Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
We used to play 3rd edition. I can't stand 4th edition though, but more on that later.

My favorite campaign was a bounty-hunter campaign. The team were absolute killers. Highly skilled, methodical, motivated (by money). But had a terrible issue with alcohol. Even before heading out to round up a mark, the team would get blitzed. This made for some interesting tactics and tense gunfights. We weren't taking on elite opponents, but they sure seemed tough! Eventually one of the team members offed one of our marks, which cost us the bounty. The team straightened up a little after that and proceeded to quietly climb their way up the foodchain. After a while, they were being contracted to extract missing persons from the Chicago containment zone...twice, and apprehending terrorist leaders.

The last guy on the team retired with a nice home in Auburn with all the extras (middle lifestyle with misc. add-ons like hardwood floors, fine furniture, etc...), and 800,000 nuyen worth of gold sitting in his gun safe.

Now on to my 4th edition woes.

I just don't really like the feel of the new system and all the metaplot that has gone on. Shadowrun 4th edition doesn't feel like shadowrun to me. Why the hell on hearth would anyone allow anything worthwhile to be accessable wirelessly? Their car!? Their smartlink!? I just can't fathom it. Especially in a world like SR's where security is an obsession to so many entities. It is so ridiculous as to ruin verisimilitude for me. Anything worth breaking into should not be accessable wirelessly...pretty much ever. Commlinks make me particularly upset. There is no way in hell I would ever put the type of information they describe as going on your commlink and PAN onto anything like that. It's like one-stop-shopping for anyone who wants to rip you off...and they don't even need to steal anything from you to do it.

Maybe I have just misunderstood a lot of the core concepts within the system, but I'll be the first to admit I am not the smartest man on the planet. As it is now though, I just find the new "wireless world" of SR4 a little hard to swallow.

But still, I finally told my friend that I would give it a try. I was the old GM, but now he is going to take the helm. Is it posible to play a character without a commlink? What things do I need to know in order to have a character who can function in SR4's world? I know enough about combat, and that crap, but I mean just day to day things like making transactions with bartenders. What sort of gear do I need? If you don't have a comlink are you relegated to living in the sewers forever?

Somebody please explain to me how to use the three shells.
I only played a short campaign in 4th unfortunately, but my solution to the security issue was to turn wireless off on everything that could get me killed if someone suddenly hacked it and run it on skinlink instead. Have a commlink, sure, but don't link it into things like...your cybereyes, your smartlinks, etc. Or have a second one that runs that and has no wireless, just operates on skinlink, while you use your backup one to access outside information and the like.