Characters

• 1: Chargen
• 2: Races
• 3: Skills for my campaign
• 4: Languages
• 5: Edges
• 6: Cyberware

1 - Chargen

There is a character generation tool for Savage Worlds at savaged.us. It’s free, and has support for Sprawlrunners, but there’s a few non-obvious things to getting the best from it. It also has a few minor areas in which it doesn’t quite reflect the Sprawlrunners rules, so you’ll need to manually adjust your character or just ignore it’s validation warnings.

NB: the chargen quick reference in the SWADE CRB, pages 55-63, are very good and are recommended reading. Remember that the Sprawlrunners book adds extra options on top of those, though.

Doing it manually

SWADE chargen is pretty simple, especially compared to Shadowrun, so you might like to do it all by hand. Even if you do use savaged.us, it helps to understand the steps.

This is covered in detail in SWADE pgs 9-59, but I’ll do a summary here.

Chargen summary

1. Concept: Start with a general idea of what you want to play. There’s many ways to approach that, but a good strategy is always to pick a specialised role and build towards being good at it. The classic list of Shadowrun archetypes include combat (either cybered or physical/qi adept), decking/hacking, rigger/vehicles/drones, magical abilities, or face (social manipulation of others).
2. Race: Choose your character’s race and apply the bonuses and special abilities it grants. The five classic Shadowrun races are available; if you want to play a variant metahuman type, ask me, and we will figure something out.
3. Hindrances: Select up to four points of hindrances (major hindrances are worth 2, minor are worth 1)
   • For 2 hindrance points you can raise an attribute one die type, or choose an edge (see below.)
   • For 1 hindrance point you can gain another skill point.
4. Attributes: Attributes start at d4. You have 5 points to distribute among them. Each step costs 1 point.
   • Attributes may not be raised beyond d12 unless your hero’s racial bonus states otherwise.
5. Skills : Athletics, Common Knowledge, Notice, Persuasion, and Stealth are core skills and start at d4 for free. (Trolls do not get Stealth for free.) See skills for a complete list of all skills and skill specialisations in my campaign.
   • You have 15 points to increase your skills. Note that this is raised from 12 in core SWADE, because a modern game setting tends to be a little more skill-heavy than a fantasy setting; for example, almost everyone will want a point or two in driving, shooting, etc.
   • Each die type costs 1 point up to and equal to the linked attribute; then 2 points per step after that. Example: Suppose you have d6 Agility and want to take Shooting to d8. It takes 1 point to take Shooting to d4, 1 point to take it to d6, then 2 points to take it to d8, for a total of 4 points.
   • A d8 is a pretty high skill, think of it as being roughly equivalent to a 12-dice pool in Shadowrun. I would encourage you to target rolling d8 or at most d10s in your character’s speciality, so you have enough points to build a rounded character. I will be basing NPC power levels around this; a ganger would roll d6 to attack, a trained corpsec d8.
     • Also, don’t forget PCs also get a Wild Die in addition to their trait die.
6. Derived Statistics
   • Standard Pace is 6″, but may be changed by racial abilities, Edges, or Hindrances.
   • Parry is 2 plus half of Fighting. If you don’t have Fighting, it’s just 2.
   • Toughness is 2, plus half of Vigor, plus any armor. Note the amount of armor in parentheses like this—Toughness: 11 (2). This means 2 points of the total 11 Toughness comes from Armor. An Armor Piercing attack could bypass those 2 points but not the other 9.
7. Edges: Use any leftover Hindrance points to take starting Edges if you like. Each Edge costs 2 Hindrance points. Some Edges have additional rules to be aware of:
   • Mages take one or two special Edges called arcane backgrounds. There are four arcane backgrounds: two flavours of spellcasting, spirit summoning, and physical adept. Once you take the arcane background edge, it unlocks powers. See Arcane Backgrounds for more.
     • Note that all the Power Edges in core SWADE are removed, with the exception of New Powers. They are replaced by a selection in Sprawlrunners pg 16 (although few are available at chargen.)
   • Cybered characters will want to take the Implanted and Chromed edges. Chromed both grants Implant Points to spend on some cyberware systems, and unlocks access to further Edges used for other cyberware. See Edge trappings for details.
8. Powers, cyberware, and physad powers: If you took Edges that give you powers to choose, cyberware implant points to spend, or physad power points (called “chi points” in Sprawlrunners), spend those now. These are chosen from the Sprawlrunners book.
9. Advances: All of the above creates a character at the Novice level. We will start new characters at Seasoned instead, so you now get to apply four advances to your character. Each advance can be used in one of a few ways:
   • Gain a new Edge.
     • Note that mages have access to a Power Edge called New Powers that gives you… new powers. You get to pick two new powers each time you take this, and you can take it as many times as you like. This is how you learn new spells.
   • Increase a skill that is equal to or greater than its linked attribute one die type.
   • Increase two skills that are lower than their linked attributes by one die type each (including new skills the character didn’t have before at d4).
   • Increase one attribute by a die type. This option may only be taken once per Rank. Legendary characters may raise an attribute every other Advance, up to the racial maximum.
   • [Not during chargen] Permanently remove a Minor Hindrance, or reduce a Major Hindrance to a Minor (if possible). With the GM’s permission, and if it makes sense, two Advances may be saved up and spent to remove a Major Hindrance.

[DEPRECATED] Using savaged.us

Getting started

You can only access the Sprawlrunners tools in savaged.us if you register for the site. So do that. Note that it has a bit of a habit of logging you out unexpectedly - keep an eye on that (if it does log you out, it’ll have a Login prompt at the top right.)

I have a custom setting for our campaign here: savaged.us/s/qlp2jxy3. It includes, wherever possible, houserules we are using. Click that link and click “use setting” at the top right to start generating your character.

Notes on each step

Once you’ve done the above, you’ll get a series of tabs you step through in order (more or less) to create your character.

Character concept

Most of this is completely optional but selecting your native language is helpful later. All characters speak two languages by default: your mother tongue (English, Japanese, German, etc) and “Sprawlspeak”, a pidgin commonly used on the streets of metroplexes. If you want more, take the Linguist edge.

Don’t worry about adding Sprawlspeak to your character sheet at this point. There’s no way to do it that won’t cost you points. We’ll take care of that during play.

Character level

For now, I think we’ll be starting freshly generated characters at the Seasoned rank. This will not only make you more powerful, it’ll also significantly expand the options open to you.

To do that, go to the Advances tab and enter “4”. You don’t need to use those advances – for extra edges, points etc – just yet. But doing this now will open up options to you through the rest of character generation.

Awakened characters

To play a mage, shaman, or physical adept character, skip ahead to Edges and add “Arcane Background”, then come back. This will unlock other options you want to take.

Hindrances

Remember that you are restricted to no more than 4 points of hindrances, where a Minor hindrance is worth 1 point and a Major hindrance is worth 2 points. You can use these points for various boosts, like increasing skills or more Edges. You can choose how to use each point in the “Perks” box in the left column.

For descriptions of the Hindrances, see the SWADE CRB and the Sprawlrunners book. You also get a one-line summary within savaged.us when you add them to your character.

Also remember that you can use Hindrances to your advantage – when you roleplay them well, I’ll generally five give you a Bennie.

Traits

Keep in mind it costs more points to raise a skill to a die type higher than the linked attribute. For example, if you have Agility at d6, it costs 1 skill point to take Shooting to d6, then 2 more skill points to take it to d8.

Note that some skills you get for free at the basic, d4 level: athletics, stealth, common knowledge, notice, and persuasion. For any other skill you don’t take, you will roll (d4-2).

Some notes about specific skills:

• Fighting is all melee combat; Shooting is all guns; Athletics is all throwing weapons (including grenades).
• Occult is used for theoretical knowledge of magic (can be taken by non-magical characters.) It’s similar to Arcane in Shadowrun.
• Spellcasting is used for all magical actions, including summoning spirits.
• Driving is all ground vehicles and drones, Piloting is all aircraft, Boating is all aquatic vehicles.
• Persuasion is your go-to “lie convincingly” skill.
• Notice is your perception skill.

For more information, see the Skills page.

Guns, vehicles, and other gear

Sprawlrunners uses an innovative system for most gear where you do not purchase it at character generation. Instead, your character has Logistics Points (LPs), representing their cash on hand, contacts, and trustworthiness. You “spend” these points during play to acquire gear you need for the mission, then discard the gear later so you can’t be traced or tracked through it. This gear is off-the-books; your contacts have taken the time to scrub it clean of any identifying or traceable marks, and it comes complete with low-grade fake licences where appropriate.

You can use LPs to buy stuff in chargen if you want, just to get a feel for what it costs, but you’re not committed to those purchases.

If you want more LPs, look at the Rich or Filthy Rich edges. You will also earn more as your character advances.

Special gear: cyberware, foci, signature weapons

Items your character owns permanently, like cyberware or magical foci, works differently. You choose an Edge and get the gear, forever, without spending LPs.

To get cyberware, take the Chromed, Man And Machine, and/or More Machine Than Man edges. Each of these gives you 2 Implant Points to spend on cyberware. Note that (for technical reasons) the cyberware part of savaged.us lists the “cost” of cyberware as Logistic Points, but this is incorrect, they’re actually Implant Points. You’ll have to double check the calculation manually.

Some common/small cyberware doesn’t cost any Implant Points. To get these, you have to take the Implanted edge. You can take any amount of zero-rated cyberware once you take the Implanted edge once. The Implanted edge is free, but note that savaged.us will charge you a point for it.

Adept powers & spells

To select your spells or adept powers, you’ll use the Powers tab. This will appear once you select an arcane background.

Adept powers work similarly to Implant Points. You get Chi Points with your Arcane Background edge, and more via other edges as your character progresses. Then you spend those points on powers.

Mages and shamans also use the Powers tab to select their spells. Note that shaman have a much shorter list of allowed powers, but their summoned spirits can cast spells, whereas a mage’s elementals cannot.

2 - Races

Human

• Adaptable (4): Humans seem to have an unlimited ability to adapt to their circumstances.
  • They begin with a free Novice Edge of their choice.
  • In addition, they can choose one of their Attributes to start at d6 rather than d4. Note that unlike other racial bonuses to Attributes, however, the maximum remains d12 rather than becoming d12+1.

Dwarf

• Thermal Vision (1): Dwarves see heat. This halves Illumination penalties when attacking warm targets (including invisible beings).
• Focused (2): They are single-minded people and start with a d6 to Spirit (with a maximum limit of d12+1).
• Tough Constitution (2): Their resiliency and natural resistance to toxins and poisons is renowned. Dwarves start with a d6 in Vigor (with a maximum limit of d12+1).
• Short Legs (-1): Being stout and having short legs means Dwarves don’t cover as much ground as the rest of metahumanity. Their Pace and running die are reduced by one.

Elf

• Low Light Vision (1): Elves ignore penalties for Dim or Dark illumination (but not Pitch Darkness).
• Agile (2): Graceful and quick, Elves start with a d6 in Agility (with a maximum of d12+1).
• Attractive (2): Considered to be the ideal image of desirability in metahumanity, elves are idolized by most and add +1 to Performance and Persuasion rolls.
• Slight (-1): They might be slender and graceful, but they tend to hurt a little easier than other metatypes. Elves subtract one from Toughness.

Ork

• Low Light Vision (1): Orks ignore penalties for Dim or Dark illumination (but not Pitch Darkness).
• Size +1 (1): Orks are large and tough. Their Strength attribute maximum is increased to d12+1, and they get +1 to Toughness.
• Strength (2): Orks are strong. They start with a d6 in Strength (with a maximum of d12+1).

Troll

• Thermal Vision (1): Trolls see heat. This halves Illumination penalties when attacking warm targets (including invisible beings).
• Size +2 (2): Toughness +2; max Strength is d12+3 (when combined with Strong, below.)
• Strong (2): Trolls start with a d6 in Strength (with a maximum of d12+3).
• Brickhouse (2): Trolls can take a beating. They start with a d6 in Vigor (with a maximum of d12+1).
• Natural armour (1): Bony deposits on their skin grant +2 points of armour (stacks with anything worn).
• Oversized (-2): It’s not easy living in a world made for smaller beings. Trolls subtract 2 from Trait rolls when using equipment that wasn’t specifically designed for them and cannot wear armor or clothing designed for other metatypes. Their food, clothing, and other lifestyle items are more expensive; they have a penalty of one step applied to their wealth die. They may take situational modifiers when trying to work in cramped conditions that other metahumans would ignore.
• Ostracised (-1): Trolls have suffered the most from marginalization, and are often looked upon with prejudice and stereotyped as dumb knuckle draggers. They often have little recourse other than resorting to crime or security work to make ends meet. They begin with the Outsider (Minor) Hindrance.
• Too Big To Hide (-1): Trolls tend to be terrible at moving quietly and hiding. Can you blame them, they’re huge! Stealth is not a Core Skill (starts Untrained instead of at d4).

3 - Skills for my campaign

My houserules make some small changes to the available skills in Savage Worlds and Sprawlrunners. Below is a complete reference to all the skills, including the ones in core SWADE. It also has some clarifications of which skill applies to some common actions where it’s perhaps not immediately obvious (eg. is a Matrix search Electronics, Hacking, or Research?)

Specialisations for Common Knowledge

Skill specialisations are available for Common Knowledge, but these are a house rule for this campaign and not handled like normal skill specialisations in Savage Worlds. As for other specialisations, they cost 1 skill point per specialisation you take. Unlike other specialisations, they don’t change the roll you make; but on any Common Knowledge check where the specialisation applies, you will get considerably more information on a Success or a Raise than if you didn’t have the specialisation. The narrower the specialisation, the more information you’ll get on a Success. You can purchase as many of these as you want.

Common skills

All characters get a d4 rank in these skills for free, without having to spend any skill points. You can, of course, spend points to improve them further.

• Athletics (Agility): Running, climbing, jumping, balancing, throwing (including weapons), catching.
• Common Knowledge (Smarts): General knowledge of daily life in the Sixth World.
  • See note above for specialisations.
• Notice (Smarts): Awareness and perception; the ability to spot trouble coming, find non-obvious clues, or read body language to guess at someone’s emotional state.
• Persuasion (Spirit): The ability to convince others to do what you want; via negotiation, orders, or lies. (But not threats; see Intimidation, below, for that.)
• Stealth (Agility): The ability to sneak and hide, tail people without being noticed. (But not spot a tail that’s following you - that’s Notice.)

Combat skills

• Battle (Smarts): Strategy, tactics, and understanding military operations. Particularly important in the Mass Battles game mechanic.
• Fighting (Agility): Skill in armed and unarmed melee combat.
• Shooting (Agility): Precision with any type of ranged weapon, including bows (but not thrown weapons).

Vehicle skills

• Boating (Agility): Ability to sail or pilot a boat, ship, submarine, or any other watercraft.
• Driving (Agility): The ability to control, steer, and operate ground vehicles - whether with wheels, treads, or legs (eg. walker drones).
• Piloting (Agility): Skill with maneuvering vehicles that operate in three dimensions, such as airplanes, helicopters, spaceships, etc. Includes ground-effect vehicles like t-birds. Also includes rotordrones and fixed-wing drones.
• Riding (Agility): A character’s skill in mounting, controlling, and riding a tamed beast. Probably not very useful in an urban cyberpunk game!

Physical active skills

See also “Athletics” and “Stealth” under common skills, above.

• Gambling (Smarts): Skill and familiarity with games of chance.
• Healing (Smarts): The ability to treat and heal Wounds and diseases, and decipher forensic evidence. Note that dealing with cyberware systems might also need Electronics and/or Repair, depending on what you’re doing.
• Survival (Smarts): How to find food, water, or shelter (including in urban environments).
• Thievery (Agility): Sleight of hand, pickpocketing, lockpicking, setting/disabling traps, and other such ethically dubious feats of legerdemain.

Social skills

See also “Persuasion” under common skills, above.

• Etiquette (Smarts): A character’s ability to blend in with the background, dress and carry themselves so they don’t stand out, or talk the right lingo to appear to be part of the crowd.
• Intimidation (Spirit): The ability to threaten others into compliance.
• Performance (Spirit): Singing, dancing, acting, or other forms of public expression.
• Taunt (Smarts): Insulting or belittling another. Can be done during combat to distract opponents.

If using a social skill in a language other than the character’s native tongue, if their language dice is lower than their social skill dice, roll the language dice instead. Sprawlspeak (a pidgin made up of English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, and many others) never counts as a native language for this rule, as it’s somewhat clumsy and not suited to rhetoric. If you’re playing a social manipulator role, strongly consider taking the Linguist edge so you can talk to people in their native language.

Magical skills

• Astral (Smarts): The skill to assense living beings’ auras and engage in combat on the Astral Plane.
• Magic (Smarts): The spellcasting skill for Arcane Backgrounds that have a Smarts basis.
• Magic (Spirit): The spellcasting skill for Arcane Backgrounds that have a Spirit basis.

See also “Arcana” under knowledge skills, below.

Technical skills

• Electronics (Smarts): The use of electronic and computerised devices and systems. Their manipulation, repair, and sabotage. Anything involving computer hardware (as opposed to software, which is Hacking.)
• Hacking (Smarts): Legal and illegal computer use; coding, programming, and breaking into computer systems. (NB: simple, everyday Matrix actions fall under Common Knowledge and do not require a Hacking roll. Complex Matrix searches fall under Research.)
• Repair (Smarts): The ability to fix, build, and modify mechanical and electrical gadgets, including weapons, vehicles, etc. Also used for setting and using explosives and demolitions.

When repairing or modifying electronics, use the lowest of the characters’ Repair and Electronics skills.

Knowledge skills

See also Common Knowledge, above.

• Language (Smarts): Knowledge and fluency in a particular language. Special rules apply for language skills.
• Arcana (Smarts): Knowledge of magical theory, supernatural events, creatures, history, and ways. (Renamed version of “Occult” in core SWADE.)
• Corps (Smarts): Knowledge of corporate structures, management theories, economics, accounting, the law. Knowledge of specific corps and their areas of expertise and specialities.
• Research (Smarts): Finding written information from various sources. Used for Matrix searches.
• Science (Smarts): Theoretical knowledge of scientific fields such as biology, chemistry, geology, engineering, etc.

For reference: what I’ve changed

• Added a special skill specialisation rule to Common Knowledge
• Added Astral to magic skills and renamed Occult to Arcana.
• Reshuffled the boundaries between Hacking, Electronics, and Repair to make them slightly more intuitive (to me, at least.)
• Added Etiquette
• Added Corps knowledge skill.

4 - Languages

Game mechanics for language skills

Language skills mostly act to limit your use of social skills. When using any skill where your command of the language you are using is a factor (most notably Persuade and Performance, but others may apply), if the language skill has a lower rating than the skill you are rolling, you use that instead.

Example: Alice has Persuade d10, English d12, and Sprawlspeak d8. When trying to Persuade someone using English, she rolls d10. But when using Sprawlspeak, she can only roll d8.

Occasionally, you may also need to roll the language skill itself, eg. to understand something or make yourself understood when acting under time pressure.

Language skill levels

In core SWADE, a language is treated as a full skill, costing one skill point per die type to raise. This gets very expensive in settings with lots of languages, so I am replacing it with the following houserules:

• There are only two levels of “knowing” a language; Partial and Fluent.
• It costs one skill point to take a language to Partial, and a second skill point to take it to Fluent. This is regardless of your Smarts die type.
• Within the game, Partial languages are regarded as having a die type equal to your Smarts die. So if you have Smarts d8, any language you know at partial level is also considered to be at d8.
  • If you raise your Smarts die, you also automatically (and for free) raise the level of your partial language skills.
• Fluent-level language skills are treated as having a d12 rating, and they never act to limit your use of social skills.

Free language skills for characters

At chargen, everyone gets:

1. A native language at Fluent level
2. Sprawlspeak (see below) at Partial

The Linguist Edge

Per RAW, the Linguist Edge is “character gains a d6 in a number of languages equal to half her Smarts die.”

As in RAW, the Linguist edge will give you knowledge of a number of languages equal to half your Smarts die. Rather than working at a d6 level, however, in these rules this edge grants Partial level knowledge to the bonus language skills.

These languages can be upgraded to Fluent for one further skill point each.

Languages of the Seattle Sprawl

In my campaign, the Seattle sprawl is a melting pot of Pacific Rim and Native American cultures, and, accordingly, of languages. English, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Cantonese, Salish, Sioux, Russian; all are commonly heard around the city.

Each megacorp and major criminal organisation typically conducts day-to-day activities in their native tongue:

• Ares, Horizon, NeoNET - English
• Saeder-Krupp - German
• Mitsuhama, Renraku, Shiawase, the Yakuza - Japanese
• Wuxing, the Triad gangs - Cantonese, some Mandarin
• Evo - Russian
• Aztechnology - Aztlaner Spanish
• The Mafia - mostly American English, reverting to Italian can be used as a rank signifier
• Seoulpas gangs - Korean

Racial languages

Two ancient languages have returned to the world with the Awakening:

• Sperethiel (elvish) - the official language of the Tir nations, the Ancients gang, and some Native American tribes.
• Or’zet (orkish) - used in the Ork Underground and ork/troll gangs.
• Rumours abound that the dragons speak their own, ancient, unknown languages.

Sprawlspeak

With a sharp need for inter-group communications across language barriers, a pidgin language has emerged in Seattle and other similar international metroplexes. Called Sprawlspeak or Streetspeak, it is a mixture of half a dozen common languages in the area. Sprawlspeak is a common language amongst ordinary people in lower-class areas; anywhere people from different language groups have to mix and communicate, sprawlspeak flourishes.

In Seattle, the local dialect of sprawlspeak is about half English, with the other half comprised mostly of Japanese, Salish, Sioux, and Cantonese. Loan words from another dozen languages creep in here and there, though.

Over time, linguistic scholars are watching with interest to see if sprawlspeak continues to develop and become a creole.

Sprawlspeak is still an awkward, halting language, although it is becoming more sophisticated and fluid over time. It can only ever be learned to Partial level. There is no such thing as Fluency in sprawlspeak. Therefore, characters planning a social manipulator role would be well-advised to consider taking multiple language skills, so they can converse with their targets in their native tongue.

5 - Edges

Edges with required augmentation trapping

In my houserules, certain standard SWADE edges are modified to require an “augmentation” trapping. This means they are only available as either specialised cyberware or a physical adept magical ability. These Edges are all listed below and annotated with the icon.

NB: for avoidance of doubt: only characters with the Adept arcane background can use the Adept trapping. Mages who take edges with the Bioware trapping suffer the same -1 penalty to magic rolls as if they’d taken one of the Cyberware edges.

The above doesn’t effect Implant Point based cyberware, which follows standard Sprawlrunners rules; ie. you take Cyberware edges that grant implant points (see below), then spend those implant points on specific cyberware that grant you buffs and abilities (see Cyberware).

TODO: Add physical adept trappings to the below.

Edges from other books

A reminder to my players that any Edge from any of our Savage Worlds supplements is a candidate to include in the game. Just ask.

New and amended Edges

Background Edges

Cyberware Edges

These are edges that give a character implant points, that they can (in turn) spend on getting cyberware.

Combat edges

Professional Edges

Social Edges

6 - Cyberware

Upgrades

In general, as long as the storyline allows time for characters to go through the necessary surgery, characters may choose to have old cyberware systems removed or upgraded when acquiring new cyberware.

Eyeware

Bodyware

Cyberlimbs

To unlock any of the below upgrades and add-ons, you first need to replace the limb: