[Singularity]

I've said my Rigger pieces before, but I will say, even if I rarely got the chance to use vehicles like those seen in the rigger art, yknow the ones, the supercars with the obvious non-hidden antivehicle weaponry and stuff, I've always wanted to have a setting where you could use that without it immediately being considered a terrorist level event

Been watching GitS SAC again lately, makes me want to see logic tanks, heh and the new cover art for 6 with that guy charging the drone made me think 'ooh tachikoma' or Lynx + arms + external rigger cocoon

I'm reading the Hardwired novel and I love the concept of the panzerboy/girl (riggers in Shadowrun) and their hovertanks (T-Birds in Shadowrun?). I'm curious, is there ever a chance for a player to acquire and use one on a regular basis in the Shadowrun missions organized play?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I'm reading the Hardwired novel and I love the concept of the panzerboy/girl (riggers in Shadowrun) and their hovertanks (T-Birds in Shadowrun?). I'm curious, is there ever a chance for a player to acquire and use one on a regular basis in the Shadowrun missions organized play?

Keep in mind Shadowrun does have hovercraft, but the T-Birds are not hover-tanks. T-Birds are ground-effect vehicles which makes them full-fledged aircraft.  Aircraft that can't go very high off the ground, and can't hover, but aircraft none-the-less.

T-birds have an aura of sex and glitz, both in-universe and within the out-of-universe Shadowrun fandom, but conventional helicopters are 9 times out of 10 going to be more practical and useful to shadowrunners    You want to jump out of an aircraft onto the top of a building?  T-Birds neither hover nor get high enough to get over the roof of a tall building!


On to the second question... SRMs generally pay about 10,000 per mission. And there's only 6 missions per season (although there's usually 4-8 more SRM-legal missions each year in the form of CMPs).  GMs are encouraged to not deviate significantly from the printed mission rewards, especially so on karma/nuyen.  So frankly there's very little opportunity to acquire top-end vehicles in SRM post-chargen.

[Michael Chandra]

In a normal campaign you can build in options for those. But in Missions you won't often have room to use them.

[Singularity]

I'm reading the Hardwired novel and I love the concept of the panzerboy/girl (riggers in Shadowrun) and their hovertanks (T-Birds in Shadowrun?). I'm curious, is there ever a chance for a player to acquire and use one on a regular basis in the Shadowrun missions organized play?

Keep in mind Shadowrun does have hovercraft, but the T-Birds are not hover-tanks. T-Birds are ground-effect vehicles which makes them full-fledged aircraft.  Aircraft that can't go very high off the ground, and can't hover, but aircraft none-the-less.

T-birds have an aura of sex and glitz, both in-universe and within the out-of-universe Shadowrun fandom, but conventional helicopters are 9 times out of 10 going to be more practical and useful to shadowrunners    You want to jump out of an aircraft onto the top of a building?  T-Birds neither hover nor get high enough to get over the roof of a tall building!


On to the second question... SRMs generally pay about 10,000 per mission. And there's only 6 missions per season (although there's usually 4-8 more SRM-legal missions each year in the form of CMPs).  GMs are encouraged to not deviate significantly from the printed mission rewards, especially so on karma/nuyen.  So frankly there's very little opportunity to acquire top-end vehicles in SRM post-chargen.

Ah, I seriously misunderstood what a T-bird was then, sorry! 

[Singularity]

In a normal campaign you can build in options for those. But in Missions you won't often have room to use them.

Ah, ok. I'll look at maybe a cheaper helicopter then, or something lower-end.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Ah, I seriously misunderstood what a T-bird was then, sorry! 

Don't be sorry.  Being a "ground effect vehicle" hasn't been given much more than lip service since.. well.. ever.

This is what a Banshee has looked like since 1st edition:



And real-life ground-effect vehicles look something like this:



Besides, don't take my word for it that T-Birds can't hover.  Unless I'm mistaken, there's been writers who've had them hover in fiction.  It doesn't even matter whether the writers were in left field or not, because a good rigger might be able to make a rigged 747 hover for a short time

The part that's really going to be absolute though is the price.  It's full of ouch.  Price alone might force you to VTOLs.

[Dangermaus]

...in Missions we have no choice but to deal with the poor editing and disorganised structure.  Some in our local group took the initiative to create "cheat sheets" and playing aids such as ones for spirits, matrix actions, and combat actions/options to minimise having to plough through two or three books to find things during play.

Would you be interested in sharing those cheat sheets?

[kyoto kid]

Ah, I seriously misunderstood what a T-bird was then, sorry! 

Don't be sorry.  Being a "ground effect vehicle" hasn't been given much more than lip service since.. well.. ever.

This is what a Banshee has looked like since 1st edition:



I actually introduced them in my 3E campaign.

I actually introduced them int my 3E campaign.

And real-life ground-effect vehicles look something like this:



Besides, don't take my word for it that T-Birds can't hover.  Unless I'm mistaken, there's been writers who've had them hover in fiction.  It doesn't even matter whether the writers were in left field or not, because a good rigger might be able to make a rigged 747 hover for a short time

The part that's really going to be absolute though is the price.  It's full of ouch.  Price alone might force you to VTOLs.

...ah, ekranoplans.  In the real world the Soviets/Russia invested heavily in this technology.

I actually introduced them in my 3E campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Nu94khHoo

[Shinobi Killfist]

Ah, I seriously misunderstood what a T-bird was then, sorry! 

Don't be sorry.  Being a "ground effect vehicle" hasn't been given much more than lip service since.. well.. ever.

This is what a Banshee has looked like since 1st edition:



And real-life ground-effect vehicles look something like this:



Besides, don't take my word for it that T-Birds can't hover.  Unless I'm mistaken, there's been writers who've had them hover in fiction.  It doesn't even matter whether the writers were in left field or not, because a good rigger might be able to make a rigged 747 hover for a short time

The part that's really going to be absolute though is the price.  It's full of ouch.  Price alone might force you to VTOLs.

They are listed in the vstol/vtol section. I’m pretty sure previous editions had them as vtol. The 2 listed in rigger 5 are specifically vstol but are described as either uber focussed or a Krime cannon version so that might be unusual. That being said given there weight I suspect they stop like a train, so while a rigger might be able to hit the spot for a drop off it’s likely don’t a couple combat turns in advance.

Though given there 2 million price tag i always felt it was a npc thing.

[mcv]

We've only really been talking about the core rules here, but there's a lot more to an edition of Shadowrun than that.

A friend loaned me some of his old SR2/3 books and reading some of them, I'm blown away by how clear they are. More meat to the adventures (maps!), clear explanations of what's going on in the metaplots, rather than the Jackpoint stream-of-consciousness mess, and just generally clear and readable.

Based on that, maybe SR2 and 3 are the best editions after all. I find it really hard to figure out what's really going on in books like Clutch of Dragons, Storm Front and Bloody Business. The older books spell it out rather than wasting many pages on Jackpoint speculation.

On life paths:

Several Space Opera games (Traveler, a couple of Fantasy Flight Warhammer 40k RPGs) do something similar to Life Paths.  What Kind of Planet were you from, get these things, what sort of school did you go to, get these other things, Military service get those other things.  At least one version of Call of Cthulhu and some of the Twilight 2000 series have a life path lite.  Harn is a three or four step Life Path char gen system.

That's just off the top of my head.  It's not the most common char gen method in RPGs, but its been around for a very long time.

Diaspora, a space RPG using Fate, also has one (no idea if this is standard in Fate). Fate relies heavily on aspects, so you describe your youth, get a few aspects from that, then describe a crisis, in which the character of the player to your right played a role and get an aspect from that, then how you helped the character to your left in their crisis, get an aspect, etc. So you get history, aspects, and relationships between the characters all in one go. Pretty neat idea.

Traveller is of course legendary for having the possibility that you die during character creation. It's less about who you are and more about in which branches of the military you served and whether you got promoted or got hurt.

[Michael Chandra]

Speculation gives a lot of nice leeway to GMs, which I rather like myself. No 'THIS is what happened precisely!' and the Jackpoint people clearly got personalities. As for maps, I do like adventures that have those.

[mcv]

Speculation gives a lot of nice leeway to GMs, which I rather like myself. No 'THIS is what happened precisely!' and the Jackpoint people clearly got personalities.

It's great for atmosphere, commentary and different perspectives, but for conveying actual information that I can rely on, it's terrible. My preference would be giving me the facts in a clear and functional manner, interspersed with Jackpoint commentary. Alternatively, Jackpoint ramblings followed by an explanation of what's actually going on (as some recent books have), but all too often, that explanation is short, incomplete, or even absent.

As for maps, I do like adventures that have those.

I was disappointed when Serrated Edge (which does have a map at least) had just a rambling paragraph of how to get into the facility, rather than a keyed map. Some adventures have no map. I was disappointed that the "adventures" in Bloody Business are more like adventure seeds: nice ideas, but almost nothing to help me figure out what's necessary to accomplish the jobs.

[kyoto kid]

Traveller is of course legendary for having the possibility that you die during character creation. It's less about who you are and more about in which branches of the military you served and whether you got promoted or got hurt.

...and if you rolled really poor for attributes, there always was the option to become a Belter which had the highest chargen casualty rate.

Another space game that used similar life/career path develoment at chargen was FGU's Space Opera.  At chargen if the rolls went your way, you could muster out of a service with a pretty decent veteran standing, severance package, and swag.

I actually ran a campaign way back in the 80s and if you like "crunchy" rules, this system made SR 3E look like AD&D or possibly even Tunnels and Trolls in comparison.  Starship combat required something like four different tests just to see if you even scratched the hull of an opposing ship and all the character vs. character combat modifiers would stack to ludicrous levels at times. 

Thankfully I had access to a 48 K Apple ][, and an HP programmable scientific calculator that had reverse Polish notation.

[Rapier]

There are some cool stuff added since then but SR2 still has a special place in my hearth.

[kyoto kid]

...you mean you burned it?