The Gaming Den

There's plenty of mechanical and fluff support for megas hiring skillwire-bearers for nearly minimum wage and having them do the grunt work in the labs, bouncing around projects and swapping skillsofts from day to day.

So setting wise how does open warfare work and how does it affect travel? What are the factions that engage in "tanks and bombers" warfare?

I'm guessing there's various mercenary companies runners can join with.

Some more questions:

Can Shadowrun work with tactical movement? If so, how much space should a square on the mat represent?

And also. How much is a nuyen worth? I've found the table describing costs for common goods and services, and while some things are kind of informative, others are still confusing. Basically, how much does an average wage slave make in a week? A month? A year?

Also, how replacable are a lot of the businesses in the game? I know they couldn't do this officially because of copyright, but if I wanted to replace the fictional business with real one's like say, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Coca-cola and so forth, how would I go about doing that?

Finally, how much is an acceptable reward for a run? Using the build points rules, I'm leaning towards 10-15 BP per run, but how much nuyen is a good payment?

Can Shadowrun work with tactical movement? If so, how much space should a square on the mat represent?

It's possible, but I'm not sure that being ultra precise about distances ever added much compared to the basic spatial effect of just having minis in approximately the right locations.

Depending on the scale of the location, 2m per square/hex works out well enough. That basically gives you the same scale as DnD's 5ft/square.

How much is a nuyen worth?

There's a chart near the start of the 4e20a book that once gave the impression that 1 nuyen is like 1 modern dollar. It seemed to work for any time I needed to make up a random price or bribe amount. Some hobo who might want 20 bucks to answer a question in a modern police procedural show would just ask for 20 nuyen during a similar shadowrun legwork scene, and so on.

Also, how replacable are a lot of the businesses in the game?

That's a matter of taste I think. Assuming that you're not worried about fluff differences, it comes down to if you want to have real world businesses doing evil things. Like, if your group would find it to all be a huge joke to square off against McDonalds, but they also like that it's a huge joke, then that's great. Other folks might like to maintain the more alien and disconnected feeling of totally fictional corps.

Finally, how much is an acceptable reward for a run? Using the build points rules, I'm leaning towards 10-15 BP per run, but how much nuyen is a good payment?

I was running some of the Shadowrun Missions adventures, giving about 5bp per run and thousands of nuyen per player. Assume that each run takes half or more of a month when you factor in the time between runs, and you should probably pay at least enough that they can cover lifestyle costs. Also somewhere between 10k-20k in take home on top of lifestyle for a month's work isn't bad for early runs. Depends on how fast you want to do advancement, but generally your take home cash should go up over time and your BP per mission should not go up over time.

Let them also potentially negotiate for higher payments in corp scrip (which has to be spent within that corp, but most corps can provide most things anyway, so it's not any huge drawback), or have "treasures" be available on the run (such as equipment that can be easily taken and kept or resold), or being paid in equipment / 'ware directly (which is a good deal for the Johnson if they're somehow able to procure items for below the normal market value). Things that keep it interesting.

Wiseman wrote: Also, how replacable are a lot of the businesses in the game? I know they couldn't do this officially because of copyright, but if I wanted to replace the fictional business with real one's like say, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Coca-cola and so forth, how would I go about doing that?

You can look up the British and Dutch East India companies for how control of distribution and commodities leads to murderkilling

De Beers.

Am I reading it correctly, that unless you reduce the dice pool to 0 through mana barriers and the conceal power a spirit will find you eventually?
Even if the dice pool is only 1 that means that they may get hits, ergo find you eventually (even if it takes a LONG time), right?

Trill wrote:Am I reading it correctly, that unless you reduce the dice pool to 0 through mana barriers and the conceal power a spirit will find you eventually?
Even if the dice pool is only 1 that means that they may get hits, ergo find you eventually (even if it takes a LONG time), right?

With the 4th edition, the only other thing that prevent a searching spirit from finding the target is Critical glitch (see page 59, under "Extended Tests and Glitches").

While a critical glitch is likely with a Force 1 spirit, a higher Force bound spirit has decent chances of finding someone even thousands of kilometers away. With 144 rolls per day, A Threshold of 40,000 (worst case scenario, a target at the exact opposite side of the Earth, with someone insisting distance to be calculated on Earth surface) is only a couple of months away for a powerful enough spirit.

For some reasons the person who wrote the rules for 4th edition thought it was a good idea to use the new mechanic of Extended Roll instead of an Opposed Roll as in the previous editions, for spirits who no longer had domain restriction and could be bound.

With the 4th/20th Anniversary Edition, the gamemaster may apply the rule of diminishing pool that would restrict even the most powerful spirits to searching for a few hours at at best.

Is it just me or are adepts kind of uninteresting. Mechanically they seem to be okay, but most of it is kinda just numbers.

This is probably a rapid departure, but what if adepts worked kind of like conduits from inFamous (which I was playing recently). In oppsition to magicians they have a more focused powerset, being specialized in contrast to magicians being more generalist. Also, they wouldn't suffer drain like magicians, or not as much. Like you would have spheres such as fire adepts, charm adepts, motion adepts, martial adepts, shadow adepts and so forth. More focus on powers and abilities that make them distinct.

Errr . . are you talking physical adepts or magical adepts here?
Because physical adepts are basically magical samurai.
And they are called adepts because they are supposed to be adept at one specific thing and things connected to it.

There was, in SR3, the way of the Adept. Where you could get discounts to the cost of certain powers adhering to the way and thus streamline and specialize the character.

Wiseman wrote:Is it just me or are adepts kind of uninteresting. Mechanically they seem to be okay, but most of it is kinda just numbers.

This is probably a rapid departure, but what if adepts worked kind of like conduits from inFamous (which I was playing recently). In oppsition to magicians they have a more focused powerset, being specialized in contrast to magicians being more generalist. Also, they wouldn't suffer drain like magicians, or not as much. Like you would have spheres such as fire adepts, charm adepts, motion adepts, martial adepts, shadow adepts and so forth. More focus on powers and abilities that make them distinct.

That's basically what Aspected Magicians are supposed to be.

Hmm... I'll have to take a look at that.

Are the ability maximums listed for your race the max at char creation or the max ever? If so, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing?

If I understand the context, then it's ever. Specifically, it depends on which maximum you're talking about. There's 'natural' maximum and 'augmented' maximum, the latter being half again as large. A human has a 'natural' maximum of 6, which can be raised by 1 with a positive quality or with genetic engineering. Said human can use any number of methods to raise an attribute, and even go over that max of 6, but the cumulative total can't exceed 9 (or 12 if they took the quality and genetic boost).

Now, I've seen some people argue that the 'augmented' maximum is based on the character's current attribute rather than their natural maximum - meaning that the Strength 4 human with genetic optimization can't go higher than 6 with spells/drugs/etc until they spend the BP/karma to raise it. I am not versed enough to know whether those people are super wrong or if I'm the munchkin powergamer trying to twist the rules.

If that was house ruled as a max at char creation, would that be a bad thing?

I think in SR4 it was still absolute maximum and only in SR5 was it reduced to maximum right now.
If memory serves correct, a human could, in theory, if he found enough ways to actually get that big of a plus on an attribute, start with a 1(9) Natural(Improved) Attribute.
And only in SR5 did they limit that to current attribute +half.
I could be wrong though, in which case i suspect Frank will gleefully and hurtfully correct me on this.

virgil wrote:If I understand the context, then it's ever. Specifically, it depends on which maximum you're talking about. There's 'natural' maximum and 'augmented' maximum, the latter being half again as large. A human has a 'natural' maximum of 6, which can be raised by 1 with a positive quality or with genetic engineering. Said human can use any number of methods to raise an attribute, and even go over that max of 6, but the cumulative total can't exceed 9 (or 12 if they took the quality and genetic boost).

Now, I've seen some people argue that the 'augmented' maximum is based on the character's current attribute rather than their natural maximum - meaning that the Strength 4 human with genetic optimization can't go higher than 6 with spells/drugs/etc until they spend the BP/karma to raise it. I am not versed enough to know whether those people are super wrong or if I'm the munchkin powergamer trying to twist the rules.

People are super wrong. They mix up the rules for attributes and skills.

Attribute Ratings, Shadowrun 4th edition, page 62
Physical and Mental attributes have a maximum natural rating of 6 plus or minus metatype modifiers, depending on metatype (see p. 73). The maximum augmented attribute value for each metatype is equal to 1.5 times this figure, rounded down (see the Metatype Attribute Table, p. 73).

Skill Ratings, Shadowrun 4th edition, page 63
Adept powers, implants or magic may provide bonus dice to a skill, creating a modified skill rating, but this does not change the base skill rating. The maximum modified rating allowed is 1.5 times the natural rating (making 9 the maximum achievable, or 10 with the Aptitude quality).

Or that yes.

IIRC in SR5 it's your current attribute +4

Okay, so we know that Toxin rules don't work since their Values were copied instead of adapted and the fact that the dice systems of 3e and 4e were quite different

How could you fix them? Because while the current rules may be bad it would also be bad not to have any rules at all.

So in Shadowrun is everything pretty much built and sustained by different megacorps? How does stuff like utilities, maintaining roads and so on work.

I'd like to know about how societies are run, what 'political views' are like (Libertarians, more like to be shamans or hackers? etc.)

If you're on corp territory, the corp provides the public utilities. Yes, this leads to scenarios exactly as fucked up as you might imagine, but keep in mind the corps want their people working for them. Sick people without electricity driving on broken roads can't do work, and if they have valuable skills they might seek to be acquired by a competitor.

Politics seems to depend on the writer. The common thread is that the politicians are puppets and the Corporate Court is holding the strings, but then Dunkelzahn being president was somehow important. There is of course political maneuvering between the corps, as they don't want open warfare near their money making centers.

Some of the most iconic corporations of Shadowrun, Lone Star and Knight Errant privatized police departments, require a somewhat adequately-funded government to pay the bills. I mean adequately only on a financial level, as those publicly-funded police services are said to provide a rather poor level of security to the masses. The reasoning can likely be extended to other sectors.

So there should still be taxes to be paid, and public contracts for the corporations to reap as much profit as they can from it.

Still, that leaves a wide range of scenario. Corporations could back the government on raising taxes level so as to get bigger contracts, maintaining and securing the most economically important areas. Or they could try to force the government into lowering public services to propose equivalent contracts only to the rich elite. Actually, each division of each megacorporation may have a different strategy in every country it operates in.

So maybe Lone Star is focused on public security business in both the UCAS and CAS, while Ares/Knight Errant is pushing for private security in the UCAS and public security in the CAS, all the while Ares Arms is trying to sell military aircrafts to private military/mercenary companies making a living of government contracts.

The debate on what whether the megacorporations and their so-called "citizens" should pay taxes is fueled by fictional tropes on one side and imaginary economic scenario on the other (we cannot even settle the debate on proper taxation in Real Life, so what do would you expect when the argument on one side actually is that it "would made the universe way too much optimistic").

There is also another debate on the number of non-mega corporations that actually do thing. Initially, the setting often featured small, local companies. Since the Corporate Court "Big Eight" have been introduced into the setting, they have been increasingly involved in every aspect of life. Everything else, from local business to second-tier AA megacorporations, rarely appear. This is usually backed by the infamous, though often misquoted "the Big Ten control more resources than all the other corporations in the world put together" and "the amount of assets the Big Ten is [...] easily accounting for at least a quarter of the world's wealth" lines from Corporate Download.

My default approach is to run with the "Privatization run amok!" stereotype where the government is a deficit spending house of cards tasked with paying for everything that is actually important while the corps buy private armies with the scratch they make selling cigarettes and viagra to the survivors. If my players ever bothered asking about how the government plans to continue paying for things at all then I'd probably respond by babbling about the NWO and folding up a foil hat rather than offering a serious answer.

Some more questions:

How much detail should we have to pay attention to or how much can just be handwaved. My game group generally likes "kick in the door" style game play, but a lot of the material suggests a picture like "mission accomplished! but you forgot to do X! Game over!

Also what's the expected level of power? I'm pretty fine with characters being able to take out mooks with impunity but I've seen some level of debate on this. Is there a way to make combat less directly lethal for PCs? Chargen takes a pretty long time. (Mooks with less damage boxes? Quicker combat?)

Thirdly, how much is changed if melee attacks are made into a simple action. And is it bad if characters can be capable of dodging or blocking bullets? (thinking adding melee combat to defense roll against ranged attacks)