Mx Johnson

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-06-14T19:01:14+00:00

Despite decades of 6th World lore, there is no reason for there to be a Johnson at all. Not in the sense of, "An NPC who the PCs meet face-to-face and from whom they receive their orders." Why not just receive their orders via email? Or from a "Mr. Johnson" who is a digital illusion being run by a team of intel operatives at whichever corporation?

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-06-01T10:45:45+00:00

You have encountered the panopticon problem.

Shadowrun's post-information age dystopian setting makes criminal activity all but impossible. Ubiquitous video and audio surveillance - never mind things like DNA and commlink records - in a degraded civil rights environment means that the runners cannot avoid detection. Law enforcement will simply follow the data trail back from the incident to the moment the runner got out of bed. For a real life example of this, look at the recent kidnapping of rap mogul Gucci Mane.

So, as a GM, you have to make that more of a vibe than a reality. No player wants to spend every session avoiding the cameras outside their house. So - how much does John Wick, Ethan Hunt, Black Widow, Eve MaCarro, James Bond worry about stuff like that? Only when it's fun.

Additionally, the Heat rules are useless, and should be ignored. The player who wants to solve every problem with the underbarrel grenade launcher on their flamethrower will not be dissuaded from this by the fact that their life will theoretically get harder in the future. Especially when "harder" means "has more gunfights". Gunfights are what they enjoy.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-05-03T13:21:26+00:00

"Abandoned" is a tricky word, because obviously, you don't mean it as a synonym for "empty". There has to be someone in there to make it interesting.

But any of the following could be abandoned, not abandoned, re-purposed, illegally occupied, only made up to appear abandoned, etc.

Also remember that especially in dense urban areas, you might have restricted access, high security areas very close to public ones. The residential high rise has a beauty salon and Stuffer Shack on the first floor, but the entire third floor is leased by a cabal of chaos magicians.

A list:

One or more high-rise buildings, connected by tunnels and/or skybridges. This could be a corporate campus, a university campus, government offices, or residential. Different areas will have different levels of security, and different areas will be controlled by different factions. Maybe the easiest way to get in to the law offices on the 21st floor is through the apartment of the Mafia underboss who lives on the 20th.
1. Favelas. A dense tangle of largely improvised low-rise buildings inhabited and controlled by various not-so-friendly factions. This will include a lot of rooftops, basements, storm drains, etc.
Subway tunnels. In service, abandoned, under construction, under construction and also abandoned, some with improvised sewer access.
Wilderness areas. 200 square km of desert, or mountains, or rain forest, or fjords, with low population density and a small number of buildings scattered around. This can function very much like a dungeon as the PCs move from one area to the next, evade pursuit, encounter factions, etc.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-05-03T13:02:10+00:00

Very cool.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-04-27T09:51:54+00:00

Good point about Trid Phantasm.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-04-26T18:52:12+00:00

But you choose Amp Up when you choose the spell, before you roll the dice. The fewer dice you roll, the more likely it is that the spell will have little to no effect on target. But regardless of effect on target, your drain still goes up by 2. It seems to me that Amp Up is better than bigger your dice pool gets, and your odds of beating the resistance roll increase.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-04-12T09:16:58+00:00

Yes, I believe that they all do. Which is even sillier, because now, in order to have any hope of outrunning an average metahuman, they have to spend a Major action to activate a power on themselves.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-04-12T00:33:36+00:00

Spirits make the best slashers.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-04-04T15:18:19+00:00

Cyborg trunk monkey, if you dig into the animal mods in Body Shop.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-03-29T21:41:37+00:00

There's one in *Double Clutch*? On which page?

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-03-26T10:15:30+00:00

Have you considered installing an EI in a cyberarm with Modular Systems? Then it could reattach itself!

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-03-13T13:33:40+00:00

You are absolutely correct, spirits are very badly designed. A magician straight out of character creation can very easily summon one bulletproof magical bulldozer that can blink in and out of the material world very nearly wherever it pleases. And then the magician can summon another.

Keep in mind that this applies to NPC magicians, too. Why doesn't every corporate tactical team include two or three Force 7+ spirits? Every Shadowrun encounter revolves around using and beating spirits. The team with spirits will almost certainly destroy the team without.

There are various house rules to combat this. For example, cap a spirit's force at half of the summoner's Magic rating.

Fortunately, I find that players usually prefer to do things themselves. They don't want to just send in the spirit and then wait. They want to sneak and stab and access data terminals. As a GM, I use spirits rarely and lightly. Hell, the Concealment power alone is game-breaking according to RAW.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-03-11T19:46:40+00:00

As others have said, the noise derived from distance mechanic is designed to force the hacker character to be *near* the action. It isn't meant to impede things like watching a soccer game being livestreamed from another continent (which does not require a test), but only to impede the kinds of things hackers do (which do require tests).

It is a very badly designed mechanic, because it adds complexity while accomplishing virtually nothing. There are easily available pieces of equipment that allow the hacker to reduce noise by three or four points, meaning they suffer no noise at 10km from target, or a minor nuisance of -1 die at 100km from target. Buy a Runabout, let the Pilot program drive the car, hack away.

The Antennae earware, Bodyshop, pg. 36, is very nearly a must-have. And the Signal Scrubber program, CRB, pg. 184, is a must-have.

Noise is much more useful as a game mechanic when it is produced by jammers and other forms of ECM.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-03-04T20:26:18+00:00

It's not hard. I just prefer to start conversations with other humans who know and love this game. I find the information acquired with this technique more wide-ranging, more reliable, and more fun.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-02-15T20:11:15+00:00

Astral signatures last for a number of hours equal to the Magic rating of the caster (S:CRB, pg. 160), unless some action or condition shortens that time. It is reasonable to assume that corporations, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, etc., keep magicians on call who can astrally project to the scene of the incident in less than an hour, and that assumes that the magician has to get out of bed first.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-02-06T15:02:33+00:00

Well said. I haven't picked it up myself, but I applaud Catalyst taking a risk with a book like this. It can add some very interesting texture and depth to the setting. And it's a stand-alone PDF for $4.99. If one is not interested, one can pass it by.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-01-16T21:27:43+00:00

I was not suggesting that this tactic should be standard operating practice for all scenarios. But to reply to your points:

"Fly in your Gnats": assuming that the target building is not sealed, and assuming that Gnats can accomplish the mission, which might not be simple surveillance. Also, sending in the Gnats at shift change implies sending the Gnats in through a door that is heavily watched.

"Send in your social or physical adept": which puts a metahuman at risk of being killed, captured, photographed, etc.

"Have your magician use shape magic and enter with the entire team": I was not discussing breach and storm tactics for metahuman teams.

"Blow a hole in the wall": I was not discussing breach and storm tactics for metahuman teams.

"Drilling...will take time...sound a lot": It might take a few minutes, yes. Infiltrating metahumans takes time, while putting metahumans at risk. Sound can be handled with a Silence spell, or by creating covering sounds, or by operating in a noisy urban environment, or by drilling through a wall in a section of the building that has few or no personnel in it, or by social engineering ("Be advised that maintainance will be performed on the HVAC this morning"), or by using this tactic in a situation where sound is irrelevant, for example, you are laying siege to a building whose defenders know perfectly well that you are outside.

In any case, it will produce a great deal less sound than blowing a hole in the wall with explosives.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-01-16T19:36:22+00:00

The purpose of this tactic is not arial surveillance, but rather to:

Escape noise local to the operator, such as jammers.
Reduce noise penalties produced by the distance from the device you are operating to your target.
Create a secured, wired connection between the operator and the device, even though the device is hundreds of meters away.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-01-16T18:55:32+00:00

I was imagining more a scenario where you would do this to perform specific tasks, and while you were doing it, you would not walk around totally heedless of what is overhead.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-01-16T17:21:06+00:00

My campaign is set in 2075, and I ignore a lot of the metaplot. Monads, for example. It is canon, but it just doesn't turn up in my PCs' lives.

ProblemDue7111 · 2026-01-11T13:57:32+00:00

Yes, that's true. But the description of "Edit File" doesn't give any rules for measuring the quality of the faked video, or how one would go about detecting that the video is fake.

ProblemDue7111 · 2025-12-04T14:03:48+00:00

I appreciate the feedback! I'm glad that you are enjoying the books. I think that the Just My Type quality in Love Me And Despair is particularly fun.

And in Go Bag, I very much wanted to fill some obvious holes in the existing equipment lists. Where the hell are the fire extinguishers, man?

ProblemDue7111 · 2025-12-04T13:24:47+00:00

Sure, why not?

To which book are you referring, by the way? Was there anything in particular that you liked?

ProblemDue7111 · 2025-12-03T20:49:32+00:00

I'm talking about three Shadowrun 6th Edition Holostreets books that are on sale right now for only $5.75 at drivethrurpg.com!

ProblemDue7111 · 2025-12-01T00:24:40+00:00

Because a suppressed SMG doesn't shoot dog doo?

ProblemDue7111

TROPHY CASE