From: [f--h--e] at [kpc.com] Reply-To: [f--h--e] at [kpc.com] Errors-To: [flashlife request] at [kpc.com] Subject: Flashlife V3 #3 To: [f--h--e] at [kpc.com] From: Carl Rigney (moderator) <[flashlife request] at [kpc.com]> Flashlife Fri, 3 Jan, 1992 Volume 3 : Issue 3 Today's topics: A New Home (Moderator) Ka*ge (Brian Bankler) Mages and how to make them behave. (Scott Baker) The power of mages (Mary Kuhner) Reining in mages (Laurence Brothers) Re: killing fire-support mages (Carl Rigney) Questions and Combat Rules (Caspar Facius) Weapons, spirits, movement, spells (Caspar Facius) Things that go BOOM and the Astral Limit around Earth (WANDERER) Program Frames (Scott Baker) Simsense vs jacking in (Laurence Brothers) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 92 23:59:59 EDT From: [flashlife request] at [kpc.com] (Moderator) Subject: A New Home I've moved the home of the Flashlife digest from netcom.com to kpc.com so that I can give it more attention. I'm hoping that I'll now be able to send it out bi-weekly instead of quarterly, if there's enough quality submissions. This issue clears out the backlog. I'd like to ask that people check their spelling and format before submitting. The best format is block paragraphs like I use with NO indentation, no longer than 72 characters per line, one blank line between paragraphs. Anything else is subject to return for reformatting if I'm not in the mood to do it myself. And PLEASE use a meaningful subject line. Subjects like "Questions" or "Re: Flashlife Vol 3 #2" will be rejected from now on. Please try to avoid long rambling letters covering every subject under the sun - keep it short, sharp and interesting to read, not just interesting to write! If you can't take a moment to check your spelling and think up a meaningful subject line then don't be surprised when I take only a moment to reject it. Submissions should be mailed to [f--h--e] at [kpc.com], and add/drop/change requests should go to [flashlife request] at [kpc.com.] The old addresses at AMD and Netcom will forward for a while, but please spread the news that Flashlife's home is now at KPC.COM. For people with mailers that don't understand internet addressing, you can reach me through uunet, amdcad, apple, decwrl and mips, e.g. uunet!kpc!flashlife-request. So thank you for your patience at seeing only two digests in 7 months. The new year promises to be much more active. -- Carl Rigney [flashlife request] at [kpc.com] -------------------------- Date: Sat, 7 Sep 91 19:56:18 EDT From: [m--lo--d] at [jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu] (Brian Bankler) Subject: Ka*ge KA*GE (kah ge') n. [Japanese] 1. Shadow or shade. 2. A japlish (slang) term for anything pertaining to "shadowrunning" (Kage crawler: shadowrunner, KageCorp: a company that doesn't want its doings known). 3. A new magazine from AWOL productions. Ka*ge (from now on I will leave out the dot...) is the shadowrun magazine and was introduced at origins. Subtitled "A survival guide to an impolite society" it is a magazine with the promise of something good. Unfortionately, that potential hasn't been completely exploited. The magazine is quite good, however, in presenting ideas. Just be prepared to have to work the numbers out yourself. Inside Issue #0 they had 1. Introduction, 2. Sysop's notes, 3. Fiction, 4. New Contacts, Location Archetypes, and a new archetype, 5. Q&A, 6. an NPC profile, 7. New vehicle stats, 8. New gear and 9. Rumors. The introduction and sysop's notes (and all of the shadowtalk located through the magazine) is a nice piece of writing that captures the feel pretty well. I picked up some new slang that works pretty well. Of course, I also picked some up from New Jack City... The fiction ("Squasher and Squeeker") didn't do much for me. It seemed very straight forward and every good runner can see through it. The new contacts and archetype are good ideas, however, they are poorly built. Still, as I said before, they provide good ideas. The location archetype is interesting (High Security Warehouse) but didn't live up to it's name against a team that I gm for. Well, that is what runners are supposed to do, I guess. The scenario (Fishing Season) given in the middle screamed of a fairly good (but fairly standard) idea that suffers from the standard problem of skill based games: You have no way to gauge how a team will do. There is no way to compare teams except by knowing them (unlike level based systems). On a level based systems I would put this as a fairly simple (novice) run. Of course, if you modify it to your team's power level, you could get quite a lot out of it. The NPC profile of Ernesto Dante is very good. The box with his statistics made me sick, though. Not only had the rules from the Grimoire not been paid attention to, I really wonder how many rating four power foci there are kicking around....Also, the scenario ideas for use with Dante are fairly good. The Q&A section was fairly straightforward. I skimmed it, because they did have a rule on falling damage that seems to work well enough. Falling damage is (Stories*2)D(Stories). One story is three meters. You can use dodge (twisting in the air) and impact armor. The new gear reads just like two more pages out of the Street Samurai guide. The one nice impact is that if you (the GM) get this, it is a fairly good way to have technology advance. The players wont see the stuff until they run into it (or hear about it...) and then they'll want to get their greedy little hands on it. Finally, the writing on the wall gives brief little news tidbits (like the end off the FASA scenarios). Some of these could undoubtedly turn into plots with a bit of work. Overall, I found myself liking some of the ideas to be found between the covers of Kage; but disliked some of the technical errors (not knowing the Grimoire, for example). Of course, feel free to consider my writing biased when I comment on the poorly built archetypes...I don't run vanilla shadowrun, but it seems to me that any runner who has a poorly built archetype will die to easily, and that means that I either have to 1) accept the fact that the character in question WILL die (and shouldn't be running) or 2) do some kind of twister dance to let them survive or 3) give everyone an easy time. While it makes perfect sense in the real world for a free-lance reporter to have a willpower of 3, he will be toasted by the first mage that gets the idea in their head. And I've put some harsh restraints on mages already. The magazine is quarterly and I forget the cost, but it struck me as fairly expensive. Maybe future issues will correct some of the mistakes I see, but I don't really care actually. I didn't get it as a "technical supplement" but as a brainstorming tool. And, it helps me well enough. I wouldn't rely on it as a sole source, but it makes a nice back up for those nights when I say "well, now what?." It has even helped a bit in my long term campaign that has had a slow developing (around 40 sessions so far) plot. All in all, if you are in the market for some new ideas, I would consider it. Flashlife has given me far more, but this has some fresh outlooks... and my players don't read it. -------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1991 00:20 CDT From: "Scott L. Baker" <[B--K--R] at [ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu]> Subject: Mages and how to make them behave... I have found that a Physical Adept can cause a *few* problems for mages, especially with some other niceties... For example, if you got a pesty mage add this new weapon... AreiTech International & Ares Arms announce the NDU-007x The NDU-007x (Neural Disruption Unit) emits an alpha wave beam along the same wavelengths as those noticed in Magically active individuals. The effect is that your mage becomes *Majorly* distracted and begins to suffer some damage. In game terms? The weapon does Stun damage to mundanes, Physical damage to Magically active folks as well as causing a minor distraction. Range? Use the range of a heavy pistol, it is the size of a rifle, fires 4 shots per power pack, and does 4M3 damage. [In a follow-up message Scott changes the previous paragraph to the latter, but I like his first way better. --CDR] The NDU-007x uses the range of a sniper rifle. Blast radius is 5 meters, and one shot per combat turn (any faster and it be the size of a small car....) Trust me, once a mage gets nailed with this, added to the general predisposition of Security teams to shoot the most magic-like person first and your magicians will begin to understand the "price of power" bit. One last note, I use the NDU-007x sparingly, it costs 250,000% and is VERY RARE, I tend to use it as an equalizer, not as a Mage Killer. Blender: What EXACTLY is that funny smell? [Intelligence Roll -- Passed] GM: Well, it's kindof like rotting flesh. Storm: And where is it comming? [Surprise roll, the team loses] GM: From that goul that just rose out of the sewer in front of you, Oh, by the way, he has an "aquired" gun that seems to be spitting lead at you... Howard [Blender is his PC]: You love this don't you? Devilish grin... what do you think? Scott Baker --- I don't kill my PC, I just run them to the limit...that's what they wanted, that's what they get --- -------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Sep 91 17:58:36 -0700 From: Mary K. Kuhner <[m k kuhner] at [genetics.washington.edu]> Subject: The power of mages I don't know of a Shadowrun group that hasn't had trouble with the power of the mageborn sooner or later. We've had a lot of arguments about the possibility of societal control, but I personally do not think, with the rules as they are, that society *can* effectively control Shadowrun mages without becoming a remarkably vile place, and maybe not even then. Mages can control other mages, but that leaves little place for mundanes. I think that a society in which mages are hated, feared and persecuted is particularly bad for keeping them under control, although it may help keep PC mages from dominating the party. Persecuted people notoriously band together, and a society in which mages are heavily persecuted will be a society with militant, insular, paranoid bands of mages in it. Consider the political behavior of the state of Israel. Now give the Israelis really overwhelming force and perfect military intelligence, and consider what will happen to the Arab nations. I'd rather have mages divided among many causes, companies, political movements and so forth, and for that to happen they mustn't be treated so badly they can't function in society. After many discussions, I personally think that the only way to maintain a fairly normal society which is not utterly dominated by mages is to revise or re-interpret the rules. We drastically limited the power of the mageborn, and it's worked well for us in a long-term campaign. Both my mageborn and my non-mageborn characters remain very playable after 19 months and 70-80 development karma. Mary Kuhner [m k kuhner] at [genetics.washington.edu] -------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 09:47:47 -0500 From: [q--as--r] at [puddle.bellcore.com] (Laurence R. Brothers) Subject: Reining in mages Any good suggestions? If one allows anything resembling the astral space rules, it seems very difficult. Most random locations will not have any sort of magical defenses, and magic is supposed to be rare enough that your average low-to-medium security location will probably have only a low level of defense -- wards, a watcher or low level elemental, etc -- stuff that a good mage can simply knock down in the course of a short-duration mission. Even ignoring site security concerns (you could change the rules to make, say, watchers last a much longer time, and make wards and barriers harder to penetrate), it is very annoying to have a player be able to perform astral surveillance on anyone who doesn't have megayen to spare on round-the-clock magical bodyguards. Even if the target's home and work locations are defended, he still has to get from point A to point B. Now of course I can send opposition of requisite strength to cause my mages problems without too much difficulty. But you can't have everyone in the world be magically defended; there's not much I can think of to do to prevent a player mage from eventually being able to astrally snipe on almost any opposition who isn't of the very highest level. In my current campaign, I'm dealing with the problem by having such an intricate situation that the players don't know what is really going on yet, but that is not a generally adequate solution... Laurence R. Brothers ([q--as--r] at [bellcore.com]) Bellcore -- Computer Graphics and Interactive Media -------------------------- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 91 21:23:21 PST From: [c d r] at [kpc.com] (Carl Rigney) Subject: Re: killing fire-support mages > I have problems with POWER mages in my camaign. I understand > the reasoning behind removing Combat spells, but how would you > fill the logical whole left by those spells? Do you have a > ratiuonalization in game terms? Finally, could you just > elaborate a wee bit on your whole concept. Thanks. I ask > 'cause I have considered the same thing and scrapped it as > impractical and difficult to justify. What logical hole? Combat spells are just D&D, not historical. Myth is full of evil eyes and curses, but I don't recall any fireballs, and certainly no magical microwave death beams. I've actually been contemplating running a game where there are NO overt spells, where magic is subtle enough that you could choose not to believe in it if you tried hard enough, and it left no evidence. That might be to weak for players weaned on D&D, but usually magic was used more for things like healing, hunting, fertility, divination, that sort of thing. Healing magic meant getting well in a week instead of a month or not at all, NOT flesh re-knitting itself in seconds. Urban Magic is things like finding parking places, having the lights go green for you, not getting run over or mugged or missing your bus, jamming guns when they shoot at you, running into an old friend when you need a friendly shoulder. On a run, its things like finding a door unlocked, guards who aren't paying attention, seeing the shadow of someone approaching in a cross corridor before he sees yours, alertness, decisiveness, and focus. Its NOT a soul-powered grenade launcher, to my taste. Now, GMs with combat-happy mage players may find that too light for their needs, I'm not claiming its for anyone. But making the mages good at doing things the wireboys can't and not good at doing things the wireboys are all about, seems a big win to me. -- Carl Rigney [c d r] at [kpc.com] -------------------------- Date: Thu, 5 Dec 91 15:30:53 +0100 From: [c--a] at [dde.dk] (Caspar Facius) Subject: Questions and Combat Rules Greetings Fellow Dekers. This is my first article on the net, and i am not quit use to the terms witch you are using, so please barre with my. First question: We wore playing Shadowrun late last night, and (great game by the way) we had a quite annoying discussion of, weather someone standing and firing against a vehicle wood get the same terrain modifyeres as if he was in the car. Second question: Has anybody sean "Riggers Black Book" yet, and if someone has, cut he please send a review. Please! Third question: dose any of you people allow character generation using alpa/beta cyperware. Forth question: what is the minimum range of standard and Air-timed granades. Now here is a little goodi for those of you who has got feat up with the existing combat rules. Armor: Light armor give's 1 autosucces and its rating to BODY Heavy armor give's 2 autosucceses and its rating to BODY Autofire: Wen firing on full auto the shuts will be treaded as bursts, each burst will be treaded as a single shut with rekyl modifyeres. This means that wen firing an assault riffel on full auto the target numbers will be:burst1 5, burst2 7 and burst3 10. You use the appropriate skill and roll the dice 1 time pr. burst. Type Max Bursts Rounds Rekyl Mod. Damage Mod. Gun - 1 - - SMG 2 6 +1/+3 +1/-/- AR 3 9 +1/+3/+6 +2/-/- Heavy W 4 12 +2/+6/+12/+16 +3/+1/- Rounds: Fletched Round go against impact armor Explosive Rounds +1 on Damage (Ares Predator 4M2 With Exp. 4S2) Bursts: Burst = 3 Rounds All Weapons get +1 on Power and Rekyl mrk. MP's can only fire bursts Rekyl Compensator: Rekyle compensator's works on every burst, wether you fire on full auto or just single bursts. Smartgun Link: It is possibily to use 2 smartgun links simultaneous, thou it will cost the full amount of essens (1 point). Granades: Standard 5D2 I.P.E 6D2 Mini 5D2 [These grenades are much too deadly in my opinion, real-world grenades almost never actually kill. These are cinematic grenades. But then some people prefer to run Shadowrun in a cinematic style, so adjust to taste. --CDR] -------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 12:28:58 +0100 From: [c--a] at [dde.dk] (Caspar Facius) Subject: Weapons, spirits, movement, spells 1. Have you guys any rules about the minimum strength of caring and firing heavy weapons.I mean, can a human fire a MMG standing? 2. We have a MAJOR problemo with spirits and there immunity to normal weapons, and i wash thinking about the possibility of having bullits(and spures) made out that reare expensive materiale(forgot the name, but it costs 88K pr. unit). And thereby nailing thus friggers. 3. When someone is to get away, and decites to run can he 1) run Quickness * Movmentmod. pr. action or 2) Quickness * Movement pr. rount. 4. When using a spellock, dose it cost 1 karma point each time a new spell is being held. -------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Sep 91 11:32:54 EST From: [W--DE--R] at [MTUS5.BITNET] Subject: Things that go BOOM and the Astral Limit around Earth Hey-ho back again, Had trouble getting this for a while, but I'm back on the digest. Anyway, I've decided to throw an interesting twist on the game by bringing in stuff from the horror genre, specifically the Cthulhu stuff. Why? What is my rationalization for mixing a 1930's game with a 2050's game? Quite simple. If y'all have read the "Bottled Demon" adventure, you know that [CENSORED FOR LACK OF SPOILER WARNING -- CDR]. In one of the most recent adventures, FASA makes the statement that they didn't tell why this stuff was happening because they are going to use it in future products, like they are doing with the "Harlequin" stuff. Oh well, I don't want to wait for it to come out, so I'm forging ahead. So first we have background about magickal power coming from some twisted alien source beyond the comprehension of most sentient races. The second part comes from the bit about why mages can't astral travel beyond a certain limit. After that, they escape the protective boundaries of the earth's magickal field. Beyond that, earth magick doesn't work because the influence is too weak. I took this from Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series, also set slightly in the future where magick has returned. Lovecraft's critters come from beyond the boundaries of the earth originally, so of course their magick is alien to earth-critters. Because the magick isn't native to earth critters, they suffer the nasty side effects from a totally different sort of magickal drain that comes from serving as a conduit for alien energies, thus the increased power and the damaging side effects. Mages may be powerful and samurai may have assault cannons, but if you give the Cthulhu critters the powers of magick resistance and regeneration, then they are tough enemies for the shadowrunners. Throw in the secret societies that go along and some magickal flukes and you have something that needn't be as immediately threatening to life as the insect shamans and the Brotherhood, but you have something far more insidious and that has been around for far longer. Also has more of a hermetic rather than shamanic feel to it. Considering that a great majority of the magickal community in our 1991 USA has shamanic leanings, it serves the same that the shamanic threat has for the hermetically-oriented folks in the UK. (At least my experience has been such.) APDS rounds with acid/nerve agent gel inside? Cool idea, but I'm not certain how it would work. In case some of y'all don't know, APDS rounds are Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot rounds. Ok, what does this mean in a practical sense? Well, the explanation that I've gotten from ballisticians in both the civilian and military realms is that the armor piercing part comes from a steel spike that is sometimes treated with teflon. The spike is then encased in plastic to make the diameter the same as the normal bullet. When the round is fired, the plastic and steel leave the barrel like a normal bullet. The plastic falls away (that's the Discarding Sabot part) and the steel spike continues on. So you have something with an extremely small diameter at the point of impact, which is what makes ballistic armor less effective. The staging is increased becuase it is a lot more difficult to differentiate between the amount of damage done with a steel spike. It doesn't really matter if it hits bone or organs, it still does the relatively same amount of damage. If a lead round comes in, it will still do a lot of damage, but it will mushroom out and spread damage if it hits soft tissue, whereas if it hits bone, it will still spread out, but the resultant damage is different. I like the subsonics idea. How about something like a white-noise generator that does this, but is small as a grenade and can be thrown. Given the advances in tech, I can see this happening easily. For the active imaging system, would the emissions point be the cybereyes? How would you power the item? How is cyberware powered anyway? Andrew - Hello there! Fancy meeting you here. Yeah, we bitch about their editing here too. We had a guy graduate from our Scientific and Technical Communications program with a strong background in graphic design who did up a portfolio of gaming stuff with a lot of redesigned Shadowrun and BattleTech stuff. Looked really good and was far better than the stuff FASA puts out. They told him they weren't hiring anyone who hadn't worked in the field for at least three years and that they felt that their editorial staff was in no need of extra help, thank you very much. FASA may put out good ideas that look great, but the substance leaves much to be desired in the revision process. Especially when it comes to weights and ranges for weapons. Marlowe - Werewolf assassin? Why didn't you say so. Of course you gotta use mucho explosives to kill anything that regenerates. Blowing things up is fun indeed, in fact, we have a summer get together here where we shoot off fireworks and blow things up for the fun of it. I suppose Shadowrunning is an even better excuse for it. My comments were from the viewpoint that running the shadows is something that has to be done with professionalism if you want to live long. Part of the professionalism is knowing as much as possible about what you might need to do to accomplish an objective. If you don't have the knowledge and skill, a perfectly acceptable alternative is to overkill in order to make certain. Did anybody have a merc as a contact? if I remember correctly, most merc archetypes have some sort of demo skill, even if someone makes it themselves, demo is a logical skill to take. Another way that a fixer could have handled it was to call someone who knew and then get back to you. That, of course, depends on the personality of the fixer. As to the movie "Die Hard", the average New York cop probably has no skill in demo, but would know that you don't need to use all the detonators. He did so in that situation because he didn't perceive a need for them later and he didn't want the terrorists to get ahold of them. No the guys at the bottom of the shaft weren't complaining about his lack of professionalism. He wasn't supposed to know demo. It wasn't part of his job. It is part of the job of a merc. It is part of the job of a fixer to know people who know about demo. It is part of the job of being a shadowrunner to be proficient in as much as possible because all sorts of skills are needed. If you don't have skill in demo, someone else on your team should. Failing that, someone should know someone who knows something about demo or who can read info in the public library. Maybe a decker could get into a military system that was lower security and get copies of training manuals on demo. Lots of ways to go about it. Phone up public data net? Well, how about getting in touch with the local Shadowland server hub and doing a query? You might know some about demo. What are your respective backgrounds? Why do you know about demo? How much do you know about demo? Wouldn't your characters have a similar amount of info? Of course, if you are in the military and your job is explosive ordnance disposal and you are playing a standard former wage-mage, than of course your background is greater than the character's. But think, these people do this drek for a living. They are gonna know more about it. Then again, we've got one person who is majoring in geological engineering and knows more about explosives than does the standard combat mage that she is playing while she gets used to gaming, but her next character will know demo. I allow her current character to have a passing knowledge of demo, but not more than a level 1 in the skill. GM: You rest your case? Where? Troll PC: On whatever crate is closest. Fixer NPC: (simultaneously) No, No, not that one. Troll PC: (sitting down) Why not? (sounds of multiple small explosions are heard) Fixer: That *was* the case of detanators you wanted. -------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1991 00:41 CDT From: "Scott L. Baker" <[B--K--R] at [ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu]> Subject: Program Frames I have a couple of additions that should spice up any system... C.O.P.S. (Computer Operated Patroling System) -- COPS is a smart program frame. It is a small program that wanders the system checking for intruders. If it crosses ANY persona it notifies a dedicated SPU. The SPU has a log of all authorized users in the system. If the Persona is not authorized, the system goes on passive alert and a response Ice is usually sent out. Sleaze works on the cop program, against twice the rating of the program... I am working on Gates as of now... "Meaner, Faster, Smarter, God I hate the technology curve." -- FastJack, Virtual Realities, FASA. -------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Nov 91 09:36:20 -0500 From: [q--as--r] at [puddle.bellcore.com] (Laurence Brothers) Subject: Simsense vs jacking in >Having been reading up on my copy of VR, it comes to mind that riggers >and deckers both work in a similar manner - a simsense link, with the >autocutoffs either removed totally, or shifted to allow a better 'feel' >of what's coming through on the link. I have to assume that decking/rigging is a much deeper level of neural interface than simsense, otherwise every mage with a few karma points to spare and not enough interest in getting the next level of initiation could become a competent decker. A few microseconds here or there may hurt a hotshot decker, but for ordinary work, a simsense helmet would be able to do pretty well. So for my campaign, we suppose that the needed depth of connection necessary to do actual programming in the matrix must occur in a real cabled connection to a brain implant, or else suffer very severe "tortoise" penalties. -Laurence -------------------------- End of Flashlife **************************