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[SR3 OOC] Megacorp Interests

InfidelInfidel HereticRegistered User regular
edited July 2009 in Critical Failures
Update:

Well it's been quite a while, but we have a team. 8-)

DevoutlyApathetic, KrataLightblade, piL.

Going smaller and more focused than originally planned, going to kick this off asap. Characters shouldn't be taking long now.

Original OP:

So yeah, here it is!

I'll be running a Shadowrun game in the new year or so, I've got the GMing bug again. To address my usual method of putting schoolwork off while I work on a game and then having it bury me and I drop hosting, I'm going to be adapting things to suit Play-by-Post better. Yes, this will be a PbP game. I will be focusing more on story than combat, to make it more tolerant to possible dry spells and also PbP in general.

I will be using Shadowrun 3rd Edition.
FPR25000E_180.jpeg

The year is 2060. Magic is as real as the mean streets of the mega-sprawls. Corporations call the shots while nailing each other through covert operatives in cutthroat competition. Flesh and machines have merged the street samurai with his smartguns and impossibly fast reflexes, the decker who can plug his own brain into the worldwide computer network, the rigger who links his mind to his vehicle and takes hairpin turns at fantastic speeds. And you're a part of this wired world, where corporate skyscrapers glitter over the dark shadows they cast. You live in those shadows. You're a shadowrunner—a street operative.

You may be human or troll, dwarf or elf. You may throw fireballs, pull out your trusty Uzi or slice through computer security with a program as elegant and deadly as a stiletto. No matter what, you get the job done. You're a shadowrunner—a professional. You don't just survive in the shadows—you thrive there... for now. Shadowrun, Third Edition is a complete rulebook for gamemasters and players. It contains all the rules needed to create characters and ongoing adventures set in the popular Shadowrun universe. Shadowrun, Third Edition updates, revises, expands and clarifies the rules from previous Shadowrun rulebooks. It is compatible with previous versions of Shadowrun and with previously published Shadowrun source material.

I'd recommend deep characters over combat-heavy. You definitely want to hold your own as a team, but don't worry about twinking yourself out with over-specced combat skills and a bucket of dikote. I'm very likely going to houserule combat to make it flow a little better in post form, or at least not focus on it too much.

Shadowrun has a lot of opportunity for espionage, tactics, humour, etc. I'd like the players to help me show off the awesome flavour that Shadowrun has, especially since there's a distinct lack of SR in this forum.

Use this thread to discuss SR RPG and concepts instead of cluttering up Z's phalla thread. 8-):whistle:

I'll work on the game and put together a team in a couple weeks roughly? I dunno. It won't be first-come first-served, so post your concept regardless of who has already posted if you are interested. I'd recommend that players be a little forgiving with pace and be able to enjoy the game for what it is, since I am sure I'll have to pause things on my end from time to time given precedent. But this time around I'm going to try to plan things with that in mind and try to keep the game going in the long-run.

Setting? Probably Seattle, still my fave.

Here are the books I have on hand. I'm stupidly excited over Shadowrun now too. :P Missing in this picture are Man and Machine and another book or two maybe that are stashed somewhere.

Spoilered for toolazytoresize.
books.jpg

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Infidel on
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Posts

  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    i would like to play infidel

    can i play a ghoul, infidel

    INeedNoSalt on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'd say depends on the concept.

    But even then probably not, so I don't want to get your hopes up.

    Infidel on
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  • Mr. JohnsonMr. Johnson Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Fuck yes I am interested. So interested I'm not even going to change to my actual account.

    Mr. Johnson on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    The Johnson coming along on the run is bad juju.

    Infidel on
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  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Hmm......In depending on timing issues.

    Edit: Play by post....I will cut you Infidel unless you let me in.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Man, I'd love to play this, but have never played Shadowrun and have no idea where to even find the books.

    So I'll probably just cheer from the sidelines.

    Inquisitor on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Instead of a ghoul, what if I played an orc, Infidel

    An orc shaman, Infidel!

    (or... a ghoul shaman)

    INeedNoSalt on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Pssst, the OP book image is a link to the PDF.

    Infidel on
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  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Infidel wrote: »
    Pssst, the OP book image is a link to the PDF.
    You are tricky, aren't ya?

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Infidel wrote: »
    Pssst, the OP book image is a link to the PDF.

    Is that the only book I'd need?

    If so...consider me tentatively in. I just, wouldn't want to steal a spot from a vet of the system, you know?

    Inquisitor on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    There are chargen systems out there that can help you with the heavy lifting ... if you had someone who was familiar with the system (like me) to help you out while you were using such a chargen program, you might not even need the book for chargen.

    INeedNoSalt on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'm not concerned with rules. It's PbP, you have time, and I'll be very likely streamlining/glossing over some to keep things rolling.

    I'm much more concerned about cool character concepts, and team balance.

    It's the only book you need period, as GM or player. The expansions are pretty plentiful and awesome though still.

    Infidel on
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  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Cool. We'll I'm off to my local coffee shop to work on a paper, but when my mind wanders I'll try to hash out a character for this, so I guess that means I'm in.

    What are the sort of character archetypes that you can get in shadowrun?

    Edit: Well, I'm out, thinking a troll though.

    Inquisitor on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Cool. We'll I'm off to my local coffee shop to work on a paper, but when my mind wanders I'll try to hash out a character for this, so I guess that means I'm in.

    What are the sort of character archetypes that you can get in shadowrun?

    basic roles:

    guy with a computer
    guy with a gun
    -- guy with a stick
    --- guy with a sharp stick
    guy with magic
    -- guy with sharp magic
    guy with robots
    guy with cars
    guy who talks to guys

    etc
    The most notable archetypes are Street Samurai, characters who have heavily augmented their bodies with cyberware and bioware and focus on physical combat; Adepts, characters who have magical abilities that increase their physical combat abilities; Deckers or Hackers who are experts at manipulating computer networks; Riggers who augment their brains to achieve fine control over vehicles and drones; and Magicians who cast spells and can view emotions and call spirits from astral space.

    INeedNoSalt on
  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'm thinking troll with gun or troll with stick then, maybe that street samurai thing.

    Inquisitor on
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    Cool. We'll I'm off to my local coffee shop to work on a paper, but when my mind wanders I'll try to hash out a character for this, so I guess that means I'm in.

    What are the sort of character archetypes that you can get in shadowrun?

    You don't need to conform to archtypes much in shadowrun, that said:

    Street Sam: Fast and shoots/stabs/kills things.
    Mage/Shaman: Brings the mojo
    Decker: Computer hacker but in SR computers are everywhere, everywhere.
    Rigger: Kinda a specialized hacker focused on vehicles, usually controlled by RC.
    Face: I make with the talky and knowy.

    In SR generally everybody needs to be able to bring force in some capacity. Depending on the game you almost always have to be wired unless you really like being bored. If you're primarily combat you need extra passes in initiative, hands down.

    Though it's pretty easy to be passable in at least some decent skills while doing your primary well in SR.

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • InquisitorInquisitor Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Though completely bucking the trend for a troll decker sounds amusing, hehe, or a face that operates through raw intimidation.

    Inquisitor on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Major chargen points: race, magic, skills, attributes, resources

    The most pivotal choice tends to be magic, you're for the most part either Awakened or Mundane. If you're Awakened, you could be a full magician (mage or shaman), aspected magician (specialist) or adept (internal magic, think ki/chi and monk/martial artist/ninja/etc.). Otherwise you're just plain ol metahuman.

    You're familiar with the five core races already, if not in detail, from the phalla. If you take a flip through the SR material online you can get a good feel for what is what I'm sure.

    After that, you see what you have left to divy up between skill points, stats/attributes, and nuyen/resources. Cyber characters will be focusing on those three areas.

    That's like way too brief, but it might give you a good idea of what the tradeoffs are when thinking of a character. If you're familiar with cyberpunk then you can probably fit a concept in someway somehow.

    Oh, and because the cyber characters like I say tend to overlap in chargen pointwise, it's basically what they take that defines their archetype: decker (hacker), rigger (controls machines and vehicles), street samurai (cybered combat monster), etc.

    Infidel on
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  • DoxaDoxa Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    cool, I'm interested and will probably read this over

    Doxa on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Inquisitor wrote: »
    I'm thinking troll with gun or troll with stick then, maybe that street samurai thing.

    A troll melee character is very ouchy, although a little overdone. :) Natural reach bonus plus high physical stats make it an obvious win.

    Infidel on
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  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'm very interested in this. As for concepts? I have so many things I'd love to play, and I just read Neuromancer again like, this weekend. Also, I was just thinking a few minutes ago that a PbP Shadowrun game would be a perfectly awesome situation to play a downtime character or a contact in.

    So if I can't play the actual Shadowrun PbP, you should let me be a talismonger. Or a barkeep.

    piL on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    That's actually a possibility. I am already contemplating finding a co-GM to help cover for me and maybe allow for a larger group of people involved, even if the focus is only on one runner team at a time. All the more reason to toss up a concept, we'll see what we have for teams when the dust clears.

    Infidel on
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  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Okay here is a vague, serious character concept, INFIDEL:

    An orkish Snake shaman, who presents himself as a magical healer and resents the assumptions people tend to make about ork Shamans (mostly, that they are all dirty Rat shamans who cower around being dirty)

    INeedNoSalt on
  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    What kind of Shaman INNS? I only ask because I'm suddenly super-excited about Shadowrun.

    piL on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    a snake shaman ...

    full magician, with a focus on healing and detection (and other utility magics)

    doesn't like rat shamans

    INeedNoSalt on
  • ValkunValkun Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'll just grab one of my many NPC's from when I was GMing:

    Name: Benjamin "Cross" Lucas
    Sex: Male
    Race: Ork
    Age: 32
    Full Magician(Shaman): If you really want, I can pick an animal as a totem.
    Background: An active and devout Catholic priest originally from Venice, Cross is definately not your typical example of a Shadowrunner. However, with bills to pay and increasingly less attendance from the local population, he did what had to be done. Balancing the deaths caused by his hands and the lives he touches, Father Lucas constantly struggles with the morality of his path. Often, this leads to passing out in some dark alley or grungy corner of some low class bar as he washes away his worries with waves of alcohol.

    A run turned bad sent him slipping out of Europe and through various destinations in the Americas before finally settling down in good ol' Seattle.
    Personality: Cross often resembles a good hearted father, the kind of dad you'd see on the trid scolding his child and having a chuckle about it later. However, when the drek hits the fan, there remains only the cold professional killer that all too resembles the sidearms that both haunt and comfort him.
    Appearance: Ben often sports black leather vestments with the traditional white collar of his trade. A simple silver cross hangs from his neck. His body has grown a bit soft with age and streaks of white have begun to appear in his neatly cut black hair.

    Valkun on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    you suck valkun

    INeedNoSalt on
  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I think I might like punch deck, but with some sort of mysticism around it. Otaku's an option I suppose, but I was thinking maybe a normal decker. Neo-catholic mystic maybe? Or perhaps a Native American or street mystic follower.

    Maybe an otaku candidate that failed to make the grade, but still worships the resonance, or believes the resonance is an aspect of Rat or something?

    Also, I was thinking a sort of hybridized decker maybe. Like a combat decker, only instead of combat focusing on infiltration and escape. A sort of hacking cat burglar, which I guess all Shadowrunners are but whatever.



    Edit: By what kind of Shaman, I meant like what traditions; Native American, African, Euro-cultish, sprawl-shaman, etc.

    piL on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    A Catholic priest seems more like a Hermetic magician than a Shamanistic one to me. :) Just holy books and ritual trappings rather than wizardry/scholarly books.

    Infidel on
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  • ValkunValkun Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    you suck valkun

    =( I can't help it. To be honest, he doesn't need to be a Shaman. It was just cool in my game that his totem was GOD. Magic use isn't really pivotal or even the main focus of him.

    Holy cow, the thread exploded while I was typing that up.

    Valkun on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Valkun wrote: »
    Holy cow, the thread exploded while I was typing that up.

    Yeah, I think there is a good bit of desire for Shadowrun up in here.

    I may be in over my head. D:

    Infidel on
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  • ValkunValkun Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Infidel wrote: »
    Valkun wrote: »
    Holy cow, the thread exploded while I was typing that up.

    Yeah, I think there is a good bit of desire for Shadowrun up in here.

    I may be in over my head. D:

    The last time I GM'd a shadowrun game on the forums, sign ups were filled within the first hour. I posted it at 6AM. D: Everyone loves Shadowrun, but it's tough as balls to host.

    Valkun on
  • InfidelInfidel Heretic Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Valkun wrote: »
    Infidel wrote: »
    Valkun wrote: »
    Holy cow, the thread exploded while I was typing that up.

    Yeah, I think there is a good bit of desire for Shadowrun up in here.

    I may be in over my head. D:

    The last time I GM'd a shadowrun game on the forums, sign ups were filled within the first hour. I posted it at 6AM. D: Everyone loves Shadowrun, but it's tough as balls to host.

    Wow, apparently the last Shadowrun game in here was yours, and that was a year and a half ago. D:

    Infidel on
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  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    In Magic in the Shadows, there is a Creator totem, a Great Mother totem, and a Dragon Slayer totem.

    The Order of St. Sylvester is a catholic order of magicians,

    In 2024, Pope John XXV issued a papal letter called "In Imago Dei" ("In the image of God") which stated the following:

    Metahumans are possessed of souls and capable of salvation. Discrimination against metahumans is not Christian.
    Magical abilities are not, by nature, evil. Rather, like any human ability, they may be used for good or evil.
    Spirits are living manifestations of nature. Thus, conjuring is not in itself evil.

    Then John XXV later declared that conjuring touches on so many questions of faith and doctrine that Catholics may not practice it without special permission from the choice. This is almost always only given to clergy and only under unique circumstances.

    A friend and I were once going to play a catholic duo, us being part of a catholic cult where he was going to be a mage that wasn't a part of St. Sylvester, but still operated under mostly catholic ideas. And I was going to be the meat half of that arrangement. We never fully hammered out the details of our mission.

    Edit: He was a hermetic, but what if the reason you weren't operating under direct authority of the pope is because your totem was talking to you and giving you orders, you you felt that it was divine influence, and it told you to ignore the pope.

    Also, it could just be the idol of the Adversary manipulating you. Of course, I don't think you can be a disagreeable shaman, so I'm not sure if that would really work out.

    piL on
  • ValkunValkun Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Infidel wrote: »
    Valkun wrote: »
    Infidel wrote: »
    Valkun wrote: »
    Holy cow, the thread exploded while I was typing that up.

    Yeah, I think there is a good bit of desire for Shadowrun up in here.

    I may be in over my head. D:

    The last time I GM'd a shadowrun game on the forums, sign ups were filled within the first hour. I posted it at 6AM. D: Everyone loves Shadowrun, but it's tough as balls to host.

    Wow, apparently the last Shadowrun game in here was yours, and that was a year and a half ago. D:

    I loved that game but I just got too busy with college. But I'm graduating in a few weeks and have a bunch of time before the Air Force gets back to me.

    Don't stress it, it's play by post so you can take all the time you need. It's not like an actual session where if you hit writer's block everyone is sitting around waiting.

    Edit: I tried to start up a somewhat non-traditional post-apocalyptic play by post Shadowrun game but there was no interest. I was sad.

    Valkun on
  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    And if I don't make the grade, my contact character concept is either a neophyte fixer with a heart of gold and a dedication to his craft, a corrupt Lone Star detective who still has a certain twisted honor and devotion to law and order paired off with his cynicism, apathy to crime he feels he can't really help (no point in just taking out every Shadowrunner he runs into, he needs contacts to get rid of the real problems), and a drug addiction or two.

    Or a shamanistic information broker.

    piL on
  • ValkunValkun Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Everyone wants to play a shaman, so I'll just turn Cross mundane or into an Adept.

    Now I'm super excited about this but I know nothing will happen for a few weeks.

    Valkun on
  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I don't want to be an actual shaman. That example was if I was a contact. I think only INNS is fighting you for that one.

    e: Also, I might try to think of another ingredient to add on the decker. I mean, I sort of like the idea of being heavy infiltrator and medium decker, instead of the other way around, so maybe I can just be a professional, or an investigator, or ex-private eye or something. I'm just not sure yet and am pretty indecisive. I've also always known it to matter what kind of GM for that sort of thing, and how much tolerance he has for running decking. Since this is pbp, I'm not super worried about that though.

    piL on
  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Nah it is all good for Valk

    He has the intense background etc

    INeedNoSalt on
  • piLpiL Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Valkun wrote: »
    Everyone wants to play a shaman, so I'll just turn Cross mundane or into an Adept.

    Catholic adept? A crusader!

    piL on
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