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Posted by: Voran Apr 14 2015, 06:49 AM

So, its been about 2 years since I've been here. Basically around the time when 5th came out. So I have to ask what's the state of the game? When I do a quick bookcheck, it looks like we're around...8ish books not including corebook revisions. Then I compare that to the couple dozen of the 4th edition I still seem to have (plus the couple dozen more of 3rd edition I have, and...hell I still have some old 1st and 2nd edition things). Can we anticipate the same level of sourcebook expansion as previous versions, or are things kind of winding down in light of focus on the MMO and other things? ...board game?

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 14 2015, 09:39 AM

there are the BBB (Big Basic Book aka Basic Rulesbook)
the Run & Gun
the Street Grimoire
and Runners Companion
4 Core Books.
Missing still are :
Matrix Book
Rigger Book
Cyberware Book
!
Additionally there are lots (and lots ) of PDF Rules-Add-ons, advanced Fiction ,etc.
( which I don't consider Books at all )

Yes ,maybe even more because CGL seems to like adding content (which rightfully belongs into Books ) in additional PDFs
to get an extra $ that fact delays the Printing of the core Rulebooks
So maybe in 2 Years (estimated) we'll have als SR5 Core Rulesbooks
and then (I guess) CGL will recycle the SR4A Citybooks and all the "old " SR4A Material and convert them to SR5 PDFs
(and maybe but just maybe into Books too)

with more dance than last Year
Medicineman

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 15 2015, 04:55 AM

Don't forget that the books being published over those two years have continued to have absolutely terrible editing and proofing, so despite the glacial release schedule the quality of content hasn't really gone up either.

Posted by: Voran Apr 15 2015, 05:20 AM

But at least we'll have a Rigger book soon right?






...right?
I mean, Rigger 3 couldn't have been the last one...right?


/crickets

Posted by: Jaid Apr 15 2015, 05:27 AM

of course it wouldn't have been the last one, don't be silly.

a quick google search leads me to believe that if i the drivethrurpg site was alive, http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/113039/Shadowrun-Rigger-4would be a link to rigger 4

(there is also another site that claims to have a PDF of rigger 4, but i'm somewhat less willing to click on random sites that i don't recognize... feel free to google it if you want).

(note: as i recall, rigger 4 was actually an april fool's joke, but it does actually exist... i mean, you can't end an edition of shadowrun without first sending out the herald of the end times, aka the rigger book )

Posted by: Glyph Apr 15 2015, 06:07 AM

I will not consider SR5 a complete game until they put out Rigger 5, with the SR5 stats for the Amish war buggy.

Posted by: Voran Apr 15 2015, 06:50 AM

I feel silly, but I just now caught up on "Where the fuck is the nanotech and genetech." I thought it was just lazy writing that left it out of the book, turns out its...."Um we're going to do a big retcon. Ignore all that material we had you buy before. Irrelevant!"

Posted by: bannockburn Apr 15 2015, 07:01 AM

Nah. Not completely. They just didn't get around to bringing out a dedicated cyber core rulebook yet. For ... you know, a cyberpunk roleplaying game.
It's not like genetech and nanotech were in the basic rules before, but that's one of my pet peeves: bringing out magic and gear books before the cyber stuff

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 15 2015, 07:26 AM

and don't forget Nanotech is "Schmutz" in SR5 now (don't touch it)

He who won't dance with Sybil
Medicineman

Posted by: Voran Apr 15 2015, 08:12 AM

Yeah, it almost feels like a, "Hey, any nano/genemod char you made back in our other edition? HAHA Screw You, he's probably a multiple personality NPC now!"

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 15 2015, 08:20 AM

and , to be honest,
the more CGL is against using Nanoware, the more I am inclined to use it, even if its just as Fluff (one of my SR5 Chars is using Nanotatoos purely for the style )

with a resistence Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Voran Apr 15 2015, 08:20 AM

And I see that Clockwork is still alive. Yaaaaaaaaaaay.

/sarcasm off

Posted by: tsuyoshikentsu Apr 15 2015, 08:24 AM

Clockwork being alive is a plus for me, actually. If they killed him they'd just need to create a carbon copy of him, and frankly, I feel about him the same way I do about the Yankees. (I despise him, but damnit, I want to keep him around so I can keep despising him!)

I really wish they'd write good rules for nanoware if for no other reason than if they did, this would make Shadowrun the best Deus Ex system ever. >.>

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 15 2015, 08:25 AM

...oO (If you want done something right, do it Yourself)

He who dances himself
Medicineman

Posted by: Sengir Apr 15 2015, 05:52 PM

Not really, unless the PC in question had direct contact with a head case. In which case even uninfected persons are not safe.

Posted by: Voran Apr 16 2015, 09:21 AM

Unless its been handwaved, wouldn't it make sense that this would actually be an excellent time to jailbreak your nanoforge and get feedstocks for dirt cheap or otherwise sitting unattended in some storage somewhere?

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 19 2015, 11:36 AM

You're doing that thing where you apply common sense to the SR5 rules. Down that path lies naught but biofeedback, brainbleeds, and NERPS.

I assume the nanoforges are Lost Tech ala 40k, just like PANs, TacNets, and fiber optic cable.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 19 2015, 01:39 PM

If I remember, even touching the same stuff a headcase touched is an attack vector.

Posted by: Voran Apr 19 2015, 11:21 PM

Don't rain on my parade I need to reconcile having practically every book since 1st edition. Otherwise the money sink/waste will make me cry

Posted by: Glyph Apr 20 2015, 01:06 AM

Yeah, it's a bit infuriating. Sci-fi tech should not go backwards to appease the grognards. All of this crap they've pulled with genetech and nanotech just seems stupidly contrived, an excuse to get rid of it.

Posted by: Shortstraw Apr 20 2015, 01:14 AM

They should check under the sofa cushions.

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 20 2015, 01:27 AM

It's less to appease the grognards and more to appease the sudden realization that they jumped the shark into what should shortly become post-scarcity transhumanism and needed to backpedal or accept that they've switched genres. If they intended to stay grimy cyberpunk, the nanotech and genetech should never have been published as it was.

Posted by: Voran Apr 20 2015, 02:46 AM

Heh, yet we're still fine with a "how did the native american population get so big?" and "wait...everything is controlled by a megacorp or some sort of organized crime family/group?" and "Um, yeah there's AI everywhere and people especially like the ones that munch on adware/etc"

Posted by: Glyph Apr 20 2015, 04:10 AM

I think it's a leap from the beginnings of nanotechnology to a post-scarcity economy, just as having shadowrunners as augmented or awakened outliers does not bode the imminence of the singularity. Even before nanotech was introduced into the books as 'ware, it was implied to be used extensively for a lot of manufacturing and construction. In other words, nanotech and geneware were marginal augmentations that didn't have to be anything more than what they were.

Shadowrun's primary genre has been the old romanticized outlaw trope that is older than dirt. It combined near-future sci-fi with fantasy to create a unique setting, but that setting should evolve, not remain stuck in the 80's. Even cyberpunk doesn't have to be nothing but old 80's paranoia and stuff cadged from noir novels.

Posted by: Voran Apr 20 2015, 07:12 AM

I still just pretend we're in the Blade Runner setting

Posted by: Not of this World Apr 20 2015, 03:11 PM

Whatever. I'm the old grognard it appeals to and I like to pretend as much as possible that 4th edition never happened.

everything that restores Shadowrun to Cyberpunk + High Fantasy is good with me.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 20 2015, 09:18 PM

Nanotech and wireless existed before 4e. And, actually, it's wires that is the lost tech in 5e.

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 21 2015, 01:14 AM

They did. It was the existence of consumer-grade nanoforges that was the tripping point for me.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 21 2015, 12:45 PM

Logical Extension of Technology... *shrug*

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 21 2015, 03:04 PM

Yeah, but once you can do that, you go from 'keeping the populace as drones because they're cheaper than robots' to 'keeping the populace as miserable slaves just to do it'... which I suppose fits, but a lot of people around here seem to not like the neo-anarchist part of the game as much as I do.

Posted by: Not of this World Apr 21 2015, 04:01 PM

Future magic / * hand wavum*

A future where autonomous AIs on every block can run autonomous nano-forges to replicate any object is NOT cyberpunk.

You can have both AIs & replication technology in a future cyberpink setting like FFG's Android universe where human labor is still in demand because its either cheap & easily available plus needed for a few high importance jobs.

In Cyberpunk technology AUGMENTS humanity
in Transhumanism it makes it obsolete and REPLACES humanity

so it was absolutely the right choice for a Cyberpunk setting. The logical extension of technology is now free to go in a different direction. Just like the Matrix does in every edition.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 21 2015, 04:46 PM

Yes, and eventually, Cyberpunk becomes Transhumanism. Logical Extension of the Genre.
It is a quantum step back to reverse technologies progress, doubly so in a game. It is completely unnatural. If you like that sort of stuff, then go ahead... Others do not appreciate it as much.

So, for me at least, the direction that SR5 went was NOT the absolute right choice for a cyberpunk setting that already had already introduced elements of Transhumanism (note it was still cyberpunk, just moving along the technology curve a bit).

Posted by: Voran Apr 21 2015, 06:20 PM

We almost hit Ghost in the Shell level stuff, but they decided to make those zombies instead.

Posted by: Sengir Apr 21 2015, 07:54 PM

The beginnings of nanotechnology were the "marginal augmentations" and use in manufacture and construction you described. Then 4th went full Drexler and introduced nanoware which was cheaper and better than its cyber equivalent, spray-on electeonic devices, desktop nano manufacturing (although with handwave DRM), and in general used "nanites" as a lazy excuse for everything.

Omnipresent magical nanobots means omnipresent means of production (and environmental cleaning, health...) resulting in an egalitarian utopia, not the vast imbalance between megacorps and outcasts.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 21 2015, 08:51 PM

Except that it was merely introduced and becoming available... such things do not happen overnight. Yes, it was pushing towards Transhumanism, but that is the next step, so...

Posted by: Sengir Apr 21 2015, 08:56 PM

Take a look at the cost and Avail ratings for nanoware...

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 21 2015, 09:29 PM

I have... the world had yet to truly be affected, though. It was coming, to be sure, but it was not there quite yet.

Posted by: Glyph Apr 22 2015, 02:21 AM

The thing with the nanites was that they still degraded, so you were a far cry from Aristoi (the novel) levels of effectiveness, or Star Trek-style replicators. Honestly, I would not have minded a milder ret-con, where unforeseen problems with nanoforges arose, or a few geneware modifications had adverse long-term effects. The fluff text did emphasize that this technology was being released too quickly and with too little testing, and that some of the people using it were little more than guinea pigs. But the full-scale ret-con is jarringly bad. The nanoware zombie apocalypse ranks up there with "your two DNI-linked augmentations need to connect to the internet to be able to work together" in lameness.

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 22 2015, 06:36 AM

+1

Hough!
Medicineman

Posted by: Voran Apr 22 2015, 07:42 AM

I wasn't a huge fan of the "secret RFID minitags that stealth squeal on you from inside your gut" possibilities.

Posted by: Sengir Apr 22 2015, 11:44 AM

Nanites only degrade without a hive to sustain them, which is why nanoforges include such a hive...and it does not even require a controlled environment within a closed container.


So universal assemblers as seen in Star Trek or The Diamond Age absolutely are a thing. Self-replicating nanites as in Aristoi used to be not possible, sadly Stolen Souls dropped the ball and declared the infected nanites to be capable of that -- which brings up another reason nanites need to go, the writers just don't think about what an Arakis-sized can of worms they're handling there.



A retcon means retroactively changing the continuity, in other words re-writing what previously was established history. Declaring that Dunkelzahn was assassinated after three years in office or nanites never were developed would be examples of a retcon. Introducing a new element which changes the rules from now on forward isn't a retcon.

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 22 2015, 12:23 PM

is pretending that Skinlink never existed a Retcon or not ?

with a Retdance
Medicineman

Posted by: Not of this World Apr 22 2015, 05:21 PM

Would a hand wavum explanation like 4th's sudden UMT for magic suffice?

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 22 2015, 05:44 PM

Only if it moves the world forward instead of backwards...

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 22 2015, 06:21 PM

the UMT is no retcon its a moving forward from archaic rules that made no sense
( like the OD&D Priest can use only Blunt Weapons (like a Mace) because he isn't allowed to shed blood )

with a forward Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Czar Eggbert Apr 22 2015, 08:10 PM

Or, if you want to go Old School, Decking Naked.


The Eggman

Posted by: Not of this World Apr 22 2015, 08:42 PM

Removing content & meaningful choice is forward? Now its just silly.

we get it, 4th edition was the pinnacle for you. An edition ago I was the 3rd edition guy complaining how we were losing traditions, cyberware suddenly bcame hackable, mechanics were a messy rip off of nWoD, etc. Changes happen in every edition including from 3rd to 4th. You like your rationalizations for changes and don't like when new ones are given to the rules you liked.

so don't play 5th

As someone who never stopped playing 3rd through the 4th era of Shadowrun, I'm very glad the 5th gave me common ground with the current generation of Shadowrun players at my FLGS. The game is more active than ever.

P.S. - in my games the 4th edition retcons never happened. System Failure until the 5th edition is not canon at my table.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 23 2015, 12:31 AM

Oh, it sure is cyberpunk as long as it's cheaper to get a bunch of SINless trogs produce said object.
In fact, autonomous AIs with nanofaxes are no different than fully automated factories in their impact on the setting.

On the contrary, one of the major themes of cyberpunk is technology making baseline humanity obsolete, with the rich becoming not just the same people, except with more money, but actually superiour in intellect, personal power, charisma and every other meaningful characteristic to an ordinary guy.
In fact, technology augmenting humanity and making its lot better is the core principle of transhumanism: "the tech will make all our problems go away" - that's their motto. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, explores the darker side of innovation: "the tech will make our problems only worse".

But the UMT was mentioned numerous times before 4e.

I like my rationalizations to make in-game sense. If that rationalization is "well everyone agreed to just switch over to a new Matrix protocol with no backwards compatibility that has no defined rules for legitimate users to access their devices and requires two devices right next to each other have access to the Matrix to interact", well, excuse me if I call bulldrek. Second Crash, dissonant virus, superAIs dashing it out, magically changed EMP nukes? Yeah, that's the motivation for change I can believe in, especially when that change is backwards compatible.

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 23 2015, 08:16 AM

see ,considering the Crunchdifference between Shaman and Hermetic and later the other Traditions
is for You a meaningful choice and for me its a prehestorical Rule in the same category as a D&D Clerics Weapon restriction
If you don't see that we have different Views on this topic than clearly You are silly, not me



not quite
the 4A Ed was better than the 5the Ed, (and I'm playing both at conventions and at Home)
No the Pinnacle is a Mix from SR4A and 5th Ed
( F.E. Skilllevel of 9(10) is best. 4A's 6 (7) levels is to few and 5th Ed 12(13) is too many Levels )

with a mixed Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Voran Apr 23 2015, 10:46 PM

Side note, I've always kind of wondered why we needed a version update. Was 4th too bloated or something? I get the dice pools could get silly, and the commlinks as cyberdecks, but otherwise what prevented just a continuation of that line? I mean, we joke about the Rigger book, but now we're changing editions before we even cover all the stuff from the previous version. Do new editions stimulate new entry of funds/players as opposed to adding stuff on?

Like remember back in the day when things like DnD lasted for like...10 years, now we're looking at new editions every 5 or so? Will we be moving to new editions every 2 years for games ?

Posted by: silva Apr 24 2015, 01:41 AM

Speaking as an old SR2/3 fan that didnt like 4th edition at all, I find 5th is a return to form for the line, by bringing back some of its emblematic tropes (cyberdeck, punk attitude, etc) while retaining some good parts from 4th and even improving on it (matrix rules).

But being completely honest, I would rather have a a "SR 2.5 Special Edition" that takes that old edition as a base and lapidate/improve on it. Im not a fan of 4th/5th inflated dice pools, flavourless magical traditions, Edge, Qualities, etc. I think Shadowrun evolved in the wrong direction, really.

Posted by: Glyph Apr 24 2015, 02:13 AM

SR5 takes some of the things I disliked about SR4 and makes them worse. Wireless, which you could at least opt out of in SR4, gets shoved down people's throats even harder. Things aren't much better for deckers themselves, who have overwatch score and ownership, both very problematic mechanics.

I originally thought they were actually going to nerf social adepts - kinesics (resistance only), voice control (limit increase only), and improved ability (more expensive, and only one skill at a time) were relatively balanced against tailored pheromones. Sure, the main flaw with balancing adepts was retained - they could have their abilities and get tailored pheromones. Mundanes were at least competitive, though. Then came Street Grimoire, with authoritative tone and cool resolve. The pornomancer is back; go adept or go home.

Mages get nerfed - well, not really, that much. A category of spells gets nerfed to oblivion, which only means that indirect combat spells replace direct combat spells as the go-to ones, and mental manipulation spells are still effective, and spirits are more overpowered than ever. Background count is back, but honestly, all that flat dice penalties do is encourage more min-maxing, so you will have dice left after penalties.

The SR3 stuff they shoehorned in doesn't fit as well. Decks I can see as "professional-level" commlinks. One way to weed out the script kiddies, I guess, but I hate how gear-dependent it makes deckers (riggers are also that way). I wish they had simplified hacking even more, and made it more ubiquitous, rather than shoehorning deckers and riggers back into their own D&D-style character classes.

Overall, the game feels less fun and more constrained, despite the increased power level. The "cyberpunk attitude" is reserved for "clever" little asides mixed in with the rules - it is more grating than anything else to me, although thankfully they don't use it too often.

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 24 2015, 04:48 AM

Given the lack of editing quality and the dismal release schedule, I still think 5e releasing when and as it did was simply Catalyst needing an injection of book sales dosh.

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 24 2015, 07:14 AM

I think Jason Coleman can answer this question best


No I don't think so, not Now (and by the way, the Freuquenzy was 6 Years in average for a New Edition IIRC )


Yes/maybe


If read a few Times that oldschool SR2/3 Players that "wouldn't touch SR4 with a 10 Feet Pole" consider the 5th ed and the Rules the Best thing since the invention of sliced Bread
I guess I will never (ever ) understand these Kinds of Gamers or their Perception

@ Glyph
+1 from Me

Hough!
Medicineman

Posted by: Machiavelli Apr 24 2015, 08:50 AM

I still cannot befriend with SR5. For me, the changes they made were either not important (hacking) or so bad (magic), that I got an overall negative impression. Aside from some stupid game mechanics (use of dram, reintroduction of cyberdecks, wifi-bonus, etc.) I was very disappointed with the general quality and the small content of the books. Proofreading was either non-existent or incompetent (I cannot tell what is worse) and publishing a new sourcebook (e.g. the new version of street magic) with – I don´t know – below 100 pages or so, was just a bad joke. What´s next? 3-page-minibooks for 50 cents? A subscription with monthly payment? Pay to win? Maybe I should shut up, before I am I guilty if this happens in SR6. 

I am with SR since 1st edition, and we always complained about the new version and the “damn money-greedy guys, that publish new versions just to get into our wallets”, but if I am honest, I wouldn´t go back to a previous version. Changes are always difficult – that is a problem of humanity, but most of the time you get used to it and after a while you see the benefit. SR4 was (for me) great. There were a enough vague rules to justify coming to DS and complain about them, you had a lot of options and if you wanted to go for powergaming, I think it was never easier then at 4th.

The switch to another version was overdue and I was really excited to get my hands on the SR5 core-book, but the first thing I lost, was the feeling for SR. SR5 is the first version that killed my childlike interest to put my nose in the book, to explore them, my wish to play around and create sample characters and – which was even worse - my imagination/picture of the game-world. I had the impression, that it was just a plain try to get quick money, no matter the costs (financially or emotionally), using existing data, changing some game-mechanics and tadaaa…we tell everybody it is a new game. They have an enormous output – I will give them that - but none of it gives me the feeling of completeness. Also the new official forum was (again, only for me) more an assault on the existing fan-base than everything else. DS was the place to be and I was very disappointed, that they rather tried to suck all the experience to their own baby. There would have been better solutions. I think, SR is not what they want it to be. It had heart, it was a small community of nerds and geeks and we were fine with it. Now they want to make it a mainstream product and I fear, that this was a bad choice.

You might have noticed that since 5th, I am not that active on DS anymore and I also got the impression, that the overall use of shadowrun forums dropped drastically. I think that I am not the only one with this impression and especially the lack of really long discussion threads seems to confirm this opinion.

I can only hope for a change.

Posted by: Sengir Apr 24 2015, 11:32 AM

Shadowrun 4th Edition was the longest lasting edition of the game so far, released in 2005. And it was a a full overhaul of the mechanics, which obviously would not get everything right the first time (and 4A only contained a small volume of fixes). From timing and necessity, a 5th edition was completely in order. What became of it is another story

Posted by: DeathStrobe Apr 24 2015, 05:01 PM

Obviously, some people's personal biases are blinding them to the actual state of SR.

The official forums didn't kill dumpshock. Dumpshock killed dumpshock by being so negative about everything Shadowrun. You guys make the freelancers not want to come here. You make new users not want to come here. Obviously there is no reason to talk about SR here, because the talk that Dumpshock likes to talk about is the death of Shadowrun.

SR4 is still being supported, strangely enough. So clearly if SR5 is a money grab to force everyone to buy new books, CGL is doing a terrible job at forcing you to buy SR5 when things like http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/144938/Shadowrun-Battle-of-Manhattan-Boardroom-Backstabs is SR4 compatible.

I don't know if you've been keeping up with other RPGs outside of Shadowrun, but all RPGs have editing issues. I can't imagine CGL is able to single handedly solve all the issues of the entire hobby. Cut them some slack and discuss the problems and how to solve or interpret the issues rather than spew out vial that doesn't help anyone.

Lastly, Shadowrun is more popular than ever. SR books are almost always on RPGDriveThru's top 10 best sellers, as well as core books are often rewarded with platinum status. the shadowrun subreddit is huge, and there are 2 shadowrun play subreddits. CGL's forums run poorly, I assume because they're getting a lot of traffic.

If you don't like SR5, that's fine. But by not supporting it, you are willingly being left behind. You can't stick your head in the ground and expect people to come to you. What are you going to do? Have the same rule discussions about SR4 that have already been talked about a million times over?

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 24 2015, 05:42 PM

As a counterpoint, SR5 has been out for two years. The fact that they feel they need to make new releases SR4/SR5 compatible does tend to demonstrate that even CGL doesn't think SR5 got the kind of take-up it could have.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 24 2015, 11:28 PM

Yep, this. The fourth has a lot of problems, both minor and major, and it could certainly use an update. The thing is: the update is supposed to be better than the current version.


You could certainly enlighten us. Or what, do you think that no one here knows or recognizes the fact that the new videogames brought new blood to the game?

Shitty writing does not equal Shadowrun. Writing books without caring to read up on the fluff does not equal Shadowrun. Absent editing does not equal Shadowrun.

Or, you know, making things backwards compatible could mean they were written before the new edition hit the shelves, and are just now being published.

All RPGs have editing issues; no major RPGs of the same class as Shadowrun have editing issues of anywhere near the scale. I can't recall a D&D book messing up a character's name thrice on the same page, or calling dragon hoards "hordes", or failing to provide errata for years. As a matter of fact, Shadowrun until quite recently did not have editing issues of the kind. Why should anyone remain silent about that? How do you "solve issues" with rules which make no goddamn in-universe sense whatsoever, not to mention often directly contradict themselves?
Other than houseruling half a system, that is - but minding that 5e is an update for 4e, perhaps a saner decision would be houserulling the later, then?

Could I please see the numbers?

Nah, we're going to discuss for the millionth time why optic cables are archeotech and how a particular clothing cut improves your negotiation skills even over the Matrix. That's just so much better.

Posted by: Cain Apr 25 2015, 03:34 AM

4.5 had a lot of problems that needed addressing. Of course, some of them 5e actually made worse.

Technically, that never happened, although it kind of depends on how you count them. Ist ed D&D was split into two lines, Basic and Advanced, and there were about four Basic editions. If you go from last core book, AD&D started in 77, and ended in 85. 2e started in 1989, but pretty much shut down after 1995. 3e ran from 2000-2003, and 3.5 lasted from 2003-2008. Eight years is pretty much the max.

Posted by: Sengir Apr 25 2015, 10:53 AM

In that case there still was the conscious decision to leave the old rules in, CGL could just as well have removed them.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 25 2015, 09:27 PM

They were already there in that scenario, why throw them out if having them in would mean milking the grognard crowd for their dosh?

Posted by: Machiavelli Apr 27 2015, 05:37 AM

@DeathStrobe: please don´t misunderstand me. Like i pointed out, this is just my impression. Nothing else. The only thing i recognized, is that i haven´t had a problem with 4 editions of the game. 5th is the first one, that killed my interest in Shadowrun, so whatever was the reason, something bad seems to have happened. If SR becoming more maintream and therefore more popular is a good thing or not, is up to yourself.

Posted by: sk8bcn Apr 27 2015, 07:53 AM

I've bought Shadowrun books like a collectionneur. I have now nearly full 3rd-4th ed + 5th core book. But I didn't read loads of it, I'm still not past Dunkelzahn's will.

Honestly, many books of 2nd ed I did read are poor or bad.

But everytime I come on DS, I get the feeling that the game must have evolvd into the baddest RPG ever made.

For a time, I believed it. Then something changed. The 3rd ed grognards somewhat faded a bit more in the background and 4th became the "best norm". And it's 5th that is now dispised.

This thread was about what was going to be released, guesses at rates and stuff and turned again in the debated to death "edition war".


To be honest, I think too that Dumpshock is killing himself with always the same old things...

Posted by: Fatum Apr 27 2015, 05:16 PM

Before drawing parallels between the edition changes, you could just open up the topic on the shortcomings of 5e core, and compare that to where you know, say, 4e is lacking.
I don't recall rules in 4e core directly contradicting themselves, or making no sense whatsoever outside of gamist worldview.

Posted by: DeathStrobe Apr 27 2015, 05:58 PM

Oh really? You don't remember in SR4A where the drain of direct spells suddenly got a lot harder the more successes you had? Almost like the developers realised how broken magic that could only be resisted with one stat was while also having the best drain formula in the game.

How about every test being Attribute + Skill, except oddly the Matrix, making the game system inconsistent with itself.

How about emotitoys?

SR4 isn't perfect. Its a good system. But SR5 does actually fix the clearly problematic parts of SR4. You've been on dumpshock long enough, I don't know how you couldn't see the problems with SR4.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 27 2015, 06:12 PM

OPTIONAL RULE, for those who preferred it.
As for resistance with one stat... never really had much issue with it at our table, to be honest. There were enough ways around it that it had some impact, but rarely what is described here. Tables are different, though, so...


OPTIONAL RULES in the books can be implemented to fix that issue...


They were weird, to be sure, but not insurmountable. The majority removed the Emotitoys themselves (I know we did)... You wanted the software, you had to get appropriate hardware to run it at capacity. This tended to keep it in line, at least at our table.



I disagree with you here... SR5 fixes SOME of the issues, and introduce a lots more that just make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Yes, SR4/4A has issues, but no where near the issues SR5 has.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 27 2015, 06:15 PM

It's like you don't even read what I'm writing, DeathStrobe; or is that an extremely naive attempt at a strawman argument?

I never claimed that 4e was perfect (see my comments on the subject above), but, as I said, to the best of my knowledge it never had rules that contradicted themselves ("troll lifestyle costs are X" here and "troll lifestyle costs are Y" there) or made no sense outside of gamist worldview ("how do legitimate users use the new matrix?" "why do implants need Matrix and not just radio contact to communicate, even if direct cable connections are losttech?" "how do wireless bonuses work for laser sights or extendable batons or clothing boosting Negotiation even over Matrix?" etc etc etc).

While 5e did address a couple problems with 4AE, it added so many more as to be largely unplayable without the GM putting in unproportional effort to houserule its shortcomings away. Minding that this effort will have to undermine the very basic subsystems introduced in 5e and that the new story arcs are hardly engaging (Body snatchers? Yet again? Oh whiz!), the new edition needs something more than decent art to make people switch over.

Posted by: apple Apr 27 2015, 06:23 PM

Actually that is an optional rule. But this optional rules is as often used as the basic rule that partial / full cover gives you spell resistance dices or that there is BGC - it is something a lot of GMs overlook. Granted, F/2+1 would be better for the stunbolt. But the problem is not the stunbolt, it was overcasting with x2 (goes the same for spirit summoning) . We have a houserule where overcasting is +2 and not x2 - and that overcasting issue was not solved in SR5, where a magic 5 mage still have good chances to summon a force 10 combat spirit.

If there are 2 things which SR4 did wrong it was overcasting made so easily and extended tests in often occurring situations.



What about the smartlink or the medkit? Or as in "toy is cheaper than software"? Well, that is certainly something which should have been changed - but it does not warrant a new edition nor is it a big issue. Still a thousand times better than "online silencer, online clubs, online air tanks, online stealth suits".



Really? With what? Cumbersome combat (hit => dodge => soak)? Multiple diceroll necessary for fast hacking? Overcasting x2? Exploding dice pools? Nope. Granted, Str vs Str/2 as base damage for melee combat and the increased damage codes are a big improvement, as are the new hardened armor rules. Except of course if you are playing a drone rigger.

SYL

Posted by: Glyph Apr 28 2015, 01:26 AM

SR5 could have been a lot better. There are hints, in things like the subtle revisions to the rules for Edge, or regeneration, that show how it could have refined a lot of the problematic areas of SR4. But the problem comes down to the editing. Too many incomplete or contradictory rules, with different writers working at cross purposes, or nerfing something one way without seeing that it has already been nerfed another way. It is marginally better now, but even Run Faster has things like dryads having no additional cost in Priority, but a 50 Karma higher cost in Point Buy or Life Modules. Now, apparently (from what I've heard), the Battletech stuff is supposed to be edited much better, so this problem seems to be exclusively for Shadowrun.

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 28 2015, 05:21 AM

does it really boil down to Editing ?
ImO its the Developing of the Core Rules ! (Editing is a Problem too, sure but I think thats a Symptom of the Sickness, not the Sickness itself )

The whole Idea of trying to Force the Player Chars to use WiFi, the Misconception that SR4A Hackers had nothing to do
in Combat,
The neglection of advises from Testplayers and Freelancer,the fact that JH wrote and published a novel ( which was bound to divert his Attention from SR to his own novel ) and many more Issues show (at least to me) that the developing Head of SR is not at it with all of their Heart/ all of their Attention.
Some of the Rules where a good Idea but than they overshoot the Mark. f.E. Skill lvl 6 in SR4A was not high enough. the Good Idea was to raise it but they overshot it bey raising the Bench to 12
Now this Benchmark of 12 can hardly be reached by normal Chars, it needs to much Karma , Chars generally need more karma and the Skill Lvl of 12 is (ImO) totally in the Domain of NPCs now.
If the Developer would've raised the Skill Benchmark to 9(10) this would've been Perfect.
And there is so many more Points where the Head developers have seen bad SR4A Rules , went 180 ° but then they
overshoot the Mark and the new Rules are just as bad (or even worse) but "in the opposite direction" ( Boy, I hope I made myself clear, this is not easy to explain, not even in German )


with a hopefully clear Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Machiavelli Apr 28 2015, 05:51 AM

No worry. I would have explained it the same way. If you know the german block format it really is not a problem. ^^

Posted by: Bull Apr 28 2015, 10:49 AM

Just a heads up... Jason's novel was written like 5 or 6 years ago, before he even became line developer (or at least contracted and probably partially written). It was one of the ones that were planned and announced ages ago, right before Topps ran into issues with Roc over the old novel line and put everything on hold.

Remember how Lagos had a write up in one of the books (Smuggler's Havens, maybe?) and was a featured location in one of the first Dawn of the Artifacts adventure. It was, I believe, initially conceived to synergize with those.

And now, carry on with the hate.

Posted by: apple Apr 28 2015, 11:56 AM

So, Bull, its 2015 ... why do the base core books take so long that we are not even sure that they will be available at the end of 2016 if its not the PDFs, novels, missions or campaigns?

1) Summer 2013 SR5 Release
2) 2014/beginning of 2015 Magic and Guns (without a lot of weapon mods)
3) Maybe Summer 2015 Matrix, maybe later (the announcement sounded like "Yeah, it will be later 2015")
4) Maybe Autumn 2015 Cyberware, maybe later
5) Maybe there will be a Rigger Book 2016, maybe not ...

WHY exactly does it take so long for CORE books?

SYL

Posted by: Sendaz Apr 28 2015, 12:27 PM

I did like the book, I do admit I was a bit hesitant buying it initially, but Hardy wrote a good piece there.

And yeah it would have been a nice tie in even with Feral Cities which had a good bit on Lagos.


Phosphorous Laced Torches ... Check

Memorymetal Pitchforks .... Check

Rent-A-Mob .... Check

Good to go.

Posted by: Critias Apr 28 2015, 02:17 PM

Yeah, Bull, what the fuck?! Explain yourself!

Posted by: Shemhazai Apr 28 2015, 05:34 PM

Would it break the game if there were no upper limit except at chargen?

Posted by: Sengir Apr 28 2015, 05:37 PM

I'd say it would be more profitable to starve them of new releases until they switch over...also, 5th is the grognard edition with all its "every was better in 3rd" throwbacks

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 28 2015, 07:04 PM

It wasn't in 3rd ed . .

Posted by: Medicineman Apr 28 2015, 07:05 PM

Counterquestion:
Would it break the Game if the Standard NPCs have a Skill of 12+ and a Pool of 20+ Dice, if the Mary Sue NPCs have Skills of Level 15-20+ and pools of 30+ Dice while the Chars need Dozens of Karma to reach Skills of Lvl 8-10 and get a Pool of 20 Dice ?
If You say No, than my Answer is No too
(as I see it, now only NPCs profit from the High Level Skills ! Unlimited Skill Level would widen the Gap between PCs which have to earn each and every Karma Point and NPCs that can be given any Skill level (and any Pool level ) they need)

with a Counterdance
Medicineman

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 28 2015, 07:44 PM

Highly Subjective Statement, there Stahlseele.
While it was rarely the Skill level that was the problem for high level PC's/NPC's (And to be honest, I rarely saw any beyond mid-level Teens - they were just too expensive), the Karma Pool resulting from spending the Karma to gain such levels renders the argument pretty moot, since they could just reroll till they succeeded.

Posted by: Glyph Apr 28 2015, 07:52 PM

I know a skill of 12 is something a PC will rarely reach, but it should be very rare among NPC's, too. I know what you are saying, Medicineman, but SR4 had the same problems - they just gave special rules for their legendary NPCs. Or gave them ludicrous levels of initiation, since Magic was not capped. I would rather have a rarely-reached level of skill to logically depict the best of the best NPC's, than see the shenanigans that SR4 had. I can live with 12 as the new limit - I just wish Magic was capped, too.

You can actually reach a rating: 12 skill - at character creation. If you're an adept (magicrun, don't ya know?), that is. Take Aptitude and start out with 7 in a skill, take 4 levels of improved ability (yeah, it rounds differently than in SR4). and take a reflex recorder (which stacks, because SR5 has no augmented limit for skills). Voila, you're a "legend".


SR3 had completely uncapped skills, but it had a different feel. The PC archetypes had lots of skills at 6, while the NPCs tended to have lower stats, with a 7 or an 8 being reserved for the best/toughest of the stock NPCs. A skill of 6 might not have been the maximum, but it was still damn good.

In SR5, it is curious - the archetypes almost look like they were built with SR4 skill caps, but the contacts, wow, lots of high skills. The fixer has a negotiation of 9, and even the beat cop has three 6's in his active skills. It looks like they revised NPC's down to more realistic levels with Run Faster, where they are toned down more. But the archetypes are definitely a lot more like SR4 characters than SR3 characters.

Posted by: Voran Apr 28 2015, 07:54 PM

As for delays, I can sorta see why. The downside with an evolving world with 'dates' attached to it is that you really can't keep it static. At the same time, it can be difficult actually writing that storyworld as it evolves. There is a serial nature to this stuff, where the previous stuff is the stuff that current stuff builds off of. It does make swerves (nanotech, etc) more noticeable and we can perceive them as disruptive because we can see it as 'step back' or 'step away' or because we have no idea where things are going its harder to put it into context other than, "so why did I buy all those books again?"

Like I noted, I stepped away from the game pretty much entirely since 2013 when I was last here, and I believe SR5 had just come out. Gamers get fatigue and I imagine the devs do as well.

I do kind of wish we nail down a basic system, then just supplement it with flavor and additional stuff. Like you know how a GURPS or Palladium system is basically going to go, and the world just gets built around that.

Posted by: Nath Apr 28 2015, 08:51 PM

Target: Smuggler Havens was released in 1998, and I don't think it mentions Lagos at all. You're most likely referring to the Lagos chapter in Feral Cities in 2008, written by Jennifer Harding.

Posted by: Bull Apr 28 2015, 08:53 PM

I'm pretty sure that elfy asshole Critias is too busy writing lame-ass fiction and can't be bothered to write any game rulebooks. So there's that.

Posted by: Bull Apr 28 2015, 08:54 PM

Yeah, Feral Cities. I've been on a bad insomnia binge for several days now, so... My critical thinking and memory are slightly fuzzy at this point.

Posted by: freudqo Apr 28 2015, 09:33 PM

Maybe that's 2 totally disconnected problems? Skill cap just looks a tiny bit absurd in a game with elves. Granted, the karma pool could be a problem, but hardly could compensate for skill advancement. Especially if you played game where the TN would easily and often bounce to 10 or 12.

On topic: as far as I understood it, SR4 went toward shadowrunner being low-level guys, more "beginners" like, and SR5 followed the same way. Hence why the average runner can be outskilled by the average cop.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 28 2015, 09:46 PM

Actually, it's the other way round. SR4 presented the skill levels runners got out of chargen as "world-class professional", and with a bit of implants and bonuses, you could get to "best of the field" easily. SR5 curbed this nonsense.

Posted by: freudqo Apr 28 2015, 09:55 PM

I know, but at the same time, everybody was talking about how the game was more "street-level" and all. I just mean it was the stated goal to make shadowrunners lower level guys. So for me, SR5 is a better implementation of this principle.

I also never quite got how you could talk about "world-class professional" for a skill while your performance relied almost as much on your attribute. But the description for the numbers in various skills always was, mmm, arguable in all editions…

Posted by: apple Apr 28 2015, 10:16 PM

Break as in "unplayable"? No.

Break as in "unrefined rule system"? Yes, because there are hard caps for attributes (there were always hardcaps for attributes in every edtion). So while "the strongest man" would be strength 7, the "best sniper" should not be 7 or 12 oder 28 oder 131. You apply the same reasons for an attribute cap to a skill cap: humans can only go so far.

Nothing speaks against hardcaps for "normal human range" skills and it is a philosophical decision if that cap should be lower, the same or higher than attribute caps. I favor 1-6 for normal humans and 1-9 for augmented humans for both, with 7-9 the "wow, world awesome sauce" area (so most humans, including NPCs, would be in the area of 2-6),

############################



Actually not necessarily in the area of expertise and competence (even if it was almost impossible to create a normal, competent soldier with 400 BP - most people were talking about one trick ponies, when talking about the mysterious "ohhhh, skill 7 at start" scenario), but mostly in the area of costs and plausibility.

For example 250k for combat cyberware sounds a lot more grounded in the setting then the infamous prio A in SR3 for 1 million ¥. A hacker who could really hack with low level decks for some hundred ¥ and spending a 5 digit sum for a professional SOTA deck (not milgrade) contrary to "Orange/Red 12/14 host? Without a 6-7 digit Kraftwerk and rating 6+ programs you do not even have to start being a decker".

Or to make it short: smaller numbers, scaling better from squatterware for billionare-ware.



Which breaks of course if you look at the entire package and realize that the street samurai in the basic book uses 650k ¥ for combat cyberware and that the most incompetent and useless decker in the world still needs hardware with a value of two familiy cars at minimum. Or there won´t be any kind of cyber criminality. At all.

Which does not really sound "street level" if my base equipment on squatterlevel could pay my lifestyle for 2 years.


#################################



Well, that was skill rating 8 in SR3, easily reachable with a single digit Karma investment in some cases, otherwise requiring 30 Karma usually - not that much for "Genius" and "world class" per definition. But yes, at least 1 point higher than in SR4.

SYL

Posted by: Glyph Apr 29 2015, 02:12 AM

In SR5, the overall power is higher than in SR4, it's just that the PC's have relatively less power compared to the rest of the game world. The archetypes which are "street level" reflect the preferences of the people who put them together; there are multiple ways that you can create some fairly powerful characters, without exploiting any ambiguous rules or making one-trick ponies.

Posted by: freudqo Apr 29 2015, 07:00 AM

Yes, there are only so much that en elve might learn in a lifetime.

More seriously, why should this cap be in the vicinity of the attributes cap? There is only so much karma an unaugmented human can cumulate in a lifetime. How much will you see someone exceed 20 in a skill? (edit: that's not even factoring the training time)




I really don't see how it's more or less plausible in either edition. The definition of shadowrunners was just different in different editions. It was clear in SR3 that despite being (possibly) sinless you were already someone in the business. The archetypes were sold as experienced runners or at least experienced combatants/professionals.

The difference really remains in having 250k or four times more?



While 250k only pays it for 8 months. Honestly, I was just talking about the goal of the systems to explain why now street cops could have 6s in some skills, the max for PC.



Which was indeed stupid (but if you have the SR3 book, the Target Number difficulty table is even more hilarious, 10 being an "nearly impossible" task). But at least, the game system didn't pretend it was true by caping it at 8 .

Posted by: apple Apr 29 2015, 08:17 AM

Indeed, especially if you are only playing around 10-20 years max, have no rules for skill degredation and are using an out of game mechanism for good players (and not a strictly ingame mechanism like learning time without Karma).



For me? Symmetry. But of course other caps are possible. SR5 went for 12, SR4 for 6 (which was too low IMHO).



Same goes for attributes: why caps for attributes? You would probably argue that there is a physical limit to what humans can push themselves. But what about mental attributes? Do the same reason apply for them as well? And would the same reason apply for skills as well (as skills are simply information saved and connected in different parts of your brain)? If yes, hardcaps are ok - just the level of the cap is a matter of discussion.



In some ways yes. In other ways no. You can build a 25 dice one trick gun bunny as a starting character (11 attribute, 7 skill etc), but usually that character cannot do much besides being a world champ with one weapon doing one kind of action. If you want a balanced character, the 400 BP are quite precious, as a even a normal veteran soldier (lets say a sergeant after some tours in "Corporate Court peace keeping missions") can be hard to build with 400 BP if he should still have a decent dicepool (of course nowwhere nere the region of 25 dices).

SYL

Posted by: freudqo Apr 29 2015, 12:13 PM

Mmm… I assumed you were talking about skill caps from a realistic viewpoint here, ignoring game mechanics. That's quite sad for mundane elves if they have such limitations in shadowrun's world, never to be able to beat the best humans despite their much longer lasting youth.



The link between symmetry and "realism" being?



Indeed, physical attribute caps seem to be biologically induced. That pretty well translates for intelligence, and we could perfectly argue that willpower is linked to the brain, and charisma linked to both your physics and brain. I honestly wouldn't care if Charisma or Willpower were not caped, but the caps makes sense.

The biological limit on skill is definitely not as evident. If skill is limited by an max amount of information in your brain, why isn't there a cap on the number of skills you know? Why isn't there a cap on the knowledge skills you can afford? On the language skills you can have? See the problem here? Why on earth cannot you exchange "brain slots" of those driving 5 skills and armed combat 4 to go from 7 to 8 in your trampoline skill?

I won't go further on, the "realistic" view that skills should be capped doesn't make so much sense. To effectively cap it, it's really sufficient to just implement increased cost (karma and/or time) and diminishing return. Doubling the "world class" professional rating (8 to 16) didn't help you overcome the "nearly impossible" so much more that the cost was worth it (TN10, hitting 3 out 4 times rather than half the time, not factoring the number of success stuff…).

This should highlight the fact than capping is made necessary only by game mechanics, that's to say going from a moving TN to a fixed TN. But let it be noticed that I'm not here criticizing either mechanics. They both have advantages. One support uncapped skills, one doesn't, and that's fine. But I just reject that skill caps, especially when limiting dice pool to what you get out of chargen or twice (more like 3/2) that, are "real life" based.




The original point was that the characters out of SR3 chargen were not "ground based" in the settings I think. I didn't get how it was linked to the 250k vs 1M the first time, I don't get how it's linked to the inability to make polyvalent one trick pony out of SR4 chargen. I once again just said that SR4 aimed to make more street based character, that SR5 went this way too, and that it explained why street cops in SR5 could have better skills than PC at chargen.

Posted by: sk8bcn Apr 29 2015, 12:37 PM

@freudqo:

You had (even if the rule was rarely used) to take time to get you're skill up, even if you had the karma.

Raising a SR3 skill from 6 to 7 implied rolling 6 dices at a TN of 14. That alone could take around 3-5 scenarios. It did really slow down the high skill ups to world class level.

Posted by: freudqo Apr 29 2015, 01:06 PM

I think this adds pretty well to what I said, or am I mistaken? But nevertheless: your number and rule are wrong in my version of SR3 Comp. The TN to hit is 9 (new skill +2), and not hitting the TN just make it longer to learn the skill (assuming attribute 4-6, that'd be base around 100 days, 150 with no successes, and this had to be uninterrupted or it would get even longer). Or has this been erratad? PLUS that's an optional rule. Plus, an optional rule I would, personally, use only in very rare cases…

But indeed, this proves there's perfectly fine way of preventing too much character advancement without adding absurd caps on skills.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 29 2015, 01:56 PM

Never had an issue with Caps at 6 for skills. In fact, they worked pretty well, in my opinion, you just had to adjust what you considered Professional (which was 3 in SR4).



Depends upon your definition of a "Decent Dicepool."

Posted by: Cochise Apr 29 2015, 04:13 PM

I guess that's the kind of 'helpful' commenting that got you on my personal list for SR freelancers whom's actions made it easier to decide against further expenditures on the P&P side of the game. Last time I made reference to you being on said list you asked which kind of action got you on that list and I wasn't inclined searching an example.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 29 2015, 04:28 PM

You do realize that Critias' Statement is very Tongue in Cheek, Yes? It is Sarcasm, at its best.
He isn't seriously calling Bull out there. As was evident by Bull's Response.

Posted by: apple Apr 29 2015, 04:30 PM

Well, you are well known for "one dice only, no problem, can do" A decent dice pool for a player character in an average campaign would be something between 10 and 15 in the main areas) considering both the threshold, opposed tests and ingame explanation what rating means what exactly. Certainly a compromise in some cases.

MfG

Posted by: Sendaz Apr 29 2015, 04:45 PM

TJ, am pretty sure he knew it was light sarcasm.

I think he is taking issue with Critias poking fun at Apple for asking Bull about release dates, seeing as Bull doesn't really have any say in that particular matter.

Apple's point is certainly valid, however there really is no one here who could have answered that question in any case, so a little light humor by Critias to defuse it a bit was not unwarranted and like you said, Bull certainly took it in stride.

Posted by: Cochise Apr 29 2015, 04:56 PM

I am absolutely aware of that ...



No, it's sarcasm at its worst



What in the text you quoted from me made you think that I took his comment as something that tries to call out Bull? I suggest that you stop worrying about my reading comprehension and start working on your own.

*edit* I could have commented on Bull's response as well, but there simply was no need for doing so since Bull never expressed any interest in as to why I consider his actions as not being beneficial for the product or the perception of the people involved in its production here on this board ... and how that kind of behavior led to me spending my money "elsewhere". Critias however did ask me such a thing before ... and now he got his answer.*/edit*

Posted by: Sengir Apr 29 2015, 05:01 PM

Since the cost of the standard commodity basket remained the same, having twice the money as before is a huge change.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Apr 29 2015, 05:03 PM

No worries here... Your post just read as if you considered Critias as attacking Bull. If I am wrong, then I apologize.

Posted by: Fatum Apr 29 2015, 11:12 PM

I know of at least http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showuser=7392.

That said, can we please move on from personal attacks against freelancers? I for one consider you all horrible dorks who will be well served when we nuke the planet, but I'm keeping silent about this.

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 30 2015, 12:20 AM

I am, however, still going to be really curious as to what in the world is going on internally at Catalyst that is making their production so glacially slow. It's on par with the 4e publishing speed (2005 4e core, 2008 for all the core class books) but that had a full licensee changover from FanPro to CGL in the middle of it. What's going on to push back to that pace?

Posted by: Critias Apr 30 2015, 02:12 AM

Which is a fair question, but jumping down Bull's throat and demanding an answer as though it were up to him, or somehow his fault, was the sort of thing -- and yes, I know it wasn't you that did it, 'wraith -- that I felt was worth a little gentle poke. Alas, Cochise seems to disagree. I am the worst of villains, for making a joke on an internet forum, apparently.

Posted by: Cochise Apr 30 2015, 06:53 AM

I certainly disagree with the notion that such "gentle poking" is helpful to the overall situation and ...



... this kind of deliberate twisting my words to make yet another "poke" defies your previous claims about genuine interest as to why I expressed displeasure with actions / behavior of freelancers on this board. In fact it's just a further illustration of what I have seen before and what I still dislike. I'm not "offended" on a personal level by that, nor am I "surprised" but if I hadn't already made my decision of no longer supporting the P&P product line - a decision mainly influenced by behavior of freelancers other than you - you'd have given me that reason now. Make of that whatever pleases you but don't ever expect to get a honest/serious answer from me to any of your questions with "genuine interest" from this point on.

Posted by: Machiavelli Apr 30 2015, 07:28 AM

I think we can agree, that your kinds of humor doesn´t fit to each other?

Posted by: apple Apr 30 2015, 08:17 AM

Question is still open: WHY do the core books take so long, when novels and PDFs do not have any influence on the shedule? Or is it a simple case of "I dont know"?

SYL

Posted by: Cochise Apr 30 2015, 08:47 AM

No we can't agree on that either ... because my dislikes are not related to which kind of humor is used but rather about who uses it for/against whom. A non-freelancer using sarcasm in that manner is a "prick" at worst with no impact on how anyone feels about buying "the product" since either action is unrelated to the other. I'm more than often just that kind of "prick" myself and usually take that kind of "humor" very well.

A freelancer doing the same is bound to be judged by different standards because the actions are no longer unrelated. And once "business" is involved at least my humor gets cut rather short rather quickly.

So, if anything we disagree on the "just a normal forum user as everybody else" status of freelancers and what we deem as an appropriate interaction between people that are in some sort of "customer to vendor" relation.

This might sound unfair - and it is to a certain degree - but that's the "ugly" truth. And once someone asks for my honest opinion - even if that question was raised in the past - but then tries to twist a given answer against me in an unwarranted attempt of being "funny" he can no longer expect me to treat him "fair" either.

Posted by: Machiavelli Apr 30 2015, 09:01 AM

I understand. It is difficult.

Posted by: sk8bcn Apr 30 2015, 01:21 PM

Form a forum user to forum user:

Cochise, quit it, we don't care about your grief, it's annoying as hell. Just solve it per pm.

Posted by: Cochise Apr 30 2015, 02:01 PM

From forum user to forum user: I don't care about you making generalized claims for others when you only have the right to speak for yourself. Nor do I care about your misconceptions concerning my "grief" (there's no such thing involved on my end) or you being annoyed. I haven't had and still don't have any reason for taking anything to PM here ... and given the situation there isn't even anything that could be solved via PM.

You wanted me to stop here? Then why didn't you take that to PM instead?

Posted by: Critias Apr 30 2015, 04:05 PM

It's not only that we don't know, it's that it's not at all up to us, and even if it was, and even if we knew, we couldn't answer because NDAs keep us from being allowed to discuss backstage discussions and ongoing projects and stuff.

Jason and Randall and Whoever Else Is Up There, they're the ones that decide when to go public with a cover (I couldn't show off the cover artwork to my new novel until they did, and I still can't show off the parts of it they didn't show off on tumblr), they're the ones that decide when to go public with chatter about an upcoming book (I can't geek out about who I'm going to be in an anthology with, because they haven't gone public with the full list of contributors). Bull can't tell you what the hold up is on anything but Missions stuff, and even then, depending on the hold up, he couldn't tell you. Right? If he had someone writing an adventure and that person was past deadline, what, you expect Bull to point a finger? You want to talk about shitty behavior, that would be it, wouldn't it?

He's not the editor in chief of upcoming core books. He's the Missions guy. He might also be writing in some of those core books, but even if so (and I honestly don't know) that's all the more reason he can't really say anything, right? What's he supposed to do, throw another writer under the bus for being late with a deadline, throw the editor under the bus for taking too long, throw the layout guy under the bus for being slow with his job, throw the line developer under the bus for moving slowly, throw a printer under the bus, or a distributor, or the artwork folks?

Even if he knew, it would be absurdly unprofessional to say anything (and we can all clearly see how important impeccable professionalism is, right?), it would violate NDAs for him to say anything, and it's not his place to say anything.

It's like accosting a busboy at a restaurant, and demanding he tell you why your food is taking so long. He's not the executive chef or a sous chef or a line chef, heck, he's not even your waiter. He's just the person you see outside the kitchen. He's available, so he gets the question, but what's being asked is so far out of his wheelhouse it's kind of silly.

So, yeah, sorry. I poked a little fun. I apologize if I hurt your feelings in doing so, Apple, since apparently I was way out of line with it, but...it struck me as a little weird. Y'all know what kind of contributions we make, those of us that stop by the forums. You know who's in charge of stuff, and who isn't. So going to the "isn't" and asking a question like that, that's that far above his pay grade, that's that much of an NDA violation? Yeah. I gave it a poke.

Posted by: apple Apr 30 2015, 07:11 PM

Which is a perfectly fine answer.

SYL

Posted by: binarywraith Apr 30 2015, 10:52 PM

Critias, the only issue is that we then get grief from the same people for throwing the entity with overall responsibility, the company itself, under the bus when things are late and not up to spec.

It's all good, though, I certainly don't hold this kind of stuff against people with no control over it.

Posted by: Bull May 1 2015, 06:55 AM

Man, if you think any of us are doing this for the paycheck...

Posted by: Voran May 2 2015, 08:28 AM

Heh. Whaat you aren't rolling in dough?!

Posted by: Sendaz May 2 2015, 03:08 PM

Nah, the closest Bull ever came was when he got that job briefly at the bakery.

Sadly it turned out even there he couldn't raise the dough.

Posted by: Voran May 3 2015, 10:29 AM

groaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 06:24 AM

You know, I never knew what the love affair of 3rd edition was. If I'm not mistaken, it still had target numbers and open tests and all that nonsense, right? Vehicles were still pretty much immune to everything, so you either ran away from that steel lynx or you brought back a freaking rocket launcher to blow it up. Decking was generally something that seemed best to handle as an NPC or entire party thing, rather than having a decker. Rigging was crazy. Seriously, rigging in 3rd. I still have my comp copy of R^3 hanging around somewhere, and while the rules were delicious, they were a lot of crunch, and still had the intrinsic problem of the old SR vehicle/character split. I probably spent the most time with it(I owned, but didn't play, 1st edition) of all the editions, yet I hold no particular love of it. And that stupid ruthy polymer crap that was annoying as all heck. Seriously. Screw that stuff.

Fourth edition rejuvenated the setting for me. It went a long way towards making firearms and vehicles make sense, I loved the bucket-o-dice, universal TN of 5, and I felt that the changes to hacking and rigging were awesome, and had great potential. Gone was the NPC decker as a concept: now everyone was using their commlinks to do stuff and roll dice, and we had a lot of fun. The lack of support and real life killed our play as people moved across countries and became dance instructors and geologists. But now, everything kinda worked, and I liked it. Sure, there were problems, but... hey, it was a new direction, and I felt the dramatic change in mechanics was and is superior to 1st-3rd's mechanics. Then fifth came out.

So far, I'm really happy with fifth's rules(Setting wise, I kinda always feel stuck in the 60s, but hey, that's me), and I like them. I dislike the changes to rigging and decking/hacking: I always hated the "class system" opposed by making Decking and Rigging speciality roles that required considerable invesment. Atleast unskilled or low skilled, or non riggers, can actually drive cars while being shot at in a parking deck. That's nice. But I hate that commlinks and deckers were seperated. Sure, I get that it was really cheap and easy for everyone to hack or rig, but honestly? I liked that. It stopped those rules from being so arcane, the role of one guy who knew those rules, and everyone else just ignored them.

I'm not even mad at wireless. I actually like it, but I also try to keep it sane: DNI connections can be networked for security. Which, I felt was kind of obvious from the rules, but it's not really explicitly stated. But I like it, it's a mechanical basis for someone to have multiple data-jacks: my "rigger(street level, so I have the skills, but no ware, a scratch built RCC and one fly-spy. w00t.) has three datajacks(one at the base of his skull, two in left temple) and on our last run, I used all of them(One to commlink, and both my guns were hard wired to me) to considerable effect. So, I'm cool with that.

As far as release schedules and editing? That's always been a problem: anyone remember how rules in SSC were included in flavor text? That was nice. There was some real ambiguous stuff in the past, and I don't expect it to change. I also, as mentioned, consider my self kinda stuck in the 60s, and didn't particularly like some of the directions SR started taking for a while in fluff and meta-plot. But that's ok.

Because at the core of it, it's still a game about omni-present corporate domination of all aspects of life and the struggle with that. We're runners, an ironic creature: we both rebel and attack the very same entities that support our existence. Without the dystopian corporate oppression, there would be no need for shadowy quasi-criminals who can be plausibly denied.

And one thing always remains the same, no matter the edition: Once someone remembers they have demolitions and 20 kilos of C4, they want to blow up everything.

Posted by: Machiavelli May 6 2015, 06:56 AM

Correct. In the next session i am gonna blow up all sections of the local gang in one big bang. Kingpin-style baby^^

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 07:19 AM

I actually stopped our demo guy from buying more explosives. I thought we had enough. They nixed my plan to use explosives to cut through the floor above the target. So I figured a different plan.

Then we went with the original, modified, plan. Turns out our mage CAN levitate us to the roof-top. Then we had to improvise.


Also, duct-tape, Stealth RFIDs and flasbangs on the doorsi nto the stairwell turns out to be great for nuetralizing guards.

Posted by: freudqo May 6 2015, 08:43 AM

Well, obviously if you call target numbers nonsense, you might indeed not know the love affair. I think it pretty much sums up why a non negligible people stayed there : because many liked floating TN and think attribute+skill+dicepool mod vs TN5 are poor mechanics for various reasons notably their perception of reality. There's also the ambiance that's said to be quite different. But from what I've understood, if SR4 went for streamlining rules [EDIT] without changing floating TN[\EDIT], making rigging, decking, infiltrating or social skills more similar to each other and to the rest of the game (as magic underwent such change from 2nd to 3rd), suppressing one or two tests in combat, there wouldn't be such a cleavage. People would be complaining the same way they complained about grounding and spell locks having disappeared, saying now how open tests were awesome and how the manoeuvre score was realistic (yes, they would).

Posted by: nezumi May 6 2015, 11:07 AM

freudqo got it. For me, SR2/3 let me dig in and make meaningful tactical choices for my characters. That isn't just floating TNs, but the dice pools, robust rules for overwatch, drone support, etc. (not saying that none of that is in SR4/5, but that's part of the whole SR2/3 package).

SR4/5 has become a 'beer and pizza' game for me, because it has meaningful choices still, but they cut out a lot of the more intellectually interesting ones (i.e., anything involving mathematical operations beyond addition). I can't play D&D at all because it feels completely shallow. I've gotten deep into Eclipse Phase because, while the mechanics are simplistic, the setting provides a constant source of novelty to compensate for that (and frankly, given the level of setting complexity, I think trying to model it mechanically would be unfeasible).

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 07:05 PM

I've hated the floating TNs for a long time. They were garbage, and always have been. Through 2nd and 3rd, I endured the rules to play in my favorite setting. But it go worse and worse, and finally, I just threw the damn book down, picked up GURPs and ran SR in GURPs. Which wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad. And didn't have the problems of bullet testers.

I never liked the high TN issue, because it made hard, but plausible tasks(shooting someone with a rifle from 500m) into damn near impossible tasks, completely dependent on luck. I'm not a big fan of relying on luck to perform tasks that my character should be able to do routinely(a 12 dice sniper in 3rd was... um... A big deal, like world class). There was no point in having skill 1 or 2. What became more important than skill was negative modifiers to the TN: I'll take Pistols 4 and a smartlink over Pistols 6 and no smart link every day of the week.

Then the problems of low body and the way armor worked. Sheesh. A body 1 guy was dead anytime he got shot, didn't matter if he had armor or not.

Combat pool, which made the best fighters the magic guys. Sheesh.

The condition monitors, which were... meh, at best.

Oh, and vehicles. Look, Vehicles have been a pain since the original RBB came out and gave them their boost in durability. I mean, I understand that a Citymaster is an APC, and shouldn't be hard to kill, but a GMC bulldog? A steel lynx? Seriously, a combat drone the size of a motorcycle is immune to evevery man-portable weapon that doesn't use some kind of special "anti-vehicular" ammunition or rockets. Which would be great, except the AV ammo turned SMGs and assault rifles into vehicle killers.

See, that's what I hated, the rock-paper-scissors of vehicles and drones. If you didn't have access to AV ammo, then a steel lynx or doberman could wipe your entire party, but if you did? It suddenly became another mook.

Not a fan of that.

Automatic fire was wonky.

Anyone remember how R3 had to rewrite the collision rules to make sense? And then, as cool as Tzeentch made it, the easiest way to drop a drone out of the sky was just to use hot-mike jamming...


But it all comes back to the fact that I don't think the base mechanics were very good. They never have been. For 2nd edition, I struggled through them. By the time I was starting to care about the mechanics, Tzeentch introduced me to GURPS, and SR3 went away.

Now, fifth? I like it. Sure, some of the background and fluff isn't nearly as robust, but that's ok: with 20+ years of experience, I can bring the fluff to life for my players. And now, the rules arn't completely crazy.

Posted by: freudqo May 6 2015, 07:36 PM

What I've always loved with the floating TN issue and the hate of the haters, it's that it's completely irrational as always shown in their example.

So, let's shoot someone with a rifle at 500 m. Let's say 501m, so that's extreme range, and TN9, since bad guy is walking around. Joe average, with skill 3, will accomplish it 1 time out of 5 without combat pool. That's reaaaaaallly so impossible. Sure, we could consider the bad guy was running (+2), and it's a bit foggy, so another +1, whatever, so the TN is 12. Joe average will then manage the shoot once every 13 times. He could of course spend a little time to aim (or buy some kind of better sight for his rifle) to get the TN to 11, managing once every 6 shots.

Without combat pool. Really, what a crazy game, how difficult it is to shoot this guy at long range with a rifle. If there was an issue, it's with the limit on take aim actions (half skill), a really easy fix. And we could also remind the audience the skilled 12 dice guy you quote would make TN9 2 out of 3 times. We could recall the fact that in SR4+, the difference between very hard and impossible is that you manage the very hard once out of three times and the impossible never (well, 2 or 3 times a day, don't try more).

Of course you would take pistol 4 and a smartlink any time over pistol 6 (edit : ain't pistol 4 + smartlink exactly the same as pistol 6 in SR4+??) . It's a device that indicates the trajectory of your bullet in your field of vision in real time, whatever the position of your gun. I ignored that the difficult part with a gun was to pull the trigger and understand the mechanical action. I thought it was aiming.

The body 1 guy (likely a mage who was the best combat guy, apparently) had combat pool and should have saved it in case of getting shot. And also, if you have body 1, never get in a position where you can get shot, and if it happens, well, of course, you have body 1.

Wow, you mean if you had those availability 16 (a TN you never seemed to be able to reach in your game even with a 12 dice face) expensive ammunition designed to destroy vehicles, you could destroy vehicles ? Terrible idea indeed.

Automatic fire in shadowrun should always be wonky, obviously, since no edition solved the problem that uncompensated auto fire suddenly make you less good from the first bullet fired.

The condition monitor is awesome. Well, no need to argue here, obviously.

There are many arguments to dislike SR3. I could write ten times this post saying what's wrong or stupid or clumsy and time waisting. I'm always wondering why it's always the irrational ones that get highlighted.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 6 2015, 07:48 PM

Because the irrational one is such a hot button?

While your statistics may indeed work out the way you indicate (mathematically), the reality is that it rarely did... I have been in SR3 Games with DP's of 8-12 (Guns of one variety or another) and smartlinks with Final TN at 9's and spent HOURS enmeshed in combat because no one could hit squat. It was frustrating and caused tons of heat at the table, because it really sucked. By the same token, I can also remember games where it was one and done, even with TN's of 12. Floating TN created extremely swingy results, for no real gain, in my opinion.

Posted by: freudqo May 6 2015, 08:25 PM

Don't get me wrong: having to roll 6 times to hit squat', however "logical" and "not impossible" it might be, can be quite problematic and frustrating. The usual solution some quotes is "you should move or act or do something for the TN to get lower". That's a poor solution, since you character might really well want to spend those 30 seconds of real game time trying to kill his opponent from his cover instead of leaving a secured position, for example. Rushing the player into rolling faster is somewhat efficient, but it : 1 - kills creativity 2 - can't be done with new players 3 - might seem impolite with players you don't know well.

The combat pool has a good deal of responsibility in this problem, especially when players like to take their time allocating it, and it authorizes full dodges of the shots. But it's almost as much a part of SR3 as the floating TN.

But all in all, this kind of situation remains sufficiently rare in my game so that I appreciate its gain at my table while not suffering too much from the drawbacks .

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 04:20 AM

And that's fine, that subjectively, the problems of SR3 arn't your problems. Different folks, different strokes.

I however, did not like the damage system in anyway, shape or form. It did not sit well with me, and I prefer SR4 and SR5s system.

I particularly hated that Assault Rifles were less "effective" than a pistol. That's just nonsense, there's only a few pistol rounds in existence that even begin to rival the firepower of a 5.56 or 5.45. And yet, Heavy pistols were more capable of damaging things than assault rifles, unless you used theb urst fire or full-auto of assault rifles. Guess what? That's not how it works: a single assault rifle round does considerably more damage than a single pistol round, while being more accurate and longer-ranged. Always sat wrong with me when they didn't appropriately hurt vehicles.

The man advantage SMGs and ARs had was their ammo capacity and... Burst Fire, because two bursts killed everything except for the bullet testers. And drones. And the magic slingers with their huge combat pools and the ability to use them purely for defense. Yay.

Speaking of drones, damage levels and weapons: Jeezus christ this was a problem. A single Steel Lynx could either be an insurmountable problem for your team, or handled by a few pistol shots with av rounds. So you either had the drones roll the opposition with no problem, or you had the drones get rolled with no problem.

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 06:27 AM

The point is not about subjectivity, it's about irrational argument. I already said there are plenty of good reasons to prefer one version over another. I just wonder why the arguments of SR3 haters are always so distorted.

The point you raise about assault rifles and pistols is indeed true. But it has strictly nothing to do with the floating TN. It has to do with the damage code of the weapons being poorly established. Once again, an easy hack. I'd like to notice that even if SR4 "corrected" this problem, the "considerably" higher damage dealt by an assault rifle compared to a heavy pistol is exactly one box. Except for the warhawk, which is better than an AR. And we could also talk about SMGs dealing less damage than pistols there too.

You keep complaining about the magic slinger and his huge combat pool. That's, well, wrong. Most combat heavy character would have a comparable combat pool. Most of them could keep them for defense too. This is generally something people quote as anecdotally funny. I don't get how it could ruin your game.

And about drones and AV round. AV rounds in pistols didn't make sense. Ok. AV round were availability 16/2weeks for 10 of them at 800 the box. You complained about never hitting TN9 earlier. Plus, honestly, once again, something that could get corrected in the framework of floating TN and dice pools.

Posted by: binarywraith May 7 2015, 07:01 AM

You're missing the point. ARs in SR3 were balanced around the idea that they would be commonly used for BF/FA fire, and in order to keep them from being overwhelmingly good in those modes they have a lower base SA damage. Zero question of 'realism', this is a pure game balance moment. Same reason pistols seem 'better', because in order to make them a viable combat option they couldn't just reduce the pistol damage codes to make the AR relatively better without making them pointless.

The Warhawk, mind you, is somewhat realistic. It's intended to be a heavy magnum pistol round, like the .454 Casull, which while shorter ranged than an AR bullet out of a rifle or carbine length barrel still delivers massive kinetic force to a target. Compare :

300gr .454 Casull out of a 7.5 inch barrel (Ruger Super Redhawk) : 1,650 ft/s and 1,814 ft·lbf of energy
55gr .223 Remington out of a 23 inch barrel (M16) : 3,240 ft/s and 1,282 ft·lbf

For another comparison of effectiveness, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_KO_Factor.

There's a reason .454 Casull, and .44 Magnum are considered acceptable mid-to-large-game hunting rounds even out of a pistol length platform and .223 is too light for anything bigger than a coyote.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 09:08 AM

Balance, scmalance. I'm not a big fan of this whole "balance" thing where weapons have to all have a combat presence. We carry pistols because we can't carry assault rifles and walk around in public like it was cool. The pistols are used to get us to our rifles and heavier weaponry, not to compete with rifles or smgs when we have them. I don't want perfect "realism", but I prefer for things that are pretty mundane if they made sense within my knowledge of them. And that means we don't use pistols to shoot up cars and expect them to do anything impressive. Rifles are rifles, and pistols are pistols. The utility of the pistol is what makes it popular, not it's effectiveness in comparison to rifles.

And especially when planning and playing, I want things to do what I imagine they do in real life, and that means that assault rifles should be pretty darn effective against light vehicles and people at most combat distances. They really are that good, and they deserve to be that good, and I deserve to be able to expect that sort of performance from them. They shouldn't be so damn wimpy(I can't rememebr the GMC Bulldog's armor value, but I seem to remember it being enough to pounce ARs, but not heavy pistols).

I really don't see what advantage the "balance" of making ARs generally inferior to Heavy Pistols is? The pistol has the advantage of cost, size, portability, legality and general utility, while not being able to burst-fire(but some can!). The assault rifle, for it's amazing ability to burst fire and larger magazine, is worse in every category. The only time you should consider using an assault rifle is when you expect outright hostility, not just for a a meet with a contact somewhere. Because Burst fire wasn't all fun and games, you could really mess up your to-hit chances with that recoil. But hey, that's great "balance".

Shooting vehicles was just a pain, and I certainly like the changes between 3rd and 4th and 5th there. The vehicle scale damage was silly, and we're much better off with it being gone. Now vehicles actually get damaged by fire, and you don't need some goofy "anti-vehicular ammo" the can damage them. Assault rifles, LMGs and Grenades will all do the trick. Which is pretty accurate: a 40mm HEDP grenade will end a hummer, and laying into it with concentrated rifle fire has an impact.

Shotguns. Heh. Just... Heh. No, they don't do that, and the current method(lower damage, penalty to defense) makes a lot more sense than... that. And it was fucking broken when that enfield went off. Double your armor jacket, go ahead. what was it, aroudn a 15 or 16D attack? That killed lots of things for me. But, yeah, that was craziness.

Yeah, I'm not going back. I like it this way. I like having ways to destroy light vehicles that don't involve anti-tank weapons.



The Super Warhawk never bothered me, as I always imagined it to be something like a .454 or above. A .44 Magnum is on the low-end for energy compared to an assault rifle, but I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with what should be pistol rounds comparable to 9mm, .45, 10mm, .357, .38 +P, etc being better than rifle rounds for punching holes in things, which is plain out ridiculous.

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 09:36 AM

Mmm… I'm not sure "game balance" is a good reason to promote unrealistic behavior at any time. There are many ways of balancing assault rifle, everywhere in the game. Notably concealability. They should be less handy in close quarter than SMGs, probably should have somehow more recoil but more armor penetration, whatever is "realistic". These are not hard rules to implement, frankly. They already implemented double recoil on shotguns and heavy weapons.

There was a real problem with firearms in SR3, but it was not their damage code (except for light pistol, where it was insanely stupid), which could be quite easily "corrected". After all, I could spend all day on the inter web trying to understand which will kill the most: .45 ACP or 5.56 Nato? Some will say that i should consider Taylor KO factor, other muzzle energy, other will tell me that I'm stupid for even comparing rifle to handguns and other will just remind that apparently, 5.56 is shitty in a short barreled carbine. Honestly, there's no point. Then people here will remember that no matter, past 5 meters we're at middle range for a heavy gun, so already less success than with the AR where we are at short range til 50 meters. Nothing will be "realistic" for everybody and we're talking about nuances.

The real big problem is that everything was somehow compatible with everything and handled the same way. You could put smart link, laser, gas-vent, sound suppressor and the like on almost anything, anytime. There was no reason not to have your 2 bursts fully compensated using gas-vent IV, shock pads and under barrel weight (or just taking the ares alpha at char gen with gas-vent IV). There's absolutely no feel because weapon could be moded at will, in any possible way. This was the utter and major failure at this level, because pass realism or game balance, there was no flavour. I'm not sure how SR4+ made it better in any way. I'm actually pretty sure we're confronted to the same "build your weapon" logic.

The condition monitor had a point in that it made the range of shots outcome wide. A heavy pistol shot by even Joe average could easily range from lethal to minor. That's why some like hit, and that's why some hate it and prefer a "hit point" system, I don't think it's any worth precising the reasons for such preferences.

Posted by: sk8bcn May 7 2015, 10:02 AM

The basics of SR3 IMO sucks as a system because it was statistically inconsistent.

But it had tactical options and depth.

Personnally, if I'd had a wish, it would be to have a system that would be robust statistical wise with depth and options.

Like dice-pools from 3rd could have been (more in offense-defense and so on)

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 10:23 AM

Or do you mean that SR4 is "statistically consistent"??

Posted by: Cain May 7 2015, 11:00 AM

While I understand that these terms will change from person to person, in general I found SR3 combat to be very tactical, while SR4.5 was very strategic.

In SR3, combat basically boiled down to who made the smarter choices. Character build was important, but so was the active choices, most notably dice pool management. Your decisions could quickly change the outcome of the fight, and it was never an easy tradeoff. Going for offense might leave you weak on defense, and you never knew if taking a support action (say, something to lower the TN) would be a better choice than just attacking. The net result was that you needed to play smart to win, and there was no single way to play smart.

Starting with SR4, everything boiled down to one factor: dice pool size. So, if you built your character well, unless the GM threw a massive curve ball, you would always win if you were halfway smart about things. If you went into a fight with 20+ dice, you knew you were likely to win, and the exact decisions you made during a fight didn't really matter. So, everything was basically a strategic decision: the fight was over before it began.

Now, both playstyles have their advantages and disadvantages. And in some games, the strategic playstyle is a lot of fun. However, in the case of SR4, we didn't have many of those advantages. It was just one choice-- if you were better at dice pool inflation at the start of the game, you were basically dominating throughout the entire campaign.

Posted by: sk8bcn May 7 2015, 11:20 AM

I've bought most SR2-3-4-5 books existing, but my readings aren't past SR3 era.

I know SR4 basics but since I didn't read and play it myself, I avoid commenting it flaws.


However, some RPGs are more consistent stat-wise. You can't say all are flawed like SR3 was.

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 12:10 PM

Well, I've learned that this statistical consistence stuff generally relies so much on subjectivity that I'm skeptical. But it would be nice if you provided examples…

Posted by: sk8bcn May 7 2015, 03:32 PM

SR3's inconsistencies are (a few that falls into my mind) :

> TN 6 to 7 doesn't generate any difference in probabilities.
> Make any roll where the number of success counts (Combat, Etiquette rolls, opposed tests) and TN works well. Now make a simple test, and the "near impossible" tasks doesn't have adapted probabilities (even with 1 die, you could succeed with 8% chances).
> Open test are inconsistent (no question of successes rolled - high luck involved - when an opposed test has a discrepency way lower).



If I had to give exemples:
> DD is a game with much luck -for skills- : a d20 roll is linear in probabilities.
> Gurps has less luck involved, because a 3d6 roll has more a gaussian style (rolling 10-11 in total is more likely than 3 (triple 1)).

However I find DD not consistent with probabilities: Your damage rolls are very fixed (like 1d8 + strength + Magic bonus => 1d8+7) with lot of hits point. Fights aren't very random (despite the attack roll) when skill is very random.

SR3 unfortunately goes a step further. Nothing impossible to fix, but it's still disappointing to have a "rule/simulationist" system whose probabilities weren't checked.

Posted by: sk8bcn May 7 2015, 03:37 PM

Another very inconsistent system : Vampire:

A strength 5 guy lifts 200kg.
A strength 3 roughly 100kg (numbers are not exact but given for explanation).

With such a difference in power, the strength 3 guy could NEVER beat the strength 5 guy.

But make a roll in Vampire, and the outcome won't match the description at all (win probabilities for the STR5 guy doesn't match the descriptions)

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 04:23 PM

Well, at least, the TN 6 to 7 doesn't hinder the fact that the probability of success doesn't decrease linearly, contrary to such inconsistent system as DnD or Vampire, where moving the TN or threshold modifies your chance of success linearly. Both those system fail at representing difficult tasks in any way.

TN 6 to 7 is a minor inconsistency. 5% chance of success on any roll whatever the difficulty is a major one. IMHO of course.

Open tests are bullshit. I wholeheartedly agree.

Near impossible just depends on the definition of near impossible. But that's a problem with the game designer obviously never comparing their words and the actual chance of success.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 07:26 PM

SR3 was tactical? No. It was arcane, and if you knew the right rules combinations to abuse for any given circumstances, then you won.

First: Smart link. -2 to TN changes your odds of success dramatically. This is the first piece of kit a "serious" combat character must run.
Second: Cyber eyes give you flare compensation, low-light or thermo(or BOTH!), and most importantls vision magnefication.
Third: As much skill as you can get with your gun

Fourth's dice pool mechanic wasn't fair, you're right. I generally find the limits of SR5 to fix problems I had with it. And the demise of Combat Pool is great. Screw that mechanic.

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 08:06 PM

Smartlink and cyber eyes are now arcane crazy rule abuse combinations.

We're talking of something available with priority D money, 20000 nuyens, which was highly recommended by both fluff and rules, and cost few essence. I don't get how this can be considered arcane, seriously.

Plus, those are in no way going to help you if that average cop happens to be able to fire at you in the open, with no cover whatsoever. What Cain meant (if I may, and correct me if I'm wrong) was that in SR3, PC with huge dice pool could be handicaped with high TN, while NPC with low dice pool fared pretty good against low TN. So you had to take cover and try to surprise the NPCs so they didn't take cover. In SR4, a high dice pool makes you immune to standard penalties, and means you're almost always going to screw average NPCs, however you're running in the open and he's hiding behind a wall. Of course, I'm caricaturing a little, but I think it was the argument you missed.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 7 2015, 09:41 PM

That and the vis mag and smartlink do not work together.
And the lowlight and infraread might reduce your TN modifier from bad lighting, but it's still not a complete negation so you still end up with a + to your TN in the end . .

Posted by: freudqo May 7 2015, 10:20 PM

Might be worth add that cybereyes were also always worse at reducing penalties than natural vision.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 7 2015, 11:12 PM

Yeah, for maximum eye-cheese you play a Troll or Dorf with the edge natural low light vision.
Then you build lights, electronic image magnification and microscopic into your fleshy eyes.

Posted by: Glyph May 8 2015, 02:04 AM

SR4 dice pools were a very important aspect to a character, but they were not the be-all, end-all. Such characters could still get ambushed, get attacked by multiple opponents with lower but still effective dice pools, etc.

In SR5, you have equal or sometimes greater dice pools, but the big difference is that grunts have been beefed up a lot. Which kind of makes me wonder how practical some of the archetypes are - they have a nice, organic feel to them, but one or two mouthbreathing thugs would be a significant challenge for them.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 8 2015, 07:44 PM

First: Keep in mind that I haven't played SR3 in... a long freaking time, like, atleast a decade. When I started, there was no Dumpshock, but there was a Deep Resonance board, and we posted all sorts of crazy stuff. That's a long time ago, and I don't have eidetic memory, so I can't recall everything. My copy of SR3, if I still own it, is packed up somewhere, and I'm not going to dig it out just to argue about specific rules interactions. I can, however, recall enough that there were glaring, massive problems with that rules set, and I have no interest to go back to it, especially after playing other games that have much better mechanics.


If everyone has a smartlink, then what's the point? Obviously not everyone is cybered: in 20+ years of playing this game and reading supplements, it's pretty obvious that most people do not have cyberware more invasive than a datajack, eyes and a few other minor mods. If everyone doesn't have a smartlink, then the difference between the haves and the have nots is pronounced. And that difference is massive: reducing a TN of 4 or 5 to 2 or 3 isn't just a small boost, it's a dramatic one: A TN of two means you have rougly an 85% chance of a hit per die you roll, compared to a 50% or 33% chance, that's almost twice as effective as without it. Yes, smartlinks are awesome, but I don't think they should be THAT awesome, or everyone would have an implant for them. Which virtually every non awakened one did(And I've played gun adepts where losing a full point of magic rating and the two extra dice on skills was offset by the smart link) as a PC. The difference between augmented and non augmented characters was clear as day: I've played SR3 characters who were Skills and Attributes heavy, but without the resources for extensive augmentation. Everyone hated that when we went on a Mr. White run(you never win with Mr. White).

Now, moving along: Using SR4 to compare to SR3 isn't my arguement. You wanna erect that strawman and tilt at windmills? Go right ahead. But that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that I prefered some SR4 mechanics(Hacking and rigging being more accessible, for example) over their SR5 incarnations. I'm not happy with SR5's return to the old psuedo class system. However, the fixed TNs, large dice pools, and unified mechanics are fairly robust, and they work for gaming out being a shadowrunner. They work enough that I don't just break out GURPS and do a cyberpunk game there. SR5's limits help to deal with dice pool inflation: if you have an Acc 5 gun, then throwing 24 dice(which is pretty hefty and implies a very high skill, high attributes, and numerous positive modifiers to your dice pool) isn't that big of a deal. You can be the best pistol slinger in the world, but if you pick up a crappy, low-end gun, you're going to be limited by your hardware. I like that.

Now, regarding dice pools: While I see some big dice pools from time to time, the truth is that a starting character really can't have so many dice that enviromental modifiers are not a real consideration. I mean, what, the best you're gonna get is around 16 dice for firearms, because you can't take Aptitude AND exceptional attribute at the same time. Well, I guess you could get muscle toners for more Agility. But that doesn't allow you to "ignore" enviromental factors, and those add up quick. Light rain and partial light, target in cover, and you could be looking at a -5 or -7 dicepool modifier. Sure, if you're some kind of hyper specialized gunslinger, you can eat that and still have 12 or 13 dice. But you paid through the nose to be that specialized.

Also, this argument that PCs should be handicapped, while NPCs should not... well, it smacks of gamism. If it's foggy and partially lit, that modifier is going to apply to all the involved parties, not just the combat pool 9 characters. And who is better able to eat that modifier, the PC who reduces the penalties to -1 or 0, and has a -2 smartlink, or the unaugmented security guards? In addition, not having a two-page chart of modifiers is both simpler, and more fluid to work with. At first, SR5's enviromental penalties seemed a bit cludgy and confusing. In practice, it works pretty well, and we don't spend a lot of time constantly flipping through the book to the modifier table(which is still pretty big).

Continuing with this whole "Tactics vs. strategy" thing: let's say you're pulled over for a routine traffic stop(say some tusker kid threw a rock and knocked out your tail lights*). The streetsam with restricted cyberware, grenades, and illegal guns decides to "fix" the problem by shooting the cops. Let's say neither party is surprised(The cops halfway expect a traffic stop to result in gun fire, the runners expect to shoot, etc), and combat starts. The augmented street same is probably looking at something like 8+3d6 initiative, or multiple passes and going first, while the cops are going to only act once, and probably be last on the draw. There's no "tactical" decision there, you simply go before them and hose'em. Oh, and with something like 8 to 9 armor as a matter of course, the street sam can just stand in the open, because he's throwing 12 or 13 dice to resist damage against a TN of 2, so even if you hit him, that pistol isn't going to do squat. Even when the SWAT team shows up, they end up having problems with the brick. Further, while combat pool might seem like a tactical deal, it was not: your combat pool was decided at character generation, and it's uses(bolstering offense, or morei mportantly, keeping you alive) didn't change based on whether or not you used good tactics. Hiding behind a corner didn't give you a bonus to combat pool, and walking like a terminator with your gun at your hip, spitting hot death didn't disadvantage you.

So you had combats that were either entirely lopsided(Augmented vs. non augmented, Augmented rolls the opposition unless very disadvantaged by environment and numbers) or became stalemates(equally matched, and good tactical decisions on both sides) and drawn out. Whether or not that is realistic(most gunfights/combat situations are generally one-sided and resolved quickly, or turn into drawn out bloody affairs), it's not fun. It's tedious and bogs down the game, to the point that you didn't want to run too many combats, or you'd spend a session running one combat at a damn time. Again, not fun.

It's not the same these days. Even a routine traffic stop can turn very lethal. Those Cops have a professional rating of 3, which gives them three edge. One cop can Blitz or Sieze the Initative so that he's not flat-flooted and can actually do some things, they can toss edge as a bonus into their dice pools, and generally they can be a pain in the ass. Now, in all fairness, the PCs will probably be victorious, but they gotta work a little bit more for it, and it's not a given that the Street Sam will automatically go first and act before the cops can respond.

Now, back to hating floating TNs? Yeah, I do, because of things like Sustaining spells. For three editions, a wizard sustaining a spell and or astrally percieving was pretty much uncapable of of doing anything. A simple +2 modifier made everything much, much harder(TN 4 is about a 50% chance of succes per die, TN 6 is a 16% chance of success) to do. Now, there were tricks around it(spirits and quickening), while reducing a dice pool of 10 to 8 is a much smaller decrease in effectiveness. So you didn't have a lot of sustained spells being used, unless that was all you were going to do. Which... didn't match the fluff at all.

Again, getting tagged with a lucky AR burst in SR3 for a 11S wound wasn't that big of a deal: you only need to get 6 success to stage it down to nothing, if the combat pool dice didn't evade the hit outright, and with armor 8 or 9, you could soak that all day long. Which lead to increasingly bizarre things, like Lonestar carrying a gun that fired faster than physically possible to "penetrate armor" by allowing no penalty bursts. Silly.

I've rebuilt Meat/Jolly Roger and played him in SR3, SR4 and SR5. In SR3, Meat has around 11-12+ dice for damage resistence and an Armor value of something like 8/5(Armored vest /w armored jacket layered over, titanium bone lacing, and maybe other cyberware. He was a freakin' cybermonster) when walking around on the street, higher when he geared up for violent runs. IF you weren't packing APDS, you were not hurting him(the one time he was really taken down, the shooters used stun ammo to get around his stupid high ballistic armor, and he still soaked a lot of bursts and killed a few guys before going down). In SR5, he'd have something like a 23-24 dice pool to soak. Against a pistol, he's throwing 23 dice against a DV of 7 or 8, which means he can eat a pistol round to the chest pretty well. Against an AR, he's looking at 22 dice, and something like 10 or 11 hits he needs to completely soak that damage.

Also, since those average guys are now throwing 7 or 8 dice on a test, rather than 3, they're more likely to get more hits, stage the damage up more, and prevent him from dodging. That's pretty sweet. It means that Meat isn't a juggernaut anymore, and he doesn't just wade through automatic weapons fire, with his AS-7 spitting hot flechette death. Sure, he won't take but a box or two of damage at a time, but that still means he's gonna go down if he tries to go full terminator.

What I'm seeing in SR5 is that "good" combat characters are throwing around 10-12 dice at char gen for their attacks, and regular "mooks" are throwing around 6 to 7. The PCs do outclass them, but not nearly as much as before when you saw Skill 5 and 6 people(with -2 to their TNs) vs 3s and 4s(Tns of 4 or 5). In SR3, regular runners could generally pull off 4 or 5 hits on a mook, while the mooks were lucky to get a hit or two. Addint enviromental modifiers into that, and the SR3 mooks just can't compete.


*This couldn't happen with the damage rules for vehicles, but whatever

Posted by: Wothanoz May 8 2015, 07:44 PM

First: Keep in mind that I haven't played SR3 in... a long freaking time, like, atleast a decade. When I started, there was no Dumpshock, but there was a Deep Resonance board, and we posted all sorts of crazy stuff. That's a long time ago, and I don't have eidetic memory, so I can't recall everything. My copy of SR3, if I still own it, is packed up somewhere, and I'm not going to dig it out just to argue about specific rules interactions. I can, however, recall enough that there were glaring, massive problems with that rules set, and I have no interest to go back to it, especially after playing other games that have much better mechanics.


If everyone has a smartlink, then what's the point? Obviously not everyone is cybered: in 20+ years of playing this game and reading supplements, it's pretty obvious that most people do not have cyberware more invasive than a datajack, eyes and a few other minor mods. If everyone doesn't have a smartlink, then the difference between the haves and the have nots is pronounced. And that difference is massive: reducing a TN of 4 or 5 to 2 or 3 isn't just a small boost, it's a dramatic one: A TN of two means you have rougly an 85% chance of a hit per die you roll, compared to a 50% or 33% chance, that's almost twice as effective as without it. Yes, smartlinks are awesome, but I don't think they should be THAT awesome, or everyone would have an implant for them. Which virtually every non awakened one did(And I've played gun adepts where losing a full point of magic rating and the two extra dice on skills was offset by the smart link) as a PC. The difference between augmented and non augmented characters was clear as day: I've played SR3 characters who were Skills and Attributes heavy, but without the resources for extensive augmentation. Everyone hated that when we went on a Mr. White run(you never win with Mr. White).

Now, moving along: Using SR4 to compare to SR3 isn't my arguement. You wanna erect that strawman and tilt at windmills? Go right ahead. But that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that I prefered some SR4 mechanics(Hacking and rigging being more accessible, for example) over their SR5 incarnations. I'm not happy with SR5's return to the old psuedo class system. However, the fixed TNs, large dice pools, and unified mechanics are fairly robust, and they work for gaming out being a shadowrunner. They work enough that I don't just break out GURPS and do a cyberpunk game there. SR5's limits help to deal with dice pool inflation: if you have an Acc 5 gun, then throwing 24 dice(which is pretty hefty and implies a very high skill, high attributes, and numerous positive modifiers to your dice pool) isn't that big of a deal. You can be the best pistol slinger in the world, but if you pick up a crappy, low-end gun, you're going to be limited by your hardware. I like that.

Now, regarding dice pools: While I see some big dice pools from time to time, the truth is that a starting character really can't have so many dice that enviromental modifiers are not a real consideration. I mean, what, the best you're gonna get is around 16 dice for firearms, because you can't take Aptitude AND exceptional attribute at the same time. Well, I guess you could get muscle toners for more Agility. But that doesn't allow you to "ignore" enviromental factors, and those add up quick. Light rain and partial light, target in cover, and you could be looking at a -5 or -7 dicepool modifier. Sure, if you're some kind of hyper specialized gunslinger, you can eat that and still have 12 or 13 dice. But you paid through the nose to be that specialized.

Also, this argument that PCs should be handicapped, while NPCs should not... well, it smacks of gamism. If it's foggy and partially lit, that modifier is going to apply to all the involved parties, not just the combat pool 9 characters. And who is better able to eat that modifier, the PC who reduces the penalties to -1 or 0, and has a -2 smartlink, or the unaugmented security guards? In addition, not having a two-page chart of modifiers is both simpler, and more fluid to work with. At first, SR5's enviromental penalties seemed a bit cludgy and confusing. In practice, it works pretty well, and we don't spend a lot of time constantly flipping through the book to the modifier table(which is still pretty big).

Continuing with this whole "Tactics vs. strategy" thing: let's say you're pulled over for a routine traffic stop(say some tusker kid threw a rock and knocked out your tail lights*). The streetsam with restricted cyberware, grenades, and illegal guns decides to "fix" the problem by shooting the cops. Let's say neither party is surprised(The cops halfway expect a traffic stop to result in gun fire, the runners expect to shoot, etc), and combat starts. The augmented street same is probably looking at something like 8+3d6 initiative, or multiple passes and going first, while the cops are going to only act once, and probably be last on the draw. There's no "tactical" decision there, you simply go before them and hose'em. Oh, and with something like 8 to 9 armor as a matter of course, the street sam can just stand in the open, because he's throwing 12 or 13 dice to resist damage against a TN of 2, so even if you hit him, that pistol isn't going to do squat. Even when the SWAT team shows up, they end up having problems with the brick. Further, while combat pool might seem like a tactical deal, it was not: your combat pool was decided at character generation, and it's uses(bolstering offense, or morei mportantly, keeping you alive) didn't change based on whether or not you used good tactics. Hiding behind a corner didn't give you a bonus to combat pool, and walking like a terminator with your gun at your hip, spitting hot death didn't disadvantage you.

So you had combats that were either entirely lopsided(Augmented vs. non augmented, Augmented rolls the opposition unless very disadvantaged by environment and numbers) or became stalemates(equally matched, and good tactical decisions on both sides) and drawn out. Whether or not that is realistic(most gunfights/combat situations are generally one-sided and resolved quickly, or turn into drawn out bloody affairs), it's not fun. It's tedious and bogs down the game, to the point that you didn't want to run too many combats, or you'd spend a session running one combat at a damn time. Again, not fun.

It's not the same these days. Even a routine traffic stop can turn very lethal. Those Cops have a professional rating of 3, which gives them three edge. One cop can Blitz or Sieze the Initative so that he's not flat-flooted and can actually do some things, they can toss edge as a bonus into their dice pools, and generally they can be a pain in the ass. Now, in all fairness, the PCs will probably be victorious, but they gotta work a little bit more for it, and it's not a given that the Street Sam will automatically go first and act before the cops can respond.

Now, back to hating floating TNs? Yeah, I do, because of things like Sustaining spells. For three editions, a wizard sustaining a spell and or astrally percieving was pretty much uncapable of of doing anything. A simple +2 modifier made everything much, much harder(TN 4 is about a 50% chance of succes per die, TN 6 is a 16% chance of success) to do. Now, there were tricks around it(spirits and quickening), while reducing a dice pool of 10 to 8 is a much smaller decrease in effectiveness. So you didn't have a lot of sustained spells being used, unless that was all you were going to do. Which... didn't match the fluff at all.

Again, getting tagged with a lucky AR burst in SR3 for a 11S wound wasn't that big of a deal: you only need to get 6 success to stage it down to nothing, if the combat pool dice didn't evade the hit outright, and with armor 8 or 9, you could soak that all day long. Which lead to increasingly bizarre things, like Lonestar carrying a gun that fired faster than physically possible to "penetrate armor" by allowing no penalty bursts. Silly.

I've rebuilt Meat/Jolly Roger and played him in SR3, SR4 and SR5. In SR3, Meat has around 11-12+ dice for damage resistence and an Armor value of something like 8/5(Armored vest /w armored jacket layered over, titanium bone lacing, and maybe other cyberware. He was a freakin' cybermonster) when walking around on the street, higher when he geared up for violent runs. IF you weren't packing APDS, you were not hurting him(the one time he was really taken down, the shooters used stun ammo to get around his stupid high ballistic armor, and he still soaked a lot of bursts and killed a few guys before going down). In SR5, he'd have something like a 23-24 dice pool to soak. Against a pistol, he's throwing 23 dice against a DV of 7 or 8, which means he can eat a pistol round to the chest pretty well. Against an AR, he's looking at 22 dice, and something like 10 or 11 hits he needs to completely soak that damage.

Also, since those average guys are now throwing 7 or 8 dice on a test, rather than 3, they're more likely to get more hits, stage the damage up more, and prevent him from dodging. That's pretty sweet. It means that Meat isn't a juggernaut anymore, and he doesn't just wade through automatic weapons fire, with his AS-7 spitting hot flechette death. Sure, he won't take but a box or two of damage at a time, but that still means he's gonna go down if he tries to go full terminator.

What I'm seeing in SR5 is that "good" combat characters are throwing around 10-12 dice at char gen for their attacks, and regular "mooks" are throwing around 6 to 7. The PCs do outclass them, but not nearly as much as before when you saw Skill 5 and 6 people(with -2 to their TNs) vs 3s and 4s(Tns of 4 or 5). In SR3, regular runners could generally pull off 4 or 5 hits on a mook, while the mooks were lucky to get a hit or two. Addint enviromental modifiers into that, and the SR3 mooks just can't compete.


*This couldn't happen with the damage rules for vehicles, but whatever

Posted by: freudqo May 8 2015, 10:22 PM

Whatever man, but don't complain if I correct most of your irrational claims about those poor mechanics. You can recall enough, but you're quoting 9 as a difficult TN, and that the smartling is a problem and so on. One issue was a problem with players who don't like to have high stats and fail some test, the second is probably one of the less quoted issue people had with SR3.

So now:

1 - The point of smartlink if everybody has one? Your very argument is that not everybody does. Yes, most non awakened PC has one. The point is that NPC didn't, and that shadowrunners are not described as Joe Average. That's as simple as it goes. You'll call me strawman, but the direct corollary of your point is that it's strange most non awakened PC have cyber or bioware while cyberware is supposed to be rare. 2nd, smartlink are not awesome. Smartgoggles gives you 1 point, laser point gives you 1 point. At long range, optical 2 or 3 is as good. It's mostly sensible that not everyone has one.

2 - About the so called straw man: I'm answering your post about how SR3 is not tactical which answered Cain's post about how SR3 was tactical and SR4 strategic. I tried to describe it more precisely for you because you missed the point, and expanding on Cain's post I quoted SR4. Is it clear?

3 - About SR4 dice pool: the 13 pool guy will make the shot reliably at extreme range in light rain running. He's still got 3 dice by my count. Now say it's actually heavy rain, and he's lightly stun, and he won't make the shot, ever. Cover applies to the target reaction. If target doesn't know (hey, it's extreme range), he will always get wounded.

4 - When talking about the conditions that don't apply to both parties in a SR3 fight, I'm talking about conditions that don't apply to both. So of course, rain will affect both. Cover won't. Running won't. staying immobile in the middle of the street spraying the opposition won't. Plus of course, not everyone has the same eyes.

I think I'll just stop arguing there. Strawman accusation are beginning, that's indicative it's time to leave it, I've already claimed that SR3 had stupid outcomes more than necessary, and my point was that the floating TN and tactical pools had nothing to do with it. The 9 ballistic guy is a problem because 9 ballistic is possible, not because floating TN. I'll just add 3 things before:
- The streetsam with maxed out reflexes, awesome guns and tons of ballistic armor will indeed make short work of two cops on patrol. It's hard to get how it's a problem, though. Some people or he at some point invested hundreds of thousands of nuyens for him to be a war machine.
- Getting tagged with a 11S AR burst with 6 successes because you were stupidly standing in the middle of the street and this skill 4 assault rifle guy spent his combat pool meant you had to make 12 successes to stage it down to nothing. And then the guy shoots a second time. And your dodge TN is at 5 on first birst, 6 on second.
- You missed the point about tactical pools. Their tactical aspect is that you decide when and how you want to spend them. That's tactical. By the very definition of tactical.

And finally, I don't care about your build. Hitting the search function will show you 10s of easily tweaked out SR4 or 5 sams that can soak anything. Have fun!

Posted by: apple May 8 2015, 10:38 PM

Sustaining Foci were already known in SR3 ... and the +2 to TN while astrally perceiving were only for mundane things, not for magical actions. So a sustaining mage was perfectly fine while astrally perceiving if he just was a little bit careful.

SYL

Posted by: Wothanoz May 9 2015, 05:21 AM

Ok, first off, I suggest that if you want to enjoy a nuanced conversation or lively debate with somebody, don't focus on one line of their position and dismiss it as "irrational". My dislikes for SR3, as comapred to SR 4 and now SR5, are not irrational, and in fact have rational basis(poor versimulitude with real-world things such as guns, a poor mechanic that didn't really explain how regular people did anything, etc). Dismissing my complaints as "irrational" by the second post, and focusing entirely on that? Also, using pejoratives such as "haters" is not really a good way to go. That's not how you start a friendly debate. Just letting you know, for future reference. Now, on the other hand, if you wanna play dirty pool, we can do that too, teacup. But don't start firing off pejoratives, then start crying when people point out your straw man arguments.

So now:



No, the point I was making is that joe-average with a smart link(a cybernetic one, not the glorified laser sight goggles) and 3 or 4 in a firearms skill is as good, if not better than a "World Class" skill of 6. And that's true: a TN of 2 gives you an 85% or so chance of each die being a success. So 4 dice turns into 3 success easy, while 6 dice on a TN of 4 turns into 3 successes. And anyone Skill 6 or better is supposed to be in the top level of that skill, the kind of person people talk about when discussing that skill. And for TN 3 vs TN 5, that's 2.64 successes compared to 1.98. For TN 7 vs TN 9 that's like .98 success compared to .48. Strange to me that a "professional" level of shooting(what I would expect for infantrymen) with a cheap, readily available augmentation is superior to "world class" skill with shooting. This creates a big problem with suspension of disbelief: It's hard for me to not be incredulous that smartlinks are not ubiquitous items in the 6th world, considering the amazing boost they provide.

While in SR4, those skill levels did not change that much, but the dice pools got bigger. But a smartlink only provides an additional 2 dice to the pool, which is less than a net success for your trouble. It's still something you should take, but it doesn't make "average" shooters outperform world class marksmen. An Agi 4, Skill 4 guy with a smartlink is on par with, not superior to an agi 4, skill 6 guy without.




Again, I'm not defending SR4 as the "superior" edition. I'm saying that, despite almost a decade with SR2 and SR3 rules, I have no particular attachment to them, and infact, have several problems with them. I believe that SR4 was a great step in the right direction, if poorly implemented, and it did wonders for things that have been problems for almost 20 damned years in the system. Sr5 is an even more refined edition, and while I absolutely LOATH some of the regressions(see riggers and hackers), over-all I consider it an outright better system than SR3.

And no, SR3 was not "tactical", because once you "bought in" to a particular level of competence, you were so far above "regular" people that they stopped being a threat. Again, this isn't just "irrational" "hate", but the experience of over 15 years of playing this game.




Hey, buttercup, i'm NOT TALKING ABOUT SR4. Talking about SR5. Applying my arguments to SR4 will result in confusion.




How do you take cover if you're surprised, or simply incapable of acting before the opponents? How do you run when you're already dead? Two cops in a squad car is a chump encounter for anyone augmented. In SR4 and SR5, getting the "drop"(in this case, acting before them in initiative) is not guaranteed against unaugmented opponents. So those cops might go before you, they might make multiple actions, allowing them to get into cover and take advantage of those tactical options, that otherwise they couldn't in SR3. So, you know, there is that. So it's not an automatic that my Init 8+3d6 guy is gonna go before those Init 7+1d6 cops. They might get the drop on me, and there's no way I can stop that.



Don't call people irrational or haters, then cry about them pointing out your weak arguments. If you wanna dish out the punishment, then be prepared to accept the punishment. Also, don't fixate on one line of an argument, while ignoring every other complaint.



Except that in SR4 and SR5, it's not a foregone conclussion. Those cops could get the first shot, they could be throwing 10+ dice on that shot, and it doesn't matter how much 'ware you have, a lowly punk cop can put you in the ground.



Lol. Ok, so an Agi(or was it still Quickness back then? Can't really remember, been a long time) 4, INT 3, Will 3 guy had what, 5 combat pool? Throwing 9 dice at TN4(or more, because, ya know, low light, glare, rain, mist, fog, chaotic world, injuries, whatever. Oh, Recoil too.) gets you around 4 to 5 successes on average, not six. And when I'm throwing 13+ dice, with a TN of 2, yeah, I can expect around 11 successes to stage that down. And couldn't you roll combat pool on your soak test, or was it only for dodging? Because I seem to remember that you could use it to soak, not just dodge.



You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

But my issue with Combat Pool was not that it allowed tactical decisions or required them, but that the mechanics of the rule meant that if you wanted to be good at combat, you had a very particular build, and that the attributes most associated with that build were generally most associated with Magicians and Deckers, rather than Street Sams.





Man. Is this how far Dumpshock has fallen? Really?

Posted by: Wothanoz May 9 2015, 05:28 AM

Sustaining foci, which I forgot to mention, were great. Bust they cost karma to bond, and the lower force ones were real easy to disbind/disenchant.

When SR4 dropped, I was able to run the street mage pre-genned character(though I swapped out spells), and not only turn myself invisible and levitate, but also be able to still cast magic fingers, mind probe and summon spirits. That was not possible without exceptional luck and specialization in SR1-3. Improvement says i.

Posted by: apple May 9 2015, 08:10 AM

Disenchanting/disbinding during combat and the Karma cost were quite low in SR3. S-Foci were a pretty good and safe way to sustain multiple spells on you. I am sure you still remember the force 1 sustaining foci with improved reflexes so that the mage had the same initiative as the street sam.



Levitation, spirit summoning, mind probe and magic fingers were already part of SR3 and could be done from the start.

In other ways the SR4 mage was nerfed (no magic immunity after some initiation grades with shielding, mor skills to cover, not simply summoning and sorcery, no free spells for 0 Karma because you performed a metaquest or used the spells exclusively, mnemoenhancer, no almost-none-reduction of magical might you you cybered up, no SnS ammunition to instantly disrupt spirits, cheaper skill increase), in others they ways they were buffed in SR (spirit tool box).

But of course everything pales against the SR1/2 mages with insta-all-metamagic.

SYL

Posted by: Wothanoz May 9 2015, 01:12 PM

I do remember the force 1 sustaining foci. And I remember getting them blown up in various ways at various times.




But there was no way you were going to cast Magic fingers, mind probe, summon, or use an attack spell, while invisible AND levitating, without messing about with foci.



Fair enough, it changed. Change isn't always bad.

And, as we all know. The more things change... the more the stay the same.

Posted by: apple May 9 2015, 03:07 PM

On a rule basis? Granted, my SR3 times is long gone (around 10 years ...) but I do not remember that it was easy to attack foci, especially with masking, a very common initiate power (usually the first one a player mage took).



Of course not. But sustaining foci were cheap (in Karma and Nuyen, depening on our starting ressources and/or nuyen rewards during play (of course, an extreme low power group without any monetary rewards to get more than squatter monthly would have massive issues getting sustaining foci in the first place - but then again SR23 tended to get way more money compared SR4 (subjective experience)). And don´t forget focused concentration, something missing in SR4 as well (focused concentration gives you now drain dices). Compared to SR3 sustained foci feel more expensive due to higher investments since the force now plays a role.

And of course: you would not do that in SR4 as well with -8 on your tests-

I still remember how painful it was when my mage cybered up the first time in SR4, and ALL dice pools went down. In SR3? After some initiations granting free mmagic points? I lost 2 or 3 essence for some really nice upgrades and still lost only 1 pool dice IIRC.

SYL

Posted by: freudqo May 9 2015, 03:46 PM

A force 1 foci could easily get destroyed when pressed against an astral barrier, typically if his owner was not astrally perceiving when passing through. It could be targeted by a mana spell, which had to do deadly physical damages to break it, but benefited from spell defense in this case. It could be attacked in astral combat too, but it took at least two complex actions to break it, so the owner could always shut it down before it was destroyed. All in all, it was not so easy to break even a force 1 focus, but it was not improbable to see it happen.

Posted by: apple May 9 2015, 04:44 PM

Yeah, thought so. Masking + astral perception (and a certain knowledge on how magical security is done) = a lot of surviving foci.

SYL

Posted by: Wothanoz May 10 2015, 05:30 AM

My knowledge of the rules is about the same as yours, so I am remembering decades old information, but there is a difference between begin able to Levitate, be Invisible, and still do magic tasks without requiring anything extra.

which is useful if you get shotup with stun rounds, wake up with a hood on you and you are buck naked with none of your foci. An SR4 and SR5 magician can still sustain multiple spells and do things, while an SR3 or SR2, or SR1 mage cannot do that without the benefit of a focus. Sure, it's easy to do, easy to maintain, but it did create a vulnerability that presently doesn't exist. And it cost Karma, which isn't to be ignored.

I remember reading the intro story to Queen Euphoria, reading about how the Coyote shammn cast armor to harden his fists and punch through the glass of his crashed plane, and I remember thinking: "Man.. unless he was intiated with centering, there's no way he is doing that". And, ya know? I was right. He wasn't an iniatiate, he didn't have centering or any other metamagics, yet the fiction describes him as doing something that wasn't possible by the rules.

There's a whole host of that.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 10 2015, 05:37 AM

I thought you were done, man? I mean, you are responding to a quote someone asked of me. I thought you were done with this conversation, because it got too "hot" when I pointed out your weak arguments.

C'mon man. I'm irrational and a hater, man. So why don't you respond to me, instead of continuing the debate through proxy?

In addition to the floating TNs, which I hate, I also give you that representations of firearms and the interaction between fleshy characters and vehicles were flawed and didn't work well. They were problematic, for a variety of reasons(learned over a decade of playing SR2 and SR3), and you don't offer any rebuttal to those points. Why not? I mean, I get it, I'm irrational and a hater, but why are these other glaring, obvious flaws of the SR3 ruleset not addressed?

Posted by: apple May 10 2015, 09:53 AM

A normal starting SR4 mage with perhaps 10-15 dices (depending on build, rule abuse, mentor spirit etc) will not do major magic with -8 on all his magic tests (for sustaining levitation, invisibility mind probe and magic fingers at the same time, as per your example). In that case, naked or not, he is almost as vulnerable as the mage from other editions. In some cases it was even easier in SR3 due to the focused concentration edge (which was changed in SR4), as in your case the mage would only rececive +4 to his TNs and not +8.

Both would need a certain amount of dice luck in that case - the SR4 mage usually less than the SR3 mage, granted.

As we begin to circle around the same arguments, I am ending my part here.

SYL

Posted by: Wothanoz May 10 2015, 03:32 PM

Just remember, its only like my opinion man. Everyone has one, and they all stink.

I do appreciate that you remained civil with me(its not an easy task), and remember: there is no badwrongfun way to play this game.

Except for being a vampire. That's just wrong.

Posted by: Sendaz May 10 2015, 04:53 PM

Sure they are bloodsucking leeches preying on mankind and hiding in the shadows as the pure light of day burns them.

But still better than being a lawyer.

SuingRun™

Injured in a shadowrun and it wasn't your fault?

Did a drunken streetdoc attach/remove the wrong limb?

Are you feeling Discriminated Against/Hunted for a Bounty due to Metavariance/Species/Magical Tradition or Infection?

Are your partners mind probing you even as we speak?

Now's your chance to let our crack legal team bring justice (for a price) by sticking it to them in court.



No case is too big, no fee is too big.

Posted by: Medicineman May 10 2015, 06:26 PM

Reminds me of "Krakatoa", my Hawai'ian Troll Adept Lawyer
If You attack him, he not only can beat You to a Pulp, but he can also sue You for Attacking him

I'm really toying with the thought of creating a Nocturnal Banshee Mage (specialised in Summoning and binding Spirits and with CHA 8 )

with an offtopic Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Voran May 11 2015, 06:11 AM

Jeez, some people are getting angry here

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 11 2015, 01:50 PM

You know how it is... Once people bring out the Infected, then the Pitchforks and Fire are shortly to follow.

Posted by: Sendaz May 11 2015, 02:06 PM

And if you act now we will throw in one (1) Free Torch with every three (3) Memory Metal Pitchforks purchased.

Ask us about our Bulk Mob Rates today......

Posted by: Voran May 22 2015, 10:24 AM

so I haven't gotten Lockdown yet, and while it might make good reading material, I'll be running of irl to a summer practicum out of the country for 3 months and probably won't have alot of time/access to get the new stuff, still I wondered what people thought of it, and the direction of the CFD "evil bad nano" route.

I've sorta realized my discomfort stems from an odd parallel I've drawn, likely not intended, but given my line of work in the health/mental health field, it almost comes across like early HIV/AIDS scare stuff. where you have a population that oooooh scary can look like you, but actually unlike vamps and ghouls, which are obvious, are secret infectors whose fluids and contact can cause YOU to get infected too. If you're not augmented you can still be in trouble if the evil uncontrollable CFD lurker can inject you with their goo. And if you're augmented, watch out for toilet seats that can infect your cyberlegs!

Posted by: bannockburn May 22 2015, 10:48 AM

There's a review in the pinned Lockdown thread, I think.

Posted by: Glyph May 23 2015, 12:14 AM

A well thought-out, non-bashing review, at that. I still doubt I will pick it up - I don't like the railroady feeling of "You are all trapped in this area now", the infection angle has problems (characters basically get ruined or killed by GM fiat, sounds like), and the whole "nanoware doesn't work now" thing makes me feel like leaving this offering to the grognards who wanted it to go away. That, and this has been done already with bug spirits and shedim. I'm kind of spitefully glad that cyberware suites sound utterly useless, because I hate it when they stick these bits of gear in adventure/setting books, instead of the crunch books where they belong.

Posted by: Voran Jun 18 2015, 02:05 AM

I've realized that part of my discomfort stems from 'being caught in tow' with the ongoing narrative. I've had a chance to catch up on the 4th edition stuff, and some of the 5th edition missions and source material now, and I'm getting this sense of "here's the story, what you players do is pretty irrelevant because we have it planned out." Its easier to see in hindsight, the missions give the illusion of player choice and contribution to world narrative, but then GMs would potentially have to retcon player stuff to fit into the source material that comes out a few months later. Or they have to go further off track, in which case the new sourcebook can be a little difficult to reconcile.

Now, this isn't anything new. Many games and genres do it. In a sense it makes sense for the SR setting, the idea of "Frak you peon, megas and dragons and the like always win out." I feel it kind of lends to a decision point: Do you want to participate in published missions/story and accept that you (as a player, and character) have no impact whatsoever, because the devs/story is decided before you even get involved. or do you ignore the published stuff and come up with your own because then your players will be less impacted by discordant background source changes in the world?

Posted by: Glyph Jun 18 2015, 02:43 AM

Yeah, that's why for me, it's always been crunch > setting books > adventures. The setting books are good for general details, but I will tend to gloss over or ignore the more specific bits - if I want Lord Torgo to still be around, or for the Tir insurrection to fail, or think a gang war would be great even though it is set ten years before/later in the timeline, then I will diverge from canon. The adventures, I prefer to come up with on my own, but they can still be mined for NPCs and story ideas.

Posted by: Cain Jun 18 2015, 10:04 AM

There's a lot of that in RPG fiction, period. D&D is loaded with that sort of thing, for example. FASA did it a lot, with Battletech: the "Stackpole Maneuver" didn't actually exist until after Stackpole made it up, then rules were eventually retconned in. SR1-3 is no different in that area.


Well, thing is, players like feeling that their characters are important. They like being able to affect the outcome of events, hence the popularity of metaplot games in the 90's. So, if you can empower the players in this fashion, it's a good thing.

But, not all player groups will agree on what should happen. So, what happened was some groups basically got to decide the outcome of events, and whatever other players did became irrelevent. This was the case with White Wolf, for example. SR2 actually made a good attempt to get player input in one case: people who bought the Super Tuesday book got ballots to vote for the next UCAS president. Problem was, they only got like five ballots back.

So, things went back to the developers, who stopped listening. They figured if players didn't care, they didn't deserve input. Some companies have come back around, using the internet to collect data in a better fashion. Others are still stuck in the 90's, and just do whatever they think is best.

In my case... I try and resolve this by putting together really big, game-changing events as the result of a campaign, not the cause. So, once the world-shaking is over, the characters are about ready to retire anyway. If I have to reset, then we start with new characters, in a modified timeline. If my old players want to see what happened, I either tell them it's hush-hush, and their new characters don't know (yet), or they'll discover the changes as the new campaign goes on.

Posted by: Draco18s Jun 18 2015, 03:17 PM

Reminds me that someone out there took Pathfinder's Reign of Winter adventure setting and went, "Ok, what happens if the players fail each one? Fail all of them? Awesome. Here, have some more adventure plots."
(I think one of the failures leads to a major city being hit with an asteroid)

Posted by: Sendaz Jun 18 2015, 03:51 PM

Wow, I guess you could say they ended up between a rock and a hard place.

(•_•)

( •_•) ⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

Yeaaaahhhhh

Posted by: Fatum Jun 18 2015, 09:29 PM

Well, it can be mitigated by adventures (or fluff books, for that matter) only giving hard info up to a certain point, until the subject is revisited a few years later in another book.
Like, take the technomancer trouble in Geneva. It's mentioned in... what was it?.. Runner Havens?.. and then GMs are left to do with it what they will, until an edition later it comes up again.

Posted by: Voran Jun 19 2015, 02:40 PM

Heh pathfinder. If you do the Drow series, a potential failure is also "Rock falls from sky, everyone dies." I also liked the Demon (devil?) one with the Worldwound, where you basically got invasion. It was like...Warhammer 40k setting if you wanted it