//uplink established<br/>>>loading.....loading....loading....>><br/><br/>Every game must have an OOC for all matters pertaining that are not immediately story relevant! This one is ours.<br/><br/>1. This is a friendly and mostly open game. When possible, please ask questions in the open--keep private messages to the GM to a minimum.<br/>2.  Play nicely! We're all here to have fun and enjoy a little vicarious cinematic violence with naughty bits.<br/>3.  When in doubt, ask--while this ruleset is not terribly complicated, it is different than most traditional games. We're all learning! And if you don't understand the answer, circle back.<br/>4. Please remember to use the OOC! There is a certain amount of back-and-forth negotiation that usually happens with these rules and it's important to make sure that you know where things are before you roll anything. (And see Rule 3.)<br/><br/>Lastly, I'm going to be putting all the reference stuff, like a link to the play sheets, copypasta sections from the rules, and so on in here, so check back!<br/><br/>The free Runners Sheets pdf can be downloaded from a link towards the bottom of this site: https://markcleveland.itch.io/runners-in-the-shadows (https://markcleveland.itch.io/runners-in-the-shadows).<br/>+ + +<br/>(Crew Gen summary)<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">1. Choose a crew type.</div><div class="spoiler_body">The crew type determines the group’s purpose, their special abilities, and how they advance. You begin at <strong>Tier 0</strong>, with <strong>strong hold</strong> and <strong>0 REP</strong>. You start with <strong>2 NUYEN</strong>.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">2. Choose an initial reputation and safehouse.</div><div class="spoiler_body">Choose how other underworld factions see you: <em>Ambitious—Brutal—Daring—Discreet—Professional—Savvy—Strange—Trustworthy</em>. Look at the map and pick a district in which to place your safehouse. Describe the safehouse site.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">3. Choose Your Fixer.</div><div class="spoiler_body"> Mark the Crew Contact who is a partner in crime, close friend, or long-time ally—your fixer. Record the faction status changes related to your contact:<br/> One faction is also friendly with this contact. Take +1 status with them.<br/> One faction is unfriendly with this contact. Take -1 status with them.<br/>At your option, this fixer has mutually chosen you and you mark them on your REP tracker and take +2 and -2 status, instead.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">4. Establish your meeting<br/>grounds.</div><div class="spoiler_body">Look at the map and pick a district into which to place your meeting grounds. Decide how you had your fixer deal with the faction<br/>that claims the area.<br/> Give them 1 NUYEN.<br/> Give them 2 NUYEN: Take +1 status with them.<br/> Give them nothing. Take -1 status with them.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">5. Choose a special ability.</div><div class="spoiler_body">They’re in the gray column in the middle of the crew sheet. If you can’t decide, choose the first ability on the list. It’s placed there as a good first option.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">6. Assign crew upgrades.</div><div class="spoiler_body">Your crew has two upgrades pre-selected. Choose two more. If your crew has a cohort, follow the procedure to create it. Record the faction status changes due to your upgrades:<br/> One faction helped you get an upgrade. Take +1 status with them. Or spend 1 NUYEN for +2 status instead.<br/> One faction was harmed when you got an upgrade. Take -2 status with them. Or spend 1 NUYEN for -1 status instead.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Generic Crew Template</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Crew Type:</strong> (Karma:0/8)<br/><strong>Name:</strong> <br/><strong>Reputation:</strong> <br/><strong>Focus:</strong> <br/><strong>Safehouse</strong>:<br/><strong>Tier:</strong> <br/><strong>Rep:</strong> <br/><strong>Hold:</strong> <br/><strong>Fixers:</strong>(0/6)<br/><strong>Heat:</strong> 0<br/><strong>Wanted Level:</strong> 0<br/><strong>Nuyen:</strong> 0<br/><strong>Cryptovault:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Special Abilities:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Crew Upgrades:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Cohorts:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Crew Contacts:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Notes:</strong><br/>Org1 (turf)<br/>Org2 (fixer +)<br/>Org3 (fixer -)<br/>Org4 (upgrade +)<br/>Org5 (upgrade -)</div></div><br/>+ + +<br/>(reserved for Char-gen summary)<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Draft Character Sheet Template</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Crew:</strong><br/><strong>Name:</strong> <br/><strong>Alias:</strong> <br/><strong>Look</strong>:<br/><strong>Heritage:</strong> <br/><strong>Background:</strong> <br/><strong>Vice/Source:</strong><br/><br/><strong>PLAYBOOK:</strong> (NAME) (Karma:0/8) <br/><br/><strong>Edge:</strong> 0<br/><strong>Trauma:</strong> 0<br/><strong>Armor:</strong> 0<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Actions</div><div class="spoiler_body">INTUITION (N) (Karma:0/6)<br/>Engineer: 0<br/>Interface: 0<br/>Stalk: 0<br/>Survey: 0<br/><br/>BODY (N) (Karma:0/6)<br/>Creep: 0<br/>Fight: 0<br/>Finesse: 0<br/>Scramble: 0<br/><br/>WILLPOWER (N) (Karma:0/6)<br/>Consort: 0<br/>Demand: 0<br/>Hustle: 0<br/>Study: 0<br/></div></div><br/><br/><strong>Special Abilities:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Special Items:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Friends and Foes:</strong><br/><br/><strong>Notes:</strong><br/>(Implants, Permutations, et cetera)</div></div><br/>+ + +<br/>Player Advice<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">EMBRACE THE RUNNER’S LIFE</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Don’t shoot down risky ideas.</strong> If something sounds fun and dangerous, well, that’s great! The game system is designed to make risky actions<br/>very achievable for the PCs.<br/><strong>Consequences are not failures.</strong> Even with two dice, you have a 75% chance to succeed (albeit mostly with consequences). These aren’t failures though! Consequences just give you more chances to do cool fantastic things—which is the whole point of the game.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">ACT NOW, PLAN LATER</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Hold on loosely, but don’t let go.</strong> Even the best laid plans can go awry. Let the engagement roll guide you into the mission, and get into the interesting bits. You are no slave to the mechanics; the mechanics are closely tied to the fiction and it’s a two-way street. Fiction can cause a mechanic, and vice versa.<br/><strong>Plan with flashbacks during missions or projects during downtime.</strong> Don’t predict eventualities. Wait to see the trouble you are in, and flashback to you planning for this. If you must plan, start and finish projects to expose a vulnerability, or strengthen your team.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">TAKE RESPONSIBILITY</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Set tone and deadliness with your decision about consequences and deadliness.</strong> You are just as much an author as the GM. If you want the sprawls to be deadly, accept deadly harm. If you want shortcomings and flaws to be part of the story, show your character’s failure to make good decision.<br/><strong>You have an expressive role at the table, not just a tactical one.</strong> Use your character’s actions to say it, or just say it aloud. Everyone at the table is responsible for the tone, style, and themes of the game—not just the GM.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">DON’T BE A TROG</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Choose the action that matches what you are doing.</strong> When you roll Engineer, it’s because you engineered something. When you roll Hustle, it’s because you hustle or convince someone. If your crafty Rigger shows off a cool invention they put together in order to convince a potential contact, then the Rigger is Hustling them. They’re not “using Engineer” to impress the person. That’s not how actions work.<br/><strong>Actions are not skills; they are about what you are doing, not what you know.</strong> Of course, you can do a setup action with Engineer to build an invention that might impress someone so they’re more easily convinced (thereby increasing the effect or position of a follow-up action). But when you actually go to convince them, you roll your Hustle dice. That’s why they’re called actions, not skills.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">USE YOUR EDGE</div><div class="spoiler_body"> <strong>Mark edge to push yourself and help teammates to improve your odds. </strong>This is what sets you apart from the other characters in the setting. Mark 2 edge to get an extra die, or mark 1 edge on a teammate’s behalf to grant them an extra die.<br/><strong>Resist when you don’t like the outcome.</strong> It all happens as we said (unless we say it didn’t for some reason) but you can avoid or reduce the consequences when things don’t go as you hoped. Hoarding edge will only make your life more difficult.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">DO WHAT SOUNDS FUN</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Don’t talk yourself out of a good time.</strong> Advocate for the plan type that will be most interesting and exciting—not always the one that seems like the clever thing to do. Your characters are daring, right? You can be, too. Go with what sounds like fun. The game will take care of the rest.<br/><strong>Deepen your character as you go.</strong> Your character starts out as a simple sketch. We don’t know—<em>and we don’t yet need to know</em>—who you “really” are. You’re not beholden to initial choices as a concept. You are what you become over the course of play.</div></div><br/>Active Options<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">HOLLYWOOD RULES</div><div class="spoiler_body">Your weapon is not empty until you suffer a complication that specifically states it is empty (you roll to resist this, as usual, or mark 1 load for ammo).<br/><br/><em>This is a two-way street: the opposition will rarely run out either.</em><br/><br/>Most NPC opponents are considered mooks. Mook NPCs can only take 1 level of harm before they give up or run away. Skilled NPCs can take 2 or 3 levels of harm, while master NPCs can take 4.</div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">MAGICAL LINEAGES</div><div class="spoiler_body">The species from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings are real! As the story goes: people have experienced genetic expression of their magical lineage when magic returned to this world. Sometimes painful, often ostracizing, these changes make you different from other people.<br/><br/>To implement this option, all newly created characters should choose from a list of allowed magical lineages. Take a look at the entries on this page, and choose the magical lineage that each character was born with (or turned out to be when they got older; usually by adulthood).<br/>Each magical lineage entry below includes a number of lineage traits. Most traits are small boons with both positive and negative features. When you choose a magical lineage, record it and all your traits in your notes for future reference.<br/><br/>If you choose to play with basic magical types, then players may choose from dwarf, elf, human, ork, or troll.</div></div><br/><br/><br/>