Part 1: Update I - Let's Play God
Update I - Let's Play God
Well, here we are. Of course, there's no title screen for this or anything...
...we just load a mod from the new game menu.
Now, I've played through every mainline game in the series on Very Hard before and made it without major hair pulling, but since the thread will have control over who I will be playing and how they will react to the world, I'm kicking it down to Hard.
For the sake of those that are reading this as their first contact with HBS's Shadowrun games (and if so: Why?), I'll go over the options we need for character creation. To start off, we pick our gender. Male or female, no stat differences. Easy.
Next, we have our choice of race. There are a total of five races - here's how they shape up:
Human: Starts with +3 Karma (which are basically experience points you spend on stats). They have a maximum of 9 in all stats.
Elf: Starts with a +1 to Charisma. They have a maximum of 12 for Charisma, 11 for Quickness, 9 for the rest.
Dwarf: Starts with a +1 to Willpower. They have a maximum of 12 for Strength, 11 for Body and Willpower, 9 for the rest.
Ork: Starts with a +1 to Body. They have a maximum of 14 for Body, 12 for Strength, 9 for Quickness and Willpower, 8 for Charisma and Intelligence.
Troll: Starts with a +1 to Body and a +1 to Strength. They have a maximum of 17 for Body, 15 for Strength, 9 for Willpower, 8 for Quickness, 6 for Charisma and Intelligence.
Next, we pick an archetype. We could completely create our character from scratch, but it's easier to just go with an archetype and some guidelines on what to focus on. Here's the choices:
Street Samurai: "Freelance operatives who follow a code of street honor and learned in the ways of the traditional samurai warrior." Your basic Fighter analogue, likes to either cut people up or shoot people up.
Mage: "Their spells reflect a pure balance of the mana-sphere and cover a wide range of magical effects." Basically a Wizard, can cast spells - attack, buffs, debuffs, healing, they can do it all depending on what they focus on.
Decker: "By projecting their minds into the electronic world, deckers can find secrets others keep hidden away." Hackers, essentially. They have a specific part of the game they excel at, and beyond that they usually can kinda sorta shoot a gun and that's about it. Note - the Workshop page for this mod advises against playing a pure Decker.
Shaman: "Shamans' relationships with their totems allow them to summon spirits and command them to do their bidding." These guys are basically Summoners. They do have some other spells, and they have a specific totem that gives them particular spells, but their bread and butter is summoning.
Rigger: "Riggers use cybertech to jack their mind into and control small robot-like vehicles called drones." Engineer-types, these guys hide far away from the shooty action and instead pilot robots to do stuff for them.
Physical Adept: "Adepts are magically-active characters who focus their magic internally to develop to their utmost potential." This is your Monk. The PhysAd is a close combat character that uses magic to give himself stronger defenses and allow him to punch people to bits.
Next is character customization. This mainly involves the portrait, the actual customization is rather barebones. For the portrait, there are some options. You can either give me a general idea how the character looks and I'll find a portrait, you can look yourself if you have the games (the "\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\" folders contain "art\portraits" folders that have all the images ready for you to look at), or if you want to, you can give me an image and I can probably turn it into a basic portrait that should be servicable enough, though it might clash with the other portraits.
After that, we have stats. In addition to the archetype, you can give me some general guidance on how to develop the character. Should they focus on something in particular? Should they add another main branch of stats to their arsenal and sorta multi-class? If you're unsure, you can always ask for help if the kind of character you have in mind is workable. Anyway, here are the main stats and what they generally do.
Body: Your defense, basically. Gives you more HP, too.
Quickness: Your ranged combat stat. Adds to your chance to hit with ranged weapons and increases your chance to not get hit by enemy physical attacks. Substats: Ranged Combat (substats Pistol, SMG, Shotgun, Rifle), Dodge.
Strength: Melee combat stat. Adds to your chance to hit with melee weapons and increases your grenade throwing range. Substats: Close Combat (substats Melee Weapons, Unarmed), Throwing Weapons.
Intelligence: Your Decking/Rigging stat. Boosts your succes with those things. Substats: Biotech (which improves your healing with medkits), Decking (substat ESP Control, which improves things that are basically computer summons), Drone Control (substat Drone Combat).
Willpower: Your magic stat. Boosts your chance to hit with magic attacks and increases your chance to not get hit by enemy magical attacks. Substats: Spellcasting (for the Mage's spells), Chi Casting (for the PhysAd's spells).
Charisma: Party face / summoner stat. Helps controlling your summoned spirits, and also grants you Etiquettes which unlock additional conversation options. It's generally useful for any character to put at least some points in Charisma for some Etiquettes, even if they don't put any points in the substats. Substats: Spirit Summoning (substat: Spirit Control), Conjuring (for the Shaman's spells).
Here's the available Etiquettes, since you're asked to pick after picking your stats. If you think your character would have particular ones, just add that.
Finally, we need a name. Don't make it too long - the streetname is more about being a sort of nickname you're known under rather than a given name with a first and a last name.
Well, not quite finally, because there is one more thing I want - character motivation. To quote Yahtzee Croshaw, this is a role playing game, so let's motherfucking role play! What is your character like? How do they generally react to adversity? What are they in this racket for? I don't just want to play this the way I usually do, kind of winging it and not really paying much attention to my character's ideology, so let's change that for this LP. You tell me how to play!
So, to recap what I need from you:
- Name
- Gender
- Race
- Archetype
- Character Look
- Stat Focuses and Etiquettes
- Character Motivation
To note, I'll be fairly occupied this upcoming week, so you can take your time with character creation, maybe combine forces to workshop something, feel free to get creative. And to close, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Either I or somebody else will surely be able to answer.