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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: The Reverend <mdb0213@******.TAMU.EDU>
Subject: Fields of Fire and more! Heh, heh, heh.... (talk with DLoH)
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 14:50:59 -0600
This is for several things, including
(a) LOTS of info on the <MUST GET> book, Fields of Fire
(b) the new module
(c) Glamour
(d) Vamps
(e) Cyberpsycho rules

(b) the new module, Eyewitness, has been shipped. Should be out soon, if not
already (I haven't heard anything about this, so I'm posting it)

(c) I had a semi-lengthy conversation with His Darkness about the fairie power
of Glamour. He told me again how powerful this is, and that the GM should be
very careful with it, and discuss how it works with hir players. According
to Tom, there's not really any way to get around Glamour, except for "that
damn save" (quote from Tom). Tech really won't work, but a couple of spells
would.
(1) a spell to increase your willpower, so you can make those nearly
impossible saves.
(2) a sustainable hypersense spell. Tom recommended making a "avoid
glamour" spell. It would be mana, and the rest you & your GM would
have to work out.

(d) Vampires and increase physical attributes. I in the past felt that since
enhanced physical attributes was plural, and it really didn't show anything
about which ones were limited, that you got all 3. Nope. This is probably
REAL redundant, but I thought y'all might want to know. For example, the
vamp only has increased Strength, the Wendigo (according to Tom, I haven't
looked at my book) only has increased running modifier, etc.

(e) Tom said that he was still trying to find a neat way to do it, but he
really hasn't made any progress. Hopefully soon, but more than likely whenever
he has a flash of insight.

(a) FIELDS OF FIRE. heh, heh, heh.

This appears to be one INCREDIBLE book!
Due date: it should wrap up this week, with artwork and all, and get sent out
to the bookmaker. It should be due out (possibly) Late February, but more
likely the 1st or 2nd week in March.

What's in it:
4 sections
1) Intro to Mercenary life in the Shadowrun world. Tom said that it was more
on how to play them. It's written from a Merc's point of view, and is kinda
derogatory towards runners. "Yahoo Bozos", Tom said. The Merc feels that
the reason runners get screwed by their Johnsons is because they're
unprofessional, uncouth, and bozos. The Merc says that he acts professional
because "someone has to". Total professional, from the way Tom was talking.

2) 32 pages worth of new rules! Stuff from "What exactly thermovision is", to
SUPPRESSION FIRE is, and how to do it! He said it was a lot of stuff that
people said about SR2 Black, like "why isn't this like this," or "explain
this
for me", etc. I'll type up the basic rules of suppression fire for y'all in
a moment. There are also rules for overdamage. He said he thought that if
the power was 3* your body, that for every two successes, it could do an extra
box of damage, and could kill you with one shot! He said that ALL OF THIS IS
OPTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE DISCUSSED WITH YOUR PLAYERS BEFORE ADDING ANY OF THESE
RULES. He said overdamage was messy (as shown in suppression fire)

3) New equipment. This has a bit of everything. Some heavy stuff, like
tank mounted lasers (!!!), heavy vehicle armor, new missile systems, tactical
comps (didn't pay attention to this at the time, but WOW!) for vehicles, knives
and everything else. LOTS of gear. Includes new vehicles.

4) Reference: takes EVERY piece of equipment, and puts it in one section.
Kinda like what Wordman did with The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment Guide. He
said he hoped we liked it, since it's 14 pages, and took some time to do.

Okay, Suppression fire. He said that he's meant to do it from the beginning,
but couldn't find out how to do it. He eventually figured it out, and went
"Duh". (his words :) From what I gathered, a lot of the new rules in FoF is
like this. Makes His Darkness seem a little more human, eh? *grin*

What you do is say how many rounds you're going to be hosing the hallway/
whatever with. You take that many dice, and roll vs. the base target # of 4.
(I didn't ask if Smartlinks do anything. They probably don't.) For each
success, a bullet hit. So theoretically, if you're hosing down a hall with
15 bullets (minigun), you might wind up rolling 8 successes. This would wind
up staging past deadly, and would probably also invoke the overdamage rules,
killing you. Odds are that if you get hit, it won't be as bad as getting shot
with the gun regularly, but it WILL hurt.


That's it for now. The book should be due out Late Feb to Early-Mid March.
LOOK FOR IT! Tom sounded really proud of this book, and from what I remember
him telling me, he should be.

Hope you like this sneak preview!

BCNU,
Rev
---
The Reverend "They called me the Reverend when I entered the church unstained"
Fear the Information Revolution...for it has reached the hands of the strange.
PGP 2.2 Public Key Block available upon request
Message no. 2
From: Jeremy Roberson <RJR96326@****.UTULSA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fields of Fire and more! Heh, heh, heh.... (talk with DLoH)
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 18:38:07 -0600
>2) 32 pages worth of new rules!

Whee. More Rules. :|


>What you do is say how many rounds you're going to be hosing the hallway/
>whatever with. You take that many dice, and roll vs. the base target # of 4.
>(I didn't ask if Smartlinks do anything. They probably don't.) For each
>success, a bullet hit.

Funny - this sounds remarkably like Twilight:2000's 2nd edition combat
system *which has subsequently been adopted into Traveller: The New
Errata). In that system, suppression fire was roll 1 die per bullet, every
*6* was a hit. What's funny is that, in the designer notes for T:2K mk2,
they mentioned that this change from the old system was precipitated by the
game mechanics from Shadowrun (then referring to the First Edition of the
game). Small World.

So theoretically, if you're hosing down a hall with
>15 bullets (minigun), you might wind up rolling 8 successes. This would wind
>up staging past deadly, and would probably also invoke the overdamage rules,
>killing you.

It seems to me that the system determines how many bullets hit *something*, but
not the same target. If it isn't already in the rules, there should be a
way of distributing the bullets, probably by dividing the number of hits by
the number of targets.

Also, I would have each bullet resisted seprately, though of course Combat
Pool would be expended cumulatively.

Furthermore, suppression fire is for SUPPRESION, not hitting people (that's
just a side benefit). There should be a provision for marale checks, at
least NPCs, anyway. Steve Huth accomplished this in his own write-up of
suppression fire rules some time ago.


J Roberson
Message no. 3
From: "The Annihilator (Lane Wells)" <bwells@***.ETC.BC.CA>
Subject: Re: Fields of Fire and more! Heh, heh, heh.... (talk with DLoH)
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 13:12:26 PST
****[Big bunch of info we dont need here]****

>4) Reference: takes EVERY piece of equipment, and puts it in one section.
>Kinda like what Wordman did with The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment Guide. He
>said he hoped we liked it, since it's 14 pages, and took some time to do.

The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment Guide? Where could one get this?

****[Bunch more stuff]****

>BCNU,
>Rev
>---
>The Reverend "They called me the Reverend when I entered the church
unstained"
> Fear the Information Revolution...for it has reached the hands of the strange.
> PGP 2.2 Public Key Block available upon request

-- The Annihilator

Lane Wells
bwells@***.etc.bc.ca
Fort Nelson, B.C
Message no. 4
From: The Deb Decker <RJR96326@****.UTULSA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fields of Fire and more! Heh, heh, heh.... (talk with DLoH)
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 1994 18:21:30 -0600
>>4) Reference: takes EVERY piece of equipment, and puts it in one section.
>>Kinda like what Wordman did with The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment Guide. He
>>said he hoped we liked it, since it's 14 pages, and took some time to do.

>The Ultimate Shadowrun Equipment Guide? Where could one get this?


Teetot.acusd.edu, described in the FAQ for this list.

J Roberson

Further Reading

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.