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[bull30548]

So working on the Chummer files from Artifacts Unbound and thought occured to me.  Having a Mr. Johnson contact that was not a Johnson you worked for often but a source of info.  As I said just a thought any follow up to this thought? Pros/Cons? 
Oh I just saw that I have more work then I thought.  I was simply going to do NPC's not named characters.  So in the back of Artifacts Unbound there is what is called character trove.  I thought this was a full list of NPC's that way the GM can reference them quickly. While looking through the book I saw that there are more NPC's in it than in the back of the book.

[Ruski]

Sometimes its good to know a buddy in the biz.
However: if you expect him/her to spill corp secrets, he's going to need to be like a level 4 contact. And a 4/4 contact is going to take some serious newyen/karma/build points to make it happen. He'd need to be more useful than a 1/2 decker combined with a 1/2 talsmonger combined with a 2/1 smuggler and a 2/1 club bouncer.

[Ingo Monk]

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.

Just like Ruski said, AP is meant to reduce the effectiveness of the armor.  The way I look at it is that the damage resistance roll is used as an example of how the character moves or how the bullet happened to hit him.  A bullet can an armor plate, hit hit chinks in the armor, or miss the armor completely and go strait into flesh.

For example let's say you have two guys in an alley shooting at each other.  One guy gets hit and rolls damage resistance perfectly, he takes no damage and doesn't get knocked down.  You can say that the round looks like it hit but it actually went through his loose clothing and actually didn't his his body.  Or you could say that the round hit square in the middle of an armor plate, which absorbed all the energy so he took no damage.  If he didn't roll well, you could say the round hit between the armor plates so he took partial damage.  And if he glitched the resistance roll you could say he got shot in the arm making it harder to hold the gun up and aim.  If he critically glitched, well then he got shot in the knee thereby reducing his movement speed.  Sometimes it's fun being a GM

In any case AP is meant as a number representing the effectiveness of the round.  Some rounds are better able to penetrate armor either due to more power (think magnum rounds) or through better penetrating design (think armor piercing rounds).  In SR the guns that give -AP generally are larger caliber guns with more power.  I consider heavy pistols to be .50 caliber or guns designed for magnum rounds.

[bull30548]

Okay I know this is a question I am going to get.  Now I am a bit of a rules lawyer and that usually my answer to questions like this.  "It's in the rules."  However, perhaps a more in depth answer would help soothe the natives.  So the question I am going to get is why am I using the availability enforcement?  Usually we just make characters and buy what they want with no limits.  Any thoughts?

[Ingo Monk]

Okay I know this is a question I am going to get.  Now I am a bit of a rules lawyer and that usually my answer to questions like this.  "It's in the rules."  However, perhaps a more in depth answer would help soothe the natives.  So the question I am going to get is why am I using the availability enforcement?  Usually we just make characters and buy what they want with no limits.  Any thoughts?

Availability is quite literal, it's how easily available something is.  Lower availability rating means it's much easier to get through the black/gray market or through contacts.  Let's say you wanted to get Intel's latest prototype CPU.  Now, as I'm sure you're aware there are only a few hundred of these in the world.  How would you get one if you only have the normal retail channels (white market) available to you?  The answer is, you can't. 

Now, if you have a contact, let's say a research scientist who works at Intel, I would say that the chances of you getting that prototype are much better.  It would still be a bit far-fetched, but it's at least possible now.  Let's say you have a different contact who happens to the lead quality tester for the prototype line.  It'd be much easier for him to say "this chip is bad" and steal it from the company to sell to you.  So in essence, different types of contacts with different levels gives you better or worse chances at getting what you want. 

At character generation you can buy any legal gear that's under the availability limit from stores through certified cred sticks.  Anything approaching the higher availability numbers represents stuff that's harder to find... but you can find it eventually if you look hard enough.  The hard availability limit, by default is Rating 6 gear and availability 12, is meant so that starting characters don't have better gear at the beginning.  You can explain this any way you like.

Personally I like to allow characters to get what they want, but anything outside of the starting limits needs to be explained. 
-Availability level is default, Rating 6 and Availability 12
-Restricted items can be registered to a SIN or fake SIN, but not required.  If it's not registered, how did the character obtain this item?
-Forbidden items not allowed without an explanation.  How did the character obtain military grade gear?

In essence, anything outside of the default can be explained either by back story or through contacts linked in that story.  If a character grew up with a guy who ended up working pretty high up in Ares as an explanation of why he has a Stoner-Ares M202 MMG (availability 12F), he'd better have that friend on his contacts list with a pretty high loyalty rating.  Usually I limit characters to only one and maybe two items outside of the chargen availability limit.  If the characters can't have cool stuff at chargen, it gives them some goals to work towards.  If a person were to write an excellent back story and have his or her character interconnected with all their contacts then I may allow more items.  At that point though I might actually start rolling like you would in game to see if they can actually start with that item.

[Ruski]

At chargen there is also an edge: "restricted gear", I used that one myself to get 'Sylvester' his better than average laser weapon, and his low level move by wires.
I wrote it into his story as he totally had this ledget business but got P'owned by some megacorp, escaping only with a handfull of toys.

[bull30548]

So more on my SR game plan that I am rolling around.  I was wanting my own Interactive map type or something I could throw up on a computer.  So I was thinking about it and there is already a couple of such things out there.  I was actually thinking of using Steelport USA as my map and city.  A lot of the stuff is already there as far as locations and it even has a city center I can use for Corp sector.  The gang sectors are already mapped out and I can have it where different gangs have different mobbed up backers.  I was going to use Knight Errant as the city law enforcement with Ares Firewatch as the military backup (if my runners go on a shooting spree).  However I plan on making the place as crooked as possible from the civilian to the cops.  Street Kings esque cops it's not about the truth it's how they write it up.  The 'Vice Special' unit is actually going to be the SR counter force that gone so far off the reservation they blurred the line between right and wrong. 

Thoughts, complaints, dear god that has all been so done before?

[kv]

The benefit to Shadowrun is that a lot of stuff has been done before, so there is a wealth of sources out there to crib stuff from. If you're introducing a new group to the world, I'd recommend starting off with a city that you're familiar with (your city- or the closest one to you), look up some of the Shadowrun background lore, make it up if it doesn't exist. Let the runners play around there, and it'll feel more connected for them.

I do like the 'street kings,' "everyone is crooked" approach.

If you don't want to do a local city, Seattle is always a great place to start. Not only is there years of writing and research, but a lot of it has filtered out into the interweb and is easy to find for free. It's also the 'classic' Shadowrun setting, so everyone can get a feel for the where of it. Lots of information about the local gangs, who owns what, and all that.

Those would be my two suggestions.

  - Logain

[bull30548]

So it took me about a week to do it but I finally got through it all.  Now in getting as much info as I could for Saints Row 2 and 3.  In doing so I noticed a big difference between 2 and 3.  It seems like they put a lot of work into the area around Stilwater.  Lots of names for buildings and areas.  Steelport however was just a bunch of generic fluff I didn't find it all that amusing at all.  In fact I got about halfway through and said screw it I am just going to count buildings and say what they are.  If anyone gets a little bit too picky in SR game I will just come up with something on the fly. 
Now I am going to actually try to take all the information I got and make it into something workable.  Just thought you guys like to know.  Also I do recommend both the second and third games just for the fun and laughs you will get from it.  Also it looks like Deep Silver (Dead Island) got a hold of the license for Saints Row and Volition was already working on 4.  So hopefully there will still be a four.

So thought I just modify instead of just adding another replay in here.  I came across and am using a resource that I thought would be useful for my fellow GM's.  Just go to DriveThruRPG and type in 100 names.  You will get a long list of random table generators from just about any genre you can think of and possibly a few you may not have.  They are usually only about .50 to a dollar in price so pretty cheap.   The ones I got are name generators and some of them even have the meaning behind the names.

[bull30548]

Didn't feel like modifying and this is a new topic sort of anyway.  So i have been playing a lot of the Aliens Colonial Marines.  I know it is not a great game but I have hopes that since it is gearbox they will raise it up a bit with DLC.  Anyway to my point had a dream that I was clearing a room full of aliens.  Instead of just blazing away with bullets I turned to my trusty flamethrower.  Instead of just flaming them I didn't engage the igniter and doused the floor with the liquid forming a nice big puddle.  The bugs caught on quick but I just stepped back through the door gave the puddle a burst of fire and shut the door.  Roasted bugs woot. 
Anyway I know I can have some weird dreams but I thought this creative little thought might cross my players minds.  So how tight are safehouses or homes in general.  Would the liquid actually make it through the doors or anything?  I am not worried about cars cause I deem those pretty waterproof.  Houses are too usually unless someone decides to bypass some of those standard features that make them that way.

So an update of sorts on my game, right now my group is on hiatus.  So I have had plenty of time to plan.  Now I am ripping off stuff from different sources but unless my players have been super bored and grabbing up some old games they won't know this.  So my first sources of material is Saints Row 1-3 for cityscape as well as a breakdown of 2 cities with gang controlled areas (who are ran by organized crime) with places of interests broken down into districts.  I worked out the political structures of the cities.  Next I listed all the organized crime syndicates and did a breakdown of their leadership plus that of the gang leaders.  I added preferred armaments, vehicles, and specialists to those organizations. Then I began working on a booklet of sorts with a lot of this information in it and expanded such as who is who, city history, and places of interests.  While working on this I realized that I couldn't have the city with only my players as runners.  With this I began poking around some of my other books and came across some photos that my friend made of his shadowrun deck.  So I am now checking through the named runners and what not against the wiki to make sure they aren't being used in other cities or stories.  That is about it once I get the stories and checking done I am going to begin hammering out stats.

[bull30548]

So another update of sorts.  This was a recent discussion that occurred and I sort of avoided.  Basically one of the players complained that SR should only be ran in third edition.  Now while I love third edition more than fourth there is a reason I am not touching it.  As I have said before most of my experience is with third edition and how this one gm ran it.  It was great!  And that is the thing of it, I think it was so great no one can properly capture that 3rd edition feel ever again.  So I am still going with 4th edition and sticking with my plan.  I know some of my players will bitch but once I explain why I don't want to run 4th I think they will understand.  Also by not touching 3rd I kind of hold out that hope the old gm will pick up those stories again and blow our minds.  Currently I am taking a bit of a break from NPC generating (because there are a lot I still have to go) and am currently ripping images off a thread on the Catalyst Games Forum.  This is so my players can pick persona pics, get an idea of what the world looks like, matrix images, augmented reality, some humor, vehicles, weapons, and for me some images to use for later on certain runs. 

So I know everybody is busy I have finals coming up and I am just taking a break.  Comments and thoughts would be appreciated.

[kv]

Can you host the images somewhere? Most likely one of us would like to have a look-see.

  -Kv

[bull30548]

I will link the thread I am grabbing stuff for now.  I am still getting images I am up to 2500 but I think some of those are duplicates so I am going to have to sort them down into more manageable folders and then I can see if I can get them all up on google or flickr or something.  So here is the link for the forum board I am cruising through.  The other part going to take A LOT of time.  Also I will see what I can do about posting up all the chummer files I have gotten done as well so you guys can use them if you want.  Most of them you probably have from the one the guys at Chummer have done themselves but I do have most of the NPC's for a lot of the books they haven't gotten to yet.  Any word if they are even going to bother anymore since we only have what i am assuming only a few weeks to maybe at best a few months until 5th is out?

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=5104.0

3,532 images total folks going to take me a while to sort through them.

[bull30548]

So originally I was gathering a bunch of information together so I could provide as much of it as I could to the players.  Now I am thinking I will hold back a whole lot of it and let my players truly make their own destiny.  Thoughts on this?

I am still compiling the images finals have been kicking my tail pretty well.  I will also point out I didn't grab every image off this thread as I am a bit picky at times. I will try to be done this weekend and possibly get a flickr account.

[bull30548]

So it has begun....
I have pitched the idea gotten responses from multiple people who are now reading books coming up with character concepts.  I have already had one concept pitched to me.  This is the combat monster actually 'playing it straight' as he says.  Nothing over the top or too much he planning on playing a street sam with a focus on pistols.

So one thing I wasn't planning but kind of realized I could quite easily get away with was globe hopping.  I mean I tried to make a city scape big enough for my players to not want to hop.  However, I don't want to have limits.  So I created multiple tables to help me run my game.  If I have a player who goes "I want to get a job what is out there?" I can just use my random job table to generate one.  "Oh what going on around the world?" I can use my random city generator (which is a list of cities from all the 4th edition books) and my own.  Though I am going to have this take a little longer as most fixers are local not international.  Also I plan on having it where I can have some of my main storyline quests to hop around the world too. 

So what is your main storyline?  Well I just wrote it out but now realized that some of my players may look on here.  So you want tell me to pm you lol. 

I also have a loose number of players though nothing is solid.  Four guys and two girls, the two girls are very new players the four guys are ones who have played SR before.   

That is it so far guys.  Haven't even gotten to character generation but in anticipation of this I designed a Rigger/Hacker NPC to cover an aspect that I know the players don't like very often.