Shadowrun 4th edition corporate game

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Avoraciopoctules
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Shadowrun 4th edition corporate game

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I'm finally getting around to running a Shadowrun 4th Edition game. Since the default game/setting assumptions don't really appeal to me, I intend to give the players control over a relatively new corporate security force tasked with a special mission and given unusual freedoms (I am being deliberately vague about the specific mission for now since at least one person in our RPG group browses TGDMB).

The force is bigger than the players, and the members are individually weaker than a shadowrunner. Rapid advancement is possible both in terms of gear quality and skillsets. I'm thinking of giving each player 3-4 characters to control during a mission (possibly sharing an Edge pool that refreshes after each mission). Characters are generally going to be distinct from each other, but they're all going to be made by altering a basic character archetype template. Characters will get killed or incapacitated in play, and it is possible that the force will run out of personnel and lose the game.

There's going to be a macromanagement minigame where the players determine how the force's bases are set up, what sorts of equipment, personnel, and training the force purchases/requisitions/recruits, and how it interacts with the corporate sponsors. I'm still thinking over whether or not to Magical Tea Party this aspect.

Character advancement will be fairly rapid at first. I figure something like 40-60 BP could get awarded in the first session if we don't get bogged down in tedium (though characters will start with around 200-300 BP's worth of power.). Players allocate these themselves, and I expect things to taper off around 500 BP characters. I am also considering giving each player some bonus BP they can divide amongst their character pool as they wish.
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The Vigilante
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Post by The Vigilante »

Sounds like a cool idea, here are my suggestions though :

1- Don't use the character templates from the book, they pretty much all suck and some of them aren't even legit.

2- Character advancement is normally made with karma. BPs are fine, but they do modify the standard advancement curve ; IE things will always cost the same instead of being gradually more expensive as you progress.

3- Less than 300BPs are pretty much useless characters. Since you want to play with characters that are weaker than Shadowrunners, I suggest going with 300-350BPs. 300BPs are usually what people use when they want to do gang or low-power campaigns. With 200BP, you are just going to get gimps, they will mostly have 2's in their Attributes and this sucks.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no one - for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.
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Gelare
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Post by Gelare »

I'm very curious how you plan to do the micromanagement minigame, because without some actual rules that you've worked out beforehand, it basically boils down to Magical Tea Party, something you (maybe?) want to avoid. Or maybe not, I guess that's fine too, although then it kind of invites the question of why they're spending their time doing that.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

The Vigilante wrote:Sounds like a cool idea, here are my suggestions though :

1- Don't use the character templates from the book, they pretty much all suck and some of them aren't even legit.
Thank you for the warning. Out of curiosity, how are some of the characters illegal?
The Vigilante wrote:2- Character advancement is normally made with karma. BPs are fine, but they do modify the standard advancement curve ; IE things will always cost the same instead of being gradually more expensive as you progress.
I'm going to use the houserules in The Ends of the Matrix. They suggest that BP or Karma be used instead of one for creation and one for advancement. BP is simpler for me, so I'm going with that.
The Vigilante wrote:3- Less than 300BPs are pretty much useless characters. Since you want to play with characters that are weaker than Shadowrunners, I suggest going with 300-350BPs. 300BPs are usually what people use when they want to do gang or low-power campaigns. With 200BP, you are just going to get gimps, they will mostly have 2's in their Attributes and this sucks.
Ah. Alright then, I should definitely up the power of the PCs. What if I take the Grunt rules and assign each player a Professional Rating 4 squad with improved customizability?
Gelare wrote:I'm very curious how you plan to do the micromanagement minigame, because without some actual rules that you've worked out beforehand, it basically boils down to Magical Tea Party, something you (maybe?) want to avoid. Or maybe not, I guess that's fine too, although then it kind of invites the question of why they're spending their time doing that.
I'm seeing 4 definite possibilities, all of which could potentially be blended together:

1. Magical Tea Party
2. Grab a copy of X-Com or something similar with a scenario editor
3. Maybe get a copy of Fields of Blood and use that as the base for some mechanics
4. Give the party a budget, and give a list of prices for various benefits (giving details on what each of these do mechanically.). Some of these prices might actually be negative if the players want to think about selling the information/loot they pick up. In each phase of downtime, the amount of money in the budget changes, and the list of ways money can be spent changes as well.

Also, as a side note, I am a MTP enthusiast. About half my games are either freeform or end up being freeform when I think the mechanics are slowing things down.

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Thank you for the feedback.
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The Vigilante
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Post by The Vigilante »

Avoraciopoctules wrote:
The Vigilante wrote:Sounds like a cool idea, here are my suggestions though :

1- Don't use the character templates from the book, they pretty much all suck and some of them aren't even legit.
Thank you for the warning. Out of curiosity, how are some of the characters illegal?
The Vigilante wrote:2- Character advancement is normally made with karma. BPs are fine, but they do modify the standard advancement curve ; IE things will always cost the same instead of being gradually more expensive as you progress.
I'm going to use the houserules in The Ends of the Matrix. They suggest that BP or Karma be used instead of one for creation and one for advancement. BP is simpler for me, so I'm going with that.
The Vigilante wrote:3- Less than 300BPs are pretty much useless characters. Since you want to play with characters that are weaker than Shadowrunners, I suggest going with 300-350BPs. 300BPs are usually what people use when they want to do gang or low-power campaigns. With 200BP, you are just going to get gimps, they will mostly have 2's in their Attributes and this sucks.
Ah. Alright then, I should definitely up the power of the PCs. What if I take the Grunt rules and assign each player a Professional Rating 4 squad with improved customizability?

The character templates are sometimes illegal because they are worth more than 400bp, or because they carry nonexistent items. Also they generally are completely incompetent, some characters suck so badly at what they do that it's not even funny. Like the bounty hunter who sucks at finding people. Those things might have been corrected in later errata though.

Regarding the grunts system, I never really bothered with it because character creation is so easy in SR4. Whipping out a NPC can be as simple as you want. Since everything is a matter of dicepools, you start with the pool you feel is appropriate and work backwards from there if necessary.

For example, I might start with a random security guard, and only have a few pools written down. Something like : Shooting 9, Dodge 4, Full Dodge 8, Soak 12 Armor 8.

Then say this NPC becomes a recurrent character which deserves proper stats, it's easy to work out stats from there.
Shooting 9 would be Agility 4, Pistols 3, Smartgun +2
etc.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no one - for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

The main reason the Grunt rules appeal to me is that I can use them to give each PC around 6 subordinates or teammates without dramatically increasing my workload. If the players are controlling them, I'll probably want a full (or at least adaptable) stat array.

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Some setting questions:

I know magic comes and goes in Ages on Earth and mana comes from the presence of living things. I know that space stations can have mana if you maintain enough plants and people inside.

Is there any reason magic wouldn't exist on inhabited planets other than Earth?

When an Age ends, does anything in Shadowrun or Earthdawn imply that magic might still exist (or maybe move) somewhere else?

Are there any factors that might artificially extend or shorten an Age?

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A mechanics question, since I haven't found the answer in Street Magic yet:

Do Toxic mages still have to worry about Essence loss from things like drug addiction?
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Post by Quantumboost »

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Is there any reason magic wouldn't exist on inhabited planets other than Earth?

When an Age ends, does anything in Shadowrun or Earthdawn imply that magic might still exist (or maybe move) somewhere else?

Are there any factors that might artificially extend or shorten an Age?
I believe most of these are outside the domain of "things that anyone in the setting has any clue about beyond guesses". Especially since nobody in the setting would have been able to go to another living planet or safely astrally project during a non-magic Age (and the "modern" humans would have to actually wait until the next magic-less world rolls around to even run basic tests, which could potentially be a long time).

I imagine that there wouldn't be any particular difference between life on Earth or life elsewhere as far as interacting with/creating mana is concerned; if you were to find another "living" planet it would likely have a mana field just like Earth's. But you'd have to actually find another planet with non-terrestrial life to test that.
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