Shadowrun
Catalyst Game Labs => Catalyst's Shadowrun Products => Topic started by: UmaroVI on <01-05-12/1905:37>
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This is my, Tsuzua, and Squee’s review of the Street Legends supplemental. It’s not a review of Street Legends itself - only the new material.
Quick Summary: This product has well-written background pieces on the characters, but they often veer away from helpful information and plot hooks and into fanfiction-esque writing about blatant Mary Sue characters.
The biggest problem, however, is the abysmal quality of editing. There’s numerous errors in the character sheets - on average 2-3 per sheet, and many of them blatantly obvious things that should never have made it into a published product. Also, the character sheets are not made with consistent style or notation - something that could easily have been fixed with a proper style guide.
General Problems:
As mentioned, the character sheets are done in an inconsistent style, which makes them confusing to read. Some characters do skill (specialization) 4 (6), others do skill (specialization) 4 (+2). Some list skill boosts as Skill 3 [6], others as Skill 3 (+3). Some hackers list matrix IP on a second line, others do not. Some people list languages separately, others under knowledge skills. This is the sort of thing that could be easily fixed, and not having done so exemplifies the lazy, sloppy editing endemic throughout the Street Legends supplemental.
Software and cyber/bioware suites really should list their components - there’s no reason to not take a little bit of extra space to prevent the reader from having to cross-reference like that.
Characters have martial arts, but none have any maneuvers. Why?
Typos:
Here is a list of typos I happened to notice while reviewing. I’m sure there will be an errata soon to fix them.
P6 “had place bounties” should be “placed.”
P12 “smart skin2” should be “smart skin 2.”
p29 “KnowledgeSkills” should be “Knowledge Skills.”
p38 “Bug City then-Captain” should be “Bug City, then-Captain.”
Character by Character
Because the different characters were done by different writers, I’m going to review each separately. Due to spoiler concerns raised by FastJack, I spoilered the remainder of the review.
[spoiler]
Street Rage:
On the whole, Street Rage is one of the better characters. His background gives a good explanation of his motivations, and it’s easy to see how to integrate him into a campaign as an antagonist. The picture is good and matches the description well.
His character sheet has some errors. He has “Home Ground,” but no indication of what or where it is. Also, his goggles have Smartlink, but not Image Link, which is illegal.
Hard Exit
I find it hard to care about this character’s existence. She’s basically just a shadowrunner who’s better than your PCs will ever be, with no indication of how she might be relevant to a game and a background that reads like a fanfic. The artwork is good on its own merits, but doesn’t match the description: while it’s believable that the drawn character is part Tejana, there’s no way she looks Tejana enough to be discriminated against purely on the basis of her appearance as the her background suggests.
Her cyberarm has 2 empty capacity. This is very odd because she could have another point of armor with no drawback at all for 1500 nuyen. Why wouldn’t she do that? The brackets on her cyberarm and the implanted commlink are erroneous - the right bracket after “2/2” should instead be after “hot-sim.” Her H&K 227-S is listed as using subsonic ammo, but has AP-4 listed instead of AP+2.
Kane
Kane is pretty cool and his background story is fun. So...what do you do with him? There's really no plot hooks here – he's a character with a finished story arc. Why do I care? He seems like someone's wish fulfillment fantasy, not like a useful NPC.
Kane’s armor doesn't total correctly. It should be 11/9, but is listed as 13/13.
Mihoshi Oni
Mihoshi Oni has an interesting enough writeup, and is more easy to integrate into a campaign than some of the others, since she's a freelancer for the Yakuza and thus could easily come in contact with many PC groups. The fluff is a bit on the fanfic side, but okay enough, and the picture is great.
Mihoshi is listed as having Unarmed Combat 8, which is illegal and also odd since she’s supposed to be a Blades specialist. She cannot have both Arcane Arrester and Magic Resistance since they are exclusive. Why does she have Moderate Addiction (Alcohol)? There's no mention whatsoever of this in her backstory. Finally, Mihoshi has a quality called “Mundane.” No such quality exists and none of the other mundane characters in the book have this listed.
The Smiling Bandit
He's actually relevant! It's easy to see how PCs might care he exists, and he has motivations and personality besides “being more awesome than you.” Gold star!
Unfortunately, his character sheet is one of the most error-ridden. He can't have 2(5) matrix passes - he should only have 1(4). He has Erased and Code of Conduct, both of which have different versions and with no indication of which he has. He has a commlink with System 4, and a lot of enormously expensive milspec programs that he can’t use properly on it. Also, for a guy who really, really hates having cyberware to the point where he refused to implant actually useful things like an Encephalon, why does he have datajacks? You don’t actually need one anymore, let alone two.
Slamm-0!
The background fluff is a gag that goes on waaay too long. It should probably be about half the length it is, and contain about a quarter the number of in-jokes. All I have to say about the picture is that it looks like a man with above-average agility if I've ever seen one!
Like the Smiling Bandit, Slamm-0! is an error-ridden mess with a commlink that can't run his ridiculously expensive milspec programs. Especially inexcusable seeing as he has hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth of expensive milspec programs with options and stuff...but he a commlink that can't use them. He has Codeslinger, but no indication of what matrix action it’s for. He has Inspired (Matrix Graffiti), which doesn’t need to be picked for a specific artisan skill, and he doesn’t have Artisan. Slamm-0!’s earbuds have no rating. His baseball bat is weird. First, it's a more effective weapon than any other non-electrical club in existence. It does as much DV as a mace, but with -1 more AP. Also, it has -1 concealment? That means it is smaller than a heavy pistol. What?
Buttercup
“In metahuman form, Buttercup appears to be a petite Japanese girl in her late teens.” This does not even remotely match her picture, which is the epitome of NO KAWAII <(x-x)<. That aside, the fluff answers the important question: “why do I care.” Buttercup will hire shadowrunners, and the entry explains what she'll hire them to do, where, and why.
I'm assuming that the various ways Buttercup works completely differently from other free spirits (like being able to Summon, or apparently being able to earn karma without making spirit pacts) is because she's too cool for rules. However, why does she have unexplained bonuses to Counterspelling, Etiquette, and Spellcasting? I can't find any source on her character sheet. Are those in addition to the specialization bonuses? Are they only for the specialization? What's up there? Lastly, Business Lingo is a specialization of a language, not a language.
Damien Knight
The fluff does a good job establishing Knight's history and provides some usable plot hooks, but could really use more “why do I care?” It’s a bit more forgivable for him, since he’s a fairly important character for everyone in the sixth world to know about and it’s not too hard to think of plot hooks related to him.
Damien Knight is wearing too much armor for his body, and is encumbered – but it isn't factored into his statblock. Also, he has a Satellite Link..on a Signal 10 commlink. Satellite links are only Signal 8, so this is pointless. Finally, he has no sim module, but he has Biofeedback Filter instead of Armor.
I like that he has a cyberarm, with nanohives to boot, so at least that's it for the “cyberarms mark you as an obvious killer cyborg, oh noes” and “nanohives were never meant to be put into cyberlimbs” arguments.
It is odd that he has no geneware – PuSHeD seems like an obvious thing for him to have gotten, in particular. Also, SR4A p119 lists him as an example of someone with 7 social skills... but he doesn't have 7 in any social skills.
Anne Ravenheart
She completely fails the “why do I care” test. She's a comically powerful mage who used to hire shadowrunners, but now doesn't and just uses in-house Ares teams, and investigates vague things for vague reasons.
She can't have 5 watcher spirits, only 4, because her Charisma is 4. She cannot have Magic 14. Her maximum magic is 13, since she has 8 initiations and 1 point of magic loss due to cyberware. Also, what tradition does she have? Is she a shaman? It's odd to be a shaman with Intuition 6, Logic 5, and Charisma 4 – but it just doesn't say anything.
Harlequin
Harlequin’s fluff is not bad, albeit far too long. He doesn’t really have any purpose besides showing up and doing awesome things while your party watches, but that’s not really the fault of whoever did this particular writeup. His picture is actually pretty cool, but lacks the buttons he’s repeatedly described as having.
The random number of random force buttons thing is just stupid. Why would you want to roll 20 dice to figure out the force and number of his foci? Why would you care? What does it add? In general, his character sheet reads like someone’s masturbation aid. I especially like the sidebar explaining that his tradition is like Hermetic, but so much cooler.
Gwynplaine, on the other hand, is much more useful than Harlequin because there are plot hooks built in, and it’s actually relevant to many campaigns. [/spoiler]
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Perhaps you should put the information in Spoilers for those that have not purchased the book.
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I like products like these, regardless of whether I will use the characters personally or not. The expand the Shadowrun universe and give both myself and my players some inspiration for character creation and aspiration.
That said, I play a 2050s campaign and the inner workings of Ares and Mr Damian Knights struggles against Leonard are part of the plot, so it was good to finally see Mr Knight's background in one place and an idea of his stats. Of course, negoatiation is the key stat here...
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great review UmaroVI
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Reading through, I pause on Harlequin, and have to express my extreme, extreme disappointment. As this carries issues, well, spoiler-space is, I suppose, polite.
[spoiler]It has long been an obvious-even-from-the-outside and clear policy on the part of the writers and management to never, ever identify, in any way, individuals or the fates thereof of 'those who performed X Adventure.' Whether it was a significant one like the various bug runs, or something less so, 'unnamed individuals' is about as far as it goes.
To have violated this policy, placing Bull (and crew) as the runners involved in Harlequin's Back, and having an unnamed someone be the 'last survivor' of the crew that did Harlequin is ...
Look, the reason why the policy existed was to be able to place into Published Adventure your own characters. "I did that run." The identities of the people who performed a published run were never, ever identified, because who knows who it was? Maybe the results of the run were chosen and placed into canon, but the cast was specifically left blank, so that every single GM and every single player could put their gaming group, or their characters, into that slot.
To have Bull be one, and to have functionally killed off every member (but one) of the other violates this policy like ... I can't describe. It's atrocious is what it is.
Bull, according to what background I know of him, had years worth of issues with the Laughing Man. Those should have been brought to the table instead of results of published adventures. Toned down, perhaps, altered as necessary to make them 'believable', but not adventure results.
[/spoiler]
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Bull has always been a vehicle for somebody's supposedly epic campaign results canon...which is a shame, really, for the real Bull whom I respect greatly.
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All I can say to those criticisms is "Meh." Seriously, is it really that big an issue?
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All I can say to those criticisms is "Meh." Seriously, is it really that big an issue?
I love Street Legends Supplemental, and the characters of Bull and Harlequin, but I was quite alarmed when I saw it. Especially as it's been handled really well in other products - "unnamed runners" and so on. I don't have such a problem with the sole survivor of the first Harlequin adventure, because that was set >20 years ago in canon and thus it seems like a safe bet that all/most of them will have died by the time this is published IC.
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And an easy thing to change for a GM that has run an adventure with his group without making the suplement useless.
I really enjoyed reading through Street Legends even though I probably never will use it as a direct gaming resource it was still fun.
I do understand the point the wyrm is making but it is just not an issue for me.
Rasmus
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Wyrm, just so we're clear: You do know that, while the in-character Bull submitted that, the real-world Bull did not, in fact, write that, don't you? I'll let him fill you in on specifics if he wants, but he only provided Devon Oratz with some background on the character of Bull. The only thing our Bull wrote was Kane's writeup.
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I stand behind Umaro, Tsuzua, and my review and also want to request the next supplement have more technomancers. I know they are supposed to be very rare in the setting, but right now there are only two published TMs that I can find (Puck and the sample). I would like to see a few more because I play a TM and want to see how I stack up against some of the greats (like Netcat).
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Actually, read Harlequin a little closer. The run Bull was on was not the same one as Harlequin's Back. As i recall HB doesn't require any willing sacrifices on the players parts. It's a similar concept, but taken to another level, I believe.
The implication is that Harlequin has gone into the Metaplanes several times to plug up "Horror leaks". Harlequin's Back is just one of those.
(In the original game, Bull did go through both H and H's Back. HB was the run he did as a favor for Harley that got him and his family out of Chicago, which is the only reason we did it. The original H ended fairly ugly, which was the start of Bull's animosity toward the elf. But I avoided specifying that for a reason. But the final run was an original one by our GM that officially "ended" the original Bull & Johnny 99 campaign, which ended up with 4 dead PCs, 3 who let themselves become sacrifices, and 1 who was an idiot).
I'm not certain about the "sole survivor" of the original Harlequin's run, though. But yeah, that's not H's Back he's talking about there.
Bull
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Hey, did Harley show up in any of the video games that starred Bull? ;D
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Wyrm, just so we're clear: You do know that, while the in-character Bull submitted that, the real-world Bull did not, in fact, write that, don't you? I'll let him fill you in on specifics if he wants, but he only provided Devon Oratz with some background on the character of Bull. The only thing our Bull wrote was Kane's writeup.
Patrick --
I understand the difference between player, writer, and character, yes -- which is why I phrased it the way I did. I was quite aware that Bull's writeup may have not been done buy Steven Ratkovich, which is why I didn't rant at him, but rather about the writeup.
The implication is that Harlequin has gone into the Metaplanes several times to plug up "Horror leaks". Harlequin's Back is just one of those.
...
I'm not certain about the "sole survivor" of the original Harlequin's run, though. But yeah, that's not H's Back he's talking about there.
I understand where you're coming from, and while the 'sacrifice' in HB is not required, nor actual, it's ... there. Part of the problem with your implication, though, is that that's the only place it exists. There's no other references to Harlequin continually going on quests of this type -- which makes the implication in the writeup as I said. So while I understand what you meant to do, the lack of it being previously set up makes it ... very difficult to take otherwise.
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It's cool. And it happens. Devon asked what Bull's beef with Harley was, so I told him the backstory from our old game, and he used bits of it in there to flesh things out a bit, I guess.
It maybe could have been made a bit clearer, and it's one reason I originally steered clear of explaining anything in Bull's write up. Better to let it be a mystery than to risk stepping on anyone's toes.
Bull
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The flipside is that Bull and his team just did LSD with Harley while in the NAN, and not every got through the trip intact. :P
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Because the books are written from a runner's point of view, why would there be more reports of Harlequin doing stuff like that? If there were any survivors, there are any number of reasons why they might not talk about it much, including the whole 'Exposure to Horrors may cause insanity' thing. And there just may have been no survivors. And we all know how talkative the immortal elves are about their secrets. Frosty is the closest thing to an informant we have on them, and you can see how little she speaks about them. These are people who spent the entire downtime between the Fourth and Sixth worlds hiding, plotting, and planning.
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And now watching as the wheels of those plans come off in record time! ;D
"Damn it, I haven't had to improvise since World War One!"
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Because the books are written from a runner's point of view, why would there be more reports of Harlequin doing stuff like that?
Because the fluff isn't written from a runner's point of view. How the hell do we know so much about Harlequin, Ehran, Dunkelzahn, et. al. anyhow? Because stories, short and otherwise, have been written about them.
If there had been fluff previous to this, H talking to F about needing to be off in the netherworlds again, okay, great, that's one of the things that Bull-the-character was on. But there hasn't been, which makes the writeup on Harlequin (not Bull, note) ... sketchy, I think the term would be. Unstable.
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It *is* always possible, however slight, that Bull is just crazy and imagined the whole thing ;)
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Blows to the head happen a lot to shadowrunners, I bet. ;D
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The fluff is written primarily through people posting to Jackpoint (or Shadowland before it). Frosty has already shown that she doesn't like talking about the secrets she's privy to. Sure, Dunkelzhan, Hestaby, Harlequin and others would post to Shadowland from time to time, but how much did they actually give out, other than cryptic hints or warnings? And did we ever get anyone from, say, Lofwyr's inner circle to spill the dirt on him? Of course not. Daniel Howling Coyote is dead, but I don't think that fact ever made it into Shadowland or Jackpoint. There were frequent posters on Shadowland who knew about AIs a decade or more before Deus took over the Arcology, but they didn't say anything. There were signs that the Universal Brotherhood was infested with insect spirits years before Bug City, but no one said anything. Why? Because the people who were involved decided to keep quiet.
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*looks around* Player, player, player, GM, GM, GM, writer, writer ...
You know, I'm pretty sure we're all out of character here. I'm not talking about how much my character knows, Mirikon; I'm talking about how the world is written, and what we, as consumers of Shadowrun products, know. We-the-players/GMs/writers know Harlequin generated a run in order to clear off the Great Ghost Dance metaplanar spike point; that run is the adventure 'Harlequin's Back'. We-the-P/G/W know that Dunkelzahn for all intents and purposes did the same thing with the metaplanar spike point being extended by Oscuro -- and that the astral cyberzombie/ghost he'd become remained out there, doing just that.
What we don't know, which is something that whomever did the Harlequin writeup put forth, is that Harlequin has also been going on / sending runners on metaplanar quests to wreck other spike points. This is new information -- an entirely new proposition -- which comes out of nowhere, which is in no wise suggested in any of the other writings, in or out of character, background material, novels, discussions-to-the-GM or whatever. This makes the writeup appear to be doing something that Shadowrun has, as a game, been careful to side-step -- naming the IC people who were responsible for the actions of public adventures. And that, you see, is my problem.
If it had been proposed anywhere that Harlequin was still bringing shadowrunners off to the metaplanes to take care of spike points, okay. It hadn't; not okay. Comprende'?
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But where was it ever suggested that he HADN'T been doing that? If he did something like that once, why not do it again, at other spike points? What was there to ever suggest that, having had such a tactic work once, he wouldn't use it again? What suggestions do we have for any of the plans of the various Great Dragons, or all the other Immortal Elves? Every plot point we get about the Immortal Elves and the Great Dragons is new information, whether it is happening now, or happened in the past.
But really, it comes down to this. Do you really think Harlequin, who apparently sees some kind of personal need to keep the Horrors from returning early, would STOP acting against them, if there were other spike points he knew of?
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But really, it comes down to this. Do you really think Harlequin, who apparently sees some kind of personal need to keep the Horrors from returning early, would STOP acting against them, if there were other spike points he knew of?
House of the Sun.
*Pours a 40 on the curb*
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Thanks for the feedback, guys.
Edit:
In general, his character sheet reads like someone’s masturbation aid.
Not sure what way in which you mean this rather nasty little comment. To respond to one possible interpretation: I had statted Lugh Surehand in a way I thought was "adequately excessive" without going "completely over the top" and a few people responded that they genuinely thought he was "too weak". I really did not want to make that mistake ("too weak") again so it's possible I overcompensated. I can't really respond further without understanding exactly why and how you feel it was "masturbatory".
As for the "Hermetic only cooler tradition" that is heritage stuff from previous appearances of the character that I personally felt obliged to carry over. It's how his tradition is described in both of the classic Harlequin adventures. In hindsight, I wish I had just put "Harlequin resists drain with Willpower + Intuition" as that's the only important distinction from Hermetic.
As for the buttons, that was purely my idea and I thought that the idea that he carries around a bunch of Hot Topic bargain bin buttons attuned into foci at literally random Force would be a good way of converying how powerful and mercurial (for mercurial read: he does not give a shit) the character was and ah fuck it-
It does seems like rather a small thing for you to be quite so caustic about, though.
To have violated this policy, placing Bull (and crew) as the runners involved in Harlequin's Back, and having an unnamed someone be the 'last survivor' of the crew that did Harlequin is ...
Look, the reason why the policy existed was to be able to place into Published Adventure your own characters. "I did that run." The identities of the people who performed a published run were never, ever identified, because who knows who it was? Maybe the results of the run were chosen and placed into canon, but the cast was specifically left blank, so that every single GM and every single player could put their gaming group, or their characters, into that slot.
I want to be clear here. I am aware of and I support the long-standing policy you're referring to, and I did not intend to countermand or subvert it. I like to think that if I had really come close to doing so, I would have been stopped by the firm hand of the editorial infrastructure. So how do I feel that I did NOT do that? Well...
The most important thing to remember is that this entire discussion occurs in the context of unreliable narrators who are professional criminals, unconfirmed third-party evidence, rumors, and hearsay. It is not meant to state that anyone's PC(s) did not canonically participate in Harlequin or Harlequin's Back; that would not be my place. There are people who PC'd in those adventures before I was old enough to go to kindergarten, after all.
The events that Bull is described as being a part of are not necessarily those of Harlequin's Back--there are similarities, but certainly Bull's account is not a blow-by-blow description of Harlequin's Back.
Relatedly, the UNNAMED PC from Harlequin is A) Unnamed and B) Possibly the last surviving member of that team. Neither of those filters should exclude the open-ended class of "your PC". At least what I can say in all earnestness is that they were not meant to.
So in the first place, that was not necessarily meant to be Harlequin's Back and in the second instance, the description of the source of the information and his status is so deliberately vague that it really ought not to exclude anyone's PCs. What I was going for was the heightened level of vagary employed by certain video-game franchises with heavily customized characters when they refer to the protagonist of the previous game (like for instance the way that later Elder Scrolls games refer to the Nerevarine who could have been of any race, class, and gender, for instance).
I naively thought that seeing that "possibly the last surviving member" line might make people who PC'd Harlequin back in the olden days wonder about how their PCs are doing at surviving to whatever ripe old age they're at in 2073, which I thought would be a pleasant thing to muse on.
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Actually, read Harlequin a little closer. The run Bull was on was not the same one as Harlequin's Back. As i recall HB doesn't require any willing sacrifices on the players parts. It's a similar concept, but taken to another level, I believe.
The implication is that Harlequin has gone into the Metaplanes several times to plug up "Horror leaks". Harlequin's Back is just one of those.
(In the original game, Bull did go through both H and H's Back. HB was the run he did as a favor for Harley that got him and his family out of Chicago, which is the only reason we did it. The original H ended fairly ugly, which was the start of Bull's animosity toward the elf. But I avoided specifying that for a reason. But the final run was an original one by our GM that officially "ended" the original Bull & Johnny 99 campaign, which ended up with 4 dead PCs, 3 who let themselves become sacrifices, and 1 who was an idiot).
I'm not certain about the "sole survivor" of the original Harlequin's run, though. But yeah, that's not H's Back he's talking about there.
Bull
Ah, that's very good to know! It means I can use both the story of H's Back as it happened at our table, AND Devon's write-up on H without conflict.
Harlequin's Back did have a sacrifice at the end, though (with the suggestion that the GM let them live on in the real world despite the sacrifice). One or more of them has to stay with Thayla at the bridge, for the quest to succeed.
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In general, his character sheet reads like someone’s masturbation aid.
Not sure what way in which you mean this rather nasty little comment. To respond to one possible interpretation: I had statted Lugh Surehand in a way I thought was "adequately excessive" without going "completely over the top" and a few people responded that they genuinely thought he was "too weak". I really did not want to make that mistake ("too weak") again so it's possible I overcompensated. I can't really respond further without understanding exactly why and how you feel it was "masturbatory".
I actually felt that Harlequin was a bit on the 'weak' side as well, if only because of fewer metamagics than initiate grades... :P ...but at the same time, I really liked that fact since it makes it easier to fit in 'special' metamagics there, like the ones Frosty got in AU, and my own custom ones based on old Earthdawn magic...
As for the buttons, that was purely my idea and I thought that the idea that he carries around a bunch of Hot Topic bargain bin buttons attuned into foci at literally random Force would be a good way of converying how powerful and mercurial (for mercurial read: he does not give a shit) the character was and ah fuck it-
It does seems like rather a small thing for you to be quite so caustic about, though.
Personally, I felt that this move was pure genius. As I read it, I literally exclaimed: 'Ah! So THAT'S why he has them! Brilliant!'
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Personally, I felt that this move was pure genius. As I read it, I literally exclaimed: 'Ah! So THAT'S why he has them! Brilliant!'
Or it could be an entirely new thing, as he was looking at his coat one day and going... "Why not?" :P
Of all the IMs, he's one of the ones always willing to try new and interesting things. I mean, hell, he plays MMOs! His immortal foe can't even figure out how to use a TYPEWRITER yet!
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To be more specific: I feel like Harlequin's character sheet contains far, far too much space dedicated to explaining how super-duper-awesome and amazing he is, and how much cooler he is than everyone else, and how much more powerful he is than everyone else, and so on. The result is that instead of coming across as an NPC, he comes across as an enormous Mary Sue. Specific examples:
The sidebar about his tradition. I agree, a simple note saying "Harlequin uses a custom tradition similar to Hermetic, but with Intuition resisting drain" would have been plenty.
"The initiate grade and Magic attribute given here do not necessarily represent the upper limits of Harlequin’s magical capacity, merely the upper limits of what the Sixth World is likely to require of him."
Saying he knows all spells, and then having that enormous, bloated list of favorite spells. A shorter list would have been far more useful. The "Demolish Pants" spell, for example, got buried under a tide of generic spells. I think everyone can figure out that if Harlequin needs to knock out a bunch of people, he can Stunball them. I'd rather know that he likes casting Physical Double Image and other "trademark" spells like that.
The thing with the buttons - do you see anyone actually sitting down and rolling to see how many buttons of what force he has? Why not just say "he always has around 20 pins that are sustaining foci of force 5-10 as needed."
That said, I do recognize that part of the fanbase wants characters like this. To be charitable, I'll describe the different positions as "I only want information about NPCs that's relevant to using them in a game" vs. "I want the game stats for my favorite characters, I don't care if they are useless for actually running a game so long as they are super awesome" and the latter camp tends to want increasingly powerful and Mary Sue-esque NPCs at the cost of usability. I doubt you can please both camps.
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Of all the IMs, he's one of the ones always willing to try new and interesting things. I mean, hell, he plays MMOs! His immortal foe can't even figure out how to use a TYPEWRITER yet!
If you meant Ehran, he is the one playing with Harlequin in the short story at the beginning of Dusk. He just happens to find such occupation ridiculous.
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Haven't gotten those adventures. :( Budget constraints. :'(
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To be more specific: I feel like Harlequin's character sheet contains far, far too much space dedicated to explaining how super-duper-awesome and amazing he is, and how much cooler he is than everyone else, and how much more powerful he is than everyone else, and so on. The result is that instead of coming across as an NPC, he comes across as an enormous Mary Sue. Specific examples:
The sidebar about his tradition. I agree, a simple note saying "Harlequin uses a custom tradition similar to Hermetic, but with Intuition resisting drain" would have been plenty.
"The initiate grade and Magic attribute given here do not necessarily represent the upper limits of Harlequin’s magical capacity, merely the upper limits of what the Sixth World is likely to require of him."
Yeah I see your point now: most of that stuff was actually put in specifically to try and avoid pissing off the fan base, ironically.
Basically, when I dropped Lugh Surehand's stats, someone literally linked me to a PC they had played that could blast him to death. It was a completely ridiculous 40-50+ dice pool monster PC that wouldn't even be allowed in an "ultra-high-power" campaign by any reasonable GM, but still...it existed, and it was preposterous, and I wanted to account for that. Besides revamping the way I looked at numerically optimizing mages (specifically, I think I learned a lesson about the efficacy of Shielding Foci versus Counterspelling Foci thanks to whoever posted those stats), I also wanted to make sure, generally speaking, that no one was looking at Harlequin and thinking "this is pretty weak compared to some of the crap in my campaign".
"The initiate grade and Magic attribute given here do not necessarily represent the upper limits of Harlequin’s magical capacity, merely the upper limits of what the Sixth World is likely to require of him."
So I put in those lines because I didn't want the character's theoretical power to be limited by my own ability to optimize and at this level by "optimize" I of course really mean "choose arbitrarily high numbers".
So it was less *fap fap fap omfg Harlequin force 1,000,000* and more *let me really cover my bases here and make it clear he's the most powerful metahuman magician in the world and every aspect of his writeup reflects that*. It's not that I particularly think that what's interesting about the character is how ZOMG powerful he is--that's not what draws me to the character--it's just a canonically established fact that I felt obliged to comply with.
tl;dr generally speaking, coming up with Harlequin's canonical stats was a really daunting task; Shadowrun has made a point of not statting him before this point, and there's the whole theory of "if you stat it, players will find a way to kill it" and all of that was on my mind. The lines in question were supposed to be my escape clause, so to speak, in case I screwed anything up. I can see what you mean when you say they came across as belaboring the point, though.
Saying he knows all spells, and then having that enormous, bloated list of favorite spells. A shorter list would have been far more useful. The "Demolish Pants" spell, for example, got buried under a tide of generic spells. I think everyone can figure out that if Harlequin needs to knock out a bunch of people, he can Stunball them. I'd rather know that he likes casting Physical Double Image and other "trademark" spells like that.
I know it's a gigantic list, but that list of spells was really just supposed to be his favored spells. With that list and with the skills, I was also trying to do some characterization-via-stats. Personally speaking, I believe that stats can also serve as a form of characterization, although I also understand people who want stats to be only and always the mechanical information they need to play and nothing more.
*On A Lighter (oh god enumberance pun) Note*
Damien Knight is wearing too much armor for his body, and is encumbered – but it isn't factored into his statblock
I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.
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When dealing with dragons and Immortal elves, one should always assume that they have forgotten more about magic than you will ever know. Also, if someone is a few thousand years old, why shouldn't they be uber? It isn't like they forgot everything during the downtime, and had to build from scratch. And most would have picked up new skills and abilities during that time.
As far as the armor mods, the +blah mods don't count as STACKED armor. They still count towards the BODY*2 limit, though.
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I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.
They do work the same way that helmets/shields/PPP do - but that is to count towards encumbrance. They add to the value of the armor, and you check that for encumbrance. So if you have a Armor Jacket (8/6) and then put on a helmet (+1/+2) it makes the armor jacket count as 9/8 for all purposes - protection and encumbrance. Threading and PPP works the same way.
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Saying he knows all spells, and then having that enormous, bloated list of favorite spells. A shorter list would have been far more useful. The "Demolish Pants" spell, for example, got buried under a tide of generic spells. I think everyone can figure out that if Harlequin needs to knock out a bunch of people, he can Stunball them. I'd rather know that he likes casting Physical Double Image and other "trademark" spells like that.
I know it's a gigantic list, but that list of spells was really just supposed to be his favored spells. With that list and with the skills, I was also trying to do some characterization-via-stats. Personally speaking, I believe that stats can also serve as a form of characterization, although I also understand people who want stats to be only and always the mechanical information they need to play and nothing more.
My point is that the characterization via stats would be better with a shorter favorite spells list. Knowing someone's top 60 spells doesn't really tell you much about them. Knowing their 5 or 10 favorite spells does.
A good example: if you asked everyone in this thread to list their top 60 favorite sci-fi movies in alphabetical order, you'd get a bunch of very similar lists and it would be really hard to distinguish people. Where there are differences, lots of people would overlap heavily so they'd be hard to compare. If you asked for everyone's top 5 list instead, it would be much easier to get a sense of how people's tastes differ.
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I interpreted the armor modification options in Attitude (p. 160) as working the same way that helmets, shields, the PP system, and anything else with a "+" in front of the armor value do, and effectively not counting towards encumbrance. If they count towards encumbrance and nothing else with a + in front of it does, then that is quite an inconsistency.
All of those thinks do count toward encumbrance, would be pretty damn imbalanced if they didn't.
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When dealing with dragons and Immortal elves, one should always assume that they have forgotten more about magic than you will ever know. Also, if someone is a few thousand years old, why shouldn't they be uber? It isn't like they forgot everything during the downtime, and had to build from scratch. And most would have picked up new skills and abilities during that time.
There's a basic assumption here, that you can always know more about magic.
I mean, how much can you learn about forging? You could learn every to swing your hammer and the effect it produce, and learn the exact color of every alloy for a given temperature. A mortal blacksmith may achieve such knowledge in two or three decades of work. And after that?
As a swordman, you could learn every move and the ways to counter them, much like chess, but versus one, two, three or more opponents wielding different kind of weapons. But as far as I can tell, Immortal elves have Immunity to Age, not Immunity to Memory Loss (an immortal with the Photographic Memory quality would be a different beast...). Nor do they have a faster brain to process information, at least not more than a normal human could with the maxed attribute or the Exceptional Attribute quality.
Magic is only different because we're told it's about powerful mystical forces from other planes of existence, and because rules give no upper limit to Initiation and thus to the Magic Attribute. Active and knowledge skills, on the other hand, cannot go beyond 7 (a legal limit several characters in Street Legends violate). It could be argued that, as Initiation allows to increase an Attribute and not skill, it's not so much about knowledge of magic than being "attuned" to mana at a deeper level.
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Not to belabor the point, but it may be useful to draw attention to SR4A Page 161 “Armor and Encumbrance” (bolding mine):
If a character is wearing more than one piece of armor at a time, only the highest value (for either Ballistic or Impact) applies. Note that some armor items, like helmets and shields, provide a modifier to the worn armor rating and so do not count as stacked armor.
Too much armor, however, can slow a character down. If either of a character’s armor ratings exceeds his Body x 2, apply a –1 modifier to Agility and Reaction for every 2 points (or fraction thereof ) that his Body x 2 is exceeded. Note that this may affect Initiative as well. If a character is wearing multiple armor items, add their ratings together before comparing to Body
Additionally look at SR4A 327
Helmets and shields do not count as separate pieces of armor; instead, they modify the rating of worn armor by their rating (Armor and Encumbrance, p. 161).
Attitude 160 notes that “Layered protection rules still apply”
PPP notes on Arsenal 49 that they modify the rating of armor worn by their rating just as helmets and shields do.
I can see how an argument can be made that helmets and shields do not count as multiple armor items due to the second paragraph of SR4A 161, but I do not think it is correct. My interpretation is that helmets and shields do not provide the “stacked armor” penalty, but do add their ratings together before comparing to Body.
Finally, I do want to commend Neurosis for giving a published example of a character wearing multiple pieces of armored clothing with Armor modifications and not double stacking threading on any given piece.
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I was fairly certain that ware such as dermal plating or natrual abilities like a troll's dermal deposits or a critter's Armor didn't count to the Body*2 limit, but otherwise, yes, everything else you add up and then compare.
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Yes, things that are not worn armor - other examples include cyberlimb armor, Mystic Armor, and some of the SURGE effects - don't count towards encumbrance.
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I can see how an argument can be made that helmets and shields do not count as multiple armor items due to the second paragraph of SR4A 161, but I do not think it is correct. My interpretation is that helmets and shields do not provide the “stacked armor” penalty, but do add their ratings together before comparing to Body.
Pretty much it works like this:
You divide it up in these categories:
Formfit: Armor Value = 6/2, Encumbrance Value = 3/1
PPP: Armor & Encumbrance Value = Total of all pieces worn = (P1/P2)
Ware: Armor Value = Total of All Ware Armor Mods = (W1/W2), Encumbrance Value = 0
Powers/Qualities: Armor Value = Total of All Armor Values = (Q1/Q2), Encumbrance Value = 0
Helmet: Armor & Encumbrance Values = Listed Stats = (S1/(S2)
Shield: Armor & Encumbrance Values = Listed Stats = (S1/(S2)
All Other Armor: Armor Value = Highest Ballistic (A1) and Highest Impact (A2), Encumbrance Value = Total Ballistic (A3) and Total Impact (A4).
So what you end up with is this:
Armor
Ballistic = 6+P1+W1+Q1+H1+S1+A1
Impact = 2+P2+W2+Q2+H2+S2+A2
Encumbrance
Ballistic = 3+P1+H1+S1+A3
Impact = 1+P2+H2+S2+A4
EDIT: Removed post and posted it again more cleaned up.
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I think the point has been officially belabored.
(That is something I have been doing wrong since I started playing SR4, and no one has pointed it out to me before now. I still think an argument could be made for my interpretation being equally valid based on nitpicky wording issues within the rules text, but I certainly see where you guys are coming from, so I'm not going to pursue that argument.)
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As for the "Hermetic only cooler tradition" that is heritage stuff from previous appearances of the character that I personally felt obliged to carry over. It's how his tradition is described in both of the classic Harlequin adventures. In hindsight, I wish I had just put "Harlequin resists drain with Willpower + Intuition" as that's the only important distinction from Hermetic.
As for the buttons, that was purely my idea and I thought that the idea that he carries around a bunch of Hot Topic bargain bin buttons attuned into foci at literally random Force would be a good way of converying how powerful and mercurial (for mercurial read: he does not give a shit) the character was and ah fuck it-
I thought the buttons thing was cool. Seemed to me like somethign a confident (and possibly phsochotic) elf who has been around forever would do. It adds something unique to the character, a bit of a personal touch. You could have foci be anythign and for him it is just a simple button.
And where does it mention the way cooler part?
I also liked the
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There's quite a few things with the Street Legends and Supplemental to it that irk me - not the least of which was statting out NPCs who should never have been statted IMHO (Lofwyr) and blatantly ignoring those who should have (Man-Of-Many-Names, Fastjack).
Fastjack to me is very much an anomaly. Being a pure mundane, hacker and no technomancer, even a human + Lucky + Aptitude + maxed Edge, I don't understand how he can keep up with TMs with umpteen Immersion grades. It just doesn't add up.
The fluff text within Harlequin I quite liked but to my reading, Bull was definitely the guy out of Harlequin's Back and the author didn't make it clear to seperate that this wasn't the case. So yes, I can see why many people would be pissed. Also, turning around and saying "oh they're criminals so you can't trust them" completely undermines the notion of people reading Jackpoint for info IMHO.
- J.
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FastJack has experience. That's something that Stats cannot convey, only Role Playing.
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Fastjack to me is very much an anomaly. Being a pure mundane, hacker and no technomancer, even a human + Lucky + Aptitude + maxed Edge, I don't understand how he can keep up with TMs with umpteen Immersion grades. It just doesn't add up.
FastJack has experience. That's something that Stats cannot convey, only Role Playing.
Experience. A brain. Information, not always -- or even usually -- his own. Planning.
This last one is something that soooo many people really don't take into consideration. You want to see FastJack in his bare bones? Read the short with him and Perri, where it's Thor vs. Jormungand at Ragnarok; that's FastJack fighting the starting version of that thing, four or six or ten times in a row, until Perri manages to tell him that he needs to kill the egg before it'll be dead for good.
All the other things/times? Jack follows the 5 P's -- Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. He checks things out, he scouts out, he gathers intel. He sits down, and analyzes, and makes contingencies, and plans as many possible steps out ahead of time. "If this, then this; if that, then that." Plenty of technomancers -- and I would venture to say 'most' -- do not do that sort of thing ...
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In other words, FastJack is the Punk Batman.
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Honestly, no more so than any other runner who's managed to survive for 5+ years in the shadows and who is still running. You learn to do your legwork, and you keep up with the various rumor-mills, and if something sounds like it might impact you, you do some preemptive research on it. FastJack has just been doing it for so long that when you meet him, you can't help but remember that the 'runner who taught you used to talk in wonder about the stories the runner who taught him used to tell, about things FastJack pulled off 30 or 40 years ago ...
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So in other words, you agree? After all you can't justify the presence of Harlequin on one and ignore Fastjack without sounding like a hypocrite.
Sorry if I sound like an arse on this one.
- J.
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Indeed, stats do not convey everything. If it was that easy, then we would simply compare statblocks, declare a winner, and move on.
Of course, you'll notice that, out of all the people profiled in 10 Jackpointers, Street Legends, and Street Legends Supplemental, only a few are actual hackers. Of those, Slamm-O!'s piece was done as a slam by Clockwork, Orbital DK was done by a megacorp, Smiling Bandit was done as an homage by Clockwork, Puck was an homage by Icarus that had very little info that hadn't already been shared in Emergence and Unwired, Rigger X was a slam piece by someone who was pissed at him, Bull did his own, Hannibelle's was fearmongering on Tamanous grounds, and Cerberus made sure his own profile was published. Fastjack isn't about to post his own bio, and even if someone's pissed enough to try and slam him, it isn't going to end up on Jackpoint. And he burned Horizon's info, literally. No, if a bio on Fastjack comes up, it will be done by Bull, Perri, or Captain Chaos's e-ghost.
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FastJack's bio will be the title, who wrote it, and <Deleted>. ;D
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FastJack's bio will be the title, who wrote it <"the black hammer, it burns!">, and <Deleted>. ;D
FIFY
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Isn't that "JackHammer"? ;D
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Isn't that "JackHammer"? ;D
Tempting fate again? ;)
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Isn't that "JackHammer"? ;D
Tempting fate again? ;)
Grabbing a stick and poking Fate in the damned eye!
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After reading SLS - which I loved as a whole - I have to plead for a profile of Clockwork (he's pissed off enough people that someone HAS to do it, maybe as a warning to him). And if Clockwork gets done, then Netcat is also a must-happen.
Maybe FastJack (SR) could drop in an 'in memoriam' profile of Hatchetman . . . Argent also cries out for a 'remember him?' listing. Aufheben has been active in Bogota of late, so maybe Picador or even Hard Exit could write up one for him(?). Man-of-Many-Names got exposure in 10 Jackpointers, so maybe not him. I know - Pyramid Watcher, the authority on all things Azzie. I think someone voted for Icarus, so I'll second that - also a request for Arete (both enigmatic, though beginners compared to some).
Maybe update(s) on Spes and/or Aegis?
This is me, really reaching . . . hence 'Longshot' . . .
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I know NetCat's stats are in Corporate Intrigue since she goes along with the runners to rescue Puck.
And, I have seen Argent's write-up at last year's GenCon. It was glorious. I wept tears of honeyed gold upon reading it and still feel a strong sense of peace in my soul.
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Hopefully I can see it this year.
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<hoists a Frangelico to Argent>
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Is there going to be another supplemental? Plenty more figures in the Sixth World I'd like to know more about. Personally, I'd love to see Frosty do a writeup of Ehran the Scribe, and see writeups on Fastjack, Netcat, and others.
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Any item on FastJack would be redacted so quickly even the Resonance Realms wouldn't have time to get a copy. ;D
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I dunno. I could see Perri being able to post something on her dad.
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I dunno. I could see Perri being able to post something on her dad.
Last less than a nanoclick, I assure you. FastJack has stayed uncaught because he keeps things like this from happening. :P
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Erased 50 ;D
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Erased 50 ;D
You got it. It's FastJack. "He's the Chuck Norris of the Matrix world. Only all the things they say about him, he can actually do!" is how I described him to someone I'm introducing to Shadowrun.
If you're hacking the Matrix, it's only because FastJack has decided that you're not worth his time... ;D
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I heard Fastjack set up the Matrix because he was looking for a bigger pool of people to punk.
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I confess, I nearly wrote him up for the Home Edition for April 1st. It would have been one of the younger members (Either Dev/Grrl or, far more likely, Slamm-o!) doing it up, probably to win a bet (Dev vs Kane, or Slam vs Bull) ... and it would have been awful. And others would log in with "Chuck Norris" level stuff the whole time. (Fastjack once derezzed an AI just for compiling too loud. Fastjack once hacked into the Fuchi mainframe on a pocket calculator. I once saw a decker that met Fastjack get so scared that he Black Hammered HIMSELF while apologizing!) Would probably have ended with Fastjack logging in after waking up in the morning, grumbling that it's too early for this, and have it deleting itself while he went to go make some coffee.
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You forgot that Fastjack doesn't sleep, he codes.
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The Crash Virus of 2029 ended itself because it was getting close to FastJack's personal files.
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"Note that these aren't necessarily the true stats of Fastjack's commlink, merely the highest stats the Matrix 2.0 is likely to require of it."
"Fastjack's Exploit program is actually a special type of program, of which he is perhaps the only living user. It works superficially like a normal Exploit program, but is much more personal and unique."
Then slap on a few programs with rating higher than his commlink's listed response, and he's good to go!
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Then slap on a few programs with rating higher than his commlink's listed response, and he's good to go!
You mean 11? ;D
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FastJack goes higher than 11, that's just the highest that can work over a wireless connection and not break the Matrix, again. ;D
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I have a soft spot for Kat o' Nine Tales and my GM too. We were really hoping to have her in the supplemental. My GM used some of the canon characters within our game sessions (some even often) but she's the one he wants more info before using. He wants to get it right so he never used her. She's somewhat unique in the canon characters being a famous rock star and it's kind of only logical that my char cross paths with her at some point, being a less but still a little famous rocker himself. I hope she's going to be in there if there's another supplemental.
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FastJack didn't just father the girl that outted the Otaku. He fathered the Otaku. All of them. He had a free weekend.
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Deus wasnt stuck in the arcology... he was too scared of Fastjack to come out.
Shadowland posters? All Fastjack Alts, even Big D.
Cleaning Up Bug City. Fastjack. He had a talk with the Bugs and they went peacefully with Ares.
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FastJack was able to deal with Bug City because he had extensive knowledge of Bugs with computers.
FastJack is the reason MicroDeck doesn't make OSes any longer, he told them not to. Or else...
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Fastjack and Argent have a deal: FJ doesn't do merc work, and Argent doesn't do Matrix work
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FastJack wrote up the agreement with Argent; Argent just whimpered like a little slitch and signed it without reading it first.
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Ahem . . . Argent doesn't do anything like a little slitch, cos Argent = Chuck Norris (for SR).
Or did you forget?
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I thought we were having FastJack as Chuck Norris. :P
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You're both wrong. Chuck Norris split himself in two, and thus we have Fastjack and Argent. They can't be in the same place, because it would be like having atomic critical mass.
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Fastjack invented time travel so he could program Chuck Norris's beard.
Skynet didn't happen because all the terminator robots are scared of Fastjack.
I want to say something about the movie War Games but I got nothing.
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War Games = EuroWars. Even Fastjack has to play some time.