[SR] Shadowrun2050 and character generation

[Niels Kobschätzki]

Hi,

I hope I find here some good suggestions for a problem I am having.
Soon I want to start a campaign based on Shadowrun 2050 (so SR4A-rules
in the 2050-setting with some rule modifications like returned
Grounding). And now I have some problems:

1) Shadowrun 2050 is not very helpful in regards of the character
generation. The prices in SR2050 are (sometimes far) higher than those
of SR4. Still you only get 5.000 Nuyen/BP. Does anyone has experiences
in regards how to change that? I am worrying that when I am setting the
money/BP too high Sams and similar concepts get far too strong while
leaving it at the 5000 Nuyen/BP-level they aren't strong enough. Or is
it not a problem at all and the mony-limit is ok that way? It seems to
be only a real problem with Cyber- and Bioware while Fake SINs for
example are still pretty cheap compared to 2nd Edition-levels.

2) Does anyone know a good source where is listed when which piece of
equipment got introduced (incl. stuff like Beta- or Deltagrade
Cyberware)? The equipment-list in SR2050 is pretty short and I am
already wondering about Bioware. I thought that was earliest introduced
in 2052. I would like to know what the characters could get and what is
really cutting edge-technology or not yet available. The same for
upcomings of magic etc. - when did which sub-meta race occured and stuff
(changelings didn't happen before 2063 with the YotC, right? Drakes and
AIs were pretty late, too afaik).

3) Regarding (2): I am planning to not allow taking Bioware during
character generation because it is so new. Yay or Nay? I have a house
rule-SOTA-positive quality which they could take if they still would
like to use Bioware but what would be a good availability-adjustment

4) Does anyone know if there are conversions of the old adventures to
SR4-rules are available (at least something home-made that only shows
adjusted ratings)?

Cheers,

Niels

[Gurth]

Op 4 jan. 2013, om 10:01 heeft Niels Kobsch�tzki <ni...@kobschaetzki.net>
het volgende geschreven:

> 2) Does anyone know a good source where is listed when which piece of
> equipment got introduced (incl. stuff like Beta- or Deltagrade
> Cyberware)?

I have a nearly-complete list, but it's not in a form I can easily share.

> The equipment-list in SR2050 is pretty short and I am
> already wondering about Bioware. I thought that was earliest introduced
> in 2052.

It was introduced in Shadowtech, which is set in 2052. The best way to find
out what was available in 2050 is to get a copy of the first- or
second-edition main rulebook, the Street Samurai Catalog and the Rigger
Black Book -- most of what's in those three should be available in 2050.

There are some exceptions, but really that's up to the GM. Some examples
from the Rigger Black Book, as I happen to have that next to my keyboard as
I type this: "The Eurovan is the latest offering from Renault-Fiat's new
automated plant," followed by comments made in August 2052 -- you can
easily rule that that means the Eurovan isn't available in 2050. OTOH, the
Saab Dynamit 776Ti most likely is, because even though it has a June 2052
comment, its blurb says it won rallies in 2045-'49.

> The same for upcomings of magic etc. - when did which sub-meta race
> occured and stuff (changelings didn't happen before 2063 with the YotC,
> right? Drakes and AIs were pretty late, too afaik).

All of those should technically exist in 2050, but they were only
introduced into the game rules in the late '90s, which would mean the late
2050s in-world. The first mention of ogres and minotaurs is in Paranormal
Animals of Europe, set in 2053. The only exception is that anything related
to SURGE (people with tails, feathers, and other such random mutations) can
only occur after September 2061.

Spells are a bit more difficult: because anybody can design any spell,
there really is no limit to what is and isn't available at any time. Physad
powers are more difficult still, since there is no real published way for
anybody to discover or design those. My advice would be to simply allow all
of them.

> 3) Regarding (2): I am planning to not allow taking Bioware during
> character generation because it is so new. Yay or Nay? I have a house
> rule-SOTA-positive quality which they could take if they still would
> like to use Bioware but what would be a good availability-adjustment

In a campaign like this, you can easily use a SOTA edge to let players
"buy' access to equipment that's not available during character generation:
give the edge a level that indicates how many years they can get an item
ahead of time. For example, in a campaign set in 2050, with SOTA at 4 you
could get gear from Fields of Fire.

> 4) Does anyone know if there are conversions of the old adventures to
> SR4-rules are available (at least something home-made that only shows
> adjusted ratings)?

No idea, but adventures aren't very hard to convert on the fly if you have
to. Just remember what stats got split into what other stats. Didn't
Intelligence become Logic and Intuition or some such? So you just use an
NPC's Intelligence for either of those two when you need one of them. I
wouldn't worry too much about this kind of thing, if I were you -- I found
it pretty easy to run adventures designed for completely different games in
SR, just by doing a few quick conversions ahead of time and putting Post-It
notes with, well, notes in the margins. I can't imagine SR1/2/3 adventures
would even require that much work to run with SR4 rules.



--
Gu...@xs4all.nl - http://www.understairs.nl | www.plasticwarriors.org
Dat is zoveel beter dan domweg gelukkig zijn

[Niels Kobschätzki]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013, at 11:03, Gurth wrote:
> Op 4 jan. 2013, om 10:01 heeft Niels Kobsch�tzki <ni...@kobschaetzki.net>
> het volgende geschreven:

> > 2) Does anyone know a good source where is listed when which piece of
> > equipment got introduced (incl. stuff like Beta- or Deltagrade
> > Cyberware)?
>

> I have a nearly-complete list, but it's not in a form I can easily share.

Ok

> > The equipment-list in SR2050 is pretty short and I am
> > already wondering about Bioware. I thought that was earliest introduced
> > in 2052.
>

> It was introduced in Shadowtech, which is set in 2052. The best way to
> find out what was available in 2050 is to get a copy of the first- or
> second-edition main rulebook, the Street Samurai Catalog and the Rigger
> Black Book -- most of what's in those three should be available in 2050.

ok, I'll do that

> There are some exceptions, but really that's up to the GM. Some examples
> from the Rigger Black Book, as I happen to have that next to my keyboard
> as I type this: "The Eurovan is the latest offering from Renault-Fiat's
> new automated plant," followed by comments made in August 2052 -- you can
> easily rule that that means the Eurovan isn't available in 2050. OTOH,
> the Saab Dynamit 776Ti most likely is, because even though it has a June
> 2052 comment, its blurb says it won rallies in 2045-'49.

well, a coment just tells you that at some point of time someone
commented on a thing. I can speak nowadays about a Ford Mustang from
1965 which doesn't mean that it got inroduced in 2012 ;)
But the dates of the rule books are pretty practical.

> > The same for upcomings of magic etc. - when did which sub-meta race
> > occured and stuff (changelings didn't happen before 2063 with the YotC,
> > right? Drakes and AIs were pretty late, too afaik).
>

> All of those should technically exist in 2050, but they were only
> introduced into the game rules in the late '90s, which would mean the
> late 2050s in-world. The first mention of ogres and minotaurs is in
> Paranormal Animals of Europe, set in 2053. The only exception is that
> anything related to SURGE (people with tails, feathers, and other such
> random mutations) can only occur after September 2061.

Yeah, I just read that Drakes are a rare form of SURGE. AIs were later
developed iirc but I didn't plan to allow players to play free spirits
and AIs anyway. I remembered Drakes wrong and thought they were a recent
magical phenomenon (change in magic levels or whatever).

> Spells are a bit more difficult: because anybody can design any spell,
> there really is no limit to what is and isn't available at any time.
> Physad powers are more difficult still, since there is no real published
> way for anybody to discover or design those. My advice would be to simply
> allow all of them.

I guess I allow spells and powers. For other stuff they already explain
it in 2050 that there were academic breakthroughs which lead to them
(like everyone has summoning and binding after some point of time and
that grounding vanished at some point of time is a strange phenomenom
and stuff.)

> > 3) Regarding (2): I am planning to not allow taking Bioware during
> > character generation because it is so new. Yay or Nay? I have a house
> > rule-SOTA-positive quality which they could take if they still would
> > like to use Bioware but what would be a good availability-adjustment
>

> In a campaign like this, you can easily use a SOTA edge to let players
> "buy' access to equipment that's not available during character
> generation: give the edge a level that indicates how many years they can
> get an item ahead of time. For example, in a campaign set in 2050, with
> SOTA at 4 you could get gear from Fields of Fire.

Ok. Good idea.

> > 4) Does anyone know if there are conversions of the old adventures to
> > SR4-rules are available (at least something home-made that only shows
> > adjusted ratings)?
>
>

> No idea, but adventures aren't very hard to convert on the fly if you
> have to. Just remember what stats got split into what other stats. Didn't
> Intelligence become Logic and Intuition or some such? So you just use an
> NPC's Intelligence for either of those two when you need one of them. I
> wouldn't worry too much about this kind of thing, if I were you -- I
> found it pretty easy to run adventures designed for completely different
> games in SR, just by doing a few quick conversions ahead of time and
> putting Post-It notes with, well, notes in the margins. I can't imagine
> SR1/2/3 adventures would even require that much work to run with SR4
> rules.

Good to know. Thanks :)

[Gurth]

Op 4 jan. 2013, om 11:17 heeft Niels Kobsch�tzki <ni...@kobschaetzki.net>
het volgende geschreven:

>> I have a nearly-complete list, but it's not in a form I can easily share.
>
> Ok

The reason being, it's tied up in my complete rewrite of SR1/2/3 + house
rules. Extracting just the equipment names and dates would be a ton of work.

> well, a coment just tells you that at some point of time someone
> commented on a thing. I can speak nowadays about a Ford Mustang from
> 1965 which doesn't mean that it got inroduced in 2012 ;)
> But the dates of the rule books are pretty practical.

The dates on the comments are often the only things you have to go on. For
some items, it's obvious even from the comments that they've been around for
a long time, while others would logically be available much earlier[1], and
yet others are clearly brand-new (either from their blurb or the comments).
Basically, you need to read the description and comments for each item and
then decide. I found it also helps if some items are commonly available a
little _later_ than their first appearance in a book[2].

[1] The retinal clock, for example. It first appears in Cybertechnology
that's set in 2056, but you're not telling me it would take a couple of
decades for a clock to finally get incorporated into cybereyes ...
[2] Like the Predator II. It's in the Street Samurai Catalog with comments
from late 2050, so it would be available that year. However, this means
nobody would buy an original Predator, so by introducing it in 2051 you can
have it available to characters with the SOTA edge at level 1 while
everybody else is "stuck" with the original model. You can explain this
quite easily in-game by saying it may have been released in '50, but only
becomes commonly available in 2051.

> Yeah, I just read that Drakes are a rare form of SURGE.

Not sure, drakes were introduced at a time when I had largely stopped paying
attention to the latest releases. I have Dragons of the Sixth World, but
haven't read much in it at all.

> AIs were later developed iirc

Yes and no. There are a very small number of AIs in the 2050s/early '60s SR
settings. You can probably count them on two or three fingers (though you
might need to do so in binary ;)

> I didn't plan to allow players to play free spirits and AIs anyway.

You can do that in SR4?

> I guess I allow spells and powers. For other stuff they already explain
> it in 2050 that there were academic breakthroughs which lead to them
> (like everyone has summoning and binding after some point of time and
> that grounding vanished at some point of time is a strange phenomenom
> and stuff.)

So ... they're retconning the retcons now?

Why, oh why, did FASA pull the plug on itself?


> Ok. Good idea.

It's basically how I revised the SOTA Equipment edge for my aforementioned
homebrew-rewrite :) The other parts of it are a TN modifier for buying
"future" gear after character generation, and an automatic degradation of
the edge by 1 every year that passes in the campaign. IMHO this finally
makes this edge make sense compared to the SR2/3 versions of it.

> Good to know. Thanks :)

Of course, if you have the time to prepare, you can apply the guidelines
FanPro once published for converting your SR3 character to SR4 to the NPCs.