[CitizenJoe]

Street level and street scum aren't easier games, they are challenge levels for groups that find normal play too easy. 

[MijRai]

Nobody said (or implied) they are 'easier' games. 

[Dinendae]

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.

[Lighthouse]

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.

[Dabat]

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.

[MijRai]

I like the cut of your gib, good sir. 

[Dabat]

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.

[MijRai]

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. 

[Halinn]

And we're back to a boat being the best option for sustainable survival.

[MijRai]

Possibly.  There's a lot of factors to consider, there. 

[Dabat]

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.

[MijRai]

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. 

[Dabat]

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.