Here's the discussion thread for the game. Out of character chat, gameplans, questions, comments, criticisms, and all that jazz can go here.
Since we're all kind of working out what we're doing, I imagine there will be a lot of finagling with the rules once we actually start doing things.
The one thing that kind of sucks is that the dice here are set for PF, which means they add instead of using SR's hit system. So when you roll for dice - [.dice]10d6[./dice] - you will need to preview the post first, then manually count the number of 5s and 6s you got.
2 hits.
Best solution I could find.
Oh, other chat commands.
Generally, bold is for when you're talking.
Italics are thoughts, but here it'll probably qualify as messages through the Matrix or other non-verbal communications.
How about something like Invisible Castle?
It lets you roll dice and then hot link the rolls into the forum.
That could also work. It's just a matter of preference and convenience. Count hits manually or go to another site to roll? Same deal either way. Half the reason I like this place for playing games is because the dice roller (despite only doing additive rolls) is directly integrated into the forum. Going other places is too much work!
I also just realized we never did contacts for Aiyan. You start with 3*Cha for contact points (a whopping 3 for Aiyan) and they can be spent on any contacts you want. Contacts have two ratings, Loyalty and Connections. They are exactly what they sound like, and they have a minimum of 1.
So Aiyan can get a Contact of L2,C1 or L1,C2. Be it an arms dealer, a corporate wage-slave, a bartender...
Contacts are the guys you go to when you need stuff. Information, gear, new runs, distractions, places to crash, whatever. Different contacts will obviously have different things they can do for you, and how willing they are to help depends on their loyalty. A Loyalty 1 contact is pretty much just a business relationship. Loyalty 6 would be best buddies for life.
Aiyan's contact is Kurasaki Hito, an old man, retired shadowrunner and bar owner, always good for advice, local knowledge and a place to lie low. - L2,C1
We should consider having all our character sheets available to look at. Maybe a public Google Drive with all them up there? Plus listing important numbers like perception, initiative, and limits directly on the character page here.
That way we all know what we each can actually do, and who you guys can go to when you need a certain skillset.
Shadowrun 5e Google Drive Link
There ya go mates! Feel free to upload your stuff.
Tom, I've already taken care of yours.
Ooh, also - because it's fairly obvious where this is going, we should make a rule clear right now. The forums would probably not appreciate lots of our, uh, colorful language regarding Italians and these totally-not-mafia guys. So, like most of the shadowrun vulgarities, we can probably assume that all that bad things people would call Italian mafiosos have also changed.
I'll let you guys get creative with it :)
Also, since I'm Italian I totally can't wait to see what kind of awful stuff you guys throw at these poor Fratellis... Though they really had it coming!
Oh boy, sentence enhancers!
I've added a 5th Edition cheat sheet I found, which explains in layman's terms how to do pretty much anything you need to roll a ton of dice to do. It looks complicated, but after doing it a few times it's fairly simple.
Example Combat:
Ranged Attack, using a pistol and a laser sight. With average skills and stats, total dice of 10. 2 hits.
Defender Attempts to dodge, using his reaction and intuition to dodge bullets. He's really bad at this, having only 6 dice. 0 hits.
The total number of net hits over the threshold (here 0) gives +2 damage. The pistol is pretty weak, having a base damage of 6P. It gets upgraded to 8P. The defender must now resist this damage.
Fortunately, he is wearing a really heavy armored coat. Combined with his high body score of 5, he has 17 dice to roll for resist. 4 hits.
With his 4 hits, he reduces the 8 damage to only 4P. However, the bullet only had a damage of 8, while his heavy armor had a rating of 12. The bullet doesn't have enough oomph to punch through. It smacks into the armor, and knocks the wind out of him, but doesn't really do any serious damage. The 4P damage is reduced to 4S damage.
But because he has taken 3 points of damage, he now suffers a -1 wound modifier on pretty much everything. It'll be a little harder for him to shoot back because he's a little fatigued from the impact.
Since loot has now come up:
Most of the time in Shadowrun, you don't have time to loot dead guys. You're on a job where the value of a single gun just isn't worth the time or effort to lug it around. And when you do, there's a good chance it's tagged by a corp, implicated in a crime, or smart-linked to blow up in the hands of an unauthorized user.
In this case, though, you've got plenty of time to grab some free guns. If you decide to sell the loot, you've got two ways to offload them.
1) You can dump them on your contacts. A decent contact can get you 5% for every point of loyalty he has with you (So Billy's TNGHS can get him a good 30% deal on loot). Most of the time, this is a lower value than you can get if you sell it yourself. But it's instant, and the contact doesn't ask questions about where it came from.
2) You can sell it yourself. This takes a matter of days, depending on how expensive and rare the item is. You might be able to earn a lot doing this, but you might also not find a buyer. The sell value starts at 25% value, and goes up or down depending on your negotiation test.
Alternatively, you can keep them as "burner" guns. Use them in a crime, toss em on the street. No ties to you!
The Run: Food Fight Five point Oh
The Employer: Herr Schmidt of Heinrich's Holistics
The Job: Save a Girl, Kill a Dude
Total Nuyen Earned (Total, not each): 1800
Payment agreed upon: 1500 nuyen.
Bonus from an unharmed daughter: 300 nuyen
Potential Goodies: Medical Supplies to be decided.
Total Karma Earned (For each character): +6 Karma
Survival : +2 Karma
All Objectives Completed : +2 Karma
Saving the Bystanders : +1 Karma
Adventure Difficulty : +1 Karma
And also Heinrich the Doc as a Connections 2, Loyalty 2 contact.
How surprise works:
When combat breaks out semi-unexpectedly, everyone involved makes a surprise test. It might represent the 'oh drek, why are there four guards in this hallway that weren't there 10 seconds ago?' or a quick-draw gunfight, or having the floor fall out from beneath you mid-fight and fall into a garbage pit full of devil rats.
It's a simple Reaction+Intuition test with a threshold of 3 - you beat 3, you're not surprised.
Failure means you lose 10 from your initiative score and don't get defensive tests for that round. You can spend a point of edge to negate the defensive penalties, but if you fail, you're losing those Initiative points no matter what.
The initiator of a surprise (in this case, you guys) recieves a +3 bonus to their dice pool since they were expecting it. But, because combat is never so cut and dry as it might appear, there's always the chance you're just a little off-balance as you charge in. (In this case, Aiyan and Freddy are both in such a state because they failed their surprise tests even after initiating it.)
If you really want to get the drop on someone (a guard patrol, for instance) you can lay an ambush. An ambushing character delays actions as they lie in wait, receiving a +6 bonus on their surprise test. (For example, if you are waiting for an unknown target to enter a room but don't know exactly when he will do so). If the ambusher has a exact means of tracking his target (astral vision, for example), he will never be surprised by the target and will not need to make a roll. (For example, if you are setting up a sniper nest across a wide plaza and tracking the target as he moves into the open via tracking RFID tags.)
Hope that makes sense. That's a lot of information.
Fine by me. Freddy won't try to spend an Edge to pass the Surprise test.
Since it seems relevant to Billy's combat style and potentially the AK sitting on the ground and who knows what else, I'll give the blurb on multiple attacks and burst fire weapons here.
Recoil and Bursts:
Whenever you're shooting bullets, from 1 to 1000, recoil starts adding up. The penalty is cumulative for each round you keep firing and don't do something else. Anything else - moving, reloading, taking aim, whatever - will reset the recoil modifier.
The recoil modifier is equal to:
1 + (STR/3, rounded up) + Recoil Compensation (on the gun or guns you're using) - Total # of bullets fired.
In most cases, you'll be able to fire off 2 or 3 shots with a single-fire weapon without even worrying about recoil at all. When you're shooting a burst like Billy, it's going to add up a lot faster.
Also - watch your ammo count! A good runner always has enough bullets for the job.
Multi-Weapon Fighting:
When using multiple weapons, you have to split your dice pool between the weapons. So if you've got two knives in your hand a total blades skill of 20d6, you can split it for 10 and 10. Worse news, unless you pick up the ambidextrous trait or compensate for the inefficiency of your 'bad' hand with a smartgun, you'll be taking a -2 penalty on all off-hand attacks. So your 20d6 becomes 10d6 and 8d6. In certain situations this can be beneficial anyway - particularly when using burst fire weapons.
Since burst fire weapons impose a penalty on the other guy's dodge roll, you have a pretty good chance of hitting even with a lower total dice pool - and with two guns going off, a chance to inflict twice as much pain.
But... watch that ammo.
So what happens now?
That's up to you.
You can...
- Loot the bodies!
- Turn the job in!
- Run away!
- Make a scene when the cops show up!
- Get a real SIN and work as a wageslave for the rest of your life!
... to name just a few. But I don't know where you're going or what you're doing, so I can't move the scene on yet.
The Run: Fetch Oxycode's Link
The Employer: An Asian Johnson
The Job: Get a link, bring it back, get paid.
Total Nuyen Earned: 4,900
Pay: 4,500
Stolen Credsticks: 400 total
Loot: Any guns acquired?
Total Karma Earned: +3
Survival +2
Objective Completed +1
Adventure Difficulty +0
Contacts Earned:
Herr Schmidt [Asian Businessman] C2 L1
Hey i could heal chibiko.
I paid for this DocWagon contract and I'm gonna use it dammit!
Thanks for the offer though. I'm sure it will come up again...
So... in the interest of Freddy and Billy getting to advance their characters ever, I'm going to split up the karma rewards from big runs like this into pieces.
Since the legwork is largely done (mostly done?) you can get the karma from that now.
The Run: Miami Killer
The Employer: James, media exec and Billy Chine's contact.
The Job: Find the serial killer... starting with searching the streets.
Total Nuyen Earned:
None Yet.
Loot: Cherry's bag of tricks.
Total Karma Earned: +5
Survival +1
Discovering Chery's Involvement +1
Difficulty +1
+50% +1.5 (2)
Contacts:
None.
Relevant to serious shadowrunner jobs:
You're not on any particular timeframe with this job. I mean, sure, it would be nice to take care of things before the killer strikes again... but you don't have to get it done now. There's something to be said for taking a step back and getting all the bits and pieces you need to go about a really serious undertaking like infiltrating a corporate residence complex. It really is a whole different league than busting skulls in cheap motels and dive bars.
Preparations you may want to undertake include, but are not limited to:
-Doing some research on the corp, its business, and this building in particular
-Hiring a hacker to do some Matrix stuff for you
-Seeking out a legitimate (or semi-legitimate) contact inside the building
-Purchasing gear or paydata that might somehow aid your infiltration
-Dividing up the team in a proper Ocean's 11 heist manner
-Waking up Chibiko
-Keeping James in the loop
-Finding alternative alternative entrances
... to name just a few. Just remember that the more serious the jobs get, the more it's about preparation and execution. You might be badass dudes, but when security drops on you with the force of a thousand angry gods, you're going to seriously regret the 'kick down the door and shoot everything' approach.
Miami Run Summary Thusfar:
After raising hell in Berlin, Billy received a call from an old contact who's been staying in Miami. While Aiyan attended to his own affairs, Freddy and Billy went on a grand adventure across the globe to sunny Miami.
At the meet with James, they met up with Chibiko and Geezer, a pair of locals that James hired on to help. The task? Finding a serial killer that's been taking down several of James' trideo stars. With only a handful of leads to go on, the group split up to search for answers.
Billy and Friedrich headed off to do some digging at the local bars, discovering that the sole survivor—Cherry—had a bad streak of biker-style and an ork-sized boyfriend. Possibly corporate.
Armed with that information, Chibiko and Geezer headed to Cherry's most frequented motel to ask a few questions. Finding her room empty, they entered to find a bloodbath... When Cherry came back. She was very clearly displeased. Cue gunfight.
Geezer and Chibiko escaped mostly unharmed, while Cherry was hauled off to the police station. She was released less than a day later, where Billy and Friedrich picked up her trail. She jumped into a corporate car and zipped off to the Liebenherr Group's Residential complex. She entered the building and has yet to leave—the only option left to uncover who Cherry really is, who she might be working with or for, and get to the bottom of this serial killer thing is to go into the Liebenherr Group.
With a package of goodies from James and his corporate resources, plus a decker-for-hire, the runners now stand ready to infiltrate the building. Billy, Friedrich, and Geezer have all opted for disguises and fake SINs, while Chibiko is attempting to get Julia as close to a security hub as possible through the ventilation systems.
In the interest of not mapping out a 20+ story corporate complex in detail and keeping things as cinematic as possible...
If you'd like to try something, go ahead and post that you're looking to do whatever. I'll then GM post with a result based on how likely or unlikely the desired outcome is.
For example, Chibiko might take actions like these:
>Chibiko searches for an exterior ventilation shaft access.
GM: Fairly likely to find one... [Rolls some dice]... Okay, you found one, but it's under a camera.
>Julia does her decker thing and disables the camera.
>Chibiko pries open the vent and enters, looking for a vertical access shaft.
GM: Also a fairly likely find... [rolls some dice]... you find one, but you're going to have to crawl through some dusty vents to get there... and then it's a straight vertical climb up or down.
>Chibiko does so, then looks for an unoccupied security room on the 5th floor or above.
GM: Unoccupied? That's never going to happen... [Rolls some dice]... The best you can find is the midlevel security checkpoint on the 10th floor that focuses its efforts on the higher ranked wageslaves living here... and it sure isn't unoccupied. Plus, there's only three real ventilation exits from the shaft you're in--into the elevator shafts, into the security room itself, and into the middle of a hallway and between at least two cameras.
Tl;dr: you can take any action you want, but the more unlikely it is to find X or use Y, the more likely things will go wrong along the way.
Make sense?