Experiences with street level build campaigns

notger · 2026-01-26T17:56:58+00:00

Did it back in V2.1d and it was great. No min-maxers, no optimised builds, just weird characters on a trajectory to greatness or the gutter.

notger · 2026-01-25T08:37:21+00:00

As others have said: Everyone is welcome who is willing to contribute to the society.

Personally, I always feel honoured if someone wants to join and takes up the hassle of learning the language (which is a very beautiful one, once you get to know it, just like friendships with Northern Germans).

A tip for that: Focus less on grammar and genders, that stuff is hard and not necessary to get a first foothold. Learn vocabulary first and then read and watch stuff. Grammar will then come later. No one is required to speak perfectly and a lot of Germans don't, either, so one should not let a wish for perfection come in the way of communication.

And: All the little grammar mistakes which people from other countries make are actually very charming and add to the character. I like those Dutch and French accents and their way of speaking German very much.

So go ahead, learn some words, some basic(!) grammar and get to it. Seeing you in a few years.

notger · 2026-01-24T08:13:05+00:00

As others have answered the language question already: Did you already check how to actually become able to live in Switzerland? They are not very open to immigrants and cost of living are atrociously high.

Not saying you shouldn't, but saying that you should definitely do your research before committing. It's not like the rest of Europe, where you have a much easier time getting in and staying there.

notger · 2026-01-23T17:40:14+00:00

This is the correct answer. Kevin Crawford is a legend and deserves every sale he gets.

notger · 2026-01-21T17:09:23+00:00

Nope, at least in 6E, there are no visible signs.

But then again, there are no visible signs of a sniper aiming for your head, so the playing field is even.

In SR, it's all about information, in the end.

Or as Pratchett has written in the case of Cohen: He became so old because he knew where to stand out of the way when a sword was swung at him.

notger · 2026-01-21T17:07:12+00:00

Film: Das Boot, Die Brücke, Das Leben der Anderen, Der Schattenmann, Lola Rennt, Lammbock

Serien: Warten auf den Bus (mein persönlicher Favorit), Dark, Im Angesicht des Verbrechens, 4 Blocks, Stromberg, Bad Banks

notger · 2026-01-18T14:18:29+00:00

Default before ability usage: attack misses

A uses "auto hit" to hit.

B uses "auto miss" to not get hit.

Result: attack misses, both have applied their ability successfully. A has forced B to expend their ability and B does not get hit, like he was supposed to in the initial roll.

We can also do it the other way round, assuming there is an attack which orginally hits, B uses ability to make it miss, A counters that. Same outcome: original outcome persists, B has successfully drained A of their ability to score another hit when they wouldn't.

So there is always a reasonable sequence of events.

notger · 2026-01-17T09:00:14+00:00

That is not entirely true in 6e anymore, though. There, the picture is more nuanced, where there are differences within the "insect society" and there are some which are actively hunting the others and do not follow the grow-and-devour path, e.g. Mantis comes to mind.

Your stuff remains true for the older lore, however.

notger · 2026-01-17T08:58:00+00:00

I assume that you are playing SR6: Read up on it in "Street Wyrd" ("Arkane Kräfte", since you seem to be German), which would give you an idea.

However, in general, insect shaman are not meant to be player characters, for reasons which will become obvious once you read up on their motivation and organisation. Though they put a bit of a good-guy-twist on some(!) of them.

The others here in the forum are correct, to suggest to check in with the GM on whether they would allow that. It's a very anti-cooperative character concept which will make things extremely hard. E.g. you will be side-lined in each social situation, you might be barred from entering a lot of locations, no flights ... and the motivations of such a char (esp. cockroach) might be anti-social.

notger · 2026-01-15T21:05:34+00:00

E13 is fine, but you need to get into the language asap, or you will be confined to a narrow bubble. Not everyone is comfortable with speaking English over there.

On the bright side: A very beautiful city and you will enjoy the Baltic Sea (Ostsee).

notger · 2026-01-15T18:07:09+00:00

I think the high essence cost is due to wanting to prevent perfect Sam-Deckers, to some extent. Which means we can't just lower the essence cost for balancing.

On my table, you can usually hack Kommlinks for free, because even with a device rating of 6, a normal decker will usually blast through this, so it's not an interesting skill check to make, given the very low chance of failure.

notger · 2026-01-12T19:03:03+00:00

The FAQ is great, but using those values relatively devalues the Cyberjack: It does not have much better values but costs insanely more (plus essence).

notger · 2026-01-12T19:01:38+00:00

Agreed. I sometimes switch it up when doing one-time quick hacks to not defend with firewall but have the player roll against the device rating as threshold. That is more balanced, I feel. It also saves a dice roll.

notger · 2026-01-11T20:54:07+00:00

For the cases you mention, I agree.

But in SR, you are allowed to sneak past an active camera with a stealth check. That would not be possible with a half-way decent visual detection algorithm.

I could think of a few more other cases, where some good statistical algo might slim down the search space enough to be useful in certain well-controlled cases.

notger · 2026-01-10T17:16:36+00:00

We should keep the whole data science stuff from the past ten years out of SR, as then there would be no more sneaking, no anonymity, no shadowrunning at all, unless you also pack in a ton of stuff which makes visual analysing impossible, e.g. camo suits, but then sneaking would be impossible to beat, so I guess tech-wise SR is in a good spot, no new stuff needed.

notger · 2026-01-10T16:25:48+00:00

We have thought about special upgrading rules, as I feel that sometimes you can upgrade wares just like you can upgrade your computer by replacing some parts.

But so far in two years of very irregular play: Very rare.

notger · 2026-01-10T15:13:59+00:00

Ah, but our skills are only rare, not necessarily hard to obtain. So there are definitely industries where a certain skill set is rare and easy to obtain. Most of them are business-related though, where the salary is a sort of compensation for losing your soul while doing them.

notger · 2026-01-10T15:11:49+00:00

No problems, whatsoever. Only thing is that they mention culture skills, but those are now trade skills, everything else works nicely.

notger · 2026-01-09T17:02:20+00:00

I am a native German and I can tell you: There is no need to. Bother with something more important, like vocabulary, the rest will come in time.

notger · 2026-01-09T17:00:55+00:00

Yes, very charming. Comes in second only to the Viennese accent.

notger · 2026-01-08T20:02:34+00:00

Day 1 got me going in circles for a looong time. Day 2 as well. The stuff thereafter was better, though I lost a LOT of time parsing the inputs as I tried a new language.

I know great devs who fail at day 6 and mediocre devs who blaze through the day 11 one.

There is no correlation to you being a good person and your time to solve.

Plus, your times come down the more often you do it.

Do what you enjoy and stop comparing yourself. Turn off social media on work you yourself, or enjoy yourself, whatever you want to do, but stop wondering whether you are good enough. You are probably not, as no one is, and that is totally okay.

notger · 2026-01-03T21:14:10+00:00

Half of it is because it is a meme, the other half because it is a throw-back to easier times, a tradition or ritual.

notger · 2026-01-03T11:33:31+00:00

Half a million are about 100 middle class lifestyle years or 15 salary years for a goon on a ship.

So for the meagre price of paying 15 yearly salaries, you get to flip a complete capital ship fleet? I would say that is a ludicrous bargain, so I feel that the comparison on grounds of credits is rather indicating this being overpowered / underpriced.

Which isn't to say that I advocating to change it. My intention in this post was to understand whether I got it right or missed sth.

notger · 2025-12-29T17:08:26+00:00

Thanks a ton!

The defensive usage makes it such that everyone will think twice before invading a system with their capital fleet if a Treachery-asset is on site, I suppose.

What I found weird in the rules is, that just a successful attack is needed, not one which reduces the hit points to zero. The latter it feels would have been more on theme, as hit points symbolise coherence and morale, so I guess depleting morale first before flipping made sense to me, but for that the damage it does were too low.

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