Complete and utter noobs to Shadowrun.

[Herabec]

Hey everyone!

So, my group has decided that they'd all like to give Shadowrun a go! That's great! The problem is, not a single one among us have ever actually... y'know... played it. So we're all utter newbies to it. I was wondering now, if maybe some veterans of the system could give myself and my group some tips about the system or setting - really just about anything would be great.

I'd especially love some tips from people about actually running a Shadowrun game, and not making it just "D&D with guns" since D&D is the only system I've had a lot of experience running. XD


Also, in case it matters, we were thinking about playing the 3rd Edition of Shadowrun.

[The Glyphstone]

D&D with guns is commonly referred to as 'pink mohawks and mirrorshades' style, and it is one way to play SR.

If you want something distinctly different, though, you want your inspiration to be heist movies, not action movies. Think stuff like Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job. In fact, have a movie night where you guys watch some good heist flicks. In a good thinky Shadowrun game, it's all about the planning for the mission, as much as it is dealing with the inevitable screwups.

A good team of runners is always on the lookout to minimize their footprint...minimal casualties, nonlethal if it's practical. Lots of scouting and surveillance beforehand. Stacking the deck in your favor as much as possible, to reduce the odds of fallout from the enemies who are so much bigger and powerful if you are clumsy enough to annoy them beyond the usual costs of doing business.

[Milodiah]

An important thing to keep in mind for Shadowrun is that the game fundamentally takes place on three different planes simultaneously. There's the obvious physical plane, on which most of the party's actions occur; there's the digital plane, on which the deckers, programs, and all that are running; and finally there's the astral plane, on which spirits and the occasional astral projector exist (and on which every living being has a shadow).

Ensure that your games include all three. Unlike some games where technology and magic are diametrically opposed, in Shadowrun any good opponent is utilizing both. A bank with anti-tampering keypad maglocks will likely also have someone astrally perceiving, and a convoy is just as likely to be spied on by spirits as it is by surveillance drones. Magic may be rarer than tech simply from the extreme minority of actual casters in society, but it crops up in places where it tends to be valuable- such as the shadows.

[Ninja Bear]

D&D with guns is commonly referred to as 'pink mohawks and mirrorshades' style, and it is one way to play SR.

If you want something distinctly different, though, you want your inspiration to be heist movies, not action movies. Think stuff like Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job. In fact, have a movie night where you guys watch some good heist flicks. In a good thinky Shadowrun game, it's all about the planning for the mission, as much as it is dealing with the inevitable screwups.

A good team of runners is always on the lookout to minimize their footprint...minimal casualties, nonlethal if it's practical. Lots of scouting and surveillance beforehand. Stacking the deck in your favor as much as possible, to reduce the odds of fallout from the enemies who are so much bigger and powerful if you are clumsy enough to annoy them beyond the usual costs of doing business.

This is pretty on the money, but the terminology's a bit off. With Shadowrun, you tend to have three different playstyles, which are:

Pink Mohawk, which is full-on "punk." The good guys never win, the bad guys are gratuitously evil, and gameplay revolves around over-the-top action. Bring lots of drugs and even more ammo!

Mirrorshades, which is far more professional and strict. Think of a modern special forces team operation or bank job: lots of planning, preparation, and use of your contacts, with very little action. Usually not as much run-and-gun then, either; more emphasis on nonlethal takedowns and only hitting the right people. The day-to-day tends to be a bit more forgiving in this playstyle; even if you get caught, unless you've gone on a double-digit murder spree of security and police officers, you can usually buy your freedom pretty easily, officially or otherwise.

Trenchcoat is a combination of the two. You start out Mirrorshades, but when something inevitably goes wrong, the coats come off and the 'hawks and the guns come out. If you've played PAYDAY 2, think that, with magic.

There's a good intro to each of the playstyles here (http://rosswatson.blogspot.com/2012/09/mohawks-and-mirrorshades.html); it might help you get a feel for what you want your game to be.

[Anonymouswizard]

Make sure everybody agrees on the style. I once tried to run a 'trenchcoat and mirrorshades' game where combat would eventually happen, but with careful planning and the like then they would be able to minimise the difficulty. There was even a ghoul samurai they would run into and annoy so many times that he'd attack and be gunned down by the more awesome and more professional PCs (he was fairly clearly a trenchcoat).

The PCs Pink Mohawked their way through the first mission, were labeled as bad runners due to excessive use of lethal force. They only got jobs where collateral damage wasn't an issue, except for one where the corps tried to wipe them out quietly by infesting a druid circle with specially breed magic resistant hellhounds and their contact number.

I do recommend 3, I think it's the best (just above 4 and miles above 5). I plan to get the Runner's Companion at some point just for the point build system, and then it'll be the best!

[Cirrylius]

If you haven't chosen 3rd Ed. for any particular reason, make sure you do your homework on which edition works best, for your needs or in general. I tried to run 4th without anyone telling me what a rat's nest it was- the results were disappointing.

[Milodiah]

If you haven't chosen 3rd Ed. for any particular reason, make sure you do your homework on which edition works best, for your needs or in general. I tried to run 4th without anyone telling me what a rat's nest it was- the results were disappointing.

I happen to like 4th edition the most- from what I've seen it really is a matter of taste on third edition versus fourth. Most people have moved on from first and second, and also have not moved on to fifth.

From what I've heard about third edition (from a player who is such a f***ing munchkin that we're in the process of kicking him out of the group, so please take this with a grain of salt), player characters can become absurdly powerful. Street samurai machine-gunning everyone at a table before the last guy can even reach for his gun, trolls that survived being hit in the chest by a cruise missile and being thrown by the blast out of the eighty-second floor of a skyscraper, adepts who could stun/kill everyone in the room with a single swing of a quarterstaff, etc etc.

In fourth edition, though, while the average character is very good at his/her job, they can still be brought down by a SWAT team composed of individually less competent, but still dangerous, members.

[Anonymouswizard]

I happen to like 4th edition the most- from what I've seen it really is a matter of taste on third edition versus fourth. Most people have moved on from first and second, and also have not moved on to fifth.

From what I've heard about third edition (from a player who is such a f***ing munchkin that we're in the process of kicking him out of the group, so please take this with a grain of salt), player characters can become absurdly powerful. Street samurai machine-gunning everyone at a table before the last guy can even reach for his gun, trolls that survived being hit in the chest by a cruise missile and being thrown by the blast out of the eighty-second floor of a skyscraper, adepts who could stun/kill everyone in the room with a single swing of a quarterstaff, etc etc.

In fourth edition, though, while the average character is very good at his/her job, they can still be brought down by a SWAT team composed of individually less competent, but still dangerous, members.

There is another problem with third edition. They only stats that matter in combat are Quickness, Body, and Intelligence, and Willpower, put in the order I personally think they matter. Quickness increases the skill cap on gun skills (which are safer than melee weapons), and sinks half it's rating into combat pool. Body doesn't affect your combat pool, but is your base number of dice to resist any attack, and you generally have to roll higher than a 6 to get a success. Willpower adds half it's dice to your combat pool and I think helps resist magic, AFB I'm afraid, but magic is far less common than guns and hackers don't have access to the wireless matrix because it doesn't exist. Intelligence adds half it's value to your combat pool and doesn't even have the decency to give you more skill points to spend on guns.

Did I mention that the highest priority level for Attributes allows you to get a five in everything? (that would be a combat pool of seven), or you can dump charisma down to 1 and strength down to the minimum needed for your weapon to bump all 3 to 6 and get a combat pool of 9. Elves also get a bonus to Quickness, but that doesn't mean much combat-wise until after character creation, and Orks and Trolls gain Strength and Body bonuses in exchange to Intelligence and (for Trolls) Wisdom penalties, making them stronger but less flexible combatants.

In all honesty though, I think it comes down to preference for the 'classic' or '4e+' rules system, as boy did the rules change with that edition jump. I personally prefer the earlier ruleset, but I can see the appeal of the more streamlined later one.

[Milodiah]

Oh, right. If I recall correctly the die rolling system for 3rd is a bit complex. In 4e it's just "Add this number to that number. Do you have any modifiers? A few? Add those too. Now you roll that many dice. How many fives or sixes did you get? That's your successes. Good job."

Whereas in three, isn't it "Yeah, do that more or less but then the thresholds are huge for hard tasks, but sixes explode and when they do you add the next number you roll to that six and then tell me how many times a die breaks like eight or nine"?

[The Glyphstone]

So what are veterans' beefs with 5e, btw? I started with 5e, and while there are some lumps that are hard to swallow (the Priority system and remembering Limits mainly), they're not as big as I would think.

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, right. If I recall correctly the die rolling system for 3rd is a bit complex. In 4e it's just "Add this number to that number. Do you have any modifiers? A few? Add those too. Now you roll that many dice. How many fives or sixes did you get? That's your successes. Good job."

Whereas in three, isn't it "Yeah, do that more or less but then the thresholds are huge for hard tasks, but sixes explode and when they do you add the next number you roll to that six and then tell me how many times a die breaks like eight or nine"?

Okay, 4e is 'add attribute and skill together and add any relevant modifiers, roll that many 6s and count up all that show 5s and 6s, as well as all that show 1s. If you roll more 5s and 6s than the threshold you succeed, but if more than half your dice roll a 1 you glitch, and you can do both. If you spend edge before a roll then roll an extra dice for every 6 rolled.' Not exactly the simplest system in the world, but not the most complex. Also worded confusingly because I tried to get the entirety of the system in as few phrases as possible.

the 3e system is 'roll the rating of the relevant attribute or skill in d6s, 6s explode and add the new value to the 6. Compare the final value of each die to the difficulty, each one above the difficulty is a success, and if you get at least one more success than your opposition you succeed.' It sounds simpler, but that's because there's two rules I haven't added to it. 'If you don't have the relevant skill you can roll the dice for a related skill or the attribute, but at an increased difficulty' and 'if you have a pool relevant to the situation then you may add d6s to the roll up to the value of the pool, but can only use the pool's value in d6s across all rolls in one initiative pass'. It ends up being slightly more complex, but at the start you roll about the same number of dice as 4e I believe, and roughly half in your specialty as in 5e. Pools add a management aspect to it, there are four pools that I can remember, combat (shared by everyone), hacking (used by deckers), control (used by riggers), and spell (used by magicians), although adding more isn't hard [(relevant attribute+relevant attribute+relevant attribute)/3] although I don't know how worthwhile it is, and as said before you can use your pool each initiative pass. For the life of me though I can't remember if you can use more than one pool at once, but I'm certain only pool can be used per action.


So what are veterans' beefs with 5e, btw? I started with 5e, and while there are some lumps that are hard to swallow (the Priority system and remembering Limits mainly), they're not as big as I would think.

I'm not a veteran, I started on 5e because that's what the store had, but my main beefs:
-Metatypes are too darn expensive, except for elves which leads to the problem of 'everybody picks an elf' I see so much even worse. You are far more likely to see an elf than the more common in the shadows by an order of magnitude or more orks, which I got so annoyed at I have previously declared my players the only elf Shadowrunners in the city.
-On the too expensive theme, some bits of cyberwear are so expensive in nuyen and Essence that I see no reason to get them beyond 'is compatible with X' cases. Exhibit A being Wired Reflexes 2, which costs an entire 2 essence over a synaptic booster 2 and only saves you about 40000 nuyen, sure you can buy a lot with that, but 2 Essence is quite a bit of augmentation you can get later on, so this is just a preference issue.
-To continue this theme, cyberdecks. The system requires a decker to spend the better part of his money on a to be able to hack effectively, a huge step down from 4e where you could have a decent hacking commlink for about 5000nuyen, give or take. This is a bit of a problem in 3e as well though, but it just doesn't seem as bad to me as the decker still gets a lot of money and you can get a passable deck with Resources B and still have some money left over (in fact, because of how decks work in 3e a good deck does better than it does in 5e, although the hit to your matrix attributes and hacking pool is still hurtful). I also hate the matrix attributes, Attack, Sleaze, Firewall and Data Processing just seem wrong, especially Attack (what happened to attack programs!?), and where's my signal!?
-On the subject of deckers, wireless bonuses. An obvious excuse to let the decker do some combat decking, and it makes bonuses that you used to get for free leave you open to having your arm hacked (okay, not quite that bad, but it can feel like it).
-Oh, technomancers are useless now. Forget the simple and practical program like complex forms that have been around since 2e (...I picked up a copy of Virtual Realities 2.0 for £3, sue me) for the more spell like complex forms which leave me screaming for such simple things as being able to add one to my persona's attributes. AND WHERE IS SIGNAL!?
-Limits are cool, but they just feel like half-arsed versions of pools. So now I have my successes limited because I didn't feel like my character was stronger than average? I do admit that it works okay for weapons though. I do feel like pools in 3e do the same thing though.

Now, I admit 3e had a couple of these problems (okay, just the third one really to the same degree), but I just prefer how it approaches things.

[Raimun]

Shadowrun is a stealth game. And I don't mean just sneaking or Hide/Move silently.

There are different kinds of stealth.

[TeChameleon]

As far as running the game goes, it depends incredibly heavily on your players.

If your players strongly prefer Pink Mohawk (combat-heavy, with an emphasis on insane stunts and occasionally property damage), then learn the combat rules inside and out, or at least have a really good quick-reference sheet that will allow you to keep the fights going at a brisk pace. Add in a good collection of 'setpiece battle' ideas so that they have a cool backdrop to do looney things on and some fun or love-to-hate-'em enemies, and you're pretty much good to go.

A Few Setpiece Battle Ideas:
- The mall chase sequence from Blues Brothers (just add a running gun battle to the mix, and probably a multi-story mall)
- The freeway battle from the (nonexistent :smalltongue:) second Matrix movie.
- The Geonosis factory sequence from Attack of the Clones
- The Hydra base assault from Captain America: The First Avenger

... you get the idea.

If your players strongly prefer Mirrorshades (careful planning, extensive reconnaissance, working contacts for info, timing to hit during shift changes, bribing guards, etc.), then the combat rules drop rather sharply in relevance. Most of your effort will need to be focussed on developing/understanding the world so that you have answers for all the questions they'll inevitably have, and reasonable responses for all the weird stuff they'll inevitably try :smallamused:

Be prepared to offer nudges in the right general direction if they're floundering; Mirrorshades can be intimidating at first, especially when the world is largely unknown.

Oh, and be prepared (as I'm sure you are, if you already have GMing experience) for things to totally leave the rails; they can do so in a rather amusing fashion (http://web.archive.org/web/20061206051518/http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/) in Shadowrun. One story I remember running across involved the PC Runners being hired to transport a 'package' for a scummy NPC that they were trying to get close to in order to bring said NPC down. The GM intended for the contents of the package (which they had strict instructions not to open) to motivate the players into further efforts to bring this complete ***wipe of an NPC down hard. Upon opening the crate in a secluded location and finding the persona-wiped and obviously-intended-for-unsavoury-purposes young teenaged girl inside, the runners... took her under their collective wing and augmented & trained her to be the perfect cyber-assassin.

..?

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, and be prepared (as I'm sure you are, if you already have GMing experience) for things to totally leave the rails; they can do so in a rather amusing fashion (http://web.archive.org/web/20061206051518/http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/) in Shadowrun. One story I remember running across involved the PC Runners being hired to transport a 'package' for a scummy NPC that they were trying to get close to in order to bring said NPC down. The GM intended for the contents of the package (which they had strict instructions not to open) to motivate the players into further efforts to bring this complete ***wipe of an NPC down hard. Upon opening the crate in a secluded location and finding the persona-wiped and obviously-intended-for-unsavoury-purposes young teenaged girl inside, the runners... took her under their collective wing and augmented & trained her to be the perfect cyber-assassin.

..?

It is an example of bad GMing, although the players were given plenty of hints, but I still love Trekkin's story about his players taking a wetwork job to eliminate themselves. After the heavily cybered and armed trolls (and an ork) discovered that they were going up against MASTER HACKERS, they immediately bought and modified several drones, stole a tour helicopter, sent the drones out of the helicopter, and then realised their targets were behind them because the drones turned around and fired missiles.

[Triskavanski]

So what are veterans' beefs with 5e, btw? I started with 5e, and while there are some lumps that are hard to swallow (the Priority system and remembering Limits mainly), they're not as big as I would think.


Playing forth and Playing fifth..

Early on, Forth is is very good with numbers. You have qualities that are 5/10/15/20/25/30 etc. You start off typically with space to buy upto 35 points in qualities. And the rest of buying everything else is done generally in multiples of five. The default is point buy.

Fifth edition says "screw that" and gives you qualities of any random number they chose to attribute to it. Since the default character creation was priority in 5th, the other versions haven't been mapped out as well. Point-buy and Life style methods that is, of the two, Life style method is one that allows for a greater character creation, in more ways than just really good at the job. Point buy, due to the costs exponentially increasing, results in lower power character, or characters who are even more limited in what they can do than priority style. Then you have the costs of the metatypes being different between Point buy and Priority. Worse yet is there is really no rhyme nor reason to some of their costs..

5th edition has a thing where it tries its damnedest to hyper-balance the **** out of somethings, often to nonsensical results. Like the Changeling, which from my understanding all the BS with that came from them wanting to include a chart where you rolled your changeling's stats.

For a Comparison of DnD, think of them like the traits from Unearthed Arcana, but worse. For every point worth of a 'good' quality, you have to have equal in 'bad' qualities. You can take 1 less point in bad qualities, but you gotta repay that in your other character points. One of the qualities for example is you gain a +1 in Acrobatics (SR calls it Gymnastics) but you take a -1 in ALL social skills because you're a freak. IF you have 3 qualities like this that are "Freak" types, your entire social limit goes down by 1. You also take a -1 to all tests whenever you are sitting, because you'd end up sitting on your tail. Another quality gives you +1 acrobatics and costs the same value but no negitives. Another gives you +2 acrobatics +2 running, and costs only one more point.


The first quality there that gives you a freak quality is Functional Tail. Where your character inexplicably has a tail of some kind growing from their butt due to a rock flying by in space. Now taking a -1 in all social skills isn't too bad, but a lot of the qualities have it. And remember for every 3 you get even worse. Its so bad that if you were to model your character off a Hindu elephant god, where you are a large bi-pedal elephantman running around with a third eye and duel wielding chainsaws, you'd have no ability to intimidate due to having a very low social limit and negative numbers.

Mind you you could get an implanted cat tail, a robot cat tail and be perfectly fine. No one thinks they're a freek because of 'freedom of choice' or something rather lame like that. Even the mad lab experiment would get a free pass. And.. bwalahfllkjalling*foams*

I could go on for hours on that part of the game alone. It pisses me off so much because its part of the game I want to use, and often did use in 4th, and I want to use in 5th, but the things they did to it..

[Mutazoia]

I'll leave all the other advice as read and add a few helpful tidbits:

1. Don't actually role-play out the decking sessions. As cool as it sounds, you end up having all but one player sitting around for what could theoretically be an hour or so of real time, while you run the decker through a hack. Not very fun for the other players, unless you happen to have something else for them to do, like watch a movie or play video games. Basically the decking runs, for all the time they use in the real world (at the table), only take seconds in game time, so you can't even run the hack at the same time as the rest of the run...and technically the hack should (mostly) be done before hand: e.g. hacking the door security to gain access to the building, unless they are accessing a stand-alone system. Sure...it takes some of the "coolness" away from the decker, but it's better for the group as a whole.

2. Discourage players from dumping a high priority into resources when working out the MASTeR chart. Sure....having all that cash at their disposal seems great at first, but with out the skills or attributes (or magic) to back it up, the character is going to be pretty useless on an actual run. Sure you can BUY a mini gun with a gyro mount...but can you actually CARRY it? Players have been known to take Resources at priority 1, spend every penny on gear for the rest of the group, then get that character killed as soon as possible and re-roll a more playable character.

3. Read Neuromancer, if you haven't already.

[Anonymouswizard]

Small notes:

1) there's no note about a run taking seconds of Real time. It's perfectly legitimate to assume that because a 'deck increases your speed via response increase and the like 1 matrix round=1 meatspace round.

2) the rare exception to this is the highly cybered human, ork, or dwarf Street Samurai, who has B and C levels for attributes and skills, and spends most of the money on cyberwear.

3) I agree with this totally, but Snow Crash is as useful if you're going to have a decker.

[comicshorse]

D&D with guns is commonly referred to as 'pink mohawks and mirrorshades' style, and it is one way to play SR.

If you want something distinctly different, though, you want your inspiration to be heist movies, not action movies. Think stuff like Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job. In fact, have a movie night where you guys watch some good heist flicks. In a good thinky Shadowrun game, it's all about the planning for the mission, as much as it is dealing with the inevitable screwups.


I always like to recommend 'Ronin' for the planning and double crossing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/?ref_=nv_sr_2

And 'Strange Days' for the atmosphere
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[Herabec]

I'll leave all the other advice as read and add a few helpful tidbits:

1. Don't actually role-play out the decking sessions. As cool as it sounds, you end up having all but one player sitting around for what could theoretically be an hour or so of real time, while you run the decker through a hack. Not very fun for the other players, unless you happen to have something else for them to do, like watch a movie or play video games. Basically the decking runs, for all the time they use in the real world (at the table), only take seconds in game time, so you can't even run the hack at the same time as the rest of the run...and technically the hack should (mostly) be done before hand: e.g. hacking the door security to gain access to the building, unless they are accessing a stand-alone system. Sure...it takes some of the "coolness" away from the decker, but it's better for the group as a whole.


Yes, my group while perusing the rule book ran across that and were immediately turned off of playing Deckers. As fun a concept as that is, they just thought it took away too much from sessions. Instead, they've opted to have someone have a decker contact that they might be able to persuade into helping on some jobs that need their expertise so all that stuff could be done in the background.


As for everyone else, thank you all for the advice and setting information you've already given me! At the moment, the group seems to be leaning toward the thought of trenchcoat mohawks, so at least the big-gun-toting troll character gets to see some action, and the stealthy adept gets some too. At least they're all very excited about it, though I feel like we're going to be fumbling through the dark for the first few sessions.

And can I also mention that the 3rd edition rulebook is a mess? XD

[Mutazoia]

Yes, my group while perusing the rule book ran across that and were immediately turned off of playing Deckers. As fun a concept as that is, they just thought it took away too much from sessions. Instead, they've opted to have someone have a decker contact that they might be able to persuade into helping on some jobs that need their expertise so all that stuff could be done in the background.

Usually Deckers in my groups just made the skill rolls when appropriate and never actually went into cyber-space unless there were in a solo session just for them (casing a security layout or what not) before or after the regular session with the rest of the players.

[Anonymouswizard]

And can I also mention that the 3rd edition rulebook is a mess? XD

Not more than the 5e one is. Not less though either, it is significantly slimmer though.

Also, can someone please point me to where a matrix run is stated to take a couple of seconds? I can see 'actions may seem to take longer than they do', but nothing that suggests a round is not a round.

Plus why do you bring the decker on site? Because if he can plug into what he's hacking it's just a few IC to fight and then a few search or computers rolls. Truding through hosts is for those who don't have direct access and a spoofed admin account. Or a real admin account, if you do legwork.

[LibraryOgre]

Just to toss my hat in the ring... I've played every edition of Shadowrun up to 4th, and, despite a few problems and a lot of poorly-organized sections, 4th is my favorite. I think it is easiest to run, most intuitive to grasp, and the best overall of the editions I've played. My only real gripe is how they handled hacking, because I think they made it too gear-centric; I use a variant set of rules which makes it more like spellcasting (i.e. maximum number of hits equal to your program rating, with rolls based on attributes).

[Mutazoia]

Also, can someone please point me to where a matrix run is stated to take a couple of seconds? I can see 'actions may seem to take longer than they do', but nothing that suggests a round is not a round.

I'm at work right now, so I don't have access to my rule-sets. I'll see if I can find it when I get home.

In the 3rd ed. rules, page 208, under "Movement in the Matrix" and "Subjective Time"

So a round is still a round, but 5 rounds in the matrix may only be one round out of the matrix.


Plus why do you bring the decker on site? Because if he can plug into what he's hacking it's just a few IC to fight and then a few search or computers rolls. Truding through hosts is for those who don't have direct access and a spoofed admin account. Or a real admin account, if you do legwork.

Yes. But the Decker is usually the biggest squishy in the group. The work-around is usually have the Decker log into one of the Rigger's drones, send the drone in with the group, and then have the drone plug in direct to the system mainframe. The Decker uses the drone as a relay and is less likely to get squished.