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Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Valeu John EMFA)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 04:05:03 2001
Ok, I've been reading the posts here and there and YotC looks great.
But I have to ask, I take it this isn't for newbies right?
My group just started playing SR (all are experianced roleplayers, just
first time shadowrunning).
How long should they be playing before I spring this on them?
Right now we're in 2059-2061 year wise. I mean, should I wait until they've
been going at it for a while (1 year of game time), or just spring it on
them now (as in do a couple of runs, then when we get back to home port,
unleash everything (M&M, MitS, R3, Matrix, CC, YotC))?
Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 04:55:02 2001
Valeu John EMFA writes:

> Ok, I've been reading the posts here and there and YotC looks great.
> But I have to ask, I take it this isn't for newbies right?
> My group just started playing SR (all are experianced roleplayers, just
> first time shadowrunning).
> How long should they be playing before I spring this on them?
> Right now we're in 2059-2061 year wise. I mean, should I wait until they've
> been going at it for a while (1 year of game time), or just spring it on
> them now (as in do a couple of runs, then when we get back to home port,
> unleash everything (M&M, MitS, R3, Matrix, CC, YotC))?

In general, I think it is better to stagger things, and introduce new stuff
gradually. I personally like to start at 2050, with SR1 era tech, and work
my way up from there. Mind you, I've never gotten past about 2054 this way
;-), and so I've slightly scaled up technological/magical advances a bit in
the games I run, but the principle is there. Gurth has a nice listing of the
dates for each SR sourcebook on his site. I can cut and paste it and mail it
to you if you like :-).

I think the better way to go is to start at a particular baseline, and
introduce new books one by one. This way players have a chance to understand
the rules better, and the game world is an interesting, dynamic place. You
could, for instance, start with SR3, which has no bioware, no metamagic, and
no fancy gun stuff, and then begin introducing the more advanced things
later on. This would be a little problematic, as the new gear books are
compilations of previous gear books, and thus do not exactly tie into the SR
timeline as nicely as the originals did (for instance, bioware first
appeared in ShadowTech, which occurred <check's Gurth's page> from 2052 to
2053. In 2055, Bug City happened. Cybertechnology came out in 2056.) I think
it's nice to stagger these releases, if not sticking to the actual time
frames, then at least to the approximate order in which they occur.

If nothing else, at least you'll avoid overwhelming new players and
bamboozaling them with a myriad of a hundred million different options.
OTOH, if all the players (and especially the GM) are a bit more experienced
with SR, then starting at the most modern timescale is a reasonable thing.

OTOH, it's only a game, so if missing out on new funky stuff from the latest
sourcebook is irking you or your players (like, say, one wants to play a
tentacled porn star furry elf with a chrome cyber **** ;-)), then since the
idea is to have fun, then try not to be too restrictive :-). Although I
would probably slightly question (OK, not too much, really ;-)) the
particular character concept I just quoted above <grin>. But if not having
access to bioware is really cramping the style of a player who has a cool
character concept involving a cloned/genetically engineered dummy corpse for
a "fake your death" plan who got away and now runs the shadows (or whatever
:-)), then withholding bioware is a bit nasty.

I personally think that it's kind of cool if the runners can be involved in
the release of new "tech" to the shadows, too. Say you are planning on
introducing MitS level advanced magic. Maybe the runners are hired to kidnap
one of the Double Domed Researchers from MIT&T who has been looking into
watcher spirits. Maybe they learn the idea from him while they're sitting on
him holding him until their Johnson gets transport organised (which was held
up, say, because the rigger he originally hired had a blue with a Free
Spirit who's Home Domain he built a garage on, and who is now possessed by
the spirit). And just when the runners are about to load up on the new
rigger's vehicle, the old now possessed rigger turns up, with his teammate
Shaman and his Mentor in hot pursuit trying to bind the free spirit to get it
out of their rigger. They enlist the aid of the runners, and in exchange the
Mentor agrees to teach some metamagical techniques to the teams mage.

When you want to introduce bioware, then a whole bunch of runs can be
created around Phoenix Biotechnology and Universal Omnitech both setting up
free clinics in the barrens. And both experimenting on unknowing SINless
patients with their prototype bioware. Perhaps the runners are hired by the
parents of a runaway executive child who accidently got tested on ("hey, he
wasn't carrying a SIN when he came in with three gunshot wounds after being
mugged by the local Furry Bug Eyed Prehensile Tailed Ripper Gang"). They've
got to find the kid. Half way through their run, another SR team does a
snatch and run on one of the clinics trying to steal the prototype bioware
for their Johnson. The runners have the place under surveillance at the
time. What do they do? Either way, bioware as an interesting plot element,
as well as a cool character accessory is introduced into the game.

Anyway, best of luck with it!

--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 06:25:26 2001
According to Damion Milliken, on Wed, 08 Aug 2001 the word on the street
was...

> In general, I think it is better to stagger things, and introduce new stuff
> gradually. I personally like to start at 2050, with SR1 era tech, and work
> my way up from there. Mind you, I've never gotten past about 2054 this way
> ;-)

That kind of campaign is exactly why the dates list on my page is there :)
My group started a similar campaign about 3 1/2 years ago, and in the
roughly 2 1/2 years we played it (with usually one game session a week), we
managed to get about 2 years into the timeline... By the end of the
campaign they were just getting access to Shadowtech.

> I think the better way to go is to start at a particular baseline, and
> introduce new books one by one. This way players have a chance to understand
> the rules better, and the game world is an interesting, dynamic place. You
> could, for instance, start with SR3, which has no bioware, no metamagic, and
> no fancy gun stuff, and then begin introducing the more advanced things
> later on. This would be a little problematic, as the new gear books are
> compilations of previous gear books, and thus do not exactly tie into the SR
> timeline as nicely as the originals did

If you have access to the original books that's not a problem, and if you
don't, you can always make something up. "You want to get an Ares Predator
II? No, that's not available yet -- wait a while, it's only 2053, remember?"

> If nothing else, at least you'll avoid overwhelming new players and
> bamboozaling them with a myriad of a hundred million different options.

IME, that doesn't matter much -- they'll only pick the immediately-obvious
items anyway. Very few players I've seen take the time to really look
through the various books and pick the best equipment available, or the
things they like the looks of. Most of them stick to the stuff they know,
and/or ask the GM (or me, if I'm not GMing :) "I now have <insert list of
equipment here>, what else do I need?" Then there's the player who does
read through pretty much all the available stuff, and then falls back on
the same old kit because he only sees the drawbacks, and not the advantages
of all the other stuff :)

I have a feeling many players will do it this way, whether you give them
all the books at once or introduce things gradually.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Tot straks en poppelepee maar weer.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L++ E W-(++) N o? K w+(--) O V?
PS+ PE(-)(+) Y PGP- t@ 5++ X(+) R+++(-)>$ tv+ b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Anders Swenson)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 13:15:03 2001
----- Original Message -----
From: "Valeu John EMFA" <ValeuJ@*************.navy.mil>
To: <shadowrn@*********.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 1:58 PM
Subject: YotC questions


> Ok, I've been reading the posts here and there and YotC looks great.
> But I have to ask, I take it this isn't for newbies right?
> My group just started playing SR (all are experianced roleplayers, just
> first time shadowrunning).
> How long should they be playing before I spring this on them?
> Right now we're in 2059-2061 year wise. I mean, should I wait until
they've
> been going at it for a while (1 year of game time), or just spring it on
> them now (as in do a couple of runs, then when we get back to home port,
> unleash everything (M&M, MitS, R3, Matrix, CC, YotC))?
>
YOTC is mostly an adjustment to the setting of SR. Seems to me that you
could
have simple or gross runs in the setting. Do the eyeball one first. --Anders
Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Pepe Barbe)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 13:40:04 2001
At 04:52 a.m. 08/08/2001, Gurth wrote:
>That kind of campaign is exactly why the dates list on my page is there :)

Hey! I just checked your site and the links to those lists were broken ... :(

Pepe
Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 14:20:02 2001
According to Pepe Barbe, on Wed, 08 Aug 2001 the word on the street was...

> Hey! I just checked your site and the links to those lists were broken ... :(

What, still? I thought I'd fixed that... I may have missed a link, though;
as I recall, I used spaces in the filenames, which caused plenty of
browsers to choke on them, so I replaced them by underscores. It's very
possible that I forgot to update one or more of the links, however -- try
replacing the space by a _ character, and see if that works. If it doesn't,
replace the space by "%20" (without the quotes), which should hopefully do
the trick.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Tot straks en poppelepee maar weer.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L++ E W-(++) N o? K w+(--) O V?
PS+ PE(-)(+) Y PGP- t@ 5++ X(+) R+++(-)>$ tv+ b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Burning Avatar)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 16:10:03 2001
On 08-Aug-01 Valeu John EMFA wrote:
> Ok, I've been reading the posts here and there and YotC looks great.
> But I have to ask, I take it this isn't for newbies right?
> My group just started playing SR (all are experianced roleplayers,
> just first time shadowrunning).
> How long should they be playing before I spring this on them?
> Right now we're in 2059-2061 year wise. I mean, should I wait until
> they've been going at it for a while (1 year of game time), or just
> spring it on them now (as in do a couple of runs, then when we
> get back to home port, unleash everything (M&M, MitS, R3, Matrix,
> CC, YotC))?

I would suggest, start end '59 beginning '60 and make *some* normal
runns and then introduce YotC with the beginning comet hype in the
medias.

- Burning Avatar

----------------------------------
BA's data haven
http://home.t-online.de/home/tobias.d/srmain.htm
Message no. 8
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Burning Avatar)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 16:10:15 2001
On 08-Aug-01 Valeu John EMFA wrote:
> Ok, I've been reading the posts here and there and YotC looks great.
> But I have to ask, I take it this isn't for newbies right?
> My group just started playing SR (all are experianced roleplayers,
> just first time shadowrunning).
> How long should they be playing before I spring this on them?
> Right now we're in 2059-2061 year wise. I mean, should I wait until
> they've been going at it for a while (1 year of game time), or just
> spring it on them now (as in do a couple of runs, then when we
> get back to home port, unleash everything (M&M, MitS, R3, Matrix,
> CC, YotC))?

I would suggest, start end '59 beginning '60 and make *some* normal
runns and then introduce YotC with the beginning comet hype in the
medias.

- Burning Avatar

----------------------------------
BA's data haven
http://home.t-online.de/home/tobias.d/srmain.htm
Message no. 9
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 16:35:02 2001
From: "Gurth" <Gurth@******.nl>
<Snip missing links>
> What, still? I thought I'd fixed that...

Ohh... along with all the other updates :-)

> I may have missed a link, though;
> as I recall, I used spaces in the filenames, which caused plenty of
> browsers to choke on them, so I replaced them by underscores. It's very
> possible that I forgot to update one or more of the links, however -- try
> replacing the space by a _ character, and see if that works. If it doesn't,
> replace the space by "%20" (without the quotes), which should hopefully do
> the trick.

Nope you still have " " in the filenames, and in any case it's not that that is
the problem.

It's the two link from your homepage
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/adventure%20dates.html and
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/sourcebook%20dates.html. You must have forgotten
that all you SR stuff is on http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/shadowrun/ page and thus
you need to put "shadowrun/" in the links. The links from you shadowrun page is
OK (http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/shadowrun/adventure%20dates.html and
http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/shadowrun/sourcebook%20dates.html).

In any case you don't even have a link from you homepage to your Shadowrun stuff
:-(

Lars
--
Lars Wagner Hansen, Jagtvej 11, 4180 Sorø
l-hansen@*****.tele.dk http://home4.inet.tele.dk/l-hansen
Message no. 10
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Hahns Shin)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Wed Aug 8 17:45:02 2001
> sourcebook is irking you or your players (like, say, one wants to play a
> tentacled porn star furry elf with a chrome cyber **** ;-)), then since
the
Dammit, you took my character idea! :-) I'll just have to go with the
Bioninja Horned God Shaman who speaks with a lisp because of malformed tusks
(he's a SURGED Ork, btw). :-)
Though this doesn't beat the single-breasted Amazon Night One with an
inferiority complex in my current game (I'm NOT playing this character...).

Hahns Shin, MS II
Budding cybersurgeon
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already
know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be
killed."
-G. K. Chesterton
Message no. 11
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Thu Aug 9 06:15:11 2001
According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on Wed, 08 Aug 2001 the word on the street was...

> Nope you still have " " in the filenames, and in any case it's not that
that is
> the problem.

I could have sworn I'd changed that...

> It's the two link from your homepage
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/adventure%20dates.html and
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/sourcebook%20dates.html. You must have forgotten
> that all you SR stuff is on http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/shadowrun/ page and thus
> you need to put "shadowrun/" in the links.

Aha! Yes, that would certainly explain it -- the files originally _were_ in
my ~ directory, but then I moved them to ~/shadowrun. But as always
happens, I forgot to update the link on the main page. (I was assuming Pepe
tried to view the files from http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/shadowrun which
might have the space problem.)

> In any case you don't even have a link from you homepage to your Shadowrun stuff
> :-(

And not to some other stuff, either. It's because I tend to point people
directly to it rather than to the basic page. Which is in dire need of
change, too :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Tot straks en poppelepee maar weer.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L++ E W-(++) N o? K w+(--) O V?
PS+ PE(-)(+) Y PGP- t@ 5++ X(+) R+++(-)>$ tv+ b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 12
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Ken Hart)
Subject: YotC questions
Date: Thu Aug 9 09:25:01 2001
Thus did Burning Avatar reply to John Valeu's question about how to work
YotC into a campaign:
> I would suggest, start end '59 beginning '60 and make *some* normal
> runs and then introduce YotC with the beginning comet hype in the
> medias.

Yep, this sounds ideal. The payoff would be much higher if you worked the
comet hype into your PC's world as an "Oh, by the way, here's today's news"
thing. It would take a few sessions, but I think it'd be worth it. If I
ever find SR players in New Jersey [cue the violin], I'd like to send them
on a couple of probe-related runs as suggested on pages 20-21. Afterward,
the PCs might feel that they had a much more personal connection to what
happens later.

--Ken, who felt a strange chill of horror when he heard someone at Gen Con
refer to YotC as "Yahtzee"

Ken Hart / ghastrian@********.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~evilweb/
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but burlap chafes me so."


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