Mine was a CoC and while the party was (wisely) attempting to avoid a firefight, they were well-prepared for one. So the bad guys ended up worse than if they'd just let the party escape. After gunning them down, they left in the car of the idiots who had shot out their tires.
Oh, it was a very well-planned ambush by the bad guys with lots of cover and some grenades they followed up with. They just didn't expect to find a sword-happy elven physadept going ninja on the guys in the building on the other side of the road and the guys in the building a bit down the road at the T getting suppressed by a cybered-up Heavy Weapons Elf capable of running around like he was on crack, laughing off concussion grenades that were just enough of a near miss, and landing just about every shot thanks to having a White Knight rigged up as an Aliens smartgun complete with gyro rig and smartlink. Full speed running, zero recoil or movement penalties, 11 dice to the attack pool.
His parents would be shitty if they did, if it was his GF dump the bitch. Anyone who forces you to get rid of your hobby or to choose them over your hobbies is a waste of air.
Me either, looking over this pdf it doesn't look too hard, nor is it that less complex than other war games I've played or TTRPGs for that matter. It's just different, so tell him that the games you'll run shouldn't be more complex than Bolt Action, and they shouldn't. Also Warhammer is way more complex imo is if he can play Warhammer and Bolt Action, he should be able learn the average TTRPG...should, if he's on the spectrum then it'll probably be very hard.
Don't know too much about it, basically only what I read from various sites (including this one) but apparently it was pretty bad.
I'll consider myself lucky that I don't see too much grimdark, then again I have a high tolerance to that where most dark settings are hardly dark enough to be too dark, but I know the feeling of oversaturation all too well.
Probably because most of these grimdark people probably have some sort of fetish with it because good lord some of these people are uh...a bit too into it. Seriously you stare into the abyss long enough it'll bestow you the knowledge that most of everything extreme is someone's fetish. Semi-related, when some people threw a hissy fit when the Tau weren't seen as "grimdark" enough so they fucked with the lore to make them so.
I figured it would try and shove as much of Ridley Scott's aborted fetus of a film into the game as possible, unless that black goo shit existed in some other media first? In which case, doh!
What honest work gets you. Anyway, I'm late and other people are doing a better job than I am so I'll leave you to it.
I'll see if I can hook him up with a Trove link or something, but chances it won't be hard to find. I'm loath to link a subplebbit but if you read the room anyone can find what they're looking for.
It's been a long time since I read the books but I seem to recall it wasn't his original name and Sally Tsung has some bit she says to Sam about it when Ghost is in a deep drunk. But I don't recall the specifics. Still, there are definitely a lot of Dolezal Indians in the NAN. There kind of have to be to make sense and it's funny as Hell to include in the games.
One of the most overlooked things amongst Shadowrun GMs is to play spirits with personalities. A Force 1 Fire Elemental is basically some little flame sprite thing with no more mental capacity than an infant. A Force 6 is smarter than you are. Piss the spirits off and they can make your life uncomfortable in all sorts of ways. If they're really opposed to being in your service they can spend Edge to oppose you on your binding tests. And they don't have to leave if you fail to bind them.
They kind of have to include it. I don't mean just because of rights or because a lot of their customer base will want it, but because without that stuff the game is even more barebones. You can only re-enact Alien or Aliens so many times. If you don't include it you're stuck coming up with ever more contrived ways for three monsters to be a threat over and over.
Can you give a little more detail what sort of Space travel and ship to ship combat you had in mind? FFG's Star Wars line Edge of Empire has ship to ship combat that works. It's kind of counter-intuitive and abstract but when you eventually get your head around it it's balanced and plays fairly quickly. Quite 'Theatre Of The Mind' though so generally not that much fun for people who want models and positioning.
Fights between proper warships. I don't really need anything large scale. Think one or two ships engaging a similar number of ships. Strike craft are rare in this setting, so I don't really need dog fighting rules or things of that nature.
It's also likely contractual due to it being an IP led game, meaning it does unfortunately have to use the crappier version of the Gibson take where blue demiurges shit out random bullshit vantablack goo. They likely would have had to do that even if they hated the last few movies.
I thought about suggesting that but wanted to know more about the sort of combat OP wanted.
Well, this was the first session and the GM was so laughably inexperienced with Shadowrun they didn't even know about Sperethiel as a language and had elves use Sindarin instead, to the surprise of every single player since we had all chosen to run elves. I know I had taken a couple levels in Sperethiel since that was my Elven Uncle Ruckus character and you need to know what them shifty keebs are plotting in their made-up gobbledygook, so naturally I was caught very flat-footed. Not that it wasn't fun to play with them, but considering that unlike us players they had only read the most shallowest portions of the lore it was definitely interesting.
Did he have the elves knowing adopt Sindarin the fictional language? Because whilst wrong that's a kind of Shadowrun sort of thing thematically at least. Or did he think Sindarin was their actual in-universe real language because they were elves?
He had them adopt Sindarin knowing that it was made-up because well... it already exists in complete form, is globally accepted as "the" elven language, and frankly if UGE happened IRL there'd be no shortage of people thinking elves should just all magically speak it and enough of them would get tired of explaining that they grew up in Baahstin and not Middle-Earth learning it would be less of a headache.
A lot of them would be the same people. Imagine your typical West Coast liberal, only now they're immortal and taller than you.
Yeah, and a lot of Californians hate those types. Here's a map of the 2024 presidential election broken down by county, shading relative to margin of victory. Notice anything?
I've struggled with this as well. I have three bizarre suggestions however.
100%
This was covered previously, but in short, nothing in isolation. The problem is that obvious challenges that would arise from that playstyle are met by the proponents with "nuh uh!".
I'd run it where they would sealed inside, and are quickly recruited by "the rats in the walls" (I've only skimmed the book remember) which from what I gather are survivors trying to band together to get out, hiding out in blind spots in the surveillance system.
Oh I know. A friend once told me that I'd love rural California and the people there, and hate the coastal cities.
Even Commiefornians hate the pointy eared back-stabbing faggots, as evidenced by the fact it was guerillas and resistance movements that ended the Tir's advances after the California National Guard got it's shit absolutely pushed in during the invasion.
Oh yeah, two different states almost, and when it comes to Shadowrun don't forget that unless you've got places that are explicitly run by one metatype or another they're still going to be in the minority compared to baseline humans. Runner's Companion mentions that the baselines make up 68% of the total, so that's 32% for all other metatypes, so unless people decide to take steps to actively distance themselves for one reason or another they're going to grow up well... just like you said. Although personally I'd have had made the chav be an elf just because its a far more hilarious mental image.
