This has remained one of my long standing favorites since I played the clunky-butt 1st Edition (with those awful awful staging rules...remember anyone?).
The trilogy of novels that kicked this off are good solid Sci-fi, and the game really captures the essence of the world. So gritty...so easy to get killed I love it!
To date, my favorite PCs (mine and other players) are nearly all Shadowrun PCs. The system lends itself to personality above all.
Anyone else dig on this game?
BTW, One reason I love Eberron so much is because Eberron is totally the bastard love-child of D&D and Shadowrun (think Dragonmarked Houses at mega-corps, warforged and lightning rails just scream Shadowrun-flave too, and Sharn = Seattle).
I tried to type in "I heart Shadowrun" for the name of this topic, but now it is like some bad riff on I, Robot, or I, Vampire. ;-)
I put a silly heart thingie in the thread title fer ya. Might have to logout to see it.
I *heart* Gary! Thanks man! :-)
Which edition of Shadowrun is the best, Nicolas? I've never played it, but I'm intrigued.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Staging. *shudder*
For those not in the know, SR uses a dice pool system with open ended rolls. The weapon damage in 1e used codes like 3M4. That meant that the weapon did Medium damage, but if you rolled 3 successes with a target number of 4, the damage increased to Serious. Similarly, if you were the one on the receiving end of the damage, you would need 3 successes with a target number of 4. The fun thing about this system is that you had to remember for every single weapon the number of successes and the target number. No one ever got it right, so starting with second edition, there was a fixed number (2) for the successes required to increase/decrease damage.
Here's one right back at you Nick - how fast can you figure out how many times 7 goes into 33 and on which pass that character gets to act. My gaming buddies that were hardcore into SR could count by 7's in their sleep thanks to that system.
Also, what were you doing playing SR1? You must have been under 10 when SR 2 came out.
I've been on a big SR kick as of the past couple days. I'm feeling heavily burned out on D&D's stairway to heaven leveling system and am hankering for a good old does of non-leveled fun. My dilemna is whether to play 3e (which I own) or spring for the more GURPS-like 4e. Any suggestions?
Which edition of Shadowrun is the best, Nicolas? I've never played it, but I'm intrigued.
I personally hateth 4th Edition (the newest one).
But 3rd is out-frickin-standing! One reason I love S-run so much is that people ROLEPLAY sooooooo much in this game. You have to! If you go for gun you could totally get greased in a matter of seconds!
Lots of awesome stand-offs, smack-talking, veiled threats, and planning on how to ambush the bad guys just right so you don't end up eating a few dozen bullets ensues!!!
One of my favorites. It's like the antithesis of D&D. You get shot, you die. Nuff said. Especially the way I run it. No mamby-pamby assault armor for my PCs unless they are in a DMZ. Great fun!
Also, the open-ended character gen system promotes great roleplaying and interesting characters. Some of my favorite PCs in Shadowrun have been band managers, professional models, porno-industry honchos, professional football players, full on Catholic priests, professional gamblers, etc. The sky really is the limit.
Here's one right back at you Nick - how fast can you figure out how many times 7 goes into 33 and on which pass that character gets to act. My gaming buddies that were hardcore into SR could count by 7's in their sleep thanks to that system.
Also, what were you doing playing SR1? You must have been under 10 when SR 2 came out.
:-) LOL! I was pretty young playing 1st ed!
I totally recommend sticking with 3rd Ed. 4th Ed loses a lot of the intrinsic flavor of the game in my opinion (just my opinion). No dice pools in 4th!!! NO DICE POOLS!!! Combat Pool is one of my favorite mechanics especially cause I usually make everyone allocate it blind (no idea how much their opponent is allocating on any roll). The pools are fun.
I don't normally smack-talk companies, but since Shadowrun traded hands, I definately think the quality of their product has gone down a bit. FASA was teh bomb! Corporate Download! Such a cool book! The original Seattle Sourcebook with fake ads for escort services and cyber-clinics!!! AWESOME! I also loved the old modules. Imago is a great adventure with tons of cool rpg scenes in it!
If you've never played before I also recommend reading the Secrets of Power trilogy by Robert N. Charlotte to get the full-on feeling of the flavor! They do a pretty good job introducing the world in the game book, but these novels are outstanding!
I've been on a big SR kick as of the past couple days.
I've been playing the old SNES Shadowrun game again recently. My gaming group out here doesn't do Shadowrun too well...they always waste each other, so until I move back to New York next year and hook up with my old-school crew, the SNES game is a great diversion! Fun stuff!
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I've been playing the old SNES Shadowrun game again recently. My gaming group out here doesn't do Shadowrun too well...they always waste each other, so until I move back to New York next year and hook up with my old-school crew, the SNES game is a great diversion! Fun stuff!
I've been on a big SR kick as of the past couple days.
My posse always swore by the Genesis SR game, but I remember that the SNES one was good as well.
Of course, last time I tried to play those games I discovered that ROM's and emulators were the great new way of infecting your computer with viruses and spyware. The poor computer died as a result.
Can you give a little more detail re: 4e v. 3e? I've heard that 4e does a great job of streamlining the various subsystems (decking, magic, etc).
Can you give a little more detail re: 4e v. 3e? I've heard that 4e does a great job of streamlining the various subsystems (decking, magic, etc).
This is very true. From what I understand (I only skimmed through 4th Ed a couple times, so it's important to keep in mind, that my opinion isn't super-informed) decking and rigging are a lot more manageable. Also there is a whole new area of wireless stuff for cyberware and decking that seems interesting too.
We always just had NPC deckers when we played! :-)
Made things a lot simpler on the party.
I love Shadowrun as well. It's tied with DnD as my favourite rpg, and was well ahead until 3E DnD came out. I agree about the characters- you do create a lot of interesting characters in Shadowrun, and its easy to swap them in and out of the game, since they all live in the same city, and you have mass transit and communication. My players would all have a few characters and they'd decide, which ones they used on which runs. One of the things that I enjoy about dnd though is that the game changes a lot more as it advances. In Shadowrun you don't level up. You can spend karma to improve skills, but your character doesn't improve the way a dnd character does, and the types of threats you face and adventures you have don't change much over the course of the game. You'll probably start off busting into corporate installations and pilfering valuable pay data, and you'll likely finish the campaign doing similar activities.
I agree with Nicholas that the quality isn't as good as when it was FASA, but they don't put out very many products these days, and there doesn't seem to be much support for the 4E rules. It also sucked that Nigel Findley died. That guy was the best rpg designer I've ever seen- I'd buy anything with his name on it.
If you are going to run any published shadowrun material, I recommend the Brainscan campaign. It rocked. My players and I ran through that over the course of about a year and it was awesome.
I personally, don't mind the 4E rules. I think they're pretty cohesive and have a good sense of unity. However, the lack of supplements is a little frustrating, and the third edition rules were pretty solid, so I didn't really think they were in need of a new rules set. I ran some 4E adventures over the summer and they went pretty well. Once we got the hang of the new system we were enjoying it at least as much as the old. The whole augmented reality thing was a kind of neat addtion to the game, but takes some getting used to. And its fun to play real bastard characters sometimes, which is easy to do in Shadowrun.
I wasn't a big fan of those, in fact I wasn't a big fan of too many of the Shadowrun novels. I hear 2xS is good (it is by Nigel Findley after all), but I haven't read it. There was one called Fade to Black that I liked a lot, I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game, and how a team would operate. It was handy for me as gm.
If you've never played before I also recommend reading the Secrets of Power trilogy by Robert N. Charlotte to get the full-on feeling of the flavor! They do a pretty good job introducing the world in the game book, but these novels are outstanding!
I wasn't a big fan of those, in fact I wasn't a big fan of too many of the Shadowrun novels. I hear 2xS is good (it is by Nigel Findley after all), but I haven't read it. There was one called Fade to Black that I liked a lot, I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game, and how a team would operate. It was handy for me as gm.
I really liked 2XS, Changeling, and Lone Wolf. I dig the Secrets of Power mostly cause they are the original three, they kind of set the stage. Don't know why I can't remember Fade to Black...I'll google it, see if the cover sparks some synapses.
You never get too cocky in Shadowrun. A SWAT team and couple of decent snipers can smoke even the most experienced team of runners real quick. You've got to play smart to survive that game. Of course it's fun to play characters who don't play smart and watch them go down in a blaze of glory. Shadowrunners can be real expendible- too bad they take about twice as long as dnd characters to create.
I try to get some of the same level of intrigue from Shadowrun into my dnd games, but it just doesn't work the same. Dnd characters get to be a lot of work to kill and scare after a while, so you always need bigger and badder goons to get them worried. In Shadowrun you don't have to worry about that near as much. If some well armed goons get the drop on them they'll sweat- especially if they think there might be a rotor drone half a click up in the air that is locking in on them with a sniper rifle.
And if you think winning initiative is important in dnd try playing shadowrun. If you don't get the first shot off- Look out!
Which edition of Shadowrun is the best, Nicolas? I've never played it, but I'm intrigued.I personally hateth 4th Edition (the newest one).
But 3rd is out-frickin-standing! One reason I love S-run so much is that people ROLEPLAY sooooooo much in this game. You have to! If you go for gun you could totally get greased in a matter of seconds!
Lots of awesome stand-offs, smack-talking, veiled threats, and planning on how to ambush the bad guys just right so you don't end up eating a few dozen bullets ensues!!!
One of my favorites. It's like the antithesis of D&D. You get shot, you die. Nuff said. Especially the way I run it. No mamby-pamby assault armor for my PCs unless they are in a DMZ. Great fun!
Also, the open-ended character gen system promotes great roleplaying and interesting characters. Some of my favorite PCs in Shadowrun have been band managers, professional models, porno-industry honchos, professional football players, full on Catholic priests, professional gamblers, etc. The sky really is the limit.
I love Shadowrun as well. It's tied with DnD as my favourite rpg, and was well ahead until 3E DnD came out. I agree about the characters- you do create a lot of interesting characters in Shadowrun, and its easy to swap them in and out of the game, since they all live in the same city, and you have mass transit and communication. My players would all have a few characters and they'd decide, which ones they used on which runs. One of the things that I enjoy about dnd though is that the game changes a lot more as it advances. In Shadowrun you don't level up. You can spend karma to improve skills, but your character doesn't improve the way a dnd character does, and the types of threats you face and adventures you have don't change much over the course of the game. You'll probably start off busting into corporate installations and pilfering valuable pay data, and you'll likely finish the campaign doing similar activities.
This is all soooo true! Well put P.H.! We did the same in my group back home. Everyone had a few runners, and we could use whoever the run's particular variables called for. This was especially fun because some characters HATED each other, but others got along great. It was a blast to get along great with the player whose PC you wanted to frag last week! Fun stuff.
I love the slippery gray slopes of morality in Shadowrun too. Sometime you don't even know who you are working for, other times you think you are doing the right thing, but end up really screwing good people. It's so hard to play a good guy and not lose it in Shadowrun, but it's worth trying for the challenge! Like life sometimes! ;-)
I agree with Nicholas that the quality isn't as good as when it was FASA, but they don't put out very many products these days, and there doesn't seem to be much support for the 4E rules. It also sucked that Nigel Findley died. That guy was the best rpg designer I've ever seen- I'd buy anything with his name on it.
I totally agree! Nigel Findley was the man. When I heard he died, I was crushed.
Does anyone know what happened to him? I got the impression that he was pretty young when he died (like mid thirties or something, but I don't know that much about him outside of what he wrote).
I totally agree! Nigel Findley was the man. When I heard he died, I was crushed.
I agree with Nicholas that the quality isn't as good as when it was FASA, but they don't put out very many products these days, and there doesn't seem to be much support for the 4E rules. It also sucked that Nigel Findley died. That guy was the best rpg designer I've ever seen- I'd buy anything with his name on it.
You never get too cocky in Shadowrun. A SWAT team and couple of decent snipers can smoke even the most experienced team of runners real quick. You've got to play smart to survive that game. Of course it's fun to play characters who don't play smart and watch them go down in a blaze of glory. Shadowrunners can be real expendible- too bad they take about twice as long as dnd characters to create.
I try to get some of the same level of intrigue from Shadowrun into my dnd games, but it just doesn't work the same. Dnd characters get to be a lot of work to kill and scare after a while, so you always need bigger and badder goons to get them worried. In Shadowrun you don't have to worry about that near as much. If some well armed goons get the drop on them they'll sweat- especially if they think there might be a rotor drone half a click up in the air that is locking in on them with a sniper rifle.
And if you think winning initiative is important in dnd try playing shadowrun. If you don't get the first shot off- Look out!
Totally. You are a grease-stain waiting to happen in Shadowrun. Playing a dumbass and getting obliterated is tons of fun in this game!!! Just don't hold on to any notions that you will survive if you don't play it smart. I love that you can't just piss off important people in Shadowrun, you have to out maneuver em with intrigue if you want to take em down. If you mouth off to a powerful guy, or worse try and waste him, you're as good as gone.
HA! Initiative is EVERYTHING. Oft-uttered quote from our campaigns:
GM: "The Red Samurai raise their sleek black sub-machineguns. Roll Initiative."
Player One: "I got a 31."
Player Two: "23."
Player Three: "16...that's my ass."
lol! Brings a smile to my face everytime.
Two bursts to the chest spells dead PC. What a great game.
Well Nicholas, I can certainly see your Shadowrun routes in the dnd adventures you write. Maybe you should take a hand at writing some shadowrun material, although I don't know if they'd pay as well. Unfortunately, I think that type of adventure is tougher to pull off in dnd, although you've made some good goes of it, but the mechanics of the game just aren't designed for it like they are in Shadowrun.
've been there before. Good old wired reflexes. Nothing beats wire reflexes. Although personally I'm a big fan of playing riggers. I had this b%!*# ass latino dwarf chick grease monkey, with a souped up muscle car called "angry purple". She rocked- too bad about that incident with the barrier spell. Cortez you will be missed.
Then there was my orc mage his street name was Yugo Swell, and he wore bright Hawaiian shirts on all his runs- too bad about that incident with the rotor drone. Yugo you will be missed.
Then there was Winston my over the hill street samurai, who had experience but was falling behind in the SOTA and his cyberware was always a little outdated. He tried to make up for his shortcomings- too bad about that incident with the Ancients goon and the shotgun. Winston you will be missed.
The list goes on from there. Fortunately, I was usually the gm. But raise dead was sorely missed by some of my players. They always kept up their Doc Wagon payments though
Totally. You are a grease-stain waiting to happen in Shadowrun. Playing a dumbass and getting obliterated is tons of fun in this game!!! Just don't hold on to any notions that you will survive if you don't play it smart. I love that you can't just piss off important people in Shadowrun, you have to out maneuver em with intrigue if you want to take em down. If you mouth off to a powerful guy, or worse try and waste him, you're as good as gone.
HA! Initiative is EVERYTHING. Oft-uttered quote from our campaigns:
GM: "The Red Samurai raise their sleek black sub-machineguns. Roll Initiative."
Player One: "I got a 31."
Player Two: "23."
Player Three: "16...that's my ass."
lol! Brings a smile to my face everytime.
Two bursts to the chest spells dead PC. What a great game.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I had a cheesefest character named Timex, built to exploit the fact that you could purchase spell locks with stat bumping spells by being an adept and then pile cyberware on top. He thought he was really cool until he learned he could not actually effect astral targets, but they could ground spells through his locks.
Oh yeah, you can't really have a conversation about shadowrun without mentioning the magic system. Sure it lacks the quirkiness of the dnd game, and you aren't going to have a book that has about half its content devouted to spell descriptions (which is by no means necessesarily a good thing), but I always loved how you could knock yourself out from spell drain. And that you were never sure how many spells you'd get off in a day. In dnd it would be like saying that a sorcerer wouldn't have a limit per day, but each time he cast a spell he'd have to make a Fort save or suffer subdual damage. I guess you could do this, you might say that the save was DC 10+the spell level, and that the damage would be 1d6 per spell level or something like that, anyhow that's the jist of what it would be equivilant to in shadowrun.
For your Shadowrunny goodness, Shadowrun is coming out for the XBox 360. Screenshot goodness on that linky there. From what I hear, there is a beta available for it. :)
Sadly, it's not going to be an RPG, but it's more of a shooter style. Still, looks like a lot of goodness, and I like it.
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I've been on a big SR kick as of the past couple days. I'm feeling heavily burned out on D&D's stairway to heaven leveling system and am hankering for a good old does of non-leveled fun. My dilemna is whether to play 3e (which I own) or spring for the more GURPS-like 4e. Any suggestions?
We actually went for the jugular and played GURPS Shadowrun, though we used FASA modules. I actually thought that worked really well... Also, playing GURPS alleviated some of the weirder rules, such as the weapon acessories and the staging.
Now, where's my copy of Burning Chrome?
I beat shadowrun on super nintendo. Does that count as liking it?
Chief Technical Officer
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Does anyone know what happened to him? I got the impression that he was pretty young when he died (like mid thirties or something, but I don't know that much about him outside of what he wrote).
Nigel Findley died of a heart attack in 1995, at age 35.
Here's a list of his credits from Pen & Paper:
http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=915.
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BTW, One reason I love Eberron so much is because Eberron is totally the bastard love-child of D&D and Shadowrun (think Dragonmarked Houses at mega-corps, warforged and lightning rails just scream Shadowrun-flave too, and Sharn = Seattle).
I feel the same way about Shadowrun and Eberron... for our group, it alleviates the need to switch systems from DnD to SR if you can get that fix with some down and gritty SR-esque adventures in Sharn once in a while.
* When creating homebrew worlds and campaigns, I've had good results with scrapping the usual DnD cosmology and replacing it with the metaplanes... of course, to do that, you also need to cut direct contact with the deities, which Eberron also does
My god, I love shadowrun too! I had no idea so many people on these boards were fans too. I'm currently collecting all of the novels- I only recenlty got Find Your Own Truth after years of searching(and I first read Never Deal With A Dragon when I was 12!) It truly truly warms my heart that I'm not alone. I personally loved 3rd edition the best, although 4th isn't so bad. 2nd had the flavor though. Anyone reading the new novels?
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BTW, One reason I love Eberron so much is because Eberron is totally the bastard love-child of D&D and Shadowrun (think Dragonmarked Houses at mega-corps, warforged and lightning rails just scream Shadowrun-flave too, and Sharn = Seattle).
I feel the same way about Shadowrun and Eberron... for our group, it alleviates the need to switch systems from DnD to SR if you can get that fix with some down and gritty SR-esque adventures in Sharn once in a while.
* When creating homebrew worlds and campaigns, I've had good results with scrapping the usual DnD cosmology and replacing it with the metaplanes... of course, to do that, you also need to cut direct contact with the deities, which Eberron also does
Holy crap, I never thought of that. I already liked Eberron, you've given me a new lease on it! I can't wait to read it with new eyes!
But if you really want to get a Shadowrun feel you need to toss alignment out the window. I agree that Eberron does have a lot of Shadowrun elements, and yet I'm a huge fan of Shadowrun, but not so big on Eberron- go figure.
Holy crap, I never thought of that. I already liked Eberron, you've given me a new lease on it! I can't wait to read it with new eyes!...
BTW, One reason I love Eberron so much is because Eberron is totally the bastard love-child of D&D and Shadowrun (think Dragonmarked Houses at mega-corps, warforged and lightning rails just scream Shadowrun-flave too, and Sharn = Seattle).
I feel the same way about Shadowrun and Eberron... for our group, it alleviates the need to switch systems from DnD to SR if you can get that fix with some down and gritty SR-esque adventures in Sharn once in a while.
* When creating homebrew worlds and campaigns, I've had good results with scrapping the usual DnD cosmology and replacing it with the metaplanes... of course, to do that, you also need to cut direct contact with the deities, which Eberron also does
yep; was/is a decent game; i enjoyed playing it; very cool of our local piazo eyeball to put in a heart; was just too cool for words.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I own some Shadowrun stuff but I have yet to play in it. I had a friend who was a big SR fan several years ago and he was going to run a game for us once... never got around to it, though. Since then he's moved away and I haven't heard from him since, so I never actually got to play.
I own one book: The main 3rd Ed. Shadowrun book. I flipped through it a few times and... I can't figure out how decking and magic works at all. Do you basically have to run a side-scene with the decker inside the Matrix while the other players sit around and wait? It seems to me that you would need 2 DMs to really make this work. One could be the 'real world' DM and the other would be the 'virtual' DM.
Magic is just... messy. I'm not real clear on spell drain and the different damage categories. Anyone care to educate the newbie?
Enormous fan...
Between Cthulhu (not d20, ick), Shadowrun and D&D...D&D is only played because of the fact that most of my players are more comfortable with it (they lurve the XP action).
Shadowrun 1st and 2nd ed had a lovely gritty hopeless feeling to it, 3rd ed introduced a bit too much magic and turned PCs into 'Heroes' too much. Admiteddly it is all about how you play it, but each of the editions changed the flavour slowly.
I've recently got my hands on one of the Limited Edition SR4 hard back rules (I'm such a nerd), but am yet to play it. I'm a bit concerned about what I've heard, but as an long time SR fan (I was the 1st ed decker, and the 2nd ed...and...well, you get the picture) I'm desperate to get back into it.
Running deckers was always kind of tricky in the 1st 3 versions because if the decker was in the matrix that player was basically playing a different game. A lot of people would get around it by having NPC deckers, which was fun as a gm because if you ever wanted to get things moving you could always have the NPC decker screw up and trip an alarm. 4th edition makes an effort to make deckers more compatible with the party and have them taking actions in the combat rounds with the rest of the team, which I think is a good thing. However, the basic 4E rule book didn't feel to me like it was in depth enough to explain all the ins and outs of the new matrix system/rules.
Magic is a little complex, but not so bad when you get used to it. Basically each mage knows a certain number of spells. You use your spellcasting skill to cast the spells, and the more successes ("hits" its called in 4E) the more damage the spell does and the harder it is to resist its effects. After casting the spell you make a drain test, if you do well you don't take any stun damage and you can keep on casting spells, if you don't do so well you take stun damage, penalties start to wrack up and life gets harder for you. The more potent the spell the harder it is to resist the drain. It was always fun to see the mage wipe out a bunch of security goons with a hellblast, but then knock himself out and have to be carted out by his companions.
I own some Shadowrun stuff but I have yet to play in it. I had a friend who was a big SR fan several years ago and he was going to run a game for us once... never got around to it, though. Since then he's moved away and I haven't heard from him since, so I never actually got to play.
I own one book: The main 3rd Ed. Shadowrun book. I flipped through it a few times and... I can't figure out how decking and magic works at all. Do you basically have to run a side-scene with the decker inside the Matrix while the other players sit around and wait? It seems to me that you would need 2 DMs to really make this work. One could be the 'real world' DM and the other would be the 'virtual' DM.
Magic is just... messy. I'm not real clear on spell drain and the different damage categories. Anyone care to educate the newbie?
Ran the Shadows night before last...reminded me just how much fun this game is.
Where else can you play an obsessive compulsive vehemently racist former Media Director for the a presidential hopeful who lost his job when their unhealthy interest in let's just say "fringe" pornography came to the public's attention.
Now he's probably one of the worst shadowrunners on Seattle's mean streets, but man did I have a fun time playing him. Oh yeah, and he's a mage...a really s&+!tastic one, but no matter...man what a great game.
Mmmm ... Shadowrun ...
I own the 3rd Edition book and a few of the supplements, but the rule system hurt my brain (small though it is). I picked up 4th Edition once it came out and I absoluely love the streamlined rules. Currently I'm running an on-again/off-again campaign on Friday nights at midnight, with runs based on Metallica songs. So far we've gone through "Trapped Under Ice" and "Where the Wild Things Are", and I can't wait to run through such gems as "Stone Dead Forever" (takes place in the ruins of the Fort Snelling Cemetary in MSP'plex) and my trip down insanity lane trilogy - "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)", "Frayed Ends of Sanity", and "The Thing That Should Not Be".
Mmmm ... Shadowrun AND Metallica ...
A friend of mine is GMing Shadowrun, but has run into some difficulty so I was wondering if any of you Shadowrun lovers might be able to help us out:
Basically, a number of the PCs are really interested in Pit Fighting, and generally betting on each other and delving into this murky 'sport' as a past-time between runs. However there just does not seem to be any official rules or systems for running this sort of thing, so if you guys know of any sites (I have just spent a couple of hours searching the net but got nothing), or books (though we have checked through quite a lot, all to no avail other than the occasional mention) or have even created any houserules of your own, which you can supply, I would be eternally grateful.
BTW The Shadowrun system being used is 3rd Ed, but even if the relevant information supplied is for another system that has the capacity to be converted, I'd still be grateful to hear from you.
Regards,
Luke
And if you think winning initiative is important in dnd try playing shadowrun. If you don't get the first shot off- Look out!
I did have one, but only one, occasion where going last saved my hoop...
But that was simply because we were in a public place, and the opposition didn't have a clue I was a threat until I acted.
llaletin, unless there is something in 4th edition, I don't remember anything that covered Pit Fighting, other than running combat as normal.
What are you looking for? Gambling rules? How to handle the fights? All of the above?
For betting, it could be as simple as a skill check... Especially if the particular combatants aren't PC's. But I am about to start rambling stream of thought ideas.
So I will stop here.
I wasn't a big fan of those, in fact I wasn't a big fan of too many of the Shadowrun novels. I hear 2xS is good (it is by Nigel Findley after all), but I haven't read it. There was one called Fade to Black that I liked a lot, I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game, and how a team would operate. It was handy for me as gm.
I really did not like Fade to Black. I just could not manage to get past Nyx Smith's sexism. In Fade to Black one of the only significant female characters is in fact only ever described as having a great ass in a tiny thong. He literally does not give us any more information about this character - she's part of the team but essentially she is just a mobile disembodied female ass in a thong.
He was really bad for this in Striper Assassin as well but here I could, with some effort, manage to swallow it. I mean if you absolutely must write characters from the perspective of 'I am female and therefore I am a sex toy' it helps a lot if the female has an alien mind and there is not a whole lot of point trying to slot her into our mores and values.
There are few female characters in his books to begin with, but when they turn up, it seems the only thing important about them is their secondary sexual characteristics - which they all desperately want to flaunt and by which we are to judge them.
What are you looking for? Gambling rules? How to handle the fights? All of the above?
All of the above :-)
Amd yes the PCs do (unfortunately) intend to be participants, otherwise we wouldn't be worrying so much about having a consistant mechanism for running it.
Wow. This can get long winded, and likely complicated. If something doesn't make sense, feel free to ask me to clarify.
First up, it sounds like you, and / or your GM, would rather the PC's not get involved. If that is the case, I would suggest the GM politely request that they don't join in. If they are experienced gamers, simply asking "are you sure you want to do that?" might do the trick.
But I'll assume that they will still want to get involved. So...
A couple of things to start. The GM needs to determine just how organized the particular fight is. The more lucrative, the more organized, the more likely a crime organization (or four) has their hands in it. The less organized, the more likely there will be a "buy in" fee. The fee should be around 10% of the purse, adjusting for number of participants and greediness of the fight organizer. The fight organizer would like to take in at about 35% - 50% of the purse from the buy in fees (if not more).
Now, there should be a minimum of two classes of fights. Un-augmented, and augmented. Participants should have to get a medical screening - by house staff, of course - to verify augmentation level, determine their condition to fight, and to give the "bad guys" a chance to dope them before a fight. The reasoning for the two classes is that no organizer wants to throw money away on a pedestrian taking on a million nuyen street sam.
The participants need to agree to a contract, either written or verbal, that they basically sign their lives away. If they get hurt, too bad. If they sign a written contract without reading it first, feel free to add in "loopholes" such as having to pay the house a certain amount of money if they win... Further obligations to the organizer / the organizers boss... Etc.
If the players haven't gotten nervous about the stability of this idea yet... Then you have to move on to the combats themselves.
The GM needs to have about a dozen "skeletons" to work with. Attributes, skills, augmentations. If the GM is good at on the fly adjustments, these skeletons can be enough to hold him / her over for a very long time.
There needs to be a set time per fight round, and I forget how much time passes in a round of Shadowrun combat... But a fight round should be maxed at about 3 minutes.
Then just run the combats as normal.
The winner of all the fights gets the purse. There might be a small sum given to the second place finisher if the fight is lucrative enough and the fighter does well.
If the game has made it this far without a meltdown of any kind, these Pit Fights should be a great story hook. If the players do badly, they could end up owing favors to people. If they do well, they can get the attention of some people - either good or bad for the players.
Is that enough? Or would you like more?
Thanks for the reply, and the ideas involved therein.
Its not that the GM doesn't want the PC(s) to get involved, but just wanted to make sure he has a good system in place for any eventualities.
All of this sounds a pretty good basis to start on, so I have forwarded these details to him.
Again, thanks for your help on this,
Regards,
Luke
We had a lot of fun with the second and third editions in highschool and a little after. A few of the guys who always wanted to run it were terrible GMs, giving fifty karma for a night's session, in which we were paid millions of neuyin (or however you spell it) to shoot some corp suit protected by a few guys with light pistols. But even those runs we managed to have fun with.
It was always fun introducing people to the game's lethality. We had one guy make a character based on Aeon Flux, and always described her clothing as being made up of rubberbands and weaponry. Someone opened up on her with a light machine gun, and when asked how much balistic armor she had the guy responded with "how much do my pistols give me?" So after that character went all over the place he made a hulking orc who always kept a sawed off shotgun stuffed down the front of his pants. Scared the hell out of some elf gangers when they asked him to step outside and he just grinned and unzipped his fly. Strangely enough that character fell to a light machine gun too...
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My friends introduced me to Shadowrun years ago. I guess we were playing 3rd edition then and I had a great time. I picked up 4th edition when it came out and found the book to be poorly edited and the rules inconsistent or in places incoherent (not to mention that dice pools were pulled, which hurt my head a tad).
Has anyone else had this experience? I was so jaded by the quality of the rules I never played with that ruleset or even investigated if there was a re-print or a serious errata written. Have there been any improvements to 4th edition that would make it worthwhile or should I just find a 3rd edition book and stick with that?
You could also have players run NPCs too, so that one player is running his character and another is running an NPC fighter. This way you don't end up in a situation where a dm and one player are running a match and the other players are picking their butts waiting for their turn. You could even have a couple fights going at a time if you had say 4 players. This would move things faster and keep everyone involved.
I also see lots of opportunity for adventure ideas around the Pit fighting. If the characters establish a reputation for themselves they may attract the attention of rival crime organizations who want to recruit them for their own matches or want to get them out of the scene so that their competitor's business suffers. The cops could get wind of it as well- most of this stuff is illegal. I'd probably have a SWAT team show up to shut it down in the middle of one of the matches. Right when the character is being beat on and doesn't have easy access to his guns and and armour. A powerful crime boss might pressure a character into throwing a fight (ala pulp fiction or any number of other movies), which could result in plenty of trouble if the PC doesn't want to take the fall. At any rate I'd use the pit fighting as springboard for adventures not merely a way for the PCs to try to rake in extra nuyen.
Thanks for the reply, and the ideas involved therein.
Its not that the GM doesn't want the PC(s) to get involved, but just wanted to make sure he has a good system in place for any eventualities.All of this sounds a pretty good basis to start on, so I have forwarded these details to him.
Again, thanks for your help on this,
Regards,
Luke
Been a while sense I looked at my fourth ed stuff, but I don't recall it being any less edited than anything else I have. The rules looked good too, in my opinion, just a little simplified (which as much as I hate to admit it, is probably a good thing).
With the exception of consistant binding problems I had with just about every shadowrun book pre fourth ed, I would say if you don't realy like the newest edition get ahold of third and go to town. There are a ton of realy great source books for third, and a lot of the second and even first edition stuff isn't that hard to convert up. One of my favorite sourcebooks ever is Sprawl Sights, which I'm pretty sure is first edition, and I still use it on those rare occassions when we play SR4.