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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Surgery
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 2 2007, 11:32 AM
Never once have the surgery rules been mentioned on these boards without -- yes, call it hate. The reason most commonly given is that they are insanely complicated.
I never found them so. Quite the contrary: once I caught the mechanic, they seemed some of the most straightforward in the entire set of rulebooks. After all, the core of it was simply determining
(a) the category of surgery;
(b) the risked negative options and desired positive options; and
(c ) location/technology/condition:
all of which together gives a target number and the required number of successes for bad things not to happen and for each potential good thing thereafter.
The combat rules are considerably more complex: yet reaction to any single part of these is far less visceral. Spellcasting even has a similar structure of rules, with the balancing act of ideal Force level echoing the balance of desired surgical options against acceptable TN.
The surgery rules do, however, insert an element of risk that is not within the PC's direct control: something almost unique throughout the rulebooks. What's more, that risk cuts directly at a keystone of the PC's sought-after superiority.
Interestingly, I have noticed that many of the most welcomed SR4 changes cut out precisely this kind of risk, or indeed most situations where a PC would be required to find a way to work with others and perhaps even have to trust them. For example, Astral Gateway is no longer a power for which the PCs have to negotiate with a free spirit; but one which an Awakened PC can command of a Guidance spirit as soon as Invoking is learned.
Perhaps in parallel, other commonly welcomed changes in SR4 involve anything that reduces negative consequences of power. The constant risk of focus addiction is gone. At least in the core books through Augmentation, the objective potential for drug addiction has vanished. With Edge, even imminent death has become -- less than relevant.
(In fact, one of the most fought-against new rules continues to be the concept of aspected Essence holes, even with the simultaneous release of genetech to undo Essence holes altogether ... so permanent Essence loss becomes another negative consequence which becomes far less relevant in SR4. The argument against aspected Essence holes is that it's an unnecessary complication. I can't help but notice that the point of contention happens to be over one of the few remaining limitations on the power balancing act.)
And the surgery rules are gone.
What really underlies the hate of the surgery rules?
Posted by: Critias Aug 2 2007, 11:43 AM
They were horribly complex and open to monstrous min/maxing. They were also yet another set of rules that were retconned into place, requiring existing characters to either lose out on the opportunity to use them, or do a decent amount of paperwork (and perhaps end up with headaches due to die rolls) to try and get their character "official" again.
Posted by: Doctor Funkenstein Aug 2 2007, 11:45 AM
It was just an unnecessary complication to the game. Surgery costs were always assumed to be part of the implant's cost, including the grade of the implant.
It would have been like including intricate rules over ten pages for improving skills and attributes beyond the base rules that already covered all the important aspects of doing just such a thing.
They simply went overboard rules-wise for something that would rarely come up for most characters or even most groups. "Downtime between runs" has always been ambiguous enough to do what you needed to do with regards to character advancement in a game that was based almost completely on ambigious rules. The orange orchid didn't need a lemon tree, especially a lemon tree with sour fruit on it that few people needed to eat as the oranges provided all their dietary requirements.
Posted by: Blade Aug 2 2007, 12:19 PM
I was quite fine with the surgery rules, except for the usage some people made of them (nothing mention that you can't take 10 times the reduced essence cost positive quality... With a good doctor, with plenty of karma and all possible positive modifiers you could fit a Move By Wire in 1 essence point).
The rules I had some problem with were the serious wounds rules. They were cool because they added scars, trauma, etc. But they required too much time and dice rolling. I remember how it went :
"Ok. D wound: you're out. Here's the book, deal with the consequences while I finish the combat sequence, it should keep you busy for at least half an hour."
Posted by: Xirces Aug 2 2007, 12:23 PM
I've never had cause to use them (I don't actually play), but I actually like the surgery rules in M&M.
I can see the scenario where someone wants to get surgery and actually has to think about the risks of doing so - balancing the additional benefit of further implants (or cosmetic surgery) against the potential for disaster. Finding the right surgeon - one with skill that you can trust becomes a key part of it.
I agree somewhat on the cost issue (maybe there could be a reduction in the actual cost of implants to compensate?), but don't understand the point about having to adjust existing characters - surely just use the surgery rules for anything after that point?
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 2 2007, 12:43 PM
I personally don't like them because, at least to me, they don't add anything enjoyable to the game. Do I really want to deal with planning out a surgery? Hell no.
They took something that should have been highly abstract -- ie, just generate a TN based on the type of surgery (Healing? Cyber? Bio?), add complications (Damage level {L,M,S,D}, Cyber Grade {N,A,B,D}, Bio type {N,C}, Facilities {Poor,Average,Good,Excellent}, Staffing {Insufficient,Sufficient,Elite}, etc) -- and stripped most of the abstraction out of it.
It just feels like a bunch of busy work to me.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 2 2007, 01:04 PM
Basically, they were a totally uncontrollable risk you had to take any time you wanted to add cyberware, and one that didn't apply to most Awakened. Dying on the table because the NPC cyberdoc rolled badly isn't fun, and neither is having to consider whether or not to try to get major surgery to improve yourself while the party mage is learning how to deal 3S damage to an area 150 meters in diameter (IIRC) for very little drain.
It's an unnecessary disadvantage, unequally applied, that has only small benefits to the game (it is vital that implantation cost be separated from 'ware cost for fencing 'ware to make any sense at all) and none that couldn't have been gotten some other way. The complexity doesn't even enter into it--it's uncommon enough that almost any amount of complexity is acceptable.
~J
Posted by: Pendaric Aug 2 2007, 02:53 PM
I have dabbled with the surgery rules and still use them in a modified manner thanks to in-game reasons.
I like the realism they provide but highly dislike the added complexity and time they bring.
SR3 is basically four rule sets hung together with a common background. The surgery rules add a fifth set that only introduces the desire to get all your ware at character creation to avoid complication and risk. As I actively have to encourage my players to get more ware during game play this was counter productive.
The cyber element of cyber punk becomes harder to intergrate with the surgery rules due to the downsides but does high light the punk element in the need for cred for safe treatment.
Personally I think the logistical headache compounded by increased cost and risk for cyber characters combine for the hate on the forums.
We play for fun and one or other of these elements reduces most peoples fun.
Posted by: Kyoto Kid Aug 2 2007, 03:01 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Basically, they were a totally uncontrollable risk you had to take any time you wanted to add cyberware, and one that didn't apply to most Awakened. Dying on the table because the NPC cyberdoc rolled badly isn't fun, and neither is having to consider whether or not to try to get major surgery to improve yourself while the party mage is learning how to deal 3S damage to an area 150 meters in diameter (IIRC) for very little drain. It's an unnecessary disadvantage, unequally applied, that has only small benefits to the game (it is vital that implantation cost be separated from 'ware cost for fencing 'ware to make any sense at all) and none that couldn't have been gotten some other way. The complexity doesn't even enter into it--it's uncommon enough that almost any amount of complexity is acceptable. ~J |
...as I know all to well with my original Tomoe. For a genetic treatment (Phenotypic Alteration) I ended up writing a spreadsheet to calculate all the time and associated costs. Too much like RL which is what I play the game for to get away from.
I don't use them in my campaigns however, I also do not make implantation an "instant "process (unless it is something mimor like a chipjack or datajack). I just use the basic wound recovery table without added costs since I also agree this is implied in the price of the 'ware itself.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 2 2007, 03:12 PM
But like I said in what you quoted, it can't be implied in the price of the 'ware--not without making selling cyberware totally undefined!
~J
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 2 2007, 05:01 PM
Delta Ware is a myth. What Delta clinics actually do is implant Betaware and tell you that it's Delta ware. Between the reduced TN for implanting Beta instead of Delta and the TN reduction for having higher grade tools than Beta calls for they can layer on a couple of Essence reductions and still come out ahead.
And that is emblematic of basically every single thing that was wrong with the M&M surgery rules. I am absolutely certain that the authors didn't think that they were retconning Deltaware out of existence, and indeed it takes quite a bit of reading and comparisons to realize that this is the case.
---
It's why when we wrote the surgery rules for SR4 they didn't really look like the Man and Machine rules on the subject. After spending hours mapping out exactly what the steps and effects of the rules in M&M actually were... we decided to make the new ones completely different instead.
-Frank
Posted by: mfb Aug 2 2007, 05:30 PM
my biggest problem with the surgery rules wasn't their complexity, though they were certainly very complex. yes, the core concept was simple--figure out the TN, figure out the bad and good results, roll and see what you get--but the details were many. rolling against a TN is not simple if it takes you ten minutes of searching through modifiers to figure out what the TN is. moreover, surgery is something that happens only a few times in a character's life; there's no need to make it so complex.
but like i said, my biggest issue wasn't the complexity. it was the freaking cost. getting a datajack implanted with a fair assurance of not dying on the table or coming out horribly scarred could cost you five to ten times as much as the datajack itself. that's completley ridiculous when you consider that prior to M&M--all through the previous two editions, all through 3rd ed until M&M came out--the implant cost was assumed to include the cost of surgery.
re: the myth of deltaware, according to ShadowFAQ you can only take the same surgery option twice, positive or negative (though the wording in M&M strongly implies that only the negative is so limited). i can't be sure offhand, but if you use that limit, i believe it demythifies deltaware.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 2 2007, 05:38 PM
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| moreover, surgery is something that happens only a few times in a character's life; there's no need to make it so complex. |
I wholeheartedly reject this view--it's the exact opposite of correct. Something that you do only once, or only a small number of times, can have incredible complexity. If you do something three times, and it takes an hour each time, you've spent three hours on it. That's not a small amount, but in a lengthy campaign, three hours can be a tiny amount of your overall time.
On the other hand, take something that you do frequently. We'll call it twice an hour. If it takes you two minutes to do it, you lose twenty minutes per five-hour session to it. Nine sessions, and you've equaled the hour-long series of calculations. Woe betide you if you've got a truly long campaign.
Rare events are exactly where complexity can remain.
~J
Posted by: mfb Aug 2 2007, 05:47 PM
rare events should not be complex because making something complex and unfamiliar makes it monumentally more likely that you'll screw it up. i agree that rare events should be... just woke up, so i can't think of the word. big, important, memorable, tense--any/all of the above. i don't think you should have to spend an hour looking up modifiers for something that comes up once in ten game sessions. but i do think something that comes up once in ten game sessions can/should involve a lot of die rolls. see the difference?
an astral quest is a good example of what i'm talking about. you don't go on astral quests everyday, generally, but when you do, it's usually an event. you do a lot of die rolling, you sweat a lot, but the actual mechanics aren't all that complicated, just variations on a theme.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 2 2007, 11:30 PM
*laugh* -- I'm wondering at all the people who are arguing that surgery should not be complex, should be made more abstract (less realistic?) or even ignored altogether ... many of the exact same people who are arguing precisely the opposite wrt firearms in http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18477 http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18493 threads.
Surgery is every bit as vital to a Shadowrun game as gunfire but much, much less frequently encountered: yet even this minimal detail is objected to. It's claimed to be unfairly risky, but a decent biotech skill possessed by a member of the team, combined with the teamwork and karma pool rules, should balance that out on a purely numbers basis. It's claimed to be complex: but for a given surgery, it's easy to run through full procedure and aftereffects in less than five minutes of gameplay. Even with the existing combat rules, except in a straightforward firefight, many combat situations can take much longer to rule.
(This, combined with the growing recent broad assumption that most situations reduce down to simple equations, tells me much about what some consider standard styles of play that should be entrenched in rulebook canon. I also suspect that metaquests -- a major Awakened parallel to the sammie's surgery -- are not being played at anywhere near the book-appropriate level of risk, let alone lethality.)
Rules should be rules. If more realism is desired, why only this or that pet project? Why not across the board? It's almost to the point of a Dumpshock truism:
1. Anything fully within the PC's direct control and of which the PCs can take primary advantage (preferably to inflict damage on NPCs) should be very detailed indeed.
2. Anything even a little outside the PC's direct control should be made abstract.
Note that this also accounts for the secondary hate reserved for any suggestion that social skills should not be primarily or solely reduced to the roll.
None of which would even be an issue except that player pressure does demonstrably bend the next generation canon rules in one direction or another, and the pattern of the shift has become absolutely clear.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 2 2007, 11:37 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| *laugh* -- I'm wondering at all the people who are arguing that surgery should not be complex, should be made more abstract (less realistic?) or even ignored altogether ... many of the exact same people who are arguing precisely the opposite wrt firearms in http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18477 http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18493 threads. Surgery is every bit as vital to a Shadowrun game as gunfire but much, much less frequently encountered: yet even this minimal detail is objected to. It's claimed to be unfairly risky, but a decent biotech skill possessed by a member of the team, combined with the teamwork and karma pool rules, should balance that out on a purely numbers basis. It's claimed to be complex: but for a given surgery, it's easy to run through full procedure and aftereffects in less than five minutes of gameplay. Even with the existing combat rules, except in a straightforward firefight, many combat situations can take much longer to rule. (This, combined with the growing recent broad assumption that most situations reduce down to simple equations, tells me much about what some consider standard styles of play that should be entrenched in rulebook canon. I also suspect that metaquests -- a major Awakened parallel to the sammie's surgery -- are not being played at anywhere near the book-appropriate level of risk, let alone lethality.) Rules should be rules. If more realism is desired, why only this or that pet project? Why not across the board? It's almost to the point of a Dumpshock truism: 1. Anything fully within the PC's direct control and of which the PCs can take primary advantage (preferably to inflict damage on NPCs) should be very detailed indeed. 2. Anything even a little outside the PC's direct control should be made abstract. Note that this also accounts for the secondary hate reserved for any suggestion that social skills should not be primarily or solely reduced to the roll. None of which would even be an issue except that player pressure does demonstrably bend the next generation canon rules in one direction or another, and the pattern of the shift has become absolutely clear. |
Talia, now that we know that you're female, will you marry me?
I actually think that realistic surgery rules, in principle, would be very interesting. What could be more fascinating to study than different types of surgery? How is surgery done in a hospital versus a combat zone? What kinds of operations are safe and what kinds are risky? What is the risk of death in each case? Just how often do surgeons really drop the scalpel and do things like amuptate the wrong leg? I'd love for there to be rules for that, especially if that meant that rules were more realistic regarding disability incurred by injuries.
I would love to see something like a Raygun of surgery, where there's a lot of medical background information about various common surgical procedures and their principles and then some accompanying rules.
Maybe I'll start reading some dusty surgery textbooks left over from the 80s that are lying around here so I can begin to enlighten myself...
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 2 2007, 11:45 PM
You mean my participation in the http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18189 thread didn't make it absolutely clear? But not looking, thanks 
Still, I'm curious as to what gave me away this time? I hadn't thought that the primacy of consequence-independent gun culture was so primarily male. I had thought it -- along with the Raygun rules -- was primarily United-States homegrown, with strong Auzzie influence.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 2 2007, 11:58 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Aug 2 2007, 06:45 PM) |
| You mean my participation in the http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18189 thread didn't make it absolutely clear? But not looking, thanks Still, I'm curious as to what gave me away this time? I hadn't thought that the primacy of consequence-independent gun culture was so primarily male. I had thought it -- along with the Raygun rules -- was primarily United-States homegrown, with strong Auzzie influence. |
I dunno. Actually, with flesh and blood females who come from places like the south, a lot of them seem to enjoy shooting, in my experience.
I grew up in New York State and there most people don't like firearms because they tend to be ideologically left wing. I cannot escape my destiny and am also ideologically left wing, BUT because I played Doom back in the day that also makes me a sociopathic gun wielding murder simulation expert. Lots of people you talk to in New York, male or female, don't know anything about firearms and end up saying incorrect things like referring to an Army guy standing outside of the Port Authority in New York City with an automatic carbine as holding a "semi automatic machine gun" or something like that.
But once upon a time I journeyed to the south and subsequently was able to interact with people from that area, including some females. In general, both males and females demonstrated knowledge about firearms.
So in my experience gun culture is NOT a gendered thing, but rather a reigional thing.
Posted by: hyzmarca Aug 3 2007, 12:20 AM
There is nothing wrong with complex surgery rules. The problem comes when complex surgery rules are completely insane and bear no resemblance to anything that could be considered real surgery while simultaneously crushing the flavor created by every bit of fluff that had existed previously.
We go from having the installation of cybereyes, datajacks, and other ubiquitous and fashionable pieces of cyberware being simple outpatient procedures commonly preformed at boutiques located in shopping malls to all cyberware instillation being this huge life threatening thing with long recovery times.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 12:34 AM
you can only run through a surgery that quickly if you're as familiar with the surgery rules as some of us are with the combat rules--in other words, no need to look up most of it. considering how rarely surgery comes up...
Posted by: Doctor Funkenstein Aug 3 2007, 12:42 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| *laugh* -- I'm wondering at all the people who are arguing that surgery should not be complex, should be made more abstract (less realistic?) or even ignored altogether ... many of the exact same people who are arguing precisely the opposite wrt firearms in http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18477 http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18493 threads. |
Not everyone's quite hypocritical when it comes to that sort of thing.
There's a natural desire for people who fancy themselves a fan or a pro of something to want to see that hobby in a more accurate portrayal whenever they come across it. Gun nuts, for instance, often get frustrated or annoyed by the abstract systems used in Shadowrun when it comes to using firearms, but couldn't give a wit's end about how abstract everything else is. It's a bit hyprocritical, sure, but it's completely understandable, too.
That said, the Surgery rules are exactly the reason why I'm personally against more realistic firearm (or anything else) rules in a game like Shadowrun. It's unncessary, overly complicated, easy to get confused by, slows the game down, and -- most importantly as far as I'm concerned -- threatens to potentially undermine game balance.
As a cinematic game, Shadowrun doesn't need rules to make everything ultra-super-realistic-and-detailed. It needs rules that simply actions, allow players tons of leeway, and invites over-the-top gameplay when the need arises. Ultra-super-realistic-and-detailed rules get in the way of that -- as demonstrated by M&M's Surgery rules -- is a prime example of why that's a Very Bad Thing™. It's also an example of why the Surgery rules themselves are a Very Bad Thing™. They're simply unnecessary and add nothing worthwhile to gameplay.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 12:52 AM
| QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein) |
| As a cinematic game, Shadowrun doesn't need rules to make everything ultra-super-realistic-and-detailed. It needs rules that simply actions, allow players tons of leeway, and invites over-the-top gameplay when the need arises. |
that's great for a cinematic game. not all of us think SR should be cinematic, though. or, at least, not that kind of movie.
Posted by: Doctor Funkenstein Aug 3 2007, 12:53 AM
I know.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 12:58 AM
of course, one problem with the surgery rules is that they're not realistic. a good street doc (skill 6) in average conditions (no modifiers) will inflict some kind of debilitating condition on his patient with ridiculous frequency. something like a third of the time, i think?
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 01:01 AM
Wounded Ronin: I think you made my point for me.
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| The problem comes when complex surgery rules are completely insane and bear no resemblance to anything that could be considered real surgery while simultaneously crushing the flavor created by every bit of fluff that had existed previously. |
Because we have so much real-life experience with enhancement cybernetic surgery, and nowhere do we ever hear of things going horribly wrong.
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| you can only run through a surgery that quickly if you're as familiar with the surgery rules as some of us are with the combat rules--in other words, no need to look up most of it. considering how rarely surgery comes up... |
Let's see: M&M core surgery-related rules run (including the Emergency Care Table) pp.142-152. Combat rules in the BBB alone run from pp.100-126, not counting supplementary rule- and sourcebooks.
I'll tell you right now I don't have either anywhere near memorised: but I do understand basic research principles, so I can usually find quickly what I'm looking for. There's a lot less to look through for surgery than for combat, and the key tables are every bit as easy to find and use as, say, melee/range/defender modifier tables in combat. (I could wish that my books didn't automatically fall open at those spots. Only a matter of time now before the pages really start falling out.)
Now, if an individual player chooses to virtually memorise one part over another: that's not exactly a weakness in the rules themselves.
| QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein) |
| There's a natural desire for people who fancy themselves a fan or a pro of something to want to see that hobby in a more accurate portrayal whenever they come across it. |
Absolutely true. My concern comes in only when a particular viewpoint tries to dominate and suppress all others in a wide-capture ruleset, to the point where (a) it tries to force itself into canon, and then (b) reject all viewpoints that are not canon. I did link a blog entry examining the pattern (in a wider context) into the other thread, but apparently to examine the psychology involved and its end results is considered an "edge personal philosophy" and thus off-topic.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 01:08 AM
Talia, you're using numbers to obscure and ignore the reality. the reality is, most people have a much harder time figuring out the surgery rules than the combat rules. it's an issue that crops up again and again in a wide array of groups. whether or not you think that's reasonable is irrelevant--the problem exists, and it exists in a wide enough sample to show that the problem is in the rules, not the players.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 3 2007, 01:58 AM
Yeah, I have participated in heart surgery in the back of an ambulance on an air strip. And the Man & Machine rules made my head explode.
When I went to make the surgery rules for Augmentation I seriously just made it an extended test and left it to glitches for bad things to happen other than the surgery damage and healing times.
I generally expect that surgeons will be professional and make few enough life-threatening errors that they will be allowed to continue working as surgeons.
-Frank
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 3 2007, 02:04 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Aug 2 2007, 06:30 PM) |
| I also suspect that metaquests -- a major Awakened parallel to the sammie's surgery -- are not being played at anywhere near the book-appropriate level of risk, let alone lethality. |
No, they are not remotely a parallel. All of the common activities that can be assisted with an Astral Quest (learning a spell, learning a formula, learning a metamagic, initiation ordeal) can be done without an Astral Quest. A Streetsam can't add or upgrade 'ware without surgery.
The Astral Quest rules could be changed to say "a character who goes on an Astral Quest dies instantly", and mages would still be able to advance in their core capabilities. A streetsam does not have that luxury.
Frank: I think you just summed up one of the fundamental changes in tone that I object to from recent books—you assume surgeons will be competent. Flavour from older books suggested you shouldn't assume surgeons to have had formal medical training.
~J
Posted by: Herald of Verjigorm Aug 3 2007, 02:29 AM
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman) |
| I generally expect that surgeons will be professional and make few enough life-threatening errors that they will be allowed to continue working as surgeons. |
Surgeons, yes. Illegal street docs who have no less than 15 warrants for practising medicine without a license, maybe (depends on why they don't currently have a license).
If your street doc was a true, trained, and certified surgeon, then he should have some skills. If he uses a bootleg skillsoft downloaded from a dark and disturbing corner of of the matrix, .... maybe, maybe this time he'll hit the flaw where some of the original code wasn't properly deleted (in which case, you may be marinated and stuffed as part of a bustergophechiduckneaealcockidgeoverwingailusharkolanbler recipe).
So, how well you should live is directly related to how picky you are with your medical contacts. In real life, doctors are less common than full mages in SR, so you may not have as much opportunity to be discriminating as you would prefer, given how some of them even try to stay legal (the shock and horror).
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 02:33 AM
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| Talia, you're using numbers to obscure and ignore the reality. |
Now there's something you don't hear said everyday to me on Dumpshock.
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| the reality is, most people have a much harder time figuring out the surgery rules than the combat rules. |
And I'm asking why that is: given that the surgery rules have considerably less complexity than, for example, the combat rules. It's not an intrinsic result of the surgery rules structure.
Kagetenshi: within the broader picture you're right. I was just borrowing the astral quest as one common example Awakened types used to ease their own acquisition of magical power: ie to reduce karma costs. It's not immediately relevant to this thread, but I'd have no problem with building in an equivalent risk to all initiation attempts.
Can you see the reaction were I to suggest it?
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 02:54 AM
like i've said, it's the fact that the surgery rules don't get used much. they're not really more complex than the combat rules, but the combat rules get used every single game. the surgery rules, not so much--which means, given the way most people's memory works, that you have to relearn the rules every time someone gets surgery. if people only used the combat rules once every few games, then you'd get a lot (more) people complaining about how complex they are.
Posted by: hyzmarca Aug 3 2007, 02:58 AM
| QUOTE (Herald of Verjigorm) | ||
Surgeons, yes. Illegal street docs who have no less than 15 warrants for practising medicine without a license, maybe (depends on why they don't currently have a license). If your street doc was a true, trained, and certified surgeon, then he should have some skills. If he uses a bootleg skillsoft downloaded from a dark and disturbing corner of of the matrix, .... maybe, maybe this time he'll hit the flaw where some of the original code wasn't properly deleted (in which case, you may be marinated and stuffed as part of a bustergophechiduckneaealcockidgeoverwingailusharkolanbler recipe). So, how well you should live is directly related to how picky you are with your medical contacts. In real life, doctors are less common than full mages in SR, so you may not have as much opportunity to be discriminating as you would prefer, given how some of them even try to stay legal (the shock and horror). |
The chances of something going horribly wrong in SR4 surgery depend very much on the abilities of the doctor. A Logic 1, Medicine 1 Street Doc installing alpha grade cyberware is probably going to glich. A Logic 1, Medicine 1, Edge 2 Street Doc installing alpha grade 'ware through a rigger-adapted medkit is will unquestionably kill the patient by leaving him pen on the table since he has 0 surgery dice after modifiers and doesn't have enough edge to make finish via longshot tests .
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 03:06 AM
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| but the combat rules get used every single game. |
... you use every one of the combat rules across three (four?) separate books -- not just the basic ruleset in the BBB -- every single game?
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 3 2007, 03:16 AM
I'll put it this way:
One of the first things we did at SotSW was discard the surgery rules. Despite that, after three years of play (and that's six, because two games run under the umbrella of SotSW), no character has implanted 'ware post-chargen.
(Granted, a big reason for this is that most of the characters who would get 'ware (non-incompatible, non-Awakened) already have well in excess of five points worth, requiring multi-million-nuyen upgrades to get anything meaningful)
We have not used every combat action from every book in that time. I don't think anyone has tried a Kick Attack or a Kip-Up. Nevertheless, we have achieved substantial coverage of combat rules, including vehicle gunnery (both types) and MIJI (or the tiny subset that isn't rendered useless by encryption), most of it frequent.
~J
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 03:20 AM
no, but i use the basic combat rules--into which all those other rules fit, more or less smoothly--every game. i don't use the basic surgery rules every game, so not only to i have to relearn all the applicable modifiers, i have to relearn all of the steps i have to go through.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 03:53 AM
It's a matter of running down the list of, what, three tables? four? And they're all in the same place!
FWIW, life took me away from SR for over a year before I managed even to return to these boards. I hadn't touched the surgery section since even before that.
It took me five minutes to go through the entire section, before opening this topic. The only relevant points not in that section are covered in the BBB damage/healing section: again, brief and limited.
It takes me much, much longer to pull in overbearing, and surprise/ambush, and martial arts, and overdamage, and the relevance of perception and range modifiers within this or that combination of scope/lenses/cybereyes, and armour reduction, and the specific rules involved with specific types of ammo ... They don't all fit neatly into the basic combat structure; and the various tables and in-text rules are all over the place. Since I've returned I've been involved in SR combats, but I haven't yet had a chance to re-read all the combat rules yet.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 05:17 AM
no, it's a matter of knowing what tables to check, in what order. and then making sure of what modifiers apply--and maybe making adjustments to the situation to get better modifiers. and then going through all the positive and negative options to fill out your list. and then tallying up all the factors that go into the pricetag for the surgery, and maybe jiggering the mods again because you can't afford some of them. and then figuring out what to roll. and then doing the roll and rp'ing the whole thing (if you choose to).
look, you think it's simple. bully for you. i think the SR3 Matrix rules are simple, but i get shouted down all the time by masses upon masses of people who find them ridiculously complex. at some point, you have to accept that you're are the outlier.
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 3 2007, 05:53 AM
Maybe it's just me, but it's not that the surgery rules are highly complex, it's that I'm not interested in the surgery rules, and so any amount of complexity above "basic" is unacceptable to me.
For the same reason, I don't want ten pages of rules on how to handle it when you have to solve a math problem, or ten pages of rules on how to handle it when you want to perform in a play, etc, etc.
Surgery is important in Shadowrun, but unless I'm playing a surgeon, I just don't need any level of complexity.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 06:06 AM
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| at some point, you have to accept that you're are the outlier. |
Never said I wasn't.
That being said, it still doesn't explain why you find the Matrix system more straightforward over the surgery system; and why people generally are more likely to find the combat system straightforward over the surgery system.
I repeat: it's not something intrinsic to the rule structure.
Nor is it simply familiarity, because the sheer number of rules involved with either combat or Matrix mean that it's very nearly impossible to be using all of them with a frequency equal to how often surgery is needed.
Sometimes people object to some part or another of combat or Matrix rules on the basis of over-complexity or over-realism or non-realism, but it's never with that same sheer hate.
Maybe I'm wondering why people who do want to keep upgrading their PCs don't want to become comfortable with the surgery rules.
After all, if you don't like a concept, rejecting it out of hand is a very easy way not to have to think about why. And in SR, it's been demonstrated that enough hate, whether or not that hate has any objective grounding, will get the rules changed.
And then, of course, the arguments change to screaming oneself RAW.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 06:20 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| That being said, it still doesn't explain why you find the Matrix system more straightforward over the surgery system; and why people generally are more likely to find the combat system straightforward over the surgery system. |
i didn't say that. i said i don't find the Matrix system to be overly complex. for its role, for the frequency it gets used, i find the Matrix rules to be of enjoyable complexity.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| I repeat: it's not something intrinsic to the rule structure. Nor is it simply familiarity, because the sheer number of rules involved with either combat or Matrix mean that it's very nearly impossible to be using all of them with a frequency equal to how often surgery is needed. |
yes, it is. it's a combination of both. the rule structure is too complex for the level of familiarity most players have with it. what you're not getting is that most players, when they open up the surgery section have to learn or relearn the basic structure of the surgery rules. when looking up obscure rules in combat or the Matrix, i already know the basic structure of the rules, so it's easy for me to slide the obscure rule into my understanding.
as for why i don't want to become familiar with the surgery rules? i'm not here to play surgeryrun. i don't want to have expend significant amounts of OOC and IC resources on every minor upgrade. it screws with my suspension of disblief--if surgery is this hard, why is cyberware so popular? if a good street doc under normal conditions has something like a 1 in 3 chance of scarring you for life, why aren't there more horribly scarred runners around?
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 06:47 AM
| QUOTE (mfb) | ||
yes, it is. |
Ah, the objectivity illusion.
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| it's a combination of both. the rule structure is too complex for the level of familiarity most players have with it ... when looking up obscure rules in combat or the Matrix, i already know the basic structure of the rules |
That almost defines a circular argument: too complex for the amount of familiarity players have, yet players don't become more familiar with it because of the amount of complexity.
Or, alternately: if something is not already known, why try to become familiar with it?
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| as for why i don't want to become familiar with the surgery rules? i'm not here to play surgeryrun. |
You're also not here to play lifestylerun: yet I've heard no particular Dumpshock-wide hate for the optional lifestyle rules. (About the same amount of detail in those rules btw.) If body modification is a relevant factor for most SR PCs, then so is how the PC gets that modification. Just pay for it and forget it? Availability rules in themselves suggest it's not supposed to be that simple, and then we have the whole "third party" rules whenever someone tries to obtain or learn something through the FoF. Although I'm guessing your style of play probably glosses over most of those also?
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| it screws with my suspension of disblief--if surgery is this hard, why is cyberware so popular? |
Ask exactly the same question about cosmetic surgery today ... and then search out some of the cases where things went horribly wrong: by professional surgeons, in licenced hospitals.
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| if a good street doc under normal conditions has something like a 1 in 3 chance of scarring you for life, why aren't there more horribly scarred runners around? |
A street doc's reputation depends on word of mouth. Thus the reputable street doc has incentive to throw in their own Karma pool to avoid a catastrophic result. And the less reputable street doc? Well, you get what you pay for.
@ Vaevictis:
I think we've discussed elsewhere the increasing reduction of Shadowrun to pressing the I WIN button equations. Removing the surgery rules -- and thus any possible complications to the equation -- is another expression of that same syndrome.
Posted by: Critias Aug 3 2007, 06:48 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| After all, if you don't like a concept, rejecting it out of hand is a very easy way not to have to think about why. And in SR, it's been demonstrated that enough hate, whether or not that hate has any objective grounding, will get the rules changed. |
I'm just curious, here, but how often does that happen, really? You've brought it up a couple times now, and you act like it happens all the time; the devs read an angry thread on Dumpshock, and according to you all sorts of rules change as a result.
Can you point to any instances of this happening? Particularly with any sort of regularity?
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 06:58 AM
Possibly because I see variations of it in the way people behave every day: and increasingly I'm seeing it as the most common behavioural reaction to any kind of having been stymied. I did point to one example directly in that blog entry you found irrelevant, but it's really not difficult to find others around you. Just watch your average office politics in action.
As to Dumpshock: with v.4, we have seen rules changes happen, in the specific directions I have already indicated in this thread. The regularity is only insofar as it happened with the new edition.
Who knows yet what direction v.5 will take?
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 3 2007, 07:01 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Possibly because I see variations of it in the way people behave every day: and increasingly I'm seeing it as the most common behavioural reaction to any kind of having been stymied. I did point to one example directly in that blog entry you found irrelevant, but it's really not difficult to find others around you. Just watch your average office politics in action. As to Dumpshock: with v.4, we have seen rules changes happen, in the specific directions I have already indicated in this thread. The regularity is only insofar as it happened with the new edition. Who knows yet what direction v.5 will take? |
What? I thought that most of the old timers are totally not happy about the direction that SR4 took, and what people spend the most time complaining about is firearms realism, which we didn't really see more of in SR4.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 07:06 AM
Some oldtimers, yes. You'll have noticed the post-SR4 schism, which wouldn't have happened had all or even most oldtimers agreed.
But what demographic do game developers have to keep tapping (and thus listen to) to stay profitable?
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 3 2007, 07:10 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Some oldtimers, yes. You'll have noticed the post-SR4 schism, which wouldn't have happened had all or even most oldtimers agreed. But what demographic do game developers have to keep tapping (and thus listen to) to stay profitable? |
So you're telling me that in fact most of the oldtimers didn't like firearms realism and that's why we didn't get any but at the same time game designers ignore oldtimers and cater to new audiences which also dislike firearms realism?
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 07:16 AM
Fair enough point.
I'm suggesting that only those oldtimer points -- and remember, most of us aren't old, after all -- which would also appeal to a younger, videogame-raised generation were accepted. (Consider the new use of Edge v. the old combat pool in this context.)
As to the rest: remember the way of Kagetenshi's attempted revisions?
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 3 2007, 07:22 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| @ Vaevictis: I think we've discussed elsewhere the increasing reduction of Shadowrun to pressing the I WIN button equations. Removing the surgery rules -- and thus any possible complications to the equation -- is another expression of that same syndrome. |
What a load of horseshit. It's not the risk I have a problem with, it's having 10 pages of rules that add nothing to the game except a bunch of busy work.
EDIT: Which is to say, I don't have a problem with there being surgery rules, or there being risk associated with them, I just don't think that having 10 pages of rules for it is beneficial or enjoyable in a game like Shadowrun.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 07:27 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| That almost defines a circular argument: too complex for the amount of familiarity players have, yet players don't become more familiar with it because of the amount of complexity. Or, alternately: if something is not already known, why try to become familiar with it? |
it's not circular, it's self-reinforcing. if you want to bash players for being too lazy to learn unfamiliar rules that are going to see rare usage, be my guest. it won't stop them from being too lazy to bother learning the rules, which means the rules are too complex to be used in most games.
if you seriously think the lifestyle rules are anything remotely similar in level of complexity to the surgery rules, then you are either seriously misunderstanding the surgery rules or seriously misunderstanding the lifestyle rules. with the lifestyle rules, you select options, add up their value, and check that value against a single chart. the surgery rules... i've already gone over what the surgery rules entail. and, looking back, i didn't even mention the part about getting a medical profile and a surgery plan created.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Ask exactly the same question about cosmetic surgery today ... and then search out some of the cases where things went horribly wrong: by professional surgeons, in licenced hospitals. |
professional surgeons in licensed hospitals do not, statistically, have a one in three chance of screwing up horribly. hell, the screwups at Walter Reed that were recently in the news didn't have a ratio that bad. i mean, you are seriously suggesting that a professional doctor with a good, clean working area, the correct tools, and full knowledge of his patient's medical profile should have to pull a miracle out of his ass every third time he installs a datajack.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| I think we've discussed elsewhere the increasing reduction of Shadowrun to pressing the I WIN button equations. Removing the surgery rules -- and thus any possible complications to the equation -- is another expression of that same syndrome. |
so, what, everybody who played SR1-2 were just unrepentant munchkins?
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 07:39 AM
*laugh*
Vaevictis, I wouldn't expect you to feel any other way.
For mfb's reference: if you wish to consider that bashing, then it's bashing. Do note though that I never called or considered it that.
The distinction between circular and self-reinforcing lies only in whether or not you want to find a reason for having entered the circle in the first place.
Btw I'd summarised the lifestyle rules separately for my own use -- came out to eight pages of densely worded charts at 6 pt font.
As to the real chance of major screwup, check those rules again, using the modifiers you just cited for a basic surgery such as only a datajack. One of the points of those rules is that the more modifications you have, the harder future surgery gets. Run-of-the-mill datajacks -- only -- don't have anywhere near that high a risk within the conditions you describe.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 3 2007, 07:47 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Fair enough point. I'm suggesting that only those oldtimer points -- and remember, most of us aren't old, after all -- which would also appeal to a younger, videogame-raised generation were accepted. (Consider the new use of Edge v. the old combat pool in this context.) As to the rest: remember the way of Kagetenshi's attempted revisions? |
I think video games have made me *more* interested in firearms realism than anything else could have been. I play a lot of video games and in many senses they did raise me. But my interest in how firearms really work as opposed to how they work in movies was first raised by games like America's Army, Rainbow Six, Soldier of Fortune II, and so on.
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 07:52 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| The distinction between circular and self-reinforcing lies only in whether or not you want to find a reason for having entered the circle in the first place. |
for the love of--this exists, do you understand? players don't use the surgery rules much, because they're fairly complex, which means they're perpetually unfamiliar with them, which exacerbates the learning curve associated with learning them. you can call that circular, self-reinforcing, or purple, and it won't change the fact that this is why people don't use the rules.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Btw I'd summarised the lifestyle rules separately for my own use -- came out to eight pages of densely worded charts at 6 pt font. |
if i had to guess, i'd say that's because you're still not understanding the difference between the complexity of the system and how many modifiers can be plugged into that system. and/or you're really, really bad at summarizing. the actual rules only take up 17 pages at what looks to be 12pt, including a decent number of pictures, charts, and lots of titles that take up their own line.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| As to the real chance of major screwup, check those rules again, using the modifiers you just cited for a basic surgery such as only a datajack. One of the points of those rules is that the more modifications you have, the harder future surgery gets. Run-of-the-mill datajacks -- only -- don't have anywhere near that high a risk within the conditions you describe. |
incorrect. i'm describing a guy with 6 skill (a professional) rolling against TN 4 with a threshold of 3.
Posted by: Ravor Aug 3 2007, 08:02 AM
Besides, the fact remains that using the combat rules are simply more fun then using the surgery rules to what seems to be a clear majority of players, and I suspect that is the real reason most people don't bother to learn or use them.
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 3 2007, 08:04 AM
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| Besides, the fact remains that using the combat rules are simply more fun then using the surgery rules to what seems to be a clear majority of players, and I suspect that is the real reason most people don't bother to learn or use them. |
Quoted for truth.
The rules just aren't enjoyable for most people, and they're pretty complex and cumbersome on top if it.
In a game -- you know, something where you're supposed to have fun -- that's just a recipe for fail.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 08:35 AM
And now we have reached a key point:
What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at.
That's how the circle is entered in the first place.
| QUOTE (mfb) | ||
if i had to guess, i'd say that's because you're still not understanding the difference between the complexity of the system and how many modifiers can be plugged into that system. and/or you're really, really bad at summarizing. the actual rules only take up 17 pages at what looks to be 12pt, including a decent number of pictures, charts, and lots of titles that take up their own line. |
You can judge for yourself if you want: you have only to ask for a copy. But I will say that I find the lifestyle rules to have been much more densely written than the surgery rules. I am fairly certain I could have reduced the text in the surgery section to about 2/3 of the current, and I know some of those tables could have been better consolidated: haven't yet done the same summary as for the lifestyle rules, but my early estimate for chart form is four pages at the same pt value. FWIW I am a professional writer and editor and developer, heavy on the hard and especially medical sciences but having covered just about every field at some point or other. Human resources experts keep trying to get me to become an efficiency engineer.
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| incorrect. i'm describing a guy with 6 skill (a professional) rolling against TN 4 with a threshold of 3. |
Except that your TN is -- well, negative -- and your threshold only matters if you don't want any negative options: most of which don't matter anyway if you are only getting the datajack and aren't expecting to take it into a standard shadowrun lifestyle. Under standard or better operating conditions, the only likely + to TN for a basic datajack surgery is if your surgeon is teleconferencing (+1). Anyone under a corporate umbrella would have -2 (medical facility/hospital), medical gear of better grade than necessary, because it's cost-efficient (-2), and possibly an additional doctor (-1). None of the negatives apply to standard one-off procedures involving normal 'ware.
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 3 2007, 08:50 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| And now we have reached a key point: What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at. That's how the circle is entered in the first place. |
1. You did say you wanted to know why. There it is.
2. It's a game. It's supposed to be gratifying.
3. In my experience, the surgery rules don't just fail to be gratifying immediately, they simply fail to be gratifying. Ever. Boring, cumbersome, and complex.
Posted by: Fortune Aug 3 2007, 08:52 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Aug 3 2007, 06:35 PM) |
| And now we have reached a key point: What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at. |
Rather that should be ...
What does not add anything of value to the game, in the opinion of both the Players and the GM will be discarded.
We all looked at the rules. Most of us probably even tried to make them work in some kind of useable and enjoyable manner, but it seems that the overwhelming majority of both Players and Gamemasters alike agree that they leave a lot to be desired.
Posted by: Critias Aug 3 2007, 08:55 AM
| QUOTE |
| Possibly because I see variations of it in the way people behave every day: and increasingly I'm seeing it as the most common behavioural reaction to any kind of having been stymied. I did point to one example directly in that blog entry you found irrelevant, but it's really not difficult to find others around you. Just watch your average office politics in action. |
Uhh, no. I'm not going to watch office politics, because I'm not talking about office politics. You shouldn't be talking about office politics, either. For the love of dice, please stop doing your freaky best to drag every single fucking topic as far away from gaming/Shadowrun as you possibly can.
I don't care about office politics, and it's not my job to hunt for examples, much less "find others around me." You said the rules of the game Shadowrun get changed all the time because players hate them, I asked you to tell me when that happened, and then you started talking about office politics.
The burden is on YOU to provide examples of the times the rules to the game Shadowrun have been changed as a direct result of people complaining about them. The burden isn't on me to go find such examples (as they pertain to Shadowrun, or office politics). The burden is on YOU, you made the statement.
The reason I think so much of what you say is irellevent is that so much of what you say is irellevent. When someone tells you to provide them with examples of something you say happens very often, you should respond with -- hey, I dunno -- examples of that something happening.
| QUOTE |
| As to Dumpshock: with v.4, we have seen rules changes happen, in the specific directions I have already indicated in this thread. The regularity is only insofar as it happened with the new edition. |
So, for instance... people griped about Shadowrun firearms not being realistic, and now SR4 came around and Shadowrun firearms still aren't realistic (and people are still griping about that), so...Talia has what point again? Quick! Talk about office politics or living in an either/or world!
If it happens all the time (rules changing because players complain about them), why are you having such a hard time just finding me examples?
I don't recall DS crawling with "Target Numbers suck!" threads, or "Man, we need more attributes RIGHT NOW" rants going on, or "ARGH, I hate the flexibility that combat pool provides, GET RID OF IT RIGHT NOW!" being a weekly topic of conversation. Maybe I'm just confused, because I remember (and participated in) plenty of threads saying just the exact fucking opposite as more information about SR4 was revealed, but if you remember all these complaint threads, please, share them with the rest of the class.
| QUOTE |
| And now we have reached a key point: What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at. |
HOLY SHIT, IMAGINE THAT! If something in a game isn't fun, people don't like it. Wow. What a revelation.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 09:33 AM
If you don't find it relevant, Critias, no one is forcing you to find it relevant. By the same token, just because you don't find it relevant doesn't mean it isn't.
There's that damn objectivity illusion again.
You've already established that any piece of evidence I could find that doesn't match your narrow definitions of "relevant" won't be considered. I've got no interest in forcing you to consider a broader context.
For those who do find this discussion of any relevance whatsover:
What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at
is not the same as
What does not add anything of value to the game, in the opinion of both the Players and the GM will be discarded.
The first acknowledges that different players may find different things enjoyable or, well, relevant. 
The second measures not enjoyability (which is generally held to be an individual and subjective quality) but a perceived value. We can generally accept that others might find different things enjoyable. It's much more difficult to accept why a logical other wouldn't accept our value hierarchy.
Again, no issues -- diversity of opinion is a wondrous thing -- except where the values of some morph into the canon rules to be followed by all.
I've been examining the surgery rules all through this thread. Most participants in this thread seem not to have found those rules enjoyable and thus don't bother to understand them: but a lack of personal gratification from a part of the rules is easily remedied by house ruling, and a tacit recognition of the subjectivity of enjoyment also means that this or that part of the canon rules which are not found enjoyable by a given group rarely becomes an emotional debate.
However, the vehemence with which this thread has been met suggests that it's not only enjoyment but their actual value -- which has now quietly morphed into the illusion of an objective value, applicable to all -- that is being questioned. A few might perhaps choose to use those rules: but for most there's no real binding reason to keep them in the rules, not when they really have no value to the game as a whole.
Thus those rules have been complained about repeatedly in this forum. And then SR4 came out and they were cut: and there was much rejoicing.
Interesting. That would seem to be a direct Shadowrun-related example, as requested:
| QUOTE |
| The burden is on YOU to provide examples of the times the rules to the game Shadowrun have been changed as a direct result of people complaining about them. The burden isn't on me to go find such examples (as they pertain to Shadowrun, or office politics). The burden is on YOU, you made the statement. |
(Though of course you'll point out that it isn't cause-effect direct result, and I'll point out in turn that I didn't introduce the concept of "direct result" in the first place, for a reason. I'm only looking at where SR has morphed in the direction of public opinion, and what the patterns suggest about both public opinion and the future path of SR.)
Posted by: Critias Aug 3 2007, 09:56 AM
| QUOTE |
| And in SR, it's been demonstrated that enough hate, whether or not that hate has any objective grounding, will get the rules changed. |
That's your statement. "Hate will get the rules changed."
Not "can." Not "might." Not "it happened this one time, at band camp." Not "one rule changed, because of hate towards it and a ton of other stuff."
Just "Hate will get the rules changed."
All I'm asking for is you to point out times that that's happened. Times that someone said they hated ___________, and ___________ changed as a result. That's it. You started talking about office politics, and telling me I should look around and find my own examples of Shadowrun rules changing in everyday life. That's...pretty silly, and irrelevent. Sorry if you disagree, but that doesn't change the fact that it is so.
Politics at my office (or even your office) have nothing to do with Shadowrun rules changes. Similarly, if you were to ask me about a Firearms rule I don't like (as a for instance), I wouldn't reply with "I like cheeseburgers," and be thought of as having a discussion like a human being. My like or dislike of cheeseburgers -- much like politics around the office -- has nothing to do with Shadowrun's rules.
So if you can't find stuff to back up your statement, that's fine. If you want to retract the statement, instead of finding all these complaint threads that were met with rules changes, I'll understand. Just don't ask me what my favorite flavor of milkshake is, instead of acknowledging that maybe the rules don't get changed just because people complain about them.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 10:18 AM
| QUOTE |
| And in SR, it's been demonstrated that enough hate, whether or not that hate has any objective grounding, will get the rules changed. |
I still say that. It's not a cause-effect relationship, but the relationship exists: call it a syndrome-symptom relationship. Enough hate exists, the rules will change. I probably should have qualified the key demographics most listened to.
Example One:
1. I think we've demonstrated that the surgery rules are hated. No houseruling: this ruleset was simply ignored -- but the opposition had a strong voice on Dumpshock.
2. The rules on surgery have changed.
3. The rules on surgery have changed in an utterly predictable manner.
Or -- let's try another one: cyberlimbs.
Example Two:
1. Players have often wanted cyberlimbs, but hated the rules (which they saw as unnecessarily restrictive). Much houseruling, but players didn't see why they should have to houserule this. The opposition had a strong voice on Dumpshock.
2. The rules on cyberlimbs have changed.
3. The rules on cyberlimbs have changed in an utterly predictable manner.
It's the ability to reliably predict that suggests relationship. Do you see isolated, unrelated events?
Posted by: Critias Aug 3 2007, 10:41 AM
So despite threads concerning firearms realism being amongst the most common (enough so there are, as you're quick to point out, two such threads active right now, and for such threads to be common enough to be something of a running gag around here), there's not "enough" hate for them, as compared to, say...the surgery rules (which I barely recall ever even being mentioned before). What about SURGE, perhaps SR3's most vocally maligned material (which still exists in SR4)? How does the absence of change in the face of such hatred relate to your insistence that hate = change?
How do you measure when there's enough hate? What's the scale? Or are we just going to look for any rule that changed, and then claim it changed due to "hate" for the previous rules while providing no evidence of such hatred (like target numbers, combat pool, attributes)? And, in fact, when there were quite a few threads that were very vocal about their hatred of the new rules?
You stated very matter of factly that if people hate a rule, the Shadowrun dev team changes that rule. I'm pointing out instances where there's been plenty of hatred (and no change), and plenty of change (and no vocal hatred) -- so, sorry. But I still just don't see your statement as a true one.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 11:12 AM
Except insofar as it's already incorporated into timeline, SURGE has been steadily downplayed ever since its introduction. It's not something that can be completely undone, because it is part of the canon history. A future release probably will have minimal changeling rules alongside those for metavariants: but I'll also lay odds we won't see a SURGE II equivalent. There's your change.
(A prediction, in fact: and thus something to test theory against.)
Despite the regularly sprouting threads, the board feeling on firearms rules is much more schismed than it might seem at first sight. The participants in those threads are almost always "the usual suspects"; and really don't include very many of the mainstream members. Quietly scattered among many, many more threads is at least as frequent a desire to stay with the more abstract rules to assist playability. Both can be PC-taken advantage of, but only one of those positions is almost ideological.
Incidentally, firearms threads occur with approximately parallel regularity as such threads as "why magic is too powerful" and "why adepts are screwed". I wonder if the frequency of their appearance could trace a sine curve? Anyone want to run the numbers?
| QUOTE |
| How do you measure when there's enough hate? What's the scale? |
That's a wide-reaching question. I don't know the answer. That's probably a good thing, since it's tightly linked to complete manipulative control of human beings.
| QUOTE |
| Or are we just going to look for any rule that changed, and then claim it changed due to "hate" for the previous rules while providing no evidence of such hatred (like target numbers, combat pool, attributes)? And, in fact, when there were quite a few threads that were very vocal about their hatred of the new rules? |
Only when that rule changes predictably. Predictability defines relationship.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 3 2007, 11:32 AM
Going backwards a little:
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| 1. Anything fully within the PC's direct control and of which the PCs can take primary advantage (preferably to inflict damage on NPCs) should be very detailed indeed. |
Why do you say this? Do you apply a different set of rules to your NPCs than you do to your PCs? I don't, at least—with a few important exceptions—which means that there generally isn't anything that PCs can do to inflict damage on NPCs that the NPCs can't do. Unless you mean wageslave-style NPCs?
As for the exceptions, I don't play an NPC through several years of gameplay to their karma total. I don't roll to make sure they join their magical group, or that they got their 'ware implanted. Essentially, every negative part of the process doesn't exist for NPCs, and without a lot of work, those parts won't exist. You say the surgery rules are simple? Are they simple enough to do six times before every session, and a dozen or more before major fights?
I also think you are deeply misinformed as to the expectations of the "videogame generation"—or at least that there is a generation gap there you're failing to see. One consistent factor of older games, or even recent ones—see, for example, the new Ninja Gaiden Foo. The consistent of your experience is you die a lot. It is not a design goal that everyone should be able to finish the game. See an older game like Columns, where not only is there no victory condition, the hardest difficulty level (which is naturally reached during sustained play) drops pieces faster than most players can react to, and of the players who can react to it many can only do so for a limited time before fatigue ends their streak. Hell, see even Shadow of the Colossus, which, while not an insanely difficult game, isn't easy, and ends ultimately very ambiguously as to whether or not doing what you did has actually made things better for you or for others.
In short, if you see a trend of self-gratification, you're right if you only average the most popular games. You don't need to dig very far below the surface, though, to find exceptions starting to appear.
(Of course, the people playing Ninja Gaiden Foo probably find dying a lot enjoyable, at least in some way—but then, so do people who participate in any other activity)
| QUOTE |
| but a lack of personal gratification from a part of the rules is easily remedied by house ruling |
No, it isn't. Coming up with good rules, that are balanced and not hideously exploitable and don't have edge cases where you end up with extra ears implanted where your eyes were, is hard. Very few areas of the rules can be altered easily and without far-reaching effects.
Which is why the most common house-ruling is total removal, not alteration.
| QUOTE |
| Incidentally, firearms threads occur with approximately parallel regularity as such threads as "why magic is too powerful" and "why adepts are screwed". I wonder if the frequency of their appearance could trace a sine curve? Anyone want to run the numbers? |
Thanks to Fourier Analysis, it can be represented via composition of sinusoidal basis functions no matter what its frequency is.
~J
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 3 2007, 11:58 AM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||
Why do you say this? Do you apply a different set of rules to your NPCs than you do to your PCs? |
As I recall, the sentence immediately preceding that quote was:
| QUOTE |
| It's almost to the point of a Dumpshock truism: |
To identify an observed pattern is not to agree with that pattern ... or disagree with it, for that matter. In and of itself, it's simply a pattern.
Most of the scenarios I have run suggest to use this or that template straight from the books for the "generic" NPCs. This I've done. In doing so, I've accepted that that particular NPC isn't going to have the same depth as a PC. However, every NPC who has become important to the group does get that same depth. I think only two have gotten 'ware upgrades during the active storyline: and those did go through the surgery rules, yes.
FWIW, I've understood the surgery rules to be used for PCs only for in-game upgrades, not during chargen.
| QUOTE |
| I also think you are deeply misinformed as to the expectations of the "videogame generation"—or at least that there is a generation gap there you're failing to see. |
It's entirely possible. I know there's far more I don't catch than I do. It's a large world.
| QUOTE |
| One consistent factor of older games, or even recent ones—see, for example, the new Ninja Gaiden Foo. The consistent of your experience is you die a lot. It is not a design goal that everyone should be able to finish the game. See an older game like Columns, where not only is there no victory condition, the hardest difficulty level (which is naturally reached during sustained play) drops pieces faster than most players can react to, and of the players who can react to it many can only do so for a limited time before fatigue ends their streak. Hell, see even Shadow of the Colossus, which, while not an insanely difficult game, isn't easy, and ends ultimately very ambiguously as to whether or not doing what you did has actually made things better for you or for others. In short, if you see a trend of self-gratification, you're right if you only average the most popular games. You don't need to dig very far below the surface, though, to find exceptions starting to appear. |
Although I'll just say that popular games are popular for a reason: and the current direction of SR4 parallels it. I do find it entirely appropriate that there should be a counterculture in the videogames. And now there is a counterculture within SR.
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||
No, it isn't. Coming up with good rules, that are balanced and not hideously exploitable and don't have edge cases where you end up with extra ears implanted where your eyes were, is hard. Very few areas of the rules can be altered easily and without far-reaching effects. |
Okay, so the creation of houserules is an agonising exercise to which roleplaying groups willingly subject themselves repeatedly. I've got a binder full. We're real masochists!
| QUOTE |
| Which is why the most common house-ruling is total removal, not alteration. |
Hmm ... there's an interesting assertion. I honestly don't know. In your case, you tend to remove, you say; while in our case we usually amend ... lots of amendments post SR4. Would you throw open a thread and ask? I'd be curious as to the ratios.
| QUOTE |
| Thanks to Fourier Analysis, it can be represented via composition of sinusoidal basis functions no matter what its frequency is |
And Fourier sequences also demonstrate that a number is only an infinite sequence: though that doesn't do us much practical good when we're counting oranges. Do we choose to look at this as all relationships being meaningless, or all relationships being meaningful, or that all relationships have similar value?
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 3 2007, 12:15 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| FWIW, I've understood the surgery rules to be used for PCs only for in-game upgrades, not during chargen. |
Absolutely. But for an NPC, chargen goes as far as you want--you can't create a PC out of chargen with Delta MBW-IV and all the trimmings, but you can make an NPC out of "chargen" that way.
| QUOTE |
| Although I'll just say that popular games are popular for a reason |
Absolutely. We're not talking about "popular" and "unpopular" here, though--Ninja Gaiden Foo has sold very well and is a well-known title. Same with Shadow of the Colossus. Neither is selling comparably to The Sims, or the GTA series, or the Halo monstrosity, but they're nevertheless seeing solid results.
Going back a bit,
| QUOTE |
| As to the rest: remember the way of Kagetenshi's attempted revisions? |
Out of interest, what did you mean by this? I can interpret it several ways.
~J
Posted by: mfb Aug 3 2007, 02:44 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Except that your TN is -- well, negative -- and your threshold only matters if you don't want any negative options: most of which don't matter anyway if you are only getting the datajack and aren't expecting to take it into a standard shadowrun lifestyle. |
no, the TN is 4, because i specifically picked out a TN 4 situation. as for negative options, those are the negative results i've been talking about this whole time.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| You can judge for yourself if you want: you have only to ask for a copy. But I will say that I find the lifestyle rules to have been much more densely written than the surgery rules. |
i have never heard anyone besides you refer to the lifestyle rules as complex. as a matter of fact, most people i've talked to about them praise them for being so simple and easy to use. the lifestyle rules certainly involve a large number of factors, but the vast, vast, vast majority of those factors are all applied in the same manner, and they're all applied to one basic mechanic--add up points, compare the point total to a chart. the surgery rules, on the other hand, involve a large number of factors that are all applied to different mechanics--one for finding a provider, one for getting the provider to treat you, one for creating the medical profile, one for creating the surgery plan, one for doing the surgery, one for recovering from the surgery, and finally one for tallying up the price of the work. as i've explained several times now, the difference lies not in the number of factors involved but in the complexity of the base mechanic. the basic mechanic for the advanced lifestyle rules is very simple; therefore, it's easy to use even for someone who's never read them. the combat mechanics are complex, but they are used with great frequency; therefore, it's easy to use even rarely-encountered aspects of the combat system, because familiarity with the basic rules is ingrained.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at. |
i've used these rules every time a character of mine has gone under the knife. i haven't ever enjoyed using them. this is not a case of "that looks hard, i'm not going to use it", as you are implying.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| However, the vehemence with which this thread has been met suggests that it's not only enjoyment but their actual value -- which has now quietly morphed into the illusion of an objective value, applicable to all -- that is being questioned. |
most of the vehemence is in response to your tone. if you'd stop acting like anybody who doesn't use the surgery rules is a drooling X-Box generation munchkin, there probably wouldn't be any vehemence at all. whether you intend it or not, that really is the attitude you're projecting through the tone of your posts. if that's not the attitude you intend to project, post differently.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Aug 3 2007, 06:39 PM
| QUOTE (mfb @ Aug 3 2007, 09:44 AM) |
| most of the vehemence is in response to your tone. if you'd stop acting like anybody who doesn't use the surgery rules is a drooling X-Box generation munchkin, there probably wouldn't be any vehemence at all. whether you intend it or not, that really is the attitude you're projecting through the tone of your posts. if that's not the attitude you intend to project, post differently. |
THIS. This right f*ing here. Your unrelenting tone of smug self-satisfaction and superiority is driving me nuts. I haven't even had an argument with you and I'm hating you just from reading the way you talk to everyone else on DS. It has nothing to do with your opinions/ideas, and everything to do with the way you present them.
Text is admittedly ambiguous, but you have been nothing if not consistent. I'll freely admit that this may not be your personality, or the way you intend to present it, but I don't think mfb and I are completely alone in our perception of the way you present yourself, and the burden is on you to make sure that you're presenting yourself the way you want to be perceived.
edit: One more thing. If mfb and I really are completely alone in our perception, then I'll admit that the problem is probably with us and we probably need to practice our reading skills, but I do not believe that is the case, and unfortunately it wouldn't really be appropriate for a poll.
edit: Again, I edit. Okay, having had some time to calm down, this probably didn't come across in the most diplomatic way possible. And that's my fault. This post has been up here long enough that I think editing what I wrote would be dishonest, and y'know, I don't really want to change it either. But try to take it more as a helpful suggestion than a frothing rant.
Posted by: Fortune Aug 3 2007, 09:40 PM
That's funny. I agree with mfb's last post.
Posted by: Critias Aug 4 2007, 04:52 AM
| QUOTE (Moon-Hawk) |
| If mfb and I really are completely alone in our perception... |
Don't worry, you aren't.
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Aug 4 2007, 05:14 AM
Alright, enough said on that subject thank you.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 4 2007, 06:01 AM
@ Kagetenshi:
I referenced "popular" because you brought it in, no other reason.
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||
Out of interest, what did you mean by this? I can interpret it several ways |
Mostly that much of the underlying ideas were underway long before SR4 was finalised, but the developers of SR4 chose to go an utterly different route. I don't think any of those ideas made it, even in concept form, into SR4.
As to the deletion: copyright was said to be an issue, and it's the prerogative of those who run the board to decide their personal tolerance levels. Thus it has nothing to do with this topic.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) | ||
no, the TN is 4, because i specifically picked out a TN 4 situation. as for negative options, those are the negative results i've been talking about this whole time. |
Correct me if my math is wrong here.
From p.2, the original described scenario was:
| QUOTE |
| professional surgeons in licensed hospitals do not, statistically, have a one in three chance of screwing up horribly. hell, the screwups at Walter Reed that were recently in the news didn't have a ratio that bad. i mean, you are seriously suggesting that a professional doctor with a good, clean working area, the correct tools, and full knowledge of his patient's medical profile should have to pull a miracle out of his ass every third time he installs a datajack. |
Now to M&M.
A standard professional surgeon has Biotech/Medicine of 6.
Part 1 is medical profiling (p.144). The test is Medicine (4). A single success is needed (extras reduce the required time). Not succeeding will give a surgical modifier for "lacking medical profile" of +1.
Part 2 is creating a surgical procedure, which translates out to determining surgical data, is described on pp.146-7. The test is Medicine(4, +1 for every desired positive option). A single success is needed (extras reduce the required time). If it doesn't get successfully created, the surgical modifier for "lacking surgical data" is +1.
Part 3 is the surgery itself. A datajack is considered implant surgery, which gives a base TN of 4, +1 for every positive option desired (p.147). For simplicity, we'll just install the basic datajack, no bells or whistles. We do have to choose two negative options though (p.144, p.148). Per the table on p.144, we know that we need one success to succeed at all, and three successes not to have any negative options.
Now to determine TN.
The base TN for implant surgery (install cyberware) is 4. (p.147)
TN modifers: (text and chart, p.146)
-2 (medical facility/hospital)
-2 (medical gear of better grade than necessary)
Because it's only a standard issue datajack, we don't have an Essence of 2 or less, or any of the upgraded 'ware modifiers. Most people aren't Awakened, so we won't use that +1 modifier either.
This gives a revised TN of 0.
Another possble positive modifer is if an additional doctor is involved of skill at least Biotech/Medicine 4 (-1). Possible negative modifiers are teleconferencing (+1), lacking medical profile (+1), or lacking surgical data (+1) (just in case the earlier steps didn't succeed. This gives a final TN range of -1 to +2.
You could even choose to skip the first two steps entirely, and it would only penalise your TN by +2, changing the final TN range to between 1 and 4. And you'd still have six dice to roll.
The possible negative options for implant surgery of a datajack are an increased Essence cost (d6 x 0.05), Fragility (+1 to future stress tests), and Sensitive (twice as likely to be stressed, relative to its Essence slot ratio). None of these would be particularly relevant in a non-shadowrunning lifestyle where the only piece of 'ware is a datajack.
One success out of six dice is all that is needed to successfully implant the datajack. The second success removes one negative option. The third removes the other negative option.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't look to me like a 1/3 chance of catastrophic failure.
| QUOTE (mfb) | ||
i have never heard anyone besides you refer to the lifestyle rules as complex. |
You will notice that I didn't use that word.
| QUOTE (mfb) | ||
most of the vehemence is in response to your tone. if you'd stop acting like anybody who doesn't use the surgery rules is a drooling X-Box generation munchkin, there probably wouldn't be any vehemence at all. whether you intend it or not, that really is the attitude you're projecting through the tone of your posts. if that's not the attitude you intend to project, post differently. |
Actually, the vehemence I was referring to predates this thread, even to the word "hate", and as it happens I hadn't posted in those threads. Reading them was what gave me the idea for this thread.
So you and Moon-Hawk (and Fortune and Critias) will have to look elsewhere for the cause.
Posted by: mfb Aug 4 2007, 07:22 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| From p.2, the original described scenario was: |
no. that was not the original scenario. that was my response to your response to the original scenario. the original scenario was:
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| of course, one problem with the surgery rules is that they're not realistic. a good street doc (skill 6) in average conditions (no modifiers) will inflict some kind of debilitating condition on his patient with ridiculous frequency. something like a third of the time, i think? |
as i've said, i intentionally picked out a TN 4 scenario--no positive or negative modifiers.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) | ||
You will notice that I didn't use that word. |
fine. the lifestyle rules aren't complex, which means you've wasted everyone's time by bringing them up. thank-you.
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| So you and Moon-Hawk (and Fortune and Critias) will have to look elsewhere for the cause. |
you're going to have to look elsewhere for a conversation. i'm done with your smug bullshit. go play word games with someone else's honest attempt to explain things to you, you silly bint.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 4 2007, 07:29 AM
Your choice, of course.
I'll mention only that even in completely average conditions, so long as the street doc has any kind of non-mobile clinic at all: that's still a -1 bonus to TN, making a net 3 (not 4). (Mobile isn't average.)
And they still need only one success out of six dice to install the datajack successfully.
Posted by: Ravor Aug 4 2007, 07:47 AM
They still need three sucesses in order to achieve the same results that are automatically assumed at char-gen. And I don't know nor really care at this point how you run your games but I sure as hell am not going to roll up the possible surgery results on the NPCs I introduce into the campaign.
So not only are the rules a pain in the ass, they discourage Players from upgrading their cyber in play, they aren't fun, and impart an unfair advantage to the NPCs. There isn't much in them to love from the viewpoint of either a player or a DM, but if you like them then by all means continue to use them and covert them over to Fourth Edition as a House Rule.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 4 2007, 08:36 AM
I'm torn.
On the one hand, I know there is a rational and objective debate to be had. I can see counter-points to every single non ad hominem point that has been raised, including the most recent one. (Btw I am female, but I'm not Arabic, though I do understand a few words and know a few of the letters.) And in a different environment, I might well discuss them further, showing every bit of that self-confidence that translates as arrogance to those who have already decided a priori that I have nothing of value to say here: even though I happen to be agreeing throughout that there is general hate of these rules, even from the opening post of this thread.
That has never been the issue.
On the other hand, I also know that not one person currently involved in this thread is willing to look at anything I have to say on this subject rationally and objectively. It's already been decided, on a priori and sometimes circular logic, that the hate is fully and objectively and rationally justifiable. Ironically, that objective and rational justification is exactly what's being questioned.
So the only possible "win" would be if either if I were to abandon the debate (be silenced), or if I were to completely concede in every particular that all the negatives people keep bringing up are inherent to the rules -- and thus concede that the hate is rationally justified.
Like everyone else who has said much the same in this thread: I know there are better uses to make of my time.
Still, we do spend time at Dumpshock, don't we? 
Posted by: Vaevictis Aug 4 2007, 09:36 AM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| It's already been decided, on a priori and sometimes circular logic, that the hate is fully and objectively and rationally justifiable. Ironically, that objective and rational justification is exactly what's being questioned. |
Part of the problem is the assumption that people's preferences (and that's what we're really talking about here) need to be objective or rational.
1. I don't find that the surgery rules add anything enjoyable to the my games (a preference not needing objective or rational justification).
2. Because I find the rules cumbersome (opinion not needing justification), and because of {1}, the rules detract from my enjoyment of the game (again, something that doesn't need justification)
3. Because of {1} and {2}, I don't like the surgery rules.
It's not necessary to objectively and/or rationally justify such a progression; it's like asking someone to justify their dislike of a certain flavor.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 4 2007, 01:26 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Aug 4 2007, 01:01 AM) |
| I referenced "popular" because you brought it in, no other reason. |
I brought it in because I had a high confidence level that you were going to reference it. I'll grant that the most popular games dole out rewards fairly easily—but nevertheless, other games that cannot not be called "popular" don't. We're finding variety within the spectrum of "popularity", not having to go to games that no one has ever heard of.
Also, something to toss out there—how much effort is demanded of someone to watch a movie to the end?
| QUOTE |
| Mostly that much of the underlying ideas were underway long before SR4 was finalised, but the developers of SR4 chose to go an utterly different route. I don't think any of those ideas made it, even in concept form, into SR4. |
They pared down the number of Matrix actions and Utilities, just like we did. Other than that, we went in nearly diametrically opposed philosophical directions.
| QUOTE |
| As to the deletion: copyright was said to be an issue, and it's the prerogative of those who run the board to decide their personal tolerance levels. Thus it has nothing to do with this topic. |
Pink elephants could have been said to be an issue. It is the prerogative of those who run the board to decide what remains on it—nothing else matters.
| QUOTE |
| On the other hand, I also know that not one person currently involved in this thread is willing to look at anything I have to say on this subject rationally and objectively. |
It's not impossible that my mind is less open than I believe it to be. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this, at least barring the possibility that there is no "objective" and "rational", at least for the human mind, though, and if you aren't, I'm so thoroughly irrational about my approach that I can't even begin to see that.
Be aware, though, that my dislike of the surgery rules is based on quite a bit of pondering and debate as to what goes into good game design.
So did you ever provide a reason why
| QUOTE (me) |
| Basically, they were a totally uncontrollable risk you had to take any time you wanted to add cyberware, and one that didn't apply to most Awakened. Dying on the table because the NPC cyberdoc rolled badly isn't fun, and neither is having to consider whether or not to try to get major surgery to improve yourself while the party mage is learning how to deal 3S damage to an area 150 meters in diameter (IIRC) for very little drain. It's an unnecessary disadvantage, unequally applied, that has only small benefits to the game (it is vital that implantation cost be separated from 'ware cost for fencing 'ware to make any sense at all) and none that couldn't have been gotten some other way. The complexity doesn't even enter into it--it's uncommon enough that almost any amount of complexity is acceptable. |
either isn't a problem or isn't inherent to the rules?
(Post flows badly due to numerous edits)
~J
Posted by: Pendaric Aug 4 2007, 03:20 PM
With respect there are plenty of moderate posters on these boards that shy away from threads dedicated to debate, due the almost reflexive habit, of said debate being polarized into an arguement.
This done repeatedly by a small core that post vehemently on their chosen postion.
I define arguement as a situation where two distinct sides form with differing views that they REFUSE to change.
Most of those willing to debate the issue long gave up on this thread due to experience that the more venemous posts and pernious posters would be seen and referenced.
Welcome to dumpshock.
Posted by: Ravor Aug 4 2007, 05:49 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| On the other hand, I also know that not one person currently involved in this thread is willing to look at anything I have to say on this subject rationally and objectively. It's already been decided, on a priori and sometimes circular logic, that the hate is fully and objectively and rationally justifiable. Ironically, that objective and rational justification is exactly what's being questioned. |
*Shrugs* That is what tends to happen when you twist statements such as;
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| Besides, the fact remains that using the combat rules are simply more fun then using the surgery rules to what seems to be a clear majority of players, and I suspect that is the real reason most people don't bother to learn or use them. |
into;
| QUOTE (Invierno) |
| And now we have reached a key point: What is not immediately enjoyable or gratifying will not be looked at. That's how the circle is entered in the first place. |
All the while standing tall on your soap box and letting slip the occassional jab implying that people who generally like the direction Fourth Edition went are part of a younger, videogame raised generation.
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 4 2007, 05:51 PM
Here's a distinction:
Where a player is referencing only their opinion, there can't be statements such as "the rules are stupid": because that implies objective description. As soon as someone says that the innate structure of the rules is stupid, that is an objective statement. These are ways of demonstrating to others that one's own perception has some objective reality.
Were we talking about preferences only, there wouldn't be the need to do so, and we'd be hearing qualifiers like YMMV much more often.
Incidentally, rationality refers to the underlying structure being pinned on reason, ie. to have been thought out in a logical manner; but also in close parallel: to have an understandable reason. If we throw out rationality altogether, not much point in developing a shared rule system.
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Also, something to toss out there—how much effort is demanded of someone to watch a movie to the end? |
An interesting point. In parallel: is the percentage of students who try to do book reports by watching the film instead changing? I've recently been running across many, many college English BAs who have poor writing skills and who have stated they hate reading; plus I used to grade papers when I worked as a TA, and edit/tutor students long before that: so I've learned not to take anything for granted anymore.
I'm not thrilled about the threads deletion either. I'd have been much more upset if you hadn't been given a copy of all the threads. (You have, haven't you?)
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||
So did you ever provide a reason why
either isn't a problem or isn't inherent to the rules? |
Actually, from the first page I was suggesting not only that this may in fact be the case, but also that the desire to eliminate as much as possible compromise or any type of ceded control to an NPC may have been a dominant factor in SR4 rules changes generally. I believe I cited the changes to Astral Gateway as another example thereof.
In this case btw, I'd suggest that maybe the compromise and/or ceded control elements of the game are not an inherent problem. The powers of the world are not the PCs alone after all; and temporary circumstances may even bring temporary power to the least powerful of NPCs. Anaesthesia is even one of the classics of storyline.
Removing these elements consistently in favour of total PC control, however, does drift the game in the directions http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=18548. (Here's hoping I don't kill that thread with this link.)
It's a curious point that the power of this particular debate arose only because what had always been taken for granted was (a) questioned and (b) examined without assuming an underlying inherent problem. And you're right, Pendaric: it could have stopped instantly had I only accepted blindly what was always taken for granted.
What few may realise is that I really don't care about who rules which way on which rules. Before I wrote that last post I was literally speechless -- voice and written alike -- with helpless laughter: what could I possibly write to that? especially since the one thing I've been trying to avoid all along is a polarity? I'm really not trying to fight for one side. I'm just trying to keep the overwhelmingly dominant view from being the only view: something I think runs counter to understanding.
I'm just curious about what underlies reactions to specific patterns of rules -- especially where stated preferences sometimes surface-appear to contradict each other: and thereby obtain some level of understanding and predictability as to how perspectives evolve ... and thus maybe develop some idea about where canon SR is going?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 4 2007, 09:05 PM
| QUOTE (Talia) |
| Actually, from the first page I was suggesting not only that this may in fact be the case, but also that the desire to eliminate as much as possible compromise or any type of ceded control to an NPC may have been a dominant factor in SR4 rules changes generally. I believe I cited the changes to Astral Gateway as another example thereof. |
I think you're over generalizing. The rules changes in question (the new surgery rules, the new Astral Gateway rules) aren't symptomatic of the greater design philosophy of SR4 - that's just me personally as a writer (and by extension, Peter Taylor as an editor). I like to tie mechanics in to other mechanics and to remove hanging rules text or fringe cases where players can die without getting to roll dice.
But there's no world mandate for that. I just like it better that way - and if reviews are any indication I'm not alone.
| QUOTE (Talia) |
| I'm really not trying to fight for one side. I'm just trying to keep the overwhelmingly dominant view from being the only view: something I think runs counter to understanding. |
And the thing that I think you should step back and really take note of is that you are being a jerk.
Seriously. You think that you're out there trying to get people to think rationally about a concept and look at all the points of view - but what you're actually doing is repeatedly insulting the intelligence of everyone involved. Playing devil's advocate is all fine and all - but if you just tell people that they aren't being objective over and over again you're being... well... insulting.
-Frank
Posted by: Pendaric Aug 4 2007, 09:58 PM
It takes two or more to argue. My intent was not to shift blame on to one individual.
Is it so much to hope for casual free roaming debate. Like you have with your friends after a game?
Apparently yes. Because this is the internet which means the most innocent comment becomes insta-barbeque topic.
We have had good and interesting debate of this nature on Dumpshock.
No, really.
It just required everyone to be polite and relaxed, not throw down their opinion like a gauge to the challenge.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Aug 4 2007, 10:02 PM
I'm confused. This isn't the way you debate with your friends after a game?
~J
Posted by: Pendaric Aug 4 2007, 10:22 PM
"Dull thunk of head hitting wall repeatedly."
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 5 2007, 09:32 AM
Er -- Frank, don't take this the wrong way in turn: but your analysis and advice is coming from someone who has repeatedly agenda-advocated even over the actual rules as written in the SR4 forum, to the point of overtly insulting your fellow writers and calling the final edited work a piece of shit because it omitted your specific changes. (Yes, I've been reading the various Augmentation threads.)
A regular member who posted as you did would normally have been warned by the administrators, if not banned.
If you -- and others who were all too willing to jump on your bandwagon there -- see what I am writing as somehow personal when absolutely nothing of the kind has been said or inferred about anyone: well, I do have to consider where the criticism is coming from. Can't help but notice that despite the popularity of mob mentality, the same kind of bandwagon didn't form in this thread.
For others: the face-to-face debates of which I am a part tend to be much more animated. 
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Aug 5 2007, 03:05 PM
| QUOTE (Talia) |
| A regular member who posted as you did would normally have been warned by the administrators, if not banned. |
Frank is a regular member. Freelancers have no other rights or privileges on the boards than you do. Nor do they recieve special treatment. When someone posts something they should not, we either post a comment in-thread, or send a direct PM. IF someone does get a warning, we don't feel the need to report it to the boards as a whole.
I can understand that people here have issues with the way people post. That however is not the purpose of this thread, nor any thread. Please keep this on topic.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 5 2007, 03:52 PM
| QUOTE |
| Er -- Frank, don't take this the wrong way in turn: but your analysis and advice is coming from someone who has repeatedly agenda-advocated even over the actual rules as written in the SR4 forum, to the point of overtly insulting your fellow writers and calling the final edited work a piece of shit because it omitted your specific changes. (Yes, I've been reading the various Augmentation threads.) |
Guilty. There are many more diplomatic ways to clal attention to wording errors, but tactically it does call attention to those wording errors and gets things changed. The statement "I don't like the text on page 178" changes nothing, but my profanity laced tirade about recursive spirit invasion got unbound remote service errataed. Similarly for the text on Essence holes on page 127. Swearing and hat stomping does get the problematic text noticed (and since it doesn't even say what the alternate interpretation wanted it to say, it does need attention).
But consider that there is a difference between:
- Swearing and raising a fuss because some text is deficient.
and - Repeatedly condescendingly stating that the opinions of another person are not true and therefore wrong.
The first is being a jerk, but actually structurally neutral. Noone needs to be offended by that, it's not specifically directed to anyone. The second is directly belittling another person and virtually guaranteed to piss them off to no end.
As a self proclaimed total asshole, believe me when I say that there are lines that you don't cross if you don't want to start blood feuds. It's all well and good to insult inanimate objects, blocks of text, or even ideologies - but the instant you carry that over to individual people you've lost the moral high ground.
| QUOTE |
| A regular member who posted as you did would normally have been warned by the administrators, if not banned. |
Fist covered that quite well. I am just a member. And yes, I can get warnings. Just as Ancient History can get himself banned from RPG.net, and I can get banned from the WotC forums, I could very plausibly get banned from here.
-Frank
Posted by: Sedna Aug 5 2007, 04:39 PM
[edit]
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 5 2007, 04:44 PM
Is that all you think you did there, Frank: just some profanity?
But:
| QUOTE |
| Repeatedly condescendingly stating that the opinions of another person are not true and therefore wrong. |
Please, find one single place in this thread where I said that something was not true -- unless it is in the part about complexity, which I demonstrated to allow working through using one TN + modifiers (ie. far less complex than combat). That I did state, and repeatedly: and I cited the numbers to prove it.
If I can prove a point quantifiably and absolutely, why should I back down from it?
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 5 2007, 04:55 PM
| QUOTE (Talia) |
| If I can prove a point quantifiably and absolutely, why should I back down from it? |
Because you can't prove this point. You're comparing tangerines and guava.
One is an open test coupled to a success test, with the TN of the success test varying depending upon a considerable number of variables, and the results of the Open test likewise floating based on a series of variables some of which are outside of player control and some of which have to be selected from a list.
The other is an opposed test between two characters where the TN floats based on circumstance.
---
If people are telling you that figuring the results and odds of an open test coupled to a success test is "too complicated" while running any number of success tests one after another is not - maybe that's just not something you can objectively disprove. Possibly, quite possibly, people are getting pissed off at you because they have told you that in their experience doing that particular mathematical exercise is a pain and you told them repeatedly that in "absolute terms" they were somehow wrong.
-Frank
Posted by: Talia Invierno Aug 6 2007, 05:43 AM
Sorry, but it's not an Open Test.
Open Tests don't have TNs (defined both in Shadowbeat and the BBB), and the surgery rules do at every step. A modified or derived TN is still a TN.
Posted by: Fuchs Aug 6 2007, 08:45 AM
In my experience, the surgery rules were looked at when they first came out for SR1 or 2, not sure anymore, then people stated that they were unfair since they gave the possibility that all other things equal, luck would mean one character got more essence left for the same amount of implants than another, which our group felt we did not want to have in game.
Complexity and such did not come into play at all - back then, we'd have gladly spent a day figuring out the rules. We simply did not want to have characters pay uneven amounts of essence for the same implants due to lucky rolls.
I think this aspect wasn't mentioned before.
Posted by: FrankTrollman Aug 6 2007, 04:03 PM
| QUOTE (Talia Invierno) |
| Sorry, but it's not an Open Test. Open Tests don't have TNs (defined both in Shadowbeat and the BBB), and the surgery rules do at every step. A modified or derived TN is still a TN. |
Are you high?
| QUOTE (Man & Machine @ page 144) |
| Additionally, each Surgery Test made is treated as an open-ended Success Test. The target number for this is called the Surgical Threshold. The base Threshold is the test's target number. Count down the Procedural List, marking off options achieved by successes. Surgical options can modify the Threshold as options are reached on the Procedural List. Apply any Threshold modifiers; all such modifiers are cumulative. If the high result of the Surgical Test does not meet the modified Threshold, that option is not achieved, nor are any further down the list, even if there are successes remaining. |
-Frank
Posted by: Bull Aug 6 2007, 04:40 PM
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman) | ||
Are you high? |
Oookay. Time to put an end to this. Talia, Frank, to your corners. You're just butting heads now and refusing to back down. Since you're not making any progress, and it's just frustrating the both of you, I think it's time to close up shop before anything gets out of hand.
Bull
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