Xabulba's Shadowrun 4 pbp

Game Master Xabulba

Ok folks we need to nail down the style of play you want and also decide on which city you'll be based in.

You also need to decide on the moral compass of the group, i.e. are you willing to do wet-work, kidnap children, bomb hospitals etc. or are you the type to help the downtrodden or a good cause for little or no pay.

Other decisions to be made are does the group know each other? Have you done runs before or are you newbs? Is the group affiliated with any gangs or underworld elements?

The most important question is how easy you want me to be on you guys. Do you want a lot, some, or very little suggestions from me and how tough do you want the bad guys to be.

Since right now I think I'll be playing a smuggler character, I think that I would go for a campaign about smugglin, an heist, or something where my character's contacts and skills would come in handy to get the proper equipment(for example, a covert ops where I need to supply the rest of the group with the right tool for the job). I'm in for the money, but no downright evil stuff.

What do you think of this: my character has just lost a fortune due to a bad smuggling operation and has to start all over again to get into the business. His contacts with the underworld gave him this job opportunity: help a group of runners in a secret operation, granting gear and support. This is his first run.

Since I am a newb to the game, fell free to go hard on us but please give some suggestion and rules explanation in the difficult situations.

I am reading the manuals now and I like the short tales they use to introduce the sections very much. Do you mind if I try to write one of those to talk about my character and his motivation instead of a traditional background? I want to stretch my writing muscles a little.

I'm good with almost any style of play, since this will be my first run. I think coming up against moral limitations makes for a more interesting story than just being a bunch of thugs willing to do whatever is necessary for a paycheck, so I'm not a huge fan of truly despicable stuff.

Since it's the first time I'm playing and putting together a character I was thinking of either playing a street samurai or something else fairly straightforward.

I also like Seattle for a base of operations.

I'm very fluid in pretty much all of the questions posed so far, though having an actual opinion would probably help eh? So, here are my own preferences, though like I said, fluid...very fluid. Mostly just happy to play SR again.

I have a fondness for Seatle that stems from that being where the editions of the game I actually played are based, though Tokyo would be killer. Denver has the advantage of being the default location of 4th (I think anyways), and has tons and tons of opportunities for the smugler minded player/character.

Having recently gotten into contact juggling I was thinking possibly playing a physad who works as a street performer, acting as the party face and spending his points on increases to social powers and throwing attacks. He would do sleight of hand magic as well, and have an assortment of CJ balls, cue balls, playing cards, and coins to charge up and throw at people as weapons, though combat would be far from his primary roll.

I've also been kicking around an idea for an angsty little goth girl mage who basically runs like an arcane rigger. She uses the control spells influence or straight up take control of people. This is why I was asking about morality earlier, as she isn't going to be a cold blooded serial killer type, but I can see where people could have an ethical problem with a girl who dominates people and uses them as human shields.

Looks like we have one player interested in playing a street sam, and another wanting to play a driver...I know someone in the recruitment thread mentioned playing a physad. With 9 people I think it's going to be difficult not to double up on team roles, but as long as we coordinate it a little I bet it wont be a problem. If some of the other players want to try the face roll I have plenty of other character types ratling around in my head, such as a super athletic urban ninja parkour guy, or a sniper/recon specialist.

Most of the characters I'm thinking of playing are very street level, so would have connections with various gangs/low ranking underworld types, though different ideas would have different relations.

I think some of us should know eachother and have a work history together, and some of should know eachother more by reputation. As we get people coming in with character ideas this can likely be worked out.

As for difficulty, well, I'm good with being forced to think outside the box, and having to resolve situations with answers beyond combat (though combat is always a fun answer too). Mostly I'd only like to be told what you feel my character should know...so if I'm talking to Mr. Billy Badaz gang leader who doesn't take crap from ANYONE in a bar, I wouldn't mind a heads up on my guy knowing this isn't someone to take lightly/play games with...where if I'm talking to some corp big wig who had the forethought to position snipers before we meet with him, and I pull a knife on him for whatever random reason, you're not going to hurt my feelings by blowing my characters brains all over the pavement...as (being that most of my concepts are street people) my guy probably wouldn't expect something that overt from a pretty boy in a suit.

I was thinking of making my street samurai kind of an overgrown fanboy. He received military training, some basic first aid and things like that but most of his drive comes from trying to fit this tough guy image from all the samurai and super hero trids he watched as a kid. He's dangerous and scary looking, but everything he knows about bushido and life in the shadows came from pop culture.

I'm still pulling together all my stuff so I'm concept-less at the moment. As far as style and tone, I prefer the moral ambiguity or gray zone type games. Outright thugs and evil SOB's can be fun as a one shot but having some moral conflict of good vs evil is way better suited as a long term game, at least that I've found.

I'm not too familiar with the various locations from a SR perspective but just in general from my limited knowledge, Tokyo or Seattle sound like they'd be a blast to me.

Re-posted from recruiting...

Setting possibilities for game style; 
Seattle, Manhattan or Hong Kong for your basic corporate/underworld runs. 
Albuquerque, Bogotá or Manila for smuggling and spy-game runs. 
Moscow, Cape Town or Perth for spirit/critter bounty hunting.
This list is no ways comprehensive and there will of course be crossover run opportunities no matter what style and setting of game play.

Book material for player use; 
Shadowrun 4 core rules 
Runners Companion 
Arsenal 
Street Magic 
Augmentation 
Runners Black Book

Anipaviel has dropped out leaving 8 players.

@Pixel Cube - feel free to write out a short story for yourself. I would like a description of everyone's characters and brief background blurb anyway and a short story would do that very well.

Tokyo is not a place for low ranked and new runners. It is one of the most tightly controlled cities in the Awakened world. Japan in general is very bigoted towards meta-humans and places a very tight control over it's magically active citizens, I would not recommend it as the setting.

Setting votes;
Seattle +2

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent 0
Grey scale +1
Dark side -2

[ooc]"Dammit Badger we are not getting paid for recreational violence"

I'm voting for seattle is well, I've being a good amount of shadowrun lately and haven't gotten to be in seattle I love that place its got everybody and everything. Also I vote grey area as well there usually the most fun. I'm figuring in either a street shaman or a ganger B and E specialist(kinda like a covert guy that breaks in and is stealthy).

Setting votes;
Seattle +3
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +1
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan - pop culture samurai
Fraust - phys-ad (Ala Gambit) or Mage (Ala Wednesday Addams)
Pixel Cube - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - in development

"Well Mesmer, Lone Star is after us, Mr Johnson wants his retainer back and our cred is in the crapper and you said this was a fool proof plan."
"It's not my fault Boeing hires idiots instead of fools."

Don't know much about the setting, but I'm fascinated by the idea of playing in Honk Kong.

Don't know much about the setting, but I'm fascinated by the idea of playing in Honk Kong.

After the People's Republic of China disintegrated in the 2030's Hong Kong, Macau and Lantau Island joined together and created the free state of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is politically neutral and as a result many Mega-Corps and Nations use Hong Kong as a data and currency haven. HK is also a haven for runners, smugglers, black marketeers working southeast Asia and the eastern Pacfic. The city is run by a council made up Mega-corps, the most influential Triads and HK's Military. It's a less stable and more intense version of Seattle.

I'm in the process of working up a character idea/build and wanted to check something. I wanted to find out if the Infected character rules were available from Runner's Companion. I don't know yet if I will go this route or not but it caught my eye early on and wanted to make sure it was something you approve of before I devote any design work to it.

Dot and waiting in the wings.

I have it narrowed down to two ideas different from what I have been suggesting,

One was for another shadowrun pbp I was starting to do but the gm quit before we started, actually I recognize a couple of you from that game. Well anyway he is a elf decker/covert ops, he is an decker who will be skilled with breaking in as well. His story is a little like the fan boys, but he's obessed with preawakening anime and will go to many lengths to obtain the trids of them. He shows his intrest most in his matrix avatar which is called Mr. Oni, who gives great shout outs to great classic anime style moves such as ONIMON SUPER DRAGON ARMOR! or more like that to come..

The other idea is a human combat mage that goes my the name "Spellslinger", who believes he shares the genes of jesse james, and kinda operates a little like a cowboy in modern times. With a little wildness towards ya'll, but he'll still have a cowboy code that he constantly qoutes to the group.

I see two areas of the group open so I like to play either, so just checking with the group to see what you guys like, also James Keegan I'm not trying to take away your thunder if you don't like my deckers anime obession or feels it takes away from your character let me know, I just thought it might be cool to have two nerdy runners getting in heated debates over each others favorite medium. If you don't to do that I will change it around.

Sounds cool to me! I should have a build up for review this weekend.

@Jonasty1031 - I'm ok with you playing and infected but I will play up the negatives associated with being one. Unless you hide your condition very well vampire hunters, Bio-tech corps and the CDC will be after your ass. You can expect outright hatred and bigotry from everyone and teenager goths will smother you wanting you to give them "the Twilight Experience".

I'm all up for Seattle as the setting. :)

As far as concepts, i've got an idea for a troll physical adept. His specialty is stealth with a good helping of investigation and he tends to dress in Victorian style clothing and goes by the street name of Shakespeare.

I have a couple of ideas too, but I'd love to give Shakespeare a try :)

Thoughts?

@Jonasty1031 - I'm ok with you playing and infected but I will play up the negatives associated with being one. Unless you hide your condition very well vampire hunters, Bio-tech corps and the CDC will be after your ass. You can expect outright hatred and bigotry from everyone and teenager goths will smother you wanting you to give them "the Twilight Experience".

That sounds good, I would actually prefer that rather than just glossing it over and saying that you're infected but that's it. And as for the second part, there might be some bodies to hide at that point cause both IC and OOC I HATE the tween Twilight BS. ;-)

Very tempted to go with the angsty goth chick now...hehehe

I'll get cracking on the character over the weekend. Tempted to look at the infected rules myself, as I played a ghoul in third ed for a session and hand a blast...but I think I'll stick with the Gambit type.

@Arknight - Troll and stealth usually don't appear in the same sentence, it'll be interesting to see how you make it work.

Setting votes;
Seattle +4
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +1
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan - pop culture samurai
Fraust - phys-ad (Ala Gambit)
Pixel Cube - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger

Sorry for the delay! I am still totally interested, just been working and haven't been checking the boards. It seems we have a fair amount of combat ability, so I'm inclined to play my staple SR character, Crow. He's an Elf, a member of the Ancients, has some decent contacts, and is generally a face/thief. I'll have the write-up done by Sunday, hopefully. I'm fine with Seattle, as I have the Vice book for gang information, and I'm kinda on the morally ambivalent front.

@Arknight - Troll and stealth usually don't appear in the same sentence, it'll be interesting to see how you make it work.

Setting votes;
Seattle +4
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +1
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan - pop culture samurai
Fraust - phys-ad (Ala Gambit)
Pixel Cube - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger

Here is a character sheet for you guys to copy and post on your character's profiles, just replace the XXXXX with the appropriate info.

Setting votes;
Seattle +5
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +2
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan - pop culture samurai
Fraust - phys-ad (Ala Gambit)
Pixel Cube - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger
Lanse - elf face/thief

Thanks for the character sheet. My street samurai is coming together- I still need to buy his cyberware augmentations, gear and contacts. By my count, I've spent 350 BP. Please let me know if you see any errors or have any advice.

Thanks for the character sheet. My street samurai is coming together- I still need to buy his cyberware augmentations, gear and contacts. By my count, I've spent 350 BP. Please let me know if you see any errors or have any advice.

I’m showing a total of 350bp spent also.

Final edit:

To take the allergy drawback at uncommon you have to pick something you can expect to reasonably come in contact with only about a dozen times a year in your daily routine. Gold is everywhere now in 60 years time it will be even more prevalent. So gold would be a common material not uncommon. Also almost all cyberware uses gold in its neural connectors so you would need to add a 10% markup on cyberware to get non-gold neural connectors otherwise you will be constantly suffering from your allergies.

Increasing the condition to mild/common would give you an 5bp extra though.

Going with something a bit different as I saw we have a street face. Basically, Aeon Flux in the Shadowrun univers. I'm still working on her obviously, but here's what I have so far. She's light in the combat area (though not worthless), and high on the infiltration aspect, and I think I'm going to end up with a number of contacts too.

Hmm, if gold is so common, I'd like to change it to something more in line with a 5 BP negative attribute. Are peanuts as common in the SR as they are in the present day; my character probably eats mostly soy products, so I don't know if he'd run into peanuts as often.

Sigh. I had his gear broken down with mods, cost and everything and I lost it all when I hit preview. So right now I just have my cyberlimbs up. I'm more or less copying from the sample Street Samurai on pg. 110 of the 20th anniversary rulebook; not sure if it's in other versions. I am breaking it down by cost and BP, but it's taking me a while. Let me know if I've totaled stuff up wrong, etc.

The Paizo website also bounces me back to the main page rather than keeping me on this one when I post and I can't go straight to the newest comment when I click on it. Do you guys have the same problem?

The Paizo website also bounces me back to the main page rather than keeping me on this one when I post and I can't go straight to the newest comment when I click on it. Do you guys have the same problem?

I am as well!

Kikuchiyo wrote:

The Paizo website also bounces me back to the main page rather than keeping me on this one when I post and I can't go straight to the newest comment when I click on it. Do you guys have the same problem?

I am as well!

I as well as quite a few others have brought this to Gary Teter's attention, he has promised that he is working out the bugs.

@Kikuchiyo - Peanut's are a dilemma; they are fairly common to upper to middle class wageslaves and hi-end Thai restaurants but not to your average runner. I'm going to approve it and as long as you stick to stuffer-shack food you should be ok.

Setting votes;
Seattle +5
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +2
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan (Kikuchiyo)- pop culture samurai
Fraust - Infiltrator
Pixel Cube - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger
Lanse - elf face/thief

Hey, so here's most of the info for Crow. I need to go over his gear again on my own, as the char gen I use is good for everything buy doing BP for gear properly- but I have everything else on there as far as skills, contacts, concepts!

This is my smuggler so far. I found the character generation to be midly headache inducing. I still need to finish lifestyle and gear. Can you check how it is so far?

Setting votes;
Seattle +5
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +2
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan (Kikuchiyo)- pop culture samurai
Fraust - Infiltrator
Pixel Cube (Moses Blake) - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger
Lanse (Crow of A)- elf face/thief

Fraust, Jonasty1030, Arknight and Roidrage how're you doing on character creation? Give a shout out if you're still in.

Jonasty1031 checking in. I still have a few more things to finish and pick an image but I've got a bulk of the stuff done-ish. Let me know if anything jumps out as being wrong or questioning.

Setting votes;

Seattle +5
Denver +/-1

Morality scale votes;
Light side 0
Morally ambivalent +2
Grey scale +2
Dark side -2

Players;
James Keegan (Kikuchiyo)- pop culture samurai
Fraust - Infiltrator
Pixel Cube (Moses Blake) - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 - infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger
Lanse (Crow of A)- elf face/thief

Fraust, Jonasty1030, Arknight and Roidrage how're you doing on character creation? Give a shout out if you're still in.

I believe Fraust is up- he's Mayze.

Still in. I've just had some issues with work, sick family and school hitting my free time for the last week. :( I should have a few free minutes tonight and in the morning.

Quick question - are you using the Way of the Adept ebook? curious because I have it and some stuff might fit my adept. :) Also, are Fomori allowed?

TC

Wanted to check something. The rule is that only Standard and Alpha level Cyberware is allowed for purchase at character creation. The rules for the Infected with Regen state that only Delta level ware can be implanted due to the Regen issue.

Can I be allowed to get a few things of Delta level quality in order to have them as implants? I'm fine if I'm SOL its not a big deal but I wanted to check. Mainly want to do this with the commlink and datajack type of stuff, not looking for full body parts or anything. Thanks.

Yeah I'm still in, sorry had a busy weekend and didn't get to it but will have most of it done later tonight. Sorry about that I am going with my Decker by the way, should have his story and base stats out in a little bit. Again sorry about the wait.

@Shadowfaux - Sorry only Alphaware is available for starting characters. All that nasty tech stuff you had got pushed out of you when you first transformed. You're going to have to put up with a trode rig and AR glasses until you can find a delta clinic that will preform surgery on one of the infected.

Setting;
Seattle +5

Morality scale;
Morally ambivalent to slightly grey

Players;
James Keegan (Kikuchiyo)- pop culture samurai
Fraust (Mayze)- Infiltrator
Pixel Cube (Moses Blake) - down and out smuggler
Jonasty1031 (Alistair 'Shadowfaux' McRath)- infected teen hater
Arknight - sneaky troll
Roidrage - Decker or spellslinger
Lanse (Crow of A)- elf face/thief

I'm going to start you guys out at a place called "Wanabes" Watanabe's Sushi & Cantonese Restaurant. "Wanabees" is a recruiting site for those with bad street reps and new to the shadows can find work. Most jobs starting here don't pay well, are relativity simple and potently very deadly but everyone's got start or restart somewhere.

Any other restrictions when it comes gear we can buy, like limits on availibilty or anything before I go to nuts on my stuff hehe.

Any other restrictions when it comes gear we can buy, like limits on availibilty or anything before I go to nuts on my stuff hehe.

There's a 50bp limit for equipment (5000Y per 1bp, max 250,000Y).

Roidrage wrote:

Any other restrictions when it comes gear we can buy, like limits on availibilty or anything before I go to nuts on my stuff hehe.

There's a 50bp limit for equipment (5000Y per 1bp, max 250,000Y).

Street warfare and alphaware only. no Mil-Spec or beta or gamma ware. thats about it for limits.

I'm still a little fuzzy with SR4e. In the availability section for the gear, when it has the R or the F listed with it, that doesn't necessarily imply that it's off limits, simply that it will be illegal if we're caught with it, correct? I've been avoiding buying things that had the F listing assuming we weren't allowed but I wanted to clear that up.

Any idea when things are going to start? Or rather, when characters are going to need to be finished? Things are getting a little hectic in the real world for me, though I think most of it is temporary, so the character is taking a lot longer to get done than I thought it would.

Xabulba wrote:

Roidrage wrote:

Any other restrictions when it comes gear we can buy, like limits on availibilty or anything before I go to nuts on my stuff hehe.

There's a 50bp limit for equipment (5000Y per 1bp, max 250,000Y).

Street warfare and alphaware only. no Mil-Spec or beta or gamma ware. thats about it for limits.

I'm still a little fuzzy with SR4e. In the availability section for the gear, when it has the R or the F listed with it, that doesn't necessarily imply that it's off limits, simply that it will be illegal if we're caught with it, correct? I've been avoiding buying things that had the F listing assuming we weren't allowed but I wanted to clear that up.

The R & F stand for rare & frequent, they only matter after the game starts and you're looking to buy equipment. Mil-Spec stuff would include tanks, auto cannons, combat armor, etc.

Any idea when things are going to start? Or rather, when characters are going to need to be finished? Things are getting a little hectic in the real world for me, though I think most of it is temporary, so the character is taking a lot longer to get done than I thought it would.

I would like to get started this coming Monday if everything's ready then. If you're having trouble getting your character together we could start without you and add you in latter.

Most defeintly will be down by monday, I just have a quick question for you Xabulba how comfortable are you with the matrix? Just curious to see how you run it since I'm leaning towards my decker.

Most defeintly will be down by monday, I just have a quick question for you Xabulba how comfortable are you with the matrix? Just curious to see how you run it since I'm leaning towards my decker.

I'm fairly comfortable with the new wireless matrix rules. I'm only going to go into as much detail as you want. Since we're playing a pbp game it will be much easier to run any full immersion VR without bogging down gameplay for the others so we can indulge. I'm not going to describe the everyday bombardment of AR other than to say if its heavy or light.

I've got a few extra ¥ to spend on starting gear, just to make sure I don't waste any of it. Other than that, Alistair is ready to rock mechanically. All the stats are done and all the "big" gear is finished, weapons, vehicles, armor, etc. Looking forward to this.

Practically done myself, unless my accounting is off. Just have about 5,000 nuyen and change to spend upgrading or buying new gear, then all I need to do is flesh him out with a description, personal history and contacts. If any of you more experienced runners have advice or anything, let me know!