Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: MijRai on <11-18-15/1122:46>
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So, I've always wondered the kinds of characters folks would bring to various kinds of games; it's interesting to see what other people are up to in the same kinds of situations. I've also been on a The Walking Dead bender. So, to start off a possible series of discussion...
What kind of Shadowrun character would you bring to the zombie apocalypse? Not shedim or other forms of spirit possession, not CFD. Magical viral outbreak zombie apocalypse, no headshots means do not pass go or collect $200.
I immediately think I'd go parkour style adept; nothing beats survivability in the zombie apocalypse as being able to go most anywhere and evade the hordes. Free Fall, Hang Time, Metabolic Control, Sustenance, Combat/Danger Sense, Light Body, Traceless Walk, Wall Running... And of course Improved Reflexes. Motion Sense if the power points are around. Toss him a bit of Longarms, a good dash of Outdoors and Survival in skills, and he's a mountaineer/wilderness guide, trapped in the concrete jungle between jobs. He travels light, knows his way around, always has a contingency for whatever he's got planned. As far as Priorities go, probably A Attribute, B Magic, C Skills, D Money, E Human. 3 Edge is a decent starting point, and 6 Magic with 50,000 nuyen leaves plenty of room for getting qi foci on top of the plethora of power points. A bow might be interesting too.
That said, I also love the idea of the 'wared up troll, the true shadowrunner, a street-sam whose titanium legs provide a nifty protection against zombie bites (turns out metal doesn't give like skin does). A guy who considers himself not to be trapped, but in a target rich environment.
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Magician or Mystic-Adept.
Levitate means never getting surrounded outside. Slaughter Zombie would work great for broken arrow situations. Ram [Wall] for getting out of a building in a pinch. Catalog for scavenging. Physical/Element wall/Lock, or one of the other options to block off entry ways. There are lots of spells that could be useful.
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It's hard for me to imagine doing anything but Mystic Adept here. Levitate to keep yourself out of reach, detect spells and adept powers to warn you of danger, health spells to keep you whole, spirits to keep watch over you at night and to help with zombie murdering. I think Drain would be a bigger danger than the zombies themselves.
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I'd go with one of the characters I've actually played in game, an elf Magician of a tradition I made called the Swordmage (possession tradition). Because blades never run out of ammo.
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Dolphin shapeshifter? :P
Or a m#¤%f¤%ng shedim, now I wont even have to work to get access to new corpses.
Or play hard mode and be a Fomorian streetsam or Xapiri thepe face:)
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I'd play an AI with a nice Otomo drone as a home device ;D
No more problems with those rotting meatbags...
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Definitely the intuition mage I'm playing now. As noted above, levitate and invisibility keep you safe. Various detect spells (detect enemies, spatial sense, detect life, clairvoyance). Once change I may make would be to lose astral projection and add adept powers. metabolic control would be big, also mentioned above.
Kind of like what you see on TWD, the surviving humans are usually your biggest problem. Zombies, even hordes can be managed. Its those pesky metahumans who want your stuff and your walls.
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Rigger with an Ares Roadmaster, a sniper drone and a wicked solar energy panel.
Zombies? Oh, oh, I just ran over one. Hordes of zombies? Boom headshot all day long.
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Rigger with an Ares Roadmaster, a sniper drone and a wicked solar energy panel.
Zombies? Oh, oh, I just ran over one. Hordes of zombies? Boom headshot all day long.
You'd need a lot of ammo. Maybe get a replica gun you can make your own bullets for?
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A ghoul sounds fun here.
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Or a laser weapon, Halinn. Those run on batteries! And yes, the Infected would be fun at this time too... I mean, who else would take the blame so easily?
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Or a laser weapon, Halinn. Those run on batteries!
I like that. Armored van and solar powered drones with laser weapons. Only issue is that you'll still eventually run out of food (unless zombies leave animals alone).
Mage has the longevity advantage, with the Nutrition spell (Stolen Souls p. 190). Chance of becoming addicted and eventually dying from that, but it's addiction rating 2 and threshold 1 so quite unlikely.
Alternately, you could do the solar powered rigger thing but with a boat instead. Fishing for food, electricity to distill salt water.
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I'd play an overworked middle manager that was having an affair with his secretary. If you're going to play a zombie apocalypse game, you need to follow the tropes.
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Uh, I could play a cute secretary and girlfriend to an overworked middle manager- Being frustrated with him not leaving his boorish wife as promised. And later furious when the zombie crisis brings them closer together.
... But maybe if that B¤% got bitten???!!
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Alternately, you could do the solar powered rigger thing but with a boat instead. Fishing for food, electricity to distill salt water.
Owner of a small-to-medium sized solar-powered cruise liner. Convert decks to growing algae for food.
Heck, you'd just cruise around the world going from port city to port city and sending scavenging parties to get luxuries like rice, pasta and applesauce. Eventually, you'd have to enforce a cruel dystopian breeding schedule to keep the genetics as fresh as you can, but it would make a great alternate storyline for a Zombie-pacolypse.
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What kind of Shadowrun character would you bring to the zombie apocalypse? Not shedim or other forms of spirit possession, not CFD. Magical viral outbreak zombie apocalypse, no headshots means do not pass go or collect $200.
Blades (sword) adept with Wudang Sword. Or a mono-whip adept. Weapon focus either way.
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Most likely, my current character, a blade adept, with a few minor tweeks. Those being, having sustenance and less disguise related powers/foci, for stuff like hang time, wall running, etc., and having more ranks in improved ability (swords and automatics).
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I only play magicians. Period. My personal take is that if you're not Awakened, well, you're basically just another NPC. And do the muggles really count, in the grand scheme of things? Eh, not really.
In this case, they'd be lunch.
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Hahahahaha. Inhale. Hahahahahahahhahahaha
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I'd probably go with a Druid mage with shapechange spell or a falconine shifter. Zombies approaching? Fly away! Need to get to that place on the other side of the zombie horde? Fly over!
Fireball and such for when you gotta fight too
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You guys really don't seem to understand what a zombie apocalypse is. You're playing murder simulators not survival horror.
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You guys really don't seem to understand what a zombie apocalypse is. You're playing murder simulators not survival horror.
There isn't really a 'right' answer, man.
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Especially when you consider magic actually gives you options to address the issue at hand.
A lone guy with just a machete and limited ammo, the latter of which you use sparingly both because you only have so much or the noise tends to attract even more zombies, has to choose a much more careful MO.
Throw magic in the mix and a lot of those calculations change drastically and you can not fault people for picking more proactive solutions.
Hell something as simple as Move Earth to dig a pit, physical barrier over it until a bunch of zombie walk over it and release it to drop them in to your own personal kill box changes the battlefield considerably.
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I'd play an overworked middle manager that was having an affair with his secretary. If you're going to play a zombie apocalypse game, you need to follow the tropes.
This. Unless the Zombies are some kind of Super Zombie! For Shadowrunners this is simply anarchy where they're likely the best trained and equipped group of people around and therefore will wind up on top of the local pile pretty quickly.
Boston Lockdown and Bug City are Shadowrun settings that pretty well simulate a local breakdown of law and order. Awakened and Armed to the teeth runners do well compared to the average wage slave in these environments and would likely become the de facto local warlords overnight.
Either game has it's merits but "Oh noes all teh corps haz fallen!" is not something your typical Shadowrunner is usually worried about. ;)
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I would love to run Boston Lockdown with a street level campaign. The horror! Also the best part about CFD is it's not just zombies they are like 28 days later zombies some of which have cyberware and others are super geniuses controlling a hivemind. Bwa Ha ha. Then you can make variants: suicide bombers with internal explosives made by their nanites. It also can ad weird things like some of them are eghosts. They could think they are Sam Spade detective personality someone engineered or a downloaded personality like Armitage.
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Totally off topic but, I don't get Street Level games. Magic Archetypes are already mechanically favored, I'm not sure what the appeal is to outright banning Street Samurai, Deckers and Riggers from the table gets you. Don't most Street level games quickly become a magical go-gang and a technomancer?
I understand the desire to start out with a more local focus, but that can be achieved pretty easily with character backstory. *shrug* Just my suggestion. Work with the players to not create a pack of murder hobos or international mercenaries and you should get the same story vibe as a street level game without banning certain classic Shadowrun Archetypes.
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Totally off topic but, I don't get Street Level games. Magic Archetypes are already mechanically favored, I'm not sure what the appeal is to outright banning Street Samurai, Deckers and Riggers from the table gets you. Don't most Street level games quickly become a magical go-gang and a technomancer?
I understand the desire to start out with a more local focus, but that can be achieved pretty easily with character backstory. *shrug* Just my suggestion. Work with the players to not create a pack of murder hobos or international mercenaries and you should get the same story vibe as a street level game without banning certain classic Shadowrun Archetypes.
Which rules are you using? There's the Street Level rules and Street Scum rules. One drops most of your nuyen, some karma, etc., the other just adjusts your Priorities (I think it is B, C, D, D, E? The rules for it are around page... 250 or 350 I think?). If you're doing low-level games, the latter is better. I also wouldn't call it a ban on Shadowrun archetypes; they just become more difficult to start out all shiny; that gives the GM a chance to provide options in-game for people to acquire their stuff.
On top of that, your concerns about 'magical go-gangs' are easily rectified by working with the players to not create a 'pack' of magical murder hobos. Magic is rare, it generally shouldn't make up most of the party unless there's a theme going on.
I'm not going to get into the whole 'magical' archetypes are mechanically favored' part. It is partially true, but there's a number of counterbalances and concerns.
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the other just adjusts your Priorities (I think it is B, C, D, D, E? The rules for it are around page... 250 or 350 I think?)
BCDEE
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Street level rules I've seen is on p. 64 and it's dramatically less Nuyen, 13 Karma instead of 25, much lower availability on gear (not that you can afford any). So pretty much a ban on Riggers, Samurai and Deckers. PITA for Mystic Adepts who lose a PP, Adepts and Mages are out some starting Karma.
Street Scum is essentially a SumTo6 chargen, p350. I honestly don't know how you make anything called a shadowrunner out of that. Good for Wage Slaves gone bad though.
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Street Scum is essentially a SumTo6 chargen, p350. I honestly don't know how you make anything called a shadowrunner out of that. Good for Wage Slaves gone bad though.
That's part of the point, though. You're not making a full-blown, experienced Shadowrunner. You're making a member of the street scum. You're starting lower on the totem pole.
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Street level and street scum aren't easier games, they are challenge levels for groups that find normal play too easy.
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Nobody said (or implied) they are 'easier' games.
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Street Scum is essentially a SumTo6 chargen, p350. I honestly don't know how you make anything called a shadowrunner out of that. Good for Wage Slaves gone bad though.
That's part of the point, though. You're not making a full-blown, experienced Shadowrunner. You're making a member of the street scum. You're starting lower on the totem pole.
Yep! I always veiwed those two builds as the ganger just starting to enter the shadows, or the corp that just got burned and tossed out on their backside.
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To make it less magic run you can at street level go with the lower priorities and cap the starting magic rating. That evens the playing feild some.
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I actually ran this very scenario for my annual Halloween game a few weeks back. The character creation was count-to-six on the priority table (my normal 'street' level games are count-to-eight). Everyone died like they were supposed to. It was fun.
As for what I would take. I am going to buck the trend of magic and say I would run my current character. A retired army ranger with perception out the yin-yang, enough REA+INT to simply buy the three hits needed not to be surprised and who, unlike most Shadowrun characters, could actually survive once the processed food ran out.
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I like the cut of your gib, good sir.
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I seriously considered swapping his metatype and his magic (D and E) so he could use assensing and summon watcher spirits to guard his back. But I liked him better as a pure mundane.
After thinking about it a bit more, I am glad I didn't for this scenario. TBH I don't think I'd want to be a Shadowrun mage in any kind of zombie apocalypse, even assuming the zombies themselves aren't some kind of walking mana static (ala techno-zombies), things would be pretty bad for mages seeing as how the death of the entirety of humanity would leave the planet Earth as one giant background count zone.
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I wouldn't consider the zombies themselves as having their own background count (at least, not for a few hours/days after a traumatic turn, I guess), but that is a very important consideration. Cities would suuuck for a long time. I'd consider most other areas wouldn't get that bad, though.
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And we're back to a boat being the best option for sustainable survival.
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Possibly. There's a lot of factors to consider, there.
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YMMV but I am not so sure about zombies not having their own background count. Magic in Shadowrun is a byproduct of life (there's no magic in space unless they bring tons of plants with them). Death is natural, but zombies aren't just dead they're undead, abominations to nature in a way even shaitan aren't. If I ever ran a Night of the Living Shadowdead (as opposed to the techno-zombies that showed up this year) I'd feel quite comfortable justifying zombies being a walking background count zone.
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Yes, magic comes from life. Background count itself generally comes from emotion and aspected power, however. Nobody has decided (or can, for that matter, until someone officially writes them up) 'hey, each of these is a walking mana ebb or background count,' so I'd assume they don't pack around their own zone as a result of being undead. In fact, you could argue that a possible cause for all these undead is due to the planet throwing up some anti-human 'anti-bodies' to fight the infestation.
That doesn't mean they won't have a background count related to having been a metahuman who was attacked and killed by zombies; if I remember right, the current rules have a... +3 background count spike at a 'normal' murder scene for a few hours? (Though I personally dislike that as it makes background count far too... Fluid, for my tastes.) So 'fresh' zombies would be a pain in the ass to magic users for sure. And any place where lots of people died would have the background count linger, perhaps forever (or at least 'forever' as far as the zombie apocalypse survivor are concerned).
Throwing a constant background count everywhere it matters (i.e. on almost every enemy) is a bit of a dick move to any magic users in the party.
Also, shaitan? You mean shedim? The extra-planar entities whose entire purpose and goal is to exterminate all life everywhere, and do so merely by standing around, much less before they apply their malign, alien intellect to making it happen faster? With a seething hatred for all forms of life?
And Techno-zombies? You mean CFD? Or Cyber-zombies, which are a very different thing, both of which are very different from zombies.
There's specific terms for these things for a reason.
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I agree with most what you are saying, hence my inclusion of 'YMMV' and 'I'd feel quite comfortable justifying'. Even if it was done just to be a dick move, I don't believe it is any more of a dick move than basing a game in Chicago. A true dick move would be to tell everyone to make a mage, and then, after the game began, declaring that since (almost) then entire human species has just died the entire earth now a mana void.
Shedim is Hebrew for demon, Shaitan is Arabic for devil. Please forgive my mistake for working off the translations of the words in related languages. And, no, techno-zombies is in fact what I meant. The whole game was inspired by Lockdown, but the zombies in my game were in no way CFD victims, which is why I did not call them CFD victims. Lastly, you are right that I used the term 'techno-zombies' to mean two different things in two different posts, and that was my fault.