Not wanting to interrupt the ongoing discussion about defining and non-defining language usage within a genre ... but here 's my 0.02 Nuyen to the question in this thread's title:

To me the 3rd Edition is both the epitome of the initial game design as well as the starting point of a completely different game design for the franchise called "Shadowrun".

SR1 and its quick successor SR2 - to me - were a nice take on a near future setting that combined then "present day" fears under the motto of cyberpunk and magic as an added twist. The core fantasy used some fancy predictions of future tech future, its impact on society and a defining timeline from the late 1990ies to the 2050ies. However some of the premises to build said predictions were already somewhat dated from a technical standpoint. This is particularly visible in the original Matrix design where networking concepts of the 70ies and early 80ies dominated while during the actual development times of 1989 onward network architectures had already significantly changed. Nevertheless SR1 and SR2 could still be interpreted as "what if" versions of "present day" life transferred about 60 years into the future as well as an "what if" scenario for an alternative reality (where some of the actual real world developments simply hadn't taken place while others did). And - at least to me - the alternate reality bit appeared to have the higher focus, simply because of the magic and meta-humanity aspect.

By the time SR3 came around in 1999 things changed. One of the first major steps within the official SR timeline simply hadn't occurred: No court ruling that opened up the way for real world "megas" becoming extra-territorial. At that point - and during the first development cycles of 3rd Edition - Shadowrun most definitely became an alternate reality game where pink mohawk and undercover spies philosophies lived side by side. Unfortunately - for my taste - with the influx of new developers / freelancers that changed rather heavy handed. People started to question the foundation of the known SR reality and pretty much demanded an revised update to make the game a new variant of that "present day" idea - at least for the parts where it was possible. This is how stuff like the ECU changed into Euro or Chrysler-Nissan changed into Daimler-Chrylser-Nissan due to real world events and why the previously closed source environment of the matrix was suddenly changed into a place where file sharing and open source became the next great thing.
And yes, some of the freelancers that are sorely missed by some people these days heavily advocated for that particular evolution. Had they gotten their wills the system might possibly better in terms of game mechanics but on the other hand the vibes of the game itself would have changed nonetheless.

When 4th edition hit the streets that change was pretty much complete and the aforementioned new staff (including now gone freelancers) still advocated for much more dramatic changes. The initial foundations of the Shadowrun universe were pretty much removed and everything revolved around more current - but far more short-lived - matters (and some really bad ideas by some of the involved freelancers that got green-lit by the people in charge). While the mechanic certainly had gotten better overall the world feeling was totally different ... and that was the point were the makers actually lost me in terms of regular investment into the franchise.

5th Edition? Now that one is funny, because quite obviously some people in the development staff try hard to bring back that 1980ies cyberpunk feeling, yet the presentation doesn't fulfill that cause and most of it feels way too forced to be enjoyable. Add in some outright stupid errors in the mechanics and at least one or two freelancers being outright dicks when being criticized about their work and one might be able to understand my decision to no longer invest into the franchise at all - at least as far as the P&P RPG is concerned.

For the record: some slang changes, some stays the same. Gibson didn't use "hacker" very much, if at all, in Neuromancer. Stephenson did in Snow Crash, but hackers weren't as much in public view then.

However, some computer slang has been around forever. We all know what a computer bug is, right? That term stems from the 50's. It came from when a fly got caught in a vacuum tube. We don't use vacuum tube computers anymore, but the term stuck.

Consider and contrast Street Samurai. The use of Samurai has definite intentional implications of having an honor code. Given how they're played, 'Murder Hobo' would be more accurate a lot of the time, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

"Murder hobo" would be a good description for the SR1 street samurai, where all of the character blurbs had them threatening the Johnson. Only in later editions did they add the over-romanticized bullshido aspect to them.

That's actually not true. Ghost was the first street sam in Shadowrun fiction, and he had a highly developed sense of honor.

I've had more trouble with people playing orks and trolls, regardless of archetype. To be fair, Kham the orc mercenary was also a main character in the original fiction, and he was a murder hobo, so there is precedent for that. Still, I like it when people play characters who go against stereotype.

Murder Hobo is an apt description of basically any RPG that does not bother with such things as lifestyle/where a character lives and what he does when he is not out to murderize something.
Shadowrun gives the conscious decision to be one at least with the different lifestyle levels available. And if you have a low lifestyle at least you are not a murder-hobo anymore. Street-Lifestyle?
Yes, very much Murderhobo. Well, if you use it exclusively. Nothing wrong with having a mid or low and several street as little hideyholes for when you have to drop from the radar.

I'm not sure if I'm willing to put Kham into that "murder hobo" category ... neither by how he was portrayed in the Secrets of Power trilogy (where he wasn't main character!) nor in the follow up "Never trust an elf" (where he indeed became the main protagonist).

The real "murder hobo" in the Secrets trilogy was Ghost's "second in command" Jason.

And as far as other sammies from those early days are concerned: I wouldn't consider Eugene 'Tiger' Jackson nor his buddy Iron Mike Morissey "murder hobos" - despite their background. And while Kid Stealth certainly had a somewhat dreadful relation towards brutality he doesn't quite fit the bill of "murder hobo" either.




Like Plutarch Graorgim?

Well, Kham was portrayed as a mouthy, uncouth bag of brawn in Secrets of Power. As I recall, he pulled stunts that Sally Tsung had to work harder to compensate for. He did get more development in Never Trust an Elf, but originally he was all the typical ork stereotypes. That qualifies him as a murder hobo, in my book.

I guess that's were we have to agree to disagree ... because having some stereotypical traits isn't enough for that in my book (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Nah, think about it. I've been GMing this game for more years than I want to admit, and generally the Street Sams I see in game have the following in common :

Impulsive
Vindictive
Distinctive Style
No living kin
No life outside of shadowrunning
Roaring addiction to combat drugs
Utterly minimal social skills, if any


The sams in the FASA-era novel series are much more rounded and interesting people, even when you throw in The Murder Machine himself, Kid Stealth. They generally do qualify as Murder Hobos because they have no permanent ties that they can't shrug and write off if something goes bad.

Ahhh the usual. Once you ask the players to consider why their characters are shadowrunners and not doing some corporate consulting, you get troupes of misfits with either Negative qualities out the vazoo (although you get these anyway, ha), or backstories that make surviving more than a couple of months a remote possibility.

Obviously depends on the choice of targets, but in general it is very hard to one-shot somebody in SR4. Two attacks, on the other hand, are very often all that it takes.

And the direction in which 5th Ed moved is definitely not less lethality: Both damage and armor values went up by roughly 50%, accordingly non-soaked damage increased the same (since Body remained equal, actually a bit more). That damage gets subtracted from an unchanged number of hitpoints.



Objection. First of all, I consider picking (and rearranging) priorities far more complicated than point-buy systems. And secondly, the by far most detailed (for better or worse) part of creating a character remains the same for both: Buying gear.


PS: And for all those with rose tint option for their cybereyes regarding SR3, I suggest you simply re-read the rules on cyberlimbs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Cybereye Rose Tinting
Wireless bonus: Includes fresh rose scent

I never noticed much wounding in SR4.5; generally, with the higher dice pools, it was easier to drop people. Also, combats only lasted until the mage cast Stunball. (Or other direct combat spell, really.)

As far as SR5 goes, nerfing combat spells has stopped the biggest source of one-shotting in SR4.5. Also, despite the fact that I have an adept who can roll over 20 dice to attack, I've only succeeded in one-shotting two opponents since the game came out. One was a mook, the other was an Edged roll with over 30 successes. (Yes, there were witnesses. It was an amazingly lucky roll.) My experience is that the game is significantly less lethal since the introduction of Limits.


Because priority has fewer moving parts, it's easier to arrange. You don't have to make as many fine tradeoffs. Detailed gear is a problem, although in Priority it's a little better-- you aren't tempted to rearrange everything else to get a few thousand more nuyen. You have what you have. Mind you, I'm not quite sold on the SR5 priority tables yet, and the SR4.5 one was just horrible.


Cyberlimbs have never worked, in any edition. The closest was in early SR2, before they introduced Capacity. You could fit as many items into a cyberlimb as you wanted, so they made very nice Bags of Holding. I ran a street sam with so many gizmos in his arm, they nicknamed him Inspector Gadget. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

But if you change something you have to create this two parts (for example swapping two priorities) completely from scratch. With the SR3 or SR4 Buildpoint system is was more in the line of "I want 2 attribute points more, so I have to reduce one skill by 5 (oder 2 by 3 and 2) - far easier then to change 46/10 and 20 with 24 and 36/5. And don´t tell me, that distributing 20 attribute points and 25 skillpoints or 16 attribute points and 20 skillpoints (SR4) is more complicated then playing around with 36/5 and 28/2 skillpoints or 24 and 14 attribute points together with 8 or 3 special points and Magic A or B with different starting attributes.

I stand with Sengir on this one: saving 1min from 120min, while the tedious gear systems slows everything down in the last 90 minutes is not really a big help, especially in the unbalanced point values of the different priorities (which will cause the next issue, when in Run Faster the BP/Karma system will be introduced and all characters will be completely incomparable).

Cyberblimbs barely workd in SR2 (way to expensive) and worked solala in SR4, in SR35 they are a bad joke.



Your players or NPCs never used assault rifles with FA, did they? Personally I think that the "power" of stunbolts was only possible of the (still broken) overcast rules. Reduce it to Magic +2 or something like that (with F-Drain and not F/2-Drain) and there would never have been such a problem. But hey, you can still overcast or have fun with limits ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

SYL

I haven't played with the SR5 system enough to say if I think it works yet. I think adding special attributes is a bad idea, it just complicates things and allows too much front loading, but we'll see.

The priority system as developed for Sr1-3 worked a lot better. It still had problems (all metahumans cost the same, for example) but overall it did decently. Each step was much easier to deal with, and had less fiddliness.

Personally: either Karma for all or SR3 build points (120 points at this time) for all as the ONLY building system. To be honest, including 3 different character creation system which are not balanced against each other and even produce different values for different priority orders is incredible stupid. Its like rolling a random number if you start with 300, 400 or 500 BPs in the same group.

SYL

Cyberlimbs work okay in SR4 if you use the additional possibilities from Augmentation, but their Essence costs are out there for what they do.

mine are nothing of the things mentioned up there at the beginning of the game. MAYBE one of these, never more than one.
that usually changes without me doing anything about it <.<

Cyberlimbs in SR3 had ONE USE ONLY.
And that was stuffing in stuff that together cost more essence than the arm did on it's own.
Usually things like Rigger Vehicle Control Rigs(yes, it was called VCR) and internal Cyberdecks.
These went up to 5 essence as well and fit into an arm or a leg, which means you paid only 1 essence for the arm, 0,1 essence for an additional DNI built into it and then only money for the thingamabob to put in there.

SR4.5 was terrible, though, because of the vast number of traps and openings for system mastery. You could start with the same number of BP, and end up with wildly different power levels. The classic priority table, for all its faults, at least produced mostly consistent characters. Original build points (SR2 and 3) were more breakable, but they weren't as crazy-breakable as SR4.5.


Full Auto, like so many things in SR4.5, were pretty much insta-kills. In my experience, wounding people was rare; it was usually all or nothing. Stunball was the ending move, though, because it dropped large numbers of people with little drain. It was also silent, and harder to resist.

Staying with that image, parts are a lot easier to arrange if you may sand off a bit here, and add some filling there. Priority would be nice as a "pattern" for a point buy system ("A means you put 50 brownie points there") to provide players with a rough concept they can refine, but as general chargen it needs to be put in a museum showcase next to literally rolling characters. It's clumsy to handle several varieties of incompatible points, small changes may have an avalanche effect, and (even more than BP) it's a completely different system from how your character improves later in the game.



I'm quite happy with what custom limbs did in 4th. It didn't fix trolls being shafted or the uncertainties of which skill uses which body parts, but a human with two symmetric limbs totally worked.

I disagree. With Shadowrun specifically, every incarnation of the point buy system has led to relentless powergaming under the guise of 'optimization' of point usage. Moving away from that can only be good for the game as a roleplaying game rather than a tabletop battle game.

Better than than the ridiculous priority system. It makes for cookie-cutters, even more than anything else, and it clamps down on customization.

Quite frankly, optimization is not a bad thing. Falling into trap options is a bad thing, but a good GM should guide players away from trap options.



It is, quite frankly, bad cognitive data, to assume that somehow "Roleplaying" and "rollplaying" are mutually exclusive, and to increase one you have to decrement the other.

I disagree. Optimization, especially how unevenly optimized characters can easily become, is exactly the problem with Shadowrun. It isn't a matter of 'traps', as it is that given enough min-maxing, you can create characters who are so wildly out of parity power wise that challenges that one brushes off will have a pretty good chance of wiping out the rest of the players.

This is a bad thing to encourage.

I agree with this. Having good stats or stats that you are comfortable with enables good roleplaying in my experience. People want to do things, they do not want to fail at things.

Comparing SR3 Priority to SR3 BP, from a powergaming perspective, I would prefer Priority. Why? That system can be gamed as much and create more powerful characters assuming the standard amount of BP (IIRC was 120). Now I know some GMs actually give only a cursory audit of the characters made with Priority because they assume that the Priority system is somehow proofed against optimisation and that a character made with Priority is somehow better for roleplay.