Surgery, Why the hate? Options

[Talia Invierno]

Never once have the surgery rules been mentioned on these boards without -- yes, call it hate. The reason most commonly given is that they are insanely complicated.

I never found them so. Quite the contrary: once I caught the mechanic, they seemed some of the most straightforward in the entire set of rulebooks. After all, the core of it was simply determining

(a) the category of surgery;
(b) the risked negative options and desired positive options; and
(c ) location/technology/condition:

all of which together gives a target number and the required number of successes for bad things not to happen and for each potential good thing thereafter.

The combat rules are considerably more complex: yet reaction to any single part of these is far less visceral. Spellcasting even has a similar structure of rules, with the balancing act of ideal Force level echoing the balance of desired surgical options against acceptable TN.

The surgery rules do, however, insert an element of risk that is not within the PC's direct control: something almost unique throughout the rulebooks. What's more, that risk cuts directly at a keystone of the PC's sought-after superiority.

Interestingly, I have noticed that many of the most welcomed SR4 changes cut out precisely this kind of risk, or indeed most situations where a PC would be required to find a way to work with others and perhaps even have to trust them. For example, Astral Gateway is no longer a power for which the PCs have to negotiate with a free spirit; but one which an Awakened PC can command of a Guidance spirit as soon as Invoking is learned.

Perhaps in parallel, other commonly welcomed changes in SR4 involve anything that reduces negative consequences of power. The constant risk of focus addiction is gone. At least in the core books through Augmentation, the objective potential for drug addiction has vanished. With Edge, even imminent death has become -- less than relevant.

(In fact, one of the most fought-against new rules continues to be the concept of aspected Essence holes, even with the simultaneous release of genetech to undo Essence holes altogether ... so permanent Essence loss becomes another negative consequence which becomes far less relevant in SR4. The argument against aspected Essence holes is that it's an unnecessary complication. I can't help but notice that the point of contention happens to be over one of the few remaining limitations on the power balancing act.)

And the surgery rules are gone.

What really underlies the hate of the surgery rules?

[Critias]

They were horribly complex and open to monstrous min/maxing. They were also yet another set of rules that were retconned into place, requiring existing characters to either lose out on the opportunity to use them, or do a decent amount of paperwork (and perhaps end up with headaches due to die rolls) to try and get their character "official" again.

[Ol' Scratch]

It was just an unnecessary complication to the game. Surgery costs were always assumed to be part of the implant's cost, including the grade of the implant.

It would have been like including intricate rules over ten pages for improving skills and attributes beyond the base rules that already covered all the important aspects of doing just such a thing.

They simply went overboard rules-wise for something that would rarely come up for most characters or even most groups. "Downtime between runs" has always been ambiguous enough to do what you needed to do with regards to character advancement in a game that was based almost completely on ambigious rules. The orange orchid didn't need a lemon tree, especially a lemon tree with sour fruit on it that few people needed to eat as the oranges provided all their dietary requirements.

[Blade]

I was quite fine with the surgery rules, except for the usage some people made of them (nothing mention that you can't take 10 times the reduced essence cost positive quality... With a good doctor, with plenty of karma and all possible positive modifiers you could fit a Move By Wire in 1 essence point).

The rules I had some problem with were the serious wounds rules. They were cool because they added scars, trauma, etc. But they required too much time and dice rolling. I remember how it went :
"Ok. D wound: you're out. Here's the book, deal with the consequences while I finish the combat sequence, it should keep you busy for at least half an hour."

[Xirces]

I've never had cause to use them (I don't actually play), but I actually like the surgery rules in M&M.

I can see the scenario where someone wants to get surgery and actually has to think about the risks of doing so - balancing the additional benefit of further implants (or cosmetic surgery) against the potential for disaster. Finding the right surgeon - one with skill that you can trust becomes a key part of it.

I agree somewhat on the cost issue (maybe there could be a reduction in the actual cost of implants to compensate?), but don't understand the point about having to adjust existing characters - surely just use the surgery rules for anything after that point?

[Vaevictis]

I personally don't like them because, at least to me, they don't add anything enjoyable to the game. Do I really want to deal with planning out a surgery? Hell no.

They took something that should have been highly abstract -- ie, just generate a TN based on the type of surgery (Healing? Cyber? Bio?), add complications (Damage level {L,M,S,D}, Cyber Grade {N,A,B,D}, Bio type {N,C}, Facilities {Poor,Average,Good,Excellent}, Staffing {Insufficient,Sufficient,Elite}, etc) -- and stripped most of the abstraction out of it.

It just feels like a bunch of busy work to me.

[Kagetenshi]

Basically, they were a totally uncontrollable risk you had to take any time you wanted to add cyberware, and one that didn't apply to most Awakened. Dying on the table because the NPC cyberdoc rolled badly isn't fun, and neither is having to consider whether or not to try to get major surgery to improve yourself while the party mage is learning how to deal 3S damage to an area 150 meters in diameter (IIRC) for very little drain.

It's an unnecessary disadvantage, unequally applied, that has only small benefits to the game (it is vital that implantation cost be separated from 'ware cost for fencing 'ware to make any sense at all) and none that couldn't have been gotten some other way. The complexity doesn't even enter into it--it's uncommon enough that almost any amount of complexity is acceptable.

~J

[Pendaric]

I have dabbled with the surgery rules and still use them in a modified manner thanks to in-game reasons.
I like the realism they provide but highly dislike the added complexity and time they bring.
SR3 is basically four rule sets hung together with a common background. The surgery rules add a fifth set that only introduces the desire to get all your ware at character creation to avoid complication and risk. As I actively have to encourage my players to get more ware during game play this was counter productive.
The cyber element of cyber punk becomes harder to intergrate with the surgery rules due to the downsides but does high light the punk element in the need for cred for safe treatment.

Personally I think the logistical headache compounded by increased cost and risk for cyber characters combine for the hate on the forums.
We play for fun and one or other of these elements reduces most peoples fun.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Kagetenshi]

But like I said in what you quoted, it can't be implied in the price of the 'ware--not without making selling cyberware totally undefined!

~J

[FrankTrollman]

Delta Ware is a myth. What Delta clinics actually do is implant Betaware and tell you that it's Delta ware. Between the reduced TN for implanting Beta instead of Delta and the TN reduction for having higher grade tools than Beta calls for they can layer on a couple of Essence reductions and still come out ahead.

And that is emblematic of basically every single thing that was wrong with the M&M surgery rules. I am absolutely certain that the authors didn't think that they were retconning Deltaware out of existence, and indeed it takes quite a bit of reading and comparisons to realize that this is the case.

---

It's why when we wrote the surgery rules for SR4 they didn't really look like the Man and Machine rules on the subject. After spending hours mapping out exactly what the steps and effects of the rules in M&M actually were... we decided to make the new ones completely different instead.

-Frank

[mfb]

my biggest problem with the surgery rules wasn't their complexity, though they were certainly very complex. yes, the core concept was simple--figure out the TN, figure out the bad and good results, roll and see what you get--but the details were many. rolling against a TN is not simple if it takes you ten minutes of searching through modifiers to figure out what the TN is. moreover, surgery is something that happens only a few times in a character's life; there's no need to make it so complex.

but like i said, my biggest issue wasn't the complexity. it was the freaking cost. getting a datajack implanted with a fair assurance of not dying on the table or coming out horribly scarred could cost you five to ten times as much as the datajack itself. that's completley ridiculous when you consider that prior to M&M--all through the previous two editions, all through 3rd ed until M&M came out--the implant cost was assumed to include the cost of surgery.

re: the myth of deltaware, according to ShadowFAQ you can only take the same surgery option twice, positive or negative (though the wording in M&M strongly implies that only the negative is so limited). i can't be sure offhand, but if you use that limit, i believe it demythifies deltaware.

[Kagetenshi]

[mfb]

rare events should not be complex because making something complex and unfamiliar makes it monumentally more likely that you'll screw it up. i agree that rare events should be... just woke up, so i can't think of the word. big, important, memorable, tense--any/all of the above. i don't think you should have to spend an hour looking up modifiers for something that comes up once in ten game sessions. but i do think something that comes up once in ten game sessions can/should involve a lot of die rolls. see the difference?

an astral quest is a good example of what i'm talking about. you don't go on astral quests everyday, generally, but when you do, it's usually an event. you do a lot of die rolling, you sweat a lot, but the actual mechanics aren't all that complicated, just variations on a theme.

[Talia Invierno]

*laugh* -- I'm wondering at all the people who are arguing that surgery should not be complex, should be made more abstract (less realistic?) or even ignored altogether ... many of the exact same people who are arguing precisely the opposite wrt firearms in two separate threads.

Surgery is every bit as vital to a Shadowrun game as gunfire but much, much less frequently encountered: yet even this minimal detail is objected to. It's claimed to be unfairly risky, but a decent biotech skill possessed by a member of the team, combined with the teamwork and karma pool rules, should balance that out on a purely numbers basis. It's claimed to be complex: but for a given surgery, it's easy to run through full procedure and aftereffects in less than five minutes of gameplay. Even with the existing combat rules, except in a straightforward firefight, many combat situations can take much longer to rule.

(This, combined with the growing recent broad assumption that most situations reduce down to simple equations, tells me much about what some consider standard styles of play that should be entrenched in rulebook canon. I also suspect that metaquests -- a major Awakened parallel to the sammie's surgery -- are not being played at anywhere near the book-appropriate level of risk, let alone lethality.)

Rules should be rules. If more realism is desired, why only this or that pet project? Why not across the board? It's almost to the point of a Dumpshock truism:

1. Anything fully within the PC's direct control and of which the PCs can take primary advantage (preferably to inflict damage on NPCs) should be very detailed indeed.

2. Anything even a little outside the PC's direct control should be made abstract.

Note that this also accounts for the secondary hate reserved for any suggestion that social skills should not be primarily or solely reduced to the roll.

None of which would even be an issue except that player pressure does demonstrably bend the next generation canon rules in one direction or another, and the pattern of the shift has become absolutely clear.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Talia Invierno]

You mean my participation in the How to have female players enjoy an SR Game ? thread didn't make it absolutely clear? But not looking, thanks 8)

Still, I'm curious as to what gave me away this time? I hadn't thought that the primacy of consequence-independent gun culture was so primarily male. I had thought it -- along with the Raygun rules -- was primarily United-States homegrown, with strong Auzzie influence.

[Wounded Ronin]

[hyzmarca]

There is nothing wrong with complex surgery rules. The problem comes when complex surgery rules are completely insane and bear no resemblance to anything that could be considered real surgery while simultaneously crushing the flavor created by every bit of fluff that had existed previously.



We go from having the installation of cybereyes, datajacks, and other ubiquitous and fashionable pieces of cyberware being simple outpatient procedures commonly preformed at boutiques located in shopping malls to all cyberware instillation being this huge life threatening thing with long recovery times.

[mfb]

you can only run through a surgery that quickly if you're as familiar with the surgery rules as some of us are with the combat rules--in other words, no need to look up most of it. considering how rarely surgery comes up...

[Ol' Scratch]

[mfb]

[Ol' Scratch]

I know. :)

[mfb]

of course, one problem with the surgery rules is that they're not realistic. a good street doc (skill 6) in average conditions (no modifiers) will inflict some kind of debilitating condition on his patient with ridiculous frequency. something like a third of the time, i think?

[Talia Invierno]

Wounded Ronin: I think you made my point for me.