Honestly at this point unless the game is explicitly about grovelling for cash or really interested in economies (like Red Markets, which is both) pretty much all the purchases should just be on a wealth level style system and a tacit presumption that the GM has permission to slap you down if you start purchasing equipment like a hoarder rather than a real person with costs outside of adventuring.
I seemed to recall some game treats money more like a stat, where certain items that are below your current wealth level can just be obtained "for free", because they're cheap enough compared to your assets that your buying power won't be affected by spending the money (the way most middle-class people can probably afford to buy a coffee without feeling the cost, or the way Jeff Bezos could buy a space station with the people inside it without feeling the cost), but items/services above your rating will drop your rating by however many points. I can't remember which game this is, though. I looked at likely candidates in my PDF collection, and came across these ways of doing resources:
The Sprawl (a Powered by the Apocalypse Shadowrun-like) has a "Cred" resource that represents a combination of your assets and your reputation (because even if you've been robbed and dropped naked in the middle of the street, someone will lend you the clothes and gun because holy shit, you're the famous Razorwire, everyone knows you're good for it). Everyone starts with 5, a couple of the playbooks have ways to generate more, but generally you stake Cred before doing a job. If you fail the job, you don't get the cred back; if you succeed, you get 2x (or more) of your staked Cred back. You spend Cred to get goods, services, and information during the legwork phase of the game.
Fate Core by default just has Resources as a static skill. This is a quick-and-dirty approach with no bookkeeping, useful if earning/spending money isn't really a core feature of the game you're playing. If it is, like with typical cyberpunk or dungeon-dive games, one alternative they suggest is creating a Wealth stress track, effectively turning Wealth into a type of hit points (hit points are a resource you can spend for results; wealth is a resource you can spend for results). This is kinda close to what I was remembering, so maybe this is what I was thinking of?
Yeah I can't do this anymore. I'm just dragging everything down never able to think of anything to do. I barely understand the story happening and I can't think of anything that my character would do in any situation. Better for her to just get written out of it entirely and me to stop playing.
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
You can also run money in Fate with Aspects if you want to create more variability beyond the resources stat. When they complete a task for payment you give them a card with "an ample purse" written on it. When they spend some coin you tell them to cross it out and write "modest reserves" on it instead. I don't generally have players directly use the Resources skill to buy something; instead I make them "create an advantage" with a resulting aspect that makes sense, like they can use it to justify taking out a large loan or withdrawing funds from a bank or collecting on an investment of some kind, then expend the resulting aspect(s) on whatever they're looking to buy.
So the DM doesn't want me to stop. And I kind of don't want to either? It's essentially the only thing I do every week and I don't want to give that up because if I stop i'll probably never start again.
But i'm such shit-ass garbage at it. And i'm not getting any better. If anything i'm getting worse even after doing it for a few years now. 80% of every session is just me feeling like shit because I can't think of anything to do to contribute.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
It sounds like you’re in an anxiety loop that has little to do with the reality of the situation.
Also I've found that in any given group there's usually characters that contribute less by fact of their character. So I wouldn't worry too much about how much you are or aren't contributing if the group and GM still like you there.
Like if I'm playing the stoic bodyguard professional and the rest of the group are punk brats then I've signed on to be doing less outside of combat in most situations.
I have played Shadowrun Dragonfall and Shadowrun Hong Kong, so I'm more or less familiar with the setting
I'm just wondering what I should know about the game
That's what people are referring to.
You need to know how hard your GM and other players are going to go in it, because Shadowrun character creations allows for a... wide range of power levels.
In that you're pretty sure that there is something fun standing between you and a light source but this is merely its shadow, insubstantial and meaningless?
Nice, mellow dude decides to run a Shadowrun campaign and his first instruction is to handicap his players with pregen characters.
Interesting. Very interesting.
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
last time I played Shadowrun it was crunchy as fuck
the GM expected us to like, meet up as a group and organize our support and supplies, and plan our route and methods to neutralize security, using the schematics he would give us if the Decker did his job right.
and if we didn't thread every needle perfectly whoops we get ruined by Corp Jerks and have to fight our way back out to try again later
my Street Boi was more machine than Troll by the time we stopped playing, because he was always the last one out, covering the retreat.
I have played Shadowrun Dragonfall and Shadowrun Hong Kong, so I'm more or less familiar with the setting
I'm just wondering what I should know about the game
Not 100% on the current rules but typically it's pick your lane and just focus on that.
If your lane isn't being a combat monster then, like, buy a gun, but don't expect a light investment in skills to be that worth it.
Repeat for magic/decking/whatever.
A not heavily system involve secondary is fine. Social/building/first aid style of thing.
Also if in combat you don't have multiple initiative passes you are basically a speed bump at best to the real combat folks. Forgetting this is gonna lead to you being reminded in a very painful way.
Nice, mellow dude decides to run a Shadowrun campaign and his first instruction is to handicap his players with pregen characters.
Interesting. Very interesting.
He previously ran a one-shot with the same "handicap", had a guy roll up with a character they made, and said he was cool with it, so I'm really not too worried about it
Which edition are you playing? Based on what I've read, the 6th edition (the one that came out like two months ago) smooths over and speeds up things like combat.
I think the Shadowrun setting is absolutely fantastic (although the timeline progressing with each new edition has brought in some changes both in content and in tone that I'm less a fan of), but when I was skimming the rules for 4th edition I realized that there was absolutely no way at all that I could ever play it. I don't have the energy for that many rules. I've seen Shadowrun hacks for The Sprawl (which by itself was created with the objective of Shadowrun-feel-in-PbtA-game) and Blades in the Dark, and I think that for me personally, that would be a much more fun experience.
I'm sorry, SirEtchwarts, this is not answering your question, I guess that stuff just spilled out. It would be useful to know what edition you're playing, and (for in-game metaplot) what decade you're playing in.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Let me just kind of come out and say it
I think Shadowrun's a terrific world. I think it's an absolutely garbage-ass tabletop game that should be banished to the land of wind and ghosts. It's a clunky system built by a company that had never made an RPG before and has only ever been added to instead of getting the soup to nuts remake it needs.
The two best outcomes you can hope for as a player are
1) Your GM is a human rules computer and has somehow internalized every single nuance of the system. Things will run quickly (as quickly as possible under the circumstances, anyway) and they will always have an answer for your questions but the answer will often not be an answer you like or one that seems to make sense. Outputs will sometimes feel weirdly disconnected from inputs, where you'll like, shoot at a guy with a ton of dice and a really powerful gun and he'll just shrug it off effortlessly because he has this one spell from this one rulebook and then he'll fumble a throw grenade check and kill himself.
2) Your GM ignores huge swathes of the rules and just does what seems to make sense in a situation. Things slow down because they're making tons of bespoke judgment calls and there are game elements (spells, weapon mods, character abilities etc) on your sheet that maybe you just never get to use because the GM thinks they sound broken or like too much of a hassle to run so they're like "man maybe you just have a normal gun that does normal gun damage."
Anyone playing Blades in the Dark? Hows it going? Any tips for a GM?
Improv heavily, consider what you want to be a threat and then build towards it mechanically by having them the only people who don't die to bullets. Read Andrew Shield's novels on the setting because they're very explicitly themed around 1-2 PC groups fucking with the setting and also establish all the weird bullshit that occurs within Duskvol.
The most biting indictment of Shadowrun I have to offer is that when I say "My group just ran it in GURPS", people nod and go "yeah, good call probably" instead of looking at me like I've admitted to being colonized by a brain fungus, as they do any other time I talk about GURPS.
Desert Leviathan on
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I think Shadowrun's a terrific world. I think it's an absolutely garbage-ass tabletop game that should be banished to the land of wind and ghosts. It's a clunky system built by a company that had never made an RPG before and has only ever been added to instead of getting the soup to nuts remake it needs.
The two best outcomes you can hope for as a player are
1) Your GM is a human rules computer and has somehow internalized every single nuance of the system. Things will run quickly (as quickly as possible under the circumstances, anyway) and they will always have an answer for your questions but the answer will often not be an answer you like or one that seems to make sense. Outputs will sometimes feel weirdly disconnected from inputs, where you'll like, shoot at a guy with a ton of dice and a really powerful gun and he'll just shrug it off effortlessly because he has this one spell from this one rulebook and then he'll fumble a throw grenade check and kill himself.
2) Your GM ignores huge swathes of the rules and just does what seems to make sense in a situation. Things slow down because they're making tons of bespoke judgment calls and there are game elements (spells, weapon mods, character abilities etc) on your sheet that maybe you just never get to use because the GM thinks they sound broken or like too much of a hassle to run so they're like "man maybe you just have a normal gun that does normal gun damage."
Or you could always play the PC games, which are fantastic. They even have custom campaigns! (Quality may vary)
If I ever run Shadowrun, I'm going to wing it using WoD mechanics.
For PbtA, the most prominent hack I know about is "Shadowrun in the Sprawl", which - you may be surprised - is a Shadowrun-themed hack for The Sprawl: https://stuh42l.itch.io/shadowrun-in-the-sprawl
The most biting indictment of Shadowrun I have to offer is that when I say "My group just ran it in GURPS", people nod and go "yeah, good call probably" instead of looking at me like I've admitted to being colonized by a brain fungus, as they do any other time I talk about GURPS.
I feel like @Ardent said it best months ago in the RPG thread in Critical Failures:
I keep getting irritated with CGL because they constantly lose the thread on why the broadest cross-section of people want to play Shadowrun. Which is the setting. Which is unique in being urban fantasy set in the near future. That's the core thesis of why so many people would like to play Shadowrun if they could get past the mechanics. SR5 felt like a game from 2009 which, given that it came out in 2013, wasn't the worst outcome for a corporate property. But it also came so close on the heels of SR4 and offered so little that represented a clear mechanical improvement, people sort of stopped caring. 6e is definitely in danger of that if all it offers is more complexity and additional systems under the guise of "simplification."
There are better options for literally every part of Shadowrun except near future urban fantasy (also, hi, if anyone's reading this who wants to try to hit a niche in the hobby, there's one). The single most correlated search for Shadowrun? "Alternatives." That says things about the game that our criticism never possibly could.
When huge swathes of your audience wants to play your setting but doesn't want to touch your game, you need to get real.
And it rings so true to me. I want to play Shadowrun, really badly. But everytime I've dipped my toes in (including buying the 5th edition core rulebook and a couple of short modules) my eyes have glazed over at the rules I would need to learn as the GM, I feel out the players I would ask for it, say fuck it, and we play something else.
Posts
The Sprawl (a Powered by the Apocalypse Shadowrun-like) has a "Cred" resource that represents a combination of your assets and your reputation (because even if you've been robbed and dropped naked in the middle of the street, someone will lend you the clothes and gun because holy shit, you're the famous Razorwire, everyone knows you're good for it). Everyone starts with 5, a couple of the playbooks have ways to generate more, but generally you stake Cred before doing a job. If you fail the job, you don't get the cred back; if you succeed, you get 2x (or more) of your staked Cred back. You spend Cred to get goods, services, and information during the legwork phase of the game.
Fate Core by default just has Resources as a static skill. This is a quick-and-dirty approach with no bookkeeping, useful if earning/spending money isn't really a core feature of the game you're playing. If it is, like with typical cyberpunk or dungeon-dive games, one alternative they suggest is creating a Wealth stress track, effectively turning Wealth into a type of hit points (hit points are a resource you can spend for results; wealth is a resource you can spend for results). This is kinda close to what I was remembering, so maybe this is what I was thinking of?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But i'm such shit-ass garbage at it. And i'm not getting any better. If anything i'm getting worse even after doing it for a few years now. 80% of every session is just me feeling like shit because I can't think of anything to do to contribute.
Like if I'm playing the stoic bodyguard professional and the rest of the group are punk brats then I've signed on to be doing less outside of combat in most situations.
What do I need to know about Shadowrun
Shadowrun isn't a game made for people to play
I have played Shadowrun Dragonfall and Shadowrun Hong Kong, so I'm more or less familiar with the setting
I'm just wondering what I should know about the game
a Shaman or whatever, or Adept, or a Decker are obviously gonna have to know more rules
Street Samurai it's like, "how do I do attack rolls" and making your numbers the highest
That's what people are referring to.
You need to know how hard your GM and other players are going to go in it, because Shadowrun character creations allows for a... wide range of power levels.
Shadowrun isn't built for characters being good at a lot of things, it's built for being perfect at one thing.
In that you're pretty sure that there is something fun standing between you and a light source but this is merely its shadow, insubstantial and meaningless?
Personality wise he's probably the nicest, mellow dude I've ever met, so I'm not too worried about him going hardcore on me
Interesting. Very interesting.
the GM expected us to like, meet up as a group and organize our support and supplies, and plan our route and methods to neutralize security, using the schematics he would give us if the Decker did his job right.
and if we didn't thread every needle perfectly whoops we get ruined by Corp Jerks and have to fight our way back out to try again later
my Street Boi was more machine than Troll by the time we stopped playing, because he was always the last one out, covering the retreat.
I mean it's mostly a question of what edition and also what you feel like playing.
Then just rigorously research that given role to the point of learning you'd usually do to GM a game.
Then you're 60% set for playing that given role in a single game of shadowrun.
Not 100% on the current rules but typically it's pick your lane and just focus on that.
If your lane isn't being a combat monster then, like, buy a gun, but don't expect a light investment in skills to be that worth it.
Repeat for magic/decking/whatever.
A not heavily system involve secondary is fine. Social/building/first aid style of thing.
Also if in combat you don't have multiple initiative passes you are basically a speed bump at best to the real combat folks. Forgetting this is gonna lead to you being reminded in a very painful way.
He previously ran a one-shot with the same "handicap", had a guy roll up with a character they made, and said he was cool with it, so I'm really not too worried about it
Geek the mage
I think the Shadowrun setting is absolutely fantastic (although the timeline progressing with each new edition has brought in some changes both in content and in tone that I'm less a fan of), but when I was skimming the rules for 4th edition I realized that there was absolutely no way at all that I could ever play it. I don't have the energy for that many rules. I've seen Shadowrun hacks for The Sprawl (which by itself was created with the objective of Shadowrun-feel-in-PbtA-game) and Blades in the Dark, and I think that for me personally, that would be a much more fun experience.
I'm sorry, SirEtchwarts, this is not answering your question, I guess that stuff just spilled out. It would be useful to know what edition you're playing, and (for in-game metaplot) what decade you're playing in.
I think Shadowrun's a terrific world. I think it's an absolutely garbage-ass tabletop game that should be banished to the land of wind and ghosts. It's a clunky system built by a company that had never made an RPG before and has only ever been added to instead of getting the soup to nuts remake it needs.
The two best outcomes you can hope for as a player are
1) Your GM is a human rules computer and has somehow internalized every single nuance of the system. Things will run quickly (as quickly as possible under the circumstances, anyway) and they will always have an answer for your questions but the answer will often not be an answer you like or one that seems to make sense. Outputs will sometimes feel weirdly disconnected from inputs, where you'll like, shoot at a guy with a ton of dice and a really powerful gun and he'll just shrug it off effortlessly because he has this one spell from this one rulebook and then he'll fumble a throw grenade check and kill himself.
2) Your GM ignores huge swathes of the rules and just does what seems to make sense in a situation. Things slow down because they're making tons of bespoke judgment calls and there are game elements (spells, weapon mods, character abilities etc) on your sheet that maybe you just never get to use because the GM thinks they sound broken or like too much of a hassle to run so they're like "man maybe you just have a normal gun that does normal gun damage."
Improv heavily, consider what you want to be a threat and then build towards it mechanically by having them the only people who don't die to bullets. Read Andrew Shield's novels on the setting because they're very explicitly themed around 1-2 PC groups fucking with the setting and also establish all the weird bullshit that occurs within Duskvol.
Invest in more d6s.
Like, take your standard D&D assortment of a few of all the dice types, replace them all with d6s, and then triple that.
or any ruleset simpler than Shadowrun's actual one
I'm sure somebody has done this
Blades in the Dark is already a better Shadowrun game than Shadowrun
Or you could always play the PC games, which are fantastic. They even have custom campaigns! (Quality may vary)
If I ever run Shadowrun, I'm going to wing it using WoD mechanics.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BwzNN7yL3u8NdjBhX1Zzdlhfd3M
(Probably a dozen more, but this is the most prominent one I know of.)
For PbtA, the most prominent hack I know about is "Shadowrun in the Sprawl", which - you may be surprised - is a Shadowrun-themed hack for The Sprawl:
https://stuh42l.itch.io/shadowrun-in-the-sprawl
I feel like @Ardent said it best months ago in the RPG thread in Critical Failures:
And it rings so true to me. I want to play Shadowrun, really badly. But everytime I've dipped my toes in (including buying the 5th edition core rulebook and a couple of short modules) my eyes have glazed over at the rules I would need to learn as the GM, I feel out the players I would ask for it, say fuck it, and we play something else.