Forge-Legging

I've refined my character concept a bit more and I have the idea of making a "Forge-Legger." A desktop forge is a device that can make just about anything out of a special feedstock powder. The corps fear this technology so they put tight controls on the feedstock, making it hard to get and expensive as well as putting stealth RFID tags in the feedstock. This has pretty well killed the technology but it creates a niche for the "Forge-Legger" who can make up his own "moonshine" feedstock. I spent about an hour and a half going over the rules in the books and writing up my synopsis of the rules and the questions that need to be addressed. It would be great if the people who plan on GM'ing read through it and help me answer some of the questions, however, the big picture is that the Forge-Legger should be able to produce just about any product in a way that in untraceable at a cost of 10% to 25% of the street cost of the object.

At first glance this may seem like broken character concept because you basically have a way to make free money but I think it could actually be a very interesting character concept if the GMs are willing to work it into the games. I see the Forge-Legger as being very similar to a prohibition moonshiner. It is an activity that most people do not see as being wrong yet it is highly illegal. In fact its very likely that the people who are supposed to enforce the prohibition may actually be customers on the side. So my concept is that yes, the Forge-Legger does essentially make free money but there is a catch. He has to make sure that the people who are supposed to be arresting him are actually on his side. That would basically mean bribing people and doing favors. Despite the fact that the Corps do not want the technology on the street a corporate Mr Johnson could actually benefit from it as well. In exchange for a cut of the proceeds he could help to protect the Forge-Legger. That would give him source of untraceable money to pay Shadowrunners and it would also give him a source for untraceable weapons, tools, etc to supply Shadowrunners with. Inevitably the Forge-Legger himself could end up becoming a Shadowrunner because you would have to have a lot of Shadowrunner like skills just to operate and if you are already under Mr Johnsons thumb you would make a very reliable Shadowrunner unlike ones who are only there for the quick newyen payout.

Obviously I've already spend a ton of time on this concept so I would really like to play a Forge-Legger but I think the only way it can work is if the GMs are willing to customize there runs slightly to fit the character. The GMs would also have to be willing to let me operate. It will cost a lot of Karma/Build Points to get the gear to do this (not to mention the bookkeeping) and it would be very easy for a GM to just say all your stuff get's blown up/stolen/confiscated/ etc. and then the whole character concept is dead. I don’t mind if that happens as part of a plot, just so long as there is a way to get it back. I just don't want to do all the work to make the character and then have a GM say, oh man, being able to make X object in the forge ruins this run, I guess I'll just start the game with the forge being stolen by random gangers. That wouldn't be cool. That would be like deciding a character with 4 passes is bothersome so the GM says wow, that one box of damage you took from that gun shot hit the controller for your wired reflex 3, now it only operates as a wired reflex 1.

Anyway, hopefully this concept will work. Let me know what you think. My detailed analysis of the rules in the book are below


*** Warning: Lots and lots of Shadowrun rules minutia beyond this point***


The desktop forge is described in Arsenal on pg 130. It the Shadowrun version of a 3D printer/rapid prototype machine. The rules seem to imply that you can make most anything with this device. I think the idea is that you make the parts with the forge and then you have to use an appropriate build skill to put it together. The forge uses a feedstock material of "plastic powder, metal fibers and microchips/tags mixed in." It uses a laser to "congeal" the powder into a 3D form and you can control "tensile strength, density, etc" of the things you make. The implication is that you can make most anything (electronics, fabric, etc.) but for more complicated items there are still some things the forge cannot make and you have to get those parts the old fashioned way.

In standard Shadowrun fashion they sort of look over the potential for using the tool to in a broader sicne and the rules only cover making vehicle and weapon modifications (as described in the back of Arsenal). I think it is obvious that you would be able to use the forge to make the items as well as modifications.

The rules as they stand are as follows:

•A small forge gives you the equivalent of a Shop
•A large forge gives you the equivalent of a Facility.

• "Desktop forges are jacks of all trades, which means they do not have to be bought separately for each mechanical skill, but provide their special capabilities to tools of all skill types"

•Even though they act as a Shop or a Facility they don't include things like forklifts or lifts so the GM may impose a -2 inadequate tool modifier to build tests if it seems appropriate.

•When you are using build/repair skill with a forge, you don't need to add extra time for making the parts but you are not allowed to use the "rushing the job" rule for extended tests.

•"The costs for feedstock are about the same as for the relevant parts that would be used in a modification without desktop forge support"

•Availability of feedstock is 10R, but that feedstock will most likely include stealth RFID tags (it is required by law in most places.) To get RFID free feedstock the availability is 20F and there is a cost modifier of 2 to 5 times base cost.

•If the modification being done has an availability of 6-10 then 25% of the parts cannot be made by the forge and have to be acquired normally
•If the modification being done has an availability of 11+ then 50% of the parts cannot be made by the forge and have to be acquired normally


My first question: Is it reasonable to apply all these rules to making baseline items (e.g. guns, armor, electronics, clothes, medtech, etc) in addition to vehicle and weapon modifications? I think it should be given the super wide variety of mods in Arsenal (they cover everything from fabrics, electronics, optics, etc. Even a rating 1 Nanomaintenance System is availability 5R so by the rules the forge could make it without any additional parts.)


My second question has to do with the feedstock. This system is really just a curiosity unless you can get clean (no RFID tag) feedstock at a price that's less than the item you are trying to make. If this isn't the case it's really just a super expensive curiosity. According to the fluff, that's how the Corps want it to be. They are scared of it getting general widespread release so they strictly control and price the feedstock. This is the part that is really interesting to me. The character concept for a "forge-leger" is that he can synthesize his own feedstock at a fraction of the price. If you treat the feedstock as a compound, the rules for this are covered on pages 78-80 of Arsenal, the Using Chemistry section. Basically you can 'home cook' a compound at 1/10th it's cost. I think the plastic powder and metal fiber portion of the feedstock would certainly be considered a compound. The question that remains is what are the microchips/tags that are in the feedstock. I kind of get the idea that these are different from the stealth RFID tags that the corps add to commercially available feedstock. So the question is could these be made also? If so chemistry wouldn't be the skill but maybe with an electronics shop? Page 240 in my core rulebook, (the Commlink Customization section at the very end of the matrix rules) has a section on Building your own hardware. Basically it says use the build repair rules and the parts cost half the cost of the finished product. That implies to me that in principle you could make your own chips. This brings up some additional questions:

If you do make your own chips, what equipment do you need. I don't think for something like this it would be a kit?

What would the final cost be for the chips? I guess you would have to say what % of the feedstock is chips. I would think something like 1%. Then I guess you could say the cost of chips would be one half of 1% of the cost of the final product.

What would be threshold for the extended test to make the chips? What would be the time interval? How many chips would you make in that interval?

Now, given all the work in calculating all this stuff vs the relatively small cost in newyen, would it be reasonable to just say that you could buy a machine that makes chips for the forge automatically, price it the same as a kit and basically just ignore the cost and assume that while you are using the chemistry skill to make the powder and metal fiber you are also making the chips automatically with this machine?

My assumption is that everyone will agree in this last point, just spend ¥500 on a kit, call it a forge chip maker and beyond that just assume that the chemistry rules apply for making the feedstock.

Finally, there is the question of the cost and the availability of the parts the forge cannot make for availability 6 and above items. My feeling is the cost should be the cost of the original item times 0.5 times .25 for items availability 6-10 and original item cost times .5 times .5 for items availability 11+. That is basically half price on the fraction of the components that you have to buy. I think availability should be one half the availability round up of the original item (unless the GM deems that the parts needed are the thing that is causing the item to have such a high availability, in that case availability should stay the same as the whole part.)

Now the chemistry rules:

•Ingredients have an availability equal to that of the compound and 1/10th the price.

•Product is given in number of doses/kilograms. The amount produced per successful chemistry skill extended test depends on the tools: 1 for a kit, 10 for a shop and 50 for a facility.

•Making the compound is an extended test with an interval of 1 hour and a threshold depending on complexity: 4 simple, 8 complex, 12 intricate, 16+ exotic.

Additional questions:

Legitimate feedstock with availability 10, for feedstock with no RFID tags it is availability 20. I would think that the availability of components to make feedstock would be based on availability 10. The cost of the components to make the feedstock would then be 1/10th the cost of whatever it is you are making. Is that reasonable?

To determine how much feedstock you need, you need to know the weight in kilograms. I think the easiest thing to do is just ball park the weight of the final object in kilograms and go with that.

I'm not really sure what the complexity of the compound should be but I'm inclined to call it intricate with a threshold of 12.

So I'm going to take some time and read the relevant rules in depth and then make a more substantial respose, but I wanted to say that my initial response is that it's a cool idea. Also, having an excuse to make a '20s-style gangster movie plot for some of the runs will make my job as a GM more entertaining, if nothing else (also, having an excuse to watch some old-school gangster movies for inspiration is always cool). Obviously, it won't be quite the same as running a bootleg still, since it looks like this stuff is a bit harder to cook up than bathtub gin, and a desktop forge is clearly harder to cobble together from random junk than the hardware for fermenting alcohol... but there are enough parallels to make it a reasonable way to run at least a few runs from time to time.

Another thing to think about is what you are manufacturing with it... the big money is going to be in making things that are rare, expensive, or otherwise difficult to get a hold of, but you can make a lot more friends down in the poor areas by making useful stuff and selling it on the cheap.

Oh, and since you clearly don't plan on being just a chemist, have you thought about what skills you're bringing on a run? Hacking? Gun-bunny? Mage? It doesn't really impact the rules for how the forge would work in game, I'm more asking out of curiosity than anything else.

I like it, and am also curious as to what this really implies. Like Rockwell said, if you are making counterfits for lack of a better word, on the cheap and selling guys in the slums things like cars, apliances, armor, clothing, for a fraction of the cost then you could easily push yourself in to the robinhood sota thing. Also to keep an enterprise like this going, you don't just need contacts, you need employees. You are creating a proabition era mafia and your the guy who has to figure out how to keep your income tax strait. I think that this is an intresting character and i would love to see it come to life. Big profits mean big risk. simple as that.

I just was thinking of some of the non-rule specific implications of this.

Not only will this buisness attract the attention of the corps, the crime syndicates will want a cut too. so that means protection money, or fight them out right. not only that, you have competition. Territory. Logistics. This is an actual business. Then if you decided to make weapons and armor, how strong will you make them? how many? Does this lead to further proliferation of arms and armor in Seattle? What does this imply? KE (who aparantly won the security bid for the greater seatle area) is already well armed and armored an backed by a supper power. What can you get them that they want?

So your suggestions above seem pretty workable (obviously, we may have to revisit some of the details after we see it in play), with the following provisions:

1) The book explicitly says that the technology is not fully developed and there are Some things that simply cannot be manufactured using the forge. I would suggest that among the things it cannot make are anything that requires very specific materials. It can manipulate density and tensile strength, but if the needed properties of the material go deeper than that, it can't do it. So you couldn't use it to make gold or diamonds or orichalcum, etc. and anything that requires such materials cannot be made unless they are obtained from another source. (You could make most of a laser, for example, but you'd need to get the ruby or whatever somewhere else.)

2) The machine has a list of standard parts in its memory, and can be customized to a certain degree, but you will occasionally have to use the Matrix or more exotic means to get the specs for something.

3) Sometimes the lack of hydraulic lifts and such will give you a -2 dice penalty to B/R tests. Sometimes, it will render the project impossible. No matter how many of the parts you can make, you can't assemble a tank without a machine to do the heavy lifting.

My basic idea for the character is that he is a good guy and he does want to help but it would be too dangerous to actually sell product locally. I see him as having a smuggler contact to transport the goods to other cities, maybe even other countries. Also, I don't see his production capacity being high enough to really play robin hood via selling cheap goods to the poor. On the other hand I do see him helping individuals when he can; especially by churning out a unique or impossible to get item that could really help someone.

As a starting character the limit on how much newyen you can have pretty well limits production capacity so, at least to start, the character would not really have a big operation though even at the small level it would, like you say, be an enterprise that would take employees to keep going. In the long run I do think it would be interesting to see the character grow into the head of a major operation with lots of employees but that might strongly impact the direction of the game for all the players so I kind of envisioned him staying at the "mom and pop" operation level. On the other hand if the GMs and players were OK with it I'd love to go that route. I guess it's something we can just see where the campaign takes it.

At the "mom and pop" level I was actually considering the idea of the character having and apprentice, more like a tradesman where in exchange for free labor you provide room, board, food, protection and training. I was thinking this would be a dependent NPC.

I agree that it would not just be Cops and the Corps that the character would have to deal with. He would definitely need help/employees/contractors, especially in the form of matrix security and physical security. I haven't decided how to handle that part yet, I think the options are to use contacts, to use the advanced lifestyle rules, and/or to see if any of the other player characters might want to fill one of those roles.

The question of competition is a really interesting one and that would depend on how common Forge-Legging would be in the world. It would in fact be very profitable so it would probably be relatively common and in that case competition could be the biggest threat. Especially since this character would be just starting out and he may have to go up against big mafia style outfits. On the other hand we could say that the forge-leggers tend to be more like mom and pop operations and competition is low, sometimes even collaboration exists. I think which option exists would largely depend on how the government/megacorps would want to enforce the anti-forge laws. A big mafia stype outfit could seriously threaten profits for a megacorp but on the other hand if the megacorp somehow controlled the mafia group they could tell them what to make and what not to make and take a cut of the profit, all of witch would be black money that wouldn't need to go onto the corporate legers. That's a pretty attractive thing for corps to do. On the other hand that route could be dangerous because a big outfit could go rouge and it would be hard to clean up. On reflection I guess the reality would be that there would be a little bit of both mom-and-pop and mafia style leggers because each one would have certain advantages and disadvantages that the corps would want to be able to use.

I'm not sure exactly what other skill besides chemistry the character would have. I think he would tend to be a generalist with good technical and social skills. I also want him to be competent in combat. Since it looks like the concept will work I'll start building the character and then I can give you a better idea.

Will R, I agree with the 3 points you made in the last post. You can kind of use some logic in terms of what parts the forge can and cannot make. The rules they have are super generic, and, quite frankly, basing what the forge can or cannot make off the availability rating of the end product is very flimsy at best but at least it is a rule that you can go by. I'm totally fine with the GM making judgment calls on what additional parts are needed.

I'm also with you on the parts library. I will probably give the character a lot of engineering knowledge skills so he may be able to make some exotic stuff up on his own but mostly I was thinking that the need for plans could be a good shadowrunning/matrix running hook.

I agree that in some cases you just cannot make something without the right tools. (the tank is an extreme but good example.)

Overall I really like the 20's-gangester movie plot theme. I really like the idea of a more gritty, realistic street level game and I think this is a good character for that.


I'll start working on him tonight.