This is a good point - if we're putting together some SR awesomeness, it'll be a good idea to hash out some of the details such as which edition we're using, online platform and so on.
Yep it only makes sense.... also when you sent your runners to Chicago how many could even do anything when bug city happened? The group I played with before would have been screwed.
Heh heh... I loved to mess with 'player knowledge' vs. 'character knowledge' - the players knew all about Bug Spirits and what happened in Chicago, but the characters didn't. And that was a rule I enforced. So, having a character have a nice dinner with a woman that the player knew was a Mantis-in-human-form... while reinforcing to them how nice it was to be having such a fine meal in such an upscale restaurant, and how witty and attractive the woman was... all the while watching the player twitch and squirm was a joy to behold. Truthfully, it was all just a mind-game to the players. I actually had them fly out of Chicago the night before Bug City happened. I've never seen a group of people so hypermotivated to get on a plane before...
haha ya I have played in two groups one was super full of metagaming and rule obsessing and the other was no meta but less strict on rules. The no meta makes the games so much fun, I certainly prefer it. Well and also not stopping for rule arguments every 5 minutes certainly helped.
Heh heh... the 'rules lawyers' had a place in my game though - I'd often hit them up before the game and hash out the rules on a particular combat that I figured would come up in a game... and let's face it, the combat rules for 3E were nightmarish at times. The 'full autofire' and 'walking the fire' rules alone made me scream for mercy more than once. My 'rules lawyer' player relished these sessions though... it made him feel part of the group, and he was considerate enough to know that game-stopping rule-hashing just pissed me off... and a pissed-off GM was never good for the party.
As far as the logistics... a lot of that is up to the GM. Myself I'm partial to the virtual tabletop programs (Fantasy Grounds specifically), but it costs money for a license (I have a couple I think), and it only has 4E available. I only have 1E books, nothing for 3rd, though again, my 4E rulebook comes today. With that in mind, we need to make sure that the players have access to the material/rules as needed, if they are creating their characters on their own without GM help and such. It was rather easy when I did 4E D&D, since I had pretty much all the books in pdf form and had parsed all of them into the ruleset in the virtual tabletop.
Well my rule lawyers tended to only find/know and interpret rules in their favor in EVERY situation. A few times they would say a rule worked one way and 5 mins later if it was used against him argue about that method of interpretation and how it was too late now to go back on their use. So they sucked Well Dihm FG isn't to bad pricewise, but even without it IRC + Ustream + Skype worked quite well. Though it certainly does not help with people lacking books.
I have quite a few years experience with GMing. I would certainly be up to trying it out over the summer. Most of my regular players are graduating in May so I think it would be cool to have some people to GM. I have run D&D 3.5 & 4.0, Scion, Cyberpunk 2020 & 203X, Cthulhu Tech, BESM and a home build Mechwarrior system. I have also played one game of Shadowrun (never GMed it though). I can run one-shots or campaigns of variable lengths. My Scion one lasted almost 2 years and is fondly talked about by those who were in it as one of the best games ever. Wouldn't mind running a one shot in a few weeks to see how this can work. Also, all my games are deadly. Someone said something about D&D being to heroic for them with not enough risk of death. I don't play that in my games. I also can handle rule lawyers because my moto is: If it works for you, it works for everyone else. Note: I was looking at FG and it looks awesome. I can see myself dropping 40 to get the full version (I wish I had the 140 to get the ultimate.) however, I've only used a map with 4.0. When we played 3.5 in High School and with most other systems we have just used our imagination and described where we are and what we are doing. Usually works pretty good.
Kazaashi, I'm copying over a bunch of PDFs from CDRs onto my hard-drive. I've got tons of stuff for 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition sourcebooks but nothing for 4th, unfortunately. If you need anything, let me know and I'll see if I can hook you up.
So who will GM/DM for the late crew? The Don? Varg? I know I've never done it and I don't think I'd be as good at it.
It's been several years since I've run as a GM, and even then I didn't do it a ton. Aside from that, I don't have any of my sourcebooks nowadays. While I wouldn't have a problem giving it the old college try it would probably go smoother if someone else was more familiar with it/more equipped for it did. Edit: I dunno where Orc stands in all of this, but I could see him being the GM type with all the time he spends buried in MW sourcebooks. I dunno if he's ever tinkered around in D&D though.
I've tinkered around plenty in D&D (well, only v3.5) and Pathfinder. However, while I spend hours on end poring over book-after-book-after-book, I have little actual play experience due to difficulty making it to group meetings. I also doubt I have the patience to run a campaign by myself (I prefer coming up with plot points which I don't even know are any good, having never used them) I am under the impression that I'll spend too much time coming up with everything needed for a given campaign Long story short, I'll just suffice with being a PC.
Okay, good to know. So what about SR? Anyone on Nightwatch feel like giving that a try? I made a character last night for it just for giggles. One of his contacts is a mafia informant. Crazy old Fred lol.
Well I can try to put something together and give it a go but I havent DM'ed much and SR has the matrix and all to do at the same time.
Proud "Shadowrun Returns" supporter here as well. Anyone else really excited to see what Catalyst has up their sleeves for "Shadowrun 3050?" Personally, I'm hoping for a nice chance to use all the old second and third editon stuff with most of the new rules. I REALLY want to see how they handle the old Matrix with the 4th ed. rules.
I used Hero Lab. Google it and just get the demo version. As far as books/pdfs, I'll look around and let you know what I find.
