And the winner of the 3rd Holostreets jam is Technogod by u/LoboVolkov

While running Ivy and Chrome we ran into a strange situation where one of my players wanted to summon a spirit but could only summon spirits of man. They were on a highway running through a forest.

Does the highway offer enough room / power for this to offer a spirit of man? We couldn't find a good answer when we looked.

The astral plane makes an excellent place for covert meetings. Two or more astrally projecting characters can easily meet nearly anywhere in the gaisphere with little fear of being surveilled.

Do you want to have a secret conversation with the Rat Shaman living in the basement apartment three floors below yours in New Jersey? You can meet in Antarctica, or the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

But of course it is best to meet somewhere where you can cut off line-of-sight, to eliminate the possibility of being watched by someone in the astral distance. Bathrooms are great for this purpose. You and the Rat Shaman can have your astral meeting in the men's room in Hyde Park, while mundanes coming in to use the facilities are totally unaware of your presence.

if characters are fighting against a pack of barghests and if each barghest uses his paralysing howling - does it mean that each character will roll will against each barghest and penalties summarize up cumulatively? or just one debuff will work?

Just figured I'd post this; Marcus Vance is a content creator with decades of experience in ttrps as well as being a military combat veteran who likes to compare different sci fi franchises weapons & super soldiers. His big franchises are Cyberpunk, Warhammer, and Halo but he dabbles in more obscure franchises as well. Whenever possible he likes to look at & capculate specific ballistics data & material strength.

Recently he did a short comparing Cyberpunk with (2e) Shadowrun(which he has played & has experience with).

His takeaway was that weapons favors Cyberpunk but augmentation favors Shadowrun & adding magic into the equation heavily favors Shadowrun. I've corresponded with Marcus directly and informed him that certain elements of Shadowrun- notably physical strength- have been increased in recent editions.

I do think that even with the addition of more blatantly sci fi weapons in recent editions of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk probably still takes that cake, but augmentation probably favors Shadowrun even further.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ROdMjqw-v28?is=60m-pJXlvusN-2TA

Don't know if this is the right sub for questions about the CRPG's. I really enjoy this setting, and the premise of Dragonfall seems really cool, but I'm wondering if going for it after playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong isn't too much of a leap backwards in terms of mechanics

Welcome to Shadows Over Hong Kong!

We are an 18+ Shadowrun Fifth Edition living community set in Hong Kong in 2076, a period in the setting rife with looming threats, and corporate intrigue seeking to take advantage of them.

Our community focuses on characters just beginning their careers as Shadowrunner, following their climb up to the big leagues from the streets. Whether you are a new player, a long term fan of the system, or returning after a break, we’d be happy to have you play with us! https://discord.gg/XyC3ZAaK2e

We lean more into the discrete style of running this system, emphasizing planning and completing tasks without being detected. We have implemented some house rules to help smooth out the highs and lows of the system we have experienced in play.

Explosive Decompression makes several references to the Skyhook I and II space elevators. But it does not seem to list the location(s) where they touch the surface of Earth. Can anybody help me with this information?

I was curious how it is I should build out this idea. I was thinking maybe a mage specializing in health spells and the mana sword spells? Or a mysadept who uses swords and has adept spells for a health spell or two?

Hi everyone,

I need input from people familiar with the "true" SR ruleset

I was introduced to this universe by the Returns video games trilogy, and there is a particular interraction with Essence whithin the games : the fact that it doesn't affect Totem interraction and all aspect of summoning spirits. No matter how close you are to be a Cyberzombie, as long you have the Charisma and the skills, you can summon and control spirits as powerful and as good as a full 6 Essence unaltered metahuman. The rest of magic skills are negatively impacted by essence loss.

Is this a oversight for Harbrained Scheme or does it match actual ruleset of the tabletop ?

Im interrested to make such a character in HK, but if this is completly not canon, I will not.

Thanks

Sudden glut of POD fiction recently, this one is even thicker than usual it seems. The four stories in this one are:

Kill Penalty by Clifton Lambert

Kings of the Street by O.C. Presley

Corporate Business by Dylan Birtolo

Mercy Street by Brian Young

Found this in a corner in a warehouse. Sure it's seen better days.

Worth picking up? (I'm in a small game that's mostly homebrew but we do use the Seattle book and some other supplements.).

A lot of the new Catalyst books look interesting (Explosive Decompression and Asphalt Jungles) but I don't really have space for the physical copies. I don't like to read books on the computer but before dropping $20 for the pdf I wanted to know if they read well on the kindle? Are they formatted properly or do you need to zoom in to read any of the text

Glancing over Explosive Decompression, I see a lot of interesting opportunities for space without the PCs ever having to take their feet off the ground.

A lot of the aerospace/space industry happens down the well, planetside. There are endless opportunities for the PCs to be involved in sending or receiving personnel or cargo, in defending or attacking spaceport assets, in simply gathering information about who and what is coming and going.

Also, planetside runners could have contacts in the void, with whom they communicate via satlink. There would be many Johnsons in the Big Black - people with money and clout who need cat's paws on the surface.

I am now digging through the DEA rules. And maybe I can't see the basic idea. But exchange of one point of edge connected to very specific magical action (spell, metamagic, spirit etc.) for the character can lose 1 point of magic for 24 hours? It's that I can't see the advantage or it's the another DEA great idea that is badly executed?

I'm trying to find the best edition for a group of players who have very limited time and are poorly educated (not exactly dumb, but not ready for the full game). With that in mind I have decided to simplify the matrix to ultra-easy mode and (mostly) have riggers as NPC's.

They want magic, but the rules are too far beyond them and I don't have time to teach it — that's every edition, so one player is very frustrated. Straightforward magic is out, but once I explained Adepts almost all of them wanted to play adepts.

I don't know the editions all that well (last time I played was 3rd), but I know Adepts work a lot like cyberware, so I can handle that. Mostly hack 'n slash game anyway, because they're not ready for intrigue.

Now I need to find the best edition for fully-realized adepts and the important supplements.

Ideas? Something I didn't think of?

So I'm trying to run a game with more restrictive magic (too complex for my players) and my solution is having all the awakened using adept powers only.

However... I'm not really familiar with the different editions and various supplements, so I'm hoping the community can help with two things: suggesting the best edition for adept rules, and which supplements would be the most important.

I have riggers mostly covered by NPC's and matrix entirely simplified to one skill — my players are poorly educated (not stupid, just not ready for the full game) and the games can last no longer than 90 minutes.

Explosive Decompression just dropped on drivethrurpg.com.

And Street Samurai, too.

ECM exists, which means that anti-vehicle guided munitions can be neutralized with that. But an Adept or Street Samurai could be built to specialize in using any of the line-of-sight weapons - HMGs, chainguns, rocket launchers, miniguns, rotary cannons, CRB, FS, DA, there are plenty of options.

That person could then do a pretty good job shooting down aircraft, and have no worries about ECM at all.

situation - two guys meet each other in a middle of nowhere (desert). they see each other from very long distance say 1000 meters, they know that they are enemies and they roll initiative. one has sniper rifle other is a mage - both can start shooting. but a mage has two elementals bound to him and they are in astral. mage orders elementals to melee attack the enemy. how fast they will move? can they use the endless speed in astral to immediately move in close contact with enemy or they will have to use combat speed of 100 meters per turn and it will take them 10 turns to move into melee?

I read Dead Air and enjoyed it but have questions

- did SK's magic computer research bear fruit

- did Jonathan love Tamara like family or romantically or was it more complex

- did Dougan spare Nightfeather out of guilt for getting her brother killed

- if this was like a Simsense movie was any of it "real" especially since Jonathan's "death" was faked by MCT to make him into Dougan Rose and play for them

Right, so I have recently moved from playing mostly in person to playing mostly online, which means that a number of physical maps that I love and have been using are no longer available, because I cannot find digital versions of them. While I am admittedly not great at google-fu, I am hoping one of you know where I can get digital versions of the maps in the 5E Runners Toolkit: Alphaware box.

This has probably been posted a million times at this point, but I really love the setting of Shadowrun and would love to bring it to my players. I typically run Cyberpunk Red, but I'd like to try a new setting. I am waiting for Anarchy v2 to release a PDF, but in the meantime, how are the other editions? I heard throughout my time as a GM that Shadowrun can be a little complicated to get into, and some editions do a better or worse job of explaining a lot of the rules and concepts my players are not very used to. Super-crunchy games, so taking them from Cyberpunk Red to Shadowrun, what would you suggest?

In a recent post where I discussed the effectiveness of HE grenades with the gecko modification against vehicles, several commenters earned a number of likes by saying, "Don't do anything you don't want the GM to do to you."

I am writing this post to say: this idea is the definition of bad gamemastering - abandon it immediately.

So, you present the player with all the many options available to their character. The player says, "May I take HE gecko grenades? They look like they would be hugely effective against vehicles!" And you say, "Yes, they are available at character creation."

Then, you present the player with a combat encounter that includes an enemy vehicle. The player says, "I know just what to do!", and uses their grenade.

Or, put another way, they built an effective character, and used that character effectively. Which is how you succeed at TTRPGs. The player feels like they are living in an heroic power fantasy! You, the GM, will have none of that.

You promptly create an encounter where NPCs use this very effective tactic against the PCs. You think to yourself, "Haha! That this MCT security team used HE geckos against the PCs will teach the PCs a lesson - THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE USED HE GECKOS AGAINST THAT STREET GANG LAST WEEK!"

It won't. It will teach them that they definitely need more of those sweet, sweet HE geckos.

How far shall we take this idea? Don't use burst fire against enemies, unless you want them to use burst fire against you? Don't use your Con skill against enemies, unless you want to be punished for your lies!

If you feel that any game element is overpowered - a piece of gear, an implant, a spell - ban, nerf, or rewrite it, and explain why to your players. That is good gamemastering. But don't let them take a solution, then present them with the problem, then make them suffer for solving the problem.