Shadowrun 5th Ed. Preview #2 Options

[bannockburn]

You can't actually handwave that away.

I can and I will. Watch me.

I call your argument bullshit, because that's what the whole thing boils down to

You are welcome to do that, if you are not willing or able to understand what I am saying.
But I am not a monkey, I don't care about the poop flinging. And since you insist on doing so, I'll stop the discussion with you here, because I cannot take you seriously anymore.

Have a nice weekend.

[Fatum]

bannockburn, I really really don't understand why textbook truths have to be written up, but since your argument is obviously missing a few, I have to do just that.

First, roleplaying is a collective pastime where every player is supposed to get their time in the limelight. Usually, the time they get is directly influenced by their characters' abilities: the more capable the character, the more often his actions are crucial to the plot, and the more often the player gets to enjoy the limelight. To take it to an extreme to illustrate: if you have two players and the first one's character is a godlike being of immense power, and the second one's a measly mortal incapable of influencing the world around him due to being quadriplegic, in any plot based on classical storytelling techniques, the first player will get all the limelight, while the second will at best be able to describe his character's internal monologue.

Second, character archetypes exist for a reason, and they're based on works of fiction/other media as well as our real world experiences. As such, a street samurai is an archetype present in the genre since its very beginning, and consistently showing up in Shadowrun's editions, as well. Thus we can presume there will be players willing to play one, and I bet there will be street sams among the pregens.

Now, let's compare two players, one playing a mage and the other a samurai, and see how capable their characters are. One can't get anywhere secure openly, because he's full of cyber and needs a weapon to be effective. The other can mask his nature, and even the rare measures capable of defeating that disguise are far from sure-fire. One can kill about two opponents per IP, if they are not too armoured, and taking out anyone capable of soaking damage is taking him a few times longer than that. The other can not only kill any two opponents in a single IP, he can turn them against their erstwhile comrades. Regardless of the defensive measures they employ, because there are no effective countermeasures against his attacks. He is also doing that while flying, invisible, protected by lifelike illusions and surrounded by summoned helpers each of which rivals a sam in stats. And he also has a whole layer of reality as his personal playground. And he doesn't get any of the social stigma, or the mental trauma, or any of the maluses, really, to boot.

Which brings us to Stahlseele's point dismissed so casually: a mage is capable of doing anything that a sam can do (except better) plus so much more. This has nothing to do with "powergaming" or "optimization" (which are for some reason used negatively, despite being just roleplaying competence) per se. This is just a question of narrative balance, and the balance of narrative focus upon different players' characters. When one of the archetypes is in all the meaningful ways better than the other, you can't dismiss that concern by just stating that they are different, since their competence areas overlap. That is why there are design choices like limits on spirit summoning and service areas or mentor spirits affecting the magician's personality, after all.

[cndblank]

You know the one thing that really balanced out cyber vs. Awaken was Skillwires.

Yeah, you wouldn't be awesome but you could be competent in any thing and most Awaken wouldn't take the essence hit.
Mass production at it's finest.

They they went and made all skill chips 10,000 nuyen per point of rating.
Killed that dead.

[bannockburn]

First off, thank you for a well made argument. Let me address some of your points.

First, roleplaying is a collective pastime where every player is supposed to get their time in the limelight. Usually, the time they get is directly influenced by their characters' abilities: the more capable the character, the more often his actions are crucial to the plot, and the more often the player gets to enjoy the limelight. To take it to an extreme to illustrate: if you have two players and the first one's character is a godlike being of immense power, and the second one's a measly mortal incapable of influencing the world around him due to being quadriplegic, in any plot based on classical storytelling techniques, the first player will get all the limelight, while the second will at best be able to describe his character's internal monologue.

So according to this truth, the most powerful character is the one with the most time in the limelight. Technomancers and hackers then, because their respective rulesets take very long to resolve their specialties? Followed by mages on astral patrol?
Or rather the characters with the most IP in combat heavy adventures?
Sorry, I am not buying this argument in its entirety.
Your example is a good one, though. It is entirely possible for two players to build a highly optimized god-mage and a quadriplegic cripple. Hopefully the cripple will have some reason to sit on the table (maybe he's the hacker?), at which point it is the GM's job to ensure their time in the limelight for the cooperative storytelling that is an RPG.
If the GM allowed such characters to be created, he is responsible to make sure that their respective specialties are used. God-Mage will very probably not be the matrix-nut, so it balances out.
If the GM does not do this, he failed at his job and one of the two players will probably go home unsatisfied. Except when he is kind of a masochist that way (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Second, character archetypes exist for a reason, and they're based on works of fiction/other media as well as our real world experiences. As such, a street samurai is an archetype present in the genre since its very beginning, and consistently showing up in Shadowrun's editions, as well. Thus we can presume there will be players willing to play one, and I bet there will be street sams among the pregens.

I don't really see your point here. Could you elaborate?
If you mean by that that the mere presence of an archetype skews the perception of power levels, I agree.
I agree that people will play a street samurai, without thinking "Will I be weak?" Because they generally do not need to compete with the player sitting next to them playing a mage. Why? Because the GM makes sure that both get to enjoy their stuff.

Now, let's compare two players, one playing a mage and the other a samurai, and see how capable their characters are. One can't get anywhere secure openly, because he's full of cyber and needs a weapon to be effective. The other can mask his nature, and even the rare measures capable of defeating that disguise are far from sure-fire. One can kill about two opponents per IP, if they are not too armoured, and taking out anyone capable of soaking damage is taking him a few times longer than that. The other can not only kill any two opponents in a single IP, he can turn them against their erstwhile comrades. Regardless of the defensive measures they employ, because there are no effective countermeasures against his attacks. He is also doing that while flying, invisible, protected by lifelike illusions and surrounded by summoned helpers each of which rivals a sam in stats. And he also has a whole layer of reality as his personal playground. And he doesn't get any of the social stigma, or the mental trauma, or any of the maluses, really, to boot.

This example is, in part, a fallacy.
To demonstrate my point, I'll deconstruct your example, at least for a bit.
First off, there are devastating samurai builds with unarmed combat, often as a backup to the weapon-necessity. They can very well get anywhere in security in the right environment. The highly cybered street samurai wouldn't be out of place deep in the Redmond barrens, or a combat zone. The prissy mage would draw fire. The street samurai doesn't need to wear his cyberware openly and thus can also mask his nature. The mage needs to initiate, before he can do this. The mage can run into background counts which makes him very unlikely to be that combat monster you're describing, while the samurai will still have his wired reflexes and a big gun. Cover provides penalties to some spells, why is counterspelling not an effective countermeasure and how many sustaining foci is that mage carrying?
And so on.
Why am I making these things up? To show the futility of it all.
We could go round and round for hours, if we were so inclined and find arguments and counter arguments in an endless circle.
My point is, it depends on multiple factors, who is actually superior.
For one: Black Trenchcoat vs Pink Mohawk. Where is the group on that scale? For two: Situational modifiers. For three: Individual character creation and progression choices. There are also in-setting social stigmata against mages, which you conveniently ignore. People are scared of magicians, ever since the Ghost Dance. If you let that just fly by, it's your fault as the GM. There are possibly more factors which all play into that particular equation, and I don't think it's just putting in a few variables to get a universally applicable result.

Which brings us to Stahlseele's point dismissed so casually: a mage is capable of doing anything that a sam can do (except better) plus so much more. This has nothing to do with "powergaming" or "optimization" (which are for some reason used negatively, despite being just roleplaying competence) per se. This is just a question of narrative balance, and the balance of narrative focus upon different players' characters. When one of the archetypes is in all the meaningful ways better than the other, you can't dismiss that concern by just stating that they are different, since their competence areas overlap.

Oh, it wasn't so casually dismissed. I very carefully considered it before dismissing it.
If you got the impression that I used 'optimizer' as a derogatory term, I apologize. I tried to use one devoid of judgment, since I actually don't care about how much a person optimizes. I'll call out 'cheesy' (this is of course, depending on table and preference) options, and really bad concepts likewise. Where I disagree is that optimization represents a 'roleplaying competence'. This is not true. An optimizer can be a bad roleplayer, just as a 'true roleplayer' can be one. Numbers do not have anything to do with the ability to roleplay, just the ability to 'rollplay' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

To address your actual point: Yes. A mage built to do the thing a samurai can do can do the same things, and, depending on a few dice rolls, presumably even better, until he gets to an area with background count. See above.
It is entirely viable to build a mage or an adept to mimic things a street sam can do. There is still no balancing involved between the two characters, because it is the GM's job to use his skills for creating a balance of narrative focus (I like that term). In 20 years of roleplaying and 15 years of being a GM, I haven't had a problem with street samurai players complaining about magic players. Usually it was the other way round.
"He has sooo many actions!" - "Then why don't you learn improved reflexes as a spell?" - "Oh good idea."
The thusly mollified mage player did not, in the majority of cases, use his new found quickness to splat enemies all over the place and instead focused on utility. And even when he threw mana balls around like there's no tomorrow, the street samurai players seemed happy as long as they could shoot things and demolish people.
This also neatly addresses your remark about competence areas. Of course competence areas overlap. Redundancy is a good thing, and players usually realize this. You have the samurai and his main field of combat, and the mage throwing his mana ball or stun ball or whatever floats his boat and degree of smart optimization (yes, stun balls (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). Is the samurai unhappy that he's got help? I think not. It is not a matter of who's best. It's a matter of "Did I get to do my thing?"

That is why there are design choices like limits on spirit summoning and service areas or mentor spirits affecting the magician's personality, after all.

I don't really follow here. Are you saying that mentor spirit personalities are in the setting because of balance against other character classes?
You've got a good point though about the limits on summoning. An army of spirits is nothing to laugh at as it is.
However, I am not entirely sure if that limitation is part of the internal balance of the field (which I mentioned earlier) or to balance it against other character classes. A bit of both, most likely, which means that I'd need to concede that there is a ceiling to the absolute power of the mage.
Except there is none. As mages progress in karma, they linearly progress in power. Street samurai go broader with buying secondary skills, mages just learn and learn and learn.
Yes, I freely admit that this can be a problem in extremely long campaigns. From a gut feeling, I'd say 7+ years.
Why?
Because I've played in a 7 year long campaign where I played a cybered mercenary. Our mage was initiate grad 6+ and had a ton of spells. I never felt inferior to him. In fact no one felt like they played second fiddle for his spotlight hogging antics. Because we had a good GM, who instinctively created a balance of narrative focus, instead of focusing on the system-inherent lack of balance between character classes.

[Aaron]

An illustration of balance in characters.

For my part, I think balance is important, but its implementation should be less like handicapping and more like salary caps. If that makes any sense.

[CanRay]

For my part, I think balance is important, but its implementation should be less like handicapping and more like salary caps. If that makes any sense.

Makes sense, the barely-trained beefstick who swings a club around is pretty common and easy to find, but a highly-trained and calm sniper isn't. Your average Street Decker isn't going to make as much as a Magician with Spirits out the wazoo.

Of course, no one makes as much as Kain. Or raises as much Cain, either! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Fatum]

So according to this truth, the most powerful character is the one with the most time in the limelight. Technomancers and hackers then, because their respective rulesets take very long to resolve their specialties? Followed by mages on astral patrol? Or rather the characters with the most IP in combat heavy adventures? Sorry, I am not buying this argument in its entirety.

It's the other way round: the one with the most capability is the one with the most time in the limelight. Yeah, rule mechanics can figure into that, but again: if one character can fight and hunt and drive vehicles, and the other can only draw pictures, for them to get equal amounts of time to shine you'll have to really stretch the suspension of disbelief.

Your example is a good one, though. It is entirely possible for two players to build a highly optimized god-mage and a quadriplegic cripple. Hopefully the cripple will have some reason to sit on the table (maybe he's the hacker?), at which point it is the GM's job to ensure their time in the limelight for the cooperative storytelling that is an RPG.

What you're doing here is moving from discussing whether certain game design decisions are good or bad to discussing whether good game design decisions are even required. The answer seems obvious to me: yes, yes they are. If you don't need a good rulesystem, you can as well just run freeform and never bother with the books. If you choose to use a tool such as a rulesystem, it should preferably be a good one.

I don't really see your point here. Could you elaborate?
If you mean by that that the mere presence of an archetype skews the perception of power levels, I agree.

Yeah, my point is: there will be people who will want to play the street samurai archetype, and the rule system should give them the ability to do so enjoyably.

This example is, in part, a fallacy.

The example is a hyperbole, but it's firmly grounded in fact.

First off, there are devastating samurai builds with unarmed combat, often as a backup to the weapon-necessity. They can very well get anywhere in security in the right environment. The highly cybered street samurai wouldn't be out of place deep in the Redmond barrens, or a combat zone. The prissy mage would draw fire. The street samurai doesn't need to wear his cyberware openly and thus can also mask his nature.

Unarmed or not, samurai are still full of F-grade ware which any border or police scanner picks up. Mages are not, and there are no even remotely reliable scanners other than other mages. Mages, unlike samurai, can mimic other archetypes perfectly: you can cast wearing a full combat armor just as well as if you were wearing a robe and a wide-brimmed hat.

The mage needs to initiate, before he can do this.

No, he doesn't: telling if a subject is Awakened still takes an Assensing test.

The mage can run into background counts which makes him very unlikely to be that combat monster you're describing, while the samurai will still have his wired reflexes and a big gun.

That's stacking the circumstances against the mage specifically, and if your runner troupe keeps for some reason constantly operating in high background counts, that's going to be little less than specifically targeting the mage with a nerf. Which is both less than enjoyable for a player, and shows that the rulesystem is far from ideal.

My point is, it depends on multiple factors, who is actually superior.

Except it doesn't. When one throws his dicepools against a strong attribute supported by a common skill plus significant gear bonuses, and the other can throw his dicepools against a weak attribute of his choosing unimpeded by the gear and most often skills, it is quite obvious who is superiour in a direct confrontation. Minding that only one of them can also fly, mind probe, turn invisible, create realistic illusions, summon powerful helpers, move to astral and so on and so for, the gap is even more obvious.

There are also in-setting social stigmata against mages, which you conveniently ignore. People are scared of magicians, ever since the Ghost Dance. If you let that just fly by, it's your fault as the GM.

Except mundanes have no way to tell who's Awakened, but they only need eyes to see who is cybered more often than not. And cybernetic mods, especially combat-capable, carry similar stigma.

[Fatum]

Where I disagree is that optimization represents a 'roleplaying competence'.

Gygax has a different opinion in his book appropriately named Roleplaying Mastery, but what I meant was that using an "optimized" character is roleplaying in-character competence.

In 20 years of roleplaying and 15 years of being a GM, I haven't had a problem with street samurai players complaining about magic players. Usually it was the other way round. "He has sooo many actions!" - "Then why don't you learn improved reflexes as a spell?" - "Oh good idea."

Maybe that's because the mage player in your example did not care as much to read the spells available to him?

The thusly mollified mage player did not, in the majority of cases, use his new found quickness to splat enemies all over the place and instead focused on utility. And even when he threw mana balls around like there's no tomorrow, the street samurai players seemed happy as long as they could shoot things and demolish people.

You argue here again against any sort of relevance of the rulesystem quality. But it's not GM's job to fix a broken system, his job is acting as an arbiter in a collective storytelling experience using a working one.
And the problem with your example, as previously noted, is that a mage can do everything a sam can do (only better), plus a bunch of things extra that a sam can not do at all. Offering additional complications to the sam is hardly helping, which is what the rules changes seem to suggest (but we don't know for sure).

This also neatly addresses your remark about competence areas. Of course competence areas overlap. Redundancy is a good thing, and players usually realize this. You have the samurai and his main field of combat, and the mage throwing his mana ball or stun ball or whatever floats his boat and degree of smart optimization (yes, stun balls (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). Is the samurai unhappy that he's got help? I think not. It is not a matter of who's best. It's a matter of "Did I get to do my thing?"

Precisely. And the answer is "No, you didn't". Because the mage is not only as capable as you are in combat, he also went ahead and used his spirits and mind-affecting spells to do the run without you, rendering you irrelevant. And the only reason why he might not be able to do it is the GM specifically stopping him with targeted nerfs (like background count).

I don't really follow here. Are you saying that mentor spirit personalities are in the setting because of balance against other character classes?

I am saying that mentor spirits and the negative effects they bestow, as well as certain other downsides to being a magician seen in previous editions, were apparently a way to balance the amount of goodies and problems a character receives for being a mage as opposed to other archetypes, yes. Except as time went by those downsides have been growing less and less significant. Which has already been mentioned in the thread: currently, as a samurai increases in power, he pays for it with his humanity. When a mage does, he... well... I've got nothing.

[Bigity]

I disagree. The massive investment of karma is costly enough, not to mention the drain of doing anything with those abilities. On the other hand, nuyen is easier to come by, and a cyber-runner gets all the perks much easier (and earlier) than mages, but suffer little penalty. In fact, they still get all that great karma for skill and attribute improvement.

I do agree. The fluff (used to) go on and on about how magic users see things that would make normal people go crazy.

I got no problem with high levels of magic causing social penalties outside of magical circles as well.

[Black Swan]

OK, humor me for a bit here:
1.) Tell me something a samurai can do that a mage/adept can not do as well.
2.) Tell me something a mage/adept can do that a samurai can not do as well.

1) become powerful quickly

2) become very powerful slowly.

In the world of SR, (as I've always perceived it, anyway) cyberware has always been the "quick fix". It is a way for a person to get the perks real fast without having to invest much time. The mage on the other hand must spend a lot of time and energy to reach a level equal to the cybergoon and then must spend more time and energy to go beyond that. The Mage might have greater potential, but he still has to survive long enough to reach that potential.

It's the path you pick at character creation. And anyone familiar with the game will know this when they generate their character, and should choose appropriately. Everyone has that same and equal option at the beginning.

[Stahlseele]

1)
Samurai: Get a new gun
Adept: WeaponFocus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore, and it hurts Spirits!
Mage: Focus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore and it helps with most of my spells or summons!
Mage: New Spell, here i come! Bam! A whole new Utility/Attack-Option just like that!
Mage: New Spirit, here i come! Bam! A magical utility Knife that i can have do stuff for me to boot!

[hermit]

Samurai: Get a new gun, modify it! BAM! Extra-Dice galore!
Samurai: get me some cyberware! BAM! Extra-Dice galore!
Samurai: get me some bioware! BAM! Extra-Dice galore!

FIFY

[Black Swan]

1)
Samurai: Get a new gun
Adept: WeaponFocus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore, and it hurts Spirits!
Mage: Focus, here i come! Bam! Extra-Dice galore and it helps with most of my spells or summons!
Mage: New Spell, here i come! Bam! A whole new Utility/Attack-Option just like that!
Mage: New Spirit, here i come! Bam! A magical utility Knife that i can have do stuff for me to boot!

Well, if you want to play that game: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Samurai: New gun, BAM. Wired Reflexes, BAM. Smartlink, BAM. Muscle Aug, BAM! Bone Lacing, BAM! Orthoskin, BAM! Hey Look, I still have all these build points and karma for other good stuff.

Adept: Weaponfocus, BAM, Several Powers, BAM. Oh wait, I'm out of cash and power points. Guess I gotta wait some time and do some work before I can get some more good stuff.

Mage: Magic Focus, BAM. wow, I'm broke.
Mage: New spell, BAM. OW, that hurts to cast.
Mage: New Spirit, BAM. Ouch, that hurt to summon. what? I gotta spend karma to keep it around for more than a day? No wait, I didn't mean to mistreat you. Please! No! Don't kill me! aaahhhhhhh!

[Temperance]

Sadly, this sounds like the old linear warrior/quadratic wizard conundrum in a slightly different medium. (Warning: TV Tropes link.)

The fix WotC went for resulted in D&D4e, which is reckoned by most* as the worst edition ever. (* Based on the outspokenness of the various gaming communities I visit and my personal circle of gamers. Not me, though. I'm one of the few people I know that like 4e. A lot.) Exalted 2e made sorcery a slightly less optimal choice. Ars Magica just told everyone to play mages, 'cause mundanes suck; which makes sense since the game was about mages. Classic WoD? Mages win in the long run, just about everyone else in the short run. NWoD? Mages again win out in the long run. GoT? No magic in the version I played. Babylon 5? Technomages were just really advanced tech while actual powerfully psychic individuals trumped just about everything on an individual level. D20 Star Wars? Jedi pretty much win, though Saga edition did tone them down. (Never played d6 SW, so I have no idea.) Marvel FASERIP? Everything ended up on the same damage scale, so it was not unlike D&D4e that way. But then, everyone's a super in some form. I'm not familiar enough with any other games/editions to make a comment.

That all said, barring spirits, I think Shadowrun (in pretty much every edition) has struck a decent balance. Drain is an effective balancing mechanic in my gaming circle. Eventually a mage will fail a drain roll at the wrong time. With spirits? I've never been a fan of ItNW or overall spirit power. I consider spirits the break in the SR magic system. But taking them out kills some of the more important flavor of the setting. (IMNSHO.)

In the end, the optimizing player has the responsibility to avoid being an attention whore and dominate the spotlight. The GM has the responsibility to put the group in situations where each character gets their own chance in the spotlight. And the other players share with the GM the responsibility to ask an AW optimizer to dial it back. It doesn't matter what you play.

-Temperance

[hermit]

What most people forget to take into account is background count. That gimps mages hard. Usually, it is left out because it makes Adepts from "bad choice" to "Ha-ha *points finger*". Properly applied, though, it makes casting, summoning, and drain a lot harder.

[Stahlseele]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA
Kinda what the problem feels like for me.

[Draco18s]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA
Kinda what the problem feels like for me.

Second time that link has come up in the last two or three pages.

[Black Swan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA
Kinda what the problem feels like for me.

That was a good laugh. Thanks for sharing that. I've played SR for more than 20 years now and played every type of character at one point in time or another. It has never felt that way for me. Maybe the issue is with the GM?

I've always looked at it in comparison to the scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. When the swordsman pulls out his sword and starts swing it around and then Indie shoots him. To me, that is symbolic of a mage summoning up a spell (or spirit) but before he is able to cast the spell, the wired cybergoon shoots him.

In any conflict, the mage is the weakest and yet the most dangerous.

One of the greatest downfalls about being a mage is that most groups (runners, security, military, etc) follow one rule: Kill the Mage first. If you want to be this class that is powerful in a way that most can't deal with, be prepared to be the first one shot at.

[Larsine]

First, roleplaying is a collective pastime where every player is supposed to get their time in the limelight. Usually, the time they get is directly influenced by their characters' abilities: the more capable the character, the more often his actions are crucial to the plot, and the more often the player gets to enjoy the limelight. To take it to an extreme to illustrate: if you have two players and the first one's character is a godlike being of immense power, and the second one's a measly mortal incapable of influencing the world around him due to being quadriplegic, in any plot based on classical storytelling techniques, the first player will get all the limelight, while the second will at best be able to describe his character's internal monologue.

That's more a problem of playing style that anything else. I've had players (both in SR and other systems) who got their share of limelight, but with inferior skills and powers. Dividing limelight time is not part of the rules, but it is part of being a good gamemaster.

[LurkerOutThere]

I'm going to give Critas a personal response, because his post calls out for one.

It really, really, doesn't sound like that is the case.

Really, let me try and put your mind at ease, at least so far as my own motivations.

For the last several months I've been on intense SR detox for a variety of reasons. Shifts in life circumstances, time constraints, and changing gaming group demographics. That and as a writer I failed to deliver on projects caused me intense like paralyzing guilt which forever will be linked to my enjoyment of the game. That and some issues in my own household is why i couldn't for example GM the con season this year. Once I was in that SR = Revulsion mode I couldn't hang out in the forums dumpshock, SR4 boards, CDT boards, you name it. So at least personally when I finally break that, admittedly self imposed, exile with the upcoming con season so I can see what's up with the new edition and you accuse me of not keeping an open mind it's really frightening. Because all those things you accuse me of? The whipping myself into a frenzy, reading things int he least charitable manner etc? I didn't do that, I went online, i read every blog post Jason or another source has posted about the upcoming issue, only then after forming an opinion that's my own about things that are important to me vis a vis SR do i come in here and post. Was my post scathing, caustic, sarcastic, sure but that's my nature

Now I know you guys are under NDA's and I can respect that, I know that as you have seen the secret project in full, especially since you have been presumably hip deep in it you are very fired up about it. But you have a concious choice, you can either evangelize and sell people on the product, or you can attack them for not being as fired up about it as you are.

The only thing I can say to you in regards to whether or not I personally am keeping an open mind? I'm back here arn't I? I'm having this conversation with you, I'm back to reading dumpshock. All those seem like suboptimal uses of my time if I weren't going to give the game at least a fair shake.

On my initial poiint of complaint I think the greatest problem I have with the material put out about SR5 is it all seems to be pointing to an overarching theme, and maybe I'm reading it incorrectly. Rather then trying to fix the problems in SR4, which warts and all is IMHO the strongest edition to date, so many of the blog posts etc seem to indicate the development has been focused on going for a certain "feel" of game. To me the great strength of SR was always that you sit any 4 people down in the SR area of a big con down and ask them what SR is to them and you'll get 4 different answers. In essence SR5 seems to be less about improving the rules and more about making the rules support one interpretation of the game. Symptoms of this methodology, whether they exist in my head alone or not A) Ware is 100% dehumanizing reflecting in a social limit on cybered characters B) Higher skill caps (a good thing IMO) coupled with accuracy limitations (chaining peoples performance to their gear). Convoluted explanations to support the return of cyberdecks etc.

Now i could be wrong, cyberware could have gotten a much needed top to bottom review and update, to the point where doing something like penalizing cybered characters socially but not having a similar penalty for magic users makes sense. The improved reflexes spell could be gone or heavily tuned and the magic rating loss rules could be back moving mages back into a position whether they are not stealing the street sams thunder as much and yet still being more versatile, but I've seen no mention of either of these priorities that would assuage my concerns. So therefore I assume if the basic cyberware functionality remains the same, which it has in most material aspects in every edition prior, then right out the gate ware is getting a whack with nerf bat, when it was already in my opinion the less versatile and arguably the less powerful option.

All of this is compounded that for me at least there's a clock running, in 17 days we have origins where I hope to actually try the game out for a spin. Unfortunately before then we are in a holding pattern so in order to not play a pregen (because by tradition SR pregens must suck) I've got to either hope the PDF is released to buy, or hope that some sort of preview of the character creation is put up. Otherwise my only option is to try and find a intro to the sixth world slot, which I would imagine are going to be just as hard to come by as the individual games. I do kind of have to wonder why CGL didn't do some sort of more open playest, at least using the CGL demo teams to both get people prepped/evangelized and iron out some of the, lets be honest with ourselves, plaguing quality control issues.

[Fatum]

In the world of SR, (as I've always perceived it, anyway) cyberware has always been the "quick fix". It is a way for a person to get the perks real fast without having to invest much time. The mage on the other hand must spend a lot of time and energy to reach a level equal to the cybergoon and then must spend more time and energy to go beyond that. The Mage might have greater potential, but he still has to survive long enough to reach that potential.

A mage starts out more powerful and with more options, and keeps getting more so, while a sam has to spend millions on minuscule improvements.

FIFY

Heard of Essence? Sammies leave chargen with a bare minimum, and purchasing more Essence effective implants costs literally millions.

What most people forget to take into account is background count. That gimps mages hard. Usually, it is left out because it makes Adepts from "bad choice" to "Ha-ha *points finger*". Properly applied, though, it makes casting, summoning, and drain a lot harder.

Background counts are a bad solution because (1) they're relatively rare (2) those are targeting one of your players specifically, and if each time he's supposed to be awesome he is instead riddled with a background count, I don't think the player will enjoy that kind of a game.

I've always looked at it in comparison to the scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. When the swordsman pulls out his sword and starts swing it around and then Indie shoots him. To me, that is symbolic of a mage summoning up a spell (or spirit) but before he is able to cast the spell, the wired cybergoon shoots him.
In any conflict, the mage is the weakest and yet the most dangerous.

A mage casts as fast as a samurai shoots. And a mage does not have to be weak: a mage can cast in armour just as well, and he has much more options for hiding in plain sight (invisibility and flying, remember?) not to be shot at to begin with.

That's more a problem of playing style that anything else. I've had players (both in SR and other systems) who got their share of limelight, but with inferior skills and powers. Dividing limelight time is not part of the rules, but it is part of being a good gamemaster.

That is a problem facilitated or lessened by the rulesystem. Again, you can compensate for the failures of the rulesystem, but the more you have to do it, the more does the suspension of disbelief get stretched.

A lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of fighting and a lot of compromising went into this product, and it sucks that so many people are, for whatever reason, so clearly making up their minds about it before they really know how it all falls together.

Oh right, poor CGL got all the wrong bad fans.
To me, it's pretty obvious that the previews are done to give the future clients an impression of the future product. If that impression, let's say, leaves a strange aftertaste, why do you think people shouldn't make up their mind? It's a showpiece, if even it can't be done right, what can?
You know, the more I read about the new edition, the less I want to play Shadowrun, and the less I want to buy new books between horrible editing, freelancers pointing fingers at the fans for not being appreciative enough, and the changes as they are described in the previews and Q&As and whatever.

[Stahlseele]

As per the Fluff, a BGC of 1 or 2 is applicable for every spot in a Plex.
Nobody does this, because it nerfs all magic.
For some reason, nobody has problems with scanners being everywhere.

[Black Swan]

... and if each time he's supposed to be awesome he is instead riddled with a background count, ...

What's with this obsession that it is the game system's responsibility to make a player awesome? A character being awesome is the result of the choices of the player in game. A low skilled character with no cyberware or magic can be awesome. It just takes a good player to do it. Players who require the system to make their characters awesome will never have awesome characters, no matter what they do.

A mage starts out more powerful and with more options, and keeps getting more so, while a sam has to spend millions on minuscule improvements.

Millions? Seriously? SR4 cut the price of cyberware (and other gear as well) by quite a large margin over previous versions. Its now cheap and easy to be a gunning cyber machine.




If I had to make a character using RAW from scratch for a one on one fight between a mage and a cybergoon, I would pick the cybergoon every time.

[KarmaInferno]

As per the Fluff, a BGC of 1 or 2 is applicable for every spot in a Plex.
Nobody does this, because it nerfs all magic.
For some reason, nobody has problems with scanners being everywhere.

Most games I've seen actually use scanners sparingly, despite the fluff that they're supposed to be everywhere.

It's just impractical to enforce in play.




-k

[Fatum]

As per the Fluff, a BGC of 1 or 2 is applicable for every spot in a Plex.
Nobody does this, because it nerfs all magic.
For some reason, nobody has problems with scanners being everywhere.

I'd say the scanners are dispersed just as laxly. Otherwise there'd be no choice other than playing hardcore mirror shades, and that's a fringe interest.

What's with this obsession that it is the game system's responsibility to make a player awesome? A character being awesome is the result of the choices of the player in game.

If you don't need a rulesystem for your games, why use it and spend time creating characters and then following rules?

A low skilled character with no cyberware or magic can be awesome. It just takes a good player to do it. Players who require the system to make their characters awesome will never have awesome characters, no matter what they do.

Can a quadriplegic be an awesome rock climber?
The logic of the world has to be consistent, and as such the obstacles that the "weak" characters face should be exactly the ones the "strong" characters face in the similar circumstances. The GM playing up to the players can compensate for it, but the consistency of the world is reduced for it (am I repeating it for the third or the fourth time now?)

Millions? Seriously? SR4 cut the price of cyberware (and other gear as well) by quite a large margin over previous versions. Its now cheap and easy to be a gunning cyber machine.

Sure, as long as you use ordinary ware, that is, in chargen. Once you hit the Essence gap and try to improve, you need alphaware and up, with the costs raised accordingly.

If I had to make a character using RAW from scratch for a one on one fight between a mage and a cybergoon, I would pick the cybergoon every time.

And you'd lose every time because a duel between a mage and a samurai even in its most primitive form is rolling the primary stat plus the primary skill against a secondary stat as opposed to rolling the primary stat and a primary skill against a secondary stat plus a secondary skill, and then against a secondary stat plus gear.