So if you have a modifier that says -1 die for this action then you actually have +1 Threshold for the action. So if you are firing at a running target, at extreme range, while you are in cover then you are looking at a Threshold of 8 to hit him.

Adding that on top of the defensive abilities already inherent in the system is truly ludicrous, even at close ranges... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

I'm a 3rd edition guy myself. I had my greatest successes there, in terms of writing and becoming involved in the behind-the-scenes aspects of things. I also had my greatest successes in terms of playing and running the game with SR3.

I find myself less and less a fan of SR4 as time goes by, and I really kind of think that's sad. Maybe it's just the old grognard in me feeling nostalgic, but I'm not happy with how things are going. I personally feel like SR has lost its way a great deal with the fourth edition.

Min-maxing being rewarded by more spotlight time is not wholly a problem with the rules. Some RPGs are more and less dependent on a good social contract at the table. Shadowrun, imo, has always been heavily dependent on social contract because it has always been vulnerable to min-maxers. Before my game began I said I wanted characters who weren't hyper-specialists and I carefully worked with each player to make sure my proscription was followed. A year into the the game we have characters who are all good at at least a few things and no one character dominates.

This is one of the reasons I disliked the one convention Missions game I played in. You get a bunch of strangers together, each with their own (probably) min-maxed character with no regard to party balance. Then you have a "Me, Me!" competition to get and keep the GM's attention so that your hyper-specialist can be the one that gets to roll ten Hits to solve the problem at hand. I much prefer convention games where you are handed a character that has been designed with both the scenario *and* the other characters in mind.

The problem isn't min/maxers per se. It is a problem that a lot of games have that shouldn't exist. System Mastery.

It is very easy in Shadowrun to accidentally make a weak or overpowered character when you are learning the rules. It is a system that also does not make it easy to prevent that or make it easy to learn which decisions are right/wrong. I know I am going to get jumped all over for saying this but it is the single greatest selling point of D&D4. There is no character-by-character system mastery. The system mastery comes in learning how to work as a team to overcome obstacles. You can still min/max characters but no matter what you will always do your job better if you have complimentary team mates to help you out.

This isn't true in games like nWoD, Exalted, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and D&D3/3.5. Yes, these are all the same game hence I can lump them into the same category. The three point based character gen systems have wrong choices/traps baked right into character creation that can cripple your character from the beginning. The hybrid (ED) and the class based (D&D3) have similar issues with regards to class selection and options (ie. feats, skills). These are things that appear to be good when you are first learning the game but when you learn how things actually work (gain System Mastery) you realize that the choices you made were traps. Futhermore these systems don't have methods of backtracking your choices short of GM lenience.

For example, take the Shadowrun martial artist. On paper it looks amazing. "I can punch through a wall with my fist!" But once you actually get into combat you realize that you are a chump as it is taking you several initiative passes to kill your enemies whereas your buddies are killing them in 1 with double taps from their guns. Things get even worse if you made the mistake of chosing to be a street samurai that specialized in martial arts instead of a physical adept. The concept rocks socks but the rules make you blow chunks.

Here's an ED example. After circle 5 your group is better off having elementalists and nethermancers instead of any non-Warrior melee fighter. The Sky Raider is a wicked concept but it just can't dish out and take enough beats to justify not just using an elemental/ally spirit (spirit of man in SR terms). Spirits are more resilient to magic, have comparable hit points, and come with powers that the Sky Raider can't duplicate (plus they are free).

So what you have happening in these system mastery games is you have a disparity in player knowledge/skill. This can be very off-putting as a new player in an established group since you are told that your concept won't work and you have to do it this way to be useful (this is a major factor that turned me off D&D3.5). It can also result in some severe niche protection issues as the non-trap options are able to perform your role better than you leading you to wonder why your character bothered waking up that morning. This is not a question of winning compared to another character but meaningfully contributing to the team effort.

I'm not saying that D&D4 is the be all and end all of game systems and that SR should mimic it but I am saying that SR and most other games systems that are still stuck in 1990 could learn some things from it. Getting rid of System Mastery is probably the single biggest favor a game company could do for its line and for the hobby. The steep hurdle to learn a lot of these games is IMO the reason why the hobby is having such difficulty getting new blood. I also feel that of the SR editions out there, SR4 is the one with the biggest trap options. YMMV.

... by a GM and players that let it. *shrug* EDIT: Though Shadowrun isn't particularly well balanced for "spotlight" (negative qualities are generally the opposite of balanced in this regard) and the tools in, and support from the system for dealing with dicks is pretty limited.

I suspect this opinion is influenced by passage of time and which of the traps you stepped in most recently. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)



With SR4 Rob & Company tried, and I suggest somewhat succeeded at, shortening the time till you had adequate system mastery to make competent the decisions. There is more than one way to reduce the issue, which I feel you rightly point out.

Of course this lead to howls of "dumbing down the game". :/ It also triggers the feelings of "I've got a lot of learning invested in this, they are tossing it out" and the nerdrage accompanying it.

Ah, OK. All modifiers are to Threshold. I do suspect this would play better (to my tastes), if only that it is more consistent. There might be some oddities when you get down to Threshold 0 (did you play you always had to have at least one success?)

I'm used to playing a (d6) pool game where all penalties are +Threshold and all benefits are +Die. But it uses TN4, so +Threshold is closer in magnitude than +Die is in Shadowrun....and the starting [and ending] pool size is, roughly speaking, less than half that of Shadowrun.

Meh, I've always made my characters in mind with regards to roleplaying, not whether or not I can murder everyone in the universe in the first period. I guess I can get scoffed at that, but I've always been more for the rich experience of a nuanced character. I realize people have different ways to have fun and I'm not knocking combat monsters, but I dunno, when it starts getting to the only way you're "supposed" to make a character is combat monsters, I just shrug and shake my head.

I never believed in that "Only one way to make a character" stuff. A character is as viable as the GM will help them be. A campaign should be written around the characters' strengths and weaknesses. That is what a good GM should do, not make adventures on a perceived way to play. There should never be a character that is not useful.

Then again, if you find min/maxing fun and always making the "optimal" character fun then hey, your game. As for me, I just don't think it is really supposed to be played like that.

Seems to be too many video game ideas and old wargaming ideas rolling around. Making that optimal build to "Beat" the game. Thing is, no winners or losers in tabletop RPG's, unless it is Paranoia! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I agree. I'm tired of the broken-record argument about spotlight time. Either deal with it by dealing with the player or the character. Having now played Dresden, I have a feeling for how the fate system works (the basis for Cain's spotlight time argument). The same mechanics are not at play here. They are completely different games.

My personal opinion is a GM that can't find a way to deal with min-maxing and spotlight hogs at their table is a pretty poor GM, especially in a campaign home-game.

EDIT: Realize I say this under the assumption that the min-maxing is disruptive to game play.

@Redjack

I did add an addendum to my post. There are some things about Shadowrun (1 through 4) that aren't particularly helpful to the GM and players in this regards, even work against avoiding games being overshadowed by a player doing what is effectively anti-social things. There are more effective ways a system can help with this.

I'd say that was the selling point of D&D 4e, but I did not find it to be true. There are plenty of bad choices and choices that are above average, in stat arrangement, feats, skills, classes, powers, rituals, gear etc. we had plenty of people build flat out bad characters while reading up on a class and other people build flat out almost overpoweringly awesome characters. Sure there are flat out less choices to make in a structured system like D&D so it will usually be less extreme, but D&D 4e still rewards system mastery to a high degree.

Hm. I guess I'm a little wary at the 4th ed combat. Where an average PC (ok maybe slightly above average, running with a 14+ dice pool) with a light pistol and no AP ammo, could mow down a guy in military armor without having to bother with called shots. Sure you can't immediately KILL the guy, but all you have to do is keep hitting him and his stun track will roll up, knock him out and then you can kick him to death.

Its not a perfect comparison, but under the sr4 combat setup, the North Hollywood Shootout wouldn't have ended the way it did, much less lasted as long as it did. 44 minutes of intense firefight action. By SR4 rules, either side would have been ko'd far earlier (half a dozen turns, tops) and even if the two armored guys had something like 'pain editors' (since there were reports they had been shot and still kept going) the overflow would have killed them anyway in another handful of turns.

Well that 14 dice guy is a better shot than anyone in human history. But yes I get your point, 14 dice=5 hits-2 hits for the reaction test so 7DV from a light pistol. You'd need 21 dice to totally soak that on average. Then again SR2 if you got the TN down to 2 you frequently might soak a full autofire blast if you used your combat pool.(or were a troll). They both seem tobe extremes just different ends of the extremes.

Okay. You go to some 14 year old's house and tell him he is a shitty GM because he didn't curb problems he wasn't aware of. Shadowrun doesn't do a very good job of setting the GM up to succeed. I'd argue in fact that it actually sets the GM up to fail. The system mastery learning curve is even harsher for the gm. Again, this is another spot where D&D4 has done a very good job. The DMG and DMG2 are amazing tools for basic story writing and telling, and toolboxes to show the DM how to use the system to make interesting encounters. A GM Toolkit like that would be very helpful to SR but they've never really hit that mark. nWoD would be another good example with their Storytelling chapters in the splat books. It tells you how to set the tone and the mood that the designers were looking for (but they still have the disconnect with the rules).

@Shinobi:

We haven't hit a Threshold 0 issue yet. But I'd still require 1 hit. As far as trap choices in D&D4 they aren't as big as the internet makes them out to be (except Hybrids) but I'm not going to get into that here. That's what D&D forums are for...lol. There is a lot more direction in the class write-ups that should help someone that has read the description (something the designers assume) instead of expecting them to just figure it out.

I'd say every game could use something like D&D 4es DMG. Not everyone is a good GM, some people need help. i know I am not a good GM and I need help. D&D4s DMG was useful to a person like me.

As for traps, look at all the feats that have stat reqs, if you make a super smart mage(hey int is the only stat you need for your spells) you easily could miss out on a huge range of feats and not know this was going to happen. On the other end a lot of classes have 2 stats, like the warlord with chr and strength being big stats. Not knowing the system well leads to maybe balancing those stats so being sucky at both. At every level powers have a fairly wide range in capabilities from at wills to 30th level powers. You have to read and really understand what all the crap in the power block means. Sure they are not as big as SR4s traps, but you are going to get that anytime you have a free character generation system vs a structured class system. Using your earthdawn example, spirits did not come out until a later book so we were well past circle 5 before we had access to them. All the classes were bad ass in some way, the sky raider stomped people into the ground quite hard(and his circle 1 talent to ignite his own blood for healing was awesome, especially given the limited healing magic in the game) with his attacks, and we actually by circle 5 had a sky ship so he added utility as well. We never saw the spirits as traps or a system mastery issue, they were broken sure, but in every system there will be broken things your GM has to deal with.

End of the day class systems have less traps or system mastery issues since there are less choices. Systems where you build the character up from scratch usually have more choices and have a bigger system mastery issue.(obviously some build from scratch systems are so basic there are few choices). I'm not going to say one way is better than the other, structure vs freedom type arguments in a RPG kind of come down to taste.

If you can find a copy, seek out the Narrator's Guide for Decipher's late Star Trek RPG, whether you intend to play Trek or not. One of the best GM resources I've held in my hand in 30 years of this hobby.

That said, what I've seen of the D&D 4e DMG has been nice, too. My interest in that one has been solely as a player, though I think I need to pick up copies of at least the DMG and the first Monster Manual to go with my PHB. At some point in my copious unstructured free time....

Crazy examples like this always make me laugh. Ok, I'll play. The same 14 year old is gonna have problems with power gamer no matter the system. He'll learn to deal with them... or he won't.

I agree that like any game, like any system, loopholes exist that can be exploited. I was really making more of a point that no system is ever going to be perfect and that some gamers will also try to make the character that tilts to scales on the table.

To say it another way: When players embrace that RPG's are generally about cooperation and 'we all win together' instead of 'I have to beat everyone else' the table generally plays better. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I'll second this. Great book. A pity some game systems just don't make it. Unfortunate, given Trek's fandom you'd think they'd be able to keep an rpg going.

Yeah. I only do this with Cain because, besides being far closer to 40 than 14, he's already had it extensively explained to him. It's like a twisted version of the Grocho Marx joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I slam my penis in the door." "Well then don't slam your penis in the door." But rather than taking the advice to heart Cain insists that the correct interpretation of the SR book is that he should slam his penis in the door, so he keeps doing it .... and keeps complaining about the results. *shrug*

Not sure if this is some sort of comment on my hyperbole like Redjack made so you might need to dumb it down for my financial industry mind. I know what the Groucho comment means but I'm not sure if you are saying I am doing the same thing or if you are commenting on Cain.

@Redjack:

I'm glad I made you laugh. Of course it is a ridiculous example but I think it is apt. I used age as a stand-in for inexperience. I remember the games my friends and I used to run when I was 14 and they were complete shit and usually devolved into name calling and arguments whenever we hit problems with the system or each other. I know that there are plenty of grown-ups who have been playing these games for decades who also are inexperienced or sub-par GMs. The system mastery inherent in a game like SR is brutal enough -- give the GM a head start on the players by giving some good advice, not the garbage that has been par for the course in SR. At least if the GM knows generally what to expect he will be familiar with it or be able to reference the book like a troubleshooting manual.

So I'm guessing you didn't like Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book, Cheops?

Dude, I've ran Shadowrun for forever. Can you say from personal experience that SR1 had certain spots that were better than SR4? And vice-versa?

Previous versions of Shadowrun didn't have the spotlight time problem as badly. It's not just a GM thing. I just ran a SR4 conversion tonight that went great, Matrix and all, with no problems or issues. Just because you like the system doesn't mean it's perfect, and the simple fact is that SR4 does have problems. All systems do.