actually, the sourcebooks provide EXPANSION rules, which provide for extended game play and are therefore intended to be "core" rules. In each of those books, there are those sections marked "OPTIONAL"...

the decision was one of simplicity. First, by saying that all "OPTIONAL" rules are not being used, it is easier for all parties to remember. Consider if you are at a convention and the player says "I use my such-and-such maneuver from JuJitsu to subdue the mage"; the GM responds "Are we using the Optional rules for melee combat??"; half the players will say yes, half will say no, and the other half () will say "i don't know" or "maybe"....
Second, not everyone has a working of the optional rules - some of which modify or seriously change the expanded rules. everyone should have a familiarity with the expansion rules, and that's bad enough to keep up with. you also can't say "well, you can just look it up!" because a) that takes time, something that is precious during an event that must run in a certain time (which doesn't necessarily apply to home games) and b) assumes you have the book. the latter is a problem, because i, for one, am not going to cart around my entire SR library with me to every con i go to - not even a local one. if a player is a mage, then i would expect them to carry the basic book and MITS as a minimum. that way, the GM doesn't have to carry MITS, along with all the other books. Think about it, if you run SRM at a con, and every table you ran never had a mage, that's one more book weighing you down. now add R3, Matrix, and the SOTA books to that...i had 3 tables during Gencon that didn't have a mage, rigger, or decker at them - they were all diverse characters, but none of the above archetypes that required their own book.

however, as everyone knows with the world, rules are meant to be broken, and so at some point, i reserve the right to say "No Optional Rules...EXCEPT for yada-yada-yada"...

Well from what I see Cochise is correct but then again my copy of the Shadowrun Companion is the old Fasa edition.

So I guess I'd first have to ask do you have the latest printing Cochise?

If not well you just have to remember things have been changed and you may want to get the latest copy.

If you do have the latest copy then it pretty much comes done to what Bitrunner and company will and will not allow in game.

That being the case you will just have to play by the rules and rulings that are given however at home with friends you can do as you please.

I for one would love to be able to make a conjurer and use 35 spell points for initiation but hey it is not my game.

Somethings need to be done to make the game easy for the new players so as not to scare them off because they think they need to buy 20 books to play.

You need to remember that SRM's are hopefully a way to get new players into the game so when you can say "Hey if you liked playing go buy this book it's 30 bucks and your all set to play at home."

That is the message that is trying to be put out there.

At least that is the way it comes across to me if I am wrong somewhere Bitrunner please feel free to to let me know.

Shadowrun Missions is partially a marketing arm for FanPro, as is the Commando program. From that perspective, we are supposed to be luring new players into the game, and so yes, one of the tenets is that you only need the basic book to play the game. I stick by that - there is NOTHING that says you have to have ANY of the other books. on the other hand, there are some that are STRONGLY recommended. Another focus is on retaining players and reattracting old players back to the game. For all three groups, beginner, current, and former players, it is stated that if you wish to use something from another book outside SR3, you must be able to provide access to that book to the GM. I've known players that played in VS for 5+ years with nothing but SR3 - most players, however, I have seen decide to go out and purchase the books that pertain to their character.

As for the SRComp, it was used for VS, and believe me, it caused more problems than it was worth...after reviewing it and after much discussion with the top staff and players of VS, it was agreed to not support the book in the SRM campaign. After discussing it with Rob (and also the President of FanPro), (they) understood the reasoning for not using the Companion in the style of campaign that we were running, and did not have a problem with us ruling out that book.

Under VS, it was quite common to have a table of all mages and/or adepts. now, under SRM, i'm seeing exactly the opposite. at gencon, we had tables that had no mages or maybe only one adept...hopefully it will fill out a little so that we have at least one spellslinger at each table, but we're definitely on the better side in SRM than the magic heavy campaign that was VS...

All i can say is that the VS campaign ran for just about 10 years, saw changes through different editions, and numerous new sourcebooks. we have learned a lot of important lessons as to what works, and what doesn't work. but even with SRM, we're not finished, and i'm not naive enough to think that the campaign is perfect. we will continuously tweak the campaign to make sure that we accomplish the goals of the campaign.

If you'd like a more in-depth response as to why certain things are done, feel free to email me and i'll send you an honest response...i think most of you out there - and those that have actually met me - know that i'll do just that. if i don't communicate with the players, then this campaign will fall apart, in my opinion...

Cochise - a personal shout-out - i don't know where you are in der fatherland, but there are a number of SRM players out there, both German and American, and in neighboring countries as well. shoot me an email and let me know where you are and i'll see if i can find anything near you...

BTW -

I saw some characters at Gencon that were a little "off kilter"....

Please remember two things -

Skills / Linked Attributes: When spending skill points, remember that if you exceed your linked Attribute, the skill costs more. Please read SR3, pg 57. If you have a troll with a Charisma of 1, and you want to have Negotiation 6, then it will cost you 1 point for the first skill level, and 10 points for levels 2-6, for a total of 11 skill points, NOT 6!!!

Gear: Remember that you are not supposed to have anything with a Device Rating of 6 or an Availability greater than 8. This is just for new characters - once the game starts, you can certainly attempt to buy a Walther sniper rifle through your fixer, arms dealer, or other channels/contacts. Note that the Device Rating applies to programs, spells, and other "leveled" items. Cyberdecks are a slight exception, as their MPCP ratings are not included in this limitation - the Persona programs themselves, however, are limited to 6.


Other than that, there are a lot of creative characters out there (gee, and all made with the Priority system! ) such as bounty hunters, Desert Wars veteran, B&E specialist...some people i saw put a lot of work into their character, such as having made their own "contact cards" with color photos (of real people!) and short backgrounds on each of their contacts. keep up the good work!!!

ps: overheard a Sun shaman asking "will this adventure be taking place at night??" at the beginning of "A Dark and Stormy Night"... don't worry, his fellow table members shamed him enough already...

yes, that includes credsticks...good question!

oops ... my players won't be happy to hear that

linei said:

linei said:

just as you can purchase premade cards now with magstripes on them, getting a credstick would be easy...it is the DATA, as you've mentioned, and the forgery created that determines the rating....

yes, the rating refers to the data on the credstick, which in many cases may be nothing but pointers to larger databases, but there is also basic data on there as well, such as passcodes, fingerprint, maybe palm or retinal, but i think DNA would be too big to fit...physical data such as eye/hair color, height, weight, and a photo id and all the stuff you normally have on your driver's license is the kind of stuff on a credstick.

All in all, i would say that a credstick only holds 1 Mp of data...

but this is all irrelevant - what it comes down to is that a forged credstick has a rating. this rating, for beginning characters, cannot be greater than 6. the rating represents how well the credstick, and the data on it, will stand to scrutiny by whatever means are used to check it.

An Ebony credstick uses a cellular scan to verify itself.

We can either assume that it needs a matrix connection for very large transactions, or that it has enough memory to store a significant amount of information.

~J

i would say the former...

some of you may not know, but if you try to purchase anything expensive, like a car, and pay in cash, it has to be reported to the government and in some cases they do a quick background check on you. this is to help catch drug dealers and other criminals that have lots of money.

as such, i would think that anyone trying to use an ebony credstick (or silver and gold for that matter) for purchases of 10,000 nY or more would probably involve having a matrix connection and having to wait for cross-checking of databases, including the government (IRS, DEA, FBI), the banks involved, plus some third party agencies such as credit agencies (Equifax, TransUnion, etc)

doesn't mean anything in game terms, except to help rationalize what happens behind the scenes, especially when a fake credstick fails...

10k or more? The threshold for an Ebony is, IIRC, a ¥1,000,000 transaction, so I wouldn't think it'd need the full cellular scan for less than ¥100,000, or people would just get sick of the whole thing.

~J

I'm trying to build a rigger character, and I have some questions about vehicle customization. I was just going to take a stock vehicle and use the vehicle customization rules.

1) Engine customization: will probably add stress points. Stress points is an "Advanced Rule", which I would be inclined to interpret as optional. No vehicle customization? Yes, but ignore stress points? Yes, but use stress points only in relation with engine customization? Yes, and use stress points as intended?

2) What skill is used to control wheeled crawler drones (e.g. Steel Lynx Combat Drone)? Car?

3) Mini-blimps and Zeppelins, same piloting skill?

4) How versatile is the Renraku Arachnoid walker drone? The description says it can go anywhere a spider could go, but then it also says it's 17cm across. Pretty big spider. and the Shiawase Kanmushi says it is 10cm across, is it even more shneaky ('cause extra-shneaky is good ?

Whew, maybe I should have started a new topic.

As an aside, I very excited about trying Shadowrun: Missions (of course I excite easily...)

OK, some good questions...

1) Stress points - be it cyberware or a vehicle, or whatever, stress points are something that we will not be dealing with in the campaign, at least at the campaign level. those that are using SR Missions events in your home campaign must, of course, check with your GM. I should probably clarify this by adding "for a character or character owned item". There may be times where you will have to deal with Stress Points, but it will be during the adventure and worked in as part of the story - it will be something that does not belong to a specific character. An example of this would be having the team steal a prototype vehicle. As they are escaping, they take some damage, which may cause Stress Points. They may end up back at the Johnson's place with a vehicle that falls apart after they slam the door shut....in this instance, it is used for dramatic effect, and may also be used as a basis of payment - as in, ok, this prototype suffered x amount of Stress Points due to the runners inability to sufficiently protect (or wrap enough duct tape around) it, so reduce their payment by y amount of nuyen.

Also, if, as a player/character, you WANT to use Stress Points to track overall damage to your vehicle, and you enjoy the extra reality this gives you (hey, some people do!), then by all means, use Stress Points - just don't eat up game time to do so - you will be responsible for tracking them yourself.

2) If it has wheels or tracks, you use Car

3) yep, both use the LTA (Lighter Than Air) skill

4) Versatile?? if you mean, as you say, being able to go anywhere, then yes, it is versatile, as is the Kanmushi. When it says it can travel where a spider can go, it means surfaces, not the size of openings, etc. The advantage of these drones is that they can crawl vertically up walls that have a surface the drone can climb. As far as being sneaky (or extra-sneaky), this is handled by the Signature rating - whichever has the higher rating is more sneaky...only if these ratings are the same would i base it on the size of the drone.

Excellent, thanks a lot bitrunner. The stress points question was the real sticker.

A player of mine expressed interest in playing an Otaku. Is that allowed in SRM?

nope...

besides, playing an otaku would basically suck - there isn't much to do for a decker, let alone an otaku...

no one should be playing a full fledged decker - they need to have other skills that make them useful to the party, such as a tech wiz type character, decker/rigger, etc.

while you certainly can play a full fledged decker, be cautioned that you may become bored and disillusioned with the game because your character will be twiddling their thumbs most of the time.

as long as someone on your team has a datajack, cyberdeck, and decent computer skill (at least 4), and knows which end of a data cable to shove in his head, you have a decker for 75% of what you'll need to do...

What about letting someone if they wanted to play 2 characters one a full decker the other some other type that is more usefull?

Then there is no need to farm out the deck work and the player is not bored.

Even if the module does somehow leaves deckers totally out of the loop, my character and I won't complain about risk-free cred and karma.

Too bad about the Otaku thing though .

I have found that Combat Decker work well in this instance where they do assist with normal functions, like an extra pair of eyes

Because it doesn't matter how much fluff you put in about your character being the guy who always took to electronics right off the bat for all his life if your six dice are the same as the six dice of the guy who didn't know an OR from a NAND until last week.

~J

Bitrunner, when is SOTA 2064 be introduced into the modules?

For example, if I am running SRMs during which module should SOTA 2064 be allowed?

SOTA2064 is available now...it is not adventure-dependent...

So to clarify... If I decide to run Mission Briefing for a new group now, they can get to use stuff in SOTA 2064?

That is what he is saying or so it seems to me. Just for your info the SRM's are set in 2064 if I am correct so it makes sense that SOTA 2064 is allowed. But hey that is just my view on your question. Anything else you want my wholely unprofessional opinion about? lol

that is correct - if you run Mission Briefing, they can have stuff from SOTA2064 - this is really important for physical adepts!

the intro games (5 in the series) are "outside" of the timeline and can take place anytime for the players during the 2-year story arc. they can be played in pretty much any order, but there is a sort of sense in playing them in the order we've established, especially playing Mission Briefing first since it a) assumes it is your first big break into shadowrunning and b) gives you one or more fixers/contacts (if you don't do a TPS* on the adventure...



(*Total Pooch Screw )

According to the Missions web page character creation rules:

" Any gear, including magic, cyberware, bioware, et cetera, may be purchased at character creation, provided the Availability is 8 or less, and/or the Device Rating is 6 or less. Also, characters cannot have cultured bioware at creation. "

Note that it says, "and/or" for availability/device rating. If I use "or" then I could have items that are either higher than raiting 6 or higher than availability 8, but not both.

Now, did they mean "and", and not "and/or"?

It applies to both. If he'd have just said 'and', someone would have made the case that this one specific piece of equipment doesn't have both an Availability of 8 and a Rating of 6, so it should be legal.

Nope, it would work just fine with "and" due to the "or less" conditions. The problem would arise form the items that don't have both ratings (hence the use of "and/or").

to be absolutely clear:

items MUST meet ALL of the following strictures:

1. an Availability of less than 9
2. a Device Rating less than 7
3. cannot be Military grade, as determined by the Legality Code. This covers the following categories: K, L, M, R, W, and Z
4. must be in the currently published/errata'd printings of the approved books

um ok less than 9 that's ok that reads 8 or less but greater than 6??????????? I think ya miss type there big guy lol.

where??? i don't see any problems!!!

Um yeah sure thing buddy what ever you say.

it is on the website - this is a special house rule for the campaign...although i'm seriously considering dropping it...

this really only affects a few items such as titanium bone lacing, wired 3, and a few other things. most everything else already falls under the rules of Availability and Device Rating so you wouldn't be able to get it anyways...so right now, it is just another layer of complexity that is probably not needed...

More or less reproduced from the General Questions thread: may a starting, magically-aware character have some free (that is, Karma cost zero) Exclusive Force 2 (Karma reduced) or Fetish-required Force 1 (Karma-reduced) spells? At Force 2 or less, the formulae would be legal to acquire, for the most part.

I'll check with Rob, but I'm thinking that learning a spell requires at least 1 point of Karma. Much like a minimum Target Number of 2, no matter what modifiers you have, learning a spell should also cost a minimum of 1 Karma, no matter how many restrictions you put on it...

My email to Rob on the subject ...

Spells -

Certainly, as Rob has said, it is not unreasonable - IN A HOME CAMPAIGN. Unfortunately, in SRM, you're dealing with multiple GMs that may or may not ever play with that player/character again. What is "reasonable" to one GM may not be reasonable to another, depending on how they interpret the rules. Some are more strict than others.

Now, I could compromise and say "OK, tell you what - you can have x amount of spells for free, concerning these low level spells". But playing devil's advocate here, I've always said from the start that we need to stick to the book as much as possible and not have a bunch of house rules that many GMs may not be aware of - or hate having to print out a four page PDF file for any house rules and/or exceptions we come up with (which is why i'm dumping the no-military equipment rule...it isn't in the book - the Availability already takes care of that...)

So, sorry - no free spells - i'm opting to go with Rob's first answer - all spells require a minimum of 1 Karma.

Equipment -

Yes, you read it right above - I've thought it over and i'm dispensing with the requirement at Character Creation to not have military grade equipment. Just follow the Availability 8 / Device Rating 6 rules. This does allow for a few things, but that is ok - most people aren't going to have them anyways due to cost, essense, etc...

as for rockets, well, that's just the rocket, not the launcher or launch system!

Merry Xmas!

Both of those rulings are probably for the best. I only posted Rob's response as a matter of convenience. I did state earlier that it might not necessarily be right for SRM.