[Alrician]

Hello,

I have bought the quick start rules and the basic rules and am now ready to lead my friends into the shadows. We are pausing our Fantasy RPG because a player has become a father. I myself am a big shadowrun fan and use the chance to introduce the universe to my players.
There were some questions:

1. Do you have any experience playing runs in cities/sprawls close to your home? Does that help the immersion or does it bother her?

2. Tips for atmospheric background music?

3. Do you know a good collection of artwork for Shadowrun?

4. Is the adventure "Fast Food Fight" suitable for a start? If not, can you recommend another?

5. Are the characters in the quick start rules suitable for starting? I will also spend a rigger and battlemage from the basic rules.

6. What are the disadvantages of having a SIN?

Many Thanks

Alrician "Scourge"

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

1) depends on the players.  Personally I find it fun and immersive.  You can talk about places everyone intimately knows about and when it comes to getaways/chases, you don't have to make up the geography.  Plus I find it fun to give a dystopian touch on familiar places.  Since noone reads anymore, the public library on Main Street closed "back in 2049" and "now" it's a burned out BTL den.  So on

2) Billy Idol's Cyberpunk is literally tailor made for the genre

3) Plenty of gems on DeviantArt.

4) Fast Food Fight is great.  It not only gives an introduction to the rules, it's a trove of priceless in-universe lore about what every day life is like for shadowrunners.  When you're not getting attacked that is

5) I always find it easier to start simple and then build up the complexity.  The rigger might be a tad complex in terms of game mechanics, but not so much that a beginning GM and Player couldn't play one.  Just be aware there'll be many more rules applying to the rigger that everyone else will probably not need to learn/worry about.

6) You have a legal identity.  That's a bad thing because the police can come knock on your door at home after the shadowrun if you leave forensic evidence behind.  If you have a SIN, you still REALLY want to get and use a good fake SIN.  Plus, it's so not 'Punk' to have to pay income tax on your shadowun income by putting the money in a legit bank account

[Sphinx]

0. Fifth Edition Quick Start Rules (QSR) vs. Fifth Edition Core Rulebook: Pick one. There are significant inconsistencies between the QSR and core rules (e.g., Drain). Once you've decided to buy the basic rulebook, you've outgrown the QSR. Leave 'em behind and don't look back.

1. Playing close to home: I think it helps enormously if you've at least visited the sprawl you're running in, although Google Earth can be a good substitute. Remember that streets and buildings will change over the next 60 years, but the underlying terrain (mostly) won't. Rivers and ridgelines and coastlines will still contain and channel sprawl. Allow for population changes (e.g., VITAS plagues, the Treaty of Denver) to leave ghost towns and abandoned "urban barrens" areas as well as new developments.

2. Tips for background music: I mostly just play AC/DC in the background, although there are a number of Shadowrun/Cyberpunk playlists available on YouTube, Spotify, and elsewhere. Free websites like Tabletop Audio have ambient sounds for different environments.

3. Artwork resource: Google Images and Pinterest will give you tons of good art if you tweak your search terms properly.

4. Fast Food Fight: The "Fast Food Fight" from the online QSR is okay, but I prefer the traditional Stuffer Shack version of the Food Fight scenario (5E version available in the Beginner Box and Alphaware box sets ... although the setting descriptions are incomplete; you'll want to use the map key from the SR4 QSR or SR3 First Run).

5. Pregen characters: They're okay for a one-shot, but not if you intend to keep playing. There was an archetype challenge on this board a while back, where you can find better builds for all the basic archetypes in the core rulebook.

6. Disadvantages of a SIN: Having a legit SIN means you're in the system. Your place of business, place of residence, finances, medical history, biometric data, commlink, Matrix habits, and more are all accessible and/or traceable by the authorities. Leave any DNA or fingerprints at a crime scene, or your face on a security camera, and Knight Errant will be knocking on your door with restraints and awkward questions by the end of the day. Plus, mostly SINless shadowrunners look on SINners with disdain, so there could be social consequences among your peers and contacts.

[Michael Chandra]

https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=7696.0 has some nice Shadowrun-style artwork on it.

SR4 QSR fight is better than SR5 QSR, and should be easy to convert (do all skills x1.5 and it's good enough).

Legal SINs are a massive liability. But they are a Negative Quality that can be hard to balance as a new GM. My advice? Ban the Quality for your first campaign, as well as any other qualities that will be tough to keep balanced.

[Alrician]

Yes, I have been already advised against the SR5 scenario and recommended SR4.
But since we come from the classic fantasy area, I feel the classic recruitment of a Mr. Johnson as something new and exciting. And my runners can look back later and say: we were stupid then, completely unprepared to stumble into something and to get too little for it.

But since I find the Etablissment of the burger shop really not very nice, does anyone know a similar short scenario of a fast run?


Thanks for all the other tips and links!!

(btw: how can I avoid these stupid Verification game while posting?

[Michael Chandra]

If memory serves me, after 10 posts it's probably gone?

Hm, if you want a fun scenario, there's a few free April Fools Missions. You could grab one of those and tweak it (reduce the amount of combat scenes, nerf enemies to not be horribly lethal). Maybe the one that involves a fake Johnson promising way too much, Free Taiwan.

[Magnaric]

Just to add my 2¥ on top of what everyone else has, I find Spotify is incredible for background music. I use it enough I actually got a paid account now(I hate adds), and it's great. Likewise fio art, I actually made a free Pinterest account because I fund some amazing artwork on there. There's also some great pages on Reddit for it, like /r/imaginarycyberpunk among others.

Lastly fir atmosphere, I use a site called Ambient Mixer to sey the tone. It pulls sounds and tracks from all over(YouTube, etc) and you can adjust the settings on up to 8 tracks at once to tailor it to what you need. It's great if you want the feeling of rainy streets in a Metroplex, the rusting hull of an abandoned ship, jungle sounds, whatever. I love it.