Streamlining gameplay Options

[Chaos Kingpin]

..Any suggestions or search help... I know I have read similar posts here but cant find them now.

I want to avoid a lot of dice rolling, anybody have a good system for this.

So it is still "game-like" and not just a group of people telling a story... but much less looking in books and searching tables of contents or GM screens...
know what I mean?

[Steak and Spirit...]

Kind of. Unfortunately, dice rolling is pretty integral to the system. If you're having it hard w/ SR4, you must have hated SR3.

I'd suggest just keeping a quick-reference notepad nearby with roll suggestions. As a GM, you'll find that the more often you do rolls, the more likely they are to pool up in your memory bank, making page references less likely.

Or. Just start winging it.

[knasser]

Have a cheat sheet handy giving the number of dice for various tasks and have it part of the PC or NPC writeup. Encourage players not to break from these. So you don't need to be looking up the modifiers for Full Auto et al. The character sheet just lists x dice to hit at y damage with PC favourite weapon. Do the same for spells cast at a particular force.

It'll take a while to work all these out and note them down, due to different ranges, etc.

If you're looking for dice rolls that you can actually cut out of the game entirely without messing up the balance, I don't really have any suggestions. There's a rule about purchasing successes instead of rolling once you have sufficient dice pool (at four for one ratio), SR4, pg.55. You could encourage players to use this rule and use it yourself. That Samurai with 12 dice to hit with his Ruger? Just assume that he gets three hits normally. Again, note all these values down so that you don't have to look them up. I'd find this a bit lifeless myself, but perhaps it's what you're looking for.

Hope this helps,

-K.

[Thanee]

Often you can simply go by the average roll (4:1 dice:hit ratio as per the book, or 3:1 for a more accurate gauge of a character's full ability; the 4:1 also includes the cost for no glitches, which could be ignored in many cases) instead of actually rolling.

Bye
Thanee

[Walknuki]

[Clyde]

Don't forget to precalculate damage for weapons and drain for spells!

Player: I fire my sniper rifle, getting 5 hits for umm what's that damage? Oh, yeah 7 plus 5 is uh 12 . . . oh and I'm loading explosive ammo so that adds . . . 1 . . . so 13 and -3 . . NO -4 AP!! 13 damage and -4 AP.

Me: The cat dies.

A statline like:

Submachine Gun 6P, -1AP 11 dice (0-10m) 10 dice (11-40m) 9 dice (41-80m) 8 dice (81-150m). 3 Recoil.

Besides organizing the sheets more effectively (this will take experimentation) make sure that the players know their rules. In our current D&D game we've got to constantly remind a couple players how their most common abilities work. I mean, if you cast a spell ten times a game and it's your "go to" combat ability wouldn't you frickin' know how to roll for it?

Finally, you may want to just skip using the modifiers as the book prints them (hard and fast). Instead, just eyeball it. One of the best features of the static 5 target number is that being a couple points off on the GM's part won't necessarily screw things over. In SR3, if you gave a guy a target number 5 shot instead of a target number 6 you changed the outcome completely, doubling the number of successes on average. In SR4 if you roll 5 dice instead of 6 (or vice versa) things are off by only 1/3 of a hit on average. It may be faster for you to just give them the penalties.

Also, be damn sure to tell your players ahead of time that you are interested in running things fast. Probably they are, too, but they shouldn't have to figure it out through telepathy.

[Zen Shooter01]

Better preparation and better organization make things go faster. I list skills like this: Unarmed Combat: 9 (4, AGI, +1 Imp). This means that ten times out of eleven, the PC is rolling 9 dice, the total of Skill, Linked Attribute, and +1 from an Implant.

Next to every character's weapon I write dp X, where X is the total dice pool for using the weapon, including smartguns, etc.

Cheat sheets and the GM screen are everything.

Another technique is don't wait to roll the dice. When the player says, "I'm going to shoot that guy," , you say, "Fine," and immediately roll that guy's Reaction, then Body + Armor while the player is still counting out dice.

Also, encourage the players to have their dice ready. If the PC is in a gunfight with her Ingram Smartgun in her hand, with a dice pool of 10, suggest that she should have ten dice set aside and ready to roll while other characters are taking their actions. Then there's no delay when she wants to shoot. And if she does something other than shoot - say, Running - she knows she's got ten dice in front of her and her Running dp is eight, so she takes away two dice and is ready to go. Instead of counting, "One...two...three...four..."

[knasser]

I saw that someone had coloured the pips of their dice to speed counting hits with big dice pools. Get a tonne of blue d6's with white pips. Colour 1-4 a lighter blue and 5-6 bright red. Still useable as a regular die, but much better for Shadowrun.

[Dragoonkin]

[Walknuki]

[Critias]

Practice makes perfect, as with so much else in life. Instead of tweaking the rules (and then having to get used to the tweaks), why not just...play more?

[SL James]

Plus, eventually you'll see how predictable the results of rolling dice are under conditions your PCs will encounter, and if you want, you can just do a little handwave and say "Oh, well this guy is toast" and move on.

[knasser]

[ShadowDragon]

[hobgoblin]

[Zen Shooter01]

Shadowdragon: paint is heavy.

[SL James]

[James McMurray]

If enemies are dropping like flies to the party's mage, it's because the GM wants it that way. Otherwise they would have been made capable of defending themselves.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[ShadowDragon]

[Ankle Biter]

[Dragoonkin]

[Critias]

You might have better luck with a highlighter or a permanent marker or something -- shade in the 5's and 6's, and call it done.

[James McMurray]

Critias: people have said that the highlighters and permanent markers don't work. That's why paint was originally mentioned.

[Zen Shooter01]

It's not like I've done a scientific study, but I would be wary of the weight of the paint throwing off the curve.