New to Shadowrun

[Felon]

I think it's important to consider the money issue in advance. I've played in games of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk where characters were taking extreme risks for a couple thousand bucks. Of course, one of the differences between a modern setting and classic fantasy is that the world's wealth isn't locked away in forgotten vaults. Nor, for that matter, is all the best gear scattered about and unaccounted for. If you're going to send a bunch of highly-trained professional criminals on a mission where they have to face incredible odds, it's not unreasonable for them to expect better compensation than a mid-level manager in a cubicle farm.

The classic Hollywood trope of the hero who doesn't have two nickels to rub together doesn't sustain well in an RPG where characters expect some kind of reward system. Millionaire PC's are OK. Samurai who stock warehouses with weapons are OK. Just make sure there are some million-dollar money sinks out there. Make them pay for safe houses, vehicles, information, and so forth. Come up with custom weapons and cyberware that cost an arm-and-a-leg.

 

[tylermalan]

This thread has been great - thanks a lot to everybody. Keep the suggestions coming!

 

[kigmatzomat]

If you need some media to get in the right mindset, watch Ghost in the shell:SAC. Keep in mind those are very advanced characters but the setting is similar.

Don't hack the players right off the bat but after a few sessions toss a hacker at them to make their lives difficult. If they're technophobic and don't run a team network, have unaugmented gangers with a network throw some smoke grenades at them and whoop up on them.

 

[skoriaan]

Well. Today is day one of the game. We'll see how it goes!

M.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Well. Today is day one of the game. We'll see how it goes!

I wonder how it went?

 

[Andor]

Well, you can substitute an NPC flunky to do anything. NPC mage, NPC bodyguard, NPC everything. Wny not become a Mr. Johnson and just delgate everything?

Hacking (decking) is a stand alone sub-system. When the decker is doing his thing everyone else is twiddleing their thumbs. And vice-versa. I understand they've tried to cut back on the problem in 4e, but at it's heart a deckers whole reason for being is to split the party. Pushing that off onto an NPC save massive amounts of player aggravation, table time, and smooths things out for the GM who no longer has to worry about the decker grabing a lot of top secret files when he was only supposed to be fixing the elevator system.

I've been in multiple shadowrun groups and we always eventually moved the decker to an NPC role.

 

[Imperialus]

Hacking (decking) is a stand alone sub-system. When the decker is doing his thing everyone else is twiddleing their thumbs. And vice-versa. I understand they've tried to cut back on the problem in 4e, but at it's heart a deckers whole reason for being is to split the party. Pushing that off onto an NPC save massive amounts of player aggravation, table time, and smooths things out for the GM who no longer has to worry about the decker grabing a lot of top secret files when he was only supposed to be fixing the elevator system.

I've been in multiple shadowrun groups and we always eventually moved the decker to an NPC role.

4E hackers are a hell of a lot better in this regard than deckers. Between AR hacks and the ability to pop in and out of VR without even breaking the initiative order (much) they can be busy trying to hack a set of turret controls while the sam holds off a corp sec. team and the mage runs astral interference all at the same time. They're operating in different 'worlds' but the system lets them continue to work together quite well.

Felon has good advice. SR characters need a lot of money. It is possible to run campaigns where the PC's have to worry about how much money they're spending on ammo but house rules are pretty well essential for such an endeavor. I mean if your street sam needs to sink half a million nuyen into better ware then he really should have the means to do so by the time the mage is initiating.

What this means is make sure you pay them accordingly. A lot of GM's I've seen tend to give out too much karma, even the book suggestion is a bit high IMO. Really for an average run I'd expect each runner to take home between 20 and 25 K and 2, maybe 3 karma. This is the only way I've found that the Sams and other cash dependent archtypes can keep pace with the awakened.

 

[Shades of Green]

In my experience, SR4 is much easier to play than the earlier editions, but even then you might want to take a good look at the advice offered by the SR4 core-book for speeding up combat (combat complexity is the one thing that makes it difficult for me to return to Shadowrun).

Anyhow, keep in mind that this isn't D&D. Solving problems by stealth or deception/diplomacy is usually better than solving them by combat; there are no armour and weapon restrictions or race/class restrictions except for the ability mods at chargen making some races somewhat more effective than others in magic (want and Ork mage armed with an AK-97 and wearing a Lined Coat? No problem!); characters start reasonably powerful and don't 'grow' very fast; combat is very lethal and with little grind; there is no arcane/divine split (so the said Ork mage can also heal if you want him to); and you can't go and kill everything and everyone in your way in most runs (it tends to attract unwanted police/corpsec attention).

Make your NPCs (and encourage your players to make their PCs) interesting, colourful and, in many cases, bizzare. SR gives you a big toolbox to build interesting ones: tons of cyberware, strange magic, multiple races, SURGE (read: secondary mutations), and bio-modifications to play with, not to mention the fact that the game is set (by default) in a very cosmopolitan city with many cultures and lifestyles to play with. Sure, corporate types tend to be human and wear suits, but most other people have far more interesting lifestyles and shapes, especially mages, shamans and hackers (who all have their subcultures and wierdness).

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Regarding cyberware and mages:

As I recall, lowering Essence lowers your Magic (Or Resonance). Period. And it rounds down. So yes, cyberware on a mage is a hilariously bad idea. The second you install a single bit of cyber or even bioware on yourself, even if it's just .1 points of Essence lost...BAM. Your Magic/Resonance goes down a full point. You're right regarding the maximum though - hilariously enough, every lost point of essence also lowers your maximum Magic/Resonance. So yeah, you get smacked TWICE for it.

Do not lose Essence if you are a mage, adept, or technomancer.

I personally never saw issues with mages until spirit binding came into play. Watch out for spirits. When a magician specializes in spirits, there could be...issues.

The issue that mages, adepts, and technomancers all have - especially technomancers - is that nuyen just isn't that great for them. Everyone else progresses twice as fast as they get karma and nuyen. Technomancers are especially bitten hard here, as close to none of their stuff can be increased with nuyen. Mages can get foci, fetishes, build of their lodge, buy formulae, etc. Depending on the adept they might need the newest, biggest weapon just as much as the street sammy, and still uses the occasional power foci. Technomancers...can't really do much with nuyen.

As such, I'd point out that slight warning that, if you do have anyone going technomancer, be aware that there's a good chance they'll be slightly behind on the power scale. Personally? I love technomancers. I think they're incredibly cool conceptually, and I and a friend had a tag team technomancer/mage that just felt awesome on so many levels. But. I relied pretty damn heavily on sprites in order to at normal hacker levels. If you have a technomancer, I would recommend considering, perhaps in the future, allowing materials from Unwired. Poor guys need it.

In the end, I've found that Shadowrun is very strongly oriented on specialization. That isn't to say that the mage can't do stealth - quite the opposite, mages can be excellent at the scout role. Rather, I'd say it's more that the scout uses magic. Mind you, one player can also play more then one roll - in this example, the mage is good at scouting (invisibility and diviniation-related magic), and can also build their Magic and summoning skills. Or it could be a street sammy who's not just good at staying hidden, but can do a silent take down on that guard without ever blipping on the Astral Plane, and if a fight does break out, guess who has a ton of 'ware backing him up? However, there is no bard. There is no "jack of all trades, master of none." Usually, each player will have one or two roles, depending on how demanding the role is - you don't need a dedicated player to be and only be the Face, for example; they can also bring quite the firepower with them, or be sneaky bastids. On the other hand, hackers are hackers and, usually, only hackers. At the most, they dabble in rigging, or are riggers dabbling in hacking.

Oh, and as for being overpowered, while binding magician is pretty obscene, I'd say riggers are worse ;p

Regarding the sandbox-esque bit...yeah. Shadowrun can bring out the at times hilarious levels of creativity in players. As the joke goes, how do you mess with a runner's head the most? Have a run go off with no complications. If the door is unlocked, they'll surgically remove a window and enter through there. If the room is unguarded, they'll bring up several spirits and sprites to patrol the area and wait half an hour to be extra extra extra sure - and then still sneak in as quickly and undetectable as they can, by lowering themselves in from the roof. If there's just two guards at the warehouse entrance and no other security, they'll stun one with magic, knock out the other with the street sammy, spend an hour carrying them away from the site to a completely different part of the city, disguise two members like the guards, and then sneak in. From the roof.

Or maybe the rigger just gets bored and runs through the warehouse with his bulletproof A-team-esque tank-van.

Lastly, talk to your players. As others here have said, this is perhaps the most crucial. You're going to really, really want to set down how grim the setting is, how imposing the ever-present cameras are, what kind of feel you're going for, and so on. Shadowrun is a very variable world, and you want you and your players to be on the same pages. You may grow amused as your players expect cameras on every street corner to be watching out for them, taking thirty cans of RFID tag erasers. On the other hand, your players will be extremely irritated if they walk into the building only for you to tell them that their underwear has an RFID tag that causes the entire base to be alerted to their presence.

And lastly, a joke you will learn to love:
How do you stop a team of professional, skilled runners who are ready for almost anything?
Throw a box of chemicals at them. They'll all be allergic to something.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

...Oh, and the books for a reason strongly recommend you make sure your players know this isn't D&D. Always plan ahead.Running in and killing everyone is what you do not want to do. Keep the enemy alive but unconcious if you can. Don't get into any unneccesary fights. Plan ahead. Let the characters use their specialties - don't make the big bazooka carrying troll do all the sneaking. Don't rely on just one method of doing things, 'cause there's no such thing as "foolproof." PLAN AHEAD.

And again, don't kill unless you need to - there's no extra experience, no extra gold from it, no magic items, just a much worse Notoriety and a big backlash.