Half a page badly formatted equipment list for a character?
You're looking at quite simply the most gear intensive page in the book, the equipment list for a high-end drone rigger, and a page so full of goodies that it got Jason to comment -- just about the amount of stuff in
that one page -- about it over on the Shadowrun blog months ago. I'm sorry if that part of the preview doesn't float your proverbial boat, but trust me when I say not every write-up is that gear intensive (if that's what's bothering you).
And some of the characters are the ones I hoped never to hear from again.
As has been said already, there's no pleasing
everyone when it comes to trying to make a list of characters for something like
Street Legends. Some will complain that their favorite legend isn't there, some will complain that characters they don't like are there, some will complain that it's nothing but old characters who've already been around the block, some will complain about any new faces. Plain fact: someone will complain, no matter what.
And of course, the "legendary" people are better why? Because they have different rules. Yes, of course. Makes total sense, breaking the system just because you can't build these characters otherwise.
Not quite, no. I'll tackle this one in part because I'm the only guy around at 4:00, but in part because this rule was largely my idea.
They're better because they have an awful lot of dice to roll for most of the things they do. In order to highlight that, we suggest an (existing!) optional rule gets used. One that's designed for cinematic gameplay (as befitting the best of the best), and one that mathematically increases the effective difference between very large die pools (like these guys) and moderate to small die pools.
Rather than "break the system" by only applying that rule to these top-tier characters, though, please note that we're suggesting it occur for everyone (PCs most certainly included, as the focal point of any campaign) when one of these legendary 'runners is around. The inclusion of a street legend into a campaign should be a Big Deal (tm) and players should know that, and understand that things just got kicked up a notch or two -- so, with the pressure on and the stakes high, the laws of probability get tweaked on the nose, your campaign gets a hit of high-octane awesomefuel, and suddenly everyone starts pulling off more awesome shit, leaving grunts in the dust.
As a preemptive strike against the "ZOMG MARY SUUUUUUUE" complaints about an optional rule being suggested for/applied to these NPCs only, we included an end zone, a goal post, a clear line in the sand that offers player characters a way to earn legendary status themselves. It's an optional rule (just like using the cinematic rules in the first place!), but a fun way for some players and GMs to have a clear end-of-campaign or retirement (or whatever else) goal. Hitting level 20 in D&D used to be a big deal, right? Now there's a similar sort of finish line available in Shadowrun, offering
those who want it a clear delineation between being just plain old awesome, and being genuinely epic. If someone's in such a long-standing, high-powered, campaign that they think the 100 karma is worth it, they can drop that chunk of change and start pulling off crazy James Bond shit. If they don't, they don't have to.
I'm sorry if you don't like that whole inset box, but do remember that "Running Legends" is optional. You can feel free to just let the legends get hits on a 4+ but everyone else sticks with the normal 5+ (which was suggested), you can let legends always reroll a 6 instead of just when they spend Edge like everyone else (which was suggested), you can come up with some other special rule that legends get (Edge manipulation differences, for instance, which were suggested), you can of course run a whole campaign with the cinematic rules if you want, or you can just ignore that whole box and hope that the real-life probability curve lets their larger-than-normal die pools do the heavy lifting.
It's a suggestion for a way to capture some of the over-the-top cinematic fun that some of these characters can muster up, it's not a rule carved in stone.