• There are No Secrets – All actions will be declared openly, even if it's one character betraying another. A one-on-one conversation with the GM is possible under extremely extenuating circumstances, but that is the exception, not the rule. Yes, this does promote metagaming in a way. It also makes the stakes of the game obvious to everybody, which makes the game better.

• Sometimes, Metagaming is Okay – Out of character discussion is fine. In fact, sometimes it can be fun to know certain information as a player, while being aware of the fact that the character has no clue. As long as the character is played with this in mind, metagaming is cool.

• Build Points – You will have a total of 320 BPs for character creation. Half of those (160 BP) are available for Attributes, the rest may be allocated to Skills, Resources, Spells, Adept Powers, Complex Forms, Qualities, etc. as you wish. Yes, this will create characters that are somewhat below a standard shadowrunner. Fortunately, your characters are not shadowrunners, so this should balance out fairly well :)

• Lifestyle – Your character begins as a sprawl ganger in the Redmond Barrens. As such, Lifestyles above Low are currently unavailable (although you could certainly look toward moving up in the world as the campaign goes on). Multiple Lifestyles may be purchased at full price during play, should you choose to maintain a second (or third, or fourth...) lifestyle as a safehouse. Additional lifestyles must be at a lower level than your primary residence. That is, if you have an apartment at Low lifestyle, any additional lifestyles must be either Squatter or Street. Only your primary lifestyle determines your starting nuyen.

• Gear – At character creation, all gear is limited to Availability Ratings of 8R and lower. Gangs, especially small ones with no organized crime, corporate, or policlub backing, are somewhat limited.

• Contacts – Contacts are the people that you know. When purchasing them, you will have to come up with not only their names and capabilities (i.e., what services they can provide), but your relationship to them. Obviously, the more points you pour into them, the more relevant to your character your contacts become. A high Loyalty rating may indicate perhaps a childhood friend, a family member, or lover. The important part is that you are the one to determine the particulars of your Contacts. I will create these characters in between character creation and the first full game session. Also, keep in mind that you are not starting out as shadowrunners, and therefore, the likelihood of having high-powered contacts is relatively low.

• Beliefs – Beliefs (and Instincts, detailed below) are a mechanic taken from another game system (The Burning Wheel in particular. If you have any interest in checking it out, you can visit http://www.burningwheel.org, or talk to me about borrowing the rulebooks). During character creation, you will have to distill down your characters top three Beliefs. This mechanic serves several purposes. First, it is a roleplaying aid. Instead of creating a novella for your backstory, you will have these three bullet-points about what motivates your character. Think of them as goals – if you're ever stuck as to what to do during a game, all you have to do is look at your Beliefs and decide to do something to further them. Second, you will be awarded Karma for accomplishing goals based on your beliefs. For example, let's say that one of your Beliefs is “My little sister is the only family I have left – she must be protected.” During the course of the game, she's kidnapped. Given your stated Belief, you drop whatever it is you're doing (even if you're in the middle of a paying run) to go rescue her. You will earn Karma for following your Belief. Finally, Beliefs act as a story hook for your character. They will be tested. Therefore, make sure your Beliefs interest you!! Let them be a signal to me to design challenges that will be fun for you. Also, keep in mind that your Beliefs can change whenever you want them to. It shouldn't be arbitrary, but it is up to you when and if they change. For example, if one of your Beliefs is “Magic is strange and incomprehensible – don't trust Mages or Shamen” and you have a Control Actions spell cast on you during play, it is perfectly acceptable to change that Belief to something more like “Magic is evil – Mages and Shamen must be purged from the world.” The key to creating good Beliefs is to make them proactive – they should always give your character something to do. A good rule of thumb is to tie your Beliefs to things within the game. I recommend tying one Belief to the campaign, one to another character (or the party as a whole), and the third is basically a freebie. Since certain Karma awards are tied to your Beliefs, making good ones can give you what amounts to a Karma factory. This is cool, since you'll be awarded for what you do during play! The flipside is that if you're ever at a loss for something to do during the game, your Beliefs are broken, and need to be seriously reexamined. And that's cool too. Fixing them can give you a much cooler character.

• Instincts – Instincts are another added-on mechanic. They are, of course, things you do without explicitly telling the GM. They cannot bypass a Test, but they can assume that the test was made or the action taken prior to when the GM calls for it. For example, one of your Instincts may be “Draw your weapon at the first sign of trouble.” You're on a run, and you come around the corner and see three guards. After Initiative, everyone has to spend actions to draw their weapons, but, because of your Instinct you already have your weapon drawn! Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Given the same belief as above, you could be in a meeting with a potential employer, and his bodyguards get a little jumpy. Because of your Instinct, you draw your weapon, and conflict ensues. Mechanically, Instincts give you a way to earn back spent Edge during play. Any time that an Instinct either gets you into serious trouble, or it is fantastically beneficial to your situation, you gain back a point of spent Edge. The important thing to remember with Instincts is that they can be used either to ignore things you don't want to deal with during the game, or to indicate what kind of trouble you want your character to get into. As with Beliefs, you should take care to make sure that your Instincts interest you. Also, like Beliefs, you will choose three of them during character creation, and they can be changed (within reason) during the course of the game.

• Open Rolls – All rolls will be made in the open. This includes rolls made by the GM.

• Intent and Task – If there is something you want to do, you are free to call for a Test. On any Test, you must declare, explicitly, what it is that you are attempting to do, and how you intend to go about it. This is called declaring the Intent and Task.

During a run, Shaun decides that his character is going to try and hack the maglock on a door. “I'm going to hack the lock before the sec team gets here. I'm rolling Logic+Hardware,” he tells the GM.

In the above example, the intent was stated – hacking the door before the guards came – as well as the task – the Logic+Hardware roll. Notice that making Tests in this way essentially means that the player narrates the scene when he/she succeeds? Pretty cool, huh?

• Consequences – When making any Test, the consequences of that Test must be declared. Sometimes, this is implicit – if you're firing on an enemy, it can reasonably be assumed that the consequences of success are that you hit your target and (hopefully) damage him, and failure means that you miss. Other rolls, especially in non-combat situations, need a little more detail. In those instances, the consequences of both success and failure need to be declared and agreed upon explicitly and out loud. This can increase tension in the game, because you know what the stakes are in the conflict. Also, it means that failing a roll doesn't necessarily mean that the task is failed – it simply means that the player doesn't get his intent. Sometimes, there could be a time-based complication, or some other appropriate consequence. The point is that a failed roll doesn't necessarily stop the game – it just takes the story in an unexpected direction.

• Fields of Related Knowledge (FoRKs) – FoRKs add bonus dice to Tests based on other appropriate skills. In the example from Intent and Task, the Test is a Logic+Hardware roll, but let's say that the character has a Knowledge: Security System Engineering skill of 3. The related knowledge gives the character a bonus to his Test. A FoRKed skill of rating 1-4 gives the character a +1 bonus to his dice pool. 5-6 gives a +2. You may only FoRK one skill per Test, and only Tests involving skills can gain benefit from FoRKs – they cannot be used on any Attribute-only Test, Resisting Drain or Damage, recovery Tests, or the like.

• Let It Ride – The Let it Ride rule means that, any time that you make a Test, the results of the Test stand until conditions change enough for another Test to be made. Another example:

• Linked Tests – Sometimes, you don't want to have to detail every single event that happens, especially when those events do nothing but take up time. Linked Tests alleviate that problem:

• Extended Tests – Maximum rolls for Extended Tests are equal to the dice pool total. Thus, a character attempting to fix a car who has an Automotive Mechanic skill at 4 and a Logic of 3 would be able to roll a maximum of 7 times. Failure to meet the Extended Test threshold means the action fails. Mundane tasks will be able to be tried again after a reasonable amount of time. Time-sensitive tasks may simply be failures. FoRKs may be used on Extended Tests.

• Advancing Abilities – To be advanced, abilities must be used. If an ability (that is, a skill or attribute) is not used, Karma may not be spent to advance the ability during downtime (unless the player wishes to use the practice rules, below). For the purposes of advancement, using an ability means making a Test involving that ability. Each time a skill or attribute is used, place a check mark next to that ability on your character sheet

• Skill Groups and Advancement – Skills within a group can be advanced either individually or in the group. Advancing a single skill within a group splits the group into its component skills. That is, if, in the above example the test had been made with Agility+Firearms, and the character had been using a pistol, a check mark would have been made for the Pistols skill within the group. At this point, the player has the option of advancing the skill, or waiting. If he advances the skill, the group splits into its components of Automatics 2, Longarms 2, and Pistols 3. By waiting, however, you can advance the entire skill group at the same time. To do this, you must have a check in each of the appropriate skills in the group.

• Learning New Skills – Any defaultable skill may be learned during downtime, so long as you have used its linked attribute during play. Non-defaultable skills require an Instructor – see Training, below.

• Training – There are skills which may not be defaulted on. To gain these skills, the character must find and pay for an Instructor. Rules for Instruction can be found on SR4 p. 123. In addition, learning a skill from an Instructor requires practice (see below)

• Movement (Experimental) – Rather than keep track of the number of meters that a character can move, movement during combat will be a matter of declaring range. Ranges are determined by weapon, and are as follows, from longest range to shortest: out of range, extreme range, long range, short range, and point-blank range. Per IP, Humans, Elves and Orks can move 1 range in either direction while walking, and 2 by running; Dwarves can move half a range (or 1 range every other IP) walking, or 1 running; Trolls can move 2 ranges walking or 3 every other IP running. Characters using extremely long-ranged weapons (such as sniper rifles), can choose to be out of range for shorter-range weapons, while still remaining between short and long range of their own weapon. Melee attacks must be made by moving into point-blank range of the target.

• Ending Combat – Combat ends under three conditions: If one party surrenders, if one party is incapacitated, or if one party flees.

• Composure – Characters who are caught in extremely stressful or frightening situations must make Composure Tests, per SR4 p. 130. This means both PCs and NPCs. Failing a Composure Test means that the character is stunned during his next IP. Also, a Composure Test must be made any time a character takes enough damage to earn a dice pool modifier. The threshold of this test is the absolute value of his total injury modifiers. So, a character with 3 boxes of Stun (-1), and 3 boxes of Physical (another -1) would make a Composure (2) test.

• Actions – Your actions must be determined at the start of your IP. Write them down if that helps. As is standard, you have 1 Free Action per IP, which can be taken during any initiative score in that IP, and either 2 Simple Actions, or 1 Complex Action that must be taken during your initiative score during that IP.

• Roll the Got-Damn Dice! - When dice are left out of social conflicts, and solved by “pure” roleplaying, then we are no longer playing the game. As such, I propose the following rules:

• Social Conflict (Experimental) – The abilities of the character should matter in social situations, especially between PC's. To that end, serious social conflicts will be resolved using the following rules. Please note that these are designed to simulate an intense argument between two characters who want different things. It's not really an appropriate system to use for, say, planning on how to execute a run, since everyone involved ultimately has the same goal in mind – in this case, it's only the method that needs to be resolved. Also, yes, this system does encourage a certain amount of metagaming. This is fine. Metagaming is only bad when someone uses it to cheat. This system is intended to encourage roleplaying by really utilizing your characters' strengths, weaknesses, Beliefs and Instincts. Additionally, this system is always optional. Players will not be forced into using it, although I as the GM would like to try to use it at least once or twice for playtesting purposes. The system can be used just as well against NPC's, although there are often existing systems in the SR4 rulebook that can be used in these instances. I'd recommend reserving these rules for conflicts that are a Big Deal, or for when one character's Beliefs directly challenge another's. The system is detailed, step-by-step, below.

1. Both parties must set the terms of the argument – in essence, what happens if either character wins.    
2. Next, the Threshold is set. The Threshold for winning the conflict is equal to the Charisma+Will of the opposing party. Spells, cyber/bioware, Adept powers, etc. that increase these attributes do apply for determining this threshold.
3. Each side starts making Extended Opposed Tests against the Threshold, with each roll accompanied by their character's points, rebuttals, etc. The player must make an in-character statement, argument, insult, etc. with each roll. Unlike standard Extended Tests, characters may switch up the skills used during this test. So, one character could use Charisma + Etiquette to toss a veiled insult at his opponent, while the other could make a Charisma + Intimidation Test to threaten the first character. FoRKs may apply to these Tests, if appropriate, and the statements made by the player support their use. Keep track of net hits from exchange to exchange. They will be used at the resolution of the extended test. 
   1. Bystanders - During this exchange, characters not directly involved in the argument may choose to side with one character or the other at their discretion. Also, they can change sides from roll to roll as they see fit, assuming that they are swayed that way. To argue for or support a particular side, the character makes a Teamwork Test, adding hits from this test as a dice pool bonus to the arguing character's pool. This test must use the same social skill as the arguer, and the player must make an in-character statement to support it. FoRKs do not apply to Teamwork tests made in this manner.
4. When the threshold is reached by one side or the other, the conflict is over, and the terms are resolved in favor of the winner. However, if the loser has generated any net hits during the conflict, compromises must be made. For each net hit that the loser scored, he may make one condition that the winner must agree to. This prevents this system from being used as a mind control mechanic. Only a character who makes a complete clean-sweep against the opposing side can get everything that he/she wants using this system. Some form of compromise is much more likely.
   1. Reluctance – As has been stated before, characters should never be forced to use a system like this. If you are reluctant to use this system, I'm not going to make you. It's simply an option. There are a couple of options available for characters who don't want to argue in this manner:
   2. Refusal – A character can always refuse to argue. Basically, this is saying “No, I don't want to deal with this in this manner”. Everyone at the table has to accept this decision, and come up with some other way of solving the conflict.
   3. Escalation – A character who loses a conflict in this system, but reallydoesn't want to give in to the demands of the winner always has one out – they have the option of escalating the situation to violence. Sometimes this can create some really cool drama. Sometimes, it just creates bad feelings at the table. The second is bad for any game. After all, it's assumed that we're all friends here. So, while escalation is always an option, it's one that should used carefully.

• Negotiations and Haggling – When using Negotiation to set a price, we will be using the following modifications to the rules. After the initial price offer is made, Negotiations can be used. As is standard, this is an opposed Negotiations+Charisma Opposed Test. The winner of the test has two options:
  • Alter Price – The price can be adjusted by 5% in favor of the winner. In some cases, there is a maximum or minimum price for any given item, service, or job offer. If this is reached, the buyer or potential employee can take it or leave it.
  • End Negotiations – Alternately, the winner can choose to end the Negotiations, instead of pushing for more or less money. This is useful if one character is getting completely owned due to a low Negotiations dice pool, but manages to get a lucky roll in.