has anyone played/dm'd shadow run?

[Scarab]

My point was that it seems nonsensical, based on what we know of real world technology. There is no reason to believe that anyone in the real world will go insane due to having cybernetic implants

Can you give me a reference that states that excessive amounts of cyberware drives you insane in Shadowrun? Or are you mixing SR up with Cyberpunk, where I know for a fact that it drives you insane?

In Shadowrun, if you go below zero essence, you die. Essence is what binds the soul to the body. When you go below zero essence, there's simply not enough left of the body to bind the soul to.

Though there are persistent rumors about "cyber zombies"... Well, from a meta-gaming perspective you CAN survive with a sub-zero essence. Sort of. But that requires cybermancy - magically binding the soul to what remains of your meat body. And it requires constant reinforcements of the spells, since your soul will do its best to escape. This is almost exclusively done with corporate backing -- it's too expensive for anyone else.

IMC, the lower your essence is, the more "cold" and machinelike you become. I had an NPC in a campaign that had 0.10 Essence. He basically spent his days off sitting at home staring at a wall. And when the pizza guy knocks on the door he has a gun drawn and pointed at the door in about 0,042 seconds.

What I really love with SR is all the secrets and metaplots. Who killed Dunkelzahn? (Oh, that one I know.) What's the meaning of Dunkelzahn's will? Who is The Laughing Man? What are the shedim? Who created the virus that caused the Crash of '29?

Shadowrun is a massive world. I could keep a campaign going on for ever without touching all secrets and metaplots.

 

[UnDfind]

Getting into shadowrun

First off, Shadowrun requires reading...LOTS OF IT, if you're gonna run it. The actual game mechanics are as simple as can be, but the way you go about doing things is rather complicated. Deckers have to know whether or not "Green" is a good thing, and what the benefits are for running hot or cold. Mages need to know how they can initiate, and what drain is and how it works. It's not that bad if you're a player, but running the game requires a bit of dedication. I've been running Shadowrun since '94 and have had nothing but but fun the entire time.

Benefits of Shadowrun: The world is continuous, meaning that the next supplement that comes out will be a certain amount of game-time after that last one (kind of like how WOTC is handling FR). 3rd ed started in 2060, and has since progressed a couple of years to the return of halley's comet.

If you like continuity, you will LOVE Shadowrun (SR). If you like mysteries and figuring stuff out, run both Earthdawn (ED) and SR, and you'll start realizing things that blow your mind. The original creators (FASA) connected their fantasy setting (ED) and their Cyberpunk game (SR) in an amazing way. If you look closely, you'll start realizing that some characters in ED are in fact the same characters in SR. Events link the two and sometimes (rarely) even roll over so that effects thousands of years different (in one direction or the other) can be felt resulting from events in the other game.

Though SR is now owned by Wizkids, and Earthdawn is run by Living Room Games, I have assurances from the guys at LRG (they're pretty cool if you ever get to meet them) that this link will stay in effect, but that was before Wizkids got SR.

All in all, SR is one of the rare gems to have sprung up in the RPG world. I highly reccomend it.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Can you give me a reference that states that excessive amounts of cyberware drives you insane in Shadowrun? Or are you mixing SR up with Cyberpunk, where I know for a fact that it drives you insane?

In Shadowrun, if you go below zero essence, you die. Essence is what binds the soul to the body. When you go below zero essence, there's simply not enough left of the body to bind the soul to.

Though there are persistent rumors about "cyber zombies"... Well, from a meta-gaming perspective you CAN survive with a sub-zero essence. Sort of. But that requires cybermancy - magically binding the soul to what remains of your meat body. And it requires constant reinforcements of the spells, since your soul will do its best to escape. This is almost exclusively done with corporate backing -- it's too expensive for anyone else.

IMC, the lower your essence is, the more "cold" and machinelike you become. I had an NPC in a campaign that had 0.10 Essence. He basically spent his days off sitting at home staring at a wall. And when the pizza guy knocks on the door he has a gun drawn and pointed at the door in about 0,042 seconds.

What I really love with SR is all the secrets and metaplots. Who killed Dunkelzahn? (Oh, that one I know.) What's the meaning of Dunkelzahn's will? Who is The Laughing Man? What are the shedim? Who created the virus that caused the Crash of '29?

Shadowrun is a massive world. I could keep a campaign going on for ever without touching all secrets and metaplots.

Yes, I believe you are correct; I mixed up Shadowrun with Cyberpunk; I was playing them at about the same time. However, the fact that you die because your essence goes below a certain point again seems nonsensical to me, based on the fact that there are plenty of people who have had mechanical replacements for body parts - again, from dentures to hearts, with everything in between - and they don't seem any more machine-like or less filled with "essence" than anyone else. What about amputees - say quadruple amputees - who have artificial limbs? What about the folk with implants for hearing or sight (or, for that matter, any type of implants)? They often seem pretty normal to me. As I said earlier, there are devices that now link directly into the brain, and rather than seeming more machine-like, those with such devices often seem even more lively than they would have otherwise. Again, the only reason I object is that we have actual cases of such things in real life to draw from, and the cyberware rules go against actual empirical data. Unlike magic or aliens or any other RPG staple based on fictional stuff, we actually have real data to work with.

Let me make something clear; I like the Shadowrun setting. I just think the rules aren't very good.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

I just love the setting! It's incredibly fun.

But I gave up on the system. I've retooled it to use D10 and simplified many mechanics, though. I just need to sit down and write it and I'm determined to do a new SR campaign when I'm done with my current D&D campaign.

My complaints with the current system:

I don't like the probability curve with D6.

Target is 2 and becomes 3? Not so bad. Target is 5 but is bumped to 6? Whoah! That's a hell of a difference. But the target increases from 6 to 7? It's the same thing. It increases from 6 to 8? Not very significant...

Let me put it this way: If you are wounded and your TN is around 6, aim for the head. Your decreased odds of success will be compensated by the fact that just one success might take down your target.

If you are healthy and your TN is around 3 or 4, shoot the torso. You'll get buckets of success and even with the armor of the target getting in the way you'll probably take him down.

Silly, eh?

Also: Decking, Rigging, Magic, Combat... They all have different rules! Now magic and combat mechanics mix well together so that's what I used the most. But decking and rigging was such a pain that they got extremely downplayed.

Victim: Run the stats of your mage by me. If he's doing something wrong I'll spot it quickly enough.

Anyone who wants to learn more about SR should indeed head towards the shadowrun archive.

It used to have a very active board, much like this one. I wonder how it is faring.

Hey, any old timer from Deep Resonance? I went by the alias of 55 a while ago. Rings any bell? Oh well.

 

[Umbran]

Rayston:

Actually, you seem to be confusing a couple of games. SR does not have people going insane from having too many cybernetic implants. There is a one-sentence statement in the 2nd Edition rules that claims characters with extremely low Essence traits are walkign teh fine line of sanity, but there are no game mechanics associated with this. Characters with too much cyberware in SR simply die.

And the reason for it isn't really mysterious, and it is described in the rulebooks. The man-machine interfaces of the SR world are not perfect. Each piece of cyberware intrudes on the body's natural functions - most notably (but not limited to) the central nervous system. There is only so much of this stress that the body can take before it simply stops operating, thus putting an effective maximum on the amount of cyberware in a human body.

Later sourcebooks include rules for going above and beyond the human norms. But these rules are optional. Plus they irequire highly expensive procedures, constant expensive maintenance, and do have psychological side-effects. In essence, the character becomes a cyber-zombie. The body ceases to be able to continue living without occasional medical attention, and the stress on the central nervous system is great enough that the mind may eventually fail completely.

 

[Kichwas]

Here's a genre rationalistion for the whole essense lowering to death thing.

This is not part of Shadowrun in any way. It's just an idea I've had that a GM could toss out there as something some parapsychologist in their universe came up with.


Before the awakening our souls were bound away from our bodies. While there were many people who claimed things like ESP or out of body experiences and so on... most people were very far removed from this reality. The body and soul had little practical effect on each other. The soul; such as it was at the time, lacked a direct connection and only the most bare of links to our mortal coils.

When the awakening came about it brought on a paradigm shift in this connection. The health of our bodies and souls became very much intertwined. Without a strong hold on one's soul life became difficul, unhealthy, and often fatal.

In the preawakening days work in prosthetics was something of a hoped for marvel. It seemed a field full of promise for a new and brighter future for the legions of disabled. If the dream held and the technology worked there were no risks.

With the awakening's change in the paradigms of our universe we were faced with a much darker fate for this technology. No longer was it a way to 'heal the weaknesses' of the flesh. Rather as it steadily removed the flesh we found it also removed the newly awakened soul.

Something that before the awakening was not a risk even in the most cybered up candidates of the day was now an all too present risk for sometimes even the most trivial of modifications.

As furthor evidence of this idea we found that even common surgery was a risk to those who were truely awakened; the mages among us.

This sort of a thought process might be common enough in some circles. And it could offer up an explaination for the situation found in Shadowrun that does match the way it's genre presents itself.

 

[Maniac]

I have played both 1st edition and 3rd edition Shadowrun and enjoyed the world but not the game system. Though 3rd is a great improvement we still tried to convert the game to other systems (like GURPS - probably not the best choice).

The material has a large over arching metaplot that I enjoyed but others may not because of the sheer amount of books needed to really follow it.

The world focus cycled with the products. At first it was focused on Corp. vs. Corp but quickly spiraled into being about Insect spirits and shamans. Later the focus shifted to Horrors - demon like extradimensional entities. This is when the links to Earthdawn started. Then dragons, AIs, pirates and finally back to Corps.

One of my biggest pet peeves was that even though a 6 ability score was a normal human maximum, it seemed as though everyone was running around with several of them. It seemed like you were not good enough without min/maxing. This could be becaus it seemed that in the Shadowrun products, NPCs were always getting better and better (Move-by-wire 4, delta grade cyberware, etc.).

I think that Shadowrun is very suited for D20 but it would require a fair amount of work to maintain the same feel. The magic system would have to be developed as well as good rules for cyberware. Otherwise you could just use DragonStar.

Well that is enough babbling.

M.

 

[Scarab]

Well, the magic system could be translated by making a Will save for each spell you cast, with the DC based on the force of the spell. A failed save does subdual damage equal to the force of the spell, or something like that.

 

[Metheus]

Ah Shadowrun

I played a 2E SR game back in the day ('93) and also some 1E before that. I enjoyed the setting immensely, and it wasnt too much of a stretch of the imagination that multinational corporations became their own countries.
I did have one problem with the game as it went on, but this is more of a story problem than anything with game mechanics. Much like FR and its silly infusion of dark elves and shades everywhere just because it was a 'cool idea,' SR became glutted with insect totem creatures (bugs) and super crazy high level initiate mages/ physical adepts. The original game of average joe heroes scrapping it out in the unlit avenues of the SIN-less was great, until, like FR, every shopkeep or bum you ran into was an insect totem or physical adept that could rip you apart if you didnt give them spare change.
Besides that the movement towards Earthdawn played up way too much meta-human racial history crap that never really needed to be a part of the game. Again, elves became the center of the universe and immediately annoying like every other role-playing game.
The one game mechanic problem we had when playing was with rigging/decking. It was way too time intensive and not exciting to play as opposed to the straight magic/firearm combat, so we ended up pretty much scrapping those from the game.
I would like to see how 3E is, but as a game, I'm happy with D+D and its system. Besides, I lost my giant bag of d6s.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For the problem with the powermage: Remember to take sight modifers into account when casting spells. They do not only apply in armed combat.
And remember that it should never be only combat solving your problems...
Mages can be severely weakend if you want to stay calm - patroling spirits (even watcher can do this job) or mages can easily spot a mage casting spells or summoning spirits, and many runs are considered a failure if you get into combat.

For the Essence:
Remember that the ShadowRun Setting was developed 1989. This is also the reason why handys still have a weight of 1 kg.
And also remember that it is not our universe, its a parallel universe, which, for some time, developed equal to ours.

That is, by the way, one of the best things in shadowrun - it is like our world, the Earth, with all its cities, states, continents.
You can, if you wish, have a run in your own home town (well, I can`t. My hometown is now part of the North Sea - though, we could run a underwater adventure, but most likely we won`t)

I love the SR System for not beeing class based, it gives you much more oppertunities than DnD.
SR combat can be deadly, so try to avoid it, and when you do it, hold some dice buckets ready AND be tactically skilled!

The rules are not always great (it`s probably the weakest thing in Shadowrun), but it could be fixed - without a D20 Conversion, which I don`t think would fit the Universe...
(Just as an example, in Standard Shadowrun Campaigns you will not start as a D&D Equvialent of a 1st level character. Starting Characters have much more skills, abilities, money and spells available than a D&D Starting Character...)

PS:
a link to the german message board for SR:
http://www.fanpro.com/forum/index.php?c=2
and an english forum (I do not visit it frequently):
http://forums.dumpshock.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro