Creating the Group

This is where discussion on what you want to play should happen. If you need help actually building a character, either I or you should start a separate thread to keep things easy to follow.

What we need to discuss:

1) What type of character you want to play. I don't want five street samurai, and neither do you.

2) How your characters know each other. I want everyone to have worked with at least one other character before. if everyone picks the same character, that's great, and if everyone picks multiple people, that's great too.

3) If we want a possible house rule: I am already going to be asking the characters what they know or have heard about certain places. This lets players create lore, or if you're very knowledgeable about existing lore and want a piece used that I might not know about, it gives you the opportunity to insert that as well. Given this, I'm tempted to say don't take any skills having to do with rumors. What does everyone think about this?

1) Since I have a solid understanding of many of the rules, I'll take up hacking (since it's the most complex) - I'll break out my combat hacker for this (meaning automatics and decking!). Normally, I'd be a combat rigger or a street-sam, but I think a change of pace is good.
@Falconloft - I'll send you my quick and messy hacking GMing tips later, if you want.

2) TBD - let's see what people come up with first, IMO.

3) BTW: a link to lore about Seattle. That site also has a lot of other handy lore.

The nature of the beast is that the setting is left fairly open-ended to allow GMs/Players to adapt it as needed. If you gotta make some stuff up, go for it.

I think the good thing is a number of us are strongly familiar with the rules and setting. So that might relieve Falconloft of too much rules-keeping and lore. We should be able to fill for those quite well.

I'm open for whatever tips you can give me. (I've run Spycraft, so I'm not a complete stranger to the scene, but anything that helps me learn the system is great.)

I'm new to the system, but am excited. Thanks for having me

I was thinking of playing a stealth focused adept. It's been a while since my last time creating a Shadowrun character but I should be able to manage

I meant that, I just didn't say it clearly. XD

Okay guys, and maybe I'll make a fresh thread for this, but here's my list of resources I've compiled to help with learning Shadowrun 5e:

Chummer5 - if there's anything that holds the gold standard of character generation programs, it's Chummer. AKA the program that saves all our butts while making characters. If you haven't downloaded and fired it up, DO IT!

Shadowrun Superbook Project - currently a bit out of date, but still handy as all hell. Mostly because it's better organized than the actual core book is.

Corporate SINs' How to Play Shadowrun series - Personally, I don't like watching videos about TTRPGs much, but I know everyone learns differently. So for those interested, give this a shot.

LeVentNoir's many SR links - one of the more famous posters of r/shadowrun, LVN is rather knowledgeable on the many subjects of SR. While most of the advice is good for GMs, there are several handy links for players, as well, under Lore and Player help.

Bamce's Pre-Gen Characters - another bit from a well-known r/shadowrun poster, this makes for great examples of quality runners mechanically. While building a good character is a different story, getting the crunch of SR down can be tricky. Use these as examples if you need 'em, because unlike the pregens in the books, these were actually accurately built using the rules (and well built, too).

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Falconloft's Note: If these options do not let you get started on your own, please let me know in this thread and I'll either help you out or get someone to work with you to create your character.

Also, please note that there is no background info on many of the character choices in both Chummer and the Superbook. It's probably a good idea not to select options that are not completely obvious to you (e.g. Dwarf vs Menehune), although I'm not going to say no to any official material.

Yamazaki, are you sure you're not building a ninja? XD (I'm deleting my post and editing yours to include my comments.)

Any restrictions that we should know about? Are the metavariants from the Runner’s Companion available?

I would like to go for the role of street Sam, though it's not going to be a street sam per se, probably
Will it be ok if I have my build ready on Monday?

Moloch: You can use what you want, as long as it's official.

Revident: That's fine. I think we're probably going to have some who need longer anyway, so I'm not in a rush.

And just so those that haven't played much know what's open, here's a rundown of the most common character archetypes. If one's taken*, it's got a name by it.
- Deckers are skilled at infiltrating cyberspace. YAMAZAKI
- Street samurai's combat skills and reflexes make them the ultimate urban predators. REVIDENT
- Riggers can manipulate vehicles and drones for a variety of purposes.
- Mages shape magical energies to spy, heal, buff, damage, and sabotage.
- Shamans are attuned natural magic that lets them use defensive spells and summon spirits.
- Adepts use magic to refine their bodies to become perfect fighting machines. BOWLOFSPINACH

* I'd rather not have more than two of anything, and one each of Decker and Rigger is probably enough.

I may take up a mage or possibly a street samurai. Just all depends on what I feel comfortable with rule wise. I'm gonna start on that youtube series tonight and see what might mesh. Thanks in advance for all the help guys.

Also, also, for those that don't know, there is a Gamersplane Discord server, and it does have a Shadowrun channel now.

If you use Discord, or want to, you can follow that link to get more immediate responses. Discord does have a browser-based client, so you don't have to download anything to use it.

I might like a Shaman if the rules aren't to clunky for a newbie

Okay, gotta chime in the clarify a few things about the archetypes - shaman are just a tradition for mages, just like Hermetic, Chaos, Christian Thurges, etc are traditions.

That said, there are mages that specialize in summoning spirits, or some who focus on combat spells, or others who specialize in manipulation.

Falcon also missed two other key archetypes: the Face and the Infiltrator.

the Face is the front man of the team, and focuses on the social aspect of runs. If anyone is going to sweet talk their way past corpsec, it'd be a face.

Infiltrators are the ninjas, the shadows, and the scout of the team. When you need someone to get in and out of a building without being seen, your friendly ninja is the man for the job.

Furthermore, don't feel like you should hyper focus on one thing - combos between archetypes are common. The mage is often a face, adepts can cover sneaking, riggers can cover muscle (for a few rounds until the drones shot down), a technomancer can be the getaway driver, and so on.

Yeah, my list was from the wiki, but apparently they don't make much distinction between versions, which is fine for timeline stuff, but a bit less okay when it comes to this.

Instead, I'm just going to list the core proficiencies we need, and who's got what covered.
Magic: Occult Investigator (LIBRARIAN)
Matrix: Decker (YAMAZAKI)
Muscle: Street Samurai (REVIDENT), Physical Adept (KING_MOLOCH)
Social: Face Mage (BEDZONE)
Stealth: Stealth Adept (BOWLOFSPINACH)

Actually, I just realized that someone is already doing an adept, so I may select something else.

It's Monday morning. I wasn't around much over the weekend, cuz I was actually at home with my family, but now that the work week has started again, I'm available either here or in Discord for anyone that needs help creating a character. I can't tell you what's 'best' but I can make sure the process gets done correctly.

I'm almost done with my sam, am I right about using standard priority and established runner level? Or do you want to use some alternate rules?

Nope, that's correct.

General readiness check. I'm available until 5 to help people out with characters.

So another twenty minutes? xD

Almost done, just adding gear!

5pm CST. You in Germany, spinach? (I'm not sure on the daylight saving situation in Europy areas.)

Question: If my pixie automatically gets the Astral Perception ability as a racial trait, do I need to pay the PP cost to use it?

Hrmm... That is a good question. My first feeling is to say no, otherwise non-Adept Pixies couldn't use it. Let me research though.

Usually yes, currently no. But still in that timezone

Sorry, one more question: as an adept, can I purchase extra Power Powers with karma? Or is that only the Mystic Adept?

Adepts get their magic rating in Power Points, and that's all they get at Chargen and after, until you can Initiate. That is the only way to get more power points - raising your magic stat or spending initiation bonuses for more power points.

This is unlike MysAds, who have to spend their karma to get those power points at chargen (and only at chargen - if you skip it, you lose that chance).

I submitted my character. Since this is my first game on GP, I'm not entirely sure I filled everything out correctly, and I left out some of the damage values for the guns (he's got lots). I hope I can still change some of this still? The box for essence also didn't let me enter the right values, so I just rounded those.
I created my char using HeroLabs, so I think rules-wise it should all be correct.

I usually let players swap out a few things if the character doesn't play how they like it during the first mission, as long as it's not trying to swap for stuff that will be immediately useful just to swap out of it again later.

I have approved all the submitted characters, complete or not. If you're a new player, and if you can, it would be a good idea to make them public so that Yamazaki can glance at them and see if there's any glaring issues.

I am sorry I've been quiet lately. Work has had me pretty much dead after I get off. IT is either feast of famine when it comes to actual work. I'm hoping that's over for a while.

TO make sure I'm up on how things are going, who's got their character ready, and who needs stuff done still?

My character is done. I posted him in the notes section of my character sheet. Just have to fill out the actual sheet itself.

All done with mine and good to go. It's up and freely accessible too.

Maybe.. ? I'm not sure what else I need

I believe I'm done, and I made mine public, I think.

I think you're okay, Librarian. We've got four out of six done. I'll poke the others today on Discord, see if we can get started.

I felt like I should post here. I let our GM know, but I have to drop from the game due to IRL issues. I have too many games. I hope I can join more with you in the future.
Sorry guys.

Well it looks like I'm the most frequent poster so far. So I'll keep playing if everyone else is, if not I'm cool.

I am still planning on continuing. I know Librarian is dealing with a lot more stuff lately, so there's absolutely no heard feelings there.

Relatedly, I have noticed that things have slowed down. Is there anything anyone is waiting on in particular, or RL issues cropping up? If so, please let me know. If not, let me know if you'd like me to move on from where we are. I'm trying not to skip ahead too fast, but if it's too slow, I can adjust.

Things have been quite busy on my end (house hunting, pregnant wife, work, etc), made worse by some writer's block. That said, I really don't have much I could post anyhow... LOL

I'll try to move things along then.

I don't post very much for two main reasons: I'm relatively new to PBP and a bit self-conscious about my writing; and I think of Ness as more of a quiet guy, who leaves the talking to others. Maybe I'll rethink that.
But I certainly want to keep going.

Don't be shy about your writing. I think we all struggle with writing in RPG, as opposed to face to face games where we simply talk. A suggestion though, if your character is the quiet type, it's still fine to post his actions, reactions, thoughts even.