Prime Runs (Shadowrun)

[Gorbash Kazdar]

I've been a player of Shadowrun for quite some time (since right around the release of 3rd Edition), and while I haven't had an opportunity to play recently, some of my best role-playing moments come from my time with the game. Additionally, I've found myself on a bit of a Shadowrun kick lately, since the recent switch from FanPro to Catalyst Games caught my attention.

So, to the three points of this thread. How many other Shadowrun players out there are there? What are your best/favorite stories and moments from runs? And, is there anyone out there interested in Shadowrun who hasn't gotten to play and has questions?

Since I've already answered question 1, and don't qualify for question 3, let me get to question 2. I've got a couple, but I'll start with a quick, fun one that demonstrates one of the key concepts of Shadowrun.

This story comes from a game with a 3rd Ed pick-up group of experienced 'runners and an experienced GM, with a prewritten adventure and (slightly modified) example characters from the book. Pretty basic stuff all around, in other words. The mission itself - I forget the name, but it was a pretty straight forward smash'n'grab run in Nairobi, where the twists were in the backstory rather than the action itself. In any case, we blasted through the set-up portion of the adventure very quickly, and it was clear the run itself would be dealt with in similar fashion (unless we totally screwed up somewhere, in which case it would be over even faster).

At this point, we - the 'runners - were a bit bored by it. As any GM will tell you, a bored group of experienced players who are really into the game otherwise is a dangerous thing. This is doubly true in Shadowrun. So, we decided to go hang out at a bar.

While we were drinking, we decided to play a little game. It was definitely a 'runner bar, so we started "making" the various players currently in attendance. The undercover Lone Star cop who was obviously out of place. The much less obvious Lone Star cop who was using the first one as extra cover. The big, obviously chromed bodyguards for the local crime boss. The much more subtly wired, twice as dangerous backup for the Johnson upstairs. The drug and BTL dealers, the other runners, the fixers, and so on and so forth. The GM was having a lot of fun with it too, giving us just enough info to figure things out. And then he decided to get creative.

We spotted a 'runner team that was obviously on the job, and then picked out their target - a too-pretty (ie. artificially improved) kid who was being way too loud for the place in more ways than one, with a great voice. Clearly a corp owned pop-idol slumming it up. When she left to hit another bar, the other 'runners followed. And, on a whim, so did we. In short order, things played out as expected - the two other team took out the overmatched thugs she'd hired as bodyguards, and just about snagged her. Probably a simple kidnapping, maybe an extraction from another corp. Clearly not wetwork, anyways.

That's when we stepped in. We were already keyed up for the actual mission, and ready for action. A nasty little firefight followed, but between our street sam and rigger, we had a big edge in firepower. And then our combat decker got close enough to jack in and fry their escape vehicle. The 'runners on the other team who were still standing cut bait and ran. The pop-idol was very grateful for being rescued, and gave us the number for her handler. The handler was a bit less clueless. We didn't even actually have to spell out that the "rescue" would quickly become a kidnapping unless we were adequately compensated for our time. Plus a little bonus to not tip off the paparazzi. After all, we'd done the bodyguard work on spec.

The corp handler was quite understanding, so out of the kindness of our hearts we didn't bleed him too much on the nuyen, and then even let ourselves be talked into a discount on that in exchange for a line on some paydata and the promise to think of us first if he (or his associates) needed some work done in the shadows.

That little side quest thing ended up being the most fun part of the whole adventure, for us and the GM. It demonstrates that key concept I mentioned up above as well - in Shadowrun, more so than in other RPGs I've played, being able to improvise is critical. Because when the drek hits the fan, chummer, you better be able to think fast or you're fragged.

[Divine Storm]

I've never played Shadowrun myself, but a friend of mine who plays in a Star Wars Saga game I run has gotten his hands on the 3e rulebook and we're planning on giving it a try within the next couple of weeks. So as a total n00b I have no interesting stories to share... yet. I was just wondering though, how easy is the system to learn? I come from a heavy d20 background with some dabbling in the World of Darkness rules. Is the d6 stuff fairly easy to pick up on?

[mostlyharmful]

very easy once you adjust to the twin concepts of subtly and leathality in a shadowrun game, its almost writen into the game that eventually you will get ganked and at double time if you don't work hard not to.

I've played in Shadowrun games, my favorite was as a bunch of Orks that got hacked off with the mobs and gangs and gunk in their block and formed a "community defense project" together. A bunch of hotdog venders and delivery boys with nothing in thier accounts and noooo manaslinging. It was great fun, gritty and smalltime with a great DM to create actual human drama. We all of us died by halfway through the campaign but we did it so stylishly that we kept it up as assosiates and also rans that turned an ork neighbourhood around from hellhole to just scummy over a six month stint. Good times.

[Cainen]

I was just wondering though, how easy is the system to learn?

The core of the system for SR1-3? Pitifully easy. You will SCREAM BLOODY MURDER at SR3's decking/rigging rules, though. There's a reason the guys I played with way back when replaced those rules with their SR2 equivalents. SR4 is basically WoD but tightened up, so you can learn that quickly enough - be warned that it's really not as thorough as the older editions, though, and its combat is less tactical due to the loss of dice pools. I personally hate SR4, but there are a lot of people that don't, and it's the most commonly played edition.

The thing you will have to get used to is the setting, not the mechanics. You will die horribly if you don't have someone pulling you along by the nose and if you are a newbie, and idealists tend not to last too long unless they're brilliant.

I haven't played SR since about 2001 due to getting stuck with the most ill-fitting gaming group you can imagine, and my stories haven't stuck with me beyond the jerk who pulled the old "but that's what my character would do!" on me and got me killed. I'd be interested in playing, assuming someone started one up(and if it wasn't SR4), but only in real-time; I can't stand PbP games.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

I've never played Shadowrun myself, but a friend of mine who plays in a Star Wars Saga game I run has gotten his hands on the 3e rulebook and we're planning on giving it a try within the next couple of weeks. So as a total n00b I have no interesting stories to share... yet. I was just wondering though, how easy is the system to learn? I come from a heavy d20 background with some dabbling in the World of Darkness rules. Is the d6 stuff fairly easy to pick up on?

Mechanics wise, it's going to seem weird for a while if you're coming entirely from a d20 background, particularly D&D. One thing that's going to be quite different is that being too focused on one thing is as bad as trying to do too many things is in D&D and most class-based d20 systems. No one character can do everything, of course, but too much specialization can cripple you. The system also tends to be more lethal - you have less margin for error.

Additionally, your gear is very important in Shadowrun. Mages of all types and adepts aren't as heavily affected by this, since they don't use cyberware, but their other tools can be very important nonetheless. Other character types, though, largely rely upon having the right 'ware and equipment to get the job done. A street samurai needs good weapons and good 'ware to get the most out of them, a rigger isn't a rigger without a VCR and a collection of drones (in fact, which drones a rigger has on hand completely defines what role he's taking on a given 'run). So pay close attention to gear.

For new players, I usually recommend playing a combat character, generally a street samurai of some sort. My usual program is to suggest lots of chrome (cyberware) that increases your combat potential, and skew your active skills towards that. Then, once you have a combat monster, go back and tone it down a bit, moving stuff around until you're good at stealth, and pick up one other talent (basic mechanical breaking and entering skills, non-decking electronics, or gun repair make good choices). In Shadowrun, you want to be able to drop the hammer when you need to, but at the same time you want to avoid doing so as much as possible. In my more experienced groups, our point of view was, that if the street sam has to go full auto with anything bigger than a sound suppressed SMG, then we've screwed up somewhere. But screwing up and still somehow surviving is part of the game in Shadowrun, so that street sam better have an LMG ready to go back in the van.

Since your whole group is likely to be new, it's not as big a deal - if everyone's on the same plane, it can go quite well. You'll adjust as you get more experience. For starting groups, certain types of runs work better than others. Bug hunts, for example, are classics for starting off - someone hires you to go kill something big and nasty that's causing problems. This usually ends up being much more of a dungeon crawl experience D&D players are familiar with, and you can go all-out with your fancy toys. Smash'n'grab runs with emphasis on the smash (go in, get this thing, bring it back) in Barrens type environments work as well - most of the time, nobody really important cares what's going on out there anyways, so once again more room for error and the ability to use the nasty stuff. Of course, you're also cut off from support - akin to the D&D wilderness adventure where you're after some magical doo-dad.

Entire campaigns can revolve around this with no problems. The Black Lagoon anime and manga series is a great example of this kind of thing, though it isn't cyberpunk/fantasy like Shadowrun.

Once you get the mechanics of the system down, you can move on to more typical runs - personnel extractions, smash'n'grabs with emphasis on grab, straight up breaking and entering (wherein smashing is frowned upon), and so forth. In this sort of thing, remember why it's called Shadowrun - you want to get the job done while attracting the absolute minimum of attention. For inspirations sake, the Firefly episode "Trash" is a classic concept for a 'run, though things don't go quite as planned. Reading cyberpunk, especially Neuromancer, can give you a good feel for the concepts as well.

To get to mechanics, though, I'd suggest for your GM (and players) not to get into dedicated deckers, and possibly avoiding rigging altogether. Those two rule sets are very complex and time consuming, and the former can run counter to the "don't overspecialize" rule. Dedicated deckers can be exceptionally effective, but it's hard to incorporate that into a standard session. Riggers specialize skill wise, but aren't as prone to being as narrow - your equipment defines what you do far more, and having a broad collection of drones and vehicles lets you pull a lot of different roles.

[mostlyharmful]

be able to drop the hammer when you need to, but at the same time you want to avoid doing so as much as possible.

Oh my yes. In fact can I sig this.

And Deckers are an oddity in Shadowrun I often feel, they make great solo runners and perfect contacts but fitting them into a fully fledged team can often be problematic, even with the "new and improved" (TM) wireless world.

[Raum]

ISo, to the three points of this thread. How many other Shadowrun players out there are there?

I GMed 2nd ed for a couple years and 3rd ed briefly. I've picked up the 4th ed book but haven't done anything with it. Shadowrun was my favorite system for a long time though. :)

What are your best/favorite stories and moments from runs?

Ahh there are so many...PCs blowing up houses, distracting the troll samurai with wimpy gangers and taking him down with a sniper's shot to the leg (he was wanted for interrogation), shooting him in the head later when his friends broke in for a rescue (amazingly he survived)...turning one PC into a vampire, frying said vampire when he attempted to go out in the sun...creating a BBEG shaman who pissed the PCs off enough the mage finally spent a point of karma permanently to ensure his death via ritual magic...and watching their faces when they meet the free spirit who used to be the shaman's familiar...

Good times! :)

[TehJhu]

I remember a very fun run we had once.

It was a three-man job, and neither of us had ever met each other ever before. I was a hotshot hacker (not decker, only old farts used those crappy things) who'd spent a fortune on bioware and the best hacking programs he could get but never actually been on a run. There was a hippy shaman who spent most of his time smoking deepweed and wouldn't use anything but paper money. And there was a troll.

The troll deserves his own paragraph. He was massive, over seven feet tall. He was able to take bursts of machinegun fire to the chest at point blank range and laugh. In his spare time he just drove around Chicago on a custome bike with the mufflers ripped off and killed gang members. His weapon of choice was a massive axe...

And he was a total otaku. He had his PDA constatly playing music from Katamari Damaci and watched episodes of Hamtaro on his goggles.

Anyway, the job was to get into some little cosmetics company and steal some kind of information from their coldroom (database cut off in everyway from the matrix) and also smash up the animal labs they had to make it look like it was a Terra First job.

So, after the Johnson tells us the job, the three of us just zoom over to the place that night. No recon, no nothing. My hacker looked up their matrix-page and downloaded some rough schematics, that was it.

Well, long story short, we wound up invisible (thanks to the shaman) and seperated (the troll dcided to use geko-tape to climb up the building and enter a window.

So as me and the shaman are holding a guard at Ruger Super Warhawk point, we hear over the comm (I hacked into it) people screaming and fighting upstairs as the invisible, nearly 8 foot tall troll goes to down on the guards. We hear shouts like:

"I see Mack! He's lying in a AHHH!-
"OH MY GOD ITS GOT PHILLIPS!"
"WHAT IS IT WE CAN'T SEE-AHH!"
"Report! Report!"
"OH MY GOD HE'S GOT A GRENADE IN HIS-" Boom.

Now remember that all the while there is Katamari Damaci music playing, both in game and in real life. We were laughing so hard by no that the hacker just said, "**** it." I disabled all the security feeds, killed the wussy security hacker they had, and then uploaded Ozarka's (like the water? He couldn't think of a name for the troll) audio feed into the building's PA system so as we ran about shooting people, the whole building was reverberating with Katamari Damaci.

Needless to say, we botched the whole run. We killed or wounded pretty much everyone there. When we eventually found the databank I nearly killed myself with a botch on an attempt to turn off a databomb. Ozarak got worried when blood started to leak out of my face so he just smashed the whole thing.

We wound up wiring the whole place to blow with some foam explosives we found (I think by now the GM was just playing along) and then ran out to have a running battle with Lone Star cops until I could hack us into a van. We drove said van off a cliff after ditching in some trees several miles outside of Chicago.

We never did go back to meet the Johnson, and figured we'd skip town, but the gaming group fell apart after that so we never got to see where the story of the three 'Runners that couldn't went.

This is obviously an example of a 'run gone horrifically bad, but those are usually the most fun.

[Crow]

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.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Oh my yes. In fact can I sig this.

Sure.

And Deckers are an oddity in Shadowrun I often feel, they make great solo runners and perfect contacts but fitting them into a fully fledged team can often be problematic, even with the "new and improved" (TM) wireless world.

I've found combat hackers in 4th Ed mix in very well - they dive into full VR for prep work and work mostly via AR on a run, except when they need to counter an enemy hacker or hack some stand-alone system. Since everything runs on the same time frame now, you just throw them into the initiative order and go from there.

A dedicated hacker is still rougher, but again the synchronized time scales alleviate a lot of pain. The trick is to make what the hacker is doing coincide nicely with what the on-site guys are doing - "open this door!" "turn off that rail drone system!"

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.

Couple of things to allay the wireless world concerns.

To start with, hacking a wireless device that's designed to get onto a PAN is a major pain - you basically have to be so close to the person you might as well just knife them. The only real way in is through the commlink, which isn't as easy as it sounds. First you have to know the commlink is there (you can set it to a passive, invisible mode that is a pain to get around all by itself), and then you have to actually hack into it. Your hacker can help set up good IC for it, and you can always just turn it off completely if you run into some super-hacker. Hacking into someone's PAN and disabling their stuff can work, but it's time consuming and a lot more difficult than it appears at first, and it's easy for a 'runner to make it even harder. Usually it's more effective just to jam wireless entirely.

Also, datajacks are still cheap in nuyen and essence. If you're chromed up and worried about wireless security, turn off the wireless mode on your device and hardlink to it. Heck, even if you're not chromed you can hardlink your gear through the commlink and turn of its wireless entirely. You can turn off wireless on any device when the situation warrants it, in fact.

As far as mucking with credit ratings and things like that, for one thing a good chunk of what's on your commlink is going to be fake data anyways. For another, there's usually additional layers of security you have to spoof, such as bank account info and so forth. Even more importantly, as a runner it's assumed you segregate that stuff as a matter of course anyways. A lot of black and grey markets deal only in cred-sticks and other verifiable forms of currency - you can't buy that back alley assault cannon via commlink. You're only buying legal goods with the commlink, which is mostly subsumed under your fake SINs and lifestyle costs; your "legitimate" bank account is going to be only a small portion of your assets at any particular time.

Not having a commlink is going to make things ridiculously hard for a character, but it's also quite possible to make it pretty safe, or to not rely on it significantly - the latter being easier for mages and adepts.

While it's theoretically possible for a super hacker to take out your toys via wireless hacking, it would take a super hacker to do it in a timely enough fashion to affect a standard 'run, and it's not really possible to completely screw you if you take some basic precautions (eg. keep at least one gun off your PAN and hardlink to it if things get squirrelly; if you're in a vehicle you're rigging, hardlink to it).

In short, the benefits outweigh the risks, which are fairly minimal anyways. And standard paranoid 'runner behavior will reduce your exposure even further.

[Liliedhe]

I love Shadowrun, it's my favorite RPG and the only one I'm playing regularly. But I'm still using 3rd Edition, 4th makes no sense. I second everything Crow said on that subject. And they all but shredded the background and don't get me started on Technomancers - if I want Marvel, I'll play Mutants and Masterminds or something like that.

I'm mostly playing online, PbP or rarely in chatrooms.

Fun stories? Hm... Where to start... A, yes. A group of runners was sent to France, to find some treasure that had been lost during WWII. They located it all right in a wine cellar, but already had been attacked by other runners and had a very suspicious encounter so they knew that others where out to get the stuff, too. And they could not get the treasure right away because there was poisonous gas in the cellar (built into a hill, not under a house) and they had to air it out because they had no equipment to go in right away.

So, what did they do? They left both doors open - wide open - and went back to their hotel to spend the night in their nice, comfortable beds. And in the morning they were soooo shocked to find out that their treasure wasn't there anymore....

EDIT @Gorbash: And being paranoid will do you a whole lot of good, when a technomancer suddenly waltzes into your commlink and rearranges the furniture in front of your eyes - some people I know use up to four layered commlinks to prevent this from happening... And nobody needs to rewrite anything sensitive on my 'link, if they can just open Pop Ups in my AR during a firefight.

[DrowVampyre]

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.

[leperkhaun]

anyone thinking about starting a shadowrun PbP?

[Liliedhe]

Just show me the way :)

But only 3rd edition.

[Prustan]

Found 2nd Edition Shadowrun while still in high school (the GM was really tough, and killed us all at the end of summer school). Found many books on my own, but only actually played 2nd Ed due to lack of players. 3rd seems much the same, and I really can't get 4th Ed.

I remember one run that me and two of my brothers did (for a decent size team, we all ran two characters each - since I was the GM at the time, my two were really just there for combat support). Troll PhysAd, Shaman of some kind, Ork PhysAd, Elf Mage, Elf Sam and Elf Decker/Mage were going to assassinate a Mafia Boss, with a standard fortified compound.

We arrived just before the guard dogs got released, and had scouted out where the guards were. All six of us were on top of the compound walls (I should have laced it with something nasty, like monowire, but I was still quite new to being a GM and didn't have anything on the walls), lying down and waiting for the moment to strike. The Shaman started off - launching a Hellblast (Deadly damage Fireball) at the dog kennel - setting it alight and roasting them all, while knocking himself out and spending the rest of the run snoozing on top of the wall.

Everyone else scattered. The Sam and Mage went to take out the guard station, the PhysAds circled the compound killing any guards they saw, and the Decker/Mage went to the other side of the compound to try some 'interesting tactics' for entry into the main building. Incidentally, the Troll was most effective at killing guards - running on top of the wall until he spotted one, then going 'Death from Above' with Deadly Killing Hands, Troll Strength and gravity assisted Troll Weight to squish the unsuspecting victim, before jumping back up and moving onto the next. And if he missed anyone, the Ork got him.

When the Decker/Mage got to the other side of the compound walls, she noticed that the building was easily within jumping distance of the wall (again, shouldn't have done that. Newbie GM mistake.), so she decided to open a window. She took out her Uzi, emptied the clip, and cast Poltergeist to have the bullets strike the window. Nothing. She then straps the empty Uzi to her boot, and does a flying kick at it, cracking the window and falling - getting caught by one of the PhysAds who was mopping up the guards, and put back on the wall. She did another flying kick, and broke the window, somehow managing to avoid getting cut by the shattered glass on her way in, and starts looking for the target - soon followed by the PhysAds.

Needless to say, aside from the sleeping Shaman, everyone finished the run fine, even managing to slaughter the reinforcements that showed up just as everyone was coming out of the compound. Had I been a more experienced and ruthless GM, they probably would have gotten severly wounded/killed.

[Crow]

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.

I understand that, but my problem with the system is why the hell on god's green earth would anyone ever run any of those things in wireless mode to begin with??? It's like they were just looking for "cool" things for hackers to do without thinking too deep into it.

[comicshorse]

I've been playing and G.M.ing 'Shadowrun' since the first Edition (pretty terrible) throung 2nd (huge improvement) 3rd (slight improvement) and 4th ( step backwards in my opinion).
I've been part of many runs but it was the silliest that immediately jumps to mind :
Our team ( Dwarf Mage, female elf samurai, Ork Physical Adept) are hired to kill the cheating boyfriend of our client.
We quickly learn he can't die ! We shoot him, gas him, spell him, everything. He just won't die !
Eventually we kidnap him and learn that (a) He's a roman centurion and (b) he's unkillable and (c) pretty pissed of about it as he's bored out of his mind.
We eventually figure out he's possessed by a spirit that's keeping him alive and the spirit won't leave. Also its only interests are sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Luckily we meet much earlier in the game this weird N.P.C. who owns a library were you can enter the books as another reality. We cut a deal we the spirit to deposit it in a suitably dirty book if it will leave him. Then all we had to do was get the librarians agreement. He agreed provided we hunted down some of the characters who had escaped the books.
Which is how our team ended up bounty-hunting literary characters across seattle. ( Toughest was Portia from 'The Merchant of Venice', she'd become a high-priced lawyer and her security was top-notch)

Should have put us of antique dealers but we still accepted the bodygaurd job on Russel Nash, antiques dealer ( Highlander fans should get that one)

[Citizen Joe]

I played a former UCAS SEAL with a bunch of headgear. He had an autoinjector for that combat drug and some other stuff, but after a while, it started to affect him to the point that they couldn't keep him on active duty. He ran under the name 'Cord' which was short for 'coordinator'. With multiple commlines active, he could monitor his squad through their eyes, even when they got killed, he maintained an open line so they could gather intel through his dead comrade.

Anyway, that was backstory, in game he would do much of the Fixer work, interviewing potential Johnsons and then at the end of the session, he would present them with a virtual control box and told them if they decided against the operation, they could press the red button and delete the entire session from his protected memory core. It is amazing how many people actually believed that ;)

One of the nice things about him was that he still had access to the military skillsoft network and could download a low rated skill (I think rating 3) through the commlinks (although very slow compared to a jack), and thus have any skill needed for the special ops on the fly. He also ran a radio spider bot program that scanned various radio stations for contests and then auto called in to be the winner of various tickets.

He wasn't terribly good in a firefight, but he was exceedingly good at all the footwork needed to pull off those epic runs.

[Dirk_Loechel]

Count me in on Lil's PbP shadowrun.

Me, I started playing SR with 1st, but immediately switched to 2nd, since just then the new edition came out in German, along with the (incredibly crappy) Germany SB.

Stayed true to i since then, it's the only game I played ongoing. Never really got into other systems, really.

As for fun stories ... geez ... my favourite actually was a player who always bitched about how out main GM's adventures were lacking screwing up:

PCs (sit down with Johnson for the meet)
Johnson: "Okay, group. I want you to recover a datachip out of a corp lab. Interested?"
PCs: "Count us in."
Johnson: "Great!" He then politely nods to the players, "Call me when you have it", leaves his number, and goes.
PCs: "Now wait a minute ... "
When the rather puzzled PCs leave the bar, the wind wraps a newspaper around one PC's ankle: 'Corporation invents incredible new datachip' is the headline ...

[Starshade]

Ive wanted to start up a local Shadowrun game myself now(that or something else, as D&D or Gurps), got books but is totally green to DMing, but my prosperous players havent decided to go for it yet.

My only contact with RPG in simmiliar style of game is actually, Mutant Chronicles. Quite similiar world, really, just different background mythology. What i remember best is a Mutant Chronicles adventure i once sat and looked at, not playing:
players was totally newbies, doing some "investigate consipracy agaisnt the cartel" style vague mission, the team consisted of 2 basic cartel soldiers, one sergant, and a Private investigator, and i think a stone rich playboy as last party member.

What happened, was they had a clue for a person. Investigation seemed to lead to they figured he wanted to buy 20 thousands sets of combat armor. They setup a meeting to sell it to him. He arrived in a limo along with 'gorilla' looking bodyguards with a huge train of 18 wheeler trucks to the storage they had setup.

What happened, was the buisnessman(i think a storylead, equal to a Jonson in Shadowrun i personally belive, storylead or clue, or something), met a dude standing by a table, 1 armor on it, and a wall of armors on left and right side. A bodyguard looked at the armor, but suddenly the walls of armor fell down, and the soldiers stood there with full auto machineguns and splattered the gang. After that, one asked:
Soldier: is buying 20 000 armors illegal?
GM(grinning): not if you can pay for it.
Players: doh, what do we do now then.

In end, they scared the truckers, asked the GM to get a 'cleaner squad' from corporation to come (GM: Capitol dont use cleaners!), and the characters got a in-game reprimand from their regular "boss".

Later they got a NEW clue, and used a assult heli to cave in a office side, to come blazing in to search for some conspiracy lead(and got hurt, one lost a leg, etc).

[Gorbash Kazdar]

I understand that, but my problem with the system is why the hell on god's green earth would anyone ever run any of those things in wireless mode to begin with??? It's like they were just looking for "cool" things for hackers to do without thinking too deep into it.

Once again I suffer indignity for posting at 2AM.

In the previous post I forgot to make a couple of important points, and also accidentally implied something dumb.

Basically, unless you're a hacker, rigger, or technomancer, you shouldn't have your PAN on or your commlink set to connect during in a run if there's any chance of being counter-hacked. Hardlinks and skinlinks will let you talk to everything you need to talk to mid-run without opening yourself up to being hacked.

Hackers, riggers, and technomancers can go wireless active during runs when needed because they have the skills and tools to spoof their data trails, counter intrusion attempts, and generally defend themselves.

It's very easy to turn off wireless connectivity on any device you have, including cyberware. It should also be noted that most cyberware doesn't accept wireless commands - wirelessly enabled chrome mostly just reports status and vitals for diagnostics via an RFID chip. So a hacker can't take over your cyberarm, just violate your medical privacy. Cybereyes aren't even really an exception - the AR spam mentioned is really hacking the data being sent by the commlink rather than the eyes themselves.

So what good is wireless? Well, let me give you an example. One of my few 4th edition characters was a weapons specialist and the crew's armorer. When prepping for a run, being able to wirelessly connect let me double check on everyone's firearms, running diagnostics to make sure everything was working okay and that everyone had proper load out of ammunition, all without having to physically get up. Since one party member had the Uneducated flaw and another Gremlins, this was very helpful. It also let me inventory the armory I maintained quickly between runs as well. The crew's rigger did the same thing with our vehicles.

Also, going wireless active briefly while the hacker ran interference was a tactic we used occasionally as well - for example, at one point our face got separated from us during a 'run and got lost. He and I went wirelessly active long enough for me to squirt over a mapsoft so he could find his way home, and for the also for the rigger to "hotwire" a bike for him (the bike's owner had turned wireless off, so our face hardlinked it to his commlink and the rigger worked through that).

The SR4 books goes into this a bit itself (pg 224, if you're wondering).

[Dirk_Loechel]

Actually, even a Rigger, Hacker or 'mancer would be stupid not to layer commlinks, using at least one as a bottleneck for intruders.

Commlinks cost next to nothing, even really decent ones are in the four-digit range - considering a shadowrunner usually nets five-digit sums per mission, that's peanuts. Thus, a runner should basically be his own matrix network - one or two bottleneck 'links, iced as far as they can be, running at least level 6 firewalls (I'd prefer level 12, since that will stop even a low-to-medium-level 'mancer who threads his infiltration CFs and uses sprite help out cold, usually), level 6 system scans, and an agent with system scan 6 on top, who has orders to start up an ice with attack and black hammer when an intruder is found. You can also have the ice cascade a bit, just for effect. Also, the system itself will notify you then an intrusion was attempted; the bottlenecks connected to one another, and the second finally connecting to your proper 'core' commlink. The core link is where you want to run all the programs you want to run. You route it's signal through the bottlenecks, though, and have it's wireless disabled (you obviously need the bottlenecks either connected via datajack, or implanted, just like the core link is). Of course, the core link should be treated to a 12 firewall and a decent system scan too. This narrows your connect list down a bit (unless Unwired rules otherwise, each bottleneck counts as one slot in your connection list taken) but offers decent protection against hack attempts against yourself.

This is, however, mostly based on assumptions and interpretations on how slaviong might work; Unwired will hopefully clean up that mess. Sadly, it will also boost Technos even further, making mundane hackers even more obsolete, but meh.

Drones and vehicles of course also need to be iced and firewalled as much as you can possibly afford.

Personally, I'm not too convinced of SR4. I dislike much they did to the background, I don't like the direction they're taking the metaplot, I really dislike the idea of Neo being introduced as a character class, and I do miss sensible vehicle modding rules that actually allow me to turn a subcompact into a racing car. Yeah, I've been playing riggers since about 1993, and I do like that character type; they're propably the most flexible and powerful mundane character type there is. They've been seriously gimped in 4 though, to propmote the Neo clone army to new heights, and all that talk of how they can doubleclass more easily now doesn't change a bit that they're effectively obsolete compared to a dedicated Riggermancer.

Also, I don't like the idea of thresholds much. It makes lots of stuff, like hacking, far too easy, it makes encryption a sad joke, and it introduces an "anything is possible, it just needs some time" mentality that's far too comic for my tastes.

[Swordguy]

Here's another person for the "can't stand 4th Edition SR" bandwagon. For me, though, it's a little simpler. No priority system? Not Shadowrun. From talking to the playtesters on SR4 (I playtest for Battletech, so there's some crossover), the idea behind the wireless stuff was entirely to let the Decker move along with the rest of the team, instead of having to sit there hotwired into the Matrix as a meat lump while the rest of the party stood over his body with their thumbs in unmentionable places. To be fair, they did succeed at this, and then expounded on the concept of a wireless Matrix in a somewhat logical fashion. The problem is that it takes Shadowrun's cyberpunk feel and goes heavy into the "cyber" and not at all into the "punk".

Good stories...hmmm...a few years back (SR3) our group had one of Those Guys. You know, the ones that Just Don't Get It. This guy played a hot elven female hooker whose first instinct was to sleep with anything that might prove threatening so he/she could try to get information out of it. Nice concept...except the guy has maxxed out his combat skills. All of them. Out of 40 Active Skill Points, 38 were in combat skills - and 2 were in Biotech (First Aid). When asked to make an Etiquette (streetwise) Check, his response was, "Sorry, I have no social skills". Naturally, we agreed with him.

All this would be at least somewhat bearable if he was at least somewhat competent at combat. You'd think with that many gun-related skills at 5 or better and a good Quickness, he'd be a shoe-in for holding his own in a firefight. You'd be wrong. Hooker-boy, you see, fancied himself a tactician. To the tune of actually bringing On War to the table as reference material. How the heck he hoped to employ Clauswitzian strategy during a 15-second gunfight is beyond me. So, in lieu of combat smarts, he tried to be creative. For example...the team was pinned down during an extraction gone bad. Rather sensibly, they had taken cover amidst a large power distribution station. Since the corp medical experimentation facility they had just raided depended on this power center to keep experiments going, they reasoned it would be a good fallback point, since the security forces weren't likely to use heavy ordnance in its viscinity. The rigger manages to break through the jamming and remote-pilot the team's heavy truck (with Hooker-boy's crotch-rocket in the back) to their location. Unfortunately, he blew the roll at the last moment and crashed the truck, setting several dozen live wires sparking to the ground around the team's only escape route. Clever tactics were called for.

Unfortunately, clever tactics got a wrong number...Hooker-boy. He looked up the hill and saw...a water tower. Hey, he thought, 50,000 gallons of water rushing downhill towards the facility would be a great distraction! So, to the consternation of the party, he broke cover, dancing between the bullets, acrobatically leaps his way to the truck, retrieves his bike and a backpack full of the riggers precious plastique (ALL of the rigger's precious plastique), and high-tails it up the hill to the foot of the water tower. The party tries to stop him, but are forced back under cover by a hail of gunfire from the guards. Hooker-boy manages to score a bunch of successes on his Demolitions check, sets the plastique on the water tower's leg facing downhill, and burns rubber back to the party, remote-detonating the explosives about halfway there.

Remember how I said he looked uphill to the tower? Yeah, that means that the party, the guards, and a battle-damaged power station carrying untold watts of power are now squarely in the path of an onrushing wave. The guards sensibly panic and run. The party is screaming for Hooker-boy to stop the bike so they can try to pile on and head for the hills (hey, any hope's better than none). Hooker-boy stops his bike, looks at the party, looks behind him, sees the tsunami, sees the live power cables all around him, and finally Gets It. "Uh...oops?" So, what does he do? Instead of waiting for the party to clamber onto the bike and try to salvage the situation, he guns his bike and takes off at top speed for high ground, leaving the party stranded in the midst of a live power station and six seconds before a tsunami hits.

Most of the party survived, by burning mega amounts of karma. Hooker-boy was later intentionally addicted to several nasty drugs that the party went "all in" on to lace his cigarettes with, and was put into a state of drug withdrawal as punishment for when he did stupid things. It was deemed for harsh than a simple bullet to the head when he was sleeping.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

You know, I think I just figured out why I don't mind SR4, and particularly the wireless world aspect, while most of the people of the "age group" that played SR3 really can't stand it.

You see, I missed Nueromancer. I missed the entire original cyberpunk literary movement. I even missed the deconstructions of it, like Snow Crash. I've read a lot of it since then, but I'd been playing Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 (and Netrunner, anyone remember that CCG?) for a few years before I went back and found those books.

What introduced me to cyberpunk was actually already postcyberpunk, which emphasizes the "cyber" over the "punk" aspects, like Swordguy mentions. Not only that, it was postcyberpunk with a lot of wireless and AR elements already introduced. I got into the genre thanks to anime - the original Ghost in the Shell film and manga is probably the primary influence in how I came into the genre. So, for me, SR4 is moving closer to what I've always enjoyed most in the genre, and to what set my original expectations for it anyways.

[hr]
Swordguy, that's definitely a great story about the "not getting it" guy. What killed me especially is that On War is really about strategy, not tactics! Talk about not getting it...

More stories, I suppose. I have a big one I posted somewhere else on the forums long ago, which I'm trying to find so I can just quote it. In the meantime..

One of my favorite characters in Shadowrun wasn't mine, but the crazy gun bunny the most experienced guy in the first group I was in played. I wish I could remember her name, but I can't, so let's call her Yoko for simplicity. Yoko was a creative planner in the good way. She was the master of the plan that was just crazy enough to work, the scheme that should have gotten us all killed but somehow pulled through. No one improvised better, and she had the chops to pull it off. She was a mad genius, the one we turned to when the drek hit the fan. It's kind of funny, because I played with the guy in a couple other systems and in those he was always the meticulous planner whom the DM could easily derail with a well timed curveball. Something about Shadowrun, though, and especially about this character, brought his latent improvisational skills to the fore. Part of it was because he knew the system so well he could push as far as it could go without breaking it, but the rest was sheer inspiration and audacity.

On one mission, we had been tasked to capture a programmer who had gone AWOL from his corp. He'd hidden his latest project, a highly advanced AI source code (the stuff that would let you make an AI, not an actual AI) in an anonymous node and secured it top-of-the-line encryption and several layers of very nasty IC. Even the corp couldn't get into it. The programmer was auctioning off the password to get to this code to the highest bidder, and our employers - a AA level corp - were pretty sure they weren't going to be able to match the high bid. At first we thought they wanted us to whack the guy, which was a no-go since we didn't do wetwork, but instead they needed someone to bag him. The corp needed that source code, and they knew that if the programmer just bought it, some AAA would crack the node before they could. At that point, our employers had actually given up hacking the node and were actually helping defend it from the AAAs. So they needed him alive - or, at least, they needed him to give up the password. What happened to him after that they didn't care; if they decided to whack him they'd hire some wetwork specialists later. Right now, getting into that node trumped all.

All this meant we had a pretty tight deadline for the run. Either the sale was going to go down, or someone was going to decide to geek the programmer and take their chances with the IC. We had a line on him about four times, and came real close to getting him twice, but he was a slippery bastard. The whole mission was a crazy mess - not only did we have to deal with his bodyguards, corp security teams, and Lone Star, but there were other 'runner teams trying to buy or steal the password, or just assassinate him. Hell, half this guy's security protocol seemed to be getting different 'runner teams fighting to keep each other from grabbing him - we considered sending him an itemized bill at one point. Eventually, we lost his trail, and word was the sale was going to finally go down within 24 hours. We were considering skipping town when we got a hot tip that he was meeting the buyer at some gala event downtown. We didn't really have time to plan, so we jumped in our truck (our rigger's favorite transport was a modified garbage truck) and headed down there.

When we got there, we piled out nearby and started trying to figure out how to sneak past all the security into this place. We'd been arguing for a while when we realized Yoko had disappeared somewhere, and were just about to panic when she showed back up. The party, it turned out, was a costume party, and only Yoko had paid enough attention to catch that. So she'd snuck off an pick-pocketed a couple tickets from an attendee. In short order, our decker forged us a set and our rigger ran them off his printers (we had acquired the gear to make counterfeit money and credsticks on an earlier run, and were perpetually trying to fence the stuff) and used a drone to deliver them. Then, Yoko in the lead, we waltzed right into the party. We went in lightly armed, but the idiots didn't even check to see if our chrome was real, or search us for anything. Yoko even played nice and gave the tickets back to the guy she pick-pocketed.

So we went in, sampling the hors d'oeuvres and getting complimented on our "fantastic shadowrunner costumes!" until we figured out where the programmer was. We busted in, shot down his bodyguards and those the Johnson he was meeting. Amusingly, we'd worked for said Johnson previously. We had a great little conversation where he acknowledged that this was simply business and even complimented us for a well-played maneuver. We whacked the programmer over the head with a stun baton a couple times to make him more compliant, and walked our "drunk buddy" out the front doors. The whole thing ended up being a cakewalk, and the Johnson at the party was impressed enough that he even hooked us up with a legit job a couple weeks later.

[hr]
Now, I told that last story so I could tell you this story.

Another run, same crew, we were busting into a black bioware research center to steal some paydata off their isolated network as well as some physical samples. We'd planned this run very carefully - dotted every i, crossed every t. We had blueprints, guard schedules, patrols patterns, the works. We'd even gotten enough info that we figured out that the project was over-budget and that the director wouldn't be able to afford to call Lone Star in if we hit near the end of a quarter (if we made things messy enough, of course, budgetary responsibility would go out the window, but we were confident we could avoid that). We'd accounted for everything. So, of course, we fragged the whole run up.

Getting in was no trouble, but we'd just gotten the paydata when the drek hit the fan. We'd mistimed the patrol pattern of the rail drone system, and stepped out of the mainframe room just as one came around the corner. Before we could figure out a way to handle it, the troll panicked at whacked it with his axe. Cue alarms, mad dash for the exit under fire. During this Yoko had gotten separated from us - she'd been on watch and spotted the drone, so she ducked behind a corner. The rest of us tanked our Perception tests to spot the warning she tried to give us.

So we're one crew member down, and the security quickly realized that blanket jamming all communications was going to hurt us a lot more than them - they had landlines installed they could use, and it was pretty obvious our rigger and our decker were much better than their guys. We ended up pinned down in an office, with a security team behind a heavy desk. By that point we were too beat up and low on ammo to just charge them (plus the troll was out cold, so we weren't exactly moving that fast, having to drag his heavy ass around). They just needed to keep us there until reinforcements showed up, and we'd be fragged.

Now, during all this Yoko's player and the GM are passing notes to see what Yoko's doing. Our impression was that she wasn't doing much better than us. Finally he makes a check, gets a shocked expression on his fast, and scribbles off a note to the GM, who snickers when he sees it.

We'd just decided to go Butch and Sundance on the security team and hope for the best when, suddenly, Yoko drops out of a ceiling vent behind the corp team, and proceeds to blow them away. We grab the troll, Yoko grabs the goods, and we cheesed it.

We were ready to compliment Yoko once again on pulling off one of her trademark crazy schemes when it was explained what had really happened. Yoko, it turned out, had panicked like the rest of us and run the wrong way. Every turn she made worsened the situation - she had drones on her tail, two security teams, and she was completely lost. So she dived into a ventilation shaft. At a bioware facility. Naturally, she nearly gets herself trapped three or four times, and now is utterly hopelessly lost. She couldn't even find an exit. With the jamming, it was only a matter of time before the security goons caught up with her and shot her like a fish in a barrel.

So, how did she end up right behind the security guards just when we needed her? Sheer blind luck. The GM had a map for the whole facility (he was an architect, so he'd just use plans for real buildings and modify them a bit to give them better security), so he'd tracked where we and Yoko were. At the critical moment, Yoko first screwed up a check to get herself unstuck from a narrow bit of ducting, then totally botched a Climbing check and fell down a vertical airshaft. She then failed several other checks to stop herself, and crashed through the ceiling, serendipitously right when we needed her. The GM swore up and down that he'd tweaked nothing to make it happen.

After that, we joked that Yoko was such a mad genius at improvisation that even she couldn't always follow her crazy plans.

[Crow]

Actually, even a Rigger, Hacker or 'mancer would be stupid not to layer commlinks, using at least one as a bottleneck for intruders.

Commlinks cost next to nothing, even really decent ones are in the four-digit range - considering a shadowrunner usually nets five-digit sums per mission, that's peanuts. Thus, a runner should basically be his own matrix network - one or two bottleneck 'links, iced as far as they can be, running at least level 6 firewalls (I'd prefer level 12, since that will stop even a low-to-medium-level 'mancer who threads his infiltration CFs and uses sprite help out cold, usually), level 6 system scans, and an agent with system scan 6 on top, who has orders to start up an ice with attack and black hammer when an intruder is found. You can also have the ice cascade a bit, just for effect. Also, the system itself will notify you then an intrusion was attempted; the bottlenecks connected to one another, and the second finally connecting to your proper 'core' commlink. The core link is where you want to run all the programs you want to run. You route it's signal through the bottlenecks, though, and have it's wireless disabled (you obviously need the bottlenecks either connected via datajack, or implanted, just like the core link is). Of course, the core link should be treated to a 12 firewall and a decent system scan too. This narrows your connect list down a bit (unless Unwired rules otherwise, each bottleneck counts as one slot in your connection list taken) but offers decent protection against hack attempts against yourself.

And this is something of what I'm talking about. Call me simple-minded, but I really don't want to deal with all that just to feel like a piece of equipment I don't want to have in the first place is not going to be a liability for my character. It's just too much.

I just want a frigging Ares Predator, some body armor, a cell phone, and a credstick. Everything else is just extra =)

That, and most of what Swordguy said as well. My gangers wear outrageous outfits, my deckers plug decks into holes in their head and veg out, and life sucks for 99.9% of the poulation. This is Shadowrun for me.

[Liliedhe]

@Crow:

I absolutely feel the same. They threw system maps out of the window after first edition, only to bring them back now, but not for Deckers and GMs, but for everyone.

[Emperor Tippy]

And this is something of what I'm talking about. Call me simple-minded, but I really don't want to deal with all that just to feel like a piece of equipment I don't want to have in the first place is not going to be a liability for my character. It's just too much.

Comlink security really is easy if you have a good hacker or just good programs. Go with 5 comlinks. The first one is hard wired to the second, which is hardwired to the other 3. The first and second have no wireless enabled. Each Comlink is loaded with rating 6 agents running max scan, and IC. The second comlink has a control agent. This agent switches wireless on and off for the 3 comlinks sequentially, every round.

The only way someone can **** with your communications is to get into the first wireless disabled com inside of 1 round. Otherwise he gets disconnected and has to deal with that unpleasantness.

---------
Keeping your coms secure is even easier. 1 time pads. Generating 1 time pads in incredibly easy and with the massive amount of memory and processing power available in SR there disadvantages are irrelevant.

How do you get a 1 time pad in SR? Lingsoft's. Generate a random language with several trillion characters. Each of which could mean a word, letter, sentence, or even paragraph. Everyone in the party gets a new copy each day and all communications and data between comlinks is automatically using that Lingsoft, which your comlink translates for you so that it has no effect on you.

[Dirk_Loechel]

Yes, Lil, the System map is back with a vengeance. But now, each node also has system ratings and seperate alert levels to keep track of!

I only meant to illustrate how it's possible to protect oneself against brainhacks and Technomancers threading/spriting themselves to 30+ dicepools. Not how it's terribly beautiful.

[Swordguy]

You know, I think I just figured out why I don't mind SR4, and particularly the wireless world aspect, while most of the people of the "age group" that played SR3 really can't stand it.

You see, I missed Nueromancer. I missed the entire original cyberpunk literary movement. I even missed the deconstructions of it, like Snow Crash. I've read a lot of it since then, but I'd been playing Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 (and Netrunner, anyone remember that CCG?) for a few years before I went back and found those books.

What introduced me to cyberpunk was actually already postcyberpunk, which emphasizes the "cyber" over the "punk" aspects, like Swordguy mentions. Not only that, it was postcyberpunk with a lot of wireless and AR elements already introduced. I got into the genre thanks to anime - the original Ghost in the Shell film and manga is probably the primary influence in how I came into the genre. So, for me, SR4 is moving closer to what I've always enjoyed most in the genre, and to what set my original expectations for it anyways.

Awesome story Gorbash, but if you'll permit a tad bit of thread drift, I'd like to follow this up a bit.

Specifically, I wonder what proportion of the people who enjoy 4th edition have experiences similar to yours. Don't get me wrong - there's a whole lot of basic mechanical issues I don't like in 4th - but it's the setting in and of itself that is the biggest obstacle towards my upgrading from 3e to 4e.

I'm 28. I missed a great number of the classic early-80's dark scifi classics. I never saw Blade Runner until fairly recently. I've never read Neuromancer (yeah, I know...I'll go get a copy). What I had read was Orwell's 1984 about two weeks before I picked up a copy of SR1 (and that damnnable skill web). What was important, I think, was getting hooked on Shadowrun and it's amazing flavor at a time when cyberpunk was still relatively new.

I think there's a dividing line, and I think it happens right around the Ghost in the Shell movie. I think, if people were in their early teens when they first watched it (or similar films), they will generally prefer 4e. If they're more familiar with 1980's/early 90's sci-fi (where plugs still matter), they'll prefer 3e*.

*3e being the first set of SR rules to really be fully useable, though still a pain in the ass on occasion - see also: having an astral mage, decker, and a real-world firefight going on simultaneously.

[Dirk_Loechel]

Like how don't plugs matter in GitS? People plug in there all the time ... except for 2501/Puppetmaster, but I guess he's just too leet to do that.

Honestly, watching SAC as well as the Oshii movies, I didn't quite get how these series/movies are supposed to support the wireless AR world of 4th. There is no shared AR environment. There're image links done in a creatuive way, yes, and there're hologram projections, but that's entirely 3rd. There's some wireless hacking, but that's not the norm - for heavy-duty hacking, they use desk-sized cyberdeck thingies, even. Also, everyone has dataplugs. Usually four and in the neck, and connects whatever they want to connect with a cable. It's very rare that section 9 agents in GitS go wireless. Possibly because, unlike the 4th devs, Shirow knows just how vulnerable wifi really is.

GitS is much more cyber than punk (the animes more than the first manga, which still was pretty punk in parts), but then again, the Sprawl Trilogy's second and third book aren't exactly punk, either (well, Bobby's part in Biochips is, but that's about it). I just don't really get where the line between cyberpunk and postcyberpunk is drawn.

Propably like with all the different cathegories of metal - according to each artist's fancy.