Posts

• Jul 13, 2020

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Mind Flayer

  

  This is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

  Mind flayers are one of those monsters that are so iconic to D&D they’re not covered by the D20 license. They’ve been in the game since AD&D 1st Edition, and are present in both the Monster Manual and the Monster Vault.

  The Lore

  Mind flayers, or illithids, are tentacle-faced humanoids who possess incredible psychic powers and use them to feed on sapient brains. They came from the Far Realm long ago. Before they arrived in the world, they had a great dimension-spanning empire whose experiments were responsible for the creation of the Gith peoples as we know them today. That empire was torn down when their slaves rebelled, and the illithids of today descend from its survivors.

  Some versions of mind flayer lore assert that they come from a distant future, having travelled back in time to ensure their empire rises and to prevent its fall. A necessary step in this plan would be to turn the world into another region of the Far Realm.

  Your typical mind flayer is a solitary, megalomaniacal villain bent on total world domination, who surrounds itself with large numbers of thralls to act as its hands and eyes to enact is elaborate plans on whatever society they’re targetting. That doesn’t mean the illithid is a coward! Should it see the need to get into a fight personally, it will do so without hesitation. There’s no limit to the number of thralls a single illithid may control - the process of creating them involves brain surgery, not active psychic domination. So those organizations may be quite large, and composed of a mix of thralls and willing (or ignorant) collaborators.

  Sometimes, several mind flayers with similar goals will work together, though you probably can’t call their relationship “friendly”. In the deep Underdark you can find large illithid cities occupying huge caverns, where many of these beings gather and surround themselves with veritable armies of thralls. These cities are ruled by Elder Brains, huge masses of illithid neural tissue that live inside briny vats.

  Mind flayers start their lives as tiny tentacled tadpoles, who upon reaching a certain level of maturity break into some poor sapient’s skull, devour its brain, and take over their bodies to mutate them into their adult form. In illithid cities, these tadpoles live in the Elder Brain brine pool until someone gives them a body.

  Some versions of mind flayer lore mention that illithids who die in these cities have their minds assimilated by the Elder Brain. They consider this to be the perfect afterlife, believing their conscience lives on inside the Brain as part of a collective. The truth is that while the process does make the Elder Brain more powerful, it erases the conscience of the individuals joined to it.

  5e tied all illithids a lot more closely to the Elder Brains, making them practically into a hive mind, but this isn’t true here. Individual, independent illithids are exactly that. They don’t need exceptional reasons to reject life in an Underdark city - maybe their plans for world domination are just incompatible (“I’m going to be the boss, not you”). This means that it’s perfectly possible to fight mind flayers in the surface without this being necessarily tied to some Underdark conspiracy.

  The Numbers

  The Monster Manual gives us 2 mind flayer stat blocks, and the Vault gives us 3. All are Medium Aberrant Humanoids with Darkvision and a land speed of 7. Every mind flayer can use a mind blast, grapple with its face tentacles, and do creepy things to people’s brains, though the exact effects vary.

  All Mind Flayers understand Deep Speech, and can communicate via telepathy regardless of language barriers.

  Mind Flayer Infiltrator (MM)

  This is a Level 14 Lurker with 107 HP and trained Perception, as well as a host of other thiefy skills.

  It it has to fight, the infiltrator will probably open up with its Mind Blast (Close Blast 5 vs. Will; recharge 6), which does psychic damage and dazes on a hit (save ends). Mind flayers and thralls are immune to this power, and the infiltrator itself is invisible to any dazed or stunned enemies (Stalk the Senseless).

  It will then attack the squishiest target with its tentacles, which grab the target on a hit. After grabbing a victim, it will proceed with Bore Into Brain (Melee 1 vs. Fortitude), something which it can also use against stunned targets without grabbing them first. This does more damage than the basic attack, and if it happens to reduce the target’s HP to 0, the illithid eats its brain and kills it instantly. No death saves for you!

  As lurkers, they probably give preference to targets made vulnerable by the Mind blast, and rely on their buddies and thralls to handle anyone who wasn’t affected. MM grab rules use either the Fort or Reflex as escape DCs, so you’re looking at a DC of 25 or 27 to get away from the infiltrator before it begins eating your brain.

  Mind Flayer Thrall Master (MV)

  This one is a Level 14 Elite Controller (Leader) with 260 HP. Its trained skills are Arcana and Insight, so it’s more of a scholar than a hands-on type.

  That doesn’t mean its defenseless! The thrall master fights in a way that’s somewhat similar to the MM’s Infiltrator, but with stronger psychic powers. Its Mind Blast (Close Blast 5 vs. Will; Recharge 5-6) works similarly but on a critical hit it dominates instead of dazing (save ends).

  The tentacles still grab on a hit, but they also hit dazed or stunned targets automatically. The escape DC is 21, and while the thrall master can only grab one person at a time, it can explicitly keep whipping other fools with its tentacles after that.

  Against the grabbed victim, the mind flayer can use Manipulate Brain (vs. Fortitude), which does a big chunk of physical damage and stuns the target until it’s no longer grabbed! If this reduces the victim to 0 HP, the thrall master has two choices: it can either devour the brain, killing the victim and regaining 20 HP, or it can perform a field-expedient thrall surgery. This restores the victim to 1 HP and dominates it until the thrall master is slain.

  Since the dominated condition also leaves the victim dazed, this results in a 1-HP, zombie-like thrall, whose main defence is the fact that its companions might not want to make it roll death saves. I imagine the illithid can do further work out of combat to make these thralls act more normally.

  Mind Flayer Mastermind (MM)

  This is essentially a more powerful variant of the Monster Vault’s Thrall Master. It’s a Level 18 Elite Controller with 324 HP and training in Perception, Arcana, Insight, Bluff and Intimidate.

  It can use its tentacles, Mind Blast and Bore Into Brain abilities in much the same way the thrall master can. Aside from the damage bug, the main difference here is that thrall surgery restores the victim to half its maximum HP, not just 1.

  The mastermind can directly Enslave a creature (Ranged 10 vs. Will), an attack which does no damage but dominates (save ends). Dominated creatures become immune to the flayer’s mind blast and gain a +5 bonus to Will while within 10 squares of it. The victims it makes into thralls also gain this benefit, by the way. Only one creature can be enslaved at a time, but as usual it can have as many thralls as it can make.

  The mastermind can also plant an Illusion of Pain in its victims (Area Burst 1 within 10 vs. Will; Enemies only; recharge 5-6) which does both immediate and ongoing psychic damage and immobilizes (save ends).

  When attacked, it can use Craddle of the Elder Brain (recharge 5-6) as an interrupt, teleporting up to 20 squares. If it’s targeted by a melee attack, it can instead Interpose Thrall, an interrupt which redirects the attack to a nearby thrall. That’s definitely going to be its preferred option if it has thralls nearby, with the teleport working as a tool of escape.

  Mind Flayer Unseen (MV)

  A more powerful version of the Infiltrator, this one is a Level 18 Lurker with 126 HP. It’s almost identical aside from the fixed damage, which makes its Extract Brain attack truly frightening.

  Instead of being invisible to dazed characters, the Unseen has a Mental Cloak power which, as a move action, allows it to teleport its speed and become invisible for a turn. It recharges whenever the Unseen is hit by an attack.

  Concordant Mind Flayer (MV)

  This Level 19 Controller (Leader) also works more or less like the Thrall Master. It has 174 HP.

  Its attacks are the usual trifecta of Mind Blast, tentacles and brain manipulation, which in this case is named Enthrall Brain and only gives the option of turning victims reduced to 0 HP into thralls. Like the Thrall Master, its mind blast dominates on a critial hit.

  The Concordant Mind Flayer’s exclusive trick is Shared Pain, a reaction that triggers when an ally within 5 squares takes damage from an attack. The illithid can make one of its dominated victims in a Close Burst 5 take 20 psychic damage which bypasses all of its resistances. This is sure to kill someone that’s been made into a thrall during the fight, since they’ll only have 1 HP. It doesn’t prevent damage to the ally - it’s more of a hostage situation. “Attack my friends and your friends will suffer!”

  Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

  Mind flayers typically consider themselves superior to everyone else. Anyone found working with them is probably a thrall or underling. I’d consider thralls created outside of combat to be able to act normally instead of being considered dazed.

  It’s possible for there to be a more congenial illithid that lives openly as a scholar and gentlesquid in a community ruled by another species. The most likely scenario in this case is that it lives and works alongside drow or duergar - congenial doesn’t mean good.

  This gives us the two sample encounters from the MM:

  • Level 14: 1 mind flayer infiltrator, 1 drider fanglord, 1 drow blademaster, 2 drow warriors. Here’s our gentlesquid.

  • Level 18: 1 mind flayer mastermind, 1 mind flayer infiltrator, 3 grimlock followers, 2 war trolls. And here’s a pair of more traditional illithids and their thralls.

  Mind flayers are such an iconic monster that even WoTC thinks it’s not D&D if they’re not in the books. And they do make excellent villains! You could have a single individual be the ultimate villain in even a mid-Heroic tier adventure by statting it up as a level 8 solo or the like.

  Unlike what happens with the more naturalistic humanoids, this is one of the rare instances where I’m fine with the books portraying them as almost universally Evil. Good mind-flayers should be once-in-a-campaign events at most.

• Jul 8, 2020

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Medusa

  We already lightly touched upon medusas on the entry for gorgons (which, in D&D, are entirely unrelated). They’re based on Greek Myth, where Medusa was an individual, the only mortal among the semi-divine Gorgon sisters. I see them on the Rules Cyclopedia, so they’ve been around since at least BECMI and probably since the beginning.

  The Lore

  

  As is common with creatures based on singular entities from Greek Myth, D&D medusas are an entire species of humanoids with snake-like features. Females have the iconic hair snakes, and their gaze can petrify victims. Males are completely bald, and their gazes can “poison the mind and body”.

  The Monster Manual portrays medusas as a haugthy and ambitious people. They live in small groups, but their ambition drives them to seek money and power in the societies of others. Evil medusas turn up as assassin guild masters or terrifying nobles, but you also get nicer ones working as eccentric veiled scholars and alchemists. Eberron has medusas make up part of the elite in the monster nation of Droaam, so you can have medusa ambassadors and such.

  The Monster Vault, as usual goes a bit harder on the evil angle and says that medusas are universally regarded as unnatural by all the other sapients. Rumors and myths abound about their origins, and run along two main lines. One says they were wholesome/wicked people who got punished/rewarded by Zehir with their current forms. The other says they were the result of yuan-ti genetic experiments, originally meant to serve as a slave race. Villainous medusas do often worship Zehir, the snake god of treachery and snakes, and they often have cordial relations with yuan-ti, who are one of the few other peoples they are said to truly respect.

  Medusas like to decorate the area around their lairs as demarcation and warning. There’s the classic statue gardens, of course, and males also like to paint the walls with the blood of their victims.

  

  The Monster Vault also turns them into another of those evil matriarchies where males are oppressed, with only those few who are immune to petrification being singled out for special treatment. The Monster Manual makes no mention of this, and says every medusa is immune to petrification regardless of gender.

  In combat, medusas use weapons, with a preference for swords and bows. Their blades and arrows are often coated in poison derived from the their own saliva or blood. Someone who has been petrified by a medusa can be brought back to life by the application of a few drops of that medusa’s blood to the victim’s lips. While the text assumes you’ll kill the medusa to get that blood, I don’t think that’s a hard requirement. If you do kill it, you must apply the blood to the victims within 24 hours.

  The Numbers

  Medusas are Medium Natural Humanoids. All are immune to petrification, and have some degree of poison resistance. They also have a gaze attack, which can be either petrification or venom depending on the individual.

  Gaze mechanics are different in both books. MM gazes are standard action attacks, to which blind creatures are immune. It’s up to the PCs to decide whether it’s safer to fight an elite paragon medusa blindfolded or to risk its gaze.

  MV gazes are triggered actions, which means the monster doesn’t need to choose between using its weapons or its gaze in a turn. Also, blinding yourself won’t save you from these gazes.

  Medusa Archer (MM)

  This lady is has the closest stat block to the classic medusas of editions past. She’s a Level 10 Elite Controller with 212 HP. Her speed is 7 and her poison resistance 10.

  She fights in melee with her Snaky Hair, which does a bit of physical damage plus 10 ongoing poison damage, and also inflicts a -2 penalty to Fortitude (save ends both). Her main ranged attack is a Longbow (range 20/40 vs AC) whose poison-dipped arrows trigger a secondary attack against Fortitude on a hit, causing the same rider effects as the hair.

  The archer’s Petrifying Gaze is a Close Blast 5 vs. Fortitude. It slows on a hit, and this worsens to immobilized on the first failed save and to full petrification on the second. The first two conditions are (save ends), but petrification is permanent until cured. This is an at-will power, and the perfect thing to use on people already weakened by the poison from the other attacks.

  Medusa Bodyguard (MV)

  One of those poor oppressed MV males, this guy is a Level 12 Soldier with 123 HP. He is not immune to petrification and has Resist 10 Poison and Speed 6.

  The bodyguard is armed with a broadsword and a longbow. The longsword marks for a turn on a hit, and both attacks have an ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends) rider. The bodyguard’s Mind-Venom Gaze triggers as an interrupt when a marked target ignores the mark. It’s a Close Blast 5 vs. Will that must include the triggering character. It does a good bit of poison damage to those it hits, and also stuns the triggering character if it hits them. The gaze recharges whenever the bodyguard hits with his sword, and blind creatures are not immune.

  Medusa Venom Arrow (MV)

  Venom arrows are non-elite versions of the MM Archers, being level 12 artillery monsters with 96 HP.

  Like Archers, they fight in melee with their less-whimsically named serpent hair, which deals poison damage and inflicts a -2 to Fortitude for a turn. Their Range 30 bows do physical damage, ongoing 5 poison damage, and slow (save ends).

  Their Petrifying Stare is a triggered opportunity action. If an enemy starts they turn within 2 squares of the medusa, they’re subject to a gaze that hits automatically and slows them (save ends). This progresses to full permanent petrification just like the Archer’s gaze.

  The possible cures for this petrification are specified here: the right power or ritual, a willing kiss from the medusa, or the afore-mentioned blood drops.

  Medusa Warrior (MM)

  We’re back in elite territory with these dudes, who are Level 13 Elite Soldiers with 272 HP. They fight with longswords and longbows as well.

  The longsword attacks trigger a secondary attack against Fortitude on a hit, dealing ongoing 10 poison damage and slowing (save ends both). The arrows automatically inflict the ongoing damage if they hit (save ends).

  As elites, warriors can use a standard action to make two sword attacks, and those deal extra damage against a dazed target. Their source of daze effects is their Venomous Gaze (Close Blast 5 vs. Will), which does poison and psychic damage, with “daze” and “weaken” riders (save ends both).

  Warriors prefer melee, alternating between their gaze and their double sword attacks. If you have more than one, they’ll coordinate their actions to that effect as well.

  Medusa Spirit Charmer (MV)

  The lady medusa from the MV. She’s a Level 13 Controller with 130 HP, immunity to petrification and resist poison 10. This is more of a spellcaster or psion type.

  Like the MM archer, she uses her serpent hair to fight in melee, doing poison damage on a hit and inflicting a -2 penalty to saves for a turn. Her main ranged attack is Spirit Charm (Close Blast 5 vs. Will), which does a bit of psychic damage and compels the target to approach the medusa. This isn’t a pull, but a choice: the victim must either end their next turn within 2 squares of the medusa, or it must take further psychic damage.

  Once per encounter she can cast Swords to Snakes (Area Burst 1 Within 10 vs. Will), an illusion that makes people think their weapons and tools have become snakes. This prevents them from using weapon or implement powers (save ends).

  The spirit charmer’s Signature Medusa Move is the Stony Glare, a reaction that triggers if an enemy ends their movement within 2 squares of the medusa. Which by the way can happen due to Spirit Charm! This is a Close Blast 2 that only affects the triggering enemy, targets Fortitude, and petrifies immediately. This is a (save ends) condition until the third failed save, in which it becomes permanent until cured.

  The possible cures are the same as those of the Venom Arrow’s gaze.

  Medusa Shroud of Zehir (MM)

  A powerful Zehir-worshipping avenger or assassin. This lady is a Level 18 Skirmisher with 172 HP. She is immune to petrification and has 10 resistance to both acid and poison.

  The Shroud fights with paired short swords, which do physical damage and ongoing acid and poison damage (save ends). She will often use a maneuver named Fangs of Death (recharge 4-6) which allows her to make two sword attacks and shift 3 squares between them. There’s a typo in her attack bonus, which is listed as +15 instead of the correct +23.

  Her Snaky Hair is a minor action, with the right attack bonus and the same damage as a sword blow. It inflicts the same ongoing damage and a further -2 penalty to Fortitude (save ends both).

  The Petrifying Gaze is here and works the same as the archer’s.

  Shrouds spam those snake bites and use Fangs of Death whenever it’s charged, since it spreads the poison around and allows them more mobility. When it’s not charged, they use their gazes.

  Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

  There are a few on the MM.

  • Level 11: 1 medusa archer, 1 venom-eye basilisk, and a gaggle of snaketongue cultists.

  • Level 14: 1 medusa warrior, a bunch of grimlocks and 2 gargoyles.

  • Level 17: 2 shrouds of Zehir, 1 yuan-ti malison disciple of Zehir, and 3 yuan-ti abominations.

  As you can see, medusas are probably the world’s premier basilisk owners, since they are completely immune to that monster’s gazes and they complement their own powers nicely. I imagine even good medusas subscribe to newsletters on the care and feeding of basilisks.

  They also tend to associate with or employ other monsters who are similarly immune to their powers, like the blind grimlocks or gargoyles and other earth-elemental creatures. Also, if you feel like yuan-ti alone don’t give you enough options to stock a dungeon full of snake-people, you can add some medusas in. If you believe those MV myths, medusas are instinctively compelled to serve yuan-ti, probably the only instance where they would put themselves in the “servant” position.

  Personally I like the image of the “archer medusa” a lot, and as with most other humanoids I’d probably include non-villainous medusa in my setting to go along with the usual antagonists. The stat blocks from both books seem to imply their gazes attacks are always entirely voluntary, which would mean a peaceful medusa wouldn’t even need those veils or dark goggles. Guess they might still wear them as a sign of goodwill, though, like sometimes knights will peace-bond their swords to show they mean no harm.

• Jul 3, 2020

  Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Marut

  

  This is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

  My first contact with Maruts was in Third Edition, where they were a type of Inevitable, a Lawful Neutral outsider. It could be that they predate that edition (though AD&D was all about modrons instead). Here, they appear only on the Monster Manual.

  The Lore

  In Fourth Edition, Maruts are enigmatic natives of the Astral Sea, usually found wandering that plane and others as mercenaries for hire. As mercenaries, they probably don’t care much about who their bosses are, as long as those bosses stick to their end of the contract. If they don’t, I imagine retribution is… inevitable.

  The price for a Marut’s service is always a reciprocal service, to be specified at a later date. They keep an exacting record of these favors in their astral fortresses. No one knows why they’re gathering favors in this manner.

  The Numbers

  We get two Marut stat blocks here, both epic. They have some common traits: trained Perception, Truesight, a land speed of 8, plus flight and teleport speeds of 4. They’re also immune to sleep, have Resist 10 Thunder, and an amazing Regeneration of 20 with no weaknesses that temporarily shut it down. These things are really hard to kill and really hard to get away from.

  Maruts are Unaligned, being indifferent to the cosmic struggle between good and evil. All they care about is keeping their ledgers balanced.

  Marut Blademaster

  This Medium Immortal Humanoid is a Level 21 Soldier with 201 HP and all common marut traits. It wields a greatsword in combat.

  That greatsword is its only attack, doing a mix of physical and thunder damage. A hit also pushes the target 1 square and marks them for a turn.

  The damage of that basic attack is a bit underwhelming due to the early math, but the blademaster will often (recharge 4-6) be able to make two such attacks a round, making it considerably more dangerous.

  You probably want to use enough of these to form a battle line. It’s hard to stand your ground against a wall of marut blademasters, and it gets even harder when they have backup.

  Marut Concordant

  This Large Immortal Humanoid is a Level 22 Elite Controller with 418 HP and all common marut traits. Concordants fight with their fists and with decrees backed by mystical power.

  You’ll likely see them coming at you from behind a battle line of blademasters. They’ll bombard your position with Fortune’s Chains (Area Burst 5 Within 20 vs. Will; enemies only; recharge 4-6), likely catching the whole party and doing psychic damage with a daze rider (save ends).

  Then they’ll stop melee PCs on their tracks with Dictums (minor action; Ranged 10 vs. Fortitude), which do no damage but immobilize (save ends). When the party finally manages to crash into the battle line, the concordants will push them away again with a Thunderous Edict (Close Burst 5 vs. Fortitude; enemies only; recharge 5-6) which does thunder damage and pushes 4 squares on a hit.

  If all of these powers happen to be recharging at the moment, they’ll content themselves with reaching over the heads of the blademaster vanguard and punching the PCs with Reach 2 slams that do a mix of physical and thunder damage.

  Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

  There’s one level 23 sample encounter: 1 concordant, 2 blademasters, a war devil, and 8 legion devils. There’s your battle line.

  Fans of 3e inevitables are probably missing a lot of the lore that was removed along with the Great Wheel cosmology. Personally, while I think 3e inevitables were interesting, I also like the new lore. Enigmatic mercenaries stockpiling favors for some future cosmic plan is an interesting background that leaves room for GM creativity.

• Jun 29, 2020

  Lich van Winkle: A Rather Interesting Blog

  Lich van Winkle’s Return to Gaming is a rather interesting blog I found through Dungeon Fantastic. Its author started role-playing with D&D basic back in 1981, stopped around the mid-90’s, and is now coming back to the hobby after a 25-year hiatus.

  I found some of the post titles there interesting enough, and the blog itself is new enough, that I’m reading it from the beginning. The first post proves that it’s going to be an interesting ride, because this is someone who played back when the old school was new and who says that “there is a lot of myth-making in the OSR”. Me, I started playing shortly before Mr. van Winkle here stopped, but I think I’ll find plenty to agree with.

• Jun 28, 2020

  The Great Irony At the Heart of Shadowrun

  For a very long time Shadowrun was my favorite game system and setting. These days I still like the setting, but my annoyance at a host of small details in it is stronger than my wish to play in it as written. Still, it’s useful to think and talk about these details. It allows me to figure out what I want to do better in my eventual home-brewed rewrite.

  One of these details isn’t small at all, however. In fact, I’d go as far as calling it the great irony at the heart of the game, as the title of this post implied. It was developed from some forum posts I made on RPG.net.

  But First, The Good Parts

  I don’t want to be unfairly critical of Shadowrun¹. I know a few people who write for it, and the last thing I want is to give the impression that I’m attacking them. I’m not. This entire article is my personal opinion and in no way meant to disparage any of the fine people who are passionate enough about Shadowrun to write for it professionally. So let’s begin by talking about something that this game does right.

  One of the best things about the setting design of Shadowrun is that it presents players with a very clear mission-based structure. The infamous question of “But what do we do in this world?” is answered very early and very clearly. This is a game about completing dangerous missions for money, just like D&D is about killing monsters and looting dungeons. Someone asks you to play Shadowrun, 99 times out of 100 you know the rough overall shape that campaign is going to take. You see a heist movie and you start thinking about it in the context of Shadowrun in your head, even if it doesn’t have all the same style elements, because the premise is strong.

  Shadowrun nailed the answer to this important question so well that it kinda spilled over to other similar games. It became the default playstile for Cyberpunk 2020 against the wishes of its own authors, and it often gets adopted as the answer to “what do we do” in Transhuman Space², which is so adamant about offering none in its pages.

  Like a lot of Shadowrun setting elements, though, this structure has an excellent premise but its implementation gives rise to a lot of unintentional oddness. Or, in this case, to a Great Irony.

  This irony, I think, emerges when the strong premise above gets combined with AD&D-style adversarial GMing, which was very popular when Shadowrun was first written. I believe it to be entirely unintentional, since as far as I can tell Shadowrun’s design methodology was mostly based on the Rule of Cool with a dash of “everyone else does this”. If it’s intentional, though, it’s among the greatest acts of trolling in all of gaming.

  Isn’t it Ironic?

  Okay, so the Sixth World is ruled by megacorporations who control every aspect of people’s lives. Most of these people live hand-to-mouth and work themselves to death in order to prop up the decadent lifestyles of a few billionaire executives. “Wage slave” is pretty much a synonym for “low-level megacorporate employee” in this setting.

  But as the flavor text tells us, player characters are supposed to have managed to escape this cycle of misery. They live in the shadows cast by those giant corporate towers, and they have the skills to oppose the megacorps and make their independent way in the world.

  Or do they?

  I’ll admit I don’t know how things are structured in the most recent editions³, but I remember that the Shadowrun Companion for Second Edition contained detailed advice on how much money your PCs should be paid for those risky missions. I call it the “rent plus change” model.

  According to the book, GMs should pay PCs enough for them to cover their lifestyle payments (i.e, rent and food) for the next month, with a little bit left over for resupplying consumables and eventually upgrading a piece of gear after a while. This was per month, not per run. If you had only one big run that month, it would pay this amount. If you had several, they would pay proportionally less so you’d receive the same “rent plus change” amount.

  This was perfectly in-keeping with the AD&D school of GMing and design, which demanded PCs “earn” their power and had cool gear that cost money as a significant part of that power. If they earn “too much” money, they would get “too powerful”, and no one wants that! If your players look like they do, it’s because they’re cheating cheaters who cheat and should be punished for it.

  Almost all published adventures started with a scene where the party met with Mr. Johnson to discuss the job. In the vast majority of these adventures, Mr. Johnson is a shady corporate exec working for one of the megas. And the GM text for this scene always included the oh-so-funny “If the players refuse the job, announce that the adventure ended, pack up your things and go home.” This is a joke about how the PCs don’t have any choice but to take the job as presented. In fact, the flavor text for the same scene almost always assumes they’re hurting for cash just before they get that call from their contact setting up the meeting.

  So yeah, those fiercely independent PC shadowrunners? They’re all wage slaves too. And the game advises the GM to keep them that way.

  Were the original writers oblivious to these implications, or are they still laughing today about how no one seems to have noticed? I don’t think I have seen any official discussion about this contradiction in any of the books I’ve read. It’s just taken as a given, and never questioned.

  This central irony gets funnier when you add in two sets of rules that were published in the same edition.

  Orichalcum

  An early SR2 sourcebook called The Grimoire contained rules for making magic items. It required a lot of skill tests and time, and the materials were still super-expensive, but the final monetary cost was cheaper than buying the item.

  “Do you buy or make your items?” would have been mostly a question of personal preference… if the book didn’t also have rules for making those materials from raw natural resources. You could use them for enchanting or sell them for half list price. You could even make orichalcum, the magical metal used in the creation of the most powerful magic items.

  Orichalcum was so expensive that a single 10-gram “unit” cost the same as a sports car or as almost nine months of High Lifestyle. The process for making it was time consuming and laborious, but not really dangerous or illegal. And a skilled character could end up with multiple units of orichalcum at the end of that process. Selling even a single unit would more than pay the cost of the necessary equipment, which was reusable.

  With these rules, a team of PCs that includes at least one magician has no financial reason to run the shadows. They can just set up an orichalcum-making operation instead, and live like kings.

  Stolen Cars

  The Shadowrun Companion sourcebook includes rules for stealing cars and selling them on the black market, which theoretically were meant to be used in a campaign where the characters were gangers instead of Shadowrunners. You could sell an entire stolen car for a fraction of its market value, or break it down for parts and sell those over several days and get money equal to the car’s full list price.

  Stealing cars is of course illegal and dangerous, but it was trivial for the typical PC party in this game. After all they have the skills to routinely break into top-secret research labs full of intricate and deadly security measures.

  The cheapest four-wheeled vehicle in the book was the Ford Americar, your typical “generic crummy sedan” that filled every street. Stealing and dismantling one of those every week would pay roughly five times the amount recommended in the “rent plus change” advice in the very same book. Or perhaps you could steal one limousine or fancy sports car per quarter. In either case, it was again much safer and more profitable than running the shadows.

  Shadowrun + Irony = Awesome

  When these two “oopsies” were first discovered, I remember seeing a lot of GMs go absolutely ballistic over them. The accusations of “munchkinism” flew thick and fast, but in true those GMs were mad that the PCs were doing something that wasn’t in the script. They reveled in describing the disproportionate response law enforcement or competitors would visit upon the PCs, which was just an excuse to punish the players for veering off the rails.

  Personally, I think these two altertane activities are fraggin’ awesome, precisely because they allow the party to truly break free from the grind. If your players decide to retire from shadowrunning and make orichalcum or boost cars for a living, I fully believe that the right response is to play along and make the campaign be about that! All of those things mentioned as hard blocks by curmudgeonly controlling GMs are actually excellent adventure hooks. And I’m pretty sure any decent player group is going to keep finding non-monetary reasons to return to the shadows. There’s still people to help and megacorps to destroy, after all.

  So I say that the first thing a team of shadowrunners needs to do is to find a way to leave classic shadowrunning behind for good. It’s a sucker’s game. Stay independent, take care of your community, tear down the system, make the Sixth World better.

  1. Which already makes me nicer than most of the people who proclaim themselves its true fans. ↩

  2. Though THS PCs tend to be working for government agencies or corporations rather than being freelance criminals. This is, after all, a cyberpunk setting as viewed by the bad guys. ↩

  3. I stopped at the end of Fourth. ↩

subscribe via RSS