Character Creation Discussion

[NewSheo]

@saithor I was hoping to use the following Code of Honor based on the Akichita Code (Run Faster pg. 29) with the following tenets and their interpretations/limitations. Ideally I'd like to use some variation of this kind of code but if it would be too much of a hassle, or if it doesn't meet your expectations, let me know and I can make changes, propose a new code, or take other negative qualities instead.

 

Afila Tu Acero (Sharpen Your Steel)

- Never show fear.

First in, last out. Never flee from a battle unless all others have left, or it's part of the plan. Fear, however, is different from practicing common sense or good tactics. Charging blindly into blatantly impossible odds without good reason is pointless. Mechanically, I feel like failing Composure tests in the presence of something either supernaturally terrifying or especially horrific mundane things would be grounds for karma loss.

- Challenge your strength against worthy foes.

There's no honor to be had in bullying the weak. Legitimate threats, such as corporate security, are met on the level of lethality/escalation they mete out, or lower. And as a personal caveat (i.e. one the character holds herself to, but understands sometimes just isn't possible), one should endeavor to make the fight "fair": gun to gun, blade to blade, fist to fist. Being outnumbered to the point of otherwise "weak" threats becoming greater than the sum of their parts can also balance the scales.

- Do not allow yourself or your loved ones to fall into decadence or slothful behavior.

Rely on as few worldly possessions as possible. Ware is distinct, in that you have made it a part of you, essentially a trade that you've made to "sharpen the knife". Combat drugs are considered "tools to use, not abuse". Do not fall to addiction, corruption, etc, or suffer the company of those that do. Indulgence is fine, so long as it does not dictate one's actions. This tenet also includes cyberpsychosis.

- Never harm the weak or innocent.

This one is interesting, in that the definition of "weak" and/or "innocent" is can be pretty murky in the shadows. I would interpret it as someone who has not acted aggressively against you, or whose aggression is insufficient to be considered "worthy", i.e. a teenage ganger or street kid with a Streetline Special who has more courage than sense, or someone who isn't in their right mind. In the case of the latter, de-escalation, disarming, or non-lethally disabling the aggressor would suffice.

 

This is what I have so far, at least.

[saithor]

1 hour ago, Ayeba said:

Sorry, missed this.

Good question on age. She's an awakened animal, and has very fragmented memory of the time before she awoke. But there's a lore question here. I assume the animal form and metahuman form are similar in maturity. That is, a barely adult animal will transform into something resembling 15-17 years old human. But does that mean

1. That the animal form ages slower than other animals, or
2. That the metahuman form ages a lot faster than other metahumans?

I know how old I imagine the character to be in its metahuman form, but the actual age depends on the question above.

On the topic of adoption; she's much more of an animal than a metahuman, so it'll be less like adopting a younger runner and more like adopting a smart, spellcasting dog that reluctantly changes into a metahuman when she absolutely has to. What smells wrong is up to me as a player to decide, but she wouldn't like the smell of constant drug use, for example. I don't want to make this difficult, so she can be as accommodating as I need her to be.

I have another rule question which the GM (@saithor) may have to decide on as it's not clear in the rules. I'm reading the section "Creating a shapeshifter" on page 102 in Run Faster. It is pretty clear that the metahuman form inherits most of the traits from the animal. But what about the other way? Does the animal form inherit the metahuman traits? For example, will a Fox/Dwarf shapeshifter obtain thermographic vision in animal form? I don't think the rules clarify this at all. Logically, I would say yes if it works the other way, but I'll accept either ruling.

 

I'd say Sapphic has the right of it, just ballpark the shapeshifter age. I don't want to deal with any mess age stuff and I don't want to have to start putting no child characters in my chargen rules again.

On the runfaster thing I'll say you can have the metahuman form traits be inherited by the animal form.

 

32 minutes ago, NewSheo said:

@saithor I was hoping to use the following Code of Honor based on the Akichita Code (Run Faster pg. 29) with the following tenets and their interpretations/limitations. Ideally I'd like to use some variation of this kind of code but if it would be too much of a hassle, or if it doesn't meet your expectations, let me know and I can make changes, propose a new code, or take other negative qualities instead.

 

Afila Tu Acero (Sharpen Your Steel)

- Never show fear.

First in, last out. Never flee from a battle unless all others have left, or it's part of the plan. Fear, however, is different from practicing common sense or good tactics. Charging blindly into blatantly impossible odds without good reason is pointless. Mechanically, I feel like failing Composure tests in the presence of something either supernaturally terrifying or especially horrific mundane things would be grounds for karma loss.

- Challenge your strength against worthy foes.

There's no honor to be had in bullying the weak. Legitimate threats, such as corporate security, are met on the level of lethality/escalation they mete out, or lower. And as a personal caveat (i.e. one the character holds herself to, but understands sometimes just isn't possible), one should endeavor to make the fight "fair": gun to gun, blade to blade, fist to fist. Being outnumbered to the point of otherwise "weak" threats becoming greater than the sum of their parts can also balance the scales.

- Do not allow yourself or your loved ones to fall into decadence or slothful behavior.

Rely on as few worldly possessions as possible. Ware is distinct, in that you have made it a part of you, essentially a trade that you've made to "sharpen the knife". Combat drugs are considered "tools to use, not abuse". Do not fall to addiction, corruption, etc, or suffer the company of those that do. Indulgence is fine, so long as it does not dictate one's actions. This tenet also includes cyberpsychosis.

- Never harm the weak or innocent.

This one is interesting, in that the definition of "weak" and/or "innocent" is can be pretty murky in the shadows. I would interpret it as someone who has not acted aggressively against you, or whose aggression is insufficient to be considered "worthy", i.e. a teenage ganger or street kid with a Streetline Special who has more courage than sense, or someone who isn't in their right mind. In the case of the latter, de-escalation, disarming, or non-lethally disabling the aggressor would suffice.

 

This is what I have so far, at least.

This one works fine, you can go ahead and use this. The one about decadence or slothful behavior I think should definitely be kept to your character only though.

[NewSheo]

4 minutes ago, saithor said:

This one works fine, you can go ahead and use this. The one about decadence or slothful behavior I think should definitely be kept to your character only though.

Gotcha! Now that I read it back I can see how that would cause friction in a group lol.

[Ayeba]

1 hour ago, saithor said:

I'd say Sapphic has the right of it, just ballpark the shapeshifter age. I don't want to deal with any mess age stuff and I don't want to have to start putting no child characters in my chargen rules again.

On the runfaster thing I'll say you can have the metahuman form traits be inherited by the animal form.

I agree on no child characters.

Thanks for the ruling.

Edited April 3 by Ayeba (see edit history)

[Sapphic Reiver]

5 hours ago, saithor said:

I don't want to have to start putting no child characters in my chargen rules again.

 

...Again?

[Havelock]

13 hours ago, saithor said:

meanwhile I’m encountering the main issue of GMing Shadowrun; Now I want someone else to start up a Shadowrun game lol

Maybe I'll be done cooking in 3 years.

 

While I'm encountering the main issue of making a PC for Shadowrun, sum to 16 would make this so much easier....only then I'd want even more and still not have enough points.

[NewSheo]

10 hours ago, saithor said:

I don't want to deal with any mess age stuff and I don't want to have to start putting no child characters in my chargen rules again.

I feel like there's a story there, but also that way probably lies madness and knowledge we'd probably prefer not to know.

[Ayeba]

On a completely unrelated note; I'm toying with the idea of testing out a D&D shadowrun-ish one-shot, with the possibility of expanding to a campaign. That is, a D&D group with the same basic feel as Shadowrunners. Only instead of megacorps, there are extremely powerful families with guilds in their pockets, and they hire runners to do their dirty work. Including something equivalent to Mr. Johnsons, contacts and, obviously, backstabbing.

I'm only 30% serious about it so far, but if others think there are merit, I'm tempted to try.

[Sapphic Reiver]

1 minute ago, Ayeba said:

On a completely unrelated note; I'm toying with the idea of testing out a D&D shadowrun-ish one-shot, with the possibility of expanding to a campaign. That is, a D&D group with the same basic feel as Shadowrunners. Only instead of megacorps, there are extremely powerful families with guilds in their pockets, and they hire runners to do their dirty work. Including something equivalent to Mr. Johnsons, contacts and, obviously, backstabbing.

I'm only 30% serious about it so far, but if others think there are merit, I'm tempted to try.

There's actually a system pretty similar in concept to this called Brinkwood though it's vampire-centric. I recommend checking it out, cool stuff.

[TheBard101]

You could do it with D20 modern!

[Ayeba]

3 hours ago, Sapphic Reiver said:

There's actually a system pretty similar in concept to this called Brinkwood though it's vampire-centric. I recommend checking it out, cool stuff.

Not heard of it, will have to look it up.

7 minutes ago, TheBard101 said:

You could do it with D20 modern!

I'm sure that's possible, but my intention is to screw around with the tropes and make fantasy Shadowrun. That is, Shadowrun in a fantasy setting.

[NewSheo]

6 minutes ago, Ayeba said:

That is, Shadowrun in a fantasy setting.

So Earthdawn but legally distinct? /s

[Lwmons]

3 hours ago, Ayeba said:

On a completely unrelated note; I'm toying with the idea of testing out a D&D shadowrun-ish one-shot, with the possibility of expanding to a campaign. That is, a D&D group with the same basic feel as Shadowrunners. Only instead of megacorps, there are extremely powerful families with guilds in their pockets, and they hire runners to do their dirty work. Including something equivalent to Mr. Johnsons, contacts and, obviously, backstabbing.

I'm only 30% serious about it so far, but if others think there are merit, I'm tempted to try.

I was looking into this as well. Look up Ravnica, the MTG setting, which has a dedicated 5e book of lore and plot

It's a planet wide city ruled by 10 guilds (megacorps) that fight amongst themselves for power over the others.

An example of some of the guilds are:

• transhumanists that augment their biology with animal biology instead of robotics to create the perfect being.

• The military police are led by angels.

• Thought spies that control the newspaper and the mail to manipulate the masses.

• Necromantic corpos that hold onto their wealth as ghosts and vampires.

• Wasteland raiders who worship long forgotten gods and violently try to overthrow the current system.

5e doesn't do to much, ruleswise, to work with the setting but it also doesn't get in the way. The setting book also assumes that players will want to join a guild. I'd recommend at least giving the book a flip through to mine for ideas at the very least.

[Ayeba]

1 minute ago, NewSheo said:

So Earthdawn but legally distinct? /s

Earthdawn! That's a thing. Well, was a thing. I remember it in the store when I was a teenager, but I never played it. Is it still alive?

1 minute ago, Lwmons said:

I was looking into this as well. Look up Ravnica, the MTG setting, which has a dedicated 5e book of lore and plot

Great suggestion, thanks. It's not exactly strange that I'm not the first person to think of such a plot.

[NewSheo]

3 minutes ago, Ayeba said:

Is it still alive?

I doubt it, but from what I've seen the setting was wild.