I’d say we’d probably be around levels 6-10. Not sure if those of you unfamiliar with the system would need to start lower.

I think Caduceus would be a Circle of the Shepherd Druid.

Are you thinking we shouldn't allow spells that don't have SR equivalents?  Any other limitations to keep the SR feel?

Hmm, well, that’s up to you guys. What do y’all think?

How do cyber, matrix and things like foci work?

Cyberware and foci would probably just be categorized under magic items. I’d say that spellcasting classes would be buying and attuning to foci whereas cyberware and bioware would be the equivalent to your non-caster classes. If anyone has a particular piece of cyberware in mind we can work out stats for it. Cyberware would serve the function of magic items to most consumers but would permanently take up an attunement slot if they have it installed. The matrix I don’t know- I was thinking it could just be something simplified to a skill check or few skill checks. I’m thinking that proper device disabling, fancy matrix shit, etc would kinda fall under your standard thieving rules, or maybe we can have deckers make up two seperate character sheets and run the proper matrix with metaphorical representations of stuff in the matrix and sort of get esoteric with it. Would require some creative application of the rules but I can think up some pretty trippy stuff :)

What do you guys think?

In reply to White Duck (msg # 200):

That sounds really good.  I mean it's like an astral adventure but using decking so you could bend the astral rules to fit.

Great! Yeah I was thinking something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroF...&utm_name=iossmf

Its kinda funny because all the old novels try and make the matrix seem like its this vast rpg within an rpg and we’de using basic rules to get there. Could be kinda fun!

I'm game. I love the group, and the posting rate works. I won't have bandwidth for intense mechanics unpacking until the new fiscal year (mid-October probably, and I say that knowing it's definitely not true, I'll be on some new project again).

I'll also say, posting frequently has been a struggle for me and I know some people want a game that well, moves. If the preference is that I step back, or just post 'as I can', I have zero ill-will about that. I've considered dropping out a few times just because I know I'm flaky.

We're all flaky in our own ways...  You started this.  You're not allowed to leave! :>

I won't really be able to focus on char-gen for about 2 weeks, but I'm game after that.  Considering a sneaky assassin type, which I guess would be a Rogue?  How are we handling firearms?

Presumably we'd just need to get Big Brother to change the default dice roller settings and have White Duck tell us where to set up accounts and we could be good to go.

Sounds good to me. Since Caduceus would likely be a druid (or possibly cleric), I think it would be pretty easy to reflavor the class's existing abilities to a Shadowrun flavor. Summoning spells/wild shape would be conjuring, a bow and arrow is a gun, spells are spells, leather armor is a fancy biking jacket, etc. Most stuff can use existing stats and mechanics. You just need to slap a different name on it. And certain spells that really don't fit can probably just not be selected.

If anyone needs help reflavoring something, I may be able to help brainstorm additional ideas.

Looks like I have an option to reconfigure default dice roller settings. I'll go ahead and make White Duck a GM?

I don't have any strong preference on character types yet. I definitely lean towards lateral thinking type characters, but obviously Hairy didn't fall into that category :P So whatever the need is, happy to fill.

In reply to Hairy (msg # 206):

I'd love to see you make Hairy as an artificer.  Big Guns are needed.

https://ddb.ac/campaigns/join/33776703487483450

There's the D&D Beyond Campaign Link. I'm going to go ahead and create Duck and use my next couple posts in walking through how to make your characters.

Step 1. Click on the link above.
Step 2. Click Create an Unassigned character.
Step 3. You're brought to the character builder, which is mostly self explanatory. After completing one section, you have to regard the right and left hand sides of the screen to navigate from one page to the next. Comes in handy.

Character Options: All sources enabled, optional features allowed, hit points rolled manually (in the dice roller here. reroll ones!). Make sure the character sheet is toggled public. After that, you can leave all of the other stuff set to its default.

Race: Duck is just a human, but everything should be somewhat available to you guys. For the sake of adding even more biodiversity into Shadowrun's array of options, examples of some of these other races might just exist. You guys are going down a voodoo rabbithole and your characters might never come out of this weird alternate world. If you want to play someone already from there and new, keep in mind it might take awhile to introduce you to the rest of the group, and you'll have an alternate starting location and story thread.

If your character geeks it though, feel free to pick nonstandard Shadowrun stuff. Like I said, this is very quickly going to become its own thing. When choosing languages though, feel free to just pick whatever there and we can just change that to whatever Shadowrun world languages your character would know. Duck speaks Vietnamese and Cajun French!

Class: Here's where you work out whatever your character would be, but also set levels. Let's do level ten. Our characters are experienced runners, after all.

Duck is going to be a monk/rogue. Just feels right.
You'll see some of the boxes presented to you highlighted amongst the others in blue. Those are the character leveling options where you have to go in and pick something more specific.

Some of the things are somewhat superfluous, like being proficient in an instrument or artisan's tools, but if you want to really hone in on being good at playing a yartling or whittling or whatever that's fine too. Hidden talent! Others are crucial, but if you're familiar with 5e you should know what options those are gonna be. The level three stuff is always crucial. Duck'll have the Way of Shadow on the Monk side of things because ninja, and  the Tough feat at monk 5 because he's always been one to stand in and take damage, then on the rogue side I'm taking Swashbuckler for Fancy Footwork and Rakish Audacity, to represent his physad-boosted reflexes.

The class screen is also where you manage your HP.
14:23, Today: White Duck rolled 50 using 10d8, rerolling ones with rolls of 5,5,8,2,6,{1}8,5,2,3,6.  Duck's HP.

Now, if anyone would want help with how a specific class or ability would work in this system that you're interested in using, let's collab on it here to make it fit.

Ability Scores: We roll em!

More to come on this later when I get back!

Can we do a "sum to X" for ability scores rather than random rolls?  (Hard to work on a specific character concept if your abilities are random.)

I think I will go with a Circle of Shepherd Druid 8, Trickery Domains Cleric 2. It seems very snake shaman-y. Unfortunately it seems that I will have to input a lot of the class features manually, since only the circle of land and domain of life options are available for free.

Sorry cadeuces, I had to share my resources to the campaign. You should have additional options unlocked now.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:54, Sun 18 Sept 2022.

In reply to DeusEx (msg # 209):

They aren't random, you will be able to assign them where you want. You can do point buy instead if that's easier for you, but I find with the way I generate ability scores that people often end up with better numbers.

Awesome! Thanks!

What do we do for rolling ability scores? Also, what sort of equipment do we start with?

Sorry for the delay- on rolling ability scores, roll 4d6 7 times, drop the lowest number from each set of four, then when you have seven numbers, drop the lowest overall. So for example, here's my set one:
08:24, Today: White Duck rolled 10 using 4d6 with rolls of 3,1,4,2.
08:24, Today: White Duck rolled 13 using 4d6 with rolls of 2,3,4,4.
08:24, Today: White Duck rolled 16 using 4d6 with rolls of 5,4,1,6.
08:24, Today: White Duck rolled 7 using 4d6 with rolls of 1,3,1,2.
08:24, Today: White Duck rolled 17 using 4d6 with rolls of 4,5,5,3.
08:23, Today: White Duck rolled 18 using 4d6 with rolls of 4,5,5,4.
08:23, Today: White Duck rolled 16 using 4d6 with rolls of 5,5,5,1.

So my set 1 is 9/11/15/6/14/14/15. Since there are only six ability scores, I'm gonna drop the 6, which leaves me with a pretty good set of stats to distribute. Nothing stellar but it happens! Gonna roll my second set though!

08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 11 using 4d6 with rolls of 1,4,4,2.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 18 using 4d6 with rolls of 6,1,5,6.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 14 using 4d6 with rolls of 6,4,1,3.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 7 using 4d6 with rolls of 2,2,2,1.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 8 using 4d6 with rolls of 2,2,1,3.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 9 using 4d6 with rolls of 3,1,1,4.
08:26, Today: White Duck rolled 15 using 4d6 with rolls of 3,6,5,1.

And that one's much lower than the last one. At this point I have the option to keep either of these sets, or say fuck it and point buy him, OR roll a third set that I just have to keep. Since Duck's probably not going to be a featured character in this story, I'd say why not roll up that third set?

08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 12 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 3,4,5,3.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 9 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 2,1,3,4.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 14 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 2,6,2,6.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 12 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,4,2,6.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 16 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,6,6,2.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 11 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 5,2,4,1.
08:29, Today: White Duck rolled 9 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,4,1,4

Noticed a drop lowest 1 box in the dice roller and that did some of the math for me, but 12/9/14/12/16/11/9. Dropping one of the 9's leaves me with an aight set to distribute across my ability scores. Gotta keep it anyway! Could have opted for point buy too but at level 10 and with feats, I should be able to get my ability scores to a more desirable level.

As for equipment, I'm gonna rule that everyone would start off with at least one piece of cyberware of up to very rare quality or one magic item of rare quality. Remember, with cyberware, mundane non-awakened characters can utilize it, but you won't be able to un-attune to the item. Cyberware's going to be dropped one level down on rarity as a result of this, and is probably going to be more affordable than magic items and foci in that regard. If it's an item not requiring attunement, let's just talk out how it would work.

For my first two sets I got 10/11/12/14/15/16, and 10/11/13/13/16/17. I think I will keep the second set, since it is tough to beat a 16 and 17 with nothing below 10.

---

09:13, Today: Caduceus rolled 15 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 3,1,6,6.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 11 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 3,4,4,1.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 5 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,1,2,2.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 12 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,5,3,2.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 10 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 2,3,5,2.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 16 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,6,4,2.
09:12, Today: Caduceus rolled 14 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,6,4,2.

09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 13 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,4,3,3.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 17 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,5,2,6.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 10 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,1,1,5.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 8 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 2,2,4,2.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 16 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,6,6,3.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 13 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 5,3,5,3.
09:15, Today: Caduceus rolled 11 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,6,2,3.  Set 2.

quote:

09:51, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 5 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,3,1,1.
09:51, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 14 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,1,2,6.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 15 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 5,6,1,4.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 10 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 2,4,3,3.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 11 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,2,4,3.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 10 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 5,1,4,1.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet2, rolled 9 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,3,3,3.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 16 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,2,5,5.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 17 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,5,6,5.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 16 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 6,5,1,5.
09:50, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 10 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 4,1,1,5.
09:49, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 13 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 5,1,6,2.
09:49, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 13 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 1,1,6,6.
09:49, Today: DeusEx, for the NPC Dunno yet, rolled 14 using 4d6, dropping the lowest dice only with rolls of 3,5,4,5.

I think the first attempt of 13/13/14/16/16/17 is pretty respectable :)
I see your point about it typically being better than a Sum to X...

CAn we start a new OOC thread for all this?

Also, I'll roll my character later today