run, and less prestige, but no less fun.

To put it another way, for every runner team with the confidence of three or four fixers, a halfway decent reputation and a good set of tools, there are five gangs of kids with nothing to lose and everything to prove, and a few fixers who need some dirty work done.

From the character development standpoint, there's a whole lot more emotionally invested for the player who nurtured Kozmo, the potsmoking troll shaman initiate, since he was a barrens trog with a habit to support.

I think I could go either way on this strategy.

If I'm assuming a new runner is someone who is making a career change, and consequently is a fairly well rounded individual who just isn't an extremely skilled runner, I agree with you.

If I'm assuming that we're working with a kid who obsessively watches every news story which mentions runners, and doesn't want to join a regular gang because he wants to reach for bigger and better, and spends all his time learning everything he can about drones, then capping the build points seems like a closer match to me.

I agree... Starting Characters should be around the 8-10 Dice range, and the vast majority of mine start this way. Some people do not like this level of play, however. *shrug*

Guess it depends upon what, exactly, you are playing.

Something from my binder:
Men Who Hate Women
Your team's fixer with connections to whoever deals in human trafficking in your town (in my case, the LA triads) calls to set up a meeting with a Johnson. The Johnson is a twitchy elf who needs a large "package" picked up and delivered late at night to an arranged drop point. If your players' characters happen to know things like this, he's a semi-famous porn director, in debt with the human trafficking organization - he basically works it off by creating illegal hot sims and productions that cater to particular tastes, and the organization distributes it. In an example of the Arson, Murder and Jaywalking cliche, he's also noted to have questionable taste in clothing.
The package itself is a Secure Medical Transport Container, or SMTC - a time-locked hibernation crate. Upon closer inspection (that requires plugging a commlink into the container's universal port), it turns out to contain a healthy metahuman, with sedative and oxygen supplies running low and a few hours (less than the specified drop-off time) before it automatically opens. Also, the tracking device usually present in SMTCs has been tampered with and doesn't work (a disassembly attempt will prove that it has been physically removed). The wiseguys who hand the package over to the players honestly have no idea what it is.
Once the box opens, its contents slowly come back to life. It's a 13-year-old girl who speaks some third-world language no player character knows (in my case, Khmer), wearing disposable scrubs printed with a medical/cybertech A-corp logo and a sticker with QR code or something similar. There should be some hint as to what secondary language the girl knows (and that one should be one the characters know) - in my case, the fact that the girl was Asian and shipped to LA by the Triads was to lead the players to trying Cantonese. Of course, her secondary language is pretty bad, but she should get her point across: she was promised fame, acting, singing or modelling work, the usual "naive country girl getting into THE showbiz" thing. She also happen to be wearing a headjammer, and for a good reason: she's already rigged for a p-fix, with a data filter, an internal commlink fitted with a hot sim unit and no way to access it herself. Aside from some crappy OS, the commlink is clean - no software, no data trace, nothing. Now, the players have a choice: do the job or help the girl.
Now, the meeting. At the drop-off point, the players encounter the Johnson, his assistant - a nerdy ork on the verge of freaking out, two bodyguards armed with machine pistols or small SMGs, and their vehicle - a luxury sedan in which a whole SMTC will definitely not fit. The Johnson will be pretty pissed off at the fact that the girl is conscious. He'll order his assistant to check if everything works and prepare the girl for further transport, leaving the players with an empty SMTC and torn disposable scrubs, along with an order to "dispose of them" (yes, the Johnson just tears the scrubs off the girl and maybe even slaps her if she protests. His assistant then takes her to the waiting car and gives her his hoodie/jacket). To say nothing of him treating his assistant like trash. In my case, the players were inconsiderate enough to stunbolt the crap out of the girl (real classy), so the Johnson was a little less pissed off, but still took it out on his assistant (you know, lines like "That's not what I pay you for, you moron").
If the players prefer to punch the headjuice out of the Johnson, it's no problem tactically and logistically (but remember, he's making money for organized crime types, and they won't be too happy about it). His assistant, however, will totally lose his shit, hunker down behind the car and beg for mercy, as he's definitely not positive about the whole deal, terrorized by his boss, fed up with having to film and edit porn to make ends meet and disgusted with the whole little wired girl deal. If the players let him live, he'll reward them with some software later (my idea was an Agent+Edit, both at Rating 3, used to easily edit videos and sims, for example to blur or swap the faces).

Further down the line, if the girl has been delivered to the Johnson, he later calls the players for another job: this time, his "new star" lost consciousness on the set and so, they have to take her to any street doc they know. Due to the sim module being shitty and the surgery being just as bad, the girl suffers from headaches and sometimes faints - any good street doc can fix it, given time (feed your players with some medical technobabble about healing, recalibration, the bad effects of sensory data overload on a freshly installed sim implant, etc.), but the Johnson is a cheapskate and will insist on some fast, temporary solution like painkillers or other drugs.

Mission 3 will have the Johnson introduce the players to a producer - even bigger sleaze rumored to having dealt in snuff productions before. Of course raising this topic at first will seriously piss him off, but then the Johnson's assistant will discreetly notify the players that the Johnson, along with the sleazy producer, indeed plan killing the girl and recording it. And this is going to cause a lot of stink - even the organized crime guys, if told, will oppose it, on the ground that an idiot like Johnson will screw something up in the process, for example improperly disposing of an imported, SINless corpse that has very illegal headware in it, bringing the law on his own head and then, most probably, ratting out anyone who provided the girl. Then, it's headjuice time.
Another variant may be a meeting between the Johnson, the producer and the OC guys. The Johnson will pitch his next great idea, namely a spectacular snuff movie, with a specially built and actually functional set piece of some sort, and the wiseguys will just listen and nod, not showing that he completely lost it and his plan is bad for their business (to put it mildly). "They'll think it through", and sure they will - contacting the players via their fixer and ordering them to whack the idiot Johnson and his sleazy pal before he manages to get himself, and them, and the players, into really deep shit.

Hitting two rich guys who happen to hire decent security will provide more entertainment than going against only two goons with submachine guns, but hey, this time the syndicate of your choice is cutting losses and paying you for being the good guys. Of course, as in earlier case, the nerdy ork assistant will freak out and beg for mercy, as until now he worked semi-legit and it's the Johnson who dragged him into all that pedo snuff deal - if the players spare him, he'll reward them (as mentioned before) and lay low in order to avoid pissing anyone off. As for the girl, I have no idea - probably there is someone the characters know who will take care of her, and hopefully it's not a crazy street doc who will fit her with skillwires and combat skillsofts, turning her into a Manchurian Candidate sort of assassin (yeah, another of my ideas).

Koekepan, I'd certainly endorse a series of starter missions. Low-powered campaigns are my favorite and it'd be great to see what you come up with.

That said, I don't think you have to write them with a specific BP or dice pool in mind. You're not really stating out the Redneck Runs and I don't see a big reason to do so here. The plot (parties/problem/proposition) is the key component. GMs can then fill in the numbers to best fit their rookie runners.

Heh, as far as I'm concerned (and my group for that matter), 400 BP is a low-level/early career character. It just isn't enough to build a well-rounded character.

Wait, what kind of dice pools are we talking about here?

I was thinking less than a dozen, for the most part. In other words, big enough to be a halfway plausible entrant to the biz, but small enough for a nontrivial chance for things to go wrong. Things other runners might take for granted are challenges, and survival needs a lot of judgement and care.

No, but it's plenty for someone who's seriously good at at least one thing, or competent at two or three. While I suppose you could beat down the rules so as to come out with a 400bp runner who is worthless, you'd have to try.

At 300bp, competence at one field is about all you can hope for, but is about as much as many hopefuls bring to the biz before they get somewhere. Many players relish the challenge of getting someone statted like that to survive and even thrive.

Background:

Business in the city is cutthroat. It's an island of sanity in a world gone insane, and business thrives where there are rules. Courts. Judges. Where contracts mean something.

Of course, some of those businesses are just soydog vendors, trying to carve out a piece of the street for themselves.

The players:

Franswa is a soydog vendor of haitian extraction. A coal black ork standing 6'4", he cuts a clearly visible figure on the streets, and is good at what he does too.

Hank is a transplant chicagoan vendor, and while he can press the buttons on the cart just fine, he brings no service or showmanship. He does, however, bring malice.

Bart (the Bastard) is a big, mean troll who has agreed to hound Franswa out of business - something he might have done for laughs anyway - but Hank offered him fifty pounds of free soydogs, and Bart has a big appetite.

The problem:

Franswa doesn't want to go out of business. In fact, he wants a cut of Hank's action - and whether or not Hank is in the picture at all is irrelevant to him. Franswa has a few cousins who could sling soydogs with the best of them. All he needs is some specialist hands to turn the tables on Hank. Oh, and get rid of Bart.

The proposition:

"That big trog has had it coming for too long. He comes to my stand, he kicks it over, he takes all the dogs and eats them like candy. Take him out. I want him dead."

"I know why Bart comes around. Hank sent him. Well, he sends bad things my way, I send bad back to him. You don't have to finish him - just make him sell his cart and goods to me, at my price. If not? We work something out. I make a profit either way."

The facts:

Bart is extra big, and extra tough, and packs two weapons: a twenty-five pound sledge which he uses to crush things he doesn't like, and a modified (for his grip) semiautomatic ten gauge shotgun. In his massive paw, it's a handgun, but without any smartlink or other fancy stuff.

Hank is actually probably the more tricky opponent. He wears a concealed vest (wouldn't you, in his career?), and packs two guns (one of which is a flechette gun) as well as a stink bomb of such potency that only the strongest constitutions (or nostril filters) are immune. He has filters, so he doesn't care.

Some complications:

Bart is mostly a distraction. Hank is the real hazard here, and if attacked he will notify a local gang with whom he has a beneficial working relationship. If the runners aren't smart and slick, they can find themselves neck deep in angry street meat.

Aftermath ideas:

Nothing too crazy. Three months later Hank and Bart would be forgotten by almost everybody.

My group barely reaches ten, so if you stat the goons out appropriately, and your group can plan tactics, there should be no problem.

For those who were interested in this line of inquiry, I'm starting a low power PbP campaign in Shadowrun 4 rules, called What I want to do when I grow up. It's build point capped, starting at high school level. Nothing fancy, just a few laughs with the kids. What could go wrong?

Freshman runs, eh?

Background: The University of Washington is the largest university available to Seattle's denizens, and it's a good one. NetCat would recommend it, at least. The halls of academia are as cutthroat as anywhere else in the sixth world, and even better, it's all slathered thick with youth and hormones and stupidity. Prime background for Shadowrunners to cut their teeth.

The Players:

Micheal Talbot is a Freshman at UW. The son of wealthy parents, he managed to anger them sufficiently for them to refuse to pay for any better schools, and he was enrolled in the University of Washington.

That's in the past; it's settled, his parents have forgiven him, but it's mid-way through freshman year, so rather than wastethe time already invested, he's slumming it at UW, as any credits he earns in the remainder of the year will at least transfer. His status as the son of rich, indulgent parents associated with an A-rated corp have made him the star of his own social clique at UW, as he can readily afford gifts that attract the favor and affections of his fellow students, all of whom who are hoping to make him like them enough to take him with them when he transfers.

Mike, however, has a small problem that's growing larger by the day, inside the belly of one of his fellow students.

Hermione Upton is one in several million, if not a billion or more. A complicated genetic history (involving a great deal of Great White Hunterism in the 18th and 19th and early 20th centuries and many native brides brought back to England) has resulted in her being born as a Xapiri Thëpë. Historically speaking, her family's holdings were in North Ireland, which did not go spectacularly for them when Ireland turned into Tir na nOg. Run out and chased away, her family fell low long below she was born, and her mother settled in Seattle. Things got worse (or perhaps better; at least one can unconditionally state that they got weirder,) for her as she was a child when the Night of the Comet hit: her skin turned bright gold and she grew two additional arms.

She's exotic, in other words. For a short while, scientists studied her as possibly being the first combination metatype/metavariant in existence, but that dead-ended. She's simply a Xapiri Thëpë won the SURGE lottery with triple-7s, gaining striking skin pigmentation and shiva arms (which make her resemble a Nartaki with green splotches and elf ears,) and Glamour, though that's not really conclusively provable.

She's also in a lot of trouble at the moment, and it's about to get worse. As many collegiate girls are wont to do, she overindulged at a party. There might have been a Mickey Finn involved, too. The end result was Hermione Upton being stripped naked at a party and the most popular boy there having his way with her. Only now, he's freaking out, because it came to his attention later that he totally banged a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian, and why would a lesbian be using any form of birth control?

The Problem:
Talbot believes Hermione is pregnant. He has no proof of this (though he did, in fact, sire a child on her,) but he's freaking out about it. He needs this problem to go away, immediately, and he has a substantial sum of money to offer to that effect: 30,000 accessible immediately, and the promise that he'll owe whomever can take care of this problem for him a solid later. She can't just be murdered, though; possibly one of the most unique girls in the entirety of North America being murdered will definitely lead to an investigation, but the sociopathic little coward doesn't care if she dies, as long as it's ruled something other than murder. (Her being a Xapiri Thëpë means its unquestionable fact that she's dangerously allergic to at least two things, which her school medical records would contain, offering a possible avenue of attack.) His first instinct, however, was for someone to give her a large enough dose of something that will induce a miscarriage.

The Twist:
Of course, there's another side to this story as well: Hermione Upton. Though her family were once landed and wealthy, they have fallen, and hung on to what shrinking bracket of middle-class remains in Seattle with both hands, though their grip on even that is beginning to slip. Hermione is a girl who's been violated badly, and if the Runners aren't amoral monsters, they should feel some sort of sympathy for her. Hopefully enough to not only tell Big Mike Talbot to go piss up a rope, but also to warn her that he means to do harm to her, and isn't above having her murdered. Even if not, though, the fixer who put them in touch with Talbot will later call them up (whether or not they take the job,) telling them that, amusingly, the girl that Mike is trying to hit is looking for Runners of her own.

Hermione is angry; she's hormonal, but most of all she is furious... And she senses an opportunity. If a paternity test can prove the child she's carrying is Mike's, and it comes to term, she can squeeze his family for a lot of money. Worse, though she was insensate enough not to know what was going on, her cyberears and cybereyes were still recording, and Mike spoke at length about the sensation of using her as he was doing the deed. They're more than enough to send him away for aggravated rape, but that wouldn't be nearly as satisfying (or profitable) as blackmailing the ever-loving shit out him and his wealthy family.

In short, Mike's reasons to fear her are entirely founded in reality, and Hermione wants the Runners' group to ensure that his fears become a living nightmare. She hasn't got anything to pay with up-front except the satisfaction of helping a violated young woman achieve her revenge, but she'll cut the group in on the blackmail: and she isn't planning on only one trip to the Talbot family trough. She's greedy and vengeful, but she has the dirt to make it work, if she can avoid being murdered in the process.

The Job:
Siding with Talbot will get the Runners a fast infusion of nuyen; he'll pay half up-front, and half when Hermione's unborn child (which he will only refer to as "that fucking fetus" or in similarly completely dehumanizing terms,) is terminated. Siding with Hermione will require a long game, protecting her from Micheal Talbot's clumsy attempts to terminate her pregnancy, and then (when he breaks down and tells his wealthy parents,) his parents' not-at-all clumsy efforts. They may wind up facing Prime Runners in the end, if they side with Hermione, but the potential rewards if they can protect her and successfully blackmail the Talbots are huge.

Pushing the Envelope:
Siding with Talbot
If the Runners take the job and terminate Hermione's pregnancy without killing her, she'll be able to use genetic testing to prove that Talbot was the father; combined with the evidence of his raping her and the fact that he would have conspired to terminate her pregnancy, she has a good case to send him away for 5-10 years at Hollywood, but she'd rather still have her blackmail money, and in all honesty she didn't want the child at all. The Runners may be able to get hired by the woman they victimized to help her blackmail the man responsible for her first victimization at their hands, a delicious irony if ever there was one. If they don't bite, however, Hermione will give up on the plan to blackmail them; she wants Micheal Talbot to suffer, and will go to the police.

Rape is a crime which, in the sixth world, is successfully prosecuted about an order of magnitude more often on the trid than in real life, but with the evidence in Hermione's possession, it's kind of a slam dunk. Talbot will panic and his parents will want to hire the Runners who made the problem go away once to make the lightning strike twice, but this is going to be messy. Not only will it require hacking Lone Star/Knight Errant's databases and erasing the evidence, but it will also mean having Hermione Upton killed, as well as everyone who might want to take revenge for her, which means rendering the Upton family extinct. They'll pay well, and Micheal already set the bar: 30,000 per Upton head.

This is proper, old-school, Biblical-style family elimination at its bloodiest, but the Talbots will hold true: 30,000 nuyen per head, which means that Hermione must die, her mother and father must die, her aged grandmother, her aunt, her teenaged sister, her child brother, and her infant cousin must all die. They'll pay 10,000 up front, 5,000 for each death when it happens, and the remainder when the family is eliminated; and they're willing to put the entire sum in a Shadow escrow account up-front. Two hundred and forty grand is enough to make anyone think twice; but someone looking for someone to start murdering an entire genetic line, including pensioners and infants, should be enough to make any Shadowrunner head for the hills and want nothing at all to do with this. If they pull it off, which shouldn't be too hard at first but will get harder when the Uptons and Law Enforcement realize they're being hunted, they'll be very wealthy, but they'll gain Infamy, and there will be some very angry, very dogged Lone Star/Knight Errant detectives who know what happened and will be looking for those that did it.

Siding with Hermione
If your group consists of Shadowrunners in possession of at least some remaining scraps of soul, they'll choose to side with Hermione. The wroth she harbors for Micheal Talbot is matched only by the potential opportunity she sees. Although an affable girl, she's ambitious and greedy, but she'll play fair with the Runners, offering them collectively half a take of whatever she manages to squeeze out of the Talbots. If they've heard his offer, they'll know how much cash he has on-hand, and it will be very simple to corner him and tell him that if he doesn't hand it over immediately, law enforcement will be contacted about the matter of the rape forthwith. While he'll think they're bluffing, if they convince him that there is evidence, he'll hand it over; if they actually show him the evidence, he'll still hand it over. They can make 15,000 pretty easily that way (perhaps more if they lied to Hermione about how much liquid cash he offered them,) but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Hermione will listen to her hired criminals (they are, after all, the criminals,) when they suggest measures and tactics, but she is adamant about squeezing the Talbot family like a grape: whether that means allowing them to believe that one payment will buy her off and then surprising them with additional demands, or making it known up-front that they're going to be supporting her from now on is something the group can decide. Either way, they're going to want to do legwork on the Talbot family and get an idea of their finances: 240,000 is what they're willing to pay to make the problem and her entire family go away for good, after all. They're going to want to set things up so that if anything at all happens to Hermione, several forms of hard-copy evidence are delivered immediately to the law, and then perform a delicate balancing act between draining the family's coffers enough that they can't afford prime talent, without making them desperate enough to put themselves in debt to a crime syndicate to raise the money to make this situation go away.

Ultimately, siding with Hermione in her desire to blackmail the Talbots is risky, but a profitable road in the long term, and best of all it should involve zero murders (give or take whacking a few hit squads.) It will, of course, earn them an enemy in the form of the rich family, but they should be able to reap periodic injections of indefinitely, as long as they can manage to delicately balance the Talbots' desire to make this problem go away with their finances. Eventually, the gravy-train will reach the last station: if they defeat too many attempts to make the problem stop, the older Talbots will simply refuse to pay any further and throw Micheal under the bus. Micheal himself will be pretty useless and unable to continue to pay to keep Hermione and the Runners in the blackmail manner in which they have become accustomed, so Hermione will go ahead with having him arrested. (Even if the Runners manage to keep the family paying indefinitely, however, such as by digging up further dirt on them and threatening to expose them for their attempts to have Hermione whacked, Hermione will pull the trigger on this option when the statute of limitations on the rape is about to expire, at which point the group should probably pull the trigger on the conspiracy-to-commit-murder option as well, and see the whole Talbot family behind bars.)

Conclusion:
This could be the run that keeps on giving, if the group sides with Hermione. It would start off small, something newbie runners could cut their teeth on, but escalates as they gain karma and nuyen from this and other runs. They'll need to balance protecting Hermione with keeping her living her life, which may well mean that one or more of them will have to enroll in UW. Further complications could include a natural miscarriage (which would suit Hermione just fine, as she'd rather be child-free and doesn't necessarily need a child to blackmail them, though it would cut off any potential future avenues to inherit the Talbot fortune genetically,) and her developing an attraction to a female member of the team. Worse, she might become attracted to their hard-nosed, edgy, exciting criminal lifestyle, which (if they haven't kept careful tabs on her,) might lead to her calling them, desperate for help, as she's gone Shadowrunning herself and it's gone pear-shaped!

If they side with the Talbots but aren't willing to exterminate an entire genetic line, on the other hand, they get a quick payday and that's it. Micheal Talbot will pay out in the heat of the moment, but if they don't cash in that "solid" he owes them before the end of his school year, he will become unavailable, and even if they find him, will have undergone a successfully memory bypass as regards who they are, let alone any debt owed to them. The GM should roll a dice to determine if some whacko serial killer eliminates a family, or if Hermione ducks their attempts to solve the problem and Micheal gets nicked for rape and attempted murder.

Many of my starting characters have most of their dice pools around the 8-9 dice range (buy 2 successes or have an average chance at 3). But these characters also have a defining dice pool that I try very hard to push to the high teens or 20s if I can manage it (ideally blackjack or more).

Starting runners run the gamut. You have people who are beginning to be runners. But that doesn't mean that they must have been slouches back in their old lives. Not all runners are people for whom running the shadows is a step up, oftentimes for many successful characters, it is a temporary step down.

Seriously if your group can plan tactics well enough to overcome the smaller combat dice pool, then at least one of your dice pools should have to be more than ten. At least one of them ought to have a significant Tactical Knowledge Skill pool.

This is one of the main grips I have with people saying that good tactics can be used to overcome small dice pools. If your character has no or little tactical skill (seeing that the character has small dice pools), then there is no roleplay justification for good tactics.

A SKill of 3 is a professional level of tactical knowledge. I disagree that you need skill dice pools above 10 to have good tactical knowledge. Dice Pools are NOT the same as Core Skill Proficiency. And THAT is MY gripe with your comparison. Players get so caught up in obtaining the highest dice pool thaey possibly can, that they forget that Skills are not dp's. You should never need more than a 3 or 4 dskill rank in anything that you would consider yourself a Veteran (10+ YEARS of experience) at performing. MOST characters should never see anything above a 5, EVER. And yet, it is the conceit of the players that their characters are the best of the best of the best in the world. And I call BS on such thinking. Such individuals are very rare indeed. And yet, look at almost any table and you will see crazy levels of proficiency in skills that just do not match up to a concept.

Tymeaus, please stop referencing that stupid table as an example of what is factually so, the ratings listed in that table have no basis in practicality.

When fluff says something which is patently absurd when examined by crunch, the fluff is wrong, full stop.




Anyway, I'm surprised (and sad,) that nobody commented on my literal freshman run.

I disagree that it is stupid. And I have absolutely no problem reconciling the table to a PC's Capabilities. But then again, I also do not feel the need to make my characters the best of the best of the best, either, so... *shrug*

And I will not stop referencing it when people make inane comments about what skills/skill levels are required to do something. The world established what the skill rating meant. Period. If you don't like it, that is not my concern. *shrug*

Tymeaus, the book examples are bollocks. "3" is an average attribute rating.

Rating 0 is "Untrained." It is defined as "The general baseline of knowledge shared by society. This is not incompetence; it is the standard level of untrained knowledge held by Joe Average."

The Vehicle Example given is "Basic operator's license. Can get from here to there, but can't handle driving in adverse conditions."

Rating 1 is "Has done this a few times." The vehicular example is "Weekend off-roader, or Seasoned driver with low insurance premiums."

By these definitions, practically every driver on the road has a dice pool of 1 (defaulting; teenager) or 4 (not a teenager.)

A vehicular test is "Characters don't need to make a vehicle test every time they operate a vehicle. For normal, everyday tasks, like driving to the Stuffer Shack, it's assumed the character performs this automatically. A vehicle test is called for only when there's a chance of bad consequences (like crashing) ..."

Let's take a look at the vehicle test threshold table. An "Easy" situation's ground examples are: Merging, passing, suddenly stopping, with a threshold of 1.

A driver literally has to roll Reaction + Ground Vehicles every single time he joins highway traffic, passes someone on a road, or is called upon to brake suddenly, with a threshold of 1. That's on good terrain, like an open highway; it gets worse in tighter conditions.

Let's take an example of a new driver: Mike. He's an average Human (so no bonuses or penalties to Reaction) teenager who's just got his operators' license (Rating 0) and the keys to pop's Mercury Comet.

2/3rds of the time he attempts to merge with highway traffic, pass another automobile, or come to a sudden stop, he fails the vehicle test and does something goofy. Fully 1/6th of the time - that is, fully 16.7% of the time he does anything with any other vehicles on the road whatsoever, he critically glitches and crashes the fucking car.

God help him if he has to so much as take someone on anything but the shortest of journeys in the most deserted streets. Not even God will be able to help him if instead of the open highway, he has to travel along even main street thoroughfares: He is literally incapable of making the threshold without spending Edge.

Now, let's assume that Mike doesn't manage to vehicularly slaughter himself or others for a few weeks, and wisely chooses to spend Karma to raise his Ground Vehicles to 1. Now his dice pool skyrockets from 1 to 4.

Mike is now a "Seasoned driver with low insurance premiums." (Bullshit he is, but we'll take it at face value.) Without spending edge, these are the probabilities of any given result:
Critical Glitch: 0.52%
Regular Glitch: 0.8%
Failure: 19.8%
1+ Successes: 80.2%
2+ Successes: 40.7%
3+ Successes: 11.1%
4+ Successes: 0.12%
5+ Successes: Not happening

Bear in mind, these are the dice pools for an "average, seasoned driver."
Mike succeeds in merging with highway traffic, passing a moving vehicle, or coming to a sudden stop 80% of the time! Yay, that's a high number! Wait a minute, no it isn't, it means that one time in five, he fails to merge with highway traffic, pass a moving vehicle, or come to a sudden stop. 80.2% are good odds if you're being forced at gunpoint to play Russian roulette, it's not good odds to take every fucking morning on your way to work. He has a 20% chance of failing and having to abort his attempt and try again, a 0.8% chance of something stupid happening despite technically succeeding, and a 0.52% chance of crashing right into something.

Now, let's make things harder: A pedestrian (or a loose dog, or a child; or more likely since this is the highway, a deer,) darts out in front of Mike. Now he has only a 40% chance of success, assuming all is equal. This is a threshold 2 test. He has a 40.7% chance of success, which means he has a 59.3% chance of failure. What does "Failure" mean when success is "successfully avoiding crashing into someone." Does it mean he goes into the ditch instead of running over the deer? Does it mean he winds up facing the wrong way on a busy highway (forcing everyone behind him to make a vehicle test?)

And a deer on a highway is a good example. Let's give you something worse: A small child darts out in front of mike on a suburban side street. This is a Restricted terrain example (Threshold +2), with a threshold of 2 (Average test.)

Mike successfully avoids plowing into the sprog 0.12% of the time, despite being an "Average, seasoned driver." That means that 99.88% of the time, something bad happens. That something bad might not necessarily be that Mike runs Little Timmy the dumbfuck right the hell over, but whatever it is, is almost certainly means his premiums are going up: Perhaps he only clips the little sprog, or maybe he jerks the wheel and crashes into a tree or a parked vehicle rather than Timmy. And that's a simple "Failure to succeed," which means attaining less than the required 4 successes to avoid a child or dog or Darwin Award candidate adult darting into a suburban back street. This is not an uncommon occurrence, let me tell you.

Now, I don't know what form a failure to succeed without a glitch or critical glitch happening would take. It's up to the GM, but if Mike wasn't driving recklessly, which I am forced to conclude he was not, given that he has "low insurance premiums," then either he came to a sudden, jarring stop instead of a smooth stop, rolled up onto the curb, or he failed his vehicular test, but arrested his velocity sufficiently that the child, dog, or adult had enough time to rescue themselves. Bear in mind that 0.8% of the time, something sufficiently bad that his insurance premiums will be going up, such as parking his car in the bumper of another, or into a tree or something, and 0.52% of the time, he mows the little bastard down.

And that's if the GM is being strictly generous with their interpretations of the rules. I wouldn't call it at all outrageous to rule that a failure to succeed which is not a critical glitch results in him clipping the kid/animal without running them down.

Let's look at the dice pool he needs to evade catastrophe greater than half the time. He requires a dice pool of eleven to achieve four successes 52% of the time, and to achieve "Russian Roulette at gunpoint" levels of consistency (79%), he needs a whopping dice pool of fucking 15. That's impossible without some form of augmentation, metegenetic advantage, or a sustained spell.

So, no. Don't even try to say that that stupid table on page 119 of SR4A has any mechanical basis in reality, because statistically speaking, I should have had a traffic collision about three times or so by now in my ten+ years of driving, and I don't get out all that frequently. And before you even say anything about the boosts from Augmented Reality or Maneuverability, bear in mind that I drive a 1998 Dodge Durango. The closest to Augmented Reality I have is my GPS unit (which notably lacks things like sensor-based driving aids,) and probably has a maneuverability of 0 or less. That would mean that, statistically speaking, any time I was called upon to make a roll while I was still an unseasoned driver, I should have failed outright.

Which is nothing but opinion on your part, and possibly Bad examples of the Category on the Writer's Part. The category Name and the examples do not always match up. I still stand by the cateogries, though.
I can reconcile the table to the rules, why can't you? Your argument boils down to nothing more than "I want more Dice."
I could care less about the augments that you speak of. Thay have absolutley no bearing whatsoever. *shrug*

As for all your statistics, they also mean absolutley nothing, as you are obviously making assumptions that I am not. My opinion on when a roll is required is obviously very different than yours, so leave it at that. *shrug*

Music City Heart Stopper

Don't be So Heartless
Here's a chance for your runners to be something many in the shadows dream of, heroes. Little Sally Shoemaker is in dire need of the artifical heart made by Ares in the Mount Juliet area of the Vol Sprawl {I really don't like that name. I feel like Music City Sprawl is better, but the few who have talked about the midstate use Vol Sprawl}. Unfortunately, within seconds of departing the facility, it was stolen by the local mafia. There boss, Mario "Tiny Tim" Timmoli, also needs a heart. The Shoemaker transplant has been all over the local news media, and so is the theft. Can the runners get the heart to little Sally in time? Or will they prove they are even more heartles, and steal the cybernetic heart for their own purposes.

Heart Pounding Excitement
Tiny Tim's boys hijacked the heart in right outside the Ares facilities gate, then took the most direct route to the Vanderbilt hospital; and, traffic being what it is on Murfreesboro road, that means that any one interested in taking the heart have about an hour or so to get it. A few points of interest along the way. There's a tunnel where an airport runway crosses the road, as well as the Briley Parkway overpass. Anyone with contact with any local gangs or small ethnic syndicates could get some help, as the road travels through Little Arabia and some gang heavy territory. Knight Errant and Ares Firewatch will show up about half way through the chase (that'd be around Fesslers Lane and the Trevecca Campus), which brings extra fun to the party.

Heart Throb Doctors
The chase across the eastside is over. Now the heart is at the hospital, and whether Tiny Tim's men kept it, or the runners grabbed it, it is right where it needs to be. Almost. Little Sally and Tiny Tim are both in operating rooms waiting for the heart to save their lives. With Ares batsmen on their heels, it's up to the runners to get the heart where it needs to go. This is harder if they don't have it. A fire fight in a hospital isn't going to endear you to the corp security already on site. That's right, Knight Errant was waiting for the heart too.

A Heartwarming Ending
The run is essentially over when the runners get the heart where they want it to go. For full satisfaction, this should loon like a last second touchdown, complete with winning the Superbowl feelings. Maybe the cops will stop shooting even, maybe. There isn't much in the way of reward if the runners save Little Sally, a whole lot of fame, and plenty of locals willing to help them out in small ways. Mario will reward the runners with some decent mafia contacts. Unless they hold the heart ransom, then he will pay them as much as fifty thousandn nuyen, but they'll make even worse enemies of the mafia then they would saving Sally (Mario is a seventy plus year-old with some rather naughty behaviors with small children, the local family would be quite happy to see him go). Either way, the runners actions will have Music City talking for a good while.

Hearty Folk
The people that the runners will have to deal with are fairly run of the mill for who they are. Ares Firewatch and Errant are the same all over really. Mario's men are fairly strong and ruthless, but they are also fairly dull and unimaginative. Exactly the kind of men who would follow the orders of a child molester. The ones that may come as a surprise are the average folk who helped the Shoeamakerz get the heart and pay for the surgery. They pitched in with money and time (running fundraisers). Many of them will gladly attempt to shoot whoever is riskinglittle Sally's life.


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I see this as a very cinematic run. Big car chase, maybe some time on foot (might be faster in downtown), a shoot out in a hospital. This would make for a great one shot, full of wonderful stories to be told later ("I dump the guy with spastic colon on the floor and hide behind his wheel chair!"). If your runners aren't in the Nashville region, the airport literally crosses Murfreesboro Road, which may help to get them "accidentally" involved.

Vol Sprawl? Must have missed that one... Which City is that, exactly? Nashville per the last paragraph... Is that right?
And if you have an answer... Why Vol Sprawl? What prompted that name anyways?
Interesting scenario, By the By.

The senario is a take on part of my favorite pc's background. TN is the Volunteer State, there is a community college in the area that's Vol State (that is what everyone calls it). Like I said, I prefer Music City Sprawl. It has come up a few time though, maybe even in a book.

Ahhh... Thank you, I was a bit confused.

Note I did not state what or how you get to that dice pool. You can be very smart and, together with augmentations, can parlay a grasp of the basic principles of tactical combat into something that can help your group overcome a significant gap in capability between the group and the opposition.

The mismatch between the character concept and the numbers on the character sheet is quite easily corrected, IMO. The player simply needs to describe his character's skill to the relevant superlative levels. I would simply point out that the numbers on the sheet does not jive with the character's concept description. Calling BS is an overkill, I think. AFAIK, while there are descriptors given to various skill levels, I do not recall any numbers detailing the rarity of such skill levels.

To sum, I do not think that a dice pool above 10 necessarily represents good tactical knowledge (see my example above a very high Logic can combine with a low Tactical Knowledge skill to produce a pool larger than 10). I think that a dice pool above 10 represents a number large enough that I am confident that such a dice pool is more likely larger than the NPCs'.

Errant, perhaps. But unless Firewatch tightened their quality control since 3rd Ed, Firewatch quality is the most unpredictable among all the AAA elite forces.

And that is where you are wrong, because the categories are utter bollocks.[/b]

QUOTE

I can reconcile the table to the rules, why can't you? Your argument boils down to nothing more than "I want more Dice."

Because your pig-headed, stubborn clinging to the table results in characters being statistically unlikely - even laughably absurdly unlikely - to succeed at [i]everyday events in their lives, even if you let them buy hits! Especially if you let them buy hits!

A pedestrian or small animal walking out in front of a moving vehicle on a side street is not at all a rare occurance in aggregate, but if these rules and the number of dice an "Average" character has are taken as fact, there should be vehicular carnage just about every single time it happens!

You're "reconciling" the rules with the categories by handwaving and denial. It's not just a river in Egypt!



So, citations from the book have no bearing whatsoever? The very mechanical situation resolution systems the game runs by have no bearing whatsoever?



No, I will not. The rules give an example as regards when a roll should be made, and the example I cited is "avoiding pedestrian or obstacle." That's a threshold 2 test - someone with an average sum of dice and with an "Average" skill of untrained 0 is literally incapable of avoiding a pedestrian or an obstacle on the road.

And that's assuming a four-lane, open superhighway. If it happens on a back street, God help him.

I tire of the parry and thrust... My opinion is different than yours. Neither of us will convince the other... Leave it at that...

You keep using that word, "opinion."

It doesn't mean what you think it means.

An "Opinion" is a matter of personal preference, without any sort of objective facts that can be used to support or refute it.

"I do not like tomatoes" is an opinion, as is "vinegar goes on french fries better than ketchup."

You are not stating an opinion, you are claiming that the listed average values for attributes and the listed skill levels for what is a professional who performs a certain activity for his living in Shadowrun, 20th Anniversary Edition, have any basis in presenting useful dice pools for PCs and NPCs, when in demonstrable, statistical fact they do not.

You are not stating an opinion, you are claiming a thing about the game to be true. A claim which is not agreed with, and which you brought up.


Kindly begin presenting statistics and numbers to back your claim about the game system, or concede that your claims cannot be backed in the hit-based conflict and challenge resolution system of Shadowrun, 20th Anniversary Edition with regards to "Average" metahumans without augmentation or magic who are supposedly skilled at their jobs performing the tasks their jobs call upon them to perform on a regular basis, or which everyday persons are called upon to do at least semi-regularly in their lives with their untrained/barely trained skill pools.

I can actually clear up really fast what the 'proper amount of dice for a SR Game' is. It's simple, actually, after I sat down with all of my calculators, books, charts, Powerpoint Presentations, and everything.

The correct number of dice for a die pool is:

...
...

...

WHATEVER A TABLE FINDS THE MOST FUN.

That's it. If a table has more fun playing a 16-20 die specialization game, then that is the correct number for their table. If another table prefers to cap at 9-12, then that's the correct number for *their* table. If someone likes to cap at 8, or 28, or 15-it doesn't matter-it's whatever the GM and Players have the most fun doing. It doesn't matter if it's street, or prime, or whatever they call it. It doesn't matter what a book says is Average or Professional or Expert or Beginner, and it doesn't matter what houserules say. These can be used as guidelines, of course, but at the end of the day? It doesn't matter. A table that caps at 9-12 aren't doing it wrong-and a table that rolls lots of dice aren't 'Doing it Wrong', either. Same thing with rules-if someone wants to follow them literally to a T-I mean it's not *my personal thing*-we play above average power games ourselves, and I actually don't agree with those charts-but it's fine if someone wants to agree with them. It's also fine if someone doesn't want to agree with them.

The proper amount of dice are the amount of dice that the GM and Players agree is the most fun for them. End of story.

And I disagree with you on the Relevance of the Average Pool.

Ah, but my friend, I know you will have more fun playing the game my way. I am sure we will all agree I am right. The table that plays the game my way is the most right.

True... To a point.

As I said, it is not worth fighting over, especially since no one wins...

That might be true... Or maybe you are disillusioned and need to come over to the Dark Side. We have cookies.

Shadowdragon, do all h of your characters have Running or the Athletics group? Does your gunbunny only ever punch some one if they have the right skill? Does your character without negotiation never ask someone to do something benign?

It seems like you think rolling should be called for for even the most common situations. Do you require wage slave NPCs to roll blades when they cut a steak? What about PCs? I'm not saying that the table in question is in fact completely right, but I think your argument is going a little far. Using your example, no one should be able to run down the street without taking ranks.

I was working under the premises that KE had the Nashville contract, and Firewatch was there because Ares made the heart and was using it to bump public perception.