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[bull30548]

Thanks that helps a lot as far as how riggers work now.  I never actually sat down and looked again after 3 seeing I played a rigger quite a long time. 

So anyway I have my major plot (not calling it meta plot cause well that the shadowrun universe around the players)  which is the runners taking down a corp.  Not a major megacorp just a corp of my own creation.  Now I just have to figure out location.  I was going to use Seattle but one of the players requested another city as Seattle is always done.  So now I am city hunting.  I have eliminated Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Neo-Tokyo, DeeCee, and Manhattan.  I would like to use a city that has a good amount of current info on it.  So any suggestions?
Oh year is going to be 2072 at least cause I don't want to do the tempo storyline; I want to deal with aftermath.

On a personal view I wish that they do one city in the CAS.  I will be honest that one of the sectors that doesn't get a lot of book coverage.  They get lots of mentions but I never seen a major storyline or a city gets it's own coverage.  I might of missed something in 4th though I admit I haven't read all the books.  Or an English translation of Berlin would be nice too I loved the idea of Berlin being like a European Seattle.

[Ruski]

my generic suggestion for city-jumping: write whay YOU know.
If youv'e visited the cal-free city of SanFrancisco: there ya' go.
you'll be able to add in your own flavor elements to the shadowrun cannon.

[Ingo Monk]

Location doesn't matter that much, it's all flavor text anyway.  For example, you know a lot about Seattle since you've run many games there.  Change all the names, call it anything other than Seattle, and BOOM you're playing in a new city. 

All you need is the major backdrop to be there for it to be believable.  For example, Seattle has the city-state surrounded by Amerind nations, San Francisco is the Japanacorp city, LA is half under water, Chicago has the containment zone (which was torn down I think?), Denver is like Seattle a bit, with the different countries and zones bordering each other, etc.  Then you hit Europe, you've got Tir Na Nog, England, and Germany.  From what I recall Berlin is similar to Seattle in that they have a security zone and a free zone (i.e. downtown Seattle, and the barrens). 

[bull30548]

I was tempted to do my own city like you suggested just take Seattle and change the city name.  However I do respect the players and have decided to go to Hong Kong.  It pretty big and lots of places I can drop into the landscape so solves a lot of issues I might of had.  I like the suggestions and I might do some globe hopping. However I do intend on introducing the option  to them instead of forcing them.  I prefer to let the players sort of guide the story with their decisions.  Which is why I am going to try to do something different with contacts.  Instead of the players going to the contacts I am going to send them an email with rumors.  A lot like what is in the beginning of Jackpoints at the bottom that are news reports.  That way the players can have more options than just the fixer for jobs.  Also I can flesh out the contacts a bit better by defining them in the players mind and mine.  That way if they want them to be a certain way it easier to define them.  I am going to base the 'rumors' they get by how much they invest into the contacts.  Loyalty is the number of rumors and connection is how accurate/solid the leads are.  Like a loyalty 1 only going to have one rumor but if his connection is a 3 the info going to be pretty good.  Like a wageslave knowing where the warehouse is all the old or recirculated office equipment is so the player can do a heist.  While a guy with loyalty 3 would have 3 rumors but if his connection is only 1 his information may not be that specific.

Thoughts on this concept?

[Ruski]

depends on your PC's.
some guys will create their own hooks and adventures out of the background information for their PCs.
"Okay, before we get this session started I check with my decker contact to see if she has any info on the people that burned down my ex-wife's house..."
Others need personal motivational involvement to so much as get out of bed in the morning.
(nothing more annoying than hearing: "why would I go to the meet with that Johnson? I stay in bed until I feel the need to move.")

[bull30548]

We were more like the latter than the former.  I will be honest that most of the group just called their contacts in 3rd when they needed info.  I wanted to give contacts a bit more action (I mean you are spending BP and later Karma on them) make them a bit more useful.  I was actually the face of the group some days and well Arca similar to Kinsey about subtle as a chainsaw.  However I treated my contacts well, I had a fence that I hardly used but I took him out to lunch once a week.  I helped out my mechanic contact in his shop anytime I had a chance really.  My fixer I bought a drink with him everyday even when I wasn't working with him.  I went out and had the balls to be friends with Lord Torgo, had a Ares secretary I took out to clubs,  and a Knight Errant guard I bribed every once in a while (who I met when a fight broke out in my house and he was the guard on duty in my suburb community.).  The best part is I was bribing him not to search my house cause we had a protection job that we went proactive on and killed the guy gunning for our protectee.  We took the guy's head and it was chilling in my freezer.

[Ruski]

Well: you can only do so much with a dead fish.
If they need to be attacked in their bed by homeless zombies in order to get them moving, the subtle niceties of their deckers BTL habit will probably be lost on them.

You need to build them up to it before you can just 'expect them to look for stuff like that'

My suggestion: rewards.

like training a pet.
You say something like: you should check with your contacts.
first person who does so: gets a free Uzi. "I found it and thought of you!"
soon enough all your guys will be: "Hey, I check with my contacts too! Do I get an Uzi?. No, no uzi. You get a experimental High Explosive Super-Foam grenade!   Do that for a session or two, THEN when they ask for a reward you say something like:
"Well, it's probably nothing, but I heard that the old fire-station has a ghost that's protecting a pre-crash treasure of some sort..."
Ta-Da! they know they can get loot from their contacts, this one just has a mini-quest included.
soon enough, they, with a little bit of luck, will be getting out of bed and talking to their contacts all by themselves like adults!
-Ruski

[bull30548]

So this is a subplot I am working on where a wage slave turns serial killer and his targets are runners.  Though I think it might be a bit transparent rip of Batman Arkham City.  Thoughts?

[Ruski]

eh, rip whatever ya' like.
We've got a guy who playes a physical adept (sp: pistols) named 'cleric'.
like from the movie equilibrium.
he's played this guy, and only this guy for probably going on 5 years or so now. We all refer to him as 'cleric'. I doubt anyone bothered to even give him any more background or information other than: 'like the guy in that movie'

seems to work for him.

*shrug* if your PC's have all played the game, twist it up a bit.
if not; have it it, copyright infringement and all.

[bull30548]

So another possible rip female bodyguards that appear as dates of the protected. Though the added twist is the protected is female and sometimes the girls are more of a group then dates. Thoughts?  Mind you I don't say this enough but thanks for being a sounding board as well as advisors for the game I will be running in the future.

[Ingo Monk]

So another possible rip female bodyguards that appear as dates of the protected. Though the added twist is the protected is female and sometimes the girls are more of a group then dates. Thoughts?  Mind you I don't say this enough but thanks for being a sounding board as well as advisors for the game I will be running in the future.

Sounds interesting, a bunch of girls together for a "girls night out" sort of deal.  Happens all the time IRL, why not in SR?  If you don't make it obvious where the target his human but all her "friends" are orks and trolls it's a great idea.

[bull30548]

So I just picked up clutch of the dragon. Holy crap they got some stuff in here that just great google moogly!  Anyway what I was posting for was another idea I had.  This is mainly for a secondary storage source by the way with the answers readily at hand. Anyway I was thinking about this I have some crafty idea about when my players go on the hunt.  My old gm was crafty so I know my players are going to be trying to outthink me. Stealing this from the novels I read where Mr. Johnson  setup meetings he had a cover identity.  So i figure based on how good the Johnson is he had a few double blinds and dead ends while the players try to run down their hiring client. they would use their contacts to track down info. So based on the contact level is how far they will be able to dig through it.

Now rule wise something I found that made my head almost implode. In third edition you could only initiate up by 6 (your magic rating). In 4th there is no initiate cap on it anymore now because magic is scalable you can spend karma up to 6 then you have to initiate. Which when and if you look at Artifacts Unbound and the book I mentioned above you will see magic ratings that will scare the hell out of you.

[bull30548]

So this isn't a book review it is just a heads up.  They released another book over the weekend with a little insight into Tir Tairngire which is cool.  I hope they do one for CAS in the future or better yet a proper big book one not an e-book.

[bull30548]

So rules question when it comes to the AP of weapons are dice subtracted before the roll or the subtracted from successes after?  Not looking at the official ruling just your perspectives.  I was thinking subtracting from initial dice cause well with 5 dice you can still get 5 successes just as if you rolled 8 dice.  However, with the way glitches can happen say you roll those 8 dice and you got 4 successes 3 1's and a non success.  Now if you subtract successes (for like APDS ammo) you went from I can soak some of this to glitch.  Or can you even glitch on  a roll like this?

Sorry for the randomness of the question just wrapping my brain around it sometimes I have to go the long way to get there.  For those curious why I am even asking?  I am working on that Chummer stuff I was talking about a while ago.  I am taking all the NPC's from the books that chummer hasn't created files for and making them.  Something to keep my brain busy while I am not in school.

[Ruski]

I always had the AP value reduce the effectiveness of the armor it was shooting into.
So, AP+1 for armor piercing rounds, vs. A leather jacket (armor value 3) means that the recalculated value of the jacket is now 2. So: when rolling body+armor to resist, they only get two points instead of three.