Sounds like a lot of Knowledge Skills to me, which are already a part of the game. Resulting actions of which can already be modeled actively with current Active skills. *shrug*

Occupying (specialisation on location, e.g. Occupying (Seattle Center), Occupying (fine New York boutiques), Occupying (extraterritorial property).)

Why does that need to be a Skill, exactly? Presence alone does that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Anyway, I'm curious for details, should they eventually emerge. Though, heroes? I can't say I like that word in connection with Shadowrun.

Body represents your presence but the skill shows how well you can chain yourself to things.

But should the skill really be body based? Charisma would better reflect the medial impact you're really after ...

I know what you mean... what I tried doing when 'playtesting' my own with skills going from 1-12 at the same karma costs as knowledge skills now. I ran into the same issue.


What I ended up doing was turning the 'dodge' skill around. I defended against all attacks with Dodge (+ melee). And added reaction as full defense.

This actually worked pretty well. Especially when altering a lot of the gear which provides bonuses to reaction to provide a skill modifier to dodge instead. (IE: wired reflexes... +1 2... to defense instead of to reaction).

Yeah, but what did you do about magic?

Use Counterspelling, which just got stronger too?

If you have access to counterspelling. If not, your mage is free to mind-rape everything.

And this is different how? You're still relying on the same tools to counter magic: noticing it (6-Force threshold), shooting the mage first and have someone with counterspelling against opposition with magicians. It's not like 2xSkill+Attribute+Focus+Spec vs Attribute is going to make a big difference. It's merely 1-6/7 extra dice against your already meager pool.

This is going to sound obtuse, and I'll expand later on it (when I'm not running out the door), but the short answer is, "when you want your fiction to be influenced by your mechanics."

Look at storygames like Apocalypse World / Dungeon World / Monsterhearts, Sorceror by Ron Edwards, or Mouseguard. The way the rules are structured, when you roll for X, Y fictional element happens. It's kind of a neat way to generate outcomes without pre-planning.


When you want to Fight the Man, roll +Punk:

On -6, the Man resists your fightin' (and probably jails you)
On 7-9, you throw a garbage can through a window, but you get hit by pepper spray
On 10+, you overthrow the system and institute a Neo-Anarchist paradise.

What? No, PHYSICAL PRESENCE (you know, actually being there to control the space) is what I am talking about. There is no skill needed to occupy a space. Controlling the space is either an Influence skill or a Combat skill, dependant upon how you intend to occupy the space. *shakes head*

Chaining yourself requires no skill at all. *shakes head*

Yeah, that's really more of a Quality.



Maybe some sort of Reverse Escape Artist type skill, to make it harder for someone else to remove you from restraints.

Ummm... Just hit them as they try to unchain you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
That should make it more difficult.

Sounds like a special social skill, then. Chaintimidation, maybe. This will need some development.

Intimidation would work... *shakes head*

Whoa there, lay off the Chainterrogation.

I am slightly more optimistic for 5th than I was prior to reading the blog. My complaints with 4th have been not enough grit and cyberpunk (in my opinion, only). They state these as goals, so I will reserve judgement and be less pessimistic.

But yeah, I agree with the concern on the "Heroes" part, I like my Shadowrun heroes to be very, very much anti-heroes.

I guess I'm still curious as to what they intend on changing. They said they mostly liked 4th edition, so I doubt they'll make changes to the existing Attribute+Skill dicepile. When I think of a 'new edition' I think about a fundamental change in gameplay, and it doesn't seem like they intend on changing anything too drastically (granted, we have very little info to go on). If they only intend on cleaning up 4A, doest it really need a whole new edition? Couldn't it just be 4B? Kinda seems to me like they're only putting out 5e because WotC is working on a new DnD....

...which, by the way, I hope they take a cue from and do an open playtest for 5e Shadowrun.

Personally, I like to read design goals for things, then disregard entirely whatever they've said. Whatever buzzwords the designers put out are meaningless, IMO.
I tend to reserve judgment until I've looked at systems, though (or had word from someone I trust to be reliable, who has). Even if designers used some buzzwords I disagree with. In RPGs, flavor is always mutable, but changing large mechanical parts of the system tends to induce imbalance to such a degree that it might very well be better to just hack another system to fit the world (FATE, GURPS, Cortex, Savage Worlds, etc. There are plenty of generic or semi-generic systems out there that can work for anything.)


Ugh, no.
The idea sounds good (They'll listen to my brilliant ideas, and it will be the perfect game for me), until you realize that by pure statistics, they're more likely to listen to the more vocal group of idiots out there, or perhaps just use hardcore fanboys as a shield for not having to listen to people who criticize the system.

Or if bad comes to worse, they might even listen to DS (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I'm quite against an open playtest. For one, this would need ressources to handle the company does not in the least have. They cannot even pay one editor, how are they supposed to pay for the infrastructure to handle an open betatest like DD5 or FFG's Only War?


They you're rather alone. Shadowrun editions, with the exception of 4, were focused on evolving, not trearing down, the current system.

That may not be so bad, as long as they don't just listen to the vocal minority with strong opinions.

...which doesn't include me, no sir (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

"Open play tests" is marketing speak for, "we are great, aren't we?"