C) what's so upsetting about any of this? If a player goes "I want to bypass the rules put in place to limit how I use drones and set up a host!" all you have to do is say "No." But if you're not comfortable just saying "No", then say "Ok. Look up how much it costs to buy/set up a Host. I'll get back to you when you find it."
I think we have a deeply fundamental disagreement here on how RPGs work. Is this always your response when players want to do something that's not in the rules?
In a recent session, a player wanted to smash out of a first floor window and do a diving melee attack onto an opponent below. I don't think there are any specific rules for that. Should I have said "show me where in the book it says you can do that"?
Surely this sort of thing -- players wanting to do things or having to operate in circumstances that aren't in the rules -- happens all the time? Do you always say no? Do you play RPGs like board games, then -- there's a list of actions one specifically can do, and players pick between the items on that list?
At my table, it's different. We put the narrative first. "You are in this situation," I say, as GM. "Then I will take this action," replies the player. Then -- and only then -- do we figure out the rules that cover the action. And when there are no rules, we improvise something based on what rules we have.
There's absolutely a time and place for incorporating players' ideas into the game when the rules don't cover them. What we're disagreeing on, apparently, is whether there are limits to how far that adaptability should go.
For example, let's say a player doesn't want to play a Shadowrunner, but instead wants to play a Mr. Johnson. It's totally an appropriate in-universe archetype, right? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean it's appropriate for
players to play. At least, not in a standard Shadowrun campaign. You can be a FORMER Mr. Johnson, sure. Or a runner who hopes to sell out and become a FUTURE Mr. Johnson, sure. But things a Mr. Johnson does is solidly in the realm of "NPC" rather than "PC". Assuming, of course, you're running a "standard" campaign where the players are playing Shadowrunners. A campaign where everyone plays corp movers and shakers could indeed be a neat thing to behold, hiring shadowrunners as your own pawns to sniff out and foil each other's plots and plans... but that's hardly the default kind of campaign.
So just like Mr. Js are perfectly appropriate to the setting, so too are illegal/underground Hosts. Afterall every mob in the Sprawl surely has many of them, right? Again it doesn't mean
Shadowrunners make personal use of them. If you want to allow it, fine! No sarcasm. It's just that you'll have to invent a whole bunch of rules since the game by default sets up Hosts as being a kind of NPC-only thing. And if you're going to make up a bunch of rules for PC-run Hosts, well there's not much the rest of us can do other than kibitz. Because: in the rules PCs aren't assumed to control Hosts. Me, I'd rather just save myself and the player heartache by just nipping any desire to shortcut Noise rules by setting up a personal Host in the bud by flatly disallowing it. Unless/until such time there
are rules for PC-run Hosts! (How much does it cost to set up? How much does it cost per month to run? How do you figure the ASDF values, given as-is they're "whatever the frag you want them to be"- that's not conducive to good play balance in player hands! How do you keep GOD from shutting it down- Overwatch Score only applies to hacking tests... etc etc. )
