Shiny Doom Forum

[Jastermereel]

I figured I'd start a thread to collect the notes and ideas for what happens after the current campaigns wrap up. I don't know how many people check the board regularly, but at least it'll be a note space for the topic.

I don't think I've heard anyone object to the Island Hopping concept for the future.*

Are we looking to do more in D&D 3.5 or do we want to switch systems? There's no shortage out there and there are many other genres open to us.

If we want to switch it up, but stick with fantasy, Tyler has suggested Legend, which is (correct me if I'm wrong) essentially a streamlined version of what we've been playing for the last few years.

Other ideas include:

Shadowrun: Think Deus-Ex and Ocean's Eleven by way of Neuromancer with a dash of fantasy. It's the future, corporations control everything (a stretch, I know) and, thanks to a genetic mutation, we've there's a small sampling of fantasy races. You and your team are Shadow Runners, a spec-op type crew that gets hired for various jobs (sabotage, corporate espionage, assassination, etc.). As things can be quite lethal very quickly, missions generally involve a lot of pre-planning, and then, when things inevitably go wrong, struggling to get out alive. Combat is diverse (with different aspects for ranged combat, melee combat, a few different types of urban magic, and cyber warfare). Character builds, as far as I can tell, are less strictly class based and more versatile with all sorts of roles to play. If we jump systems, I think this is what I'd vote we go to. It's got careful planning, it's got fast-paced action, and could easily work with the island-hopping idea through various runners on our team either joining in or sitting out any given mission.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Zombies. Need I say more? (No, you aren't the zombies. You are the flesh that must be eaten.) Upside? it's fairly accessible and has zombies. Downside? All zombies, all the time. Update: There are quite a lot of books for this one (nothing like D&D 3.5, but still a lot for a young system) so our island hopping idea could take us through a wide assortment of settings ("Deadworlds" as the game names them) with zombies in space, the old west, medieval times, and a bunch of other concepts, generally straddling the line between too campy and just campy enough. "Shawn of the Dead" meets "Sliders" anyone?

Call of Cthulhu: I haven't read much of the system for this, but my understanding is that you're the investigators who find (and somehow engage in a futile struggle against) eldritch horrors from the beyond that are not very good for your sanity, where you're expected. to run, not fight, most of what you'll encounter. From what I hear the game system is fairly average without any particularly good or bad points and has support for a range of time periods (particularly the 1890s, 1920s, and "the present" (from 1990 on anyway).

Paranoia: Dystopian sci-fi where the more you know, the more likely others will kill you for knowing that (or knowing that you shouldn't know that). Seriously, demonstrating knowledge of the rules is cause for death. Furthermore, each player has a secret mission (often involving sabotaging or killing your teammates). On the other hand, you have a six-pack of clones, so you won't be out immediately. Some of it's fairly dated ("futuristic" sci-fi has one of the shortest shelf-lives of any genre), but there seems more support for 2nd edition (1987) than any that has followed, including the latest versions from 2004/2009. It's probably the campiest of the lot and would involve a fair deal of absurdist role-playing and an odd balance of teamwork and backstabbing. A cross between Munchkin and a lethal version of Taboo?

There are plenty more out there, in a wide range of genres and playstyles (Hollow Earth Expedition (1930's era pulp fantasy adventures), Mutants and Masterminds (Superheroes), Nobilis(modern mythology as agents of a concept, akin to Gaiman's Endless, with a heavy shift towards role playing over roll playing) and a wide range of franchise material from Star Wars and Star Trek to Doctor Who and Serenity to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Macross),but this seemed like a good starter list. I expect that if we were to switch, a few of us (particularly those eager to be in a rotating pool of DMs) might test out a few systems on a small scale (as you can only learn so much be reading about them), before trying it on the group as a whole.

So...any more ideas? What sort of things are people interested in? What do they want to change? What do they want more of?



*For those that haven't been around for the discussion, the basic idea is that we'd all be on a ship and would take turns DMing. That DM player's character would stay on board the ship while the rest of us go off on an adventure on an island, thus explaining the DM's character's absence. Now, it could be a sailing ship and actual islands, or it could be a space ship and planets and moons, or it could be that we all just work for some temp agency and various people are sent out on a mission from a stock of characters employed there, but the structure would allow any of us to be DM for a time, would help ensure that none of us were locked in that position for years, and would also make attendance issues more flexible (Can't make it that night? You just stayed with the DM's character on the ship.).
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

Ok, so I'm halfway through a straight read of the Shadowrun 4 Core Book. I'm not saying I'll throw a hissy-fit if we don't play, but I can't picture anything else getting my vote at this point.

Yes, the rules are a little more complex, but most of it looks like it flows naturally (though vehicular combat may be the system's Grapple). That said, I've not yet read through two of the major topics, so there could be plenty of headaches ahead.

I've been putting together a collection of notes from the read-through and will post them when I'm done.

It looks like a natural fit for island-hopping and, given the lethal nature of combat and the vastly powerful organizations in the world, it's a near sure thing that you'll never be the big damn heroes roaming the countryside and saving the world. You're a group of skilled thieves trying to survive the next mission and pay the bills.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

Tyler pointed out one major omission (other than Mutants and Masterminds* which simply one of the ones in the first post's list):

GURPS

GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System. Unlike nearly every other system out there, it isn't genre or setting specific. As such, I'm not entirely sure what to say about it. It has a good pedigree (coming from Steve Jackson Games). The catch is that the big upside to it is the big downside: With Great Freedom Comes A Whole Lot More Work.

While there are supplements that help to create worlds, we basically would need to agree as a group, what world do we want to collectively play.

I'll be taking a look at it and Mutants and Masterminds after I finish reading through Shadowrun's book, but since the DM role will be passed around, we'd want to agree on what sort of world we'd want together...and I imagine it will be much harder than figuring out what to order for delivery on game night.

*While Mutants and Masterminds gets generally good marks among other gamers, we shouldn't underestimate the fun of being able to play M&M at M&M's.
_________________
The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

If people are still looking for alternatives, take a look here:
http://inkwellideas.com/misc/distinguishing-rpgs-chart/
Start with the green diamond toward the bottom left corner.
_________________
The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

After two weeks, I’ve finished a fairly thorough read of the core rulebook.

The World:

Fantasy worlds generally have their own specific background, most standard fantasy tropes apply (Orcs bad, Dwarfs miners/forgers, hit things with swords and fireballs to win). Shadowrun, on the other hand, is a unique and rich world that has been building a fairly rich history over four editions (and more than 20 years), each taking place later in the world’s timeline (a decade has passed in game since 3rd edition started) creating a lengthy cumulative history.

While knowledge of this history isn’t required to play, knowing the world should make the R part of the RPG more interesting. The Core Book (20th Anniversary Edition) has 6 pages to get a brief understanding of the world and your role in it, a 12-page intense history lesson, and another 16 pages about the current culture. For some, that’s a huge mental investment for a game (even before the rules), but I’d recommend reading at least the first (who you are and what you do) and the third (how to survive and interact with the world) and skimming the second (how things have changed between now and 2070).

You aren’t the Big Damn Heroes roving the countryside and saving the world. You’re a bunch of agents for hire, doing dirty jobs as deniable assets. This isn’t a black-and-white world. That tusked troll (yes, there are a few fantasy elements; really, read the history sections) may save your life and just because someone is paying you for a job doesn’t mean you should trust them in the slightest.

Furthermore, the core book has a dozen pieces of short (2-4 partial-page) pieces of short fiction; they’re a mixed bag quality-wise, but are good genre-setters. But then, so are a lot of other things you’ve probably seen or read. Shadowrun is directly inspired by William Gibson’s Neuromancer (the foundation of the cyberpunk genre back in 1984) and rips off a lot of the details of his world (but adds a lot of new big concepts).

If you haven’t read his work (and it’s definitely worth a look), perhaps you’ve played any of the Deus Ex games? Watched Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell? Hell, if you’ve seen Ocean’s Eleven, just picture what the remade (again) version of it would look like 60 years from now.

What’s that? You still aren’t willing to read a few pages of the rulebook to get a sense of the setting? Here’s the official description:

[Jastermereel]

Character building:

When we start off, everyone will be using a pre-made sample character. This isn’t a long-term situation, just until we understand the system better. The book gives 16 archetypal builds as sample characters and we should draw on them for the first character or two. Until we understand the mechanics (and know how to survive a run or two) I wouldn’t worry about putting too much work into making a character (rather than a build). However, once we get going, character is key to making this fun. You aren’t just Gunslinger Adept #5 with a medium lifestyle and an Armsdealer contact whom you might not be able to count on. You’ve got a bit of your history there, possibly tied with your personal goals. Are you looking for riches? Revenge? Maybe you’re trying to get the best gear, or just trying to get out from under some student loan debt. Archetypes and cliches are fine for learning the ropes, but no one wants to play one forever.

While the samples are built around archetypes, they system isn’t strictly class based. There are some discrete (and sometimes non-overlapping) areas of advancement (and some it recommends against simply dabbling in), but you don’t just say, “I’m a wizard” or “I wanna hit things!” and fiddle with the feats and skills a little (though there are specific ways to use magic and the matrix, those are more of a starting point than the full-path approach of a class).

Since it’s more free form, character creation will take longer, especially at first. You really must start out with a concept in mind and take the abilities, skills and equipment that develop your idea. This is done using Build Points; think of it as a point-buy system (an option for generating ability scores in D&D), but for the whole build, not just one aspect. While it is a new system, it’s not completely foreign, and there are many analogous concepts, though sometimes to optional D&D rules (Edge is akin to Action Points, Positive and Negative Qualities akin to Feats and Flaws). However, they all are acquired through build points.

Consequently, players will need to weigh wildly different parts of the build against one another. You’re not just using your points for ability scores (and weighing one stellar ability against a balanced set), you’re using them for your abilities, your skills, your starting gear, and your personal contacts. Sure, you could boost your Strength from 4 to 5, but might those ten build points serve you better in the form of a police lieutenant BFF or a trio of reliable contacts with enough left over for a basic Doc-Wagon contract? In such a melting-pot city, which’ll serve you better: Learning the basics of another language or or a Chameleon Suit and a light machine gun? Also, assuming we run with the default 400 BP start, characters have been around the block a little and aren’t complete rookies. A 300 BP build would be a character looking to just get their start (though, in the game world, apparently only 1 in 10 survive the first year) while 500 BP builds are high-powered elite ops, likely on a megacorp payroll to protect it from 400 BP runners like you.

In D&D your equipment gave you an edge over the tides of enemies and often presented interesting tactical options while at higher levels it became necessary to compete. In Shadowrun, your gear is more important and, while it covers 41 pages of the core book, it’s worth looking through to figure it out. It covers everything from your wheels to your thyroid and is how you stay alive to the next run. Another point worth making is that D&D equipment, by and large, fell into your hands at the end of an encounter or adventure and was rarely bought outright; the DM had to put together a mix of bits that seemed appropriate for foes and also useful to the characters/players. Shadowrun equipment is generally more specialized and is generally sought out (sometimes a process in itself) so if players don’t know exactly what they want for their character, they should at least have an idea what they’re looking for (some sorta stealth thingy).

Beyond their skills and their tools, any character that expects to survive should have several contacts they can reach out to for leads, equipment, or help in a pinch. For starter characters this may simply be “Fixer (Connection 3 / Loyalty 2)”, but as we get comfortable with the system and create our own characters, I’d recommend making these mini-characters as well (p285). Unless you’re going to roll-play the whole thing (“I want piece of gear X, my contact can get it for me, what do I roll to see what the extra cost is and move on.”) having a fleshed out contact can make the down-time as interesting as the runs.

Building a good character is important because it will remain largely the same over time. You do improve, but there is no set path of leveling. You can get better at things and buy better equipment, but you don’t have a set of abilities that are gradually unlocked. This also means that you do not become super-humanly tough by getting loads of hit points. You can slightly improve your HP by boosting your Body stat, but that generally won’t turn you into a walking tank. Bullets hurt and characters die. Get used to it.

Additional Books and Resources:

While there are essentially six core books, unless something is particularly lacking (and it may well be for some specialist roles) from the main volume, I’d lean toward sticking to the core rulebook itself for the time being (and certainly away from the assorted books beyond the core 6). This isn’t because anything in them is supposed to be particularly broken, but because there are so many options, too many could well be overwhelming. For example, there are 5 core races (v. D&D’s 7), but the Runner’s Companion adds 17 (between 1 and 4 subraces per main race. The Runner’s Companion looks like it’s good for general notes, but, from a glance, seems like it might overload a starting player who doesn’t need to worry about the difference between a Dwarf and a Menehune or a Human and a Nartaki. UPDATE: Apparently it’s a good book, but should not be used for players. It opens the door for too much munchkin misbehavior.


Actions: Figuring out what to do on your turn is also easier in some ways. D&D’s has Full-Round, Standard, Move (as well as Free, Immediate and Swift) actions and you can either take a full-round, a standard and a move, or two moves (but not two standard actions). Shadowrun has Complex, Simple (and Free). Complex take all of a turn, Simple take half (so you can use two a turn), eliminating the irregularly sized Standard Action. While, moving and acting are largely independent, you can spend a free action to run (rather than walk or stay still) and a simple action to try to sprint (rather than run).

Distance: In D&D we generally used a map with a grid to keep track of distances, but that may not be necessary in Shadowrun. Your positioning is important, but I can’t say yet how it needs to be addressed. While a map will likely be essential for planning things out, being stealthy, and diving for cover in a firefight, I don’t think we’ll have to stick to a grid as much. Most likely you’ll be able to estimate distances enough (and the game seems built around the Rule of Awesome in many places). Some people who’ve played Shadowrun suggest dropping a grid that players stop thinking about movement like chess and use their imagination more. No more “If that weapon has a range of X meters, I should stand X+1 meters away.” Most maps I’ve seen for the game are floorplans, but without any grid. Depending on who is in the RPG group and who isn’t, we’ll have to figure out whether we want to use detailed maps with the projector (as my group has done) or sketch them out on the battle mat. I figure if we prepare for the former, we can work with the latter so that we don’t keep those not involved from using the consoles if they want to.

Weight: These rules seem a little vague. It explicitly suggests not worrying too much about carrying capacity, and few (if any) items list their weight. However there are some rules about it that presume a known weight. Sure, a skin-pocket or a body-mod that improves your thyroid won’t weigh much, but a belt-fed assault cannon most certainly would. It could be that it is primarily expected to be hand-waved most of the time and used as a dice-pool modifier when reasonable.

Ammo: Unlike D&D where mundane ammo is generally overlooked (You have very few fountainhead bolts, but are you really keeping track of regular non-magical ammo all that well?), Shadowrun counts bullets. I know what you’re thinking. Did I fire six shots or only five? Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I might have lost track myself, but being as though you’ve got a Hammerli 620S, a run-of-the-mill pistol, and is just one of dozens of firearms in play at the moment, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: do ya’ really want to risk the DMs wrath while you work it all out again? Do ya’ punk? Me, I’d be sure to keep track, be it with checkboxes and hash-marks or rows of tokens.

Initiative: This will be trickier. In D&D, you generated an order at the start of combat that almost never changed until combat ended. Shadowrun has a similar list, but the order is rolled every turn, can change if you are wounded, and may be used more than once a turn. While everyone gets to act at least once, some are enhanced in a way that allows them to act twice or more. So a single turn could look like Normal A, Speedy Guy (1/2), Normal B, Normal C, The Flash (1/3), Normal D, Speedy Guy (2/2), The Flash (2/3), The Flash (3/3).

(I had a table for this, but it didn't work well on the board)

While that might look like a lot of time passing, all of those actions would have taken place over 3 seconds. While D&D had combat turns as 6 seconds long, Shadowrun’s are 3 seconds, but combat is also generally shorter, which, I expect, is due in part to the amount that can happen in a three second turn. I don’t know if there are recommended ways of keeping track of this, but a mini-whiteboard or a magnetic board might help.

Initiative is also more consistent. D&D’s Initiative stat was generally much smaller than the randomizing factor of the D20. Shadowrun uses a mix of your stat and a random number of successes based on that stat.

Magic and the Matrix:

Given the semi-modular nature of the rules, I'd recommend adding some things in piece by piece. Start without magic/matrix characters. Augs and equipment are fine, but nothing really advanced crazy so that people can get a sense of the basics. The rest can be added when those interested, player and DMs alike, are ready to handle another 30 pages of the core rulebook (for magic and the matrix apiece) and eventually draw on another full sourcebook (Street Magic and Unwired respectively).

Magic: There are three major fields in magic and three avenues to explore them (but it’s not a 1 to 1 relationship there). Magicians have access to Sorcery (spells) and Conjuring (summoning). Adepts have access to Powers (self-buffing). Mystic Adepts can dabble in each. There are several types or traditions of Magicians (2 in the core book, some 17 or more in the side-book), but the basic concepts are the same.

Spells come in five varieties and are available to Magicians (and Mystic Adepts): Combat (Fireball type stuff), Detection (additional and enhanced senses), Health (heal, cure, breath underwater), Illusion (…um…illusions), Manipulation (both physical, like Levitation, and mental, like Control Thoughts). In addition to this, there’s the ability to perceive and manipulate things on the Astral plane (essentially a different perspective on our world that focuses on life auras) which is, I believe a given for Magicians, but that Adepts have to “pay extra” to perceive.

Spellcasting isn’t as vast as it is for many D&D classes. While, I believe, you can learn any spell (no level or school restrictions) you generally don’t know all that many (the most known by a sample character is . Instead of daily spells (whether chosen at dawn or written in a spell book or some other method), you seem to be able to cast your limited number of spells an infinite number of times per day, theoretically. However, each casting risks dealing the caster some damage (either stun (non-lethal) or physical (lethal)) which cannot be healed by magical means. If you can resist that damage particularly well, you can cast a lot. If not, choose your castings wisely. Additionally, there aren’t nearly as many spells (8-12 pages in the Shadowrun core book v. +100 pages in D&D’s Player Handbook), but who really ever used Goodberry, Know Direction, or Virtue?

Summoned entities also come in a variety of forms (depending on your tradition) and are able to carry out a few simple services on your behalf (both in and out of combat). Like spells, however, summoning them has the same risk of self-injury, so most casters won’t simply spam the battlefield with them.

Hacking: The third of the major realms (Reality, Magic, The Matrix) is generally considered the most difficult to figure out from the rules and, having slogged through the 30 pages in the core book, I can understand why. There are a wide range of options and more rules for it alone than for most other games we play. However, it looks like a powerful game concept. Once we get the basics of the game, we can ease into it, but I would suggest only doing so once there is specific player interest in it and it has been practiced outside of a run (reading it and learning how to use it are quite different).

Hacking, once included, is a very useful ability offering unique tactical opportunities, but as it is run in parallel, it can make the game drag for players not involved in the digital world. There are suggestions out there as to how to handle this issue (some suggest it be handled the day before and they might not be kidding). Suffice to say, it’s very complicated and requires that both player and DM be well versed in it.

Everyone (unless I missed something) has access to the digital world, but most are fairly limited in what they can do there. AR (Alternative Reality) is basically an overlay over the normal world and can be helpful (pointing out emergency exits or highlighting well-armed guards) or a nuisance (advertising and pop-up spam). VR (Virtual Reality) is a full immersion in the digital world (leaving you blind to what’s around you in the real world) but allows for a wide range of hacking opportunities.

Most people need special hardware to connect, but there are those who have these abilities available naturally. Technomancers have some abilities analogous to magic users. Compiling and Registering Sprites is very similar to Conjuring and Binding Spirits, Submersion improves a Resonance score the way Initiation improves Magic, Astral perception/projection and Matrix AR/VR, Astral and Matrix signatures, etc.

Another major flavor of Hacking (available to all, not just to Technomancers) is Rigging, controlling devices through the matrix. While Drones are the most common targets, a Rigger could take control of pretty much anything from a jet, to a security system, to a coffee maker.

I recommend introducing Hacking last. The sheer number of options and new rules will almost certainly prove overwhelming without experience with the basics of the system first. As a simple comparison the Combat chapter includes a list of actions that has 9 Free, 13 Simple, 7 Complex; the Matrix introduces 7 Free, 10 Simple, and 23 Complex. They may not come up all the time, but great googly-moogly, that’s a lot to account for.

Also, some other players out there, albeit some who are rather curmudgeony (though not necessarily to excess), recommend using the sidebar on p226 as a rule. While this would require mentally rewriting the rules in places, it means that things would apparently be more analogous to the way Magic and Spell Force work.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

From a DM Perspective:

We’re a fairly large group at the moment (M&M, R&A, S&M, S&M, J&E, T, D, B) and it would almost certainly be impractical to have everyone involved in a run. Of that base of 13, 3 aren’t currently involved in D&D, and would likely not be involved for Shadowrun. Of the remaining people, some may not be interested, but I expect the larger split will be among those who are interested/willing to DM and those who aren’t. I suspect we have at least 3 in the former, but it would be good to increase that number; ideally, everyone could give the DM seat a shot, but many players may not be interested in that role. I would hope we could get half of those involved to consider being DM on a semi-regular basis. While everyone involved would need to learn the new system, the DMs would have to have a stronger grasp of it than the others (and would need to know all topics currently in use to a degree, rather than just those applicable for their character).

While there is a lot to manage as a DM, there are a lot of short and fast pre-made adventures to draw from, so all anyone who wants to DM has to do is be familiar with the rules, read the 30 page adventure and lead the session. No weeks of planning, plotting and stating out monsters, it’s all there already. There are several “seasons” of these mini-adventures, each supposedly about an evening’s worth of game time that could tide us over for years without having to design our own runs. There are also larger adventures, but the smaller runs might be easier for an island-hopping approach to shifting-leadership and playing it with a flexible headcount.

If, and this isn’t a well thought out idea at all yet, but if we had two DMs for a session, perhaps one could be focused on the rolls and numbers and the other on the narrative. The game requires a lot of thinking on your feet for all involved and it can be hard to juggle everything going on when puzzling out just how many dice you need to roll for each shot fired. Alternatively, once The Matrix and hacking are introduced, it may pay for one DM to help manage that player's actions to speed things along.


How do we handle advancement (leveling)? Shadowrun uses a different style (giving Karma points you can spend on personal improvement) and cash (for better equipment). Should the DM’s character (who would obviously sit out the mission) be given a comparable reward for a session (not identical, for Karma isn’t given out evenly to participating players)? What about a player who skips a few weeks? If I want to keep a few characters on deck (to try out the various elements of the system with different builds without serially killing of my characters), do they lag behind if not used or should they keep pace? I can’t quite tell how much of a problem an experience gap is; in D&D one’s level is critical and contributes to nearly every action and is the primary source of hit points, while in Shadowrun, karma and cash are used to buy specific upgrades incrementally and hit points are largely the same over time (you better be wearing armor, you fragile meatbag). While it seems less of a problem than in D&D, too wide a gulf would almost surely be a problem anyway (especially if that player is the weakest link in a team).

Any given run will likely endear you to one group and earn the ire of another. How you handle the run may affect the degree of these feelings (they might have been pissed you stole a prototype, but you trashed their labs in the process, and now they’re gunning for you). With a wide array of such factions in the world (governments, corporations, organized grime organizations, and countless gangs), I suspect it’ll be easy to avoid stepping on other DMs toes while still keeping running story threads going.

Given that several, if not most, of the players will have a turn as DM, players who want to keep secrets should either be able to handle them on their own or play with them as an open secret among players (closed among characters).

Downtime:

In Shadowrun, down-time can be just as important as the missions. Dealing with ones contacts and acquiring gear isn’t simply a matter of rolling dice and looking up loot in a book. As such, we could have other players roleplay NPCs during downtime when there might be one-on-one interactions with contacts rather than just taking care of shopping during player downtime by going through books. In D&D you can pretty much own what you like where you like, outside of various city ordinances. In Shadowrun, buying or owning the wrong kind of gear gets you noticed in ways you may not want.

Given the heavy emphasis on planning, it might make sense, once we’ve got things figured out, to have sessions focused on prep and some on execution. Alternatively, if the DM needs to be more creative than using a pre-existing module, we could do some of the prep in the time between sessions allowing the DM to feed information as it created. That way, if a player comes up with an idea that requires more in-game research, the DM doesn’t have to spit out a few mob bios, their personal schedules and security schemes on the fly, when they were expecting to present the players with a wholly different route.


Given the diverse possibilities for gameplay once we get going, it might be fun to have more than one character handy per player when choosing who is in for a mission. Sure, you’ve been running as a master of stealth for a few sessions, but sometimes you just want to get in the thick of it with a street samurai or a offensive mage.


Contacts:

In a standard game, I would think players would make contacts in collaboration with the DM (or vice versa) to provide hooks on both sides, but with an island hopping game, perhaps we all work together on contacts (not to excess, but enough so that they aren’t simply finger-puppets for a PC. The descriptions for the stock contacts in (p289-292) seem like a treasure trove of good low-level run ideas.

On the mechanical side of contacts, however, I haven’t yet found rules on limiting their score, but it strikes me odd that a starting runner (for 12 points) can have a high-level CEO owing them a life debt for less than the price of many Qualities (and would almost certainly pay for itself in terms of starting resources (12 points = 60K)). I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a common house rule making the BP price Connection X Loyalty rather than Connection + Loyalty.

Regarding the other systems:

Paranoia: I’ve glanced through a few of the versions, but it’s a little too wacky. The rulebook is written in character and consequently is a little hard to absorb. It could be fun, but even though the game’s been going for nearly 30 years, the concept still looks paper-thin. The focus seems to be on absurdity, backstabbing and accidental death much like Munchkin or Bang and it took as long to learn as either of those games, it might work for a time, but if everyone is going to have to learn a whole new system, I think I want something that stands a better chance of lasting more than a month or two.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Beyond the all-zombies-all-the-time thing, it’s got a vibe that I don’t know that I care for. It might work for a time but, like Paranoia, if we’re going to invest the time to learn a new system, I want it to last, not get boring before we’re comfortable with the rules.

Call of Cthulhu: It could work. I haven’t really looked into it much, but I hear the system is fairly solid. However, a fair deal of it is investigation; I don’t need us to all be Big Damn Heroes saving the world each week, but I think I’d like something a little more active. That said, it’s got a following, so it can’t be as dry as that sounds. However, there’s also the mythos problem: you don’t have to love Tolkien, Jordan or Martin to play D&D; it’s fantasy settings, even when customized, are familiar enough to those with passing familiarity with the genre. You don’t need to read William Gibson’s Neuromancer or know much, if any of Shadowrun’s history (created over the course of 4 game editions and dozens of novels books) to live in a small corner of it’s world telling your own tales. But Call of Cthulhu is explicitly built around H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction (which is of varying levels of quality and accessibility) and deals with dark forces coming through to our world; while your characters don’t know much, if anything, about it to start (as a rule, I believe), the players should know what they’re getting into if they’re going to enjoy it. If you don’t know Nyarlathotep from a hole in the ground and Dagon from a Dragon, this probably isn’t for you. If there’s an interest in it, I’ll investigate further, but if people don’t R’lyeh want to play, I think I’ll leave it be in favor of something more accessible.

Nobilis: It’s very abstract and very collaborative. Unless people find the concept really engaging it simply won’t work. I think it sounds intriguing, but I don’t know if we have the creative attention span for it when together.

Mutants and Masterminds: I don't think I've heard much if anything bad about it, but I imagine even the best game-system would get fairly monotonous unless there's a lot of group enthusiasm for super-heroes that I don't know about.

GURPS: The Generic Universal Role Playing System is possibly the most flexible of all systems. Upside: You get to create a world from scratch (with many many sourcebooks for suggestions and guidelines on the rules. Downside? You have to create a world essentially from scratch. If one or two of us wanted to lead in perpetuity with a grand vision, this could work, but I think that it would require too much effort from too many people to let the island-hopping idea play out with ease. That said, of the systems I've seen so far, even without having looked at the basics of the rules in depth, this might be a good alternative to the one I explained at length above. It's about as open-world as you can get, but I just wonder how many want to help populate that world.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

I"ve been dabbling in Shadowrun Character generation. It's...involved. So far, I've been using a character gen tool for the basics and a book of equipment packs to start the items.

The former is from a french Shadowrun site, but the tool itself is in english (first link on this page): http://daegann.free.fr/programmes/programmes.php

The latter isn't online, but will be on hand when we start dabbling in such things.

The core book contains more than enough to overwhelm at first. The other books (like Augmentation and Arsenal) add a whole lot more, but I'm not going to dabble in them just yet.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

Word on the street is that the core book's sample characters are pretty mediocre. Not having played with them, I couldn't say, but I expect they'll do just fine for learning the rules. If we find we need something with a little more polish, I've seen people point to these threads:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=19988
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=20029
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

I thought I'd post to remind people that there's a summary of the world we expect to dive into in this very thread, and that, having read the rule book cover to cover back in May of 2012, I made a series of posts in the GITP forums with loads of questions, most of which were answered, so as we move forward, we can look there as a reference on some issues.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

For those looking for a really quick "What's with Shadowrun's 6th World stuff?", here's your overview.
http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowrun_setting

For those looking for a longer "No, really, the core rulebook didn't have NEARLY enough detail for me.", here's a starting point.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shadowrun_primer.pdf
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.

[Jastermereel]

And for anyone looking for a character generator tool, this is the best I've seen thus far: http://www.chummergen.com/

That said, the process is MUCH more involved than D&D's. Some of that will get easier with a little practice, and some is usefully difficult. It might just be that most of the characters I rolled-up for D&D were NPCs, but I rarely felt any given creation's story was tied to the character particularly. However, just trying to build up a few Shadowrun concepts, I find myself developing a history to justify, or justified by, various facets of the build.

That said, even with ChummerGen, I've still got 5 copies of the book open simultaneously cross-referencing various spells and bits of gear to figure out what I'm missing...so yeah, it takes time.
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The old Jastermereel account seems to have been killed in an unfortunate email changing accident. I am an illegal clone manufactured on a little known island state off the coast of...well...never you mind. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to face the combined wrath of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and the League of Awesomeness.