heh, i dont get the hacking complaint, as SR3 could turn just as labyrinthine ones one deployed chokepoints, virtual machines and other tricks of the trade.

and the rigger and decker merge was imo inevitable, given that one had rules for deckers infiltrating building security systems. and ones one turn computer networks wireless, it makes sense from a pure cost benefit to use the same parts for both drone and network controls.

just watch how real life mobile phone networks will be moving towards using tcp/ip as the basic carrier, and chips being planned that can talk anything from bluetooth to LTE, with wifi and wimax tossed in.

hell, real life militaries are moving more and more towards using off the shelf parts for their systems. submarines and destroyers running windows, anyone?

Not with the revised rules from Matrix (which I used).


I disagree. You also have rules for Adepts and Streetsams augmenting their bodies, and those don't have to be unified. Makingmerging both concepts easier and the rules work on similar mechanics, I could agree with. Merging them in-game? Not so much.


... watching UMTS' failure and how people still want displays larger than a stamp should be mentioned too ...


Once they actually have to fight a war, they'll pay for that idiocy with lots of their own blood. They get away with this folly for the time being because since Korea, no western power has been involved in a traditional war against a half way developed enemy any more.

Edit: maybe someone split this thread?

The argument that both systems can be run as a convoluted mess of complicated architecture and impossible target numbers/thresholds is missing the point (And yes, I did it under SR3 and SR4. Guilty.). It is possible to use both systems clean and fast.

@Hermit: If you are going to join us for a game at some point, remind me to showcase the options of including the wireless world and hacking. The rigger/hacker distinction is mostly one of skill, as can be easily seen with Seven´s technomancer and Fenrir´s rigger.

simple enough to take care off. allow the rigging stuff to be built into limbs like the decking stuff.
the rigging stuff in the fluff utilizes the brains control and command connection for body movement, instead of the higher thinking like decking does.
so if you have a limb connected to that part of the brain anyway, just put a switch into the arm and hook up the rigging control to the same movement centre using the limbs connections. presto, level 3 VCR in alpha Arm for 0.8 essence . . but an metric huge ass load of money *snickers*
and you can either use the limb, or the VCR, not both at once. and because torso and head do not require such movement connections, you can only put the VCR into full and partial arms/legs . . yes, it is a house-rule, but one that makes sense outside and inside the world of shadowrun . .

Technomancers make hermit twitch ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ... no, that would be interesting. Thanks for the offer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yes, there are synergies (possible 5 IP if jumped into a drone/vehicle, for instance), but mainly, I see many more hazards for the rigger side (my preferred character type) than benefits.


Well yes, of course. It's just ... it makes less sense in SR4, with how the rules work against system security. Of course, you could use the 1000 nuyen maximum unhackability exploit with strong encryption and the node spoofing itself, but that really makes it totally uncrackable save for a technomancer who does a resonance quest to hack anything, and isn't quite ideal either. Either you've got your virtual pants down, or you're wearing a mithril armour of impenetrability. SR3 offers much more intermediates there, or at least, that's my impression.

funny enough, thats the book that introduced virtual machines, chokepoints and all those other tricks to SR3...

merging adepts and samurai (two types that get their abilities from two potentially conflicting sources, given how cyberware eats magic ability) would be just silly.

however, both hacker/decker and rigger operated via technology, technology that where already overlapping thanks to deckers getting emulation abilities.

and they are not so much merged as two overlapping speheres of interest in the fluff, thanks to riggers being able to piggyback on the wireless matrix to extend their area of activity with drones.

what they have in common is data/connection integrity, while the rigger will still focus more on the physical world, and the hacker on the virtual.

depends on how one see it. UMTS failed in the operators focus on video calls, but as a data carrier its another story, specifically in that one can have both a call and a data connection going at the same time.

as always, the street finds its own use of the tech.

as for larger then a stamp. can someone say video glasses? there is a increasing number of them, with the ability to plug into all kinds of media players.

and they dont want to risk one either. as all of the big dogs, and a increasing number of the small ones, have the ability to go nuclear. the global market is a much more lucrative option, for the time being at least.

i guess in the end it comes down to how one wants to see things (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

but then im the person that may end up getting at least the main books of d&d4, so maybe im no true believer in anything?

Being a true believer in any ruleset leaves you with less time actually enjoying the game itself.

that is . . very zen O.o

No. It leaves the decker wide open to be hacked by any stupid code kiddie. And for what? being able to rig a drone in Hong Kong from Seattle? Duh. Like that would be useful except in very few specific situations.


And adepts and sammies both hurt people, just one does it via magical enhancments, the other with cybernetics. different sources, true, but same effect too.


For the time being, as you say.


Can't say. I don't play D&D to begin with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I play (or at least I would since my group went belly up) 4th ed only for the reason that it's what I've started with, I know it's blasphemous what I'm about to tell but I've discovered shadowrun thank that M$ ciofeca of a FPS, no I hadn't enough masochism in me to buy it but it made me curious, troll, magic and guns? I've looked around when I didn't know what to do and I was realy surprised, I was expecting something like alternate realities, or buffylike stuff and I've found a coesive setting that made sense and touched themes that range from everyday problems to history defining moments without going on the superhero path, before the best that I had was Ebberon (yes I know I didn't look around that hard).
After realizing that I had found my "enviroment" I've put my hands on any book I could and I fell deeper and deeper in love with SR, I think that 4th ed is good but not perfect (perfection is simply not atteainable) and rulewise it can improve but overall it's ok; what I don't like that much is the overall presentation, shadowland was the shadowmatrix the whole shadowworld at hand, jackpoint is more an exclusive club, it's not a bad thing (for example it makes perfectely sense for topic-centered books like unwired or Street Magic) but for certain plot related things it's a little too "little", I they did something like printing one page with jackpoint the other with shadowland, emulating two windows opened in AR, one could have access to jackpoint and shadowland simultaneosly (open the book, left page shadowland, right page jackpoint). I'd also like to see the shadowslang return, it helped to recreate the atmosphere of the game. Aside from this I think that the new material trasudes quality from (almost) all its pores so far.
I think that flaming on which system is better is a waste of time, it's a matter of tastes, which are by definition a subjective matter, that time would be spent much better having fun.

Whoah! The act of true rebellion, buying a copy of the world's most popular RPG! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

hehe, but also the most "hated" at the moment, if one can trust the internet about anything..

I certainly don't trust the internet when it comes to D&D 4th. It's a fun li'l game they have there, even if it lends itself more to cruising through dungeons than heavy rp. Which, frankly, is completely and utterly fine by me. Playing D&D has always been more about slapping around green people and taking their lunch money than it has been about exploring the depths of the human spirit anyway.

Sh'ya right! Haven't you ever played as a 1st edition Cleric?

First edition is before my time, although I did play 2nd edition a few times as a cleric. Although to be honest, I don't really remember it all that well; it is all just a blur of Cure Light Wounds and bludgeoning goblins at this point.

A with anything, i think you have to take a nice long hard look at something before you can say ya or nay. As such i did try out 4th edition and found it disheartening. I cannot say that i have been playing since 1st edition or even 2nd.. I own a 2nd edition book and from what i can tell, 3rd edition seemed to fix the slow down of the game and hacking. but all in all it was still the same game.. As was said earlier though, 4th edition is not the same game. they might have even just started over with the time line and gone back to 2050 for the amount of difference it made. Even simple story elements are changed by what rules they changed. but i will go over this step by step. I am not trying to flame any one and welcome the olive branch, but think it does nothing to change the situation.
Decking: The problem that i keep hearing is that some people say that changing decking to hacking made it more realistic and in tune with the way the world works today in comparison to the 1980s. But the change not only kills the flavor that Decker's once had, but seems unrealistic to me. A computer system placed in the users head seems ok until you get to cyber-combat and the possible damage that said computer could take from many of the counter measures that the matrix has to offer. In my mind and how it would work in real life is that if your computer took damage because of something electrical or what not then the brain would be affected since said computer is place right there. Right on top and in the brain. Components would ehat up and burn out and the brain would take damage. Hell, the person could even suffer sever brain damage... On top of this it kind of kills the uniqueness of a decker since anyone can have a computer placed in them. Whats the point then. The other thing i have noticed is that many people complained that playing a decker made them feel left out of the group, because they were in a room somewhere and the team was on a mission. That is pretty sad story i guess. But that is more of the fault of the decker and Gm in the end. Deckers are the small nerdy types that got picked on in high school and who cannot usually defend themselves. But this does not mean they have to hide and do the whole matrix thing away from the danger. Every team needs a decker and will protect that decker's hoop to the last of them. Thats part of their job, protect the squishies. Its the Gms fault because he let the deck do all his runs from home. I'm sorry but no corp is going to leave their mainframe hooked up to the matrix for long and when they do access the matrix to send or receive it would be like hitting the beach on D day. Thats why you bring the decker along on the run so they can patch in on site. And if you had not noticed, the source books all say that you do not need to use every rule in them.. So something that had appeared in 3rd edition, you didn't need to worry about. Like hot and cold Assist or Bandwidth. Not very important in the game.
Otaku or Technomancers: I find it weird that there was so much changed here. If you were going to change anything you could have done either of two things: 1) make them psychic or two have them want to get closer to the "whatever it is called" that they slow turn themselves into machines to better commune with it. But putting that aside for now. Here is what does not make much sense to me. How is it that a whole archtype that as they grew up they lost their powers and the connection to the matrix spirirt end up like the technomancers? where is the logic in that?
Then there is things like edge, the biggest cheat in the world. Karma pool made more sense than edge. It was like the designers looked at 4th edition and said to themselves," oh, wow! this game is broken. Maybe if we stick this band aid here it will fix everything.
Oh and by the by, i hate the fact that perception is a skill only now.. If you wanted to make it better you could have made a separate skill that gave a player a boost like Aura reading in 3rd edition does for ascensing.
Next thing you are going to tell me is that the future is more Politically Correct and say that racism of any type does not exist.

i wonder if im going to be yelled at for mentioning die hard 4.0 right about now...

and not every TM walking around the SR4 world was a otaku back in the day...

if i where to guess, the simsense signals of AR pokes at something latent in a group of people that have some kind of gene sequence related to a electric eel or shark (both animals that make use of electricity in their life).

not that simsense makes any sense in the first place, given how it seems we cant come up with a generic model of brain signals as it is. it seems every brain builds its own pattern of signals (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

bah, forget the olive branch. what it seems to boil down to again and again is the "oh noes, they broke the flavor!!!"...

people, the SR world had been strangely uniform in "flavor" for some 30 odd years.

in the same time real life have gone full circle, from 70 hippies, to 80s punk to whatever the 90s where, then back at something that looked like 70s with a new coat of paint...

the only real constant is change...

...OK I've played both versions and when it comes down to it I till prefer third ed. Not just for the timeline but the "feel"

Now I'm not down on the SR4 crowd. I've actually been in a few 4th ed sessions that were quite fun.

Where I have differences is that I find the caps and such just way to limiting. Now many of those I have gamed with know I am one of the last to min-max (which I actually find more "desirable" in 4th). It just gets to the point when all your attributes and skills cap out, where does the character go? What is the incentive to keep going? I am used to being in long running campaigns, maybe trading off between two characters. from time to time as one has to lay low recovering or spend several months upgrading her deck. I am also used to developing a character to be the "best of the best" (and not the "best with the rest" which is what the caps promote) in her chosen occupation.

But again that has to do totally with the system itself and not the individuals who play it.

They killed the sacred cow. I'm happier eating burgers. If you don't want to eat burgers, that's fine. Eat whatever you want.


Computers are not so ridiculously insecure that you can make them self destruct in a fireball, in the real world (which is 63 years earlier than SR4). Changes to the assumptions about what things a hostile intruder can do to your computer had to be made because the assumption is now that your everyday person carries a computer on them all the time. If it could overheat and melt through the casing it'd never sell. Consumer absenteeism. Business considerations direct security decisions every step of the way.

The Hacker/Decker still has those 4-5 ranks in Hacking Skills and all that SOTA Hacking 'ware. Your Street Sam shouldn't be denied the ability to embed a useful everyday item in any chosen part of their anatomy when the Commlink has become part of your assumed gear instead of an option.


Except that in the real world people did keep their servers hooked up to the internetwork because they had to be on the same network as the employees and those employees made use of information on the internetwork to do their job better, or considered access a very desirable fringe benefit. For whatever reason, the connection was maintained 24/7 because it was easier that way and that allowed malicious attackers access as a side effect. Business drives security design.

The setting standing up when someone looks at it is important in my opinion. If I happen to know business, the setting should do its best to pretend to stay standing.


Karma Pool, because everyone has to begin at the very bottom. Doesn't matter if a member of your team clawed their way out of Chicago, or spent 20 years in the Yucatan, they're exactly the same as that self-trained corp brat looking for some fun.

So... yeah. I like Edge because it lets me play an old CFS rigger that lived through the occupation as a member of the resistance and my friend can play a naive corp-brat rigger and they're seriously mechanically different even if they have similar stats and skills. That's the kind of difference that is nice to represent.


The skill things are just preferences. There's no real answer for or against making Perceptions skills, because they're mechanically the same thing and are just tastes. You don't like burgers, I love them.

Things that happen in the real world happen for good reasons, even if those reasons are not obvious. We should look around and figure out what the reasons are and apply it to our games because there's no fiction that is as tactilely accessable as stuff stolen from real life.


I just felt like writing this response. Feel free to ignore me.

Some would say that but they have done that at leased twice before with the death of big D and YOTC.

I've posted this more or less before but...
Others (like myself) have a problem with the mechanics. Not because its a new set but because after 3 editions of the old clunky mechanics the new streamlined mechanics feel more like 1e with the oddities (I'm not calling them bugs, because FanPro claimed that it was part of the design) and seamingly contradictory rules found through out the rule books. A bigger problem with this is I don't ever want to play, run or otherwise be involved with missions because they stick to the core set and even though there have been optional rules released that help handle some of the oddities you cant use these rules in missions games. From an outsider point of view it would appear that the developers tried to port shadowrun to nWOD without understanding the fundamental design ideas behind nWOD. Perhaps thats not the case but with my over 15 years playing everything under the sun and rubbing elbows with game designers, I can't understand a few of the design decisions. And when I originally addressed fanpro with my questions they handled it poorly. I believe some simple errata or a document explaining the rational behind oh say attributes being x3 karma (meaning you want to max your attributes rather than buy skills) would appease me. Then I can at leased agree to disagree. There are plenty of improvements with 4e but it really feels like I'm playing 1e again when it comes to finding rules that make the game less fun.



They are not mechanically the same because now you have 1-12 dice rather than 1-6. Not a huge deal I agree but I can understand someone being upset about it. Also the skill distribution isn't even close to equal so there are "right" ways to raise dice for each character. I miss having good old Firearms and big wide generic skills where attributes didn't matter (or at leased didnt matter alot).

SR4 was well into design by the time anyone working on it saw nWoD.

Heath Robinson- i think you are assuming that the computer that is placed in a person's head is in a nice neat plastic casing. i highly doubt that if it was possible they would waste room by doing that. but that is not here or there. What i do wonder is what they use to cool the whole system since no one seems to have a fan built into there head.....
Yes, business have networks linked to the matrix, i get that, but not usually the stuff that people involved in corporate ops. want. And like i said, if it is then it is still better to go in and patch in on site. But that was not the point of why i brought that up to begin with. But if you want to get into it i will say this, who in their right mind would put these same said networks on wireless access. Joe the plumber could access it from across the street at starbucks by accident.
My other problem with the shrinkage for decking in 4th is that the technology seemed to change very drastically from 2060 to 2070. It went from a keyboard sized deck that carried you software chips, main computer, and all the hardware (which i imagine was most of the reason for the size of a deck to begin with) that allowed the brain to interact with the matrix without problems. Which brings me back to.. why not just start from scratch time line wise. As far as i can tell none of the 2050s and 2060 really affects 4th edition at all. Call it a logical loop hole. There is no reason why the slang is not used any more for instance. Yes, you could argue that the newer generation of kids didn't care much for it started there own thing, but it would still be around much like surfer slang from the 50s and 60s is still around. Another one would be the disappearance of Boosted reflex as a cyberware option. hey, we could get this chemical process done in the 2060's but for some unknown reason it no longer exist.


But anyway, sorry for the rant, i'll stop now. My main thing was that they should have rebooted the timeline since they wanted to update the game to fall inline with the real world new tech. I would comment about the mechanics, but i only played a few games (2 years ago)so i couldn't really say what is wrong in that area that was not already said or that i can remember anyway. As far as the nWOD references, i have to say that i doubt that there is any similarity between the two anymore. From what i saw of the nWOD main core book, it is better balanced than the old one. They got rid of some of the pointless rolling rules that you didn't need, like the two rolls needed to make a successful attack. It reminded me to much like the stupid 3rd edition D&D rule for crits, "ok now, you rolled a nat. 20 roll to see if you really did crit." I would have to say that the nWOD is better built than shadowrun 4th editon- but hey thats me.

Yes, I was a tad bit suprised at the caps myself. I think this was to encourage diversification of your skill set. So instead of focusing on just decking, maybe you could aquire the skill set to be a decent rigger. IMHGMO it makes it easier to gauge the opposition and set stats when developing a run. As to the edge, remember that the GM decides how quickly it refreshes.

Another serious problem this causes is the gap in development between awakened and nonawakened characters. when a mage, adept or mancer really starts to get going, his mundane teammates have long since collided with the setting's low glass ceiling and essentially have no way of developing anymore except for getting a secondary profession, which isn't quite rewarding. This also furthers the setting's trend of awakened uber alles', giving them theoretically limitless development without having to sacrifice the character concept while it limits mundanes forever to being slightly above average grunts.

Another point where the setting enforces play styles, making unawakened characters totally unfit for longer-lived cammpaigns and only good as one-shots, really, and making common progress in a mixed awakened/mundane team more difficult than ever. That especially technomancers now have access to powers that are just game-breaking (like being able to hack computers that are off the net and without power and dismantled, or stealing data where all copies and all backups were physically destroyed, doesn't help either).

Actually, I was assuming straight up that a commlink can run at its fastest in your head safely (these are things that you keep in your pocket 24/7, they don't get very hot) and then noted that any security classed as better than "swiss cheese" would be able to prevent an intruder from making the machine clock up at all, let alone enough to cause actual brain damage. It takes a lot of effort to persuade your computer to do even relatively safe overclocking and components are now very reliable. SR4 has had 63 more years to get this sorted, I can believe that it's unlikely to kill you even if it's put inside your head.


You can set up the security to prevent Joe the Plumber accessing your server from the Starbucks across the sheet, it just requires making use of a list of machines that are permitted access, and decent account control. The fact is that once you've got routing you've then got free access between any nodes that can find a path to each other and you have to design your security to take account of that.

Now, you also have spiders who have access to the security infrastructure from outside because they need to be on call all the time. Security cannot guarantee that an intruder doesn't already have access to vital Business infrastructure and needs to have access to pretty much everything remotely if they're to perform their on-call functions fully. Business choices (cutting the number of Spiders to reduce costs and getting the rest to sign on-call contracts) guides security design (allowing external access to the network).

Extremely paranoid, or really traditional, businesses will pay extra to keep Spiders and workers on-site and that will completely change their security infrastructure. These are the times when you need on-site activity to hack them. You also have existing notes on security design for why you might bring a Matrix Specialist on site, and SR4 makes this more likely with the Jedi handwaves that a wireless AR Hacker can do.


Miniaturisation and mass-market computing has driven the increasingly easy to hold computers. Commlinks aren't cyberdecks, they've just absorbed all that functionality as technological progress jumps into overdrive with the results of certain genius level intelligences being properly harnessed and increasingly efficient design environments. You can't honestly expect Leonardo and Deus to exist and leave toys behind without someone figuring out how they work and turning that into the next generation of consumer-grade hardware.


Stuff from the earlier games filters through, but SR4 has a couple of additional plot threads and when you tried it out there was less in the way of plot material. We're slowly getting bits and pieces of the old plots filtering into the new game (I assume, I started on SR4 and haven't read all that much of the old background yet), it's just taking a while because the team focussed on rulebooks to make sure things worked. We've certainly seen continued mentions of old Threats (the books that I liked and had had motivation to read) with some threats dying off (which is nice to see) and others persisting.