Looking for Game - Shadowrun 4E

I'm new to Shadowrun, but have made 2 characters for games that never got off the ground... well, Roll20 is here, and that might just make it easier on the GM, so I figured I'll ask here if anyone is willing to GM an SR4A game here. I'd like to use a character I've already made (mage, standard 400 BP build, a little nutty). I enjoy more RP aspects (I will play in character as much as possible), if that affects anyone's decision. I run a D&D campaign on Saturday afternoons, so Sundays would be best (to minimize potential conflict with job), but my schedule is flexible, at least for now.

I have a long running Shadowrun 4e campaign that went on ice a few months back, because one of my players moved from town. It was a good plotline and had room for more players... I will discuss with my group whether they would be interested in playing it over Roll20 once June begins. I have another campaign that'll be seeing about 14-20 hours of play each week up until then, but that is when the current campaign is set to complete. I will bookmark this thread and keep you in mind.

Awesome :D I finally got details on my job for this summer, so I can confirm that I will only be available on weekends, unless we play after work hours US Mountain Time. I have at *least* 2 other players who are interested in a game online. (I'm new to SR, which is a large part of why I'm not GMing.)

Well, I could probably volunteer to run a single session quick run of SR 4e. But despite my love for it, it can be a real pain to run once you get a single caster and a technomancer or hacker in the same place. Although, I'm kind of stoked about the idea of running a game on one side of the map, while running a network map in tandem... That presents such an awesome level of craziness to it. Are you all in Mountain? I'm in EST. So we're not -that- different on time.

Also, that offer is mostly so you and your friends can give it a run before you try to settle in and try to play it for any length of time. SR has a small learning curve, but some people just don't take to it. It can get complicated at times. But I love it, anyway. :)

A one-shot campaign would be good for me. I'm currently in EST (as is everyone else) right now, but I will be moving to MST for the summer. I'd even be up for playing the sample game using the quick-start guide. Whatever works, I'm just really eager to try out this setting. :)

Alright then. I will see when I'll have some free time in the next two weeks; I've already started constructing a one-shot on Roll20 for future use, so it seems I've decided to do it. When do you think would be best for you and your friends?

Also... anyone among your crew of a delicate disposition? Shadowrun can be kind of gritty, and that's my favorite aspect of the cyberpunk genre, so I might dip into the unpleasant aspects a little to keep it interesting. Gets the culture across better.

Should be fine (the gritty setting). I'm waiting to hear back from them. My schedule's kind of crazy over the next two weeks, but once I hear back from them I can probably figure out a time when we're all available.

Message me directly when you know a general idea, and I'll work something out. Only times I'm guaranteed taken will be Friday & Saturday evenings/nights. Saturdays should be open again for the most part after a few weeks pass--likely to correspond with your own schedule difference in two weeks. When the time comes I will generate a few characters based on questions I'll ask of you and your compatriots. Then refer you to what you need to read from Shadowrun (a lot of which is available and floating out in the wild of the Internet), assign the characters, and probably give you a week to prepare your brains for it. It's not a game setting I'd ever suggest as a beer and pretzels "Hey! It's Friday and none of us are busy, lets bust out a game tonight!" kind of thing. Takes a bit of prep.

Also, if you're new to SR, and you want a taste of it over the next few weeks, I enjoyed this book a lot recently and it has a decent spread of concepts in it: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shadowrun-Spells-Chrome-ebook/dp/B003MGK9B4" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Shadowrun-Spells-Chrome-ebook/dp/B003MGK9B4</a> The link leads specifically to a Kindle edition of it, which is only a few bucks. There are also novels kicking around and the SR 4e mainbook is spectacular both in terms of system, but also in story content. It is a great read if you can get your hands on a copy. There are digital copies off in the aether as well.

Love the SR setting and have most of the 4Th edition goodies as well as the main book, mostly for the fluff and concepts vice mechanics. Depending on the details of the game, day of week, time duration, etc, I might be interested in trying the system out if you don't mind a rules noob.

My intention is to run it with rules noobs, so you're good on that count. :) When I have a final total on Mouse's crew, if there is space, I will post the time details I anticipate here and then remind anyone who showed interest in the thread using a private message to let you know what the times may be, etc. Then folks can decide if they still want in. In case anyone is curious why I am doing a noob run this time... This way I'm not competing with a veteran hacker, technomancer, and caster all at the same time. Which is one of my personal definitions of living hell. It contains so many compatible but functionally separate systems to run at once, but not interacting. SR is definitely the game for learning to multitask as a GM, in my experience. I am actually very excited to be able to have the players see grid areas for both the networks available to hack, and the environment to roam around in. That way I can run everyone at once, in the same initiative, and everyone will both be able to see and understand what it is any hackers are doing, etc. A much better learning experience. Offline I usually have to cobble that aspect together somewhat to make it work.

One of my players replied; says Saturday before 8pm, Friday at any time, and Sundays anytime. After next week, he'll be available any day but Mon or Tues. I'll be moving next week (dates STILL not confirmed -.-;;), so next week is almost definitely out for me. Sundays will be best ((since I (hopefully) will get to DM my campaign at some point this millennium)). Once I know my work schedule, I may be able to open up a Friday night, though.

Sunday nights may be an option then. I have commitments on sunday evenings on an on-again off-again basis, but I can put them off for a one shot every now and then. It won't be this Sunday, I'd rather not drop it in amongst your move, so perhaps the Sunday after that? Two weeks from the coming Sunday? June 2nd, say... 3pm-12pm EST as a possible time frame? That gives us a 9 hour spread within which to determine our play time. I will look at the session I have in the works and figure out a rough estimation of how long it will take to run. If everyone is pretty on-the-ball, I can't imagine it would take more than 6 hours since we don't all know each other already and are less likely to break into random gamer tangents. ;)

I'd be interested in playing as well. I have the rulebooks though I haven't read them because I never had anyone to play or who knew the game to run a one-shot to learn the ropes. I backed the Shadowrun Returns game on Kickstarter at the same time as Roll20 and there is probably some overlap between backers other than me :)

Well, it looks like Mouse's posse will consist of Mouse + 1, so I should have room for 2-3 more. Being the first game I will have run solely on r20, I'll probably stick to two. If the times work out, I'll keep you and Matthew in mind for first dibs. If the one-shot runs pretty well, and I can get all of the kinks smoothed out of it, maybe I will run it a few successive times to give people a chance to try it. You may be surprised how many people I know who own some version of it, but have never played it. Like Call of Cthulhu in that respect.

Yeah, I'm hoping Roll20 will allow me to try out all the games I've bought books for in the past but was never able to play them due to non-interest in my D&D group of old.

Same David. Not having to learn a new program or app ruleset when experimenting with a game system is awesome. Still a savage at heart though.

I mentioned it earlier on, and this is a reminder for Mouse too, but would you fellas have anything against filling out a few short personality'ish survey bits for me prior to my generating the one-shot characters? It won't contain anything terribly personal, but I like to know who I am working with. I tend to be very picky about screening my players offline, not due to any lasting damage from past play, but because I like to know what people favor, which elements of a game they go to at the first opportunity, what number their personal revulsion meter goes up to, etc. It makes the more complicated games a lot smoother.

Not at all Deightine. Very reasonable request if you ask me.

That's fine--makes sense to me :)

Just noticed this thread. Hopefully this is where Roll20 is heading, where we can all pick up games to play in future. (I'm more a SR1-3 guy but I'd be interested in SR4 in future if spaces open up, time difference permitting. I'm GMT +10)

Since this thread I have to admit, I've dusted off my 4Ea and even picked up some of the supplimentals. Very excited.

The supplementals for 4e are fantastic. I highly recommend getting them just to read the social commentaries by the various participating authors through their characters. The Jackpoint characters weave amazingly interesting tales between the various books, not unlike an alternate reality game.

Totally agree. I don't even want to think about how much money I dropped on SR over the past week. RPGNow's wishlist sale didn't help. =P So, pretty much yeah, anything even mildly interesting to me in the Shadowrun universe is either on my gaming shelf now or on my tablet. Nice thing, even if I opt to not use the SR4 system all that much (though I'd like to learn), the fluff material is so great it's an easy port to my system of choice.

Indeed. The only issue would be backward-porting the Wireless system, which is probably the most amazing update for 4e. Your hacker can actually be in the primary party of runners, which wasn't nearly as feasible in older versions. The fluff around it is amazing too--read up on the stuff that happened in the Renraku Arcology if you want to see some of the most brutal and gritty of events that happened in the update.

Indeed. The only issue would be backward-porting the Wireless system, which is probably the most amazing update for 4e. I've thought about trying to sort that out as I much prefer the 3e system but it seems like a lot of work.

When it comes to porting, I find as long as you catch the spirit of the setting you're good. If it was about mechanics, then why port. :-)

Oh, indeed. It's why I ported all of In Nomine over to BESM (it ports cleanly, btw, Songs directly convert with no effort--everything else is child's play)... But I think the wireless vs wired concept is probably one of the best tidbits to the SR 4e system, and although it could be ported, it's kind of fun to tinker with. I'm of the mind that although you can port pretty much anything--I once used the Rifts Conversion rules to take a Ninja Turtle from GURPS through to D&D--sometimes the system is part of the experience of a game. It is the reason, when doing game design (I do a lot of it these days) a system should be elegant and representative of the genre, feel, etc, of the game. It encourages us to make better crunch. :)

Well said Deightine. On another note, I have a decent character concept for the game when it takes off. Musing a bit about background and whatnot. Do you have any insight on the setting so I can do a bit of read up and make sure what I'm thinking about makes sense?

As it stands, I'm going to pre-gen the one-shot. This is mostly happening for Mouse's sake, as an opportunity to get to know the system, setting, etc. I might be willing to entertain a longterm campaign, which would require individual character concepts, depending how the one-shot runs. If I do that, or if you just want to put the time in enriching the concept you are thinking about, get any of the 4e splatbooks... and read the margins. The Jackpointers elucidate some of the best material in all of the books, which is unnerving since its kind of tagged on, but their conversations are very representative of the worldview a shadowrunner holds.

As for where the one-shot will go down, it'll be in the Redmond Barrens of Seattle. Same place you started in the video games, same place the original campaign settings assumed you'd be, home of the famous Coffin Motel, etc. If you want to get a good feel for it, I've cloned a gMaps project that was created a few years back and am slowly updating it: <a href="http://sr.abstrusion.org/" rel="nofollow">http://sr.abstrusion.org/</a> which shows all of the locations in the Seattle area as best as the project (and some of my tweaking) could determine future locations, GPS coordinates, etc, for. It took me a long time to outline those zones, but I'm pretty close to getting them exact in terms of where one area ends and the next begins. The descriptions of the locations can be a lot of fun. The one-shot focuses on a run in a 5-mile radius area of Yoshiro's in the upper left section of Redmond.

If you want to get a good feel for it, I've cloned a gMaps project that was created a few years back and am slowly updating it: <a href="http://sr.abstrusion.org/" rel="nofollow">http://sr.abstrusion.org/</a> which shows all of the locations in the Seattle area as best as the project (and some of my tweaking) could determine future locations, GPS coordinates, etc, for. Sorry for the tangent, but could you give a brief overview of the software behind that map? It's rather cool...I'd love to do something similar for some other games, but I'm not sure where to start looking.

Cool deal Deightine. Thanks!

Well, it's using the google maps API (which requires you go and register for a developers key) and then it is overlaying custom KML layers above the normal google worldmap. Other people have found ways to load custom maps into the interface, but I'll willingly admit I only dabble in KML/geo-spatial systems interfaces. In essence, it's just the normal google maps, minus all of the perks (street level, 3D, etc), with added icons and polygonal shapes. For alternate-Earth games like d20 Modern, Shadowrun, In Nomine, Call of Cthulhu, etc, it can be pretty useful. It's a little harder to make do your bidding if you are also sourcing the material, but I've seen it, so with a little elbow grease, it could easily accommodate a different map, as long as it was one that could scale to the numerous levels of zoom. Probably want to do it with vector, if possible.

Alright! For those of you who want to get in on the one-shot that I've already chattered with, or those of you who would like to, but aren't saying anything, this is the link to the survey I mentioned earlier. Take it at your whim! <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHM1Nkl4bFhZSzBvbV9fSm1sR0RaN0E6MQ" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHM1Nkl4bFhZSzBvbV9fSm1sR0RaN0E6MQ</a> Heck, I won't even be annoyed if you just feel like taking it to see what it looks like, but you have no real interest. But do me a favor and mention that early on in taking it! I'm entertaining the day of Sunday, June 10th, in the mid-afternoon to late evening. This is to give me more of a chance to generate custom characters and give others the chance to plan life around it. Ultimately if you fill out the survey, I'll be asking for your email to send a flexvite to. Figured I'd try their site out.

I just got into the Roll20 open beta, and would be interested in joining! I'm free Sunday evenings EST. I am a newbie to Shadowrun, but the two (short) campaigns I've played were enough to get me hooked. I've also read about 4-5 of the novels. Making my way over to the survey now :)

Id Like to join your group Ive never playd the actual Shadow run game but I play the video game all the time and i love it! iam availiable most afternoons.

I will entertain all comers, for the most part. If we end up with a lot of takers, I'll arrange multiple one-shots, using the same session over a week or two so people can get acclimated to the idea of it.

I never play Shadowrun but i really love to, can i join :) ?

Thank [Head god of pantheon of your choice]! Thanks to Open Beta, I can now run and/or play! I'll likely be setting up a campaign here sooner or later, and when I do, I'll likely announce it here.

Long time, no something! I've just gotten moved in and started at new job. I replied to Deightine's survey, and will most likely be available Friday nights and Sundays. I'll be checking this more often now that I'm not frantically packing/driving/moving/finding job site.

I'd love to get in on something like this! I'm open most nights.

Anyone interested--especially those who have never played--can take the survey and in the next day or so, I will be putting together the flexvite to see when everyone can make it. I'm aiming for the coming Sunday afternoon to evening EST.

Oooh ooh! I wanna play! Only problem is I'm mainly available on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and work nights on weekends. Any chance you'll be available any of those times?

This is to give me more of a chance to generate custom characters Does this mean the PC's will be built by you?

For the one-shots, yes. It's easier to introduce the aesthetic that way. Thus, it's a one-shot for first timers. If a longer game comes up because of it, it would likely start completely from scratch, with me walking the players through creation. But that won't be this time, not at first anyway.

I'd like to play this as well.

Alright! For those of you who want to get in on the one-shot that I've already chattered with, or those of you who would like to, but aren't saying anything, this is the link to the survey I mentioned earlier. Take it at your whim! <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHM1Nkl4bFhZSzBvbV9fSm1sR0RaN0E6MQ" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHM1Nkl4bFhZSzBvbV9fSm1sR0RaN0E6MQ</a> Heck, I won't even be annoyed if you just feel like taking it to see what it looks like, but you have no real interest. But do me a favor and mention that early on in taking it! I'm entertaining the day of Sunday, June 10th, in the mid-afternoon to late evening. This is to give me more of a chance to generate custom characters and give others the chance to plan life around it. Ultimately if you fill out the survey, I'll be asking for your email to send a flexvite to. Figured I'd try their site out. See the above.

Filling out the survey right now, and honestly Deightine, you seem pretty damn awesome for organising so many games.