Did you feel you got your money's worth out of the content inside?

translates to:

Italian, Spanish, Italian, Italian, Norwegian, Norwegian, Italian, Russian.


So far, yes. Euro's still strong, which helps. Isn't bad, though. useful info and probably useful gear. But, havuing read, like, a quarter yet, I'm not making final judgements here.

Nothing in the Shadowrun books in French... Yet. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) We just got a multilingual dump, and French is a major language used around the world. (Asia, North America, Africa, Europe...)


Still haven't gone through it with a fine toothed comb, but I'm happy with my purchase of a PDF copy, especially as I got it on sale. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Here's the inspiration for it under video and it's the video titled blast mitigation.

http://www.rhinoliningsindustrial.com/appl...le_jacket/76/95

Reminds me that one can fix a leaky fuel tank using a bar of soap, thanks to how it interacts with petrol.

Okay, glanced over my buddy's head to see what the book has on the GRU, and what the crunch is good for.

And the first quote is instant WTF:
Does the Army has any other intelligence agencies in addition to the GRU for GRU operatives to order a murder of "Red Army spies"?

The part on the GRU itself is boring, though. No fact-checking done since SoE, the GRU still handles political officers (which has always been the KGB's duty, actually, political officer being in the KGB and not Army's chain of command is what gave him his power, and what made him that hated), but now it uses them to back up its political ambitions (with their political clique called Siloviki, which is a Russian word for any and all state-run organizations bearing arms, but it's a buzzword since Putin's rise to power, so no way for it not to be used, even without knowing its meaning!). But a couple small paragraphs on actual intelligence work. And but of course, Spetznaz used as a name for specific spec-ops group run by the GRU.


On to crunch (which is mixed IC and OOC, despite what's said above; describing an item IC and then giving an OOC stat line is not separating the two).
The disguise rules for equipment are a nice idea, but the even example provided includes the necessity to tell a pen's Device rating. And, but of course, it's never cross-checked with Arsenal - things like SA Puzzler should hardly work with the rules suggested. Same for drone case rules - minidrones, which are said to be the size of a large insect to the size of a mouse in Arsenal, are suggested to be hidden in pen- or key-shaped cases; small drones, which are commlink or toaster to large dog in size, are said to be possible to hide in a commlink- or shoe-shaped case (or a hidden pocket).

Commlink accessories are cool, as well. Although the section leaves you wondering - why is there nothing as handy as Nanite Slicers in Augmentation, and where can I get a whole vat of these Nanite Disassemblers 2.0? Does the Gyroscopic Winch mod come "w/ 50m of high-tensile microwire", as listed in the stats, or without any, as said in the description? Is the "Small Explosive Device" the same as "Self-destruct, Area" mod from Unwired, and if yes, why list it twice, if no, what's the difference?

Same goes for Intelligence Gear. Assembler assembles documents "regardless of the style of shredder used"? Good ultra-secure shredders turn paper into a pulp. There are shredders with a tiny fireplace inside. How does the assembler work, is it magitech, after all? Does it have magnets inside, perchance? Does Card Skimmer record first ten swipes or first ten cards? Is CarnivoreGold your universal lingvosoft to make all lingvosofts obscolete, after all? How is MonaLisa different from Facial Recognition from Arsenal, and why are the rules different? What determines the UM material rating when it's shaped neither as a hood nor as a body bag?

Surveillance equipment is the best rules section, as for me. Mage Sight Eye Drops pretty much solves the problem with astral security for infiltrators I've been so sore about in a recent thread. Good job!
The drone section is weird, though. Olfactory sensors with a range of four kilometers? And how is Bloodhound Olfactory Sensor different from the usual Olfactory Sensors?

At last, the new magic stuff. What the hell does "anywhere the caster can telepathically communicate" mean for Synesthesia? Can he "telepathically communicate" through wards, for example? How does Spell Masking metamagic interact with Extended Masking, which allows you to mask sustained spells, as well, afaik? Why does Master of 1000 Faces limit your weight at 50 kg minimum, is it only available for human males?

The crunch all in all leaves positive impression - a lot of good ideas there, - but it could've used a competent editor.

This isn't exactly accurate. Yes there is OoC text imbedded in the IC text, but the OoC/crunch stuff is in big black boxes. While I'm sure not everyone will like this format, you can clearly tell which is which.


The device rating limitation only applies to adding Secondary Functionality. And why is this a problem? Its not saying that you need to give every pen a device rating every time a character goes to write something. Just that if you want to build a laser torch into a given pen, you need to consider that pen's device rating (which should be 1 or 2 at most). Seems pretty reasonable to me, and limits the amount of functions you can build into a device without adding a new mechanic (device ratings being well established in cannon, which states that just about everything has one).

And there is mention of Arsenal's disguise rules in the very first paragraph of the section, with page reference even.

The Puzzler is manufactured from start to finish to break down into disguised components. It hardly applies to a discussion of rules for modifying existing gear to be broken down or disguised. Its rules don't even work the same way- requiring a Logic + Armor test implies that the observer needs to be somewhat skilled to even realize what they are looking at. Thats not the same as realizing that a lighter has a microphone built into it, or that a bunch of undisguised pieces can be assembled into a gun.

Drone Cases: If you ask me a pen is about the size of a large insect and disguising a drone the size of a commlink as a commlink seems pretty reasonable. It seems a bit nit-picky to argue that items that are only described in vague size ranges can't be disguised as other items that are only described in vague size ranges. Obviously there has to be some level of common sense and GM logic applied here.


Nanites:Seems like the rules as written can easily be adapted to any other nanite. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Wench: This is a little confusing. As I read it, the wire is included in the price of the mod, but cannot be housed inside the modified commlink. You have to conceal it elsewhere on your person and thread it into the commlink when you intend to use it.

Explosive: This is a good question. As far as I can tell there isn't a lot of difference except that the Spy Games mod packs a much smaller punch. And of course the assumption is that the user plans to use the commlink as a grenade at some point in the mission, whereas the mod in Unwired assumes that the commlink will only be detonated if the shit hits the fan. donno.


Assembler: I think its implicit that you actually have to have shreds to reassemble. Not sure what magnets would contribute?

Card Skimmer: Rules say first ten swipes.

CarnivoreGold: Linguasofts allow the user to speak an unknown language in realtime. CarnivoreGold is only used to translate after the fact. Trying to use it in place of a linguasoft would be like 3 people sitting and having a conversation where 2 are speaking fluently and one is using Babblefish to try to follow along.

Monalisa: Another good question. I think both CarnivoreGold and Monalisa were initially conceptualized as specialized Browse programs used for Data Search tests specific to their types. That didn't seem to translate well to the final product, tho.

UM: The rating is whatever you want to pay for. The hood and body bag are apparently pre-manufactured products, which have a rating of one. You could purchase rating 6 material and make a rating 6 hood, if you wanted to.

A bear can smell a carcass up to 20 miles away if its upwind. Although there are no ranges listed, I think the Olfactory Sensor/Olfactory Booster are meant to be short ranged and used in the immediate vicinity of the user. The Bloodhound System is long ranged, directional and intended for use with the BioTags listed on the previous page. Interesting to note the Std. Upgrades for the drone lists "Olfactory Booster" which is the cyberware system, and clearly a mistake.


Synesthesia: It means not on the metaplanes, as stated in the text. I would say the basic rules for Ward apply (i.e.- the threshold is increased by 1 for every 3 force the ward possesses).

Spell Masking: Another good question. Lots of overlap there. The advantage seems to be that Spell Masking only works for spells and does not require Masking as a prerequisite. Its also weaker than Extended Masking, since you don't add your Intuition. Overall, not a great ability.

Master of 1000 Faces: 50 kg would be a very skinny human male. But otherwise you are right, the limits don't seem to account for a female, dwarf or other adept with smaller body type using this power.

OK guys, how about a little game to pass some time?

Here's how it goes: You open one of the equipment sidebars (well, full-page sidebars), pick an item and then time yourself while trying to figure out what the hell it actually does. (using a search function is cheating of course)
Red Hands? OK, it has similar effects to a light allergy...but what does it actually do?
T-Ray? What the hell is a T-Ray? It has a price and an availability, but that list mentioning it does not even have a heading which would give an indication of what it does. OK, the list below that mentions "visibility modifiers", so it probably has something to do with vision...


If I'm looking for equipment, I want to find the rules FAST. I don't want to read a few pages of text until finding the sentence this stuff is described. If you want to continue this weird mish-mash of fluff and crunch, then PLEASE at least highlight the names of new equipment in the fluff text, so one can figure out what it does.
Also, the tables. The core books used to have really nicely laid out tables, clear to read and without annoying vertical bars. Now all we get is a bunch of numbers, in front of a monochrome background. Randomly intermixed with rules text. Half of it, as mentioned above the other half is hidden somewhere in the fluff. And the "collected tables" are nothing but an exact C&P of the sidebars.


@Method:

A sensor's range is determined by its rating, it equals the broadcast range of a device with that Signal rating (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There really is some stuff which is but a repetition of older gear. For example the fingerprint implant thingie, unless I missed something it does exactly the Dynamic Handprints from Augmentation.

Oh yeah... damn those screwy Sensor rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif) But in that case the rating 5 Bloodhound system that comes standard on the drone is compliant with the established rules.

Edit: And btw I agree that this format leaves something to be desired. As I said above, I'm sure that many will not like it, for exactly the reasons you have stated. Granted its not the first example of something where you need to read the fluff to figure out what the hell it does, but in the case of this book you have dig through fluff for most items.

The problem is that the OOC boxes do not provide actual info on the things statted - just as Sengir is pointing out.

Why exactly should we be bothered with determining what is a pen's, or a comb's, or a simple radio system's from 1956 Device Rating is? How is it in any way related to its size, which should logically determine what can fit and what can't?

Oh, nice to know they were aware of its existence!

And that's precisely the problem - different rules for the same situation. You can replicate Puzzler (or, so to say, build Puzzler-like equipment) - but the result will not work more often than it will. You can build a gun to replicate Puzzler with Arsenal mod rules, and it will work just fine.

The drone case is a "combination of drone rack and hidden compartment". You're not masking a commlink-sized drone to look like a commlink, you're putting it into a commlink-sized container.
The drone racks are pretty strictly described. As are drone sizes. But now it's written explicitly in the rules that you can put a small drone (like, say, a Transys Steed) into your shoe - and if the rules do not work as written and require GM fiat more often than not, those are bad rules. After all, if there's no way around that, adding "but use GM discretion" hasn't killed anyone.

Sure, it's just that their performance seemed kinda astounding compared to what Augmentation has to offer.

And why precisely should we be guessing that and houseruling instead of getting rules that work right away? Wasn't there an editor among the staff?

Well, the self-destruct can be remotely initiated, so frankly, I fail to see the major difference in function.

Magnets work because of magic, bro. Do you believe in miracles? Cause a miracle is the only way for it to assemble the documents put through any shredder.

Sure, right after they say "it records the first ten cards".

Well, sure it's not a perfect way. But a hacker in VR can have 5 IPs, so for two people talking at 1 IP per turn providing a translation with a barely noticeable lag does not seem to contradict the rules - at least, as long as nothing's said about the time required to translate each message there. You can use delaying your initiative to make the translations more or less effectively instant.

Right, I just didn't see anything making it any different from that piece of sensor software.

My bad. Didn't spot that bit about Rating in the price tag - saw it's not there for availability (why is it F, btw?), and jumped to conclusion. As I said, my bad.

The descriptions actually differ only in that the Bloodhound thing can be used for tracking, far as I remember. But who said a simple Olfactory Booster/Sensor can't?

"Not on the metaplanes" means "not on the metaplanes". "Anywhere the caster can telepathically communicate" might mean anything - for example, a reference to a specific bit of rules I don't remember (not too keen on magic stuff), or whatever else. Why should we be guessing and houseruling that instead of getting rules that work?

Certainly seems so, but it could at least have been pointed out.

Well I guess we have different definitions of "rules that work".

Because then we either need a book of tables that describe the sizes of everything a runner could possibly own or use, a new rule mechanic for determining size, or we leave it up to the GM (which by your definition = bad rule).

Puzzler: Maybe you hadn't noticed but there are dozens of firearms and vehicles that don't adhere to their respective modification rules. Your argument is that the Failure Pool would mean that the Puzzler would never work? I would argue that a weapon designed and manufactured for the explicit purpose of being disassembled into disguised parts shouldn't have a Failure Pool because *thats what it was designed and manufactured to do*. The point of the Failure Pool is that modifying ordinary items to conceal things with non-standard (and sometimes vastly different) functions should make them less reliable.

Drone Cases: so is the problem that a small drone should fit in a shoe, or that the Steed is classified as "small". If you ask me the retardedness stems from the latter, which is an existing problem in the rules.

Well in that case intelligence services like the CIA and FBI have been working magic for years. In fact for $90 a month you can work the magic too. So are you saying that with SR computing power its impossible to apply technology that exists today?

The "anywhere the caster can telepathically communicate" line is there to present the idea that "remote observation of metaplanes is still impossible". You are reading way more into it.

Which is ironic really. The whole thrust of your posts seems to be that CGL is expected to provide rules that require no interpretation. This isn't a new argument at all. People around here have gone rounds about how SR4 is too dependent on "GM-fiat" (a term I detest, btw). But if you ask me its stuff like this that makes a GM (or some other means of rule interpretation) necessary. No rule system will ever be complete enough to cover everything. At any rate its not a "problem" specific to this book by any means.

Any update on the fractured free spirits of the city of Denver?

Just saying: "Okay, you're the GM, use your judgment" works as well as providing explicit rules for minor things like that. It's trying to write up a rule and dropping it half-way, so that it requires GM judgment more often than not, is what makes a bad rule.

So, are you saying that the intelligence agencies of the world use jury-rigged items, or what? Just on a side note: those same intelligence agencies have whole factories and research tanks working for them exquisitely.

The problem is that any small drone should fit in a shoe by RAW. I used the Steed as the most outrageous example, but Arsenal is full of small-sized drones which are extremely hard to imagine cramped in a shoe. Actually, that's why the drone size description says "up to the size of a large dog" - and that ruling, unlike the new one, makes sense.

I reiterate my point: even now there are shredders that burn the high-secret documentation or turn it into a paper pulp. Those are still shredders. Yes, I doubt that even with SR tech it's possible to restore info from these.

Except, as you might notice, in this thread alone we've seen a different interpretation. Just because whether a caster can telepathically communicate with every point on physical is a question without an obvious answer (at least for me, YMMV). And allowing for different interpretations makes a bad rule.

I'm just pointing out the parts of the rules that made me raise eyebrows. Some of those are just weird wordings and my nitpicking. Some are glaring editor mistakes, which can lead to hours of rules lawyering or make existing working rules subsystems obsolete. Knowing all can help the reader make an informed decision whether they want the book or not, don't you think? :ь

As for my criteria of good rules, those are pretty simple. Good rules
1) describe the situations the gaming system aims to simulate fully (a) and believably (b), in a consistent © and non-controversial (d) manner
2) allow for only a single interpretation
3) are not overly complex both in wording (a) and execution (b).
Frankly, it's a simple set of things I expect from a rule system, and I believe it's easy to see where my hopes do not come true for the book in question.


Sorry, didn't read the fluff, too scared lately.

Absolutely. If there are other examples, please share! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Which produce things like the Puzzler. Runners don't often have such resources. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I agree. As I stated, if there are no shreddings left, such a system would clearly not work.

This is drifting off topic, but to clarify, I think that groups (GMs *and* players) should discuss vague rules and come to a consensus on how they will apply them. But I also think that in-game the GM needs the authority to say "this is how we'll do it now and we will talk about it more later". This is not to say that a given player at the table might have a better grasp of the rules. The GM is more-often-than-not the best person to make the call because the player is often unaware of all the factors at play. This is why I hate the term "GM-fiat"- because if you sit at a GM's table there is a tacit agreement that you will accept his ruling. "Rules-lawyering" has no place at the table.

Just out of curiosity, is there any system that meets your criteria?

You carry food on it?

Yeah, using these ranges for sensors is a bit weird...but certainly easier than giving each sensor individual ranges


Having to read the descriptions would indeed be nothing new, that's what most gear and cyber requires. The difference is that in Augmentation or Arsenal I can pick item X from a table, then look for the paragraph with the bold heading "item X" (in order between "item W" and "item Y"), and find what I was looking for. Whereas in the new books, the descriptions are hidden somewhere in two pages of continuous text, without any special markup to designate "description for item X starts here".
In an electronic product that's annoying, but ctrl+F helps. In a print product, it's unacceptable - would anyone buy an encyclopedia without keywords?

Granted, the old books also require some page flipping, because the tables for half of the gear are not on the same spread as the description. But only SOME because there are clear and lexicographically ordered headings.


PS: And I agree with your interpretation of the winch - to be honest, it seems rather clear to me.

The art on pg. 22 sucks big time; looks very very amateur-ish, especially compared to those on pg. 90, pg. pg. 104, and pg. 136.
And I get to love the artis who created the illustration on pg. 121.

As soon as I get my book.

And the rules for that would be...

GM Fiat is when you sit at a GM's table and then a Fiat comes from behind and runs you over.
Now, it all seriousness, I have absolutely nothing against specific interpretations of the rules, and houseruling, as well, and I do both excessively. I just say that the books should not be forcing you that way.

Paranoia, for example.

I have several questions about the adept power Demara. First off, why the trideo requirement? Why can't an adept watch someone perform the action in person? Why do have to watch a bunch of youtube videos to use your magical powers? I agree that trideo should count for this power, but it seems odd to be required.

Secondly by restricted skills, does it refer to stuff like conjuring, sorcery, and compiling which can only be used by certain characters? I assume the answer is yes since that's the reading that makes the most sense by fluff and context. However those skills are never refereed to as restricted skills and I want to make sure it's not actually about default:no skills or something weirder. On a related note, does that mean restricted skills the character cannot have or all skills that are restricted? If I'm a mystic adept with Demara, can I "learn" Conjuring this way? If I have Incompetent: Pistols, can I use it for the pistols skill?

While this is all under "Ask your GM", I'll like to know more about the writer's intentions as well as others opinions.

Can't comment on the authors intent, but I'd imagine that the trideo requirement is because the adept has to see the skill used repeatedly in order to absorb it. I would say if you are watching someone use a skill that entails repetitive motions (shadow basket weaving perhaps?) that would meet the requirement.

But watching somebody shoot a pistol once and then thinking about it for an hour doesn't cut it.

So what about spending a day at the shooting range? Where lots of people fire firearms?

Edit: To pick up my Review briefly, an observation: I can read this pdf on my netbook. This was flat out impossible with Attitude, which would just freeze my reader there. So, this PDF works a lot better as a file than previous releases (War was bumpy on my netbook, too). It seems the pdf person is finally getting the hang of producing usable PDFs. Gratz.

I like what I've seen in the book so far, especially since my game is taking place in Denver. I can't say I'm a fan of the format in which items are listed now on those black pages. I keep thinking they're just fluff text so I skip over them, instead trying to find the tables that the older books used to show item costs and the like.

What pdf program do you use? If it's Adobe Reader, I advise foxit reader. I've found it be the better program (tabbed pdfs!) and far less buggy. I never noticed any problems with Attitude or War. I've had issues with War on my smartphone, but that's not exactly surprising.

I would say that is largely a issue of habit, as the change in "interface" have been a bit sudden.