The Shadowrun Situation

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:00 am

Aryxbez wrote:Also, never played Cyberpunk 2020, I've heard it's tech is less advanced (cell-phones in your head are big deal), but supports Walking Gundam men. How doable is that in Cyberpunk 2020, is it a end-game path only, and does its "essence/Aug-slot equivalent" system it probably has better than Shadowruns in any way?

IIRC the walking Gundam men were pretty far out of players' purchasing power and way outside of the acceptable "essence" cost range.

I always liked the flavor of CP2020's Humanity system better than Shadowrun's essence. In CP2020 as you add more cyberware your humanity score goes down. As your humanity approaches zero you start to increasingly empathize with machines, have vivid nightmarish hallucinations, and kill everyone you knew or loved. Losing your magical essence and dying seems pretty tame by comparison.

But my recollection is that they're pretty mechanically similar. The only difference that springs to mind is that CP2020 humanity is determined by a stat you roll at chargen, so different characters can tolerate different amounts of metal. Humanity costs might have been randomized too.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:51 am

Cyberpunk had Humanity rather than Essence, and flavoured degradation through cyberware as a mental disintegration rather than severing your magical connection to your "soul". This was kind of interesting, but had a few unfortunate knock-on effects detailed below. Also, the system was set up so that your Humanity was an actual stat that you could buy up at Chargen that was used for interpersonal skills and negotiation. Humanity losses were always random, and going below 0 meant you became an NPC.

The idea was that as you got more cybered up you lost your connection to people, which kind of works, but it lead to the most inhuman combat monsters being incentivised to start as really lovely personable people. These paragons of virtue then proceeded to jam as much hardware into themselves as possible until they could barely remember what happiness felt like. It was a bit weird. The random losses also meant you would occasionally just lose a character to unlucky rolls and your GM got a new serial killer NPC.

But the real killer was that cyberpsychosis was described as becoming a cold fish, unemotional, distant - which meant that every Solo character ended up being played the same. They were all cold, unemotional killers that couldn't relate to people. Half the party having the same schtick got old fast. So I can't honestly say the more flavourful CP2020 way of dealing with cyberware was any better than the mechanical Shadowrun way.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:00 pm

As of SR4, they had implemented Cyber-Psychosis as an optional flaw as well.
In SR3, some of the social combat rules were affected by cyber/essence.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:11 pm

Stahlseele wrote:As of SR4, they had implemented Cyber-Psychosis as an optional flaw as well.
In SR3, some of the social combat rules were affected by cyber/essence.

Wasn't cyber zombies a holdover from early editions, which basically was the came thing as the cyber psychosis in CP? I remember it being talked about pre-SR3 if memory serves.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:16 pm

No no, Cyber-Zombie is something else entirely.
That's people with below 0 Essence. They don't have psychosis so much as forgetting to live and cancer.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:57 pm

I would say Cyber-Zombie is very similar idea to CP2020's "become a NPC mechanical killer". As it even includes the idea of mental degradation and decreased life span as I recall.

pragma wrote:IIRC the walking Gundam men were pretty far out of players' purchasing power and way outside of the acceptable "essence" cost range.

Yeah, I funnily started to look this all up after I asked it, and from a glance seemed to be the case. The "Dragoon" super awesome one in particular is unsuable for player use as even max EMP, it'll turn you into an NPC. Best can hope is ye roll all 1's on 30-50d6's worth of HUManity loss. Even more BS, is the option to become a walking mobile suit, you only get a 20% chance to actually partake in it, "so don't skimp on your stats!" being an actual line in the supplement.... Obviously old-school BS where just roll the same PC 5+ times till the DM concedes its retarded. It talks about how 'super special" guys that defy the norm in those super suits in various psychological ways, it's a pity most of that seems to be RNG based.

So unless there's some way to Decrease HUM loss from any augment ever, I'm greatly disappointed that "walking tank/@man" isn't a fully supported archetype to play (Worker construction/Radiation bot kinda is, max EMP leave you at 3 or "Cold-fish" as discussed above). That's pretty much the only thing I'd want to play in this system I still hardly know much of (basically read a fan-quick PC creation guide, and supplement with the mini-mobile suits).

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:58 pm

So, I'm starting up a SR4 (with Ends and a few other houserules, like consolidation of combat skills) campaign, and I've been trying to get a feel for how, exactly the Shadowrun economy works, and I have several questions. If needed, I can crosspost this into another thread, but this seems like as good a place as any.

First of all, what the fuck? If Seattle is typical, going by Seattle 2072, literally a third of the population lives in Barrens, and that's going by highly unreliable official census counts, which almost certainly omit a good chunk of the SINless. Now this is awesome, and very cyberpunk, and I love it. But here's my question: what percentage of the population has an income? Where the fuck does that money come from? Is it in nuyen (probably not), certified cred, cash, scrip, barter, or what? If the stereotype of paying off a local gang for power taps and paying for nutrisoy in cash under the glare of turrets is true, clearly this population isn't generating a great deal of effective demand. Moreover, in a post-industrial society, most of the ways in which these populations could earn a wage (and generate gigantic profits for their employer), namely subsistence agriculture and labor-intensive manufacturing are gone. Corporate managers picking out skillwired day laborers at the gates of a commlink factory is cool and cyberpunk, but surely there aren't that many jobs. So where the fuck does any of Redmond's money come from? Prostitution isn't that labour-intensive in a world with BTL's and simsense, and other than organ-harvesting and otherwise providing raw biomass I fail to see how these populations could even exist. It's somewhat plausible that all the income comes from gangs and syndicates, who in turn provide services to the upper echelons, but is that seriously enough to sustain a million people in a city the size of Seattle?

This brings me to my next question: how is there not a crisis of overproduction? Sure, a lot of productive capacity would be spent on recovering from the endless Crashes and toxic spirit attacks and shadowrunner rampages, bullshit like that, but if a third of the urban world lives in barrens, buying fuck-all, and most of the rest are wageslaves who earn a pittance, who the fuck is buying the shit the corps make, so they can turn a profit? Unless the metastasis of corporations into state-esque entities is complete, and corps run up giant fucking deficits (which would presume a source of easy credit willing to buy up Azzie-Bills or whatever the fuck), how are they managing to run enough of a profit where they can invest lord knows how much of it into cybered-up goons and aircraft carriers for their personal navies? If enough easy currency was pouring into the economy, then there might be enough to generate effective demand, but stimulus packages for Barrens Joe aren't very cyberpunk, and moreover, I don't think Zurich really wants to encourage inflation, even a little bit. The other possibility is that most of what corps make goes to the very highest echelons, but that's ridiculous.

Even with the mindcaulk of easy fracking, Awakening-reduced global warming, and restricting everything to the UCAS and surrounding territories, how does this shit work? I don't see this coming up in the course of the game unless my players decide to try out large-scale commodity manipulation, but I'd like to have an actual answer that makes sense if my players ask me "what is an average Redmond inhabitant doing to make cred?"

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:55 pm

Shadowrun cities are probably best modeled on African cities. So Accra has four million people in it, and 60% of economically active people are in the "private, informal sector." Which means basically that they wander around, doing odd jobs when they can or sell stuff on the sidewalk.

So in the Barrens, people will get their hands on a container full of... something. Power tools, hot pants, shoes, pull-tab burritos, whatever. And they sell these things at whatever rate they can, and take their daily earnings to buy some tamales from a local baker and maybe swap whatever they have excess of for the excesses of someone else.

It's basically crisis of overproduction all the time, and massive massive unemployment is the order of the day every day. The corps maintain demand at all by having a massive SOTA and style turnover of absolutely everything, and the street vendors can get product because stuff on remainder is pretty much worthless to the boutiques and they can fill a rusty shopping cart full of stuff to resell on the black market for a song.

It's essentially a total collapse of the organized economy for about half the population, with an actual minority of the people living in an "advanced economy" with high productivity employment and advanced allocation of resources. So like Lagos or Accra.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:14 pm

Well, keep in mind regional variations. In old urban cores like Seattle, you're going to have relatively high unemployment because the megacorps *can* be choosy as they fucking well please, and their "citizen employees" are probably going to be paid in some combination of nuyen and scrip - with the scrip going towards paying for the necessities of living from the corporation, plus assorted luxury goods. So that shuts out a lot of people from even participating directly in the local economy, except for goods and services that they can't get (or don't want to get) at home, like drugs and elf sex and unfettered Matrix access. That's going to shrink the overall economy, since a good chunk of any AAA megacorp's resources are going to go to feeding and caring for its population. Most of the SINless and others in Seattle aren't going to be able to qualify for megacorporate citizenship, so that right there is going to keep unemployment in cities high - and with unemployment high, tax receipts plummet, which is why old urban cores skimp on maintenance and start to decay a la Detroit.

...but all that shit has to be built somewhere. So you have to have places which are basically the equivalent of company towns, where pretty much everybody either works for the corporation directly or through a subsidiary, and because it'll be a local monopoly which some people are practically born into, you're going to see near total employment - but no competition to speak of, just inner corporate politics and probably a thriving grey market. But those are the real blue-collar 12-hour-shift factory jobs where the nurse assistants come by to give you your RenrakuMeth shots every few hours whether you need it or not.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 9:42 pm

Well, I got a response from the two biggest shadowrun authorities on this forum, so I'm happy. Thanks a bunch. I hadn't considered turnover as a source for effective demand, and that makes a lot of sense. I'd imagined a decent chunk of a corp's laborers being non-contractual day laborers like longshoremen in the Great Depression or whatever, but I suppose widespread wageslavery allows for consumption within the corp and better control of workers.

I'm assuming that legal worker's rights are non-existent, but I've never seen any mention of strikes or workers' groups or unions (probably because they're all violently suppressed). Is that because the writers never paid any attention to worker resistance, or is there a legitimate reason for that?

Is it also reasonable to suggest that with the proliferation of gangs and Awakened wildlife that most inter-city transport is either aerieal or incredibly militarized? The first run I had planned out for my group involves hijacking a truck belonging to a waste management service that caters to the outposts of civilization in the Barrens, via large septic tanks. Since it's the barrens, of course, it's a retrofitted Citymaster with the seats replaced with a shit tank and drone racks added, and a mounted HMG. All trucks have a spider/rigger riding shotgun, and there are a couple mages on astral overwatch. Naturally, this is expensive, but for the factories and hospitals and labs out in the Barrens, there's basically no alternative. Given that the lawless nature of the barrens is presumably replicated outside major cities, is it reasonable to expect that trucking basically doesn't exist except as Mad-Max style convoys armed to the teeth? In that case, it might actually make sense for Snohomish to be the breadbasket it is, because transport costs are so high growing everything in Idaho and trucking it everywhere isn't efficient. If we extend the same paradigm to nautical transport, with pirates, does that mean that globalization has actually retreated, and most sprawls are somewhat self-sufficient?

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:30 pm

Let's just say that economics was not a strong point of the guys who built the setting way back when. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak" was the FASA motto. So pretty much anything you think through and can offer logical reasons for is something that you have spent 10 times as much effort on as the people who built the setting.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 11:43 pm

As it happens, the one Shadowrun novel I own has hijacking truck convoys through the Barrens as a central plot point. Two vehicles, one mage and associated spirit(s), bunch of guys with flak jackets and small arms. They could also radio Knight Errant for help, but the team had a Decker tasked to fuck with communications. That was the escort for a shitty electronics shipment and a high-quality arms shipment, although the arms shipment had a more hardcore mage and extra spirits. There were shenanigans afoot, so I don't know which cargo would normally merit that escort.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 3:05 am

Korgan0 wrote:Given that the lawless nature of the barrens is presumably replicated outside major cities, is it reasonable to expect that trucking basically doesn't exist except as Mad-Max style convoys armed to the teeth?

Pretty much. The old books had crazy shit like semis with drone bays and observation pods on top. Still, it's worth noting that Seattle has its own Metroplex Guard which patrols the most vital stretches of highway. Basically, the authorities keep vital shipping corridors relatively clear but opportunistic crime is still a problem and "minor" off-ramps are littered with gang graffiti that may as well read "here be dragons." Also, remember that in many ways Shadowrun sprawls have actually contracted rather than grown out of control, so many areas are virtually abandoned so attacks might become fairly rare if you can can get past the worst areas.

Also, if you're going to do a waste removal angle you should strongly consider including a community that's sickly and pissed off because they are seriously out of a "job" now that someone is actually going to dispose of the waste properly rather than pay squatters pennies to drag that shit off themselves. Toxic spirits are optional.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 9:52 am

I've written a few things about jobs in "Style Over Substance" my unofficial book about life in 207x.

In addition to what Frank and AH said:

- SINless jobs:
Some SINless will be employed illegally in factories (cheaper workforce than drones especially in conditions that are dangerous to drones or where drones don't work really well) or by SINners (gardeners, maids, basically "slaves")

Then there are criminal businesses that can generate quite a lot of money, which will not only create jobs in the criminal businesses themselves but also in regular businesses that carter to the needs of those in the criminal business. Sure, a successful SINless drug dealer can get lunch at McHugh, but he'll need to use one of his fake SINs with the risk of failing a check and getting caught, so the Barrens burger joint where you don't need a SIN to order will be more convenient.

And then there are some remote communities that are completely cut off from the rest of the world and will grow/hunt their food and have their own economy.

- About overproduction, here's a little extract from Style Over Substance:

Since the beginning of the 21st century, as corporations grew larger, they faced a new problem: keeping wages as low as possible meant getting less potential consumers. Two different schools of thought emerged from this problem.

- The first one was about selling to the employees of other corporations, the less you paid your own employees the lower you could set your price and sell your products to your rivals who couldn't lower wage as low as you.
- The second one was about selling to your own employees but making them pay later. The corp would lend money to the employee and the employee would pay back over the years by working for the corp. Of course, as years went by, debts accumulated and finally the employee's children had to work for the corp too. But the corps was the winner: it'd get right now the money the employee would create by working for his entire lifetime.

Nowadays, most corps apply both methods. They try to lower the cost as much as possible and force their employees to borrow money. In some corps employees actually borrow money, in other they sign an indenture contract when joining and in some they "benefit" from "purchasing options". The common part is that this money can only be spent on company's products. The race for the lowest cost implies that products quality is getting worse all the time, but thanks to this corps can sell many more of them. Advertisement make sure that they want to regularly change what they have anyway. This also prevents employees from investing the money to make sure you get it now. Of course you can't just hand any amount of money you want to your employees, even if you get it back, you'd have inflation and your money would become worthless. But with the right amounts you can get now the money the employee would earn your corp in the next years

Sure, this is highly unsustainable, but that has never stopped anyone from doing something that brings a lot of short-term money.

- Trucks: There are mentions of automated armed and armored truck convoys on the highways. They might still get targeted from times to times by the biggest or more desperate go-gangs, though.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 10:14 pm

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/we ... -hong-kong
It went up on Kickstarter just hours ago and is by now at almost twice what they were asking for . .
i was a bit too disappoint with SRR to kick in this time, i'll probably wait for normal release and then buy it to give it a go, but the "Tracks" for characters already are not sitting well with me <.<

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 11:02 pm

oh well, Dragonfall had good sidequests, someone over there is at least somewhat competent. but why another KS?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 11:12 pm

err . . i hate to have to be the one that points it out to you but:
because, obviously, it works VERY WELL O.o
Proof: not even half a day has passed since they started the kickstarter, and they are at twice what they asked for already . .

and yes, the sidequests were nice, but i still am disappointed on the technical side <.<

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:47 am

Re: Shadowrun economy.

Reminds me of this.

http://omnifeed.com/article/digg.com/vi ... yn-hustler

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 10:59 am

Fasanomics.
Never work.
Neither in SR, nor in BT.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 12:49 pm

Oh, tell us more.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:34 am

Korgan0 wrote: Given that the lawless nature of the barrens is presumably replicated outside major cities, is it reasonable to expect that trucking basically doesn't exist except as Mad-Max style convoys armed to the teeth?

Originally when I was enjoying Sons of Anarchy I was going to write an MC Shadowrun game where you played bikers halfway between Salt Lake City and Seattle who ran protection rackets for shipping around the Northwest.

Anything the club wanted to get into as backstory like guns, drugs, BTLs or second-hand cyberware or whatever would be more or less up to the PCs.

I imagine larger gangs like the Halloweeners and shit might actually be paid to at least leave your shit alone or at best do ride-alongs for security.

Also, air travel still seems... expensive in SR. Don't ask me why. Actually come to think of it outside of drones it really isn't talked about much.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 7:56 am

TheFlatline wrote:
Korgan0 wrote: Given that the lawless nature of the barrens is presumably replicated outside major cities, is it reasonable to expect that trucking basically doesn't exist except as Mad-Max style convoys armed to the teeth?
Originally when I was enjoying Sons of Anarchy I was going to write an MC Shadowrun game where you played bikers halfway between Salt Lake City and Seattle who ran protection rackets for shipping around the Northwest.

Anything the club wanted to get into as backstory like guns, drugs, BTLs or second-hand cyberware or whatever would be more or less up to the PCs.

I imagine larger gangs like the Halloweeners and shit might actually be paid to at least leave your shit alone or at best do ride-alongs for security.

Also, air travel still seems... expensive in SR. Don't ask me why. Actually come to think of it outside of drones it really isn't talked about much.

Well, air travel is apparently super secure. Especially if you are flying to any of the Tyrs. But even if you aren't, ninja security will give you stealthy cavity searches while you are standing in contraband detectors.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 9:05 am

TheFlatline wrote: Also, air travel still seems... expensive in SR. Don't ask me why. Actually come to think of it outside of drones it really isn't talked about much.

Yeah, Shadowrun's kinda weird in that for whatever reason some of the writers had a gigantic nerd boner for packing the books with low altitude flying bricks nobody could afford. It was an odd bit of fetishism in a setting where no single military is routinely presented as a true super power and the actual gameplay rewards the cheap and disposable. I would have understood more if they had glommed onto autogyros--at least there's one in Mad Max and you can feasibly afford one.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:19 am

Some questions about Shadowrun as we wish it were:

Stats & Skills: Always triangular, or always linear?
Stat List: Strength, Agility, Reaction, Logic, Intuition, Willpower okay?
Skills: Here's my proposed skill list. Skill groups are gone, but some skills are now "subskills" which require a main skill but cost very little.

AGILITY: Gunplay (Subskill: Ordnance), Martial Arts (Subskill: Exotics), Infiltration (Subskill: Thievery
STRENGTH: Athletics (Subskill: Acrobatics)
REACTION: Pilot (Subskill: Rigging)
INTUTION: Alertness (Subskill: Shadowing), Assensing, Survivalism
LOGIC: Saboteur (Subskill: Mechanic), Data (Subskill: Hardware), Hacking (Subskill: Software), First Aid (Subskill: Medicine), E. Warfare, Forgery, Academics
WILLPOWER: Etiquette (Subskill: Negotiate), Intimidate (Subskill: Leadership), Con, Linguistics
MAGIC: Spellcasting (Subskill: Ritual), Counterspell (Subskill: Banishing), Summoning (Subskill: Binding)

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Feb 12, 2015 2:40 am

A couple weeks ago (or maybe longer, I dunno) someone sent me a PM on the old Dumpshock forums, trying to get me back posting there...I didn't do it, because honestly I've burned my bridges, boxed up my books and moved on. It's not just that I don't really have relationships with any of the current freelancers or devs, and haven't kept up with any of the sourcebooks, but...I'm just really done with the game. I did my piece, I got burned, I'm out.

But it was enough to get me to look at the threads and...well, I'm not surprised that pretty much all the stuff that was a problem when I left is still a problem. Completely aside from the rules debacle that is 5th edition or the quality of the writing - I see they've got some novels out again, and more in the pipe, and I have to say I'm glad I'm out of it and don't have to read those - it's kinda sad to see people complaining about the lack of proofing and errata still, and not realizing that this is an ongoing issue that dates back...well, at least since Jason Hardy took over, if not before when Randall Bills was nominally in charge after Peter Taylor left. It's sad to me that the current situation with Shadowrun has not apparently budged an inch from where it was five years ago.