LFG Shadowrun 4e

I really want to play a Shadowrun game. Preferable an intensive and long-running RP campaign. However each game I try to get into is filled up too quickly. So I decided to try and make my own! I'd like to find a group of four to five people, preferable four players and one DM. I personally am very new to Shadowrun the tabletop, but I am not new to it's world. I am a longtime shadowrun fan, and have played the games Shadowrun reborn, and done some intensive reading into the stories and lore. I'd like to get the game up on Sundays, or perhaps during the Weekday, running early to late afternoon on Sundays and anytime between 4-9 on weekdays, I can make my schedule flexible if necessary. Here's a ling to the Shadowrun 4e free anniversary PDF for anyone who wants it. Here you are.

If a DM can be found I would be highly interested to play a Changeling Rigger. I've had a dreadful stretch of luck with finding shadowrun games that don't fall apart 3 sessions in and I would like to recapture those deep role-playing experiences I've had in Pathfinder but in the Shadowrun universe. Also if all possible I prefer GMs that aren't....well...Insanely intent on killing the players as quickly as physically possible. I really don't want to have to write out a backstory and get super invested in a character only for the GM to instakill them or slap them in a no-win situation where the players have no hope of fighting back two sessions in ( if the group doesn't have a Decker then sticking a Decker on any player reliant on anything more technologically advanced than a commlink is basically a slow but certain game-over as everyone's guns turn off. ditto for astral mages when the party doesn't have someone who can project. and I don't want to get in more situations like that where the GM literally just decides to kill my character rather than giving us a remotely winnable fight. )

since we're talking dream SR games, and since you have specified 4e ( a system that actually is completed), i'll toss my hopes in with the rest. i've always wanted to play a perception adept, with a stealth secondary, and a utility tertiary. party lookout, and scout with a utility background (Strato, i'd spider for you, stealth into the building, jack in a comm for you or act as a second spider myself if need be.) we're talking the ultimate supplement characters, if the GM can handle a character with a 30 dice in perception. if memory serves i think it's an egyptian mage-adept build. but for the right SR game, i could play a lot of different concepts.

I'd also be interested! I have no played SR yet either but I have an ok grasp of the rules and the world. I have a few other games I'm in but if scheduling works I'd love to join in!

bump

In order to help bump the thread and get people excited for the campaign I am going to post my character concept. I will be playing an elf mystical adept. Something similar to a physical combat mage. Where the magician's spellcasting ability is for covering long range and enhancing sword work, while the strength moves i.e. swords and the like would cover the close range, while also trying to cover the face options that are needed.

I would be very interested in doing a SR game! I have a little experience with 5e but no 4e. I'm also very new to tabletop rpgs so you would have to put up my inexperience too...:)

sam, we're both rocking the mystic adept build, we might be able to swing an all mage party. maybe we can et a GM to run a high karma game. that would allow for mages with cyberware without it bieng as big a hit.

I was thinking of putting together a adept gunslinger, kind of a urban scout type thing.

well in 4e, the best, most powerful build, hands down, is the focus-mage. for relatively little karma you can double all of your core stats. no other build can compete with that. conversely, technomancers require more points to be able to do what any other build can, they are less effective or their point costs. he most stable and easy thing to deal with, system wise is cyber-gear, and basic skills. second most is Adept powers. I could be talked into playing a cyber-tank with a stealth secondary. stealth trolls for the win!

At this point I'm thinking we need SOME kind of tank

only it we build it like a D&D party. you don't need tanks in SR. combat specialists are only needed for certain kinds of missions. if the run is he sort where combat could happen at any moment it's not a beginner run.... usually...

As a Rigger I can definitely build a psuedo tank with a Wuxang Crimson Samurai, I won't be any Troll in heavy armor by a long shot but I can definitely soak the worst of the gunfire until the rest of the part starts to upgrade their own damage sponge potential. and with clever uses of Vehicle mods spoof chips and chameloen coating even a hilariously large samurai can sneak with the best of them, and of course I can keep up pretty well with the rest of the party with Simsense boosters and accelerators so I'm not overly worried about falling behind in terms of usefullness.

you know, now that i think about it, a tank in SR's sole purpose is not actual damage sponge. we have little control over who shoots who. in SR a tank's main purpose is provoking enemies and lifting things, breaking through doors etc. right?

I'd agree, just because of the way damage works in Shadowrun any character's best bet is really to just hope they don't get shot in the first place and even a Troll with maxed out body and strength scores covered in armor can still get taken down almost as easily as any other character by just having the bad guys switch to tasers or stick and shock. Automatic weapons truly are the great equalizer ( which is one of the things I like about shadowrun a gun in the hands of a psychopathic mercenary or a small child is still a gun. ) and with options for narrow or wide spreads can adapt on the fly to an acrobatic mage or a beefy troll. I would definitely go with the deffinition of a Tank more as a " state of mind " if that makes any sense. the guy who is the bombastic door kicker, enemy hurler/provoker, etc. etc.

when i cyber a troll armor is almost never worth it for me. i put that essence into agility boosters, body, really anything else first. the bigest advantage of being a cyber troll is the high racial maximums. getting thoes up high enough will give you just as much as armor would plus more. but the crowning jewel for a cyber troll tank, is wired reflexes, and of course a few skill wires. i built a technomancer commando build. ironically the most cost effective technomancer build i've found, was a straight up commando type with no real hacking ability. he just went technomancer for the ability to thread skill wires, and submerge for thread-able wired reflexes. translation: you get a skill that let's you mimic any other skill. still, if you put those same points into a street sammy, he'd certainly be rolling his primary skills with a higher number of dice. (We are still looking for a GM and Players people, please join teh conversation!)

I am thinking instead of playing an elf Mystic adept I might go for something more range oriented, Street samurai is what I'm thinking so we can cover our range. Because at this point it seems like we have a rigger, and a cyber troll but no real cover in actual man-to-man ranged combat. Or am I not reading into it correctly?

Even then, perhaps a ranged Adept, because hey, MAGIC!

I can definitely bring the ranged hurt with Drones packing high velocity modified weapons but more guns always helps and of course there will be times when I don't have the luxury of my drones with me and then we'll need a little bit more than just my Ruger Thunderbolt to throw and the bad guys.

i don't know, with this group, we might pick a concept or a theme of tactics we want to make sure we employ. like we want to make sure there is a tank mentality, i think wer'e all on board with that. what other mentalities do we really want in our three man unit?

Ahhh this thread is so active its awesome! I posted above but now my schedule has cleared up and I'd love to play with everyone. I'd be down to take anything the party needs, like a healter or a giant troll anything like that; I like trying out new styles :p This is assuming of course you guys are still taking another player. Either way I hope a GM can be found!

great! let's keep interest alive! once we get a Gm we'll figure out scheduling until then everyone is welcome! so Ovi, Strato, Scott and Sam, what should are 4 ideal archetypes be?

For me a Cyber'd out Changelling Rigger. one of the captain's chair variety that has one particular heavily customized drone that he uses for heavy combat and a slew of smaller drones that are usually modified for infiltration and surveillance ( Microtapper bug drones and gecko gripped crawlers and the like to waltz down vents and whatnot and to chew into a facilities network to give the resident Decker or Techno a backdoor into a system. I have the surveillance drones in the form of a " Unkindness " of steampunk Raven Drones. ) and usually command the whole insanity first from a tricked out riggermobile and later on from a stealth zepplin once the Nuyen starts rolling in. ( yes I know the contradiction of stealth zepplin and that changelling isn't an archetype lolol just wanted to get those little details out of the way lol. ) and of course I find the character can generally hold her own in combat when its necessary but she ain't no street sam by a longshot.

okay so strato is 100% rigger. if i play my perception adpet, you won't need to worry about the surveliance suites. my perception adept build does it all in his head, that would let you put more points and energy into hacking, could create nice synergy. or i could play the stealth troll, which would allow you to shore up your combat point allocations. so we need tank, rigger... what else guys? i know magic will be on teh list, but in SR mage isn't really a roll description.

Hmm, I don't know too much about SR, as I've never played but reading the rules, it seems like every character can be flexible to an extent. Personally, I like not to min-max characters too much and just have if I had to pick ideal Archetypes I would pick something along the line of a support mage (something like a shaman) that has some healing as well. Another would probably be a decker, since they are very important to deal with the technical side of things. Also I would think a long range character that has stealth, similar to a sniper or something like that, and finally, someone to just charge in; not necessarily a tank, but someone who will put pressure to the people he/she is near, either by being big or just by rushing in with no regard for their life Something like that :p, but I'm not too sure since I've never played SR, I've played a bit of DnD before, which is sort of what I'm basing this off of, as you can probably tell :P However, for me personally, I would take the support mage/cleric type of character. That or the rusher character I described above, but I'd be fine with anything really.

i love how utility minded this whole group is. nobody has mentioned a face. does anyone care about social skills? also infiltration experts, like lock picking, or piloting. lastly, i don't think that anyone has discussed spirit magic also any cool ideas for party or group concepts? we don't have to use them, just shout out ideas. i'm not saying this is a safe space, we'll call the bad ones stupid, we're all jackasses here. but we'll have stupid ideas too i promise.

A Face would be extremely handy they are far more central to a run than alot of groups realize, theres alot more to them than just negotiating with a Fixer at the start of a run and getting the group more equipment, many a black trenchcoat infiltration has turned into a Pink Mohawk castle storming ( not that theres anything wrong with that sometimes its pretty fun to drop the spy game and just charge down hallways firing on full auto. ) all because the group didn't have a person who could reliably lie to people. I've deffinetly got Piloting handled though Infiltration would be nice. and finally we may want a Decker ( I know Decking often falls to the Rigger when nobody else is around but I haven't ever really read into the Matrix rules and it would still take me a very long while to get up the skillset necessary to be able to Hack reliably It is an unfortunate quality of both 4e and 5e that the Rigger seems to need twice as many skills as everyone else one set to Rig and another to Hack in 4e and one set to Rig and another to do everything a Street sam needs to do in 5e because there just aren't enough vehicle and drone custimizations out yet to reliably infiltrate areas with them. )

I'd be willing to give a decker a shot, ill do some reading up on it. I don't think i could pull a face off.

I cannot pull off being the face of the party, but anything else is fine with me. Infiltration sounds awesome though =)

i think we should built a full infiltration team. i think we all like that idea. and i'm going go perception adept, unless something better comes along. that means i'll have some limited spider abilities, that's a backup rigger, and backup utility mage, and backup shaman. combat wise, he'd be a sniper. i'd love to ply a high karma game and build it really really right.

I've never actually played Shadowrun, but i love to play spy/con man type characters in basically any game, so i could be your face, maybe?

so,multiple characters with overlap in SR can be a really great thing, allowing for multiple kinds of tandem tactics. we could all play corp kids, or ex gang members from the same redmond gang (redmond is pretty much any movie about gangs from the 80s, with magic and cyber punk tossed in) also, there is non-magical healing, and we should make sure if we go full combat party, that we have both kinds of healing accounted for.

I've decided I'm going to role a straight elf mage, with some melee capability instead of just rolling a mystic adept, because we NEED someone who can astrally percieve, and project.

we don't need projection. it's nifty, but like dfamiliars in D&D the risk outwights the reward usuially. what we Do need is spirit summoning, which can duplicate most of the effects of projection. my perception adept build has astral perception (depending on starting karma values, either spending the essence for it [a huge waste of points], or using an initiation benefit for it). it crucial for the concept, spirit sentinels, low end rigging for tech sentinels, and every single kind of vision. can't be done with goggles, but a mage with cyber eyes, can cast spells though all forms of his vision, and still see in the astral (as astral sight done't actually require eyes at all)

I'll do a mixed build of spell casting and conjuring then? Be a Shamo-mage? And charisma is an influence on spirit summoning so if I'm correct I could also be a sort of stand in face.

My character is indeed a corp kid from saeder-Krupp, but you guys can have whatever backstory you like.

so does nobody have any ideas for group concepts? we can leave strato out of it if he's not interested. i just want to brainstorm till we find a DM.

Rag tag team of freelance shadowrunners that ended up working together because of their complementary skillsets. We don't particulary like each other, but we need others to finish our task and get paid. Coming from diffrent backgrounds both racially and socially, we all have the same goals in life 1. Survive 2. Make Nuyen 3. Do what you love and are good at, and what you love and are good at is stealing, kidnapping, extoritng and scamming, possibly killing. tl:dr something like reservoir dogs, i guess?

that's the basic SR concept serious. and we're all on board with it. i'm just thinking if we were all from the same background. Strato wants to be from a coorperation. what if we were all children of the futuristic corporate world? Still looking for a GM! all concepts are subject to GM approval

Well, that's my point. First of all, similar backgrounds imply similar life experiences, which imply similar characters and believes. Relationships between characters in the story are more interesting if characters are actualy diffrent and can learn and broaden their horizons through those interactions. What does a street kid knows about Ettiquet? Does corporate man know anything about assault rifles?? Probably nothing and most likely no. That's why they work together. Secondly, have you ever seen corporate kid troll? I did not. At last, but not at least, i'm always gonna stand behind the concept that artificial relatioships between characters damage story/roleplay. Let's decide through our actions, rather than flat exposition of "we're freinds i guess" sort. tl;dr 'little more bite and little less bark'

My character will be fairly simple. Japanese elf born and raised on Yomi island. Found out he was awakened from a young age and went on to try and use that to improve his life in Yomi island. When he was around 10 the Yomi island decree was reprieved and the HUK took care of the freeing. His parents now seeking to find a place more considerate of meta-humans (particularly elves) moved to Tir Tairngire, where he studied magic at Cara'Sir (Portland) University, and eventually with his grades and skill managed to get into the Ghosts, but after a mission went bad he had to go to ground.

right. i get that serious. that's one way to go. that's the standard way to go that's what everyone does every time. other methods have value as well i thought we might consider that, but that's fine. i'm probably going to do the perception based mage-adept. he's an infiltration expert, either elf or human it doesn't matter because he's a Seattle socialite (assuming the game is set in seattle) a good chunk of his points might go into status. low charisma, high agility and reaction. will have a sniper rifle if i have enough money. i see his role in combat as he opens, and then never does anything else again, because in SR, everyone eventually gets 4 actions a round, and that's inappropriate for this concept. (ALL CONCEPTS SUBJECT TO GM APPROVAL. GM STILL NEEDED)

I feel personally that especially for a Roleplay Heavy game that us all having unique characters that we can really dive into is very important. Meshing 100% or being from the same background is perfectly fine but in this case it would really kill alot of potential RP fodder, " Why Does Hawkeye always were that helmet? How did the Drone Krieg get his name? Why does she have such a beef with BTL dealers and why in the world does she ademently refuse to accept jobs that involve Saeder-Krupp? " Questions like that make for some awesome story moments but if we already kinda know each other from the start than we kind of just end up passively responding to the situation at hand which would leave RP rather shallow. That of course is just entirely my opinion and we do indeed need a GM still, I'll set up a LFGM posting in the R20 LFG system to maybe help out a tad. GM's for shadowrun games are near immpossible to find so hopefully we'll luck out.

I agree with Strato. In roleplay heavy games, I think its important to focus on playing interesting characters more so than it is having the perfect group.

I've done both and had great success at both. i'll admit i'm mildly annoyed that my suggestion isn't even really being considered, but i have no real issue with completely different backgrounds. so you would be in favor of rich backstory? meaning a focus on player interaction as narration, and revelation. as opposed to low backstory, forcing players interation to focus more on the immediate circumstances. to each theri own, i'm just kinda taking a poll at this point. (ALL CONCEPTS SUBJECT TO GM APPROVAL. GM STILL NEEDED)

I feel like we could mix both.

alright, how about a race-poll. i think at one point everyone here has mentioned elves. (ALL CONCEPTS SUBJECT TO GM APPROVAL. GM STILL NEEDED)

FULL EX-GHOST TEAM MAN THAT'S WHAT I'M FEELING. Heh.

we could all play HMV victims, ghouls, zombies vampires and whatnot, or all play AI. i'm not familiar with ex-ghosts. what is an ex-ghost? the idea of an all-orc or all-troll party is hysterical. (ALL CONCEPTS SUBJECT TO GM APPROVAL. GM STILL NEEDED)

<a href="http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Tir_Tairngire_Peace_Force" rel="nofollow">http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Tir_Tairngire_Peace_Force</a> Ghosts are the elite soldiers/police officers of the Tir Tairngire.

Can I get the skype of everyone desiring to apply, so I can do something of a tiny interview?