Checkin on interest levels here. I've just picked up the fourth edition shadowrun core, and I'm starting to gel on situations and storylines.
A little about me as a GM:
I'm not what's commonly referred to in the biz as a "rules lawyer". If a situation comes up, and I can't find a book ruling in under 60 seconds, I make something up on the fly and stick with that until I know better.
I specialize in "winging it". How much damage does a dumpster do if your troll picks it up and smishes someone? I dunno, try it and find out. DocWagon's gonna earn their paycheck, I can tell you that. I absolutely encourage players to use their surroundings to their benefit, sometimes going so far as to provide several options for that very purpose.
Roleplaying is good. Metagaming is not. If your character doesn't have that vital knowledge, but you read the published adventure and you do... You still can't act on it. My advice is, if I'm running a pub, don't read it. It'll just frustrate you with your inability to act.
I'm going to have a number of house rules, some of which are still under construction. A couple that are finalized: 1) Team Karma: A pool of d12's to augment any test that any character makes. A roll of 5 or greater is a hit, a roll of 10 or greater is 2 hits. The team gets one die per player character, and each individual die can only be used once per session. The pool can be expanded by spending individual karma at the cost of raising an attribute. 2) Character generation will be augmented by the Deck of Stuff! (Stole this one from Jeff Rients; awesome idea, Jeff) A deck of index cards with... well, stuff on them, ranging from the useful to the downright silly. Animated Day-glo tattoos, Dikote steeltoe boots, a nine-foot pole, a box of puppy treats, that sort of thing.
