Quelle, en: Rigger 2: The Developer's Say/Kopie
INTRODUCTION
If the only thing that comes to mind when you think of a rigger is the "car chick" or-even worse-the "getaway guy", then this book is for you. For those of you who always wished the rigger character could fulfill its potential as a vital element of the Shadowrun team-from commanding drones, to taking control of a security-rigged building or even using a vehicle as a weapon to hit stuff that gets in the way (including those pesky pedestrians)-well, you've found a home, chummer. Rigger 2 includes everything you want to know about rigging and riggers in a single volume, from character creation to vehicle creation, from vehicle combat to drone use to rigging a security system.
The rules contained in this volume replace the rigger rules published in Shadowrun, Second Edition and the Rigger Black Book.
Rigger 2 begins with The Rigger, which talks about the rigger from the perspective of dice pools, skills and concentrations, cyberware/bioware and even Edges and Flaws. This section also covers what it takes to be a rigger, including insights into the mind and emotions of someone jacked into a vehicle.
From there we go straight into Standard Vehicle Operations, which covers everything from the basic Driving Test to vehicle statistics and attributes. This section describes what a vehicle can and can't do, and introduces the concept of Stress-the idea that a vehicle will wear down if not cared for properly. That's right, we've given the gamemaster even more options for parting a rigger from his hard-earned nuyen.
Now, what good is becoming your vehicle if you can't see what's going on around you? The Sensors chapter is devoted entirely to explaining how a rigger uses the sensors of his vehicle to observe and affect his world. This section also includes the basics of Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) and Electronic Deception (ED). The chapter on Special Vehicle Operations offers rules for operating everything from VTOLs and other airborne vehicles to hover crafts and vehicles with arms, and even pulling and towing vehicles.
Now that your rigger is fully constructed and knows his vehicles inside and out, it's time to test his abilities on the street. The chapter on Vehicle Combat provides rules to cover every situation, from auto chases to running down pedestrians. An expanded turn sequence incorporates the rigger's actions into the flow of the standard Combat Turn. The rules for magic and vehicles have been expanded and updated, offering the opportunity to include every facet of the awakened world into a single running fight! Rigger 2 also gives the rigger the tools for the next step: firing her weapons directly from the vehicle. Vehicle Gunnery gives target numbers and modifiers for all vehicle-mounted and hand-held weapons, including missile rules. The addition of indirect fire and area-effect rules are custom-designed to ramp up the paranoia level in every city where your team runs the shadows.
But if you think that's all a rigger can handle, you're wrong. The Drones chapter describes those special friends of the rigger that allow him to see everything and be everywhere at once. This chapter covers all remote control operations needed to sic these mechanical nightmares on your enemies, and introduces a new element to the world of Shadowrun-robotics. Riggers interested in working from a more defensive posture can conduct Electronic Warfare using a remote control deck to interfere with security operations from a distance, taking advantage of a variety of tactics, from jamming transmissions to taking over control of an enemy's drones. Finally, for those riggers who like to fight up close and personal, the Security Rigger section fleshes out the rules on rigging a building. These rules cover everything from breaking into a security system to a network combat between two riggers fighting to take control of an entire security system.
The Advanced Rules section is for those players and gamemasters who just want more. This chapter offers Quality Factors (consider them Edges and Flaws for vehicles; it's the little things you do to get your truck started in winter, the funky way you park the car to keep it from rolling, the glitch in the hatch hydraulics ); rules for fuel consumption; advanced gunnery, sensor and electronic warfare rules; and rules for damaging vehicle subsystems.
Perhaps the most-often heard request in Shadowrun is for rules that allow a rigger to modify or create his own ride. Well, the wait is over! Vehicle Design and Customization offers a complete set of rules to create your own vehicle or modify existing ones, by adding everything from turrets to state-of-the art armor to super-injected engines to ejector seats. We even answer the burning question of how can a dwarf drive a car? New Toys speaks for itself-new toys made with the rigger-mad player character in mind. Missiles, drones, vehicles, mines, cyberware (including the head-implanted remote control deck) and even the first and newest robots on the market.
Finally, the Vehicle List provides a complete list of all vehicles ever published in Shadowrun products, updated to correspond to the rules in this book.
THE DEVELOPER'S SAY
In many ways, this book represents a completed first edition more than a second edition. The existing Shadowrun rules relegated the rigger to the status of a non-player character; not because his role was insufficiently thought-out, but because the rigger was not given enough rules within the system to spread his wings. Vehicle combat was abstracted so far as to be unusable, and drone combat was barely covered at all. Situations that seem tailor-made for riggers-pre-shadowrun surveillance, drones aiding mercs and mages on a run, riggers taking care of or taking over the security of a target locale-these were tasks that rigger players wanted to perform, but the rules just didn't cover what they needed to do their jobs.
The players were asking for ways to better integrate this character into the shadowrun team, and for more things to do with a rigger character. We chose to not focus this book on vehicles-that direction always poses the risk of turning a roleplaying game into a tactical, table-top vehicle-based game. Instead, we wanted to include the rigger in the action of the game, to find a way to incorporate his vehicle actions into the turn along with those characters who were decking, shooting guns and chucking spells.
The result was a vastly expanded rules system. To begin with, vehicle combat went from a scant six pages in Shadowrun, Second Edition to 174 pages in this book. We focused on stripping those six pages of rules down to their core and relaying the foundation, at the same time making sure that the rigger remained integrated into the flow of the game session. Few things are more frustrating than for the game to slow to a crawl as the rigger and gamemaster try to figure out how they should resolve a monstrous hole in the rules (exactly how fast were you going and how much damage should you take from hitting that troll with your Dodge Scoot?).
While the options and actions for driving are fun for the rigger, nothing says Shadowrun like doing a lot of damage. We needed rules for using guns, from firing missiles to having a good buddy fire that turret-mounted Ingram Valiant out the back of the mini-van. These rules needed to give the player a sense of his rigger's place in the battle, and to cover launching missiles, remote targeting and area-effect damage.
Having fleshed out the rules that existed, we moved on to rules that didn't exist-rules for things the rigger clearly was meant to do, but was never given the necessary information to execute. The primary lack in the rules was for drone use. In my ideal Shadowrun world, drones would be used as often as guns, spirits and cyberdecks. Drones and the use of remote control vehicles-one of the coolest parts of being a rigger, in my opinion-were so woefully underdeveloped that the rigger was in danger of dying out from lack of interest. The idea of a shadowrun team using drones as "the sixth man on the team" was left to novelists and players' imaginations, mainly because the rules gave you nothing to work with. My mission for this book was to remedy that missing game application.
As you can see, just putting in the basics and making sure those basics fit into the world of Shadowrun, and then making sure the rules appealed to both the casual rigger player and the most serious motorhead took on us on a mission to reinvent the wheel-a wheel that can be jacked into, of course. As soon as we were sure that we'd covered all the basics, of course, we had a whole new set of concerns and questions. Those concerns and questions led to sections on sensors, things that mess with sensors, electronic warfare and an expansion of the idea of the security rigger.
Our final goal was to create a vehicle and drone construction system, which was needed to fill the second biggest lack in the existing rules. Aware that a vehicle design system could easily become a micro-management affair of square roots, fractional multipliers and such advanced math that only NASA engineers could figure it out, we chose to create a template system with a single cost multiplier. This system allows players to both modify a "stock" version of any vehicle or drone in the Shadowrun universe and to create their own designs using stock parts. This forced us to define the stock types of vehicles, generate options and create the "personal touches" that would make the rigger's toys fit into the world we created for everyone else in the Sixth World-so there are hidden gun ports, turrets, ejector seats, enviro-seals, stealth armor and security devices that range from annoying to deadly.
Our template system also required us to make sure that all existing vehicles worked with that system. We re-evaluated each and every vehicle we had published to date, adjusting the numbers when necessary to bring them into line with the vehicle design system. And just to make it easy for everyone, we compiled a list of all existing vehicles and their stats: everything that a player may wish to have and a GM may want to use can be found at the back of this book.
We rounded out the book with new rigger toys, advanced rules for nearly every aspect of the rigger, record sheets and fiction. And that's how six pages in one book turned into this tome you hold in your hands.
But don't panic yet! The rules presented in this book can be broken down into easily digestible pieces, depending how much you want to use. Start with the standard vehicle operations and sensors. From there, toss in some vehicle combat and gunnery. That logically takes you to electronic warfare and security riggers. If a rules section seems too advanced, skip it and use it when you are ready. If you never use electronic warfare, that's fine-use what you want and use what you need (but we highly recommend getting drones into your game right away!). Rigger 2 was created to help you have fun when you play Shadowrun, not to get in the way of your enjoyment. If something in this book isn't working for you, skip it and figure it out later. We are confident you will find more in this book that you want to use than not-so jack in, boys and girls, and hit the streets. The only thing that can stop you now is your imagination or a fully armored Lone Star Security team!
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