Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Checkmate on <12-02-17/1615:01>
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Quick question here. The Metaplanes section of Dark Terrors makes it sound like it's possible to physically visit the metaplanes l. Last I'd heard they could only be reached via steal projection, but I've been out of the sixth world for a spell, do i might've missed something. If someone could give me an explanation, I'd appreciate it!
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I'm pretty sure it is possible as I've seen things here and there hinting at it especially materialized Alchera which are Astral Topography that somehow transitions over to the physical world leaving for example a mountain where no mountain was there yesterday. However if there are any actual rules on physical travel for PC's I've not seen them to use the alchera again they specifically state if you are on them when they return to the astral you're (a) disorientated and (b) left behind which can be potentially lethal if you were in the middle of climbing said mountain as you're now falling. So I'd say its either a power long lost or a power not yet discovered but either way not something PC's are meant to be able to do. Just one of those tantalizing its theoretically possible but no one alive is capable of things.
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Alchera are essentially localized 'pocket planes' that are manifested in the material.
However, there are ways to physically go to the metaplanes. You either need to be one of the few who could do that back in the 4th world (or have been taught by those who were), have a spirit create an astral gateway, or find a rift. Getting physically into the metaplanes is difficult, naturally. Getting where you WANT to go is more so. Getting BACK? That's where the real trouble is.
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@Senko I mean travelling to the metaplanes, not Alchera.
@Mirikon Astral Gateways/Rifts do not physically move you to the metaplanes. They simply allow/force you to astrally project to a specific plane (even if you're mundane.) This is something new. Or a chapter long typo.
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There are, as noted, a few ways, but they're RARE. You have to find a thin enough point in the Astral to cross over or find a spirit that can take you. Ghost Trains are the easiest way if you can ever flag one down, but there are portals in assorted out-of-the-way locations that might allow access.
Expect to hunt a LOT, and figure that any of these that have been found will be well-guarded. By what? Well, that's half the fun. :D
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I seem to have misphrased my question. Dark Terrors makes it seem that there is a reliable and readily available method of physically reaching the metaplanes, given that it makes mention of MCT 'strip mining' metaplanes, taking back crystals for use in foci and other things. This isn't a method of travel that's chance, luck or rarity. It's something that corps can seemingly access and use.
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My point was more alchera can move back and forth from astral to material therefore it is theoretically possible but for characters doing something smilar is going to be much, much harder.
Corps probably can afterall they'd have the resources to take and guard one of those points the others mentioned
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The wording involving rifts and gateways have always been kind of loose and unclear. But rai seem to lean towards it being projection and not travel. Seems like I remember something from 4th edition that let you do it but can't recall reference right now. Have to do some digging tonight. The MCT thing kinda threw me off too.
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Earthdawn astral gateway spell seems to have been able to do it. Not sure if that counts. Strip mineing would seem to infer men and heavy equipment moving back and forth easily. Unless spirits are capable of moving things back and forth when they travel. Sure MCT wouldn't be against enslaving a large number of spirits to mine a metaplane.
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Away from my books, but as I remember, it was the ability of some great form spirits create a physical gateway for physical travel to the metaplanes. It was covered very briefly in Street Grimoire as I recall.
Not that I would recommend this, not all meta planes can support life...
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Astral Gateway (Street Grimoire, p.194) lets a spirit open an astral rift, which makes nearby objects dual-natured and enables mundanes to astrally project. An astral rift (Street Grimoire, p.29) enables anyone to astrally project, and provides a direct route to various metaplanes that bypasses the Dweller on the Threshold, but astral travelers still have to project, leaving their bodies behind. Both materialized and displacement alchera (Street Grimoire, p.29-30) normally leave living beings behind on the physical plane when they end.
Travelling physically to the metaplanes happens in fluff text, but I can't recall seeing rules for it anywhere.
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How about in a published adventure? SRM02-18 "A Very Bad Day" has the players going through a displacement alchera above the Hub in Denver. They are in a Pueblo metaplane, wholly and not astrally, and are even briefly trapped there after it closes on them.
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Hmmmm interesting. So it seems it is possibly to physically travel to metaplanes either accidentally or on purpose but there are no rules for players to do it consistently or to target a specific metaplane as their destination. Although that last one also applies somewhat to astral projection.
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There is a way through projection, but it means dealing with the Dweller... An experience that most people want to avoid...
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Hmmmm interesting. So it seems it is possibly to physically travel to metaplanes either accidentally or on purpose but there are no rules for players to do it consistently or to target a specific metaplane as their destination. Although that last one also applies somewhat to astral projection.
That may just be the point, that the players cannot do it consistently. At the end of SRM02-18 the players are zapped back to the material, and are in a different building than the one they used to get up into the alchera in the first place. Pretty sure the writers want to keep teleportation out of the hands of PCs.
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There is a stable way to enter the metaplanes. Through the Yellowstone anomaly. Granted, it only takes you to the fey metaplane, but it is stable, and avoids the dweller on the threshold.
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As for teleportation? Yeah, teleporting, time travel, and resurrecting the dead are the Three Big Magical No-Nos.
Do not cross Go, do not collect two hundred Nuyen.
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Strict teleportation is right out. However faux teleportation, such as when a Dragon overcasts a Levitate spell to send a group of azzie delegates as far from Ghostwalker as he can get them near instantaneously, or being able to step into the astral at one point, travel at the speed of thought, and step out at another point, or other such tricks are possible. Players almost certainly aren't going to have the power or ability to do it on their own, but they are possible.
Likewise faux time travel is possible, in that you can see echoes of the past or what may yet be in alchera or metaplanes, but you're not actually traveling in time and your actions won't affect the timeline. Also, fidelity of the echoes is not guaranteed.
And as for raising the dead? Well, you can certainly take a body, and get SOMETHING to live in it, and that thing may even have some of the former host's memories. But it isn't the being that died, and the whole process is going to end badly for you.
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I'm still not entirely clear on how overcasting levitate gets you from point A to point B apparently instantaneously the one I have is force in meters per combat turn. Now I agree you can move quickly but at that rate to get as fast as a car going 60 km/h you'd need to be casting at force 51 give or take and that's a long way from too fast too follow. Now I'm prepared to agree an unstated great dragon is going to have piles of drain resistant ability but still. To get apparently instantaneous travel over even a short distance is . . . a lot. Just to cover an average city block fast enough you would seem to teleport your looking at 75 THOUSAND + force. That will make you cover the distance of 16 miles in 1 second. 16 miles, 1 second, over 75 thousand force but I don't want to work it out) to pull off. Now you could slow it down and still be moving faster than the human can follow but your going to notice a time delay. Drop the force to 25 thousand and you'll do it in 3 seconds, drop it to 8.5 thousand and you'll do it in 9 seconds, drop it to 2.8 thousand and your up to 27 seconds, drop it again to 953 and your up to a minute and half to travel that distance (roughly). This is one city block covered in a minute and a half at still nearly a thousand force. Admitedly that's 10 miles in a minute but I think you see my problem here.
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That's because you're looking at a the 5th edition version, when the act I'm talking about was done in 4th edition. In 4th, the speed was Force x Spellcasting hits in meters per turn. So a dragon overcasting the spell as far as he could take it, and spending Edge to get as many hits as possible? Yeah, you're moving pretty fast at that point. Maybe not instant transmission, but enough that observers would say you were there one moment and gone the next.
Of course, that's assuming that a dragon didn't have his own version of the spell with different effects.
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Ah yes that would make a bit of a difference. Still seems odd they'd get it fast enough to fool those it was used on into thinking they were teleported but yes that would make it exponentially faster.
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Its also worth noting that some NPCs have explicitly been given game breaking Illegal abilities. I know back in 1st when they published the adventure with Harlequin in it the book said he did not have stats and the PCs lose period full stop if they engage him. It said he can TELEPORT and yes they meant the TELEPORT that was explicitly forbidden in the spell creation rules because he was using 4th world magic and he knows how to do things that were forgotten at the end of the 4th age and only other people like the Great Dragons who survived the jump from the 4th age to the 6th age know the stuff he knows. The PCs could have multiple nukes and Thor shots on call and they lost to Harlequin and he slapped them around until they did what he wanted or he killed them out of frustration/boredom.
Heck when the gave him a stated write up in street legends in 4E he was a Grade 30 something initiate and had a force 24 ish ally spirit with him. And implied pretty heavily that he had meta magics that were unknown to the current age and filled any gaps the GM needed plugged.
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That's because you're looking at a the 5th edition version, when the act I'm talking about was done in 4th edition. In 4th, the speed was Force x Spellcasting hits in meters per turn. So a dragon overcasting the spell as far as he could take it, and spending Edge to get as many hits as possible? Yeah, you're moving pretty fast at that point. Maybe not instant transmission, but enough that observers would say you were there one moment and gone the next.
Of course, that's assuming that a dragon didn't have his own version of the spell with different effects.
Add in a high force spirit with the Movement power to multiply that again...
Assuming the old wyrm didn't truly teleport them. Might be considered impossible now due to the lower levels of ambient mana, but when you've been around since the 4th age...
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Its also worth noting that some NPCs have explicitly been given game breaking Illegal abilities. I know back in 1st when they published the adventure with Harlequin in it the book said he did not have stats and the PCs lose period full stop if they engage him. It said he can TELEPORT and yes they meant the TELEPORT that was explicitly forbidden in the spell creation rules because he was using 4th world magic and he knows how to do things that were forgotten at the end of the 4th age and only other people like the Great Dragons who survived the jump from the 4th age to the 6th age know the stuff he knows. The PCs could have multiple nukes and Thor shots on call and they lost to Harlequin and he slapped them around until they did what he wanted or he killed them out of frustration/boredom.
Heck when the gave him a stated write up in street legends in 4E he was a Grade 30 something initiate and had a force 24 ish ally spirit with him. And implied pretty heavily that he had meta magics that were unknown to the current age and filled any gaps the GM needed plugged.
Bit of a sidetrack here, but is anyone else explicitly okay with certain famous/powerful NPCs having abilities or fluff that breaks the standard rules? I mean, in most history of tabletop it exists somewhere in the books something that says "The first rule is to have fun. As long as the players and GM enjoy the game, feel free to fudge the rules a bit."
I mean Hell, you look at any published adventure, especially the older ones, and there are significant parts where "X happens" no matter what the players do. So having an NPC or event break the normal rules I think is fine, as long as it's stressed that it's extremely rare/expensive/challenging to do that, and /orthe Powers That Be have tried recreating it with little success. Biggest thing is for them not to abuse the rules or start using the tabletop Deus Ex Machina so much that the normal rules become irrelevant.
The issue with Harlequin, IMO, is that they used what should have been a singular instance of that same NPC/rules Machina and made a character that was the focus of 2 entire adventures. So if/when the party eventually tries to challenge him or go against his wishes, the writers simply said "He wins, they lose, thanks for playing".
Bear in mind that this was still in the era of Gygaxian "player vs the GM" mindset a bit, so making arbitrary rulings like that was more common. I mean shot, look at the original Tomb of Horrors as a prime example of the Treadmill of Fun.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now so we can get back to the topic at hand.
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@Magnaric I actually tend to agree. The problem is that all the 'powers that be' are right here on Earth. And there's a lot of them. Which tends to make the world feel...small. It's hard to go ten feet without tripping over a Dragon's plot. I (and my group) also have a personal dislike of Harlequin. Which might explain why he's technically dead in our campaign world. Although given he was killed by another Fourth Worlder (one of ours from our ED game) we're not really bucking the model....
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One of the situations of playing in a modern game I think. In most fantasy ones you go over the hill and your the only hope that village has. In Shadowrun you go over the hill and there's people with a satellite uplink reporting the problem to the official authorities while the corp assasin is passing by on his way to shoot Jason Bourne and over in Germany a Great Dragon is nodding happily at his plot going off smoothly. There are some really major players around and with modern communications they're able to effectively be every where in some form or other. Add in beings with "special powers" (something I'm not ok with it may be hard to nearly impossible to get ahold of but the potential should be there) you literally can't get as a PC but need to interact with them and it can leave players feeling they may as well have stayed home it'd get dealt with anyway.
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One of the situations of playing in a modern game I think. In most fantasy ones you go over the hill and your the only hope that village has. In Shadowrun you go over the hill and there's people with a satellite uplink reporting the problem to the official authorities while the corp assasin is passing by on his way to shoot Jason Bourne and over in Germany a Great Dragon is nodding happily at his plot going off smoothly. There are some really major players around and with modern communications they're able to effectively be every where in some form or other. Add in beings with "special powers" (something I'm not ok with it may be hard to nearly impossible to get ahold of but the potential should be there) you literally can't get as a PC but need to interact with them and it can leave players feeling they may as well have stayed home it'd get dealt with anyway.
Which is possibly why one of the common themes in cyberpunk is that you can't save the world or even a big chunk of it, but sometimes, if you are willing to take risks and make sacrifices, you can save a person or small group or punish an ill-doer. It is those situations where the powers-that-be don't care about -- or are even the cause of -- the problem where players have the option to be heroes.
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Back to the 'can you physically move to the metaplanes" issue. IIRC inn Boston: Lockdown there is mention of research on setting up paired metaplanar gates such that you could go through one at point A, arrive in a metaplane, take two steps and go through another gate at emerge back on Earth at point B. I remember when I read it having that same "Wait, I thought bodies didn't go into the astral or metaplanes?" reaction. I've not really seen anything clarifying this much.
In my game I have given such a 'physical transfer to a metaplane' power to an particular artifact -- this particular one being activated only through blood magic, and taking the user to a blood-magic associated metaplane where even a powerful blood mage could not stay long .... but it has let a particular opponent escape from at least one certain-defeat situation, and chasing down and eventually destroying this artifact is one of the long-running metaplots in the game now.
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Some of it might be 4th vs 5th problems. I am pretty sure that in 4th the Astral gateway power from great form spirits physically moved you to the Astral plain and opened up physical travel to the Meta planes. In the end its the GMs call as the world will work the way the GM wants. If he wants players going to the meta planes physically he will make it happen only question is it something he wants the players to have direct access and control over. Great form spirits is something any summoner can get his hands on by taking the meta magic once hes got the karma to initiate a few times and get all the prerequisites out of the way. It could be done via Stargate type devices that are fantastically expensive (billions of nuyen) cause you know its a couple thousand pounds of Orichalum and what not that they are only going to see by going to DELTA level magic research facility that has a small army of very well armed and very prepared corp sec guarding it. Or it may not exist at all, that is the GMs call. Just remember that unless they are giving you hard rules crunch stuff its all unreliable narrative info that may or may not be right and its up to the GM to decide if its legit and how legit it is or if its all just some one blowing smoke and telling a tall tale to get free drinks.
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Some of it might be 4th vs 5th problems. I am pretty sure that in 4th the Astral gateway power from great form spirits physically moved you to the Astral plain and opened up physical travel to the Meta planes. ...
Checking ... no, the Astral Gateway power (SR4 Street Magic, p.98) and astral rifts (p.116) worked the same way in Fourth Edition as they do in Fifth. They make nearby objects dual-natured, enable mundanes to astrally project, and sometimes open a direct path to the metaplanes that bypasses the Dweller. Physical bodies are always left behind. It was the same in First, Second, and Third Editions: Astral Gateway (SR1 Grimoire, p.75; SR2 Grimoire, p.79; SR3 Magic in the Shadows, p.116) enables mundanes to project astrally and travel to the spirit's native metaplane while the spirit watches over their physical bodies.
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That is what is available to those with the knowledge of magic in the 6th world, yes.
Some beings have older knowledge, and abilities which transcend what we now possess.