Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: The Smirking Brigand on <11-21-12/0833:43>
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Looking for some opinions and feedback on this topic. Also potential pitfalls that may not be immediately obvious.
So I want to run for some friends, but we're coming from an extreme high-magic fantasy campaign. Everyone is interested in trying out SR4a, but most have no experience. I've been playing SR off and on since the early 90s, and one other player has almost as much history with the setting; the rest are all new to SR in specific, and cyberpunk in general.
To provide contrast from our last campaign, and highlight the cyberpunk elements for those new to them, I'd like to slightly reduce the amount of magic in the setting.
Magic in general will be very rare. Not so much 'wage mage' as 'highly paid magical specialist' for corps, paranormal critters almost non-existant, (bug) spirits mostly just rumors, alternative races (anything beyond hume/elf/dwarf/ork/troll) as unique NPCs, etc. Common knowledge says these things all still exist, but mostly as window dressing to actual runs.
Ideas?
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You don't need to reduce the amount of magic at all to emphasize the cyberpunk feel of the setting. Simply adjust the kinds of jobs they're given. Magic is still rare enough that you won't see uber-mages on most runs. Just going by the Missions released this season, any of the ones involving Bull's ORC activities are pretty low-magic. Even some of the Artifacts missions are fairly low-magic. Running through the Emergence timeline will certainly provide a cyberpunk feel. I'm sure you can think of other examples as well. The Shadowrun universe is like a huge stage, with a spotlight going here and there. What is emphasized depends on where you put the spotlight.
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Looking for some opinions and feedback on this topic. Also potential pitfalls that may not be immediately obvious.
So I want to run for some friends, but we're coming from an extreme high-magic fantasy campaign. Everyone is interested in trying out SR4a, but most have no experience. I've been playing SR off and on since the early 90s, and one other player has almost as much history with the setting; the rest are all new to SR in specific, and cyberpunk in general.
To provide contrast from our last campaign, and highlight the cyberpunk elements for those new to them, I'd like to slightly reduce the amount of magic in the setting.
Magic in general will be very rare. Not so much 'wage mage' as 'highly paid magical specialist' for corps, paranormal critters almost non-existant, (bug) spirits mostly just rumors, alternative races (anything beyond hume/elf/dwarf/ork/troll) as unique NPCs, etc. Common knowledge says these things all still exist, but mostly as window dressing to actual runs.
Ideas?
By "alternative races do you mean stuff like dragons, or do you mean gnomes, fomiri, night oness, centaurs an so on and so forth?
Also, if mages are going to be super rare then your runners just end getting flattened the first time they have to fight a spirit, so you might want to spend at least some time explaining the various ways around their "immunity".
The other big thing is that with no mage you will probably want to have at least one of your runners take longarms since they will not be able to have the groups mage just LoS snipe with stunbolts.
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Hacking and Magic is as rare as the GM makes it. Been in groups that have lacked both, hacking was handled via NPC and magic we only encountered now and then.
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This was how we played in SR2 back in the day, none of us were really comfortable with the decking or magic rules when we first got the core rulebook, so we kept it pretty street-level (using very abbreviated decking). Gritty NPCs, in marginalized parts of the city is kind of classic cyberpunk - forays into the corporate world should be like field trips for 3rd Graders, display the contrasting sides of how technology can really help people but also how it can get out of control.
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This was how we played in SR2 back in the day, none of us were really comfortable with the decking or magic rules when we first got the core rulebook, so we kept it pretty street-level (using very abbreviated decking). Gritty NPCs, in marginalized parts of the city is kind of classic cyberpunk - forays into the corporate world should be like field trips for 3rd Graders, display the contrasting sides of how technology can really help people but also how it can get out of control.
You've nailed the game I run perfectly.
But I'm stealing the line about "field trip for 3rd graders", because that's just gorgeous, that is.
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By "alternative races do you mean stuff like dragons, or do you mean gnomes, fomiri, night oness, centaurs an so on and so forth?
Also, if mages are going to be super rare then your runners just end getting flattened the first time they have to fight a spirit, so you might want to spend at least some time explaining the various ways around their "immunity".
The other big thing is that with no mage you will probably want to have at least one of your runners take longarms since they will not be able to have the groups mage just LoS snipe with stunbolts.
For alternative races, just the base 5 are available for chargen; alternative metavariants will be heard of but not seen.
In regards to fighting spirits, that's entirely in my hands. In other words, they won't be fighting spirits until and unless they're ready. Same with long range combat. However, thank you for pointing these out, as they may be questions my more experienced player may have.
As far as I "..don't need to reduce the amount of magic at all..", that's kind of the point, reducing the amount of magic since we're switching from a high magic campaign. If we wanted to just do cyberpunk I'd go out and find an old copy of 2020, but that's not what we want; we want to play in the Sixth World. I understand what you're saying, just de-emphasize the magical elements of the setting rather than reduce, but in my eyes that can lead to logical inconsistancies which I want to avoid in the first place. (commonality of magical overwatch, defenses, spirits, paracritters, etc)
Again, I don't want to completely nullify the magical/paranormal ... just reduce it to the point that a magical problem or solution is rarer than any other option.
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Hacking and Magic is as rare as the GM makes it. Been in groups that have lacked both, hacking was handled via NPC and magic we only encountered now and then.
When nobody wants to play a hacker, I'll pick someone appropriate (someone who has taken Mysterious Implant, if available) and saddle them with an "special" Commlink that's home to an AI that, for whatever reason, has decided the team are it's Special Friends.
Takes care of the Hacking, and provides a nice hook for side-jobs as downtime between major arcs.
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By "alternative races do you mean stuff like dragons, or do you mean gnomes, fomiri, night oness, centaurs an so on and so forth?
Also, if mages are going to be super rare then your runners just end getting flattened the first time they have to fight a spirit, so you might want to spend at least some time explaining the various ways around their "immunity".
The other big thing is that with no mage you will probably want to have at least one of your runners take longarms since they will not be able to have the groups mage just LoS snipe with stunbolts.
For alternative races, just the base 5 are available for chargen; alternative metavariants will be heard of but not seen.
In regards to fighting spirits, that's entirely in my hands. In other words, they won't be fighting spirits until and unless they're ready. Same with long range combat. However, thank you for pointing these out, as they may be questions my more experienced player may have.
As far as I "..don't need to reduce the amount of magic at all..", that's kind of the point, reducing the amount of magic since we're switching from a high magic campaign. If we wanted to just do cyberpunk I'd go out and find an old copy of 2020, but that's not what we want; we want to play in the Sixth World. I understand what you're saying, just de-emphasize the magical elements of the setting rather than reduce, but in my eyes that can lead to logical inconsistancies which I want to avoid in the first place. (commonality of magical overwatch, defenses, spirits, paracritters, etc)
Again, I don't want to completely nullify the magical/paranormal ... just reduce it to the point that a magical problem or solution is rarer than any other option.
What does reducing the number of unusual metatypes (like gnomes which are just an offshoot of dwarfs or fomori which is just an offshoot of trolls) have to do with decreasing the amount of magic that shows up in your world over all...
I do not get how those two things are related.
I'm not saying that you can't make that ruling (obviously you can its your campaign) I just don't get the logic behind how reducing the amount of magic leads to having fewer rare metaypes.
Granted, on the other hand with less magic there will be less interest/need for people to end up playing those rare metatypes in order to get metatypes with the built in Arcane Arrester advantage for the street samuri who wants to make sure he doesn't go down up against the first good stunbolt he runs into.
Also as another heads up on how this will affect your campaign (not sure if it was intended or not) expect to have B&E stuff/related skills become more powerful. A phrase that tends to crop up a lot in our runs is "you can't sneak past a spirit" which is why if the bad guys have spirits and we don't have a way to nutralize them/bluff the bad guys (and thus the spirits which answer to them) into thinking we belong there then it was clearly time to go in guns blazing.
With fewer spirits it will be much easier to sneak around.